It turns out that there are all sorts of unexpected things that create panic or unease in people. Many of them have fancy scientific names:

Fear of buttons                               Koumpounophobia

Fear of doorknobs                          Ostiumtractophobia

Fear of feather-tickling                 Pteronophobia

And so on.

But an obvious and familiar one is Glossophobia – fear of public speaking:

… these symptoms include acute hearing, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, dilated pupils, increased perspiration, increased oxygen intake, stiffening of neck/upper back muscles, and dry mouth…

The verbal symptoms include (but are not limited to) a tense voice, a quivering voice, and vocalized pauses—which tend to comfort anxious speakers. One form of speech anxiety is dysfunctional speech anxiety, in which the intensity of the fight-or-flight response prevents an individual from performing effectively…

It has been estimated that 75% of all people experience some degree of anxiety/nervousness when public speaking. In fact, surveys have shown that most people fear public speaking more than they fear death…

When I have done public speaking masterclasses, many people there confess that they have some sort of nervousness. They feel uneasy about being looked at, or they don’t think that what they have to say is interesting, or they’ll mess up, or their knees will start shaking, or something.

An impressive industry has built up around this problem. Lots of public speaking websites lead with the issue of anxiety or lack of confidence, promising to help the nervous speaker sort everything out. There is something to be said for acknowledging the issue up front. But I don’t favour dwelling on it too much, as it diverts attention from what I think is the central way to deal with public speaking nerves: have good content.

If you are confident that what you have to say is interesting and coherent, you’ll say it well. You’ll come across as confident and coherent. You’ll actually hear the audience listening to you. Because the content is good, you are good. The audience likes it. You feel more confident, so you say what you have to say all the stronger. The content itself improves with strong delivery. You get a virtuous spiral of content/speaker/audience working together, better and better.

Many public speaking coaches are not so good on producing the right content. So they dwell on clothes, breathing, eye-contact, knees and all sorts of other essentially marginal things that do matter, but mainly because the content and speaker are not doing the central business.

All of which said, for some people the very idea of making a short wedding speech or a key business presentation creates real anxiety. The anxiety comes in part because the speech matters: the speaker panics at different possible sorts of failures. Yet some sense of ‘stress’ is good: it gees you up for the moment when you need to go somewhere different and be bold about it. Anxiety is your enemy. How to get the balance right?

My answer lies in giving would-be speakers a comprehensive approach, combining great speech content with psychological tools for relaxing in the form of hypnotherapy. And this is exactly what I am working on with a leading UK hypnotherapy expert.

To be continued when my eBook Speechwriting for Leaders appears in the coming weeks…