Guest Post By Echo Rivera, PhD
Echorivera.com / stellarslides.com / Twitter / YouTube / LinkedIn
I got no sleep the night before. I couldn’t eat breakfast. I had a lingering feeling of wanting to throw up. I was sweating. I was shaking. I hated everything and questioned whether a bachelor's degree was really worth all this trouble.
No, this wasn’t me before taking a final. This was me before giving a 10 minute class presentation to 25 of my fellow undergrad students who weren’t even paying attention to me.
Can you relate? Do you have, or have you ever had, major anxiety over public speaking?
We all have different paths that led us to this point. For some, this fear has always been there. For others, it’s because of a negative experience that we can’t quite seem to shake because we feel so much shame about it (hi, that’s me). Either way, once we end up with these overwhelming negative emotions about public speaking, it can sometimes feel like it’s impossible to overcome it.
Now here’s the hard part: once you get to this point, if you don’t actively work on addressing those emotions, you will be stuck in a perpetual loop of anxiety and fear over public speaking.
The biggest mistake you can make at this point is hoping that you’ll overcome your fears and anxieties over time. A lot of people believe they can overcome their fear or anxiety about public speaking simply by doing more presentations. This rarely works. More likely than not, procrastination anxiety will take over and create perpetual negative loops that will trap you in this mindset.
Procrastination anxiety will make you procrastinate on your presentation (duh, I know). When you procrastinate on your presentation for too long (which many people who fear public speaking do), then you leave yourself with only enough time to create a #DeathByPowerpoint presentation. Because of that, while giving your presentation you’ll see an audience that is disengaged, confused, or not enjoying your talk. This will further validate your negative emotions about the entire experience, which will increase your procrastination anxiety for next time. If you also end up with negative feedback about your slides or public speaking skills, these emotions will be even further reinforced and even harder to break with each cycle you go through.
So, without actively breaking the cycle of negative emotions I mentioned above, each presentation will only reinforce that loop. If you want to break it -- if you want to overcome your public speaking anxiety -- then you have to be proactive about it.
Here is how I recommend you begin working on this issue. It’s a combination of what I did that worked for me (and generally works for others), as well as new lessons I learned along the way.
Warning -- these tips are things like “do a power pose” or “be yourself.” I drew a comic about the public speaking “tips” that I find bothersome, because they don’t address the root problems of this issue/
1. End your presentation procrastination (and address your procrastination anxiety)
The first bad habit to break is your procrastination and is a must. No one can create an amazing presentation from scratch in just a couple days, so you have to start here. This video about procrastination anxiety may be particularly helpful. You may also need to work through the shame you might be feeling as a result of previous negative experiences and recognize self-sabotaging thoughts you may be having.
Once you start to deal with those emotions, it’s time to get serious about starting earlier and earlier when you have an upcoming presentation. I shocked many of my viewers by revealing my own workflow and timeline for working on presentations. But this workflow and timeline is a direct result of how I overcome my own fears of public speaking, and will be particularly helpful if you also have fears/anxieties about giving presentations.
2. Create a script and practice it
I also shocked a lot of academics by revealing that I recommend everyone creates a script for their presentations. Most people are convinced that the worst presenters--the ones who sound like robots--are those who use a script. Not true. A script is your most valuable resource for creating an effective and engaging presentation.
Even people who love public speaking should create a script, because people who love public speaking often go on tangents or are disorganized (because they’re “winging it”), which often makes them hard to follow.
But people who have public speaking anxieties? A script (and practicing it!) is the #1 most effective strategy that helped me overcome my negative emotions about speaking. I cannot emphasize this enough--if I didn’t get into the habit of scripting my talks, I don’t think I would have ever overcome my fears.
I was excessive about it at first. I literally memorized every single word (remember though: this was for short class presentations, not 60-min talks). I practiced it until I nailed my dramatic pauses, had varying intonations, and my hand gestures were on point. This took a ridiculous amount of time and was completely unsustainable. So by the time I went to grad school, I started tweaking this process and now have it finely tuned so it’s easy to fit into my schedule and is practical for 60 minute or longer presentations.
3. Create Well-designed, Visually Engaging Slides
Okay, so you’ve started working on your presentation early and you have a great script. Now what?
The surprising answer is that it’s time to pivot to your slide design skills.
Beyond my excessive scripting and practicing habits, the other way I overcame my fear of public speaking is by creating engaging and memorable presentation slides. Although I recommend PowerPoint for slide presentations because it has so many great features, you can create slides with Keynote or Google Slides too.
If you’re like most academics I’ve worked with, you’ve probably been trying to improve your slide design for a while, but it takes way too long or never seems to make the impact you want. That’s because there are tons of myths out there about what being an effective presenter even means and myths about how to design slides effective for an academic audience. Plus we all have picked up some bad presentation habits along the way. You’ll need to unlearn those myths and address those bad habits to design great slides, and I have a FREE online course about these myths and bad habits. It’s called #StellarSlidesin5 and you can start today by signing up here.
It’s kind of funny how I figured this out. Part of the reason I was so terrified of public speaking was that the idea of people looking at me made me nervous. My solution was to create slides that were so fun, unique, and visual that no one would look at me--they would look at the slides instead.
And, it mostly worked! Most people watched my slides instead of me. Success! Except...then something happened that I never saw coming.
4. Remember that Change Doesn’t Happen in One Presentation; Allow Positive Feedback to Build Your Confidence Over Time!
The combination of having a perfectly rehearsed script plus creative slides resulted in the final element that helped me fully overcome my fear: positive feedback. My fellow undergrads would come up to me and tell me things like, “WOW! You’re such a good presenter!” and “Your presentation was awesome!”
At first, I was embarrassed because I was convinced they were messing with me. I thought I did so bad that they felt sorry for me and were just trying to make me feel better. I dismissed the high grades and positive comments from my professors as being something that “everyone probably got because it’s probably just an easy assignment anyway.”
I went on like that--dismissing any/all positive feedback--until I made it into graduate school. That’s, like, 4 years of dismissing positive feedback. And even in grad school, I was weary of positive feedback, but started to become open to it. I didn’t fully acknowledge that I created effective and engaging presentations until after I earned my master’s degree.
I’m sharing this for two reasons:
It will take time for you to build your confidence in public speaking. If you don’t suddenly feel better about public speaking, don’t give up. Assume that you’re in it for the long haul and trust the process.
Believe people when they tell you your presentation was great! Don’t be like me. Don’t dismiss it.
After you’ve worked on #1-3 and you start getting positive feedback from your audience (because you WILL), then take it to heart. Let it feed into your confidence, but also remember that it may take some time for this to happen. Once you start getting positive feedback -- or even just notice a more engaged audience -- let it serve as a deterrent for all those negative emotions about public speaking that you’ve accumulated over the years. Let it help end your procrastination anxiety.
And who knows: The (currently) unimaginable might happen: You may actually start to enjoy creating and delivering presentations. Yup. I know. It seems impossible, but several people who have taken my presentation design course have experienced this transformation! And I now do public speaking for a living!
5. (BONUS) Learn improv skills
When I mentioned my fear of public speaking to others the only recommendation they had was to sign up for Toastmasters. For me, that was literally the stuff of nightmares and I was not interested at all. I imagine that if I had followed that advice, my path towards overcoming my fear of public speaking would not have taken so long. So, although I can’t speak to a personal experience with improv skill development, I know it’s a valuable skill to have and it’s worked for others. If it doesn’t terrify you like it did me (or your braver than I am), then I highly recommend you try it!
You Can Do This!
Hopefully this post was helpful and provided some new ideas for overcoming your fear of public speaking. For what it’s worth, you definitely aren’t alone in having these fears and I know that you can overcome it!
With joy,Echo
P.s. If you’d like to create better presentations, get started with my free course #StellarSlidesin5.
Bio: Dr. Echo Rivera helps academics, researchers, consultants and evaluators communicate more effectively and creatively. She has a PhD in Community Psychology, and after about 14 years of working in the social science research and program evaluation fields, Echo became a freelance communications consultant. She is on a mission to end #DeathByPowerpoint in our course lectures, conference presentations, and other educational settings. What she does goes beyond just graphic design. She works specifically with people who want to present their data in ways that increase the likelihood the audience will pay attention to, understand, remember, and use the information.