The Value of Fear

We all have a dream. We want to become experienced speakers. Of course, we are not yet. So, the questions come. What feeling would you have if you are going to show an important demo to your customers? What feeling would you have if you will deliver a public speech in a big event? What feeling would you have if it’s the first time for you to present a topic to a group of managers? I guess most probably you would have the same feeling as me in similar situations. It is anxiety and fear.

Recently I read the book Presentation S.O.S. I learnt from the book about the value of fear. I learnt that it’s the first step towards success if we can understand fear, and develop strategies to address it. Then the question is what strategies we could have.

The best strategy to address fear is to accept it and utilize the feeling of fear.It can help us to concentrate on the things we need to work on. It can help us to take the current challenge seriously to take actions. If we rehearsal again and again, we should be able to stand in front of audience with more confidence and ease.

The worse strategy to address fear is to escape. That means we are overwhelmed by the feeling of fear. But at same time we are unable to take enough actions. I had such an experience before. Some years ago, I got an opportunity to be a speaker in SAP Developer Kick-off Meeting event which was held in Shanghai. At beginning I was excited about the chance to be a super star in such a big event. But later, I worried about it because I was not very familiar with the topic. I tried to find enough time to prepare for the speech. But unfortunately I failed to do so because I always had an excuse. I told myself “I’m too busy. It’s really hard to get more time to review the content and do more excises. Let me think about this in next week.”. However, in the following week I still could not arrange time for the preparation. Finally, I realized that I could not handle the speech by myself anymore. So, I asked help from a colleague to be another speaker so that each of us cover only half of the contents. Even with this, I felt that I lacked confidence when I stood on the stage. That’s really a bad experience and I do not want to have it anymore.

The worst strategy to address fear is to just simply ignore it. You might think you have done everything very well. You might do not care about having a better preparation. If so, you’ll lose the opportunity to improve yourself. Actually,that is what I did before many times for knowledge sharing sessions, workshops,demos and many other meetings where I was a speaker or host. Now I understand that it’s not helpful at all on improving my communication skills to speak in such a way with lower standard. It’s not helpful even I repeat these things thousands of times.

So, it’s time to recognize the value of fear, and take actions to prepare ourselves. Only in this way, could we be more likely to establish good connections to our audience and have a better experience in public speaking.