Good Fear, Bad Fear, No Fear

As a professional speaker for more than 40 years, there’s one question I’ve been asked more than any other: “Do you get nervous before a presentation?”? My answer is a simple one, but first understand everyone experiences fear in one way or another, particularly when we leave our area of comfort, and journey off into the unknown.? Having fear is not always something you should dread or avoid. It becomes a matter of what type of fear you are experiencing because fear can present itself in three different varieties.

Good Fear

Whenever we are faced with unknowns, a certain amount of fear will appear. This can manifest itself in the form of anxiousness.? In business, this might be due to an important meeting with a client, or a key presentation in front of a large audience.? We can feel butterflies in our stomach, and a slight shortness of breath.? Sounds like trouble, right?? Wrong.

A few butterflies is what I call, “good fear.”? For starters, if you feel good fear, I can almost guarantee you that you won’t be boring.? One of the biggest challenges anyone can experience is showing up to do a job, and just not feeling motivated, or excited, to take on the challenge that awaits you.? Good fear takes care of that concern because it provides just enough of a reminder of what’s at stake to keep you on your toes without doing any real harm to your performance.

Bad Fear

Now that you know that certain types of fear can be helpful, let me introduce you to a second kind of fear I call, “bad fear.”? Some will refer to this type of fear as nervousness – a word I’ve never been a fan of.? When I think of the word, “nervousness,” I think of a person shaking from fear, almost cowering in the corner.? It’s rooted in a fear of the unknown, and I’ve never known anyone who performed better when nervous.

The first suggestion I’d like to make is to drop the word, “nervous” from your vocabulary; just get rid of it!? In some instances, words really do matter, and this is one of them.? Substitute the word, “anxious,” for the word “nervous.” Now, there’s a word - anxious – that I can get behind.? When you are under pressure, and you’re anxious, you can channel that anxiety into energy.? Strangely enough, the only time I find myself feeling a bit nervous is when I’m not anxious.?

My second suggestion would be to try and stop misusing your imagination.? When faced with pressure, our imaginations can get the best of us.? We find ourselves thinking about all the little things that might go wrong.? For instance, when preparing for a presentation, you probably feel a small amount of good fear keeping you on your toes, and eliminating the chances of you sleepwalking through a presentation, or forgetting to bring a key item.? When bad fear creeps in, you begin to think about the worst possible outcomes to your task, and they are often almost unimaginable. ?Perhaps these thoughts are difficult to imagine because they never actually happen. A gentle reminder about reality can snap you out of that bad fear funk.? To be clear, I’m not necessarily a fan of bad fear, and although I don’t like it and I try to channel it into good fear, it doesn’t scare me. There is something that does scare me, however…

No Fear

The third, and in my mind, the most dangerous fear of all is, “no fear.”? For the record, I’ve only experienced one significant slump in my life as a professional speaker.? Ironically, as my command of my topic and delivery techniques were going up, simultaneously my evaluations from my audiences were going down.? I couldn’t figure out what in the world I was doing wrong, and I finally flew another Xerox trainer out to watch me speak. He nailed it in the first five minutes when he said this: “You look like you have no fear.” That was no surprise to me because I did feel fearless and in complete control.? Unfortunately, to the audience, I looked like a guy who was going through the paces, a bit arrogant, almost bored, and had little interest in truly connecting with those who were in the seats watching me.

So, do I get nervous before a presentation?? You already know the first half of my answer: No, I don’t get nervous, but just like you, I do get anxious. Please let me continue that thought: When we learn how to do our jobs well, we don’t have to worry about being nervous.? We have to worry about being flat.? That’s why I actually hope I feel a little anxiousness in my belly before I begin.? I can channel that into energy!?

You don’t have to be giving presentations to connect to this message.? Maybe you’re visiting a client to sell them a product you have sold hundreds of, if not thousands. Maybe you’re handling an interview with a recruiter and although you’ve had interviews countless times before, you feel some anxiousness.? Good fear can be used to your advantage, bad fear can be rationalized away, but no fear can wait like a silent assassin.? Remember to appreciate the fear you feel so you can perform like a champion in whatever you do.