Partner Article

A little perspective, please

With Simon Raybould of Curved Vision.

According to some research often banded about, more people are afraid of speaking in public than of dying. Assuming the research was done in an appropriate way there’s no reason to doubt it, but let’s have a little perspective… for all that I spend my professional life trying to help normal people become better and better at public speaking sometimes you’ve just got a step back and think for a moment. Is it really an end-of-the-world thing?

To put it in perspective, let me quote a friend of mine: I’d just heard someone describe their recent presentation as a ‘total disaster’. My friend looked at them, made sympathetic noises and then said, quietly “I’m so sorry. Were there many people dead?”

Harsh - very harsh - but not without a modicum of truth. Sometimes we all (myself included) get so anxious to get our presentations ‘just right’ that we forget that we don’t need to be perfect. For the vast majority of us we just need to be ‘good enough’ to get the message over. Believing we have to be perfect is a kind of hubris - and it’s also a bad plan in terms of staying calm!

The message (that is, what our presentation is about) is important - not us. All we need to do, really, is be good enough at delivering it to get the message over. And that’s a very liberating idea!

As always: questions and comments at sme@curved-vision.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .