Perfect Pitch: Fear of Flopping

If you’re afraid of cold calling, or speaking before a group, or making a presentation to a client, what is it you’re really afraid of? Unless you’re addressing a hostile audience in some very dangerous region of the world, you probably don’t have to worry about physical violence. And even if you were to suddenly draw a complete blank, it’s unlikely that anyone will laugh out loud at you. On the contrary, everyone knows that making a presentation is a challenge -- so your listeners would probably be very sympathetic.

With this in mind, let’s consider what people are really afraid of, and how to deal with that fear.

It’s not totally blowing it that we fear. It’s being anything less than perfect. Nervous speakers aren’t afraid of striking out. They’re afraid of not hitting a grand slam home run. They’re also afraid that they’ll be recognized as being afraid, which only makes the fear worse. For some reason, perfectionism seems to be built into the concept of business communication, yet perfectionism is just the opposite of what a good communicator should be feeling. This is true not only emotionally, but physically as well.

You’ve probably heard of the so-called fight or flight response. It’s the primal yes or no question that your brain asks when you’re faced with a stress inducing situation. It’s the hardwired prehistoric choice that still exists in our minds, even in the 21^st century. Are we going to confront this threat like a good caveman or cavewoman? Or are we going to run to the back of the cave and hide from it? Never mind that what we’re confronting is not a dinosaur, but the weekly meeting of the PTA. At the deepest level, the human brain doesn’t make those kinds of distinctions. When you’re feeling stressed by an unfamiliar circumstance, your brain thinks everything is on the line.

The fight or flight response leads to some very well documented physical reactions – and a couple of them are very unfortunate with respect to public speaking. It doesn’t really matter that the pupils of your eyes dilate, or that your digestive system begins to shut down. But the fight or flight response also causes a very powerful inhibition of the vocal cords. At the neurobiological level, the ability to talk is blocked. You capability to speak is actually paralyzed. 

As if that weren’t enough, your facial muscles can also freeze up. So you’re not able to say anything, and you’re not even able to grin and bear it. The fight or flight response has turned you into a cigar store Indian. This is exactly what you were afraid of, right? And that’s exactly why it happened: because you were afraid!

The truth is, even many highly accomplished public speakers continue to experience a certain level of stage fright, regardless of how many talks they’ve given. They accept it as a fact of life. They don’t have to completely erase the fear in order to bring it under control. They’re pragmatists rather than perfectionists. Stage fright may come and go, but it usually does not vanish permanently. The key to success is just putting into the right perspective.