As you’d expect, I’m associated with the Professional Speaking Association (of UK and Ireland). They have a reasonably active facebook group and there was a recent post about how even professionals get nervous when they perform. The overwhelming consensus was “Yes we do!” followed by “Yes, we should!”. I even cited a company maxim in the discussion.
The day you’re not nervous when you stand up to speak is the day after you should have quit!
It brought to mind a distinction I picked up not as a speaker or even as a presentations trainer, but rather as a theatrical performer… Being nervous and being confident are not as closely linked as people think they are.
It’s perfectly possible to be both nervous and confident, but it’s not a distinction we often make – and particularly if we don’t think about it.
I can be perfectly confident (I know my material, I’ve rehearsed, I’ve gone through my pre-course checklist, my team are with me, it’s a well constructed presentation with great material and so on) but I can also be absolutely terrified (the ultimate in nervousness) because of all the things that can go wrong despite that.
In a sense, I’m confident about the things I can control but nervous because there are always things I can’t.
All too many presenters and speakers confuse the two concepts and end up feeling anxious. Anxiety is a different state of mind! It’s what you end up with when you’re nervous but not confident. Anxiety is a close cousin to fear. And (as any fan of Dune will tell you) fear is the mind killer. While anxiety won’t actually kill your ability to think it might seriously cripple it!
So what to do?
Well, it’s not as if I’ve not liberally sprayed tools for dealing with nerves throughout this blog over the past few years – fairly recently writing about the humble checklist – but there’s a very simple too I use which comes in handy when answering the question “Yes, those tools are fantastic Simon, but I forget them in the heat of the moment!”.
It’s this… for most of your presentation you’re going to have notes and keywords in your Presenter View, right? (If not, why not!) That means that you see things on your screen that don’t get projected for the audience to see. So why not use that option for your spash screen – the one you have before your presentation starts.
Here’s a quick a dirty screen grab of a slide deck we’re putting together for Wirral Borough Council: the thing you need to notice is the set of bullet points at the bottom of the splash slide (the title slide). This is a list of things I need to remind myself to do just before I start to speak.
… it’s almost idiot proof. Only almost, I admit, but better than nothing!
