I Taught Public Speaking for 30 Years: Part II (The Power of Nerves)

The thing is, I don’t get nervous. That’s most likely because I’m (as yet, undiagnosed) neurodivergent and the nerves thing just goes over my head. I can get emotional - once I was interviewed after the premiere of a film about sex trafficking and my voice shook throughout. My husband was surprised. You were so nervous he said. I wasn’t nervous but I had been deeply affected by the circumstances of the main character and performance of the actor playing her. 
If you put me in a room with a thousand strangers and then asked me to call them to attention, I’d have no issue. I’ve spoken publicly to hundreds of crowds of people over my career, and I think the secret is this: I know they’re just the same as me. I entertain no superiors. However, I worked for a couple of years quite recently in a hospital, and senior nurses, consultants, higher management - they work on the premise of hierarchy that chips away at your confidence. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t stay. 
 
So I’m confident, I’m self-assured. That’s not always a recipe for a good public speaker. Because I wasn’t driven to excel by my nerves, I was, initially, a sloppy speaker, squinting into the stage lights and forgetting what I was saying. It took a while for me to pull myself together, have a plan, a basic script, and the maturity to address my audience with the respect they deserved. In other words, a well prepared speech. 
 
In my early years as a theatre director, I had an interesting experience. I had agreed to take on an acting role, and the discipline required for that helped enormously in the skill of basic preparation. As a director I’d have read the script so many times before even coming to the first rehearsal, and I’d know the lines - everyone’s lines - backwards. As an actor you have a separate discipline: people are dependent on you knowing your own words exactly. Your words are a cue - for other actors’ actions, for the lighting script or a piece of music. So the stakes are higher and the pressure is greater. Actors care. They want to get things right. Hence the nerves. 
 
My husband (then boyfriend) is an actor, and that night we were performing together. The other actors backstage (him included) were nervous. No one could speak to each other. They paced silently. One guy faced into a corner. I said to him, 
“I think I’m sick. My tummy is doing somersaults and I feel like I might throw up. Or worse. I must be coming down with something.” 
He shook his head and turned back to his corner. My husband, pacing aimlessly nearby told me it was nerves, of course it was nerves, everyone feels like that before stepping on stage. True, backstage was a dismal place, and a little smelly in quiet pockets, but I didn’t connect the sensations I was feeling with my pending performance. My body and my brain worked together without me. That’s what I mean about things going over my head. It’s as if the biological elements of me have a private agreement not to bother me with any of that nonsense. 
 
That ‘nonsense’ however, is key to a great delivery. First, you have to know what you’re talking about. Know your subject. Really know it, inside out, back to front. In my article Public Speaking Part I, I suggest that based on 30 years teaching this artform, there are two types of speaker – the Actor and the Communicator (check it out to see which you are). In this case, the Actor learns his lines well. The Communicator’s desire is to connect with the audience and to have them feel as enthused as she does about the subject. We can forgive someone’s nerves, but lack of preparation deserves no respect. You’ll lose your audience very quickly that way. How do you know you’re losing them? They’ll fidget, whisper, stop engaging. You want them to give you their undivided attention, and for that, you need, in no uncertain terms, to make sure you know your stuff. It just takes one distracted person to create a ripple of unease, so anticipate it, and come in strong. I gave the keynote speech recently at a school reunion lunch; my class was 40 years out, but there were others who were anything from fresh school leavers to 70 years out. I had the advantage of being at the lunch a few years ago, when another speaker spoke about the shenanigans of her year. No one was interested in who got up to what back in her day, characters no doubt but unknown to the rest of us. The audience switched off. In a room of well over 500 people, all of whom are speaking softly, that gets pretty loud and a lone voice (even with a microphone) simply drowns. So, with that insight, I went in big: from the outset I talked about big 80’s hair and feeling invisible in a school where academia and sport were championed. I knew I had to get enough people to relate, and what teenage girl ever truly feels seen and understood? I talked ADHD and the friendships that saved us. I was self-depreciating, sure, but I also talked about the things that empowered us. I made them laugh, I made them cry. It was fascinating – my intention was to hold on to their attention – to be heard in a huge room, and in doing so, I think they all felt heard and seen.
 
What about the nasty business of nerves? Like anxiety, this is just too much energy flowing through you, and it simply needs to be controlled. Excitement works the same way, but we connect it with positivity so it’s easier for us for release it – through laughter, giddiness, even jumping up and down – we instinctively know how to release excitement. I would tell my students to embrace their nerves; lean into the feeling and turn it into excitement. This energy is the power behind a great performance. Back in those early days, the actors that stood in corners and paced aimlessly were searching within themselves for a way to control that energy. By acknowledging what it is and that it can be manipulated to your own advantage, a lot of agony can be reduced – replaced if you like, by something far more fun. If I was working with a full cast, we’d ground ourselves first, standing together in a circle, but this simple strategy works for lone speakers backstage also:
 
Ground yourself by standing strong, two feel firmly on the ground, about shoulder width apart. Don’t slouch. Stand straight and relax your shoulders. Let your hands swing by your sides. Knees slightly bent – check that no part of you is too strained or tense. 
Breathe in for a slow count of 3 and breathe out for a slow count of 10 (Breath work is the true powerhouse behind a well projected voice, and I cover this in more detail in Part III). The breathing work should relax you. 
Here you can do some speech exercises, or practice your opening address.
Now that you’re calm, you might want to pump yourself up again, and this is where you can turn those nerves into controlled excitement – the true power behind your performance. 
Here’s an example of a short, snappy exercise to turn nerves into excitement: 
 
(This works great with a group, so if you are a loan speaker, try to get a few backstage supporters to do this with you. The pace should be steady but snappy – you’re building to a crescendo)
 
From your grounded position, take your right arm and raise it over your head, flicking your hand outward eight times, and counting aloud, with energy, to 8. 
Repeat with your left hand.
Repeat with your right foot, kicking the air.
Repeat with your left foot.
 
Immediately repeat the whole thing for a count of 4
Repeat the whole thing for a count of 2
Repeat the whole thing for a count of 1, then jump in the air with a loud whoop!
 
If you did this exercise and it didn’t give you a buzz, try doing it faster next time!
 
Let me know in the comments what you do to control nerves, and if you liked my article, subscribe to my monthly newsletter or follow me on Instagram and TikTok.
 
Next time: Develop Your Voice and Command an Audience with Ease
 
 

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