Subtle ways to handle your presentation nerves

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Subtle ways to handle your presentation nerves

Are nerves getting the best of you in a presentation? It happens to everyone at some stage. The heart racing, the sweaty palms, and feeling of complete overwhelm. But being nervous is okay. Nerves don’t mean you can’t do it, they mean you care about the outcome. The key is finding a strategy to ensure nerves don’t ruin your presentation.

Being able to calm your mind to focus on what you are saying is not easy. It is less easy to focus on your connection with the audience. There are a million and one things that could be racing through your mind. Having a plan in place to deal with this scenario is a huge part of public speaking that nobody talks about.

You can be both nervous and confident at the same time. You just need a strategy to deal with it in the moment. This is something I discussed on the 21st Century Expression Podcast last year.

Dealing with nerves before your presentation

You can be both nervous and confident at the same time. Nerves mean you care about the delivery. Your preparation should start on the pieces you are least confident in. That is the preparation that makes the most difference to you.

In your preparation, work to define:

• Your key messages (in one sentence)

• How you will engage your audience (polls, audience participation etc.)

• How you will connect with your audience (storytelling, analogies etc.)

As a speaker it’s not about you, it’s about your audience. Make everything about them in your preparation and you will succeed. This not only helps your audience connection, but it takes some pressure off you because you are thinking much less about what you need to do, and thinking more about what the audience need. This is a small shift that makes the world of difference.

Dealing with nerves during your presentation

Slowing down is the key. In your preparation you should have defined your key messages in one sentence. If you can't deliver them as concise as that, it is not clear enough. If you have clear messages it makes it easier for you to collect your thoughts, regain composure and continue where you left off.

If everything feels too much. Pause, breathe, slow down and focus on just one thing:

Delivering your key message clearly.

If you do nothing else, you have a good chance of a successful outcome. Being able to take a moment to collect your thoughts helps you in a big way. Step outside of the public speaking experience and focus on what you need to do to deliver. It’s a reason you shouldn’t be scripting your presentation. Scripts make people nervous because it becomes a memory test. Instead use 4 bullet points that you can always come back to in your mind:

• How you will open

• The main point (in one sentence)

• A story/analogy to help make the point memorable

• How you will close

This will help you manage your nerves and get you back on track.

Dealing with nerves every day

Turning what can be a nervous situation into one that you do on autopilot is always an ideal situation. This is how you should aim to play it with public speaking. Most people ignore public speaking on a daily basis because we were taught we have to be on a stage in front of a lot of people to be speaking in public. That is not the case.

Practice can be done early - not even necessarily practice for your specific presentation, but reps speaking in public. Using the 4 bullet point structure above, what I like to call the nano speech, can help you speak in public every day, even if it is just for 10 seconds. Rep after rep builds foundations that make using that structure in a presentation something you can do on autopilot. Being in ‘just another public speaking experience’ is a great way to learn to control any nerves you have.

Even if you don’t practice speaking way in advance, get your practice run throughs in early. Don’t do a run through of your presentation just before delivering it for real. There is very little upside to practicing on the day you are delivering your presentation. If something goes wrong it will throw you off. Instead, end on a strong practice the day before and go in with high confidence.

Actionable takeaways

• Focus all of your preparation on the audience, this removes some pressure and focus from you, meaning you can reduce some nerves ahead of your presentation.

• Slow down. being able to collect your thoughts is a top skill for public speakers. Practice in an every day environment so that you can transfer that into your presentation.

• Build speaking into a skill you can do on autopilot. This is the best way to get used to handling nerves.

• End your preparation on a strong practice. Don’t do a run through on the same day you are delivering the presentation.

That's all for today!

As always feel free to reply to this email or reach out @liamsandford as I would love to hear your feedback.

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