How overcome fear
Here you’ll find a list of the reasons why you sometimes dread giving a talk in front af an audience and the solutions to overcome all your fears.
As you can see, all the fears come from a lack of preparation and practice, or ignorance of simple communication techniques that anyone can learn.
For each cause there is a practical solution that you can find explained and shown in the learning resources of Speak Easy.
| CAUSES OF FEAR | SOLUTIONS | SPEAK EASY RESOURCES |
| Feeling under-prepared and being afraid of drying up or losing your way | Plan and organize the content of your talk in detail | Preparing a talk |
| Not feeling comfortable with the hardware and software | Practise in advance until you feel confident | Presenting with visuals |
| Irregular or difficult breathing during talks | Learn and practice how to breathe correctly | Irregular or difficult breathing during talks |
| Believing your voice isn’t right for public speaking | Improve the quality of your voice through appropriate practice and exercises | Using the voice |
| Not feeling at ease physically and feeling clumsy in front of an audience | Practise the right posture and body language | Using body language |
| Not being used to reading aloud, especially in front of an audience | Learn how to read aloud to children and practise | Reading in public |
| Not being able to handle questions, objections or discussion | Study your audience in advance and prepare a strategy for dealing with tricky questions | Handling questions and stating my case |
| Worrying about not having everything under control | Practise your talk and rehearse in front people you trust | Preparing for the big day |
Practising for the big day
The best way to deliver a successful talk is to practise as much as you can, including doing a proper final “dress rehearsal” with any visual aids you’re planning to use.
As you already know how long your talk can last, make sure you stay within that time. If you realize that it’s going to be longer, cut something out. Never try to fit more in by speaking more quickly!
It’s not a bad idea to do your final rehearsal in front of a selected audience of family or friends. This will give you a much better idea of what things will really be like and how you are performing.
Video your rehearsal and spend some time assessing your performance. There may still be a few things that could be improved and that you want to “tweak”.
