Three ways to handle speech anxiety
It was halftime.
After over an hour of pitches to venture capitalists, the Kellogg executive MBA class had a 10-minute break to regroup.
Our group was about to go. I took center stage, pacing across our performance space to get comfortable.
One of my friends—who was in a different team—turned to me. She asked, “How do you deal with nerves before you speak?”
Another asked me about his accent. “How should I handle the words I can’t quite pronounce?”
A third wanted to know how to be more confident as a performer generally.
I’m pretty bad at anxiety management OUTSIDE of speaking. I struggle to meditate. I’m a zero-inbox guy to the nth degree; I’m still answering emails at 1 AM most mornings.
If my Oura ring were a family member, they would have staged an intervention based on my stress and recovery levels.
I am not Mr. Zen.
But when it comes to performances? I’m not worried. I’m just excited.
Every coach has their own approach. As a friend of mine said, treat the advice “like a shirt—one size doesn’t fit all, and you shouldn’t wear it if it doesn’t work.” But my approach has worked for me, and the 1,600+ champions I’ve coached, handle speaking stress.
First, treat the stage like your playground.
Plenty of speakers are paralyzed when nothing stands between them and their judgmental audience. This creates a negative loop where they’re too nervous to move because of judgment, so they stay put, which invites more negative judgment, which fosters more nervousness. Break out of the cycle before it starts.
When I’m helping college mock trial contestants, wary of movement in a courtroom, I tell them to lean on things. The witness stand, the jury box, counsel table—mark your territory before the judges walk in. No area’s “off limits” to you unless a judge reprimands you—and if they do, so what? You had the gumption to spread your wings and take up space.
Some of my favorite trial advocacy rounds of all time involve contestants ‘breaking the rules’ of space—like charging towards the jury to demonstrate someone flying forward, or walking back into the audience to establish the distance between a witness and their observations (My Cousin Vinny style).
Sometimes, I call this ‘being a cat.’ A cat would sit and sleep wherever it damn well pleases. You can certainly do the same.
A very fancy feline!
Second, warm up!
Tongue twisters—“red leather, yellow leather, green leather, purple leather; you know you need unique New York; the six sheik’s six sleep’s sick”—are a great way to start.
Sirens (starting low and going high) help you clear up your throat. It might seem silly, but the benefits are well-documented. You wouldn’t run a marathon before stretching your legs, so why give a high-stakes speech before stretching your vocal chords?
Playing the watermelon game (where you repeat a nonsense word in place of your speech’s script, but use gestures and inflection as if you were communicating truly valuable content) makes it fun.
If you have accent-related concerns as my friend did, you have three options: prepare fallback jokes for any mispronounced words, change the words you keep messing up, or do the PENCIL drill to warm up.
The latter involves putting a pencil in your teeth and working to get through every word as you say your speech. It’s a classic debate team warm-up. (This is intentionally hard—it helped me with my childhood speech impediment.)
If someone else unfamiliar with your script can’t understand keywords when you’re over-enunciating like this, you know where to slow down and focus.
Third, practice like you’ll perform.
After you’re memorized and timed (allowing for audience engagement, it is next to meaningless to run your speech by yourself. You need a partner.
It doesn’t matter if they’re barely paying attention (I often ask my wife to be a sounding board as she’s plugged into respiratory therapy work or Baldur’s Gate 3)—the mere idea that you’re practicing by engaging another human being beats being alone. Doing it with a group—even better!
People are mainly scared of public speaking because they rarely do it. If you’ve never said your presentation’s words to a crowd, the first time will be terrifying.
By the time you’ve gotten through the speech a dozen times in comparable conditions? It’s a breeze. Even rehearsing with a SMALL audience is many times more effective than doing it alone.
Most amateur speakers simply don’t practice effectively enough.
Ultimately, everyone came back from halftime and finished their pitches. And the speakers who (1) were more comfortable in their spaces, (2) warmed up their voices, and (3) practiced like they performed had the best time.
Put in the work. You’ll make it to the end zone.
