Preparation can help you take flight when speaking in public.

Even the most seasoned business executives get nervous.

Many people get nervous at the prospect of speaking in front of a large audience. They tense up. Some lie awake for nights before dreading the moment when we step in front of the crowd.

For a brand new leader in business, facing the challenges of public speaking for the first time, the nerves might seem overwhelming.

Are Nerves Psychological?

Nerves might seem like a strictly psychological problem, but it doesn’t stop there.

It is commonly known that, when faced with a dangerous or threatening situation, the human body will produce a physiological reaction commonly known as “fight-or-flight.” When one thinks of fight-or-flight scenarios, public speaking is not necessarily what comes to mind—after all, public speaking is not truly “dangerous” in the same way as an encounter with a wild animal, for instance.

Nonetheless, fight-or-flight will kick in when a person perceives a threat. A perceived threat can come in many different forms, and it may simply mean that one feels a lack of control over a given situation. This, as we have probably all experienced at one point or another, is often the case when it comes to public speaking.

In most cases we choose flight when faced with public speaking. It’s easier to walk away from a public speaking situation than it is to walk away from the threat of an animal.

Understanding The Symptoms

When you experience the fight-or-flight response, you are feeling more than simply fear or anxiety. Fight-or-flight involves specific physiological symptoms. In other words, your nerves no longer exist solely in your mind—they begin to manifest themselves in a physical form as well.

Upon perceiving a threat, your body will begin to prepare to, as the name suggests, either fight off the danger, or flee from it.

The accompanying physical reactions, then, include:

• Accelerated activity in your heart or lungs
• Either paling or flushing, or alternating between the two
• The shutting down of all non-essential bodily stems, in order to redirect all available blood to your muscles; this includes, for example, slowing or stopping of your digestive system
• Dilation of pupils
• Loss of bladder control
• Loss of peripheral vision
• Shaking

These are just some of the many symptoms associated with fight-or-flight. While they may serve you well in certain truly dangerous situations, when it comes to public speaking they can make the experience even more difficult than it already is.

As a business leader, you are good at what you do—you wouldn’t be where you are today if that were not the case. But without a great deal of public speaking experience already under your belt, you may find these fight-or-flight symptoms hitting you especially hard.

The Solution

Public speaking is, of course, essential for making a positive impression on employees, clients and coworkers. As you convey your message to the group, you want to appear confident and in control. You certainly don’t want to appear pale, shaky or out of breath, as none of that that is likely to instill a great deal of confidence in those around you.

The good news is there are steps that you can take to alleviate or eliminate the symptoms of fight-or-flight as you adjust to your new role as an executive and grow more comfortable with public speaking.

Step 1 – Prepare

This might seem obvious, but it really can’t be emphasised enough.

If the fight-or-flight response is prompted in part by a perceived lack of control over a given situation, then the best way to counter that response is to put yourself in a position where you feel as much in control as possible.

The more prepared you are—the more you have practiced your speech, for example—the more likely that you will be confident enough not to be effected by the fight-or-flight symptoms.

Step 2 – Control Your Breathing

when it comes to public speaking, people are, first and foremost, listening to you. That means that one of the most important things you can do to appear calm and in control of the situation is to make sure your voice sounds as calm and in control as possible.

A shaky voice is one of the primary effects of fight-or-flight in public speaking, as activity in your lungs speeds up and your breathing becomes shallower. If you can gain control of this symptom, you will go a long way towards overcoming the dreaded fight-or-flight response.

Of course that’s easier said than done, because keeping your voice and breath steady on the outside when, on the inside, you are overcome with nerves, can be an incredible challenge. So before you even go up to begin speaking, try and focus on gaining and maintaining control of your breath. If, when you step up to speak, your breathing is even and regular, this well help ensure that your heart rate is also under control, and that your voice will be even and controlled when you begin to speak.

A Few Other Tips

A few other simple tips can help relieve the symptoms of fight-or-flight as your work on building up your confidence as a public speaker. For one, try and avoid eating too soon before you speak. Since the fight-or-flight reaction will often shut down your digestive system, you will likely feel a lot better if you don’t have any food in your stomach to begin with.

In addition, if you have a chance to get away briefly—an intermission, a break in the event, etc.—go outside and shake your limbs around a little bit. By shaking out all the extra energy that has built up in your arms and legs, you can beat back the fight-or-flight symptoms.

The post Overcoming Nervousness: How to Control the Physiological Reaction of Fight-or-Flight When Speaking appeared first on Executive Speaking.

• Use them as supporting evidence. Deliver your point and explain it, then drop the quote in. It’s better to show that you have an idea that Obama supports with a quote, rather than having an idea of Obama’s that you have pinched and tried to expand.
• Know the quote verbatim. No reading it out, no putting it on the screen. If it is integral to your message, it stands to reason that you know it back-to-front.
• If you must put the quote on the screen, don’t use ‘Quotation Marks’. Quotation marks reduce the quote to a temporary message.
• Always attribute the quote to the correct source.

As always your thoughts appreciated below.

Cheers

Darren Fleming –

The post Presentation Skills appeared first on Executive Speaking.

When your boss/colleague/whoever has finished talking observe how others MOVE. Do they start moving at the same time, shifting their weight from side-to-side, moving their whole body as though they have just woken up? If they do, there is a good chance they have just woken up – or at least come out of a trance.

This happens when your voice becomes monotone. When it is monotone it becomes hypnotic. In the way that a good hypnotist will relax you into a trance with their voice, you can do the same to your team if you are not careful

You can avoid this by varying your voice in speed, volume, tone and even just pausing……………mid sentence. It does not matter how interesting your message is, if it is delivered without energy and enthusiasm it will disengage your team.

Now I know that this does not happen when you speak, but it will for others at your meeting

The post How to tell if people are really listening to the boss appeared first on Executive Speaking.

There are two ways people try to increase the strength of what they say or write. The first is to increase the word count. They put in a whole bunch of adjectives to give their message more weight. These include words very, exactaly, precisely, huge etc in the hope that it will give their point more weight. The better approach is to take the Zen path and reduce the word count. Cut the adjectives and excess words that do not add value. Pay particular attention to any adjectives ending in the ‘ly’. Words ending in ly weaken your sentence and reduce the strength of your message. The next time you see an e-mail with an ly word in it, re-read it without the word and see the sentence change.

As always, your thoughts appreciated here

The post More Strength to Your Arm appeared first on Executive Speaking.

What was the result of this? because there were so many speakers (5 in 20 minutes) the whole event lacked rhythm. We could not settle into the speakers and listen to the message they had. It was like trying to watch TV with the ads coming thick and fast. Those that did have extended times to speak lacked substance and the audience stopped listening.

What is the solution?

Make sure that every person who gets up to speak will add value to the event message and deliver value to the audience. If they don’t add value, do they really need to speak? Just because someone can speak, doesn’t mean that they should. As the great philosopher Groucho Marx put it, ‘Very few sinners are saved after the first 20 minutes of a sermon.’

Cheers

Darren Fleming

The post Just Because You Can Does Not Mean You Should appeared first on Executive Speaking.

The effect of making eye-contact is driven home by what you do once you have made it. There are several things you can do, depending what you want to achieve.

1. Stare – This is when you hold the gaze for too long and the other person becomes uncomfortable. Generally not conducive to good communication.
2. Stare down – This is when you show your position of power/authority over the person by holding them in your gaze. You let them go when you are finished ‘drilling’ them, or they break eye contact admitting their subordinate position.
3. Break eye-contact. This happens when you feel that you should move on because you don’t want to be caught staring. There are 3 ways to break eye-contact. Break by looking down puts you into a submissive position and shows weakness/lack of confidence – almost like saying sorry for looking. Breaking by looking up has the similar feel of being ‘caught staring’, but is not submissive, but it is still not strong. It still gives the impression that you are moving on after being caught staring. Breaking eye contact horizontally shows that you are just moving on with your eye contact. This is the best.
4. Move on as part of the natural flow. If your eye contact is moving from person to person when addressing an audience, it will put you in a position of control over yourself and others too. This gives you a sense of authority that your audience wants.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Cheers

Darren Fleming

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The post I’ve got eye contact – now what? appeared first on Executive Speaking.

There are many statistics that state public speaking is our greatest fear. Apparently it is higher than the fear of spiders, snakes, flying and even death itself (though there are not stats on the fear of dieing from a snake or spider bite while flying)

Why do people fear public speaking so much?

It is something that was conditioned into us in school and we live out in the workplace.

As teenagers at school, the teacher forced us to stand in front of our classmates and deliver a book report. We were given no practice or advice on how we should do it. Being self-conscious teenagers, we stood up and immediately thought everyone was judging us – and judging us poorly! Is it any wonder why there is such a real fear of public speaking. Now at work, when we have to stand and speak, we relive those school day fears and tell each other how much we hate public speaking.

But the reality is far from our school experience. People want to see us succeed. After all, who wants to have to sit through a boreing presentation?

Overcoming your fear of public speaking is very easy when you are shown how to do it. Just like learning to drive a car, it was easy to learn how when someone showed you! How do you do it?

1. Stop telling yourself and others you don’t like public speaking
2. Stop telling yourself you are no good at public speaking
3. Give public speaking a go
4. Get help from someone who knows about public speaking. You would not go to a mechanic to get legal advice, so go to a speech coach to get speaking advice.

Now, imagine yourself commenting on this.

Cheers

Darren

The post Why the Fear of Public Speaking? appeared first on Executive Speaking.

Or will you enable them to be different. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Break the mould: Give staff permission to vary the traditional sales presentation. If the client sees the 2010 sales presentation as 2009 extended, why would they pay attention? They have seen it before!
2. Then jump on the bits of the mould: Encourage your staff to try something different. Just because your staff have permission to try something new in the sales presentation side does not mean that they will. Actively encourage them to be different.
3. Equip them: Give them the tools to be different. This includes training, support material and maybe even pricing structures (though this is not as important). If you want things to change, how will they change unless you drive the changes with a new approach?
4. Get ideas from industries not related to you. If you are in the superannuation game, look at what the food sector is doing to sell their product. You will be amazed at what you can learn. If you look at your own industry too much you will put the blinkers on to what is possible. Industry experts have their place, but keep your eyes open for someone who knows nothing about what you do. That is the person who will question the norm.

If 2010 is to be different to 2009, how will YOU make it different. As always, your thoughts are appreciated below….

Cheers,

Darren Fleming

The post How Will You be Different for Your Clients in 2010? appeared first on Executive Speaking.

1. Maximum time allowed: 5 min + Q&A time (time set by you)
2. Slides: Every speaker has 20 slides (no more; no less)
3. Slide transition: Slides automatically move on after 15 seconds (slides cannot be repeated or returned too)
4. No logos on the screen (we know who you work for!)
5. Lights in room stay turned on.

What is the result:
1. Speakers who focus in on their message
2. Speakers who do not waffle
3. Speaker who know their material because they cannot read the slides
4. Audience members who can remain awake through what would otherwise be boring presentations
5. Shorter and more enjoyable presentations

This is how lightning talks work. http://vimeo.com/7021316

Will this work for sales conferences? YES. You just need to be in tune with your message.

Follow these instructions and the annual sales conference will be worth attending for more than just the boozy nights!

Cheers

Darren Fleming

The post The 5 minute Annual Sales Conference appeared first on Executive Speaking.

What they mean by saying they are comfortable is that they do not feel nervous when standing in front of a group. This is not usually a good thing. Elton John once told Andrew Denton that he is always nervous before his concerts. He is not alone in performers who feel this way.

Being comfortable has nothing to do with how effective your presentation will be. Effective presentations are about connecting with your audience and having them adopt your message. They are not about you feeling comfortable.

Feel the energy that the opportunity to present gives you. Don’t call it nervousness; call it excitement!

As always, your thoughts on this are appreciated.

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