Understanding Fear

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From the course by University of Colorado Boulder

Successful Presentation

140 оценки

University of Colorado Boulder

Successful Presentation

140 оценки

Course 3 of 4 in the Specialization Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation

Few kinds of communication can have the effect of a powerful presentation. Even a short speech can motivate people to change long-held beliefs or to take action, and a wonderfully delivered speech can transform a normal person into a leader. In this course, Prof. William Kuskin provides a series of pragmatic videos and exercises for successful public speaking and presentations. The course develops through four themes—mastering fear, developing a creative formula, using verbal and body language, and anticipating the room—so that you can discover your personal power as a speaker and give excellent presentations. Successful presentations do not rely on perfect teeth, a deep voice, or an army of scriptwriters. They depend largely on the same skills as successful Business Writing and Graphic Design: clarity, structure, and revision. The goal of the course, therefore, is to enable you to discover your own internal power as a speaker and express it to the world. After this course, with some practice, you will be able to go into any situation and command the room for as long as you like.

From the lesson

Getting Started with Public Speaking

In this module William tackles the one element that makes public speaking difficult: fear. Unlike writing a memo or designing a slide deck, presenting a speech puts you directly in front of an audience. Public speaking is wrapped up in the fear of immediate judgment and of lasting rejection. Yet the skills of writing and design are exactly the same as those of public speaking: clarity, structure, revision, and above all, storytelling. By applying these skills you can control your fear and take center stage in public. The results will astound you.

Welcome to Effective Communication (For New Learners)3:05

The Capstone (For New Learners)3:58

Welcome to Successful Presentation3:39

Understanding Fear4:15

The Code Rule: Survival Reactions4:27

The Paradox of Public Speaking3:30

We've All Felt Fear4:06

Meet the Instructors

Professor William Kuskin
Professor
Department of English, University of Colorado Boulder

Public speaking is anxiety producing.

This is true for people who've been giving speeches and presentations for years.

Everyone feels some anxiety within them.

In fact, if you don't feel the anxiety is when you should really worry.

We've all seen those professors who stagger out on stage with

a withered sheaf of papers and read them to us and you know they feel no passion.

The trick is turning anxiety into positive energy.

I want to talk a little bit about fear and anxiety, abstractly, just for

a little bit because I think it's important to understand.

It's important to understand why we're afraid and what we do when we're afraid.

In my mind, the fear of public speaking is both rational,

who wants to stand up and be judged?

And it's also irrational because in the end,

it's just words, it's just standing up and saying what you have to say.

I thought a little bit about fear, and

the best thing I've read is by a motorcycle racer.

His name is Keith Code and the book is called A Twist of the Wrist, and

I put it up online, and I want you to download it and read it with me or

get it up on your screen, so I'll wait.

The passage is called Survival Reactions.

The enemy is tough but limited in number.

Roll-off the gas.

Tighten on the bars.

Narrowed and frantically hunting field of view.

Fixed attention on something.

Steering in the direction of the fixed attention.

No steering, frozen, or ineffective, not quick enough.

Too early steering, braking errors, both over and under braking.

Everyone has had all the above happen to them.

Are they automatic?

Take tightening on the bars as another example.

Do you command your arms to tighten up, or

do you find they have done it on their own?

Do you choose to have your attention narrow and target fix?

Did you over-brake on purpose?

Whether for real or

an imagined reason, anything that triggers one of the above survival reactions,

such as quickly shutting the throttle, hitting the brakes on a turn,

holding the bars too tightly, is an attempt to reduce or avoid injury.

None of them will work in harmony with machine technology or rider control.

In the following chapters, we will see how to defeat them.

Now this isn't a course on motorcycle racing, though I wish it was.

This is a course on how to manage fear and

I think Code has three things to teach us here.

One thing is he labels survival reactions of things we do automatically, when we're

in, an andrenalized situation, when our fight or flight reactions kick in.

Our body and our mind, they do automatic things.

Now in Keith Code's context,

he says that these automatic things interfere with machine technology.

So a motorcycle is designed to go around the curve.

It's only when we do these things like snap the throttle shut

that the motorcycle gets upset and that makes our situation worse.

Our survival reactions,

our instinctual reactions end up making the situation chaotic.

They do the exact opposite of what we want to do.

The same is true for public speaking.

Look, motorcycling and public speaking are both high pressure situations.

The pressure is on to perform and you don't get a redo.

In both, our flight or fight instincts kick in and

we stop making choices and start taking actions.

Those actions can cause chaos.

This is why fear is both rational and irrational.

It's rational because the reactions are trying to help us,

that's a rational thing.

It's irrational because they make the situation worse.

What Keith Code has to teach us Is that there's nothing to fear but

fear itself, and yet fear is a very real thing.

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