During Presentation

Stay in control of your speech by building credibility and engaging your audience in your presentation.There are some established guidelines to weave your path for success during your performance.  These guidelines are as follows:

• Memorize your opening to establish eye contact with your audience. Gives people the feeling that you are talking to them rather than at them
• Maintain eye contact: If the size of the audiece intimidates you then "pick out two individuals on the right and two individuals on the left and talk directly with them" (Guffey,Rhodes & Rogin, 2011, p. 508)
• Control your voice and vocabulary by keeping a moderate tone and  avoid verbal static.
• Do not speak too rapidly, try to make pauses in the middle to slow down and listen to what you are saying.

By following these few pointers you are definitely going to gain confidence of your audience and establish a good rapport that will keep them interested till the end.  

Reference:

Guffey, M.,  Rhodes, K., & Rogin, P. (2011). Business Communication: Process and Product (6th ed.). Toronto: Nelson.

Before Presentation

Following are some relatively simple and common tips to handle stage fright before the presentation.

• Preparation. Be prepared for your presentation by thoroughly researching your topic
• Know your audience.  Try and find out the mind set of people you are going to speak to  and be prepared to answer any question that the audiences might have for you.  
• Rehearse extensively. Practice your entire presentation before friends and family to build confidence. Also practice with slides to harbour any last minute surprise.  
• Stress reduction- Breath deeply and take a sip of water to calm your nerves down, convert your fear into excitement. 
• Be confident. Your confidence will not only help you feel sure of yourself but also make you appear composed on the stage and will be less likely to fall a victim to stage fright.
• Believe in your cause. You are here for a reason and you have something worth talking about. 
• Everyone feels it. Most of us feel nervous and you're definitely not alone. The only difference between them and you is that they overcame it, and so can you.
• Be inspired by others. take inspiration from other avid speakers preferably by someone who has spoken on the same subject. Observe their demeanor, how they moved, what they wore. How they engaged the audience and how did the audience react to them.

By utilizing these simple steps of ample preparation, knowledge of your audience, rehearsing, breathing exercise, confidence, and thorough knowledge of your subject, you are bound to be on the right path for a confident presentation that will fully engage your audience and make you the star of the show!!

You are not alone!

Every individual experiences some degree of nervousness before speaking in front of a large audience.  That happens because our body undergoes some physiological changes when we gain the attention of a large crowd. "Research has shown that more than 40% of people say their top fear was speaking in front of other people. According to one survey, fear of public speaking came before heights, death, illness and other common phobias" ("overcome fears", 2004). one can overcome this fear by mastering some of the techniques,  and applying the following strategies of before, during and after the presentations.


The Stage fright graph





The stage fright graph explains the relationship of our perceived distressful consequence and actual projected negative performance (Stage_fright_graph, n.d.).  As a presenter, our underlying fears of what our audience might think (negative evaluation) of us, effect our actual performance by negatively impacting it on stage. As the graph shows, our stress level of stage fright increases with our presumption of what our audience might be thinking and in doing so, deteriorates our actual performance on stage.  Now that you see how vicious this psychological cycle is, we must do everything in our power to understand the problem and avoid it in order to win our audience.


Reference: 
Public Speaking Tips. (2004). Overcoming your fear of presenting. Retrieved from http://www.speaking-tips.com/Articles/Overcome-Your-Fear-of-Presenting.aspx_


Stage_fright_graph, (n.d.). Yahoo Canada. Retrieved from http://ca.images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A0PDodh5PU1P9n4AzRftFAx.;_ylu=X3oDMTBlMTQ4cGxyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1n?

The Symptoms.

So what really happens when we have stage fright? Well, there are obvious physical and chemical manifestations. Our bodies react to excitement or fear and adrenaline is pumped into our bloodstream in order to help us cope. 


Adrenaline is also know as Epinephrine,  it is a hormone used by our bodies in a high stress situations to give us that burst of energy, when we have the "fight or flight" response.This is also called adrenaline rush which can cause our body to experience side effects such as:

•  
• shaking, trembling, 
• vomiting and 
• shortness of breath.
• accelerated heartbeat
• cold sweats/stomach pain

This gives us an insight of why our bodies respond the way they do when we are having theses uncomfortable feelings. But everyone's experience is different. Some might feel more severe symptoms than others. They might feel like the room is closing in on them, the throat may tighten making it harder to breath, the heart can sometimes race to the point of making them believe that they are  having a heart attack. In extreme cases they may freeze and be unable to speak. "The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops, until you stand up to speak in public."--George Jessel. 


We are all born with the fear of heights and loud noises. The rest is what we learn in the course of our lives.  These fears are learned from experiences. Have you ever experienced stage fright? What effects do you feel when you are in a unique situation like that?

Reference:


Fear-of-Publicspeaking.net. (n.d). Causes of Stage Fright. Retrieved from http://www.fear-of-publicspeaking.net/stage-fright.html

Definition

What is stage fright?  The online dictionary defines stage fright as "acute nervousness felt by a performer or speaker when appearing before an audience" (Dictionary.com, 2012). 

Even famous people regularly experience what you experience. Elvis Presley said, "I've never gotten over what they call stage fright. I go through it every show." There is comfort in knowing that even "The King" always had  stage fright (Boyd, 2010). 

Now that we know what stage fright is, we must be prepared to deal with it by taking an in-depth look into the problem and finding a solution for it.  

references: 


Boyd, stephen. (2010). Public speaking tips: The mental part of public speaking. Retrieved from http://www.speaking-tips.com/Articles/The-Mental-Part-of-Public-Speaking.aspx


Stage fright. (n.d.). Dictionary.com. Retrieved from  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stage+fright