CAB 11. Conquering Your Stage Fright

Because it is your showtime

Author

Azhar Ahmad
October 07, 2023

Hello friends

Welcome back to Career Autobahn. We have discussed how to write the content of your presentation and how to make slides to support your presentation.

Now the big day has come and time to actually do the presentation!

Before the day of the presentation, make sure that you get to rehearse a few times. Rehearsing means saying all the words out loud, playing with your voice control and also appropriate hand gestures and body language.

Remember the Mehrabian rule of 7% words, 38% tonality and 55% body language. So it is not just about the words that you are using.

Where do I like to rehearse? It’s usually one of these 3 places - my bedroom, in the shower or while driving. I don’t know why driving gives me that clarity to just do my rehearsal without care of who can see me talking to myself in the car.

So for you, find a place that makes you feel great to rehearse out loudly your presentation

Is it normal to feel nervous before a presentation?

Yes of course it is.

I still get nervous every time I go on stage.

What are some of the things that you can do to take charge of your nervous energy

  1. Good preparation. If you have prepared well, done your rehearsals a few times, this will help with your nervous energy because you are already confident with your presentation.

  1. If it is somewhere that you have never been before, for example, a company townhall in a hotel, then go early and get on stage to walk around, to feel what it’s like to be on stage.

  1. Just before the presentation, go find a quiet place to do the power pose. Hands on the hip like Wonder Woman for 2 minutes. I learned this from Amy Cuddy. Does it really work? I dunno, but for sure I have a big smile after I’ve been pretending to be Wonder Woman for 2 minutes. (The link to her TED talk is below)

Your body language may shape who you are

(NOTE: Some of the findings presented in this talk have been referenced in an ongoing debate among social scientists about robustness and reproducibility. Read "Criticisms & updates" below for more details as well as Amy Cuddy's response.) Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy argues that "power posing" -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don't feel confident -- can boost feelings of confidence, and might have an impact on our chances for success.

www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

  1. When you get on stage, stand in the middle and take charge. Don't stand behind the podium. You own the stage. Take a couple of seconds to adjust to the lights, noise etc and start your presentation with a bang with the ‘mind grenade’ that you have prepared

  1. Then scan the room for some familiar faces. I usually looked for my friends, close colleagues to seek their smiley happy faces to help me settle and calm me down.

Nervous energy now fully under control, you can rock and roll with the rest of the presentation.

During the whole presentation, 2 important things to pay attention to - eye contact and open body language.

You must maintain eye contact with the audience throughout the presentation. Obviously don't stare at the same person all the time but move your gaze from person to person throughout the presentation.

Don’t look back at your slides during the presentation. Many people have a bad habit of doing this, keep looking back to refer to the slides.

When you do this, what happens is that you break eye contact with the audience. When you do this frequently, then you will lose the connection with the audience completely.

The other problem with looking back to read your slides, your body is also turned away from the audience. So you don't have the ‘open’ position anymore.

You want to maintain an ‘open’ body position throughout the presentation. Watch where you put your hands. Don't put it in your pockets, don't cross your hands and don't hold your hands at your back either.

If the room is big and you have a big stage, it is good to walk around a bit on stage to address the different parts of the room. But don't move too much because it then becomes distracting when you keep moving from right to left, from right to left.

That’s it for this week - controlling your nervous energy, eye contact and open body language.

Next edition, I will discuss about how to control your voice.

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The more you rehearse your presentation, the more confident you will feel on the actual day

At your next presentation, to control your nervous energy, you can choose to practice 1-2 steps out of the 5 steps that I described above.

And let me know if they are helpful.

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