Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2014; the Prezi survey it calls recent, including its finding that 70% of professionals see presentation skills as essential, dates from 2014.
In one of his stand-up routines, Jerry Seinfeld said that the fear of death came in second place, beaten only by the fear of public speaking. Put another way, some people would rather be the star of their own funeral than the lead actor in a presentation where they have to address an audience.
I don’t think it goes that far, but it’s true that most professionals, and even successful business people, still admit that speaking in public terrifies them. Richard Branson is one of them, and he has said so on several occasions.
A recent study by Prezi found that this fear is widespread, but it also found that 70% of professionals are aware that presentation or public speaking skills are essential for career success.
After all, presentation skills are nothing more than communication skills, together with the ability to convey or conceptualise a vision, which makes them useful for leading a group of people.
As a rule, if you can’t give a decent presentation, if nerves get the better of you in public, your boss will probably think you’re not suited to a leadership position, and that can hold back your career.
Likewise, if you have your own business and lack these communication skills, you’ll be less likely to win over an audience in a business meeting. The Prezi study itself shows how many business owners prefer to send someone else to give a presentation, even at the risk of that person failing, all to avoid being the centre of attention in a presentation or talk themselves.
Communication skills are essential for persuading and convincing others: for putting forward a point of view or an idea and knowing how to get it across with conviction. At other times, it’s about delivering a message that motivates a group of people.
How can you improve these skills and lose your fear of public speaking?
Guess what I’m going to say. Yes, that’s right: it isn’t hard once you’re willing to face that fear and fail a couple of times. As with so many other things, only practice will make you better.
In fact, people who took an active part in plays when they were young usually find it easier, because they have lost or mastered their stage fright.
The bad news is that there’s no way that fear will disappear during your first presentations, and probably not during the next few either. All you can do is face it, as others have done before you.
(Read: Learning to be a good speaker with the techniques of TED speakers)
If we look at TED speakers, most of them have something in common: in most cases their talks last no more than 20 minutes. It’s a way of keeping a talk short so as not to tire or bore the audience. These talks tend to be very intense and productive, and the great majority include a small dose of humour.
Various studies have shown that you won’t be able to hold an audience’s full attention for very long, so between 15 and 25 minutes is all yours.
Know in advance what your audience expects from you
Why has your audience come? Why are they there? What do they hope to find? You need to answer these questions before you walk into a room or onto a stage, and make sure they find what they came for.
Some time ago we published public speaking tips from the world champion of public speaking. He said there’s no difference between speaking to 5 people and speaking to 5,000, because the message is the same. The only thing that changes is that to speak to 5,000 people you need a microphone.
You have to start with a message, and that message has to be delivered with passion. You have to rehearse the speech, but it should come across as natural and spontaneous, not rehearsed.
Beginners should focus instead on avoiding certain mistakes, and many of those mistakes come from taking certain advice too literally or out of context.
It’s said that to make a talk more engaging you should use a visual presentation such as PowerPoint, but some speakers now use their slides as a crutch and end up achieving the opposite effect: boring the audience.
In fact, you shouldn’t build a talk around slides alone, because slides should serve to season an explanation visually. In other words, slides should be light support, not the main subject.
(Read: The 9 most common mistakes when speaking in public)
Why has stage fright grown worse these days?
In a technological era in which much of business and communication now happens through social media, we are killing off social communication.
Now, if you want to congratulate someone, you do it on Facebook; if you want to break up with your partner, you send them a WhatsApp message; and many managers even admit that they now deliver bad news to their teams by email.
These so-called social networks are making us less and less social, and I suppose that over time we’ll see more cases of phobias about communicating in person. We’ve lost practice in our communication skills, even though we communicate with many more people.
One of the best ways to prepare yourself for public speaking is undoubtedly to start talking to people face to face, because if you go straight from email and Facebook to speaking in public… may the force be with you.
See also: How to be more persuasive and get people to do what you want
Featured image: Balise42, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
