How to Handle Anxiety Before Your Speech

The fear of public speaking remains very common largely because people don’t pursue experience with public speaking.  Lack of experience leads to fear of the experience.

 Photo by Wan San Yip on Unsplash

Anxiety Is Normal 

After hundreds of presentations, I still feel some anxiety before taking the stage. I will usually ask myself if I know  how I will begin with the audience, how I will conclude with the audience, and if I’m confident in the key points I will discuss. Then, based on my experience, I quickly and easily acknowledge that I do know these components and I then proceed.   

How To Manage Your Speech Anxiety

Consider in advance what will make you nervous before you take the stage and make a plan to confront each.  Here are some examples and approaches;

1.   Feeling unprepared

Make a speech plan. This may be a fully written text, but much better in my experience is to simply map the topics you wish to speak on.  A map makes it much easier to make adjustments to sequence and allows you to mentally rehearse each element without committing to specific words and sentences in a text.

2.   Forgetting material

Your audience will never know if you forget material. Still, I advise to never memorize precise sentences or passages.  Know exactly what you will talk about, not exactly what you will say.  For example, if talking with your work team you might note that you’ll talk about recent team results, plans for the next quarter, and some successful team behaviors that you’re recently observed. 

3.   Feeling unpracticed.

Find some opportunities to practice the entire presentation or portions of the presentation. When you’re comfortable with your plan, you will be able to go lightly or heavily for certain portions, ideally based on audience knowledge and response. Get to a position where you believe you know your plan, you know your material, you know what you’ll talk about and you know you’re ready.  

4.   Believing Your Plan Will Go Awry

Chances are your plan will go awry. An audience member may assert a question, a microphone fails, a door loudly slams shut etc. Expect something will interrupt you and be confident you can manage the disruption.

5.    Feeling Stage Struck Upon Your Entrance

This is very manageable.  Arrive 30 minutes before your presentation, walk the stage, check out any audio or visual needs and requirements, and envision a full room. In this way you’ve already experienced the stage and minimized the risk of surprises. 

6.    Believing The Audience is Better Informed than You

Chances are someone in the audience is in fact better informed than you. However, they haven’t had your experiences, or engaged in your thoughts and reflections on the topic.  Share yourself – the audience does not want to hear you recite a text book. Share your experiences, reflections and learnings, and how these developed.  

7.   A Past Failure

A past presentation that did not go as your hoped isn’t a failure, although I acknowledge some will feel so. Most people will celebrate that you took the risk and made a presentation. The past is the past, and we learn from the past.  Simply prepare for success with your next presentation.

 

Conclusion

Anxiety before a presentation is normal. Some anxiety indicates you care about doing well and making an impact – never lose that. You can prepare in advance and manage the roots of most presentation anxiety.