🦋 Are you feeling nervous?
🦋 Just picture your audience naked.
Yeah, sure... that’ll put you at ease... 😳
Can you even imagine??
That advice has been around for decades. When I tried to track the source, I was blown away to find it is often attributed to one of the world’s most revered orators... Sir Winston Churchill. 🎩
Churchill was not a naturally gifted speaker. He struggled with a stammer and lacked confidence. Rumor has it that to ease his nerves, he imagined his audience naked. I suppose for him it leveled the playing field.
Regardless, this is not good advice for today’s presenter! It disrespects your audience and disconnects you from them. Disrespect and disconnect...those are the last things you want to do when communicating!
Since glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, still ranks among the top global phobias, we need effective strategies for quelling those butterflies.
While there are many solid strategies for reducing speech anxiety, academic research consistently touts what is called the communication orientation—thinking less about yourself and your fears, and more about your (clothed) audience and how you can relate your topic to them—as one of the most effective methods for building presentation confidence.
Your audience members are co-authors of your presentation. How can you connect with them? What will they do once they hear your speech? How can you make information that’s important to you important to them? The more you focus on those things—the less you’ll worry about your performance.
So please, don’t think of your audience naked! But if you insist, and I’m in your audience, please apply a good filter. 😉