Three tips to stop your mind going blank when public speaking

It’s remarkably easy to get through a regular work day without speaking to anyone. I don’t mean in absolute silence (although that’s certainly an option), but to not address people – be that colleagues, or clients, or managers – for hours at a time. Depending on who you are – and what your mood is today – the idea of such an existence will either fill you with joy or dread.

But equally, there might be times when we are called upon to talk to others: perhaps we have to give a presentation, or attend our annual appraisal. It’s not always within our comfort zone, even when the full focus isn’t on us as individuals, like during a meeting at which fifteen others are attending, or even finding ourselves waiting for the kettle to boil when someone else pops into the staffroom.

It’s definitely a big fear for people – that we don’t have anything interesting or relevant to say, that the others in the room are far more confident, and that, at worst, our minds might go fully blank when we’re talking to others who are (presumably) looking to us to say something that’s helpful, smart, or at the very least, halfway coherent. 

First of all, let’s segue for a moment and consider just how underappreciated and valuable the very concept of ‘going blank’ actually is. Far from being a negative thing, it can be the most precious thing ever. Think about it: most of the time, our minds are a buzzing cacophony of unanswered questions and concerns, our heads filled with THAT DEADLINE IS LOOMING / THAT PERSON THINKS I’M A FOOL / I SHOULDN’T BE HERE / WHEN WILL THEY FIND ME OUT .. what a sweet oasis it would be for all of that noise to just ..shut up. To take a breath, and consider what the options might be, rather than continually racing ahead without stopping to think. There are people out there who have been mediating for years who would love to go blank for just a moment.

But that’s probably a bigger concept than we have space for right now. So let’s look at a couple of tips that will be useful if the thought of having to speak to others brings you out in sweaty palms – either if delivering a presentation to the rest of your department, or interjecting your ideas into a meeting that for some reason is being held on a Friday afternoon and everyone has just realised isn’t finishing anytime before 5pm.

Take a moment

Whatever you’re doing, you can almost certainly afford to talk slower than you do. It’s pretty likely that you’re speaking too quickly, and that will only lead to the possibility of you panicking. It’s understandable – we feel that if we talk quicker, we’ll waste less of everyone’s time (and that our own torture will be over more quickly). Technically, this might be accurate – we might well be finished earlier, but there’s also a fair chance that we’ll have many more stumbles along the way (and, crucially, that those listening won’t have quite understood what we were trying to tell them). There’s a number of reasons for this: generally, we think much faster than the words can physically come out of our mouths, so the temptation is to try to catch up before we lose our train of thought. But that way lies gabbling and conversational cul-de-sacs. 

So, speaking more slowly is a really valuable tool. It indicates to your audience that you’re in command, it will give you more space and time to consider how you’re forming the next thing to say, and – most of the time – it will mean you’re less tempted to fill any unexpected pauses with bridging sounds like ‘uh’ and ‘uhm’. 

Take another moment

Talking of pauses, consider baking them into the DNA of your delivery. What I say to any actor, stand-up, or anyone else who has to deliver spoken words to an audience: the very fact that you are standing (or sitting) there talking to others means that you have earned the right to do so: you’ve got a remarkable amount of goodwill and patience before others start to get twitchy or concerned – even as much as five seconds. Try it now: read this paragraph out loud, and wait five seconds between the first sentence and the second. What you will hopefully realise is that even a pause as ‘long’ as five seconds isn’t the painful chasm of silence you may have thought it was. Stand ups who record their sets will often report listening back to themselves after having forgotten a line, and only then realise that their ‘freeze’ was never as long as they thought it was, and often is often entirely unnoticeable! 

You’re not on your own
While we’re on the subject of stand-ups, it’s good to take a tip from their survival guide – because often their minds do go entirely blank, even on a set that they’ve repeated time and time again (and I’ll speak in another blog about the wisdom – or not – of relying on a carefully written speech, even with a fact-based presentation). It’s worth remembering that you’re not on your own, even when you’re speaking on your own: most people are wanting you to do well, and don’t want you to feel awkward (if only because that will mean that they will end up feeling awkward themselves). Obviously, I’m not naive, and this is not a utopia – there might be some situations in which the people you find yourself tasked with speaking to are not on your side – but for the most part, people are thinking good things for you, and don’t want you to freeze up, and stop. The solution is simple, clear, and might even sound counterproductive: just ask the audience ‘What was I talking about?’, or even, if you were about to start a new subject ‘What was I going to tell you about?’ Far from making you look unprepared, it will return the authority to you – there’s no point in attempting to look like you’re always in control if the words run away from you. By hanging a lamp on it, you’re involving the audience in your dialogue, making it organic, and – remarkably frequently – by the very action of asking the question, unlocking your panicked brain enough that you can provide the answer almost by the time that you’ve finished asking. It almost always works; it’s like alchemy. And on the occasions it doesn’t, it usually bridges the gap so that you can jump to the next next thing you were going to talk about.