Mastering Public Speaking: Overcoming Fear with One Simple Technique

29 Dec 2023 · 2 min

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2:17

A short instructional piece by TJ Walker explaining a simple technique to reduce public-speaking fear: avoid scanning the whole audience and instead direct your attention to one person at a time for a sentence or two. This approach simulates a one-on-one conversation, reduces adrenaline and nervousness, and softens vocal delivery; use a microphone for large crowds rather than projecting loudly.

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It's normal to be fearful when you're giving a speech or presentation, especially in front of a large audience. 100, 500, maybe a thousand. So what do you do? Here's one technique that's really effective. Don't look at the whole audience. Now, I'm not suggesting you bury your head in your notes or stare over people's heads, but pick one person in the audience and hold a conversation with that person, just for one thought, a couple sentences, five seconds or so. Ignore everyone else in that area. Then go to another person and act like you're having a conversation with just that one person. Now, you're not staring at one person for the whole time. You're not staring at them for five minutes or one minute or 30 seconds or even 10 seconds. It's just one thought, typically a sentence or two, five seconds, then go to the next person. That's far more effective than looking at this vast sea of people and thinking, oh, my gosh, there's so many of them and only one of me. That's intimidating. It's only natural to get that adrenaline rush and start to feel nervous and uncomfortable. Eliminate it by just looking at one person. The other thing it does is, is it tends to soften your voice. Now, if you're speaking to a large crowd, you should be using a microphone. But if you're looking at 100 people, 200 people, all at once, the tendency is to all of a sudden start speaking like this and projecting your voice. That sounds awful. It sounds flat. It sounds like the school teacher who's talking to the unruly homeroom class. You don't want to speak louder than normal for an extended period of time. You want to use the full range of your voice. That's easier to happen when you're looking at just one person, because you've been talking to one person your whole life, having conversations one at a time. So if you can simulate that own experience, something you've already been doing for your whole life, it makes it much more relaxing when you're speaking to a larger group.