The So-Called Phobia of Public Speaking
(subtitle: Fear of Public Speaking Is Rational!)

This is the full article; if you began reading this in my eZine, please continue after the yellow highlighting.

As a public speaking coach, I'd say 75% of the people who call my office mention fear - and that's fine.  It's okay to acknowledge that something is scary and it's even better that these folks have picked up the phone, taking a step to deal with it.  It's that word "phobia" that I have a problem with.

Dictionary.com defines a phobia as "a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation..."   My argument is that there's nothing irrational about being afraid to do something that you haven't been trained to do well!

Supposing tomorrow, for reasons unknown, you are awakened to find out that you have to do immediate open-heart surgery on someone.  Only you can save the person on the table and you're rushed into the O.R. where Nurse Jenkins hands you a scalpel and everyone is poised for you to begin.

Scared?  I would expect so!  So then:  you have a phobia of performing open-heart surgery?  Or is it a completely rational reaction to being expected to do something that you haven't been prepared for...let alone had time to develop a comfort zone with?

Get the point?  It's the same with speaking!  Our society has this ridiculous notion that if you have a voice and you know English, you should be able to get up and give a presentation -- and should even be comfortable doing so!  Yet few of us have ever had any real preparation for this.  Almost none of us get it in high school and relatively few do in college.  Oh, you might have been asked to give some sort of oral reports, but likely you just got a grade on it, not coaching.

So if this is an area that you have stress related to and, like 99% of Americans, your education didn't really prepare you to:

• speak to your staff
• do that sales presentation
• address that business/social group
• make that speech to a hundred friends and family at your daughter's wedding

...give yourself a break, my friend.   You have no more reason to feel ready and comfortable than you did taking that scalpel from Nurse Jenkins.  So take a breath and give yourself credit for that.

The good news is two-fold:

1)   No one will ever ask you to do open-heart surgery, unless you're in the 0.01% of my readers who HAVE been expertly trained in this...and they chose to do that.

2)  Public speaking skills are quite learnable, just like driving a car, roasting a turkey, and programming your DVR.  You just need a sense of commitment and a willingness to screw up a little in practice without kicking your self too hard 'til you start to see the improvement.

A good book like my Public Speaking: Get A's, Not Zzzzzz's! or its age-specific sequel
Public Speaking for TEENS: Get A's, Not Zzzzzz's! can help; both are designed to be fun reading so it won't hurt be painful.

Even better, or in concert with reading, is joining a Toastmasters club -- an international organization dedicated to meeting weekly to work on these skills.  You're expected to speak every 4 to 6 weeks while learning from watching others give their presentations and getting feedback.

Or, if you want to speed up the process, there's coaching, where 100% of the energy is devoted to taking your talents, needs, and goals into consideration as we delve into what works well and how capable you are of doing it.

What you're going to find is that the more you know, the more the fear gets smaller and smaller...until it's barely there.  And that, my friends, don't sound like no kinda phobia to me!  :)

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Learn more in "Public Speaking: Get A's, Not Zzzzzz's!"

And now for the next generation: