139: Nerves Need Not Nobble Your Presentations

<p>Speaking in front of others makes many people tongue tied and nervous.  They struggle to get through a simple presentation, internally, in front of their colleagues.  A public audience is something they would flee from, screaming and waving their hands in the air.  Why is that?  We all learn how to talk.  The presentation is just a talk, so what is the big deal?  Yet, it is a barrier to many people who have to navigate this impediment to move up through their careers.  If you are in front of the big bosses and you can’t make a competent presentation, kiss your career aspirations goodbye baby.  There is very little chance they are going to put you in charge of others.  So, if you like what you are doing today, that will be just fine, because you will stay where you are right now for a long, long time.</p> <p> </p> <p>If it is just talking, why do we have such tremor at the prospect.  Most of us can talk to our friends, family and colleagues without any problem.  In a presentation though, the stakes are raised.  We are on show, we are singled out for attention, scrutiny and investigation.  We become very internally focused.  We are oblivious to our audience because all of our attention is on ourselves.  All of the pressure is on us too and it is coming from within ourselves.  Our self-talk is usually bad.  Our self-regard goes negative too.  We become plagued with self-doubt, and memories of failures, shortcomings, inadequacies and scalding derision.</p> <p> </p> <p>Our current playbook is drawing on our failures from the past, not from our potential or even the small successes we have had.  We go to grand scale immediately on the negative and obliterate the good bits from our memory.  We recall that school play when we forgot our lines and everyone laughed at us.  The time at University when our class presentation of our research paper was scoffed at and belittled by some of our bolshie classmates.  That time in the results meeting, when the big boss berated us for our presentation skill deficit.</p> <p> </p> <