Lower the “Public” Speaking Terror Alert?

Seems to be a lot going on right now. I just submitted the following article for publication on a website called www.exzibit.net. Thought I’d share this. I’ll be sending this article around to clients and contacts. This captures some of the concepts I go into more fully in my one-on-one coaching and Podium Power workshops.
Enjoy!

Want To Lower The ‘Public’ Speaking Terror Alert?

These secrets will help you make the shift from stage fright to stage delight… and boost your career in the process.

By Matthew Cossolotto, 30/01/2006.

The ability to stand up and speak comfortably and effectively before audiences is a widely recognized leadership and success skill. In fact, I’d say no matter what your current profession, enhancing your presentation skills is probably the single most important thing you can do to give your career a major boost.
And yet, opinion polls tell us that many people rank public speaking as their Number One fear. Number Two is death. Why is that? Why is the fear of public speaking so widespread and so intense?
The fear is clearly self induced. It’s part of a strange mind game we play on ourselves. It all comes down to our mindset, to how we think about public speaking.

Change the Word, Change the Mindset

To change the mindset, I offer the following advice to my speech coaching and “Podium Power” workshop clients: There’s no such thing as “public” speaking.

There it is in one short sentence. It’s the first and most important secret to lowering the “public” speaking terror alert. It’s also basic commonsense, when you think about it. After all, speaking is something we all do quite comfortably and effortlessly every day. We talk with our friends and loved ones all the time without experiencing performance anxiety.

Putting the label “public” on a certain kind of speaking is the heart of the problem. As soon as you call it “public” speaking, you’re fighting an uphill battle. That infamous “P-word” raises unrealistic expectations, increases stress, and generally elevates the “terror alert” to dangerously high levels.

So let’s play the mind game to our advantage. Let’s take the very concept of “public” speaking out of the equation. Doing so immediately subdues the stress and throttles down the threat. We should approach speaking to audiences with the same effortless ease as we approach having a conversation with our closest friends.

The logical, terror-reducing corollary to the first secret is this: You can only speak to one person at a time. Making solid, sustained, one-on-one eye contact with individual members of the audience will help to keep you in conversation mode.

This leads to the third secret to being more a more comfortable and effective speaker: Make sure the real, authentic you shows up. Too often, audiences are subjected to speakers who are nervous, detached, stressed out, nearly unrecognizable versions of the real person. Next time you get up to speak to an audience, think about the old song: “I Gotta Be Me!”

The fourth secret is this: The audience wants you to succeed. Audiences support the speaker. The audience wants you to be comfortable, informative, entertaining and authentic.

The Joy of Speaking: Moving From Stage Fright to Stage Delight

The best speakers don’t dread the experience. They actually enjoy the opportunity to share their ideas and insights with a live audience. And audiences appreciate it when the speaker actually enjoys the experience. Your sense of ease and enjoyment as a speaker is contagious.

How can you make the shift from stage fright to stage delight? I recommend a simple, three-step process called the Three Rs: Recognize, Reject and Replace. It’s a process I describe in more detail in my book, HabitForce!

You begin by “Recognizing” the fear, simply acknowledge that it exists. There’s no point hiding the fact or pretending otherwise. Just admit it to yourself. Then you can “Reject” it – make a conscious choice – by repeating to yourself as an affirmation that there’s no such thing as “public” speaking. And remind yourself to speak to one person at a time.

The third step completes the transformation process. You’re able to “Replace” fright with delight by shifting your focus from being self-conscious to being support and connection-conscious. Knowing the audience supports you allows you let the real you to show up. The two go hand-in-hand. Self-consciousness stifles joy and delight. It’s the underlying cause that generates fear and anxiety.

So do your career, your self-confidence and your audiences a big favor. Enhance your presentation skills by taking advantage of these four secrets to more effective speaking. The first secret gets the ball rolling. Once you realize there’s no such thing as public speaking, you’ll move toward greater comfort, enjoyment, connection, authenticity and natural enthusiasm.

And you’ll take a giant step from fright to delight, replacing the fear of speaking with the joy of speaking.