How to Control Your Nerves When Presenting
How to control your nerves when presenting is a big deal when you have to stand up in front of an audience and speak. You might be presenting to a small group, in a team meeting, or giving a presentation on a stage. Just thinking about presenting in front of an audience might make your heart race, your body tense up, butterflies start in your stomach and your mouth to go dry…
I used to absolutely hate speaking in front of others, even small groups. My body would go into overdrive, by brain would freeze up, causing me to mumble my words and I would worry about the audience sniggering and laughing at my mistakes. My brain would bring back all those painful memories of reading to the class at school or giving nervous presentations when early in my career. Presenting to others was not for me. Something to be avoided at all costs.
How to Control Your Nerves When Presenting
- Transform fear into excitement
- Focus on your audience and message
- Do visualisation exercises
- Your performance is your practice
I wanted to change all the fear and nerves I felt when presenting to groups and went about learning and practicing how to do that. I am now confident when presenting to groups, on stage, and on camera.
Before we dive in, a couple of tips. Even the best most experienced presenters will feel some nerves going onto stage. This is normal and expected. You can feel nervous and do a great job presenting. Nearly all the time, you will look to your audience a lot less nervous than you actually feel. When you put these 4 actions into practice, the feeling of nerves will drop dramatically, freeing you up to present really well in front of your audience.
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The first action to control your nerves when presenting is to transform fear into excitement
When your brain perceives you to be in danger, in a situation where you might be threatened, you body goes into fight or flight mode. Your logical brain shuts down, which is why you experience brain freezes, forget your next point etc. You experience a number of physical reactions to that fear, the common ones being:
- Increased heart rate
- Increase adrenaline
- Shallow breathing
- Tension in your muscles
- You start sweating
- Your month going dry
- Butterflies in the stomach
These are all signs your body is getting ready to fight or fly. Typically these reactions build, starting with one or two which are fairly mild. As the feeling of fear and nerves continues, these symptoms get stronger, and you may experience additional symptoms.
You Can Stop These Building
You can stop these feelings of nerves and fear building. As soon as you start feeling the signs of nerves and fear, tell yourself that you are not feeling nerves but excitement. This mental transformation is powerful. The reason is that the physical symptoms you feel from excitement are:
- Increased heart rate
- Increase adrenaline
- Shallow breathing
- Tension in your muscles
- You start sweating
- Your month going dry
- Butterflies in the stomach
Yes – they are exactly the same as the feeling from fear and nerves. Your brain senses the same physiological response to both feelings. I personally would always rather be feeling excitement than nerves and the difference is how you mentally label these feelings.
In the run up to your presentation, whenever you start to feel nerves, tell yourself it is excitement. Do this over and over again, and your brain automatically associates the physical sensations you feel as excitement. When you come to present on the day, you will be feeling excited not nervous!
The second action to control your nerves when presenting is to focus on your audience and message
The whole reason you are presenting to others is to communicate messages and ideas. The presentation is about helping others improve, change or be better. Your audience is listening to you, so they get something out of being in the presentation.
When presenting, think about “how can I do the best job I can to get my message across as clearly as possible” so my audience listens, takes it in, understands it and ideally takes some action. This is all about serving your audience as best you can.
If you are presenting and thinking about –
- What if I make a mistake, stumble, mumble etc – what will my audience think of me or
- Does the audience still think I am interesting and will they keep listening or
- I don’t want to look silly, unprofessional or poor at presenting in front of these people
Or any other of these types of thoughts, then you are thinking about yourself. You are the focus of your thoughts. This is not serving your audience.
Your audience don’t want to know about you, but they do want to know about your message and your ideas.
When presenting to others, focus on the message you are communicating and think about your audience and how you can make their experience easier, better and more rewarding.
When you focus on your audience and your message, rather than you, you can control your nerves when presenting a lot better. This mental adjustment takes a lot of pressure off you. Stop thinking about yourself and think about your message and how you can serve your audience best.
do visualisation exercises – The third action to control your nerves when presenting
Visualisation exercises are when you picture the outcomes you want in your mind. When you are practicing your presentation, picture yourself speaking to your audience. They are looking at you and listening attentively. You are speaking with a clear confident voice and getting your message across well.
Always focus on the positives, being successful and achieving what you want. Do this over and over again. When you are actually speaking to your audience, it is just one more visual experience. You have done it ton of times before already. Once more is no big deal.
I spoke to an audience of around 60 people last week, and in the run up to my speech, I was picturing myself walking out on stage and delivering the speech just the way I wanted to. When it came to the actual presentation, it happened just the way I had pictured it. I didn’t feel particularly nervous, and a lot of delegates came over afterwards to thank me for what I said, mentioning it was a good speech.
Be realistic with your expectations and how you visualise the room. Most people listening attentively don’t have much going on with their faces. Expect attention not lots of smiles and visual feedback.
The most important part of the presentation to control your nerves is the first 10 seconds and then the first minute. Once you are past these points and everything has gone well, you will be a lot more relaxed. Visualise the first minute going brilliantly for you again and again.
The fourth action is to practice – Your performance is in your practice
How well you present to your audience is a direct reflection of how much you put into the practice of your presentation.
Put in a lot of good quality practice and your presentation will go really well. If you don’t practice, don’t expect much from your performance on the day.
As you practice, I would expect you to improve how you communicate your messages to your audience. Keep refining your presentation each time you practice.
Practice over a least a few days or better still over the week before your presentation. Run through your presentation at least once per day. This gives you time to work out better ways of presenting your messages to your audience.
When you are practicing, keep visualising your audience in front of you, of you speaking clearly and confidently. Always speak out loud when practicing as you will when you are presenting. Listen to how you sound, the pauses you use, the speed of your voice and the energy and emotions in your voice. Think about your body language. Stand up tall and use outward and expansive arm movements. Think about how you will engage with your audience. Do everything you plan to do in the actual presentation is your practice too.
Minimum Suggested Practice
As a minimum, I suggest you do your presentation 8-10 times at least. Keep practicing until you are happy with what you are saying, how you are saying it and the body language you are using. Don’t stop practicing until you reach this point.
Lots of practice is a great way to control your nerves when presenting. After all you are just going through your presentation one more time.
I hope you are now much more confident in how to control your nerves when presenting. Good luck with your presentation, it will go great.
In summary
How to control your nerves when presenting is all about what you do before you actually present. The 4 actions I suggest you take to massively reduce your nerves when presenting are:
- Transform fear into excitement
- Focus on your audience and message
- Do visualisation exercises
- Your performance is in your practice
Don’t forget to take a look in the description for links to more resources to help you. If you have any questions on “How to Control Your Nerves When Presenting”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
Public speaking or presenting in front of groups is a nerve racking experience until you know how to prepare and approach public speaking. With the right mindset and preparation, speaking in front of groups – small to big – becomes much less of a deal and even enjoyable.
Do put these actions into practice. To learn more about public speaking do look at all the help available in our Management Skills Hub
