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For public speaking, I have a theory of what "confidence" is. It's pretty simple: confidence is actually knowing what you're about to do. Public speaking is sca

For public speaking, I have a theory of what "confidence" is. It's pretty simple: confidence is actually knowing what you're about to do. Public speaking is scary because there are so many things that people haven't accounted for. 1. Know your subject. This is usually the easy one. Know exactly how you came to your conclusions, and why it's valid. You can defend the hell out of it if you need to, and you can honestly engage with useful criticism. 2. Know what you're going to say. This comes from practice. Are you worried about time? Practice and time yourself. Are you worried about how you look? Practice and video it and watch it. Are you worried about sounding stupid? Practice and record and listen to it. Get someone else to listen to it. 3. Know your audience. This is the hardest one. It comes from experience. What does your audience care about? How can you move your audience from where they are to where you want them to be? Get to know them. Become familiar with who they are. This is why talking with your friends is easy, but an auditorium of strangers is scary. This is also why making eye contact with different audience members is helpful. You need to respect your audience, and also believe that your audience respects you. This was a bit of a brain dump (my best write-up has been lost to /dev/null, unfortunately), but hopefully you get the idea. I suspect this would serve as a good core to learning public speaking, though.

marshray 13y ago
Those are all good points, but the number one cited phobia is "fear of public speaking". There's a lot going on under the hood there that's only partially addressed through solid preparation.
visural 13y ago
I recently read "The Naked Ape" and a theory discussed there, is that public speaking is actually an acutely unnatural scenario which we are not well evolved to cope with. To stare at someone is generally a threatening gesture, certainly there are many social cues about when it is appropriate to maintain a fixed gaze, and if a stare is held to long or without reciprocal give-and-take then it is usually interpreted as threatening/aggressive. Now think about public speaking - 100's or 1000's of people all staring at you, the speaker, at the same time. It's no wonder this triggers a fear (or fight/flight) response in most people. It's also worth considering, in our distant primate past, we are used to communicating with only a handful of other people at a time, outside of the context of tribal warfare. I'd be interested if anyone has any more recent research / theories on this.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > Now think about public speaking - 100's or 1000's of people all staring at you, the speaker, at the same time. It's no wonder this triggers a fear (or fight/flight) response in most people. This is true for all public performance, though. Sure, in a football game, maybe it's just triggering all of their fight responses, but that doesn't explain the downtime between plays. Stage performers of every kind have to deal with this. And so on and so on. I'm not suggesting that you can snap your fingers and lose your fear of public speaking: I'm saying that you can develop confidence. What's the point of a rehearsal, after all, other than to have something safe and ritualized that you can fall back on in case of wetting your pants? The things I'm suggesting aren't easy. They're quite demanding, in fact; you're not going to be able to get to know most audiences except vaguely and through repeated exposure. > To stare at someone is generally a threatening gesture, certainly there are many social cues about when it is appropriate to maintain a fixed gaze, and if a stare is held to long or without reciprocal give-and-take then it is usually interpreted as threatening/aggressive. There are ways to deal with this. My suggestion is essentially to learn how to break the ice. Give them reasons to laugh or applaud, which fills you up with positive emotion. Get them to talk to their neighbors, which breaks the staring effect. Focus and engage with random audience members throughout the talk. Pace, slowly, which is a posturing response.
adrianhoward 13y ago
For public speaking, I have a theory of what "confidence" is. It's pretty simple: confidence is actually knowing what you're about to do. Public speaking is scary because there are so many things that people haven't accounted for. While all of those things are very important - I don't think that's all there is to stage fright. I certainly know folk who have nailed all of the things you talk about and still have major problems with fear. Hell - I still get cold sweats before any talk I give and I've been doing it for years. A process of acclimatisation seems to help some folks - I talked about this in more detail over at https://medium.com/speak-up/18cfbc7c5a78 https://medium.com/speak-up/18cfbc7c5a78

marshray 13y ago

Those are all good points, but the number one cited phobia is "fear of public speaking". There's a lot going on under the hood there that's only partially addressed through solid preparation.

visural 13y ago

I recently read "The Naked Ape" and a theory discussed there, is that public speaking is actually an acutely unnatural scenario which we are not well evolved to cope with. To stare at someone is generally a threatening gesture, certainly there are many social cues about when it is appropriate to maintain a fixed gaze, and if a stare is held to long or without reciprocal give-and-take then it is usually interpreted as threatening/aggressive. Now think about public speaking - 100's or 1000's of people all staring at you, the speaker, at the same time. It's no wonder this triggers a fear (or fight/flight) response in most people. It's also worth considering, in our distant primate past, we are used to communicating with only a handful of other people at a time, outside of the context of tribal warfare. I'd be interested if anyone has any more recent research / theories on this.

saraid216 13y ago
> Now think about public speaking - 100's or 1000's of people all staring at you, the speaker, at the same time. It's no wonder this triggers a fear (or fight/flight) response in most people. This is true for all public performance, though. Sure, in a football game, maybe it's just triggering all of their fight responses, but that doesn't explain the downtime between plays. Stage performers of every kind have to deal with this. And so on and so on. I'm not suggesting that you can snap your fingers and lose your fear of public speaking: I'm saying that you can develop confidence. What's the point of a rehearsal, after all, other than to have something safe and ritualized that you can fall back on in case of wetting your pants? The things I'm suggesting aren't easy. They're quite demanding, in fact; you're not going to be able to get to know most audiences except vaguely and through repeated exposure. > To stare at someone is generally a threatening gesture, certainly there are many social cues about when it is appropriate to maintain a fixed gaze, and if a stare is held to long or without reciprocal give-and-take then it is usually interpreted as threatening/aggressive. There are ways to deal with this. My suggestion is essentially to learn how to break the ice. Give them reasons to laugh or applaud, which fills you up with positive emotion. Get them to talk to their neighbors, which breaks the staring effect. Focus and engage with random audience members throughout the talk. Pace, slowly, which is a posturing response.

adrianhoward 13y ago

For public speaking, I have a theory of what "confidence" is. It's pretty simple: confidence is actually knowing what you're about to do. Public speaking is scary because there are so many things that people haven't accounted for. While all of those things are very important - I don't think that's all there is to stage fright. I certainly know folk who have nailed all of the things you talk about and still have major problems with fear. Hell - I still get cold sweats before any talk I give and I've been doing it for years. A process of acclimatisation seems to help some folks - I talked about this in more detail over at https://medium.com/speak-up/18cfbc7c5a78 https://medium.com/speak-up/18cfbc7c5a78