Nervous on Stage?

Tips for overcoming fear when speaking in front an audience

Hi everyone…

Happy New Year!!

Thanks to all of you who responded to the final post last quarter. Your feedback helps me adjust the content for future cohorts and I greatly appreciate it.

One topic that inevitably pops out at the end of the quarter is nerves and I’m always interested to hear your thoughts on this topic. Feel free to share your own tips and tricks from your experience in the comments section but, unlike last quarter, please don’t feel obligated to reply unless you want to.

It’s not just you…

I’ll start with my own experience. I’m always nervous speaking in front of a group, especially if it’s not a group of people that I know well. Perhaps the best example is teaching Made to Stick as part of your MAS curriculum. I’ve taught this material for over a decade and I still find myself doubting my abilities to get my message across and engage the student audience every single year. To be completely candid, my own fear of getting in front of you all often results in a subconscious desire to stop volunteering to teach this course just so that I don’t have to get up there!

1) Remind yourself why you're doing this… remember the reward

Once the fear becomes conscious (which tends to happen about a month before the workshop), I go through a ritual of reminding myself why I do it every year. I remind myself how rewarding it is and how much I enjoy working with you and the faculty and the staff. I remind myself how nice it is to come to spend several days in San Diego doing something that I love doing. I remind myself how nice it is to get out of the office away from the day-to-day duties of my primary job. I remind myself that this “escape” refuels me and actually motivates me to be better at my everyday work when I return.

I always stop and remember exactly how I felt last year when we finished the course, as I walked back to the hotel. I felt inspired by the interaction with you and with your faculty and I remember the simple joy of walking around the Scripps campus.

This is more than just telling myself “everything will be okay” … it’s actually pausing and remembering EXACTLY what it felt like. I conjure this feeling and do my best to relive it in my mind.

2) Make time to prepare then stick to it

Next - I block time to prepare. The bulk of my lecture/presentation takes about 3-4 hours of “stage time” (the presentation in front of your class). A good rule of thumb when you’re preparing a presentation for the first time is that you’ll need at least 30-60 minutes of time to prepare for every one minute of speaking time. So if you’re giving a 15-minute presentation, you’ll need a full day to prepare it.

About 4-weeks prior to teaching your course, I set aside a full 40-hr workweek to prepare myself. I don’t do it all in the same week - I spread my time across a 4-week period. I block out a full weekend (8hrs on Saturday and 8hrs on Sunday) about a month before the presentation. Then I block 2-4 hours on my calendar on 2-3 days per week leading up to the presentation itself. I put these blocks on my calendar so that my colleagues and family know that I’ll be behind a closed-door working. I don’t allow myself to do be distracted or procrastinate … this is my “job” to prepare. I accept that I need this amount of time to feel fully prepared.

I’ll admit that giving a presentation for the 10th or 11th time doesn’t require as much preparation as the first few times but I know that I must block time each and every year to prepare in order to feel confident.

Confidence the secret formula for overcoming stage fright and preparation is the key to confidence.

Doing presentations

Advice on how to write and present well, by people who’ve been doing it professionally for years.

3) Structure your preparation … use time wisely to build confidence

You can break your preparation into phases and use rough time guidelines so that your preparation builds confidence. This confidence will help you perform even though you’re nervous while on stage.

The first 10% of your preparation time can be devoted to finding your core message. If your audience only remembers one thing from your presentation … what is it?

How to craft a memorable key message in 10 minutes

For example, I boil made to stick down to three key phrases … simple, concrete, stories. I create my presentation to reinforce this core message with the goal to make these three concepts “stick.” As part of this, I want my audience to remember not only the three words but also what each concept means. If students don’t remember what SUCCESs stands for … that’s okay with me. If students don’t remember what schemas are and can’t remember what a Hollywood Pitch is, it’s okay with me. I try to create my presentation so that students know what a core message is and how to tell a story with concrete elements.

The next 10% of your prep time can be devoted to outlining your story ark. This is a simple and quick outline - not a script.

HOW TO TELL A STORY IN YOUR RESEARCH PRESENTATION

For example, my “Setup” is about using an unexpected way to introduce my core message and demonstrate simple, concrete, stories without my audience realizing that’s what I’m doing. Most students expect that either Samantha or I will introduce myself and my background at the very beginning. Students expect me to say… “Hello, my name is Steve Bennett and [insert long list of my education and jobs and all the reasons that I’m credible to teach this topic]” (with your eyelids getting heavy).

In my outline, I note that I want to violate this schema and, instead, tell simple concrete stories that introduce me and also demonstrate the elements of SUCCESs. My outline reminds me that I want to tell a couple of stories that have nothing to do with the Made to Stick book. Then I want to ask you why you think I took so long talking about completely irrelevant things. I want your class to discover what I’m doing on your own. I want you to have that “aha moment!”

My “Research Problem” goes on to demonstrate examples of presentations that aren’t Made to Stick. Your class will rapidly begin to see the difference between presentations that leverage simple concrete stories and those that don’t. Most scientists aren’t taught how to be “sticky.” These skills aren’t hard to learn but they do require focus.

My “Strategy” is to engage you with TED talks and video lectures and use open discussion to highlight successful and unsuccessful elements. This begins to build an inventory of examples for you to refer back to later.

My “Impact” is delivered during an in-class exercise where you are asked to form a “sticky” presentation from research material. This is the “hands-on” section of the workshop.

Finally … I close the workshop by reinforcing examples from the your experience that demonstrated simple, concrete, stories.

That’s it!! That’s the initial outline for my story ark for the entire 2-day workshop.

The next 60% of your prep time can be developing your materials. This includes your pictures, slides, and video cuts which should take about half of this time block. The rest of the time block (fully 30% of your total preparation time) is what most people fail to do and is particularly helpful for nervous speakers. You can use this time to develop a long-form script for your on-stage narrative. Write down every word you want to say. You won’t actually read this script on stage but having written it all out will help your confidence dramatically.

The key for me is very simple, if I know I have this written down, I know I won’t forget it when I get on stage. My biggest fear is forgetting what I want to say. So writing it all out gives me confidence that I cannot forget it!! I also know that I’m most nervous in the first 30-minutes in front of your class. Once I see that you and your classmates are interested (I can literally see some of you begin to “lean in”) … my nerves begin to ease. That’s why I write out every single word that I want to say in that half-hour. I’ve been doing this long enough now to know that once I’m through that first bout of nerves … I won’t need my script anymore and I can defer to an outline instead.

It’s really important to note here that you will not read this script aloud. You have it in your notes if you need it but you should not read it. Professionally, there’s nothing “less sticky” than a presenter who reads an entire 10-15 minute presentation. Very few people can read a presentation with the sense of enthusiasm and presence that comes from speaking without a script on stage.

Use the next block of prep time to get comfortable with your script so that you won’t need to read it. It’s just there to give you confidence and backstop you in case you do happen to “blank out”.

The final 20% of your prep time can be spent practicing your presentation. It’s important in this step to practice out loud and use your presentation material. I don’t think it’s necessary (or in most cases practical) to practice in front of an audience but it certainly never hurts. The key is to speak out loud. Transition through your presentation material on a screen (even if that screen is just your phone). Time yourself.

You can start by reading your script aloud. As you get more comfortable with your script, make a bullet list of points and then practice from that. In the end, you should have a short page of notes that you can hold in your hand or keep on the lectern during the presentation to refer back to as you go. The idea is that this set of notes reminds you of the story you want to tell next.

It’s also fine to have your full script narrative on the lectern or nearby in case you need it. If you’ve spent enough time practicing, you won’t need it.

That’s my trick…

I think the best way to overcome stage fright is simple preparation because most people who feel well prepared are able to manage their nerves and perform well. I think the key to proper preparation is structuring your time so that you have enough of it and use it to go through all the stages of preparation. I think a lot of people spend 95% of their time making slides and almost no time developing story-arks. Even fewer people write out a script or practice it aloud. In my experience, those steps give me all the tools I need to get past the fear that happens every single time.

Additional Resources

Some people are particularly susceptible to nerves on stage, more-so than most of us. This is probably 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 students. If you think you’re in this category and preparation alone doesn’t get you to where you want to be, here are some additional resources for you:

To Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, Stop Thinking About Yourself

When I ask my clients what makes them nervous, invariably they respond with the same answers:

“I don’t like being watched.”

“I don’t like the eyes on me.”

“I don’t like being in the spotlight.”

5 Tips for Reducing Public Speaking Nervousness

• Don’t Expect Perfection from Yourself 

• Avoid Equating Public Speaking to Your Self-Worth

• Avoid Being Nervous About Your Nervousness

• Avoid Trying to Memorize Every Word

• Avoid Reading Word for Word

20 Tips for public speaking nerves

Public speaking anxiety is something which affects all of us to some extent. In fact, I believe that Mark Twain was right when he said,“There are two types of speakers: those who are nervous and those who are liars.”

Barbra Streisand, the 72 year old singer and actress is one of the highest-selling female recording artist of all time and even she still gets nervous.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor was once terrified of speaking in public and says he used to avoid college classes where he had to get up in front of people.

Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, Reese Witherspoon, and reportedly even Winston Churchill, JFK, Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Walters and Johnny Carson are believed to have had some anxiety about public communication at some point.

Even the late great, Elvis Presley once said, “I’ve never gotten over what they call stage fright. I go through it every show.”

If that doesn’t shock you then perhaps this will.

I believe that even Aristotle, Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin all had stutters and were nervous speakers at one time in their lives.

The list of famous, successful, influential and powerful people is as surprising as it is long. If you have an important speech coming up and are feeling a little nervous about it then you can take comfort knowing that you really are in the very best of company.

For many people it can be a very scary prospect but the good news is, however nervous you may feel it’s not life threatening. To my knowledge no one has ever died from either speaking in public or worrying about speaking in public.

Personally, I quite like the idea that so many hugely talented and famous people have felt and still feel nervous when performing in some way. It tells me they are human, just like the rest of us and that if they can achieve so much despite feeling that way then there must be hope for all of us. It’s my belief that it really doesn’t matter who we are when we stand to speak in public we are somehow hard wired to feel some level of anxiety.

Tips for Managing Public Speaking Anxiety

In the end, preparing well for a speech or presentation gives you confidence that you have done everything possible to succeed. Give yourself the tools and the ability to succeed, add in some strategies for managing anxiety, and see how well you do. For those in recovery from social anxiety disorder (SAD), these tips should be used to complement traditional treatment methods.

What has worked well for you; what tips and tricks would you suggest for your colleagues? Do you have questions that may inspire a discussion amongst this group? Comment using the button below: