Leadership

Six Ways to Beat Public Speaking Anxiety

By Jessica Stillman

Updated on: May 12, 2009 / 7:41 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

The Find: Fear of public speaking is a common affliction, so one blog is offering six tips to help professionals beat their presentation anxiety and engage with their audience.
The Source: The Great Management Blog from management consultant Andrew Rondeau.

The Takeaway: Maybe your palms get sweaty or your hands shake. Maybe all your ideas drain away leaving a great, echoing silence in your head, or maybe you just can't loose the impression that your public speaking leaves audiences cold. Whatever form your anxiety takes, Rondeau wants you to know there are simple things everyone can do to improve your public speaking and better communicate their ideas to their audience. He offers six on his blog:

Make sure that before you deliver a key point you grab everyone's attention so that they can hear that point â€" change your voice, body language, and eye contact. Warn the audience that they need to listen.
Maintain good eye contact with all your audience not just the ones that are smiling and nodding! If you are talking to a large group scan the audience regularly (but not in a set pattern) and scan towards the back of the audience so that everyone forward from the back will feel included in your gaze.
Use lots of questions followed by pauses and eye contact. Unless you are prepared for 'wrong answers', ad-hoc responses and potential ruination of your structure, stick to hypothetical questions.
Keep changing your voice and body posture to maintain interest. Change the volume, the pace, the tone.
Try different ways of expressing yourself â€" a story, anecdote, conversation, question, voicing an objection.
Use people's names or make reference to their interests, background, experiences, potential objections, likely questions or queries.

For further insight into grabbing your audience's attention, check out BNET's feature outlining five ways to speak like Obama.

The Question: Any other ideas on how to keep nerves under control when it comes time to give a presentation?

(Stage fright image by Victor Jeg, CC 2.0)