Introverts

For some people it’s a fear of feeling exposed in front of strangers. A fear of feeling “naked” in public. Typically introverts would prefer to stay at home, or at least, hide behind the lectern and a pile of written notes. Such shy types may wow the audience with very complicated slides in an attempt to divert all the attention away from themselves.

If this describes you, then you have my sympathy because I personally can strongly relate with you. It is futile to try to change this aspect of your personality because such traits are deeply wired in.

What may be much more effective is for you to identify a positive role model and develop a “public persona” – call it a mask if you want – that you can put on and off whenever you like. There is no need to show the public your inner private soul – why should you? But for the purpose of your presentation, go ahead and invent a new dimension to your personality which you can use to face the public with.

Fear of embarrassment

Many people experience a fear of public speaking which can be traced to a fear of the audience finding out their weakness, flaws and insecurities. Normal, otherwise happy, confident and strong personalities can be reduced to sweating, trembling wrecks because of an irrational feeling that the audience will find out, once and for all, that they are not as smart or cool or “in control” as they had previously been led to believe.

The solution to this problem is similar to the advice I give to introverts – you must build a strong wall around yourself and project a robust image that you are happy for people to see. A useful way to do this is to practice public speaking with your new persona as much as possible and whenever you can.

Fear of failure / fear of the consequences of failure

Lets be frank – developing solid skills in public speaking are paramount to climbing the career ladder in many professions. Those who do not master the necessary skills in an appropriate time-frame will be left behind by those who can.

Naturally, when it comes to giving a presentation, people do realise that a lot may be riding on this event. That pressure damages performance.

The good news is that if you follow the tips in this book, you will have significantly and dramatically reduced your chances of failure. I hope you take some comfort from that fact.

And even if you do fail – you can take solace in the fact that even professional speakers sometimes fail because they did not research adequately, or because the audience was hostile, for example. In such situations you just have to pick yourself up and move on.