tellingpeople ~ the presentation skills blog

I was doing a half day’s training this morning in one of the Local Authorities near us. As I walked into their training room I noticed that the flipchart still had the notes from yesterday’s training hanging over the back… that’s too good an opportunity to miss for someone as nosy as me… and one of the pages really caught my eye.

Clearly the training had been about developing assertiveness: there was full page statement which read “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the acceptance that something else is more important“.

To me that really got to grips with something I’d been trying to explain to clients for a while: they’d ask me how to get un-afraid when they did their public speaking or business presentations and I’d explain that everyone gets nervous and that even I was nervous as I stood there in front of them. Some found that hard to believe.

It’s true though; I was nervous – very nervous indeed. That quote summed up the attitude that I think most public speakers have when they’re doing their presentations. It’s not that they’re not nervous, anxious or even down-right afraid but rather their audience and the message they have to deliver to them is more important.

So what is it that’s more important to you than your fear? If you’re only doing the presentation because The Boss told you to do it and you don’t believe in whatever it is your saying anyway then you’re fighting a losing battle If it’s something you’re passionate about, perhaps your charity work, perhaps the state of the neighbourhood, perhaps something else, then you’ve got a better chance.

To be honest, there’s a bit of me that wants to suggest to would-be public speakers that if they can’t think of something more important than their fear, they should ask themselves a cold, hard question about whether they should be speaking in public at all!

In the real world, of course, people have to present because they’ve got no choice. For those people I’d urge you to simple sit down with a cup of tea and a notepad and jot down all the good things that could (should?) come out of your presentation. Find things more important than your fear. If no one thing is more important, what about the cumulative effect of all the little benefits to the world you’ll bring?

It might be worthwhile chatting it over with a friend, too. They’ll widen your perspective.

It’s not about not being afraid – it’s about being afraid not mattering to you as much as the presentation!