My speech to the School of Life Self-help Summit was over a week ago now, so I’ve had time to reflect. Typical of a High-FF (someone with high fear of failure as described in What’s Stopping You?) I’ve started to focus on the negatives, now the first rush of adrenalin from simply getting through the process has dissipated. I rather fluffed the question on “charlatans”, asked right at the end of the day and directed towards me by the chairman Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian. In fact, I had a neural hijacking, wondering whether Oliver thought me a charlatan – ignoring the fact I’d spent much of my speech criticising the genre for over-promising, hyper-titling, over simplifying complex mental conditions and being generally a bit cheesy (making me the obvious speaker to address the issue).
Yet that’s the key problem with fear of failure – it’s an innate condition. Those reactions are inevitable, making our only hope the ability to generate a better second response. Nonetheless, there I was – a confirmed High-FF making a speech that seemed to go down rather well. At least, I made people laugh, got a round of applause, engendered a good debate and had people saying nice things to me in the break.
Being a High-FF is certainly no barrier to presenting to an audience, although there is no doubt that it is one of those terrifying episodes – a key moment for the monkey on our shoulder to appear and start whispering disabling thoughts into our head along “you can’t do this”, “you’re an idiot and you’re about to be found out” lines. Indeed, my High-FF persona was even capable of scouring the audience for the one person looking less than delighted with my speech and focusing totally on him (who’d probably been chucked by his girlfriend that morning).
So can I offer any advice to the High-FF fearing presentations or speeches (as nearly all will)? These are purely my own thoughts – and purely in retrospect given that it seemed to go OK – but the following seemed to get me through it without the need for beta blockers (which a friend had offered and I’m now glad I refused).
1) Prepare. Powerpoint presentations are actually for the speaker rather than the audience. I used Powerpoint to help me structure the discussion, work out the narrative and order of points, to illustrate what I was saying with images, and to help me remember my lines. In fact the Powerpoint was my beta blocker – just knowing it was there calmed me enormously.
2) Work out the message. I had one point I wanted to make – that self-help cannot cure you of innate conditions but it can help you make progress once you realise no cure is on offer. I thought this a strong message so it ran throughout, repeating it on the last slide to remove any doubt.
3) Practice. My wife heard it twice, a colleague in the office also heard it twice. I practiced it twice alone before work each morning prior to the summit and three times on the day. I learnt to smooth out the sticking points and, in fact, pretty much knew it by heart by the time I stood up. Ultimately, knowing the material inside out was what allowed me a confident delivery.
4) Especially know the opening. This is worth knowing verbatim – those first few lines after “good morning ladies and gentlemen”. Make absolutely sure you are happy with these lines – because it is here you win or lose your audience.
5) Remember they are on your side. In nearly all situations in which you are making a speech the crowd are with you. Unless you are a Tory addressing a Labour rally, the audience is willing you to do well and couldn’t care about the odd verbal clumsiness. So don’t alienate them. My guess that the School of Life crowd was likely to be cerebral, sceptical but open minded was correct (I think). I therefore addressed their sceptical side (winning them over) before appealing to their open-mindedness (with positive messages about self-help).
6) Give it pace. This may be just me but that old advice to slow down doesn’t suit the nervous speaker. With the Powerpoint as an aide mémoire, why not give it some welly? Rattle through the slides making fast but clear points that have your audience’s hearts racing. Certainly, it’s a great way to cover up any signs of nervousness.
7) Be funny. Levity is certainly appreciated. Because they are on your side, jokes tend to work, even if not that funny. I used visual gags – showing them the cover of my last book (with “me” standing in Union Jack boxer shorts) and the "surgically-enhanced" grin of Anthony Robbins on the jacket of Awaken the Giant Within to illustrate the cheesy aspects to self-help. They loved it!
8) Never slag the other speakers. Try and repeat their message (as long as you agree with it). This is a collegiate endeavour, after all. In fact, Philippa Perry, the previous speaker, said that psychotherapy could help build new neural pathways (challenging my claim that our insecurities were hard-wired). Actually, we were saying the same thing – differently. Try and find the common ground.
9) Be careful in the Q&A. The “charlatans” question threw me so I ended up just repeating my message about “the afflicted desperate for a cure” (though with much less clarity). In fact, this isn’t a bad strategy – repeat the message. Otherwise anecdotes that support the message may work. A trick I use when presenting at work is to answer the question by repeating the message but then asking the questioner if my answer satisfied. If not, that's fine as, by then, I’ve usually had a chance to think up a strong answer to the actual question.
10) Thank your hosts. And compliment them.
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