It happened to me. Admittedly, I was eight years old, but I vowed never to get back on stage ever again. And I didn’t. School plays, I’d be wardrobe mistress, rather than tread the boards.
What a waste of opportunity. Only dire necessity, a low wage and an unemployed student husband, where the only way I could earn more was to lecture nurses in the NHS led me to face my fears.
Now, of course, people cannot get me to shut up. I get comments like, ‘But you’re a natural!’, lovely but entirely untrue. I studied psychological literature concerning phobias and decided I had to desensitise myself.
I built this skill, psychological tricks and techniques bit by bit. I started saying, ‘yes’ to every speaking request. I discovered the real buzz of bringing people into my world of expertise. If you said to me, ‘Averil there’s 1,000 people in a stadium there, can you speak to them?’ I’d take a moment and on the back of an envelope sketch a quick mind map to structure my talk and I’d be off, feeling nothing but excitement.
The only time I feel any anxiety is when someone else introduces me. This happened recently during an introduction which covered my entire CV and ancient history ending with a mention of my book, erroneously referred to as Coaching Women for Sex. The actual title is Coaching Women to Lead.
I didn’t know whether this was an elaborate joke or the ultimate Freudian slip. That was followed by a microphone malfunction despite careful pre-speech checking. Nerves of steel. Unphased, I got on with what I had to say.
Face the fear of public speaking
A fear of public speaking is widespread and pervasive but many people would never let on. I’ve seen some very senior people who were brilliant at delegating to more junior staff as a way of avoiding having to do it themselves. It doesn’t help with imposter syndrome if you carry that guilty secret throughout your career.
So, if you find speaking up challenging, ask yourself a few questions:
- What goes through your mind when asked to speak?
- What is it that you fear most?
- How does your body react at the thought?
- How often do you make excuses and avoid?
- What’s the worst that has actually happened?
Any good approach to becoming good at public speaking will involve finding ways to calm the physical effects of anxiety, challenge the beliefs and assumptions that you have and teach you really good, practical ways of structuring a great presentation. But you can’t start at the end tacking on speaking tricks, without going inside and changing deep seated beliefs.
One of my favourite gigs was a leadership programme we ran many times for a major bank, where we had our bankers declaiming Shakespeare and poetry to the empty stands at Twickenham or standing on plinths in Exchange Square spouting poetry to rush hour passersby. Our aim was not to be sadists but rather to bring out their ability to be inspirational rather than boring, pedestrian and tense. They invented a drinking game which centred on my hatred of the clichéd ‘we’ve been on a journey’ as used in every reality show.
They knew they’d succeeded when speeches I’d heard hundreds of times brought tears to my eyes.
Don’t miss opportunities to make an impact through speaking up. Get in touch if you want to know more:
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