While some are dying to be in the spotlight, quite many others have a hard time when required to speak publicly. In fact, it has been estimated that 75% of the world’s population experience limelight fright, 19% of whom even claim to be more afraid of public speaking than other serious commonly known frights, such as height, death, darkness and poisonous animals, like spiders. The three fourth population do admit that not only will the fright present itself in noticeable signs, like trembling voice, being out of breath and sweating, but it will further put their jobs at risk. Well, is there any solution to this nerve wrecking job duty?
As 15.7% of office workers consider public speaking to be one of the most unsettling work duties, it earns a significant place in the category of top ten office goers’ fears. That is closely followed presentation delivery at 12.2% and quite similar duty, like leading a meeting at 7.3%. Astonishingly, even one on one communication, speaking on the phone, in this case, accounts for 6.4% of the total percentage. Further study conducted in several different countries has also shown that female are more prone to experience such anxiety when compared to men. Such tendency has been proven in most of the investigated countries: Brazil, Australia, America, England, Canada and Germany. On the contrary, Spain and Malaysia show the opposite trend in which men are known to be more nervous to speak publicly than the female.
Executive communication coach Malcolm Andrews has put together this useful infographic on how to deliver a world-class presentation and overcome your fear of public speaking. Check it out below:
We’ve got some helpful tips from the infographic above how to deliver a world class presentation.
- A good presentation starts with planning and preparation. In this initial stage, try to find out the audience’s objective(s), interest value(s) and some common grounds.
- Next, choose a topic that suits your audience and consider possible knowledge gaps.
- While in script writing process, ensure the presentation to have these characteristics: informative, engaging, influential and entertaining.
- Rehearse and record your performance should also be done in this stage.
- In the execution, remind yourself to present with enthusiasm, especially during the opening.
- During the presentation, maintain coherent structure of the subject highlights and show visuals, statistics or other supporting facts.
- At the end of the delivery, repeat the key message, give conclusions and a clear call to action.
Keeping a few more findings like the following in mind can also enlarge the possibilities of public speaking success:
- Facts presented as parts of a story can be twenty times more memorable
- Visual aids allow audience to remember 95% of the things they see and hear in the presentation
- The first thirty seconds decides how successful a presentation is going to be.
How to Overcome Performance Anxiety?
- Take some deep breaths
- Research and re-research your topic repeatedly
- Organise the points
- Practice and go through the points frequently
- Seek some professional help to master the art
In short, shifting our focus to the things that can be improved, realizing that (bad) experiences do not dictate our future presentations, assessing our public speaking performance based on the reaction of the audience instead of our own biased judgement, and believing that more practice means better performance can boost our public speaking performance.
You can read more about giving presentations on Andrews’ website.
