What to Do Before the Talk: Stage Fright, Introversion, and Saber-Toothed Tigers

Stage fright is real!

You can’t avoid stage fright—you need to handle it.[27] Different people have different responses to it, but nobody feels safe on stage, in front of a lot of people. Experienced speakers and performers still suffer from stage fright.

That’s natural, because our brain was trained over thousands of years to pay attention to possible risks, and to fight or flee. Have you ever heard of saber-toothed tigers that in our imagination are the natural enemies of our ancestors, the cavemen?

To keep our feline-inspired metaphor, we need to think about our audience like kittens that need to be fed with stories and knowledge, not saber-toothed tigers ready to eat us.

If you think about your presentation more as a conversation and less as a performance, it’s easier to handle stage fright.

Introverts and extroverts

Introverts and extroverts can both be excellent public speakers. The only difference between them is that introverts need time for themselves to charge their batteries before the session, and time to recharge them after it. Extroverts can charge their batteries while being with the public, and after a session they have a high level of energy.

This means that if you’re an introvert, you probably need some time alone before and after the session. You can go to the speaker’s room, you can go outside the conference venue, or you can find an empty room and sit there.

“Public speaking for quiet people”[28] is a great talk that can help you understand how to be a great speaker while being an introvert.

By the way, if you’re an introvert, you need to enjoy your conference, too. Conferences for Introverts by Alan Mendelevich[29] is a great book with a lot of practical advice.

Note: Many conferences have a speaker room, sometimes called the “green room.” There are many reasons why it’s called this,[30] but one reason could be that anxious speakers suffer, and green is the color they become in those situations.

Anxiety can be an energy drain or can be a great source of power

In his book Originals,[31] Adam Grant has a great chapter about handling anxiety. He shows results from many studies that demonstrate that if you try to calm anxious people before the performance, their results will be worse than if you try to energize them and convert their anxiety into positive energy.

In the book, there are examples of people who use visualization to see positive outcomes to drive them, but there are people who like to visualize bad or terrible outcomes, too.

Sometimes visualizing a bad outcome could help you prevent it, or you could just think about people who were negative about your initiative who are now happy that you didn’t succeed. Some people could find the right motivation from those negative images.

Note: I’ve seen a great talk by @N1c0l_3 about anxiety-driven development, which was delivered with a lot of anxiety, but with an intense energy, too.[32] I was impressed by the way she used her breath difficulties (induced by anxiety) to create suspense in the audience and to enhance the content.

Don’t rehearse in front of a mirror

Rehearsing is one of the best tools for avoiding stupid errors, proving that you can do something, and testing different ways to present the same topic. However, rehearsing in front of a mirror is a terrible idea. You’ll concentrate on your physical appearance and small defects, and lose contact with the flow of your talk. Instead, you can simply use your phone or camera to record your performance, or you can do a video call and record it.

People usually find a lot of excuses to not rehearse, something like:

• I’d like to improvise.
• I want to keep it as a conversation.
• I don’t have time.

You can easily spot people who have rehearsed their presentations—not because they don’t improvise, or because they are presenting like an actor on stage—but because they can anticipate bad things that could happen during the presentation.

Always remember that your goal in rehearsing is not to be perfect; it’s about better preparation and handling your stage fright.

When you’re good at it, you can also rehearse in your mind, visualizing the presentation, the flow, and workarounds for potential problems. But you need a lot of practice!

Synchronize yourself with your content

Do you look at the Date Modified field of presentations? If you’re in the room when someone is preparing to present, and you can see the desktop, try to look at the modified date of the presentation.

Most of the time, you’ll find that speakers have updated their presentations the same day of the delivery. It’s a good thing to review your material and to synchronize yourself with the content. You have to think about the stories—perhaps you’ve met somebody at the conference, and now you have a better knowledge of your audience. Sometimes you just have to modify something so that your brain thinks the content is fresh, and your body language will be consistent with that.

Note: Have you ever felt that a presentation was old, that the content wasn’t fresh? Sometimes, especially if it’s the first time you’re learning something, you’ll have a gut feeling that the content is stale. That’s because the body language of the presenter gives you that message. Making little changes to a presentation before doing it helps to solve this problem.

Put the pedal to the metal!

The final advice of this chapter is: Stay away from your comfort zone, take risks, and be bold!

It’s easy to play it safe when you’re worried or have stage fright. There are many WRONG ways to play it safe, including:

• Introducing yourself, losing time on the agenda, and using boring slides.
• Using facts and data only, without stories.
• Staying away from hot topics, trying to please everyone.

Why should someone be on the stage in front of a lot of people and not give their best? At the end of the presentation, you’ll regret it if you don’t. Even if it was okay, you didn’t give your best and didn’t make a good impression.

Of course, you should take controlled risks, but, if you know your audience, if you’ve done your dry runs and you know your topic, if you have a great story, and if you’ve anticipated critical questions, you could exit your comfort zone and try to impress everyone!

Some suggestions:

• Turn off the projector. Go to the whiteboard and discuss your topic without slides.
• Use a prop—something unexpected. Don’t speak. Open Notepad in full-screen mode with a big font and start writing questions and annotating answers. Then, at the end of the presentation, review the questions and answers to see if you’ve covered everything, or if you’ve left out something.
• If the event is not recorded, move around the stage and go into the audience. Remember to keep good eye contact with every part of the audience.

In any case, trust your gut.

Note: During my career, I’ve used a lightsaber, a cape, a small rocket launcher, and a drone for props. Of course, props have to enhance your story, so don’t use one just for the sake of using it.