You will build tolerance for nerves by practising in front of real people.
Arjun can now give his clinic managers' talk to an empty room without a stumble. He has recorded it, reviewed it and fixed his pace. But every time he imagines the real room, with the operations director at the head of the table and seven clinic managers watching, his stomach turns over. An empty room does not prepare you for faces.
Nerves respond to practice the way most fears do. The more often you face a situation and come through it, the less threatening it feels next time. This exercise gives you that practice twice, in a small and friendly setting, with about twenty minutes for each session and a week between them so you can see the change for yourself.
Find two or three people who will give you twenty minutes. Friends, family, a few colleagues over lunch, or a peer from another team all work. They do not need to know the subject. In some ways it is better if they do not, because they will ask the questions an outsider would.
Choose a three-minute section of your talk. The opening plus your first main point is a good choice, because it includes the moment when nerves usually peak, as lesson 6.1, What nerves are doing to your body, described.
Arrange the room so it feels a little like the real thing. Stand while they sit. Use your slides if you can. If you will present online, set it up as a video call instead.
Arjun asked two friends from university and his younger brother over on a Saturday afternoon, put his laptop on the dining table and stood at the far end of it.
Before you start, give your audience two jobs. First, one of them should interrupt you once at some point, with a comment or a question, without warning you when. Second, at the end, each of them should ask one awkward question: something hard, sceptical or slightly off topic.
Interruptions and hard questions are, for many people, scarier than the talk itself. Meet them first in a friendly room and the real one will not be your first time. Module 7 covers questions in depth; for now, answer as well as you can and pay attention to how it feels.
Arjun's brother interrupted in the second minute to ask, "Wait, why don't you just send two reminders?" It was exactly the misunderstanding Arjun had worked to avoid in lesson 1.4, and he was glad to meet it on a Saturday rather than in the real meeting.
Before you start, run your pre-talk routine from lesson 6.2, Breathing and a routine before you speak: check your setup, put water within reach, run through your first lines once, and do a minute or two of slow breathing.
Then give your three minutes and take the questions. Straight afterwards, before you chat with your audience, write a short note on how you felt at three points. Before you started: how strong were your nerves, and what did you notice in your body? During: when did they peak, and when did they ease? After: how do you feel now?
To make the two sessions comparable, give your nerves a rating from one to ten at each of those points and add a sentence or two describing them, keeping the same scale for both sessions.
Arjun's first note read: before, 8, heart racing and a dry mouth; during, 9 in the first thirty seconds, 5 by the end of the section and back up to 7 at the interruption; after, 3, relieved and slightly embarrassed about one fumbled answer. The numbers are his own rough ratings, nothing more scientific than that, but they gave him something to compare.
A week later, run the session again. It can be the same people or different ones. Different is slightly better, because new faces bring back a little more of the uncertainty of a real audience. Use the same section, or the next three minutes of your talk.
Run your routine again, give the section, take the interruption and the questions, and write the same three-part note with the same scale.
Then put the two notes side by side. Most people find that the second session feels easier, sometimes much easier. The peak may be lower or shorter, the interruption less alarming, the questions easier to handle. Some find that the before part barely changes but the during part improves a lot. Whatever the pattern, a written note shows you progress you would otherwise forget within a week.
Arjun's second note: before, 7. During, 7 in the first thirty seconds, 4 by the end, 5 at the interruption. After, 2. He noticed that the interruption barely registered the second time, because he had already handled one.
You are finished when you have run two practice sessions a week apart, each with your pre-talk routine, an interruption and at least two awkward questions, and you have a short written note from each describing your nerves before, during and after. Keep the two notes with your recovery plan from lesson 6.4, When you blank or make a mistake. Together they are the record of how you prepared and how your nerves changed.
Book your small audience now, with dates a week apart, so the second session is fixed before the first one happens.
Run the session twice a week apart and write a short note each time on your nerves before, during and after.
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