Public Speaking - ‘CALM DOWN, CALM DOWN!’

For most of us, regardless of status and position, public speaking really summons the butterflies in our bellies. This anxiety or ‘stage fright’ is one of the most common fears, so conquering it is a challenge worth overcoming.

A Harvard Business School study found that 84.9% of colleagues would give the advice to relax or calm down to an anxious co-worker; so surely sound advice, right? Wrong! A follow up study requiring participants to perform a two-minute persuasive speech on short notice found that those who repeated “I am calm” prior to the activity performed significantly worse than those who repeated “I am excited”. The reason being that we have little control of our anxiety, so we might as well embrace that racing heart rate and turn it into excitement rather than trying to hide it in an (often transparent) calm exterior!