You Can Be Nervous and Still Give a Great Speech

You can be extremely nervous and still give a great speech.

That one sentence often resonates more with the people I work with than anything else I share. Most arrive thinking they need to get rid of their nerves first and that confidence will follow, but it doesn’t work that way. Waiting for nerves to disappear can hold talented people back for years, causing them to pass up opportunities they could excel at.

The people who did it anyway

Thomas Jefferson served two terms as President of the United States. His two inaugural addresses were, by the accounts of those present, barely audible: the first was delivered so quietly that few people heard it, and the second only partly so. In eight years, he never once appeared before Congress to deliver his annual message, instead sending it as a written document with his secretary, and that remained the practice for more than a century until Woodrow Wilson broke it in 1913. John Adams, who had served alongside him in the Continental Congress, wrote that in all the time they sat together he never heard Jefferson utter three sentences in a row.

Gandhi wrote in his autobiography about a Vegetarian Society committee in London, for which he prepared his thoughts in writing and then, in his own words, “did not find myself equal even to reading it”, so the President had somebody else read it out. At a farewell dinner not long afterwards he stood up, managed the first sentence and could get no further.

Laurence Olivier was in his late fifties, and had been the most celebrated actor in the country for the better part of two decades, when stage fright arrived. It grew steadily worse across the last ten years of his stage career, to the point where he controlled it with Valium for two years.

Adele has put it more plainly than anybody.

“I’m scared of audiences,” she told Rolling Stone, before describing the night in Amsterdam when she was so nervous she went out through the fire exit.

None of these individuals were people who overcame their nerves and then proceeded to do the work. Instead, they are those who managed to do the work despite feeling frightened, which is a completely different situation and much more practical, since it doesn’t require becoming someone else first.

So what is the difference?

If it is not the absence of fear, then what separates the people who manage it from the people who do not?

In my experience, it is intent. A sincere, uncomplicated intention to give an audience something they need is the strongest starting point there is, and it does something to the fear that no technique quite manages, because it moves the whole business out of the category of a test you might fail and into the category of a thing you are doing for somebody.

Fear of speaking often comes from a worry about being judged, especially since discussions tend to focus on you. However, when you centre your presentation on your audience’s needs, you naturally reveal less of yourself for judgment. This isn’t something you can fake; genuinely caring about what your audience will take away makes a real difference, and people in the room can tell.

Three things that carry intent into a room

Intent is not much use sitting in your head. There are three things that get it across, and they work in that order.

SELF-DISCLOSURE

Opening yourself up a bit and embracing vulnerability does something truly special that no amount of perfection can match. It shows others there’s a real person in front of them, not just a job title, and that makes them pay closer attention. Admittedly, this can be the scariest part for many. Remember, you’re not being asked to share everything or make a grand confession. Just one honest sentence about what this experience has cost you, what mistakes you’ve made, or what you’ve learned the hard way is perfectly enough. Anything beyond that might start to shift the focus back onto you.

STORY

Nothing reaches an audience quite like a story. People forget arguments and remember what happened to somebody. A story also lets them work out the point for themselves, and a point somebody works out on their own is one they keep.

MESSAGE

A clear and confidently held message reduces fear, doubt, and confusion for both you and others.

This is the one that does the most work and gets the least attention. When you are certain what you are there to say, a great deal of the nervousness has nowhere to attach itself, because most of what people call nerves is actually uncertainty wearing a different coat. Not sure what the point is, not sure why these people need it, not sure what you want them to do about it. Clear that up and the feeling reduces on its own, without you having to do anything to it directly.

From nervous to excited

There is a well-known piece of research on this that is worth knowing about. In 2014, Alison Wood Brooks at Harvard Business School ran a set of experiments, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, in which people faced an anxiety-producing task, including giving a speech. Some were told to say “I am excited” out loud beforehand, and others were told to say “I am calm.” Independent judges rated the ones who reframed the feeling as excitement as more persuasive, more competent, and more confident than the ones who tried to calm themselves down.

The reason that works is simple enough. Anxiety and excitement feel almost identical from the inside, and the difference between them is not the sensation but what you have decided it means. Anxiety points you at what might go wrong; excitement points you at what might go right. Telling yourself to calm down asks your body for something it won’t give you, which is why it so rarely helps.

Intent is what makes that reframe honest rather than just a slogan. When you truly care about whether these people leave better off, it’s natural to feel excitement, and it comes from a genuine place, not just convincing yourself of anything.

 Where this sits

Knowing why you are speaking, and what you want to be different afterwards, is the Intention layer of The Presenter’s Operating System, the framework all my work is built on. It is the layer that decides how the whole thing feels to do, which is why so much anxiety turns out to be an Intention problem rather than a confidence one.

If the nerves are what you most want addressed, there are two other places to go: what is happening in your mind before you speak, and what is happening in your body, which responds to breathing rather than reasoning, but start here. Before you do anything about the nerves, get clear about what you are there to give these people. In a great many cases the nerves quietly reduce on their own once that question is settled, and what is left is the useful kind.

If any of this was useful, send it to somebody who needs it. There is almost certainly someone you work with who has turned down something they would have been good at because they are waiting to stop being nervous first. Nobody has told them they do not have to wait.

If you need a little help with your public speaking and presentation skills:

– Book yourself onto a powerful public speaking course.

– Invest in some really good one to one public speaking coaching.

– Get yourself some excellent presentation skills training.

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