Public speaking: fears and life hacks

Public speaking: fears and life hacks

By Dmitry Sizov

Just a single thought about a performance in front of the big audience may lead to a state of panic. Then it can cause not only internal feelings or external emotional expressions but even physical distress. In this article we will consider some reasons of the stage fright, discuss the personal qualities of a successful speaker, and point out some lifehacks that would be helpful during public performance.

Let us start the topic with a simple definition of public speaking:

Public speaking,?also called?oratory?or?oration,?has traditionally meant the act of speaking face to face to a live audience. Today it includes any form of speaking (formally and informally) to an audience, including pre-recorded speech delivered over great distance by means of technology[1].

At first glance, it might be inferred that the pre-recorded view is vainly included in the above definition. However, if you have ever recorded some of your appearance on video, you understand that this is also not so easy. Even the ability to make several "doubles" does not bloom much.

As a rule, we are all critical of ourselves. That is why most of us do not like to see how we look from the outside. Even small speech defects are striking to us - lisping or burring, unnatural position of the body and hands, no mention of facial expressions or the story, and so on situations.?

Hence, let's not exclude recorded performances from a number of public ones.

One day, the owner of our company decided to make a New Year's greeting for the employees, as he was going to leave for vacation and could not personally attend a corporate holiday. We recorded his performance about twenty (!) times until he gave up and settled on one of the made variants.

Every time he was not satisfied with something: he forgot the words, then confused the order, then made too long pauses or sighed too deep… At one point, he was even ready to thrive on writing down the idea of recording of congratulations.

By the way, our manager had a wonderful sense of self-irony, so together with the whole team he laughed at the cutting of failed shots that we made later, as it usually happens after the credits in films with Jackie Chan.

So, what is the nature of the fear of such performances, why are we afraid to be in front of people like ourselves?

In a certain way, going out in public, on stage, can be compared to the exit of ... a primitive man from a well-known (and therefore safe) cave. And even if, as a rule, evil predators are no longer waiting for us outside our "shelter", ready to eat us, the feeling of insecurity still plays a cruel joke with us. It does not give us that feeling of freedom and "omnipotence", which could be very useful when working with a large audience, which also needs to be "conquered" somehow.

Another primal fear is the fear of being excluded from the group. Probably, this goes back to the times when a person needed to be in a herd in order to survive. It was easier to hunt large prey together, it was easier to scare off predators together. By the way, it was easier to fight off their own kind together, for example, representatives of a neighboring tribe.

We are afraid of being alone, no matter how much a person has developed over his history.

And have we really developed much? The question is debatable. Unfortunately, I don't remember in which fantastic book I read it (it was in my distant childhood), but according to its plot, aliens came to Earth. The main idea that "caught me alive" at that time was the following.

One of the aliens, comparing the development of his civilization with the development of mankind, said: "My grandfather invented the wheel 800 years ago." The fact that they have one generation living for about 300 years did not touch me as much as the fact that their civilization went from the wheel to intergalactic travel in less than a thousand years. ?

However it could be, it's really easier for us to stay in the shadows, to be invisible. Or not in the shadows, but to be "one of" many. Therefore, it is so hard for us to go on stage and find ourselves torn off from our team there. And that's why it's so easy to do things at the performances of some famous guru or coaches that we stopped doing in the first grade, for example, jumping around and waving our arms like crazy. Just because everyone around (consider that our tribe) is doing it.

There are many more other answers why a person can experience stage fright. We discussed some of them with Mrs. Miriam Rickli during her seminar at #CASDigitalMasterclass in HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich.

Amongst that reasons of the fear, for example, are the following: ?

Lack of knowledge about the subject and poor preparation

Perhaps these are the two simplest possible reasons for unwillingness to speak - in the context of the possibility of their correction. In fact, this is something that we can directly and consciously influence. We can spend time to study the topic of the upcoming speech, to listen to other speakers who have spoken on this issue, to pick up additional materials.

What is more difficult to believe is that you are really well prepared. But this will come later, with experience and the appearance or strengthening of existing self-confidence.

By the way, you can use the factor of an upcoming public performance as an incentive for deep immersion in some topic. If you volunteered to be a speaker, one way or another you will prepare and study the issue.

When I was a student, I didn't have enough time to read Nietzsche's works. In addition to studying itself, I was busy performing in the student theater, organizing university tourist events and the like. That is why I decided to choose the topic of the course work on the creativity of Friedrich Nietzsche. After that, I had no choice – I was forced to read, read and read again Nietzsche's books, and books about him and his works.

Fear of evaluation (fear of being judged)

People like to give their own opinion on almost every single person they contact. And in most cases this happens automatically, unconsciously. Everyone does it. We should admit the fact that we will be judged anyway.

The only thing left is to do your job well. And people will judge you only by your speech, and not by speculation – for example, why you did not performance at a conference on your usual topic.

Fear of looking stupid or making a stupid mistake

The fear of making a stupid mistake on stage when you see thousands of eyes staring at you is understandable. A mistake can take the form of mispronunciation, a forgotten word that you were going to say, or literally everything that you personally count as a mistake.

Getting rid of this fear is not easy. There will always be people who think they know everything much better than you. The world is full of such people. But there are even more of those who don't really care that someone did something wrong. They remember perfectly well that we are all human. And you should not forget about this!

Impostor syndrome (or fear being unmasked)

People have strange thoughts that someone will ”reveal them" or suspect them that they are scammers. The speaker feels that he is not an "expert” in his field, but rather an impostor. It is often associated with self-confidence.

The good news is that:

- others feel it too;

- this is normal;

- this feeling is possessed by people who are growing up.

The fear of exposure makes you constantly develop in your field, take courses and learn new things, double-check your work and try to bring it to perfection. It is important not to overdo it. Remember that perfection is unattainable.

"Inner critic" voice

To put it in other words - fear of oneself. Who knows our insecurities better than we do? Nobody. Our "inner critic" knows exactly what to say to make us feel uncomfortable. It is logical that you want to avoid this psychological violence.

The advice may seem strange but try to create an imaginary support group. These can be your friends, heroes of movies and books, or completely new fictional characters. Let them "protect" you from self-eating. Help this group with weighty arguments about what you are good at, "tell" them your positive qualities. It helps to train self-belief.?

Fear of being criticized by the audience

It's one thing to be criticized by an anonymous troll on the Internet. It's quite another to be condemned by a hostile troll in life. Being put in place by some person while the whole audience is watching would be a hell of a lot of stress. Even if you have the knowledge to support your beliefs, the pressure can take even the smartest person by surprise.

What can help in this case is the understanding that even a critical remark is a sign of ... attention. If your presentation does not arouse a desire to ask a question, argue or criticize, perhaps this indicates not that the audience understands everything, but that the topic of the presentation or the performance itself simply did not interest them. Questions or criticisms, on the contrary, mean that you were listened to carefully, you were able to arouse the interest of the public and made the audience think.

Thus, try to accept the fact that the question from the audience is already your first, albeit small, but still victory. And in order for the victory to be complete, final and irrevocable, one should learn to adequately reflect verbal attacks and competently parry remarks. There are several techniques for this in rhetoric. And we need to devote a separate material to this.

Fear of forgetting the text

This item usually ranks high on the scale of fears. When you analyze this fear, you will see that it is a mixture of error, stupidity and condemnation (perhaps by others). Worst of all, the physical symptoms of fear actually contribute to forgetfulness.

This problem is partially solved by materials prepared in advance. You can use a presentation as support. Or, for example, cards with the main words, thoughts, or quotes. Even famous presenters often perform with such cards in their hands.

Remember the main thing – no one in the audience knows what you were originally going to say. This is not an exam in which the teacher expects to hear a set of information and data known to him in advance. Until you admit out loud that you have forgotten something, it may not be noticed at all.

By the way, this is a non-standard lifehack. You can actually frankly admit to the audience that you have forgotten something. This is good because it will definitely give you some relief. You will no longer have to hide that you have forgotten the text and torment yourself with the question whether the audience noticed it or not.

An old joke.

The husband tossed and turned in bed for a long time in the evening, could not fall asleep. His wife asked him what the matter was.

- I have to return $100 to our neighbor John tomorrow that I borrowed, but I don't have it.

His wife went out on the balcony and shouted:

"John, my husband owes you a hundred dollars. So he won't return it to you tomorrow!”

Then she came back and told her husband:

- That's it, you can sleep peacefully, let John not sleep now!

Fear of not knowing the answer to the question

You have prepared carefully and even delivered your speech quite well, but now comes the Questions & Answers part. You are listening to the first question and don't know the answer. Do the audience scratch their heads and begin to doubt the content of your speech?.. ?

If, while preparing for a performance, you have not thought through the question asked in the audience, and really do not know how to answer it, you can always say this frankly. And to add something like the following: "What I love about such meetings is the opportunity to think about issues that have not occurred to me before. This is just such a question that I will definitely think about now. And we can come back to this issue with you separately later."

Believe me, people have more respect for those who can admit that they do not know something than for those who, in response to the question, will "pour water", say a lot of words that do not carry much meaning.

Negative experiences and negative attitudes.

In contrast to the situation with poor preparation and ignorance of the subject, with negative attitudes and bad experience, you have to work a lot. Sometimes with the help of specialists. But the game is worth the candles!

Recently, my wife expressed an idea that became a certain insight for me. It is very difficult, if it is possible at all, to "remove" the existing "settings" from a person. Some of them were laid down by his environment in his unconscious childhood, some appeared later, but also long enough for a person to consider them his "own". The only thing that can be done in this case is... adding new ones. You may incept new ideas and attitudes to yourself. You can begin from choosing the appropriate surroundings to be able to learn something new and positive.

I have here associations with the role of a parent in relation to children. In addition to providing the child with safety, food and shelter, I think that the main duty of mom and dad is to show him a wide horizon of possibilities. Let him choose something himself, but show how wide is this choice first.

No matter how many reasons there are that would keep us from public speaking, man is a contradictory and sometimes vain being. For this reason, we are ready to go "against nature" and overcome our deep fear by getting on stage. Sometimes we go to perform for some other reasons, like the need to go to work every day, because it gives us the means to exist. But first of all, it is precisely because of vanity.

Remember the words of John Milton in the movie "Devil's Advocate"? "Definitely… Vanity is my most favorite of sins"

Hence, it is extremely useful to know what people use to reduce their fears, or at least reduce the impact of these fears on the success of their performances. Let's consider a couple more of these lifehacks.

I'm worried!

I have already given an example where sincerity in communicating with the audience can help the speaker. Many people are very worried before going on stage, and I am not an exception. If the audience is completely unknown to me, and I have to speak on a new topic, sometimes the first thing I say after greeting is the words "You know, I'm worried today."

This gives me the opportunity to no longer hide my excitement. And it immediately makes me somehow "more human", closer to the audience. They understand that I am the same human as they are, no matter how cool and maybe even expensive a tie I'm wearing.

"Your man" in the hall

It is great if we can to lean on someone in the audience in front of whom we are speaking. But it's hard to do that if you don't know anyone in the audience.

One day, while preparing for my appearance on stage, I asked a girl sitting next to me if I could look at her sometimes during the performance and if she could sometimes nod approvingly at my words. She agreed, and it helped me a lot that day. From time to time I addressed her in my speech, she nodded in response, and I felt her support. To be honest, I do not know a stronger lifehack to ease your own condition on the stage.

Oops!

When my son turned six, we gifted him with a set of a young magician. He got so carried away with it that he decided to perform magic tricks in his kindergarten. At the same time, he was very worried if some trick for some reason did not work out. Due to his age, he still could not control his emotions, and this could hinder him so much that in case of even a small hitch, he could get upset and quit everything.

And then we came up with a "magic word" with him. "Oops!" We agreed that if something suddenly goes wrong, he should say loudly "Oops! Let's move on to the next trick!"

By the way, thanks to this discovery, he stopped worrying even before the start, and his performance went great.

?

As for the qualities that a successful speaker should possess, we have already mentioned some of them. In general, they sound quite banal:

- a good speaker should be able to express his thoughts. Moreover, it is desirable that he could do it in simple language accessible to any audience.

- as we noted before, the orator should know the subject of his speech well.

- of course, it is desirable to have good diction, to be able to use sign language correctly.

- finally, a person must be sincere with the audience. If, of course, he wants them to believe him.

From the non-standard, I liked the comparison of the speaker with the masseur. A good orator, with the help of his emotions, body language, intonations, can "press" on various points, receptors and provoke a response – the reaction of the audience that he needs.

In conclusion, I would like to underline that we all have one or all of the mentioned fears. But the result is the same. Any fear is an obstacle between you and the opportunity to change your life. And only you can decide when to stop.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_speaking