Three Ways to Beat Your Fear of Public Speaking

As a leader, you will often be called upon to speak in public, a prospect that most people are quite fearful of. While such a fear is understandable, if left to run amok it can hinder your ability present well, cause you to avoid an important part of your role and hurt your image as a leader. In this article, I offer you three proven strategies you can use to beat your fear of public speaking:

1. Practice, practice and more practice
2. Relaxing your body
3. Reframing the way you view public speaking

 
Practice, Practice & More Practice

I cannot overstate the value of practice. Skillfully delivering a great speech requires prior practise in much the same way as any other performance, such as music or sport.

At a practical level, rehearsing your speech will help you to speak with confidence and certainty. It helps you to move from vague ideas about content into the more concrete realm of what you will say and how you will say it. This does not mean that you need to learn a previously prepared script word-for-word, although I do recommend that you do this for the first minute or so. Rather, it involves saying words aloud, listening to yourself and reworking any dull, cumbersome or rough patches. The exact words may change slightly each time, but the gist of your speech remains the same. The better you know your material, the less anxious you will be about speaking. You can even practise in your mind by imagining yourself giving the speech. This is known as visualization. Elite athletes have used this type of mental rehearsal with great results [1. Loehr, J., & Schwartz, T. (2001, January). The Making of a Corporate Athlete. Harvard Business Review , 120-128]. However, you really must imagine that you can see and hear yourself giving the speech word-for-word for visualization to work.

At the psychological level, repeated exposure to giving a speech is an effective way of desensitising yourself to any irrational fear[2. Roth, A., & Fonagy, P. (2005). What works for whom? A critical review of psychotherapy research. London: Guilford Press.] – from spiders, to flying and in this case, public speaking. The more you do it without experiencing disastrous consequences, the less anxious you will feel each time you give a speech. You can also desensitise yourself using the vivid and detailed mental rehearsal[3. Powers, M. B., & Emmelkamp, P. M. (2007). Virtual reality exposure therapy for anxiety disorders: A meta-analysis. Anxiety Disorders.] that I described earlier in this article.

Relaxing Your Body

Your emotions and physiology are linked. When you feel anxious, your body gets ready to fight or to flee. Your heart rate increases, your muscles become tense and your breathing becomes fast and shallow. [4. Levenson, R. W. (1992). Autonomic nervous system differences among emotions. Psychological Science , 3, 23-27; Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (2004). The Emotionally Intelligent Manager. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.]

You can change how you feel, or at the least the intensity of your feeling, by consciously changing your physiology. You can do this two ways:[5. Edelman, S. (2006). Change your thinking (2nd ed.). Sydney: ABC Books]

• Breathing exercises
• Progressive muscle relaxation

Both of these methods can be used unobtrusively while you are sitting in audience.

To adjust your breathing, try practicing this simple exercise:

1. Place your two hands, palm down, at the bottom of your rib cage – in between your chest and your belly button. Your two middle fingers should just touch.
2. Breathe in slowly and deeply, counting to three as you go. You should notice that the muscle separating your lung cavity from your abdominal cavity causes the tips of your two middle fingers to separate.
3. Hold your breath as you slowly count to three a second time.
4. Breathe out slowly, ensuring that you empty your lungs of all air, counting to three as you go.

Repeat this 3-10 times. 

After slowing down your breathing, it is time to relax your tense muscles. The way to do this may seem counterintuitive because it involves tensing and then relaxing each muscle group. As you hold and release tension, focus your attention on the sensations you feel in that muscle group. To do this well, you may need to hold tension or stay in the relaxed mode for up to ten seconds. Do not tense any muscle groups that may make an existing injury or medical condition worse, without first consulting your doctor.

There is no single ‘best’ order of muscle groups, nor is there a single best technique for tensing each muscle group. However, the following order is easy to remember as it moves from your feet to your head, and you can perform the techniques listed without drawing attention to yourself:

• Feet (one at a time)—simply tighten and lock your ankles in the position you are in
• Lower legs (one at a time)—tighten while pointing your toes up towards your shins
• Upper legs—tighten while pressing your thighs together
• Stomach—tighten while sitting up extra straight
• Back—sit up straight and try to bring your shoulder blades closer together
• Arms—cross your arms and press your hands against the inner part of your upper arm

 
Reframe Your Remaining Fear

Prior practice, deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation will all help to quell your fears, but they may not eliminate them entirely. Therefore, you need to take any remaining fear and reframe it in ways that will help rather than hinder your speech.

One way to do this is to repackage fear as excitement. Physiologically, there is little difference between these two emotions [6. Daly, J., & Engleberg, I. (2004). Coping with stage fright. In Presentations that persuade and motivate (pp. 49-58). Boston: Harvard Business School Press.] (Daly & Engleberg, 2004), and if you channel your remaining fears into a conscious effort to sound exciting, you can put your fears to good use. People like to listen to speakers who are excited about what they are saying.

Another method is to challenge the unhelpful beliefs that underpin your fears into beliefs that are more positive.

Beliefs & Fear of Public Speaking

What other techniques do you use?

Tagged as: Emotional Intelligence, public speaking