10 Simple Ways to Get Over the Fear of Public Speaking

Doug Staneart  |  11/25/22
last updated

10 Ways to Get Over the Fear of Public Speaking In this session, I’m going to cover 10 simple ways to overcome the fear of public speaking. This is a continuation of the 3-step process to eliminate public speaking fear. In that episode, I showed you the process that a nervous speaker should go through to reduce speech anxiety.

As a review, the first step is to find out where the fear of public speaking comes from. Then, do a few simple things to reduce the risk of failure in those instances. (We will cover 10 of these tips in this episode.) Finally, you want to string together a series of successes speaking in front of a group of people. Basically, you want to get lots of practice so you can develop good presentation skills.

This is the process that we use in our public speaking classes. Your local toastmasters club and your local speech coach might use this process as well. So, presentation tips can help you eliminate presentation fear symptoms. However, to permanently reduce nervousness, you have to follow the process over and over. Every time you use one of these key tips and have success, your confidence will grow.

That is why a good public speaking class or coach can help you move through this process more quickly. If you only give a single presentation once a year or a couple of times a year, you will find it difficult to string together this series of successes. You will become a much better speaker if you speak more often.

Remember, stage fright is a common form of anxiety. And public speaking is a learned skill. No one comes out of the womb as a great public speaker. So a good coach or class can speed up the process exponentially.

10 Ways to Get Over the Fear of Public Speaking

  1. Realize that Most Public Speaking Anxiety Symptoms are Unseen by the Audience.
  2. Never, Ever Write a Speech Word-for-Word.
  3. Avoid Memorizing Your Entire Speech.
  4. Show Up Early.
  5. Take a Few Deep Breaths.
  6. Look for a Friendly Face.
  7. Drop Your Hands.
  8. Speak about Topics in which You are an Expert.
  9. Show Enthusiasm.
  10. Practice with a Person.

How to Use These Tips to Reduce Stage Fright When You Speak.

1) Realize that Most Public Speaking Anxiety Symptoms are Unseen by the Audience.

Even though public speaking nervousness symptoms like butterflies in the stomach, racing heart, shallow breathing, and shaky hands can be distracting to us as speakers, most of these things will be unknown to the audience. For instance, if you have a queasy stomach, how will your audience know? Obviously, if you throw up, they will know something is wrong. But if you just feel those tingly butterflies in the stomach, there is no way the audience will know this.

If your body temperature rises, you will feel the difference. It is real. But the audience will never know. If your heart rate increases, your breathing changes, or your hands get shaky, these symptoms are also real. You will feel them when they occur. But the audience can’t see your heart beating. They also can’t see your lungs.

Yes, they can see your hands, but unless you are holding something, shaky hands are really, really hard to see. (So, put the marker down. Don’t hold onto notes, etc. And your audience won’t even be able to see that.)

The point is that even the most nervous speakers can show confidence to an audience. This is important to understand because nervousness speaking in front of others is the most common fear. However, when we see other speakers stand in front of people and do very well, we often think, “Why am I the only one who gets nervous?”

You are not. It is just that those other speakers aren’t showing their nervousness any more than you are.

In fact, some symptoms, like speaking faster and moving more, can be perceived by the audience as being symptoms of enthusiasm. (More on that in tip #8.)

2) Never, Ever Write a Speech Word-for-Word.

The biggest mistake that a presenter can make is to write out an entire speech word-for-word. In fact, in my experience, this one mistake is often the root cause of almost all public speaking fear.

When we write a script word-for-word, we are most likely going to read it to the audience. (Which is really boring.) Reading a speech and sounding interesting is a difficult skill. You will repeatedly lose eye contact with your audience. In addition, if you sound boring, you will get negative visual feedback from your audience. Your audience will have wandering eyes or pick up their cell phones. This action actually causes more fear in the speaker. So, if you really want to get over your public speaking fear, don’t write out your presentation word-for-word.

In the olden days, we wrote our speeches on index cards or a legal pad. Today, though, we are high-tech. People often fall into the trap of designing their PowerPoint presentations first. They make separate bullet points for every single item that they will cover in the speech.

In all practical terms, this is still reading your speech. A better way to design a speech is to start with an outline of just a few major key points.

For details about what to do INSTEAD of writing a presentation word-for-word, see Create a Great Speech Outline.

3) The Single Best Way to Get Over Public Speaking Fear is to Avoid Memorizing Your Entire Speech.

Because we know that we sound boring when we read a speech, we often fall into the second most common trap. We try to memorize our entire speech. If you are already nervous and you try to memorize your entire speech, you will make delivering that speech much more difficult. I mean, if you read the speech, at least you have your cheat notes. However, when you toss the index cards aside and try to memorize the speech, you make the entire process much, much harder.

Your nervousness will shoot through the roof if you lose your place.

So, how exactly do you deliver an entire speech without memorizing anything? It is actually pretty easy. If you create an outline of a presentation with just a few key points, you will have a visual aid containing all the points. (No need to memorize them.) Then, all you have to do is prove each point by using a few personal stories from your experience. Stories are much easier to remember. They make your presentation sound more spontaneous and interesting as well.

For details about How to Be a Good Storyteller click here. If you absolutely have to Memorize a Speech, click here for an easy way to do it.

4) Show Up Early for Your Presentations.

If you are the presenter, show up well ahead of your start time. Give yourself time to work out any bugs in setting up your visual aids, etc. Also, get a feel for the room and the setting that you will be presenting in.

Something will always go wrong during even the simplest of presentation setups. For instance, a few weeks ago, I got to the meeting room an hour ahead of my start time. It was a good thing too. Because when I turned on my laptop, the computer began an update. Since I was there so early, it wasn’t a big deal, though.

The laptop slowly moved to 20%. Then 40%. At this point, I started looking at my watch. My class was scheduled to begin in less than 20 minutes. This update was taking forever. When it got to 80% and a few class members started to arrive in the meeting room, I began to worry a little.

Luckily, though, the laptop sped through the last few percentage points, restarted, and I was ready to go. If I had rolled into the room 15 minutes before the speech, though, I might have experienced a panic attack, though.

So, if you are the speaker and you’re on time, you’re late. Show up early, and you will have a better shot at getting over public speaking fear. (At least you won’t cause yourself more fear, anyway.)

5) Take a Few Deep Breaths.

When our heart rate increases, it causes many public speaking fear symptoms. These symptoms include shortness of breath, queasy stomach, losing your train of thought, dry mouth, and more. Deep breathing from the diaphragm will slow down your racing heart a little. This one thing will reduce a lot of these symptoms.

So, although proper breathing won’t eliminate the fear of public speaking, it can reduce A LOT of the symptoms. When you control your breathing, you control your heart rate.

I encourage my students to find a quiet place just before they go in front of an audience. Take one or two very deep breaths from your diaphragm. This is one of the best relaxation techniques that you can do just before you speak. For the most part, just before you say your first words, your nervousness will be at its peak. So, if you can reduce the symptoms of nervousness at this point, you will have a better shot at getting over your public speaking fear as the speech continues.

6) Look for a Friendly Face.

Remember that, for the most part, the audience is not your enemy. In fact, if you are communicating well, your audience can help you build confidence. When you say something that people in the audience agree with, you will see them nod slightly. This is a positive piece of feedback to let you know that the person that nodded understood your point. This positive feedback tells you that you communicated well.

The more of this feedback that you receive, the more your confidence will grow.

The opposite is true, too, though. Sometimes there are people in your audience who are tougher to convince or who may just not want to be there at all. The more that you focus on these folks, the more uncomfortable you will feel as the speaker. You will begin to question whether or not you are performing well. In the back of your head, you will think, “Oh my God, am I being confusing? Did I do something wrong?” This negative feedback will cause your fear of public speaking to grow.

So, focus on the friendly faces. Graciously receive the positive feedback from your audience. By the way, most often, the tougher cases will come along if you are really communicating effectively. Eventually, they will begin to give you more positive feedback as well.

7) To Look More Confident When You Speak, Start with a Neutral Poised Stance.

If you want to look more poised and confident when you stand up to speak, start with your hands dropped to your side. When we feel threatened, we want to put something between us and the threat. So, if we feel threatened by our audience, we naturally put our hands between them and us. This has two negative consequences.

First, by putting our hands between us and the audience, we are creating a barrier. Our hands become a wall between the speaker and the audience. Second, we also lose a lot of energy. We will gesture fewer times, and the gestures will look mechanical.

Try this experiment. Stand up as if you are speaking in front of a crowd and clasp your hands together. Next, break the clasp and move your right hand up as if you are making a presentation gesture. Do that same gesture over and over, and watch your right elbow. If you are like most people, that gesture will look like you are a robot.

Now, try the same motion again, but this time stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Drop your hands to your side. Now move your right hand to the same spot you did before. You will probably find it hard to move just your right hand. Your gesture will be more powerful and natural looking as well.

So, start with your hands by your side and use your hands more when you speak. These natural gestures will help you communicate better and add more natural energy to your speech.

8) Eliminate Public Speaking Fear by Speaking about Topics in which You are an Expert.

In business presentations, if you are the person speaking, you are, most often, the person in the room who knows the most about that topic. For instance, if you are the project manager, then you’d be the perfect choice to deliver a project report.

However, when we are learning to present, we often choose a topic that we actually don’t know a lot about. For instance, in High School, we had to give book reports. Most people’s first official presentation occurred in front of high school students. (The least most-critical audience on the face of the Earth… That is sarcasm.) Then, our topic was a book… That we never read.

A lot of public speaking fear actually comes from well-meaning teachers or coaches trying to help us be more confident. Negative experiences like this can stick with us for a long time.

The good news is, though, that, in the business world, this cause of public speaking fear fixes itself. I had a friend in college who hated math. When she graduated from school, we lost touch. I met her years later, and I was surprised to find out she was a 4th-grade math teacher.

“I thought you hated math,” I said to her.

She replied back by saying, “Yeah, but to be a good 4th-grade math teacher, I just have to be an expert at 5th-grade math.”

She was right. To get over your fear of public speaking, put yourself in situations where you know more about the topic than anyone else in your audience. You don’t have to be an expert at everything. Just the topic you are presenting.

9) Show Enthusiasm and Energy to Get Over the Fear of Public Speaking.

The energy that you have as a speaker is the most important aspect of your speaking style. Enthusiasm is the most sought-after skill in public speaking. The good news is that fearful speakers also often have a lot of nervous energy. You can use this to your advantage. A lot of people focus on slowing down their rate of speech when they get nervous. This is the worst thing that you can do. Instead, do the opposite. Speak faster.

Using your nervous energy to make your presentation more enthusiastic is a great way to overcome the fear of public speaking. When you finish your presentation, you will get positive feedback from your audience. They will compliment you on your energy. When this happens, you stack up another public speaking success!

Regardless of whether you feel that nervousness, though, you do want to focus on having more energy when you present. If you want your audience to be enthused about your topic, you need to have a little bit more energy when delivering the topic as well.

For additional tips on how to add enthusiasm and energy to a presentation, click here.

10) Practice Your Speech Once or Twice with a Person.

Most people practice their presentations alone. That is a huge mistake. Logically, we believe that we have to practice, practice, practice to get better. And, obviously, we can get lots of practice without any risk of embarrassment if we just practice by ourselves, right?

Well, not exactly. In fact, this process can actually make you more nervous. The big problem here is that you are your own worst critic.

When we practice in front of a mirror or record ourselves on video, we will nitpick every mistake. When we focus on the mistakes and not the effective communication, we make more mistakes.

In addition, we don’t get the feedback that is valuable to make corrections along the way. We know what we meant to say. So, if the communication is unclear, we won’t pick up on it.

However, when we practice with a friend, coworker, or significant other, we do get that feedback. We will see positive nods when we say something that the partner understands. When we say something confusing, we see that confusion in the face of the partner as well. This allows us to make corrections to our presentations so when we present in front of our “real group,” we deliver an even better presentation.

Be careful not to over-practice, or you will fall into the trap of trying to memorize the entire speech. Instead, practice once or twice with a partner, and you will nail your speech!

Want an Easy Way to Implement All of these Ways to Eliminate Public Speaking Fear?

If you really want to get rid of your fear of public speaking, there is a simple solution. This solution works every, single time. The absolute best way to reduce nervousness is to attend the absolute best presentation class. For details about the Fearless Presentation ® course, click the link above or complete the form below!

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author Doug Staneart
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Doug Staneart is the CEO of The Leader's Institute. LLC and founder of the Fearless Presentations class. He is author of Fearless Presentations, Mastering Presentations, and 28 Ways to Influence People.

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