Pushing to Present

There is nothing normal or good about this feeling. My right leg taps uncontrollably, shaking my entire body. Attempting to focus on my notes, I notice finger-prints of sweat my hands have left on either side of my paper. Buh-boom, buh-boom, buh-boom. The unescapable sound of my elevated heart beat and heavy breathing obscure my focus as I try my best to prepare for the moment of truth. I know what I want to say, and how I want to say it… but am painfully aware that none of that may ultimately matter. For some, this may sound familiar. No, I am not describing a panic attack; rather, how I feel in the moments leading up to a presentation.

Presenting is a challenge for everyone, and an essential skill to nearly every facet of adult life. Some are naturally more comfortable speaking to a group, but nearly all of us have struggled with nerves presenting at one point or another. Some of us (myself included) struggle with debilitating anxiety every single time we present. Until this year I was blissfully unaware of how bad this could get. I had extremely limited experience presenting when I started at BDW, but discovered early on this was a skill I would have to work on. At BDW students are asked to get up and present at least once a week, so once a week I’ve attempted to mitigate my nerves in order to deliver a solid presentation. No matter how well prepared I have been, it is still difficult every single time. This week I feel I’ve had a breakthrough and want to take this opportunity to reflect on how far I’ve come and how I plan to continue developing my presentation skills.

There are two moments surrounding every presentation where panic can set in and disrupt my ability to perform. The first and perhaps greater of these two moments takes place in the hours leading up to a presentation. Initially, I believed that thorough preparation was enough to qualm this panic. What I’ve discovered is that preparation does help, but only to delay these moments of anxiety. The more I practice and know the material, the closer to presentation time my anxiety sets in. This isn’t to say preparation is useless, as I’ll talk about later— it makes all the difference during the second moment of panic. But I have yet to make a presentation where the butterflies didn’t hit me hard beforehand. The only thing that has helped (and you may not want to hear it) is more presentations. With each presentation I feel the moments of panic are shorter. This week I had the opportunity to present to executives from Jarden and Bernardin at the culmination of a design sprint. I was well prepared and confident, but still very nervous in the final 20-minutes of preparation. However, the anxiety was less present than ever before. What helped me stay relatively calm was the confidence that I could get through it, no matter how fast my heart was beating and my mind was racing: I had been there before. I knew I had the ability to not blow it. I believe this self-confidence can only come from experience.

The second major moment of nerves occurs for me during the presentation itself. When I get up to present there is always a strange calm before the storm. The reason for this is a genuine mystery. Inevitably at some point during the presentation, the panic returns. Sometimes it is a stutter or stumble that triggers this; other times, a moment of eye contact leads me to lose my train of thought. This is where I’ve found preparation can make all the difference. With experience has come the ability to recognize a momentary stumble for what it is and to recover from it, but I would be kidding myself if I said it isn’t still scary when it happens. I am still learning how to best negotiate this moment, but a few things I have been trying have made this recurring panic more manageable. The number one thing is practicing, not memorizing. The more comfortable I am with the material, the easier it is for me to take a breath and recover. The second mainstay is bringing just the right amount of notes. The “right” amount of notes may be different for everybody, but I have found that about 3 bullet points per slide is the sweet spot for me. If I bring up more than this, my eyes tend to lock to my notes for the rest of the presentation. While this may help me get the right information out, it doesn’t make for an engaging presentation. Furthermore, I become conscious of the fact I am reading which leads my voice to tremble and my words to come out entirely too quickly. If I bring up too few notes or no notes at all, I tend to leave important information out as I scramble to figure out what it is I had planned to say. The most helpful thing for me here is, again, experience. With each presentation I learn more about myself and how I can best cope with my nerves to give an effective presentation. This has made me more self-confident and makes it easier to take a breath and recover from the inevitable hiccup and ensuing panic.

I suppose the take-away from this reflection is that the only way to get more comfortable presenting, is to present more. There are lots of things you can try that may work for you, but ultimately the most successful method is doing it more and more. This may not be comforting or easy to swallow, but I believe it to be true. Confidence in your ability to present is the difference maker in a collected presentation, and the best way to build that self-confidence is to see yourself improve. I am grateful that BDW has given me the opportunity to present in a safe place— I fully realize I am lucky to have a place to fall on my face, week after week, in order to build confidence in my ability to present. My presenting skills are still very early in development, but for the first time I am confident they will continue to get better with practice and time.