Fear Not: Managing Our Public Speaking Butterflies

By John Weeren

According to a Gallup poll, Americans fear only one thing more than public speaking, namely, snakes. Forty percent of respondents were afraid to address an audience, outnumbering those who dreaded heights, small spaces, needles, mice, thunder and lightning, crowds, or doctors’ appointments. There’s even a word for the fear inspired by public speaking: glossophobia, which the Mayo Clinic describes as “a common form of anxiety” ranging “from slight nervousness to paralyzing fear and panic.”

Many otherwise hardy souls dodge every opportunity to speak in public, denying themselves the rewards – and they are great – that this experience affords. Some individuals, when compelled to do so, march bleakly into battle, with the sole goal of surviving. The result is painful for everyone, as audiences are quick to detect and absorb a speaker’s discomfort. Others resolve to fake it till they make it, but this sets up an internal conflict whose successful resolution is uncertain. None of these strategies – avoidance, endurance, and pretense – is conducive to achieving our potential as public speakers, and all should be a last resort.

Instead, it’s incumbent on us to accept that much of the fear engendered by public speaking is without foundation and that our substantive misgivings generally lie within our power to dispel. While fear is sometimes our best friend, it frequently distorts reality, turning the possible into the impossible. As Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing Americans in the depths of the Great Depression, famously declared, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

With this in mind, we must discriminate between groundless anxieties and legitimate concerns. For example, to assume, without evidence, that we will humiliate ourselves if we speak in public is to succumb to the baleful voice of fear. But to question whether we will be able to keep ourselves on track is a reasonable worry that can be addressed by scripting ourselves with care.

At a fundamental level, we need to ensure that our very conception of public speaking is a realistic one. It’s counterproductive to choose as our primary models public figures with golden tongues – or at least accomplished speechwriters – thereby setting a formidably high bar for ourselves. We can, of course, glean insights from speeches that have stirred multitudes – from the potency of metaphors to the indispensability of pauses – but these speeches should never constitute the standard by which we measure our own. We don’t have to climb Mount Everest to affirm our mountaineering talents, and we don’t have to stand in the crosshairs of history to make a memorable oral presentation.

We need to accept that there’s no better way to excel as a public speaker than to be ourselves, capitalizing on our strengths and acknowledging our weaknesses, while framing our oral presentations in ordinary terms – as an act of self-expression that has more in common with an engaging conversation than a soaring oration. In this light, to be a capable public speaker is less a matter of mastering a new form of oral communication than of massaging what most of us do instinctively: conveying our thoughts and feelings to others. This also means our principal sources of inspiration should be our peers. Perhaps it’s Priyanka in Financial Services, who, at a staff retreat, demystified depreciation calculations. Perhaps it’s Uncle Bob at Cousin Elly’s wedding, whose tribute to his daughter sparked tears and laughter. Or perhaps it’s the discussant – his name forgotten – at an academic conference who spoke “to” rather than “at” his audience.

In short, if we focus on the craft of public speaking, as opposed to the anxieties it stirs, and channel our adrenaline in ways that enhance rather than inhibit our delivery, most of us should be able to hold forth with nothing more than a butterfly or two for company. Only then will we taste the joy of public speaking, a joy rooted in the connections that an absence of fear allows us to forge with our listeners.

Now, in a spirit of full disclosure, reaching this promised land takes work. Even Winston Churchill, whose flights of oratory rallied Britons in World War II, labored over his addresses, dogged by a lifelong speech impediment. In the words of the BBC, which broadcast many of them, “he spent much time preparing and practising saying them out loud, helping him overcome the nervousness he had felt about public speaking since his youth.” Indeed, no substitute exists for “practice and perseverance” – the advice that Churchill received from an eminent doctor – or for “preparation and persistence” – the Mayo Clinic’s general antidote for glossophobia. As Dale Carnegie and Joseph Berg Esenwein succinctly put it in The Art of Public Speaking more than a century ago, “You must learn to speak by speaking.”

Another vital tool for public speakers is feedback. An oral presentation involves two parties – the speaker and the listener – and it only makes sense that the reaction of our audience should inform our growth as public speakers, especially when most if not all of our listeners wish us well. This means rehearsing our remarks in front of people we trust to be candid, monitoring the impact of our words as we formally deliver them, and soliciting constructive audience input afterwards. Ask not “How did I do?” but “What did you like most and least about my oral presentation?”

Lastly, we should make every effort to familiarize ourselves with the fundamentals of public speaking, focusing on the building blocks of preparation and delivery rather than on rhetorical flourishes that can be developed later. When we ask and answer such foundational questions as how to organize our points, how to hold our audience’s attention, and how to use our bodies effectively, we are laying the groundwork for low-stress success.

Simply put, the more we familiarize ourselves with public speaking, the less alarm it will induce and the happier both we and our listeners will be.

Please consider taking part in the monthly meetings of our public speaking group, which offers participants an informal and nonjudgmental setting in which to develop their skills and confidence. To join our mailing list, please contact us a pwrites@princeton.edu. You have nothing to lose but your fears!