Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking
May 12th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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One way to overcome fear of public speaking is to be afraid and speak anyway. As stupid as this seems, it’s possibly the most reliable way to gain confidence in speaking. Be afraid, be nervous, be hesitant, but do it anyway.
You won’t be very good at it the first few times, but don’t expect to be. Simply make it a goal to do it and finish. Once you’ve done it a few times, and you realize it hasn’t killed you, you’ll be less afraid to do it the next time. And if you keep doing it, eventually you’ll start to get good at it and may even learn to enjoy it.
I think one of the reasons people fear public speaking is that they expect too much of themselves. It’s like being afraid of flying a plane when you’ve had no instruction. Of course you’re going to fail. If the pilot calls you up to the cockpit and says “land this plane,” it’s a safe bet you’ll crash if you try it.
But at least when you fail at public speaking, it isn’t normally fatal. Failure is actually one of the best ways to learn it. It’s the same way we learn to walk and talk when we’re toddlers. We stumble and stutter until we get it right. Just as you wouldn’t expect a white belt in Karate to be able to break a brick, you also wouldn’t expect a first-time public speaker to be as polished as a pro. But sadly, people demand such a level of performance of themselves, expecting that if they’re going to speak publicly, they’d better be outstanding. And since this isn’t going to happen, it generates fear. But the fear largely goes away if you set realistic expectations and head up to the lectern expecting to stink your first few times.
Remember the scene from the movie The Matrix where Neo tries to do a super jump between two skyscrapers and falls to the ground? “Everyone falls the first time.” The same goes with public speaking. You’re going to stink your first time. Get over it.
Unfortunately, in the real world it can be hard to find opportunities to speak where you aren’t expected to be good. People assume that if you volunteer to speak, you must be good. But it’s reasonable for people to demand that speakers be good, since most people don’t want to listen to a poor speaker. It’s boring.
I think the best solution to this conundrum is to join Toastmasters International. The nice thing about Toastmasters is that the organization is designed to make it as easy as possible to learn public speaking. You can attend a few meetings as a guest for free to see what it’s like without pressure. Just show up and watch. Everyone understands what it’s like to be new to speaking, and they don’t expect you to be good. It’s low pressure with plenty of encouragement. Before I joined Toastmasters last year, I thought the organization was for people who were really good at speaking. The brochures make it look like a bunch of business people doing formal presentations. But that isn’t the reality I discovered. Some clubs are mostly people in their 40s and 50s and treat their meetings fairly formally, but other clubs are people in their 20s and 30s who hold very informal meetings; every club is unique. Most speeches I’ve seen are personal, not business-like — people often give speeches recalling vacation stories or events from childhood.
Everyone has flaws. Some people that have been in Toastmasters for more than a decade still struggle with “ums” and “ahs” during their speeches. Everyone is at a different skill level, but no one is perfect. And most importantly everyone seems to have a healthy recollection of what it was like their first time too.
The best way to get a sense of what Toastmasters is really like is to attend a meeting as a guest. You can even try out more than one club — I’ve been to five different clubs so far. And if you decide to join, membership is cheap. The dues are going up soon (not by much), but I currently pay only $5 per month. Plus you get a monthly magazine. There are over 10,000 individual clubs in 80 different countries with an average of 20 members each, so chances are good that you can find a local club in your area. There are 10 clubs just within a 7-mile radius of my home. Check out the club locator to see what’s near you.
Some of the casinos here in Vegas even have their own Toastmasters clubs. The MGM Grand has the Lions Roar club. The Luxor has the Pyramid Power Talkers club. And the New York, New York has the Manhattan Express club.
Toastmasters actually has two tracks for building skills. One is the communication track, which involves improving your speaking skills. But less well known outside the organization is the leadership track, which helps you build leadership skills. Members are free to focus on one track or the other or both. I recently earned my CTM (Competent Toastmaster), which is the first educational award on the communication track, and I’m working towards my CL (Competent Leader), which is the first award on the leadership track. There’s a lot of flexibility in how you go about fulfilling the requirements for these.
Toastmasters is a lot of fun too, and I look forward to meetings partly for their entertainment value. There’s normally a lot of humor in each meeting, especially in the club I belong to that includes a few comedians. In some clubs a few members will go out to dinner afterwards. One club in my area called Bachelors & Bachelorettes is only for singles; they meet in the back room of a bar & grill and have cocktails and dinner during their meetings, which tends to make them fairly lively. So don’t be intimidated by the seeming formality of Toastmasters — it’s extremely friendly to newcomers.
At the very least, Toastmasters is a great way to get out and do something social, make new local friends (which is especially nice to counterbalance an overabundance of online friends), have some laughs, and get the heck away from the computer for a while. In fact, I have a meeting to go to right now….
May 12th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the conquest of it.
May 12th, 2005 at 6:30 pm
Like the article. I’ve been encouraging folks in my organization to go, I’ve seen Toastmasters help a lot of people.
May 12th, 2005 at 10:01 pm
When people mention being afraid of publich speaking I always try to point out they probably already do it all the time they just aren’t thinking of it as public speaking.
*) If you are at a dinner with 3 other people and you talk to all of them at once you are public speaking
*) If you are in a meeting at work and you share your opinion or discuss something you are public speaking.
*) If during that meeting you get up to demostrate something with body jestures or draw something on a whiteboard or even draw something on a piece of paper and push it to the center of the table you are presenting.
Most people have no problem in those situations, the problem is when they hear the phrase “public speaking” they re-frame the sitatution in a way that makes them nervous when in reality there is only a very subtle difference between the situations.
The one thing I find that makes the biggest difference is knowing your topic. I’m a programmer, if I’ve just written a library and my company wants me to explain how to use it to 10 to 20 programmers in a meeting I’m going to have ZERO problem with that. Changing that from 10-20 to 100-200 really isn’t going to change the fact that I know my topic inside and out and it won’t be any harder for me. On the other hand, if you ask me to give the best man speech at a wedding well then now I’m super nervous because coming up with witty and interesting things to say is not something I’m an expert at.
May 12th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
One more point, and something I never got in high school and my teachers never explained to me. In high school I was asked to give oral book reports. It was always somewhat of an ordeal. For me less than some others but still an ordeal. What I didn’t understand was that I actually do it all the time. I read a book or see a movie and share my opinions with my friends all the time. That sharing of opinions is exactly what the teacher was looking for. She could have probably gotten many more students comfortable with public speaking (or oral book reports) if she had just set them aside with an exchange something like this
student: “Ms Teacher, I don’t know how to do an oral book report and I’m freaking out”
teacher: “Okay, well, do you have a favorite movie?”
student: “Yea, it’s Lord of the Rings, it rocks”
teacher: “Well, tell me about the movie, what happens and why did you like it”.
student: “Oh man, it rocks! haven’t you seen it? There’s all these zillions people battles that are amazing and Sam is so strong and ….. ” 5 to 10 minutes later with maybe a few “and then what happened?”s and “why was that cool?”s from the teacher
teacher: “You just gave me an oral movie report”.
student: “oh, that really wasn’t hard at all”.
teacher: “so, now tell me about a book you liked”.
May 13th, 2005 at 12:33 am
I was just reading this when I noticed you said Toastmasters is international. Surely enough, I went to the home page and found two clubs right near my very own home! My public speaking and self confidence skills are something I have wanted to work on for some time, so I am definately going to attend the next meeting (on Tuesday). Thanks Steve!
May 13th, 2005 at 4:24 am
Sometimes people join Toastmasters temporarily to prepare for an upcoming speaking event. One guy joined my club (before I was a member) to prepare for a best man speech. He said it went very well thanks to the coaching he received.
Personally I don’t think reframing is that helpful. As Mohammad Ali said, “Everyone’s got plans… until they get hit.”
May 13th, 2005 at 5:10 am
I had Toastmasters on my calendar every week for over a year, and I’ve just always been too busy (terrified
) to go. Your earlier articles inspired me to just go and I did. I am one of the most introverted people you could meet if you were brave enough to come find me hiding in the corner. I am terrified of publicly speaking even to just other individuals that I don’t know, so you can imagine me in front of a crowd.
Anyway, as your first paragraph says, I am afraid but I did it anyway. I am still afraid, but I am also scheduled for my second speech next Thursday. I will continue to force myself to do this until I feel I am successful.
May 13th, 2005 at 5:34 am
Congrats, Tom. That’s wonderful. I don’t think people realize how complicated public speaking really is. It can be overwhelming to think of all the details like vocal variety, body language, gestures, pauses, etc. But with every speech we get a little better. We all have to start somewhere.
I used to hate public speaking in school, and I was shy as a child. But I’ve overcome a lot of that just by feeling uncertain and taking action anyway.
In my experience the fear doesn’t really go away — it eventually transforms into a feeling of confidence and excitement. It’s as if you eventually get the butterflies in your stomach to fly in formation.
All it really takes to get good is to just get up and do it again and again. Stage time, stage time, stage time.
May 13th, 2005 at 9:19 am
When I was in college, I had to take a Senior Project class. Originally this was a class where you could write a program of your choosing that was approved by the professor (I was a Computer Science major). By the time I took the class though, they turned it into a team project. I decided to challenge myself and apply for team Project Manager, and ended up being accepted for the position. This was very difficult for me to do because I was and still am a shy person. I did it anyway though, despite being nervous and afraid. We had to give a total of five presentations, most of which I had to spearhead. It was scary but a huge growth experience for me. I’ve grown more from my experience in that class alone than in the rest of the four years combined.
May 13th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
This is weird, I’m a shy an intorverted person myself, though I have no problem to speak in public, of course it depends on the audience that’s listening, as long as there’s not risk of someone throwing some object or fluid at me, everything is fine, there’s nothing to fear.
I just noticed there are some Toastmasters groups near, I shall join one someday, I especialy like that singles only group idea, I hope I can find a group of that kind…
May 22nd, 2005 at 6:17 pm
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Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking
Overcoming Fear of Pub…
July 1st, 2005 at 12:43 am
Hey Greggman - It was great to read your blog on overcoming fear… I have delivered trainings on overcoming fear of expression and this one to many analogy is one of the main things I tend to talk about!
July 29th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
I’ve just recently took on a management position which is going to require me to speak in large groups. Needless to say i’m dreading it and i’m fearing this will affect my job. There a many clubs located within minutes from me and i’m seriously considering attending one.
I have the same problems many others have such as mumbling, sweating, and sometimes even feeling paralized. I wasn’t always like this. It just seemed to develop over the years especially my last years of college.
I’m hoping I can overcome this because I know I will enjoy speaking in groups when i’m confident enough. Maybe one day I can help people with the same problem.
August 3rd, 2005 at 12:24 am
I’ve been working in management position which always requires me to speak in large groups. Needless to say i’m dreading it and i’m fearing this will affect my job.
I’m hoping I can overcome this because I know I will enjoy speaking in groups when i’m confident enough. Maybe one day I can help people with the same problem