John was an executive at a mid-size construction company. He had been promoted several times in his 20-year career from which he started directly out of college as a project engineer. John was smart, hardworking, and conscientious about exceeding expectations. Yet John had a career-limiting shortcoming—he had glossophobia. He was fearful of public speaking. He did okay speaking in small informal meetings, but when attending larger meetings, he was quiet. And when asked to make a stand-up presentation, he was terrified.
There are many people like John. Some don’t like to make presentations of any kind. Some will only make presentations to small audiences on topics they know well. Some don’t speak much in 1on1s or in team meetings. Studies on the fear of public speaking find that some people would rather be in the casket than give the eulogy at a funeral.
People with a fear of speaking up and making presentations limit their career as well as other areas of their life. For anyone aspiring to have a voice in their community, business, or family, the importance of being able to speak to groups of people can’t be overstated. If you have to avoid all presentation opportunities in life, you miss out on so much. You won’t make toasts at your family celebrations. You won’t speak at your children’s weddings. You won’t present new ideas to your boss or clients. If you’re a manager, you won’t effectively lead.
No one wants to be fearful of public speaking. People with glossophobia hate that part of themselves, but most don’t know where it came from or how to get rid of it. It is as debilitating and frustrating as any shortcoming can be.
Reasons for Fear: There are many reasons people are afraid of public speaking. Contrary to what some think, it is not merely a genetic issue. There can be a degree of heritability in it as with any fear, but how we were raised and past negative experiences have the primary influence. Some grew up in environments where they were constantly told to be concerned about how they look, behave, and speak. Others had a really bad experience in a school play, speech class, or other speaking event. So, through nature, nurture, and past events, people become overly conscientious and fearful.
Whatever the cause, there is only one place to blame. Our fears and excess conscientiousness reside in one place—our brains. Our brains create and react to our fears. From a neuroscience perspective, there are two small almond-shaped parts deep in the back part of our brain called amygdala that create most of our fears. Our senses, like our eyesight, send signals to the amygdala that automatically sense danger and cause our bodies to automatically react. Like putting your hand on a hot stove, our hand senses heat, sends a signal to our amygdala which then automatically tells our hand to move off of the stove. There is no deliberate thinking involved.
Like a hot stove, when people are on a stage, or asked to speak, their brains immediately sense danger and they start to react. Some people sweat. Some blush. Others tremble, lose access to their memory, or feel sick in their stomach. Some actually get sick.
Reasons for Hope: There is hope. In fact, there is great news. Our brain isn’t limited to automatic thinking. There is another powerful part of our brain called our pre-frontal cortex located in our forehead. This is the part of the brain we consciously control. It is our thinking brain. With our thinking brain, we can override our automatic amygdala responses. We can intercept our automatic reactions, reframe them, and control them.
There are many “experts” who provide advice on how to overcome glossophobia. If you’ve tried their advice and it works, keep using it. Advice includes getting rid of your excess energy before a presentation by running or going to the gym. Advice includes thinking less of your audience so they don’t intimidate you. Some suggest memorizing your presentation. Other suggestions include making eye contact with your audience, having confident body language, visualizing yourself making a great presentation, eating foods that calm your body, using presentation aids that take the focus off of you, medicating yourself, breathing from your diaphragm, wearing your “confident” clothes, and reframing your anxiety symptoms.
From my own personal experience in overcoming glossophobia, some of these practices can help, but they miss the most important and fundamental issue—we care too much about what others think. Our fear of being evaluated and judged is the root cause underpinning most people’s fear of public speaking. Psychologists call this Social Evaluative Threat (SET).
The Solution: The key is not caring so much about what others think and the key to not caring so much is accepting ourselves. If you want to not only survive but thrive at public speaking, you must accept yourself as you are. Let yourself and others think whatever they want. Truly accept that you are not perfect and it is okay. You will make mistakes and it is okay. You may studder, blush, tremble, and feel butterflies in your stomach, but it’s okay.
Guess what happens when you stop caring about making a mistake and looking foolish from others’ perspectives? You stop making mistakes and looking foolish.
This may be counterintuitive, but when you stop caring about making mistakes, you make fewer mistakes. When you stop caring if you sweat, blush, or tremble, you stop sweating, blushing, and trembling. You are essentially reprogramming the automatic part of your brain that what people think is no longer a threat to you and you are going to ignore it. You are not going to react to it. Then the automatic part of your brain starts calming down. When it becomes conditioned to people not being a threat, it stops overacting.
As you care less about what your audience thinks, you become more confident. You give less energy to your fear and more energy to delivering your message. You still care about your message, prepare prior to your presentation, and desire be the best you can be, but you don’t worry about it. You don’t get anxious. You strive to give your current best and truly believe that your current best is good enough.
Putting a lot of pressure on yourself to perform isn’t helpful. Yes, a little insecurity makes you prepare more and keeps you from getting too comfortable on the stage, but the rest of the impact is negative. It makes you overreact. It makes you over prepare. It makes you nervous and creates the physical baggage that comes with anxiety.
What is perhaps most ridiculous about focusing on others’ evaluation of us is that we essentially place our self-confidence in the hands of others, who by the way we often don’t even know. We become co-dependent on them. Then, through our excessive sensitivity, we take their thoughts extremely personal …. as if we are supposed to be perfect. By the way, they are not perfect either. No one is.
Another element to overcoming social evaluative threat is realizing your uniqueness. You are authentically different so don’t compare yourself to others. See yourself as a wonderfully unique blend of DNA, nurturing, education, and experience. You are one-of-a-kind, so why feel inferior to others? Or want to be like others? Yes, in a specific area, others are better. It’s okay. Respect their ability and strive to improve your own, but don’t let being less skilled, knowledgeable, or capable in a given area bother you. You have skills and attributes others don’t have. In your own unique way, you are actually perfect. Either accept that you are perfect in who you are …. or that you aren’t perfect and it’s okay.
Example 1: Coaching people to overcome their fear of speaking up and making presentations usually requires many sessions over weeks or months. However, in some cases, it only takes one conversation. In one such case, I was coaching Judy, a mid-level manager in her early-forties. In our first conversation, she had an epiphany. She immediately realized she was caring too much about what others think. She was able to simply make the decision to stop caring so much. From that point forward she led staff meetings, presented at organizational all-hands meetings, and delivered industry keynote presentations without the debilitating stress that had plagued her entire career.
Example 2: For other people, overcoming a fear such as public speaking isn’t as simple. It takes more work. In some cases, the thought of working on a fear creates even more fear which has to also be overcome. This was the case with Richard, a highly respected front-line manager in his late 50s. He had lived with the fear of speaking up, even in small meetings, for his entire life, but had developed a strong coping mechanism that allowed him to function somewhat normally. The work he needed to do took a year. It involved overcoming his fear of working on his fear by making changes to his mindset. It involved undoing his deeply entrenched coping mechanism of just being a good listener by learning to ask questions. It involved incremental endeavors outside of his comfort zone to become conditioned to higher levels of speaking up and ultimately standing behind a podium.
Keys to Reducing Fear
You may never become a natural performer, but you can become comfortable with speaking up and public speaking. You can even become really good at it. Here are the keys to reducing fear:
- Accept yourself. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Know that you are not perfect, you will make mistakes, and it’s okay. Don’t outsource your self-esteem to the opinions of others. Don’t worry about what others think.
- Expect to give your best and accept that it is enough. You can’t give more than what you can give. Do what you reasonably can to prepare and present, then accept that you are doing enough.
- Have a structure. Put your content into a structure that flows smoothly like the why, what, how framework. You will no longer get disoriented or confused about where you are. Nor will your audience.
- Include engaging content. Use attention-diverting visual aids in your presentation such as props, pictures, videos, and diagrams, especially to highlight your key points. Use online tools that involve audience input.
- Create a reference. Create notes or a handout to glance at as you present. Content projected on a screen is perhaps the easiest reference to use, but don’t over-rely on it as it can reduce engagement.
In addition to applying the keys to reducing fear, here are additional public speaking tips to keep in mind:
Know your audience. Before preparing your content, know your audience’s interests, needs, drivers, and current level of knowledge. Know the degree of detail desired. Know their expectations.
Know your venue. Well before your presentation, check out the room shape, size, and seating configuration. Test whatever resources you plan to use including the audio, video, and Internet.
Practice. Rehearse your presentation so that you become comfortable with the flow. Memorize it in its entirety if appropriate, but most importantly, memorize the key points and transitions between them.
Capture feedback. Feedback is a gift. Through surveys or questions, ask your audience for insight into what worked well and didn’t. Use these insights to enhance your future presentations.
PDF version of this article: https://alpinelink.com/docs/Overcoming_the_Fear_of_Speaking_Up_and_Presentations.pdf.
