For many people, when it comes to public speaking, they experience fear either before or during the presentation. Sometimes they're feeling fine during the presentation, then something unexpected happens like an equipment failure or a disruption from the audience, and their fear rears up it's ugly head and takes over their thoughts.
Suddenly the situation is out of their control! But how do you control the unexpected?
Well, obviously, you can't. The unexpected will occur, and you as the speaker, will need to handle it.
But how do you do that without fear, if public speaking fear has been an issue for you? We all know it's various manifestations: stiffness, mind going blank, sweating, stomach upset, shaky voice, and so on. Many of us have seen it in ourselves at some point, as well as in others during their presentations. It's an involuntary reaction that you may feel you have no power over.
What if you could just skip all that fear stuff altogether and move right on into creative problem solving?
Let me tell you a story about a scary experience I once had where I completely surprised myself by reacting without fear. As many of you know, I study a self-defensive martial art called aikido. In aikido, we study ukemi, or the art of falling (safely). There's a lot of throwing involved in aikido, so we train ukemi a lot.
I was at the aquarium with my family, holding my then 2 year old, when I took a fall off of some steps that led to another exhibit section. The floor was black at a narrow entryway, I was playing with the baby, and I had no idea the steps were there until I was already past the point of no return.
I had about a full second before I hit the floor with my full weight on top of the baby.
Oddly enough, when I realized we were falling, I didn't feel any fear at all. No panic or terror over hurting the little one. I hadn't trained aikido in about a year, but my ukemi skills kicked right in.
I felt that I had all the time in the world I needed to use ukemi to reposition myself underneath him before hitting the floor, and I did. We landed, and the baby just thought we'd done some fun trick. He picked up no tension at all from me. My husband had been busily reorganizing the stroller basket and didn't even notice anything was awry until he looked up and saw us on the floor surrounded by aquarium staff and other visitors, picking us up and checking to make sure we were ok.
So what does all that have to do with fearless public speaking?
With skills and training, you can be ready for the unexpected.
The more training and experience you have, the better you'll prepared to respond to the unexpected with a constructive solution that solves the problem in seconds and minimizes the disruption to your public speaking experience. You'll have a wider repertoire of strategies and tactics to apply to a problem, and with more experience, several options will come to you in seconds, and you'll be able to decide which to use quickly.
When something you hadn't planned on occurs, don't try to control the situation. Instead, flow with it.
Flexibility is key here. You can't anticipate how things are going to turn out. What you can do is stay loose, adjust quickly to the circumstances at hand, and come up with creative constructive solutions to get things back on track. If you let yourself get locked down by public speaking fear, you lose the ability to solve problems and lead your group.
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Lily Iatridis of Fearless Delivery, has a proven track record and knows the key elements in effective and engaging presentation. Her expertise is in supporting professionals to get their message expressed clearly to deliver the biggest results in their live and online presentations. Secrets and strategies such as "how-to" shortcuts, personalized instruction and even packaging the presentation are just some of the skill sets that Lily brings to her audience to create a fearless and effective delivery.
If you've ever been nervous in front of an audience, please sign up for Lily's free 5-part video series titled, "Your Energetic Elevator Pitch Everyone Will Want to Hear!" This free video series will not only help you to get over any nervous jitters about speaking at networking events, but your message will be clear, you will deliver with confidence, and you'll distinguish yourself from your competition effectively.
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