How can you use storytelling to conquer stage fright?

In my experience, storytelling has been a powerful tool for connection. Bribing people together, through shared lived experiences helps listeners empathize and understand what you may be going through. It helps them connect the dots, add that last puzzle piece in or uncover the missing link. It also facilitates compassion— seeing what one may have experienced and then as a listener—trying to do something to bring about change.

My two cents on this topic Storytelling is a powerful and universal communication tool that works because of the following reasons 1.Engagement: Stories capture our imagination and engage us emotionally. 2.Relatability: Stories most often than not feature characters and situations that we can relate to at a personal level. 3.Emotions: Stories evoke a wide range of emotions from joy and empathy to fear and anger which keeps us emotionally connected.

When you have a great story, the audience is hooked. If you can take that story and connect it them, they will go home and repeat it. Finally, if that story can also teach them something, they will remember it for a long time. Great stories also allow you as the speaker to be your best. This creates a good experience for the audience, and allows you to be comfortable and confident. The best talks area always the best stories.

When sharing personal stories, one thing to consider is whether you yourself have processed the experience enough to share it. If something is brand new, or even if you are still in the middle of a trying experience, make sure you reflect before sharing on stage. Perhaps consider whether one piece of it is sufficiently complete that you can talk about it in a way where you share specific lessons. If so, great, but if not, and if you're still "in it", you risk shifting the audience from active listening/learning to almost feeling as if they need to support you. The LI tip about stories having an end can help you gauge readiness to share. The experience need not be over - I speak regularly about cancer - but each story within it needs an end.

Master your story so well that it becomes second nature. When you don't have to wrestle with remembering it, you free yourself to connect with your audience. Feel their reactions, engage with them, and adapt on the fly. Your story becomes a tool for interaction, not just narration.

Picking a story that hooks your audience and keeps them wanting to learn the outcome is a great way to go about introducing and then sharing a story. Consider queuing up a story with the outcome “we gave our daughter a first name that no one in our family can use in their password!” That should hook your audience to want to learn more and wonder amongst themselves “what kind of name can you not use in your password?” Then as you reveal the story, your audience is hooked and interested in the outcome. You could talk about why password complexity is important, some of the default changes the industry has made, explain some of the rules. I usually have a survey to see if anyone can guess what we named our daughter - six letter first name.

A good story is memorable, connects to the audience (and the reason you all are there), has punchline or destination to it, and can be recalled or brought up again and again during the talk. It should act as the arch to your keynote.

Password security is how I connect the story I tell and survey to the topic of password security. It’s an interesting exercise because a lot of people only know one or two of the common password complexity rules. If an audience gets the correct answer more often than not, they either 1) Know someone with this first name 2) have cheated by looking her name up or talking to someone else or 3) heard someone say the correct answer (and there is another name that rhymes with her six letter name, so once someone either guesses her first name or this other name that is close, the next guess is her first name!

There are stories I’ve told nearly one hundred times as a conference speaker and trainer. These are the stories you have improved, figured out where to pause, come up with great analogies (I have one for Microsoft Teams vs Outlook) and the story or delivery may change based on these factors. I’ve listened to others tell a story on social media hooking the audience to watch for multiple minutes just waiting for an outcome - cooking videos, surprise your spouse or kid, opening something, etc.)

I have been performing in facilitating workshops since 1995. If you don’t feel anxious or stage fright before a speech, you’re doing something wrong. You are not ready. Anxiety and excitement live in the same part of the body. They are the mobilization of energy necessary in order to act in the world. Energy needs to move for us to have an impact on the environment. Anxiety stage fright, excitement? Those are all names for the energy we need to have at a preverbal level to come out and “meet” an audience. Your energy needs to be able to meet the combined energy of all of the people in the audience you face. Say thank you to stage fright. It is part of being prepared.