By Barrett Whitener, Senior Health Communications Manager
When it’s time to give a talk, many speakers get a little nervous. But anxiety can become a real problem if it distracts you from the task of communicating. Here are six tips to help you use fear to your advantage:
Acknowledge that you feel nervous. This simple step can loosen its grip on you and make it easier to focus on giving the best presentation possible.
- Realize that it’s not about you. The audience’s attention is on the content of the talk, not on you personally. Direct your energy to the same place: prepare the talk carefully and rehearse it at least once in its entirety.
- Be cognizant of the clock. Limit your content to what an audience can comfortably absorb in the time allotted. Don’t spend more than about 2 minutes on each slide (e.g., 10 minutes on five slides). You’ll avoid the trap of having to rush through the talk in an attempt to “get everything in”-a strategy likely to elevate your anxiety and overwhelm your listeners.
- Limit the text on your slides. Use brief titles and bullet points (not full sentences). Limiting the text will allow you to make more eye contact with the audience and speak to them more than to the screen. Maintaining this connection is crucial to the talk-everyone, including you, will feel more engaged by the content.
- Train your focus on the entire audience. Think of the audience as one big lawn, and “water the entire lawn” with eye contact and vocal energy. This perspective makes it easier to overlook distracting actions by individual blades of grass (e.g., someone leaves the room, never looks up from the computer, or listens to you raptly) and to continue communicating with purpose.
- Consult your “inner critic.” This observant viewer wants to help you improve. Before the presentation, ask your inner critic to take notes on what works well in the talk and what you can do better next time-but not to share those notes with you until you ask for them, sometime after the talk. Be sure to follow through and ask; you’ll find the notes surprisingly kind and helpful.
By regarding nervousness as an ally-as a source of both energy and learning-you can use it to continually improve your talks.
Tags: audience, communication, content, fear, nervousness, productivity