Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
—Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
We’ve all had that “sick” feeling before an
important presentation. While excessive pressure can undermine your
ability to perform well, there are techniques to help you to enjoy,
rather than dread, these situations.
Check Your Response
The “inverted-U”
relationship between pressure and performance helps to explain why you
can “go to pieces” under pressure. The sweaty palms, raised heart rate,
and sense of agitation that you feel when you have to perform are the
unpleasant side effects of the fight-or-flight response produced by
intense pressure. Anxieties and negative thinking crowd your mind, your
concentration suffers, your focus narrows, and you find it difficult to
think clearly and perform well. So what can you do about overcoming
this?
If you think you’re going to enjoy giving a presentation, you will
give a good one, and your enthusiasm will be shared by your audience.
Techniques to Practise
Part of the stress that you feel comes from
uncertainty about what is about to happen. By thinking through the
event, you can understand and manage the doubts and uncertainties that
may disrupt it.
There are some practical
things that you can do before any performance, however small, or however
much you are in control of it, to ensure that things go without a
hitch.
Do some research on the situation or environment you will be
performing in – if possible, visit it beforehand to familiarize
yourself.
Find out some facts such as the size of your audience, what people
will be expecting from your performance, and whether they will be
well-disposed towards you.
Find out if the format will require you to prepare for audience questions.
Ask what technology will support your performance (lights, sound,
projectors, etc.), and what preparations have been made in the event
that the technology fails.
Turn It Around
It is worth
remembering that stress, managed well, can actually give you a
competitive edge. The goal is to find the level of pressure that
corresponds to your area of peak performance and enter the “state of
flow”, in which you are completely involved in an activity for its own
sake and where you are using your skills to their limit. Many of the
important techniques that help you to manage the performance stress that
can disrupt this state of flow come from sport psychology – these are
the mental techniques that help top athletes to deliver exceptional
performances.
Think Smart
If you feel happy with your presentation you will
feel confident about making it. If you’ve never made a presentation
before, ask a friend to help you to prepare for it using a video camera.
Stand in front of your
friend and make your presentation. When you have finished, play back the
video together and make a note of things you could improve. Your friend
will be able to give you an audience perspective. Amend your
presentation and make it again, repeating the process until you are
happy with it. This will help you to feel confident on the day of the
presentation.
Rehearse Your Performance
Rehearsing for a stressful
event, such as an interview or a speech, will polish your performance
and build confidence. Practice also allows you to spot any potential
problems while you have the opportunity and the time to eliminate them.
The more you repeat what you are going to say and do, the smoother and
more polished you will become and the better you will perform under
pressure.
Be Prepared
For big events, it
can be worth preparing a performance plan that helps you to deal with
any problems or distractions that may occur and to perform in a positive
and focused frame of mind. A plan such as this will give you the
confidence that comes from knowing that you are as well prepared for an
event as is practically possible. Make a list all of the steps that you
need to take, from getting prepared for the performance, through
packing, travelling, and setting up, to delivery and conclusion. Work
through all of the things that could realistically go wrong and
eliminate them by careful preparation.
Rehearse Thoroughly
A good rehearsal
makes for a good performance and there are several things you can do to
ensure that everything goes smoothly and according to plan.
Plan Your Speech
Rehearse until you’re
completely fluent and comfortable with what you want to say. If you can,
do this in the place where you’re going to perform. With enough
rehearsal you’ll be eloquent under pressure.
Prompt Yourself
Write down your key
points on postcards that you can hold and refer to if you lose your
place during your presentation. People often won’t even notice if you’re
holding something as small as a prompt card.
Research the Venue
If you’re going to show a
video as part of your presentation, check that there’s a functioning
remote-controlled video player and monitor at your venue, and have
back-ups in place in case they don’t work.
Reduce the Event’s Importance
The more important an
event is to you, the more stressful it is likely to be. This is
particularly true when you are operating at a high level, when many
people (especially family or important people) are watching, or when
there is the prospect of a large financial reward, promotion, or
personal advancement if you perform well. If stress is a problem under
these circumstances, take every opportunity to reduce its importance in
your eyes. Compare it with bigger events you might know of, or might
have attended. Remind yourself that there may be other opportunities for
reward later, and this won’t be the only chance you have. Focus on the
correct performance of your tasks, and the importance of the event will
fade into the background.
Get to Know the Venue
If the thought of making a
presentation is making you feel very nervous, it is a good idea to
reduce the number of unknown factors to a minimum. If it’s at all
possible, visit the venue where you will be making the presentation so
that you can establish where the podium and microphone will be and where
you can set up your audio-visual aids. If you are speaking after a
number of other speakers, ascertain from where you will be making your
entrance. Stand where you will stand during your presentation and
visualize a room full of people listening to everything you say.
Tip
If you make a mistake, don’t criticize yourself. It
is now in the past, and there is nothing you can do about it.
5 Minute Fix
If you need to relax before a big event take a few minutes by yourself.
Sit comfortably with your eyes closed.
Take slow, deep breaths, inhaling for five seconds, then exhaling for five seconds.
After 20 breaths, open your eyes and readjust to your surroundings.
Case Study: Preparing for Success
Maria was feeling very
nervous. She’d just accepted an invitation to speak at a prestigious
industry event, and now she was starting to panic about what she’d say.
Realizing that this would be a
stressful event, and one that could go badly wrong if she was
over-stressed, she planned and prepared carefully. Well before the
event, she wrote her speech and polished it so that it was as good as it
could be. She took plenty of time preparing her PowerPoint presentation
and tweaking it so that it worked smoothly and well. She found out
about the venue and the people attending. She prepared for possible
eventualities and for difficult questions, and she rehearsed thoroughly.
This improved her fluency, and made her feel confident that she’d find
her words easily under pressure. After all of this, despite a small
power surge while she was making her presentation, she gave the very
best speech at the conference, in front of some of the most important
decision makers in her industry.
Maria’s
preparation gave her confidence that what she had to say was worth
hearing, and meant that she wouldn’t have any last-minute self-doubt.
Because she was feeling so confident Maria was able to stay calm even when a few minor things did go wrong.
Review Your Performance
If you have prepared
well, the event will go well, although there will always be things that
you feel could have gone better. After the event, make a point of
reviewing how things went, how well your preparation served you, how you
handled any problems, and what could have been done better. Take
confidence from the things that went well and give yourself credit for
them. Learn from the things that didn’t go as well as you had hoped, and
update your performance plan to reflect this. Don’t use this review as
an opportunity to castigate yourself for everything that you think has
gone wrong. In any event, it is unlikely that your audience even noticed
the things that didn’t go according to plan. And, next time, you’ll be
even better!
