A fear of public speaking, of having to stand up and speak to a large group of people is a very common fear. If you ask why someone has this fear they will tell you how they think the audience is going to laugh at them. That only happens to politicians, who know what they are in for and deserve no sympathy whatsoever. Everyone in your audience knows how you are feeling and there are very few of them who would willingly change places with you.
There are ways of overcoming this fear. You can never give in to any fear, the way forward is always to confront the fear, to look for opportunities to give it a chance to raise its head. In this case you need to look for opportunities for public speaking. Joining public speaking support groups like Toastmasters is one of the best options. At Toastmasters you will learn how to control your nerves, your voice and your body language. Everyone at Toastmasters started as someone with little or no public speaking confidence and they always present an excellent audience who you know will be sympathetic towards new speakers.
There are a few basic things you can do to start to overcome your fears. I speak as a teacher who started off with a very nervous public speaking manner. I learnt how to stand in front of 300 staff and students to deliver a religious assembly.
1. Know your subject. Read and re-read your materials before the presentation. You need to know your subject backwards, that way you will not speak in a rushed way and you will come across in an interesting manner, keeping your audience's attention.
2. Expect to do well. Your body language tells your audience if you are confident and expect to do a good job. Poor expectations of yourself communicate to your audience that you have no confidence because you do not know your subject in sufficient depth and that you will be a boring speaker. They stop listening before you even start!
3. Look at your audience. Eye contact is one way you can dominate the audience, who are there to listen to you after all. Reading the facial expressions of your audience is the only way you have to judge the pace of your delivery.
4. Use notes. If you read your speech, it sounds AWFUL, you are obviously someone who has not the slightest grasp of the subject and, as such, do not deserve listening to
5. Talk slowly. Rushed speech is another sign of a lack of confidence, that you want to get this over with as soon as possible. Slow speech makes your audience listen and they catch more of what you are saying
6. Vary the level and tone of your voice. We have all had to endure speakers who drone on and on in a monotone. Varying your voice holds the interest of your audience and gives more meaning to what you are saying by emphasising pasrts of it. Dropping your voice at appropriate points grabs everyone's attention. Project your voice (not the same as shouting) and listen to what comes back to you.
7. Keep any body movements and gestures slow and limited. Excessive movements are a distraction to your listeners.
8. Keep your hands and thumbs visible. Politicians use a gesture where they raise their hands with the thumbs uppermost as a dominance signal, it works.
9. Feel good. Public speaking can give you an endorphin high that can take an hour to dissipate when things work out.
