It's commonly said that most people in fact fear presenting more than they fear death, because they can't imagine what death feels like, but they can imagine what presenting feels like, and it feels awful! As a result, many people avoid presenting at all. This can have a very limiting effect on their careers, since they will have fewer opportunities for wider exposure, engagement and experience, which is very unfortunate.
But it is natural to dislike being on the spot in front of a crowd, or even in front of a few people in a meeting. What's interesting though is that there are actually a lot of people who make an effort to improve their presentation skills, but do so in unproductive ways. Let's look at one particular case.
Coaching a shy client through a presentation recently, I noticed that his PC's wallpaper was a very snappy small plane. "Is that your plane?" I asked.
"No, but it's the one I'm learning to fly in," he told me.
During the course of the coaching session, I learned that he also scuba dives and rock climbs, and that he regularly pits himself against thin air, the deep sea, and unforgiving stone in order to beef up his retiring nature and deal with his social fears.
Of course it's not working. Why? Because he does all these activities alone. Becoming more accomplished in his responses to wind patterns, water currents, sharks, and rough outcroppings just won't help him in human relations.
In fact, even engaging in outdoor activities with others doesn't necessarily help us communicate with people either. I've been present several times when corporate groups have done very nicely outside on ropes courses and raft-building, treasure-digging, tree-climbing adventures, but have then reverted to their usual negative, self-protective ways when I put them through verbal games and exercises.
Fundamentally, we are just much more willing to take physical risks than emotional ones. We'll bungee jump, but we won't find a way to tell an overbearing colleague that we'd appreciate the opportunity to speak in meetings as well. We know when we leap off the bungee platform that we will come back up with a guaranteed sense of accomplishment. With the colleague, we only feel the sense of accomplishment if he takes our comment well and changes his demeanor in meetings, when we should be feeling the accomplishment merely for facing our fear of the confrontation, no matter how he takes it.
The same goes for delivering presentations. If you are afraid of humans, as most of us are when there are 50 or 500 or even 5 of them staring us at once, give yourself a pat on the back for being willing to present in the first place. Then, give yourself a kick in the pants toward making your presentation energetic and memorable. This is the difference between bungee jumping looking like you'd rather be dead and taking a running leap off the platform yelling "Yeeehaaa!" You don't have to feel like yelling it, but you must yell it anyway. It adds so much panache.
People die bungee jumping, flying, and rock climbing, if infrequently. Can we say the same of delivering presentations? Certainly not. But we fear them more. So if there are brave things you do when you are not struggling to communicate, carry them in your mind. Think of the listeners as a coral reef, and swim. Think of them as a mountain, and pit yourself against their icy ridges with the same enthusiasm you would bring to the Himalayas.
|
Author: Alison Lester