Here's how you can conquer your fear of public speaking in your career.

Practice Regularly: Overcome fear through consistent practice and exposure to public speaking opportunities. Start with small, low-pressure settings such as speaking in front of friends or colleagues, then gradually progress to larger audiences. Focus on Preparation: Thoroughly prepare your content and visuals to feel more confident and in control during presentations. Organize your thoughts, create clear and engaging visuals, and anticipate potential questions or objections. Seek Feedback and Support: Solicit constructive feedback from trusted peers, mentors, or public speaking coaches to identify areas for improvement. Actively incorporate feedback into your practice sessions to refine your delivery and enhance your skills.

People are very shocked when I tell them this, but I’ve never in my life experienced stage fright or performance anxiety. However, I understand the pressure—when many eyes are on us, the stakes feel higher, causing us to overthink and worry about mistakes, which ironically increases the likelihood of errors. The secret is to ask yourself this: who cares? Honestly, no one does. If you make a mistake, just say "excuse me" and move on. Even if it can’t be immediately corrected, people mess up far less often than they fear. Even a novice presenter will deliver ten great presentations for every bad one. The key is to realize that the chances of making a mistake are slim, and even if you do, it really doesn’t matter.

Fear of public speaking often stems from two key factors: a lack of preparation or an insecurity when it comes to delivery. If you can prepare well with good support around you, plus take the time to learn key fundamentals of good speaking, you will be great. Your authentic voice deserves to be heard; use that to turn your butterfly in your stomach into a falcon!

Try these three questions as you build your speech: What makes me credible? What ways can I connect with my audience emotionally? What is the gift, the call-to-action, I want to offer my audience? If you can confidently understand how your speech is addressing these questions, you can't really go wrong!

The only time I perform poorly on a presentation is when I’m not well-prepared and don’t know my material. Therefore, thorough preparation is essential. You should know your content in your own words and at your own pace. Scripts never work; at most, use bullet points to remind you of key points. Prepare a broad understanding of your topic so you’re ready for questions and can introduce related points or anecdotes when presenting. Faking confidence when you're unprepared is much harder than having genuine confidence from being well-prepared.

Success in public speaking is understanding that great public speakers always have a great team around them. Reach out to those around you and ask for their guidance. Learn from their lessons. Get them to help you identify your biggest strengths. When you speak, visualise the team that helped you get to where you are. My visualisation of success when I speak is when I think of the people that helped get to that stage with that speech and how excited I am to show them that their support of me has paid off!

To start small, first, find a place where you can begin practising. I began by seeking a public speaking club, where I could return week after week to work on my speaking skills and receive feedback. I started by doing, which is probably the fastest way to learn. Ideally, begin with 1-2 minutes on stage speaking on a random topic. Even if it means just standing there without saying anything—the fact that you've spent 1-2 minutes feeling the fear with your body is already a victory. Then, it's about challenging yourself to give longer speeches—first 5-7 minutes, and eventually 12-15 minutes, until you become comfortable giving a one-hour keynote. This won't happen overnight, but with feedback and the right support, it's possible

This is good advice. Presenting to 5 people is not much different than presenting to 5000. It's mostly all in your head. As you work your way, you'll naturally build the confidence to present in front of any number of people.

Engaging with the audience is key. To help get rid of my nerves, I remind myself that it is about the other people in the room rather than me. To engage with the audience, I put more emphasis on my body language than on words. Words account for only 7 per cent of our actual communication, so much more can be conveyed using our body language in conjunction with words. I like using the acronym FORM, which stands for Facial expressions, Arms, movement, and Eye contact, to ensure that the audience feels my presence and engages with my delivery.

Always engage your audience. It's the secret to making everyone feel easy. An interaction between you and your audience members, even if it's brief, will make the presentation feel natural and personal and will calm your nerves.

Reflection is a big part of growing as a speaker. When reflecting, however, it is important to seek feedback from people who have achieved the results you are aiming for. Their feedback should be valued the most and carefully considered. Therefore, knowing when, where, and who to listen to can be crucial because, at a certain stage, you don't want to take feedback from everybody. My reflection process is done in two parts: feedback from others and self-feedback. Feedback from others is filtered through and applied where applicable. Part two involves training and rehearsing on my own. When reflecting on my work, I first record myself and watch it back. I start with no sound—just video—then no video—just sound—then both video and sound.

Reflection is always better if you have a video to look back on. Athletes watch film to get a different perspective, see mistakes, and inspire improvement. If you are able to get the visual your audience had you are able to reflect on a deeper level. This can also improve your confidence by seeing what you did well and building on that. If you can also survey your audience that is really helpful. You want to get feedback from your target audience whenever you can.

These steps may help: Know your topic. ... Get organized. ... Practice, and then practice some more. ... Challenge specific worries. ... Visualize your success. ... Do some deep breathing. ... Focus on your material, not on your audience. ... Don't fear a moment of silence.

Practice everyday. In the beginning of the career, seize the opportunity to speak even without money. Consider it to be an important part of training. Read stories, case studies and examples and see where they can be incorporated. Stay enthusiastic. If you remain motivated and cheerful, your audience will be.