How I decided to love giving presentations (and you can too!)

Do you feel uncomfortable speaking in front of an audience? For years, I felt that way too—until one day, I decided to become someone who loves presenting.

Here’s the story of how I changed my relationship with public speaking and taught myself to love it.

I used to hate public speaking. If I had to give a presentation, my heart would start to race and my palms would start to sweat as I waited my turn to take the floor. As I presented, my whole body would feel shaky and tense, and my voice would sound strained and breathless. I didn’t know what to do with my body while I was talking.

When I applied to grad school, I naively assumed that my courses would require mostly reading and writing assignments. I was dismayed to find out that not only would I have to give presentations in class, but I would also have to present regularly at international conferences in order to share my research and build an academic CV.

At first, the idea of presenting at conferences terrified me, and I seriously considered whether I could somehow get through a PhD program without ever presenting at a conference. (The answer, friends, is no.)

Once I realized that was not an option, I was faced with a choice:

1. continue to squirm through presentations, feeling sweaty, shaky, and miserable, or
2. embrace the challenge and learn to love presenting.

I chose the latter, and embarked on a process of becoming a person who loves to present.

Although presenting still makes me a little nervous sometimes, I have learned strategies for calming myself down and finding joy in giving presentations. Here are a few pieces of advice for anyone who struggles with presenting based on what I’ve learned along the way:

Change your orientation

In my master’s program, I had a good friend who often gave presentations sitting down. A few times, I decided to mimic him and found that I felt much calmer presenting while sitting. I didn’t feel so exposed and didn’t worry as much about how I was holding my body. Instead, I felt supported by the chair. It was almost like hacking my body to feel comfortable while doing something that usually caused discomfort.

Of course, it isn’t always appropriate to giving a presentation sitting down. But if you can find a few opportunities to practice this method, you will know how it feels to give a presentation sitting down and will remember that feeling when you start standing up again.

Fake it till you become it

In her book Presence, Amy Cuddy recalls feeling so terrified about presenting that she considered quitting her PhD program rather than giving a 20-minute talk. Her adviser’s advice? Give the talk, and keep giving more talks until you realize that you can do it. Prompted by this advice, Cuddy started seeking out opportunities to practice giving talks, and she eventually developed confidence in her ability to present before an audience. In fact, she went on to deliver a TED talk that has been viewed by more than 65 million people worldwide.

Cuddy emphasizes that her philosophy isn’t to “fake it till you make it”; it’s to “fake it till you become it,” meaning that you embrace the challenge so wholeheartedly that it becomes part of your identity. When I decided to become a person who loves presenting, I inadvertently committed to a change in my identity, which I have now fully embraced. You can too.

Slow down

We’ve all seen (or given) talks where the presenter sped through their material, palpably nervous to the extent that the audience felt anxiety on their behalf. Sometimes I have spoken so quickly or continuously that I had to gasp for breath between phrases. This style of presenting feels awful and doesn’t exactly project confidence.

A way to combat this effect is to speak more expansively; just as taking up physical space by power posing can make you feel more confident, taking up space with your voice can as well. Speaking expansively means taking time to enunciate and giving yourself time to breathe. It also means knowing how much time you will have to present and planning a talk that you won’t have to rush through. Now when I give a talk I get off on the right foot by taking time to breathe before I start, and then continuing to breathe throughout the presentation. I think this allows the audience to relax and breathe too.

Plan and practice, especially transitions

Once I saw a friend give a phenomenal conference talk. What made it so great was that she made eye contact with the audience the entire time and projected warmth and confidence. I was especially impressed that she did not seem to have to consult her notes or look at the projector screen to know which slide was displayed. How was this possible?

After the talk, I found out the two reasons my friend’s talk went so smoothly:

1. She scripted the talk and memorized it, and
2. She built transitions into the script.

My friend not only knew exactly what she was going to say, but she had planned when she would click the remote so that her speech and visuals would be seamlessly integrated and she would know which slide was displayed without having to look. She literally wrote the word "CLICK" in her script to indicate slide changes.

Ever since then, I have planned my talks differently. Sometimes I memorize a whole talk, whereas other times I memorize (or plan) only the transitions. But always, without fail, I think about what I will say to trigger a "CLICK" and what I will say to orient the audience to the new information that click makes visible. This practice has helped me avoid the awkward moments (that I’m sure we’ve all experienced) of staring at a new slide trying to remember what I wanted to say about it instead of being present with my audience. It also requires a lot of practice, which has made me more conscious of how much time my talk takes (and whether I’m speaking too quickly).

Power pose

As Amy Cuddy discusses in her TED talk, we can make ourselves feel more confident in our abilities by practicing a powerful physical stance. Her research has shown that adopting a high-power pose for two minutes, such stretching your arms and raising your chest as if you are taking a victory lap, can cause changes in hormone levels that leave us feeling more assertive, confident, and comfortable. Smiling can also reduce levels of stress hormones, facilitating the same feelings. When I first learned about Cuddy’s work, I started to practice power posing before presentations and other stressful situations, and it made me feel more grounded and confident. I also made a deliberate practice of saying something that would make me smile at the beginning of each talk to give myself a little extra boost. For example, expressing gratitude for the opportunity to speak gives you a great opportunity to smile and helps form an immediate connection with the audience.

These are a few of the practices that have made presenting much easier and more enjoyable for me. I hope they will be helpful for others as well.

Got any tips or strategies for someone who is nervous about presenting? Have a presenting horror story you need to get off your chest? Drop them in the comments!

Photo by Alex Litvin on Unsplash