Overcoming Speaking Jitters; Fear of Greater Knowledge

Last week I spent 90 minutes with the current cohort of MBA students at the University of New Brunswick – Saint John (https://www.unb.ca/saintjohn/business/mba/). The program is a fast paced one-year version. I completed these same studies in 2013. 

I spoke with the students about public speaking fundamentals and offered some tips and shortcuts, including some that should help with their group presentations. I also encouraged them to be opportunistic and to mine their experience for personal stories they can use to enhance their presentations. 

Life Experience

Great speakers draw upon their life experience and especially customer service experiences for relevant content. Sometimes these experiences can seem trivial at first glance but can be funny, useful and illustrative for presentations. Any story you recount to a friend or colleague with some degree of passion could become a reusable speaking asset. 

Managing Jitters 

During the question-and-answer section, a young woman asked how she can overcome pre-presentation jitters. After the formal session we talked some more and she indicated she has speaking experience, and has confidence in her skills, but she still feels strong jitters before taking a stage. Further, she said she is usually quite nervous that someone in the audience will ask her a question that stumps her, or someone will make a point to showcase his knowledge, perhaps perceived as superior knowledge.

 

Tips for Managing Jitters 

Here are some tips if you feel jitters before a presentation;

1. Jitters are normal

Many people will avoid situations when they must stand before an audience and present. Speakers will feel anxiety because they want to do well. It’s normal to have performance anxiety. Prior to a big game, professional athletes will often be physically ill, but once the game starts, their skills engage and they simply play the game. Be confident in your skills and preparation.   

2. Know precisely what you’ll talk about

Make your plan. Know your key points. I advise that you do not memorize any element of your speech, expect perhaps the structure. It’s fine to take a page of key points on stage that you wish to address. Don’t worry about the precise words you’ll use, or precise sentences.  Be confident in the key points you wish to speak about, and your ability to speak to each.

 

3. Give yourself a pep talk before you hit the stage 

Be confident that you’re prepared, you trust your plan, that you can speak to your key points, and then proceed. You know your content.

4. Questions outside your experience 

If someone asks a question outside your experience, frame your answer around your observations, and indicate the question is outside your familiarity. This could sound like “thank you for the question.  My experience/research focused on the three areas I’ve discussed, and while interesting, your question/scenario is outside my experience/research.” 

If you expect the questioner may persist, you should likely end your response with “I see we have another question over here.” 

Conclusion 

It’s normal to have jitters before speaking to an audience.  You want to perform well and deliver value. These few points should help you manage your jitters. 

GYCZ The Importance of Local Leadership – A Podcast Interview

In November, I was interviewed for The Talkative Toastmaster podcast which is hosted by Melanie Surplice from Brisbane, Australia. Melanie and I talked about communication and leadership skills in general, and as members of Toastmasters International, we easily veered into how this worldwide organization enables people to polish their public speaking skills, and to communicate with confidence. Here is a link to that content -

https://youtu.be/VSn0DRyRR9I?si=yCLJ5Y0cLsl-aSbw

 

Engaged Local Leaders

During the interview we talked about the treasure of engaged local leaders, in this case engaged local Toastmaster club leaders.  In 145 countries worldwide (for reference, there are 193 member countries in the United Nations, some of which are very small), local Toastmasters club leaders respond to the ambitions and needs of their individual members and their local market demands.  While a broader support structure is in place, it is highly variable in its ability to deliver much needed support to local club leaders. Local club leaders perform phenomenal volunteer work in supporting their club members, and adapting to their local market ambitions.

Post Pandemic Effects

The impact of local leadership was made so very clear during the COVID pandemic when local clubs lost their ability to meet in-person for an extended period. Most local leaders reacted with speed and agility that enabled their clubs to quickly pivot to online meetings, primarily using the Zoom platform. While initially their online meeting skills were not extensive or widely shared among their members, as their online meetings continued all participants improved their online meeting skills. As the pandemic eased, their competence to successfully operate hybrid meetings developed.

This quick and effective response from local leaders enabled their clubs to not only meet during the pandemic, but in the long term enabled significant skill advancement in operating online and hybrid meetings for each of their members. In my opinion, this was the organizations most significant collective skill advancement in decades, and was driven by a crisis for local leadership teams.  

I’ve participated in several hybrid meetings outside of Toastmasters and many are not well run. In my experiences outside of Toastmasters, attendees who are not present in the physical room have challenges engaging as a full participant. Conversely, most Toastmaster members who participate in our hybrid or online meetings learn how to respect and manage all participants in meetings. Online participants do learn to assert their presence even though they are not in a room with a majority of attendees.

 

A Rapid Adaptation

The rapid adaptation to online meetings by local leaders personally invested in their clubs would not have been as quick, and perhaps not even possible, by a centralized board. An oversight board would need time to convene, then list several approaches to address the issue, then investigate and debate the merits of each approach, ultimately choose an approach, and then finally communicate the decision to local leaders.  By the time such a process was completed, it would be too late for many who simply folded their tent, and would fail to reach many others who simply missed the messaging.

 

Supporting Local Leaders

In any organization it is critical to support and encourage local autonomy, experimentation and innovation, while ensuring the core objectives of the organization are respected and achieved. 

With such support, all involved can grow their comfort zones.