Welcome to The Science Behind Success — a blog series that explores the best ways to help our brains perform better at work. With psychological research and interviews with leaders in the field, we’re showing you how psychology can help you overcome workplace obstacles and excel in your career. Because a little mindset change could go a long way.
If you’re anything like me, there’s little in this world that scares you more than the daunting idea of public speaking (besides spiders, of course, but that’s another issue altogether … ).
However, as marketers, most of our roles require public speaking. Perhaps you need to report on monthly campaign numbers to your team, share the results of an exciting marketing experiment with the company, or make a pitch to an external team with whom you’d like to partner.
Ultimately, in the marketing field, public speaking is often unavoidable.
Additionally, even if you could hide from it, you probably don’t want to — speaking to large groups makes you more visible at your company and strengthens your own personal brand, as well as your ability to network and be seen as a leader.
Over the past few years, I’ve personally come to terms with the necessity of public speaking. But that doesn’t mean I still don’t get sweaty palms and shaky breath moments before walking on-stage (or, in this case, turning my Zoom camera on … ).
I spoke with a few mental health professionals to get to the bottom of why public speaking is so scary in the first place and am sharing their takeaways below. Plus, we’ll dive into a few science-backed tips for mastering public speaking, so you can feel at-ease the next time you’re speaking to a room full of people.
Now, as for spiders … that, I can’t help you with.