The Short Self-Promotion Business Speech

Continued from the previous page:
Audience Interaction in Your Business Speech

 Overcoming Stage Fright in Your Business Speech 

George:

Let’s bring up the subject of stage fright. Of course you’re an attorney so you’re possibly a little more accustomed to speaking in front of groups than some other folks. But is stage fright something you had to deal with in standing up in front of a crowd?

Patricia:

Yes, I’m not a litigating attorney George. So I rarely do get up in front of groups in a professional sense. Mostly my practice is in an office practice were people come and sit with me and we’ll confer on their situation. So it was difficult for me to get up in front of a group of people. I’ve never been a public speaker, never been real comfortable and I’m a very private quiet person.

George:

Of course one of the things that terrifies people talking on the subject on stage fright still is they think they’re going to make a mistake or they think they’re going to said something stupid or they think they’re going to embarrass themselves. Has that ever happened to you?

Patricia:

Well, actually I had a bad experience in law school. They do make us do some public speaking in law school and I was getting ready to make a presentation. I was so very confident because I had really done my research. I really knew my topic. I had all my notes prepared and so I wasn’t nervous going up to the podium.

Well, I got up the podium and I couldn’t breath. I literally couldn’t breath. My chest froze up. I had complete stage fright. I couldn’t speak.

So I’ve learned since then to allow a little of that stage fright to come in early on, to get the adrenaline running and to sort of work in to it and when it’s more controlled. I haven’t really had so much of a problem since I had that experience and learned that lesson.

George:

You know I actually sat down once and I figured out I had something like 15,000 to 18,000 TV appearances in my life. Now one appearance could be one sportscast, it could be one newscast, could be one 22 hour telethon but 15,000 to 18,000.

Anyway, believe me I made lots of dumb mistakes but there was a good lesson for me because I learned that you survive even your worst embarrassments.

There’s a story I love to tell about how common stage fright is, and how almost everyone gets it.

I remember very clearly, I emceed a dinner once a Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio and the late Tom Landry was the keynote speaker. Of course Tom Landry he was coach of the Dallas Cowboys for a long, long time.

But since I was the emcee, I got to sit right next to the podium as he was delivering his talk and I could see his hands behind the podium. He was holding note cards in his hands and his hands were actually shaking and his voice actually cracked a couple of times.

When his presentation was over I got up and I reached over to congratulate him and I noticed that his palm was really wet from sweat.

Think about this. Here’s a guy who not only played and coached in some of the most pressure packed NFL games in history with tens of millions of people watching sometimes, but also…when he was 20 years old he flew a bomber over Germany and he got shot at. So Tom Landry is a guy who knows about pressure and knows about dealing with pressure a little bit.

But there he was, in front of maybe 300 people at the athletic banquet at Saint Mary’s University and he’s getting up to do what? To simply talk out loud in front of a crowd that idolizes him.

And he’s scared.

So I went over to him afterward and I kind of got my courage up a little bit becuase this is not the kind of question you ask a Tom Landry. But I said “Coach do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

I said “Do you still get a little bit of stage fright when you do presentations and do public speaking?”

And he said “Yeah, absolutely I do.”

So I said “Well how do you cope with that?”

And this is what he told me and I never forgot it.

“I tell myself the same thing I used to tell my players before a big game and that is, the people who make their way in this life are those who walk through their fear with faith and they never let the fear of failure get the cause of failure.”

That’s good. I went home and wrote that one down right away. But my point is…if someone like Tom Landry can get stage fright, what should the rest of us be ashamed of?

I’ve also learned from my own experience over the years that a little stage fright and nervousness actually isn’t a bad thing because it kind of helps get the adrenaline going and that allows you to put more energy into your presentation.

Patricia:

That’s right. And the energy that you can display at the end of a day is just amazing to me because I get in to the office fairly early. I spend all day working with people and taking care of business and then I go out and make these presentations often late in the evening and to be able to do that and to have the energy and show your passion and your devotion to your topic. I just think that is really important.

George:

Do you ever come away from presentation thinking “Man that was a tough group.” Because that’s one of the things that scares people sometimes, they’re afraid to get up in front of a group where they just see a bunch of blank stares looking back at them and nobody makes any moves or asks any questions. Have you had that experience too?

Patricia:

I’ve had a couple of times when I’ve had that experience. But I have a few techniques for warming them up. One of them is that I try to get there (Ed: into the room) early and originally I did this because I wanted to own the space. I wanted it to be my space and I wanted to be comfortable in it.

But what I found is that if a few people are trickling in and you’re standing up there, you can ask them, “Does anybody have a question that they want to start with?” Because sometimes people just have burning questions when they come to the presentation so then I’m able to answer that question first. Which saves the time during the major part of the speech and it also warms them up to me.

Then I find that it also helps to have some people in the audience who already feel like we’re friends.

George:

I’ve found that to be really helpful if you can spend a little time in the back of the room as people are coming in and shake hands and get to know names. It’s not always possible in some formats, especially in small lunch time presentations.

But do you try to spend a little bit of your presentation actually out into the audience and making a lot of eye contact and getting closer to the people rather than standing behind a podium.

Patricia:

I try my best not to put anything me and the audience. If I can I dispense with the podium all together and take a free microphone with me, that’s great. I’d prefer to do it without a mike in a small group.

George:

At the same time a lot of people who are just starting out probably need that podium for a little bit of security and they have their notes there and everything like that and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the way you started out right?

Patricia:

Oh yes indeed, I was clinging to it like everyone else.

George:

At what point Patricia did it sort of feel natural to get up there where you didn’t need the cards anymore? And you could go out into the audience and do you speech seemingly off the top of your head?

Patricia:

I guess I threw away my notes somewhere between speech number 60 and speech number 100. One day I just forgot my notes and went and spoke without them and I find now I can speak up to three hours extemporaneously on my subjects that I’m passionate about.