tellingpeople ~ the presentation skills blog

Recently, I seem to have heard lots of people, in various places, saying that they don’t understand why they’re nervous or anxious when they make presentations because they’re confident and they know their stuff. Well, I’m confident too, when I stand up to make a presentation or run a workshop – but it doesn’t stop me from being nervous. The two are barely related…

‘Nervous’ is about being afraid that things might go wrong but ‘confident’ is about knowing you can handle things if they do. I’m writing this on a train towards Leeds to do a voice workshop for some actors: I don’t know what they’re like and I don’t know how good they are – what I’ve got prepared might not be what they are expecting, so I’m nervous. But I’m also sure that I can do a good job of things (I’ve done lots of it after all!) so I’m also confident.

Besides, nerves are good. Nerves produce a variety of hormones: adrenaline and cortisol are two of the best known. Obviously you don’t want to be a slave to adrenaline but I want you to think of cortisol as being like adrenaline for the brain – it speeds up your thinking and helps you remember what you’re going to say! So it’s a good thing.

The next time you have to make a presentation, don’t try to deal only with your nerves: also ask yourself how confident you’re feeling. If you’re not confident, work on what you need to work on. If you are confident don’t beat yourself up because you’re also nervous or anxious. I spend a lot of time in training session working with people who’ve spent a huge amount of time, effort and energy working on the wrong thing! That’s time wasted, which could have been spent on other things (such as the content of their presentation!).