Public Speaking Fear: Why Practice Alone Isn’t the Cure

Last week I had a conversation with a client who’s in senior management and deeply scared of public speaking. She told me her boss kept encouraging her by saying,
“Just practice, practice, practice—you’ll be fine. It worked for me, so it’ll work for you.”
But for her—and for many of my clients—that’s the wrong advice. So wrong.
And I get it. If exposure has worked for you, this might not make sense. But here’s the thing:
Lots of people just end up practising being scared—and get more fearful.
Another leader told me: “John, I’ve been bleeping… practising for 20 years and I’m still petrified.”
For many people, exposure alone doesn’t work. It’s not enough to keep doing the scary thing and hope it magically gets better.

What actually helps?

Practice only works when it’s combined with new skills and reframing.
We need to learn:
• how to feel comfortable being the centre of attention (that’s a big one for so many),
•  how audiences listen very differently from a conversation (blank faces are normal!),
• how to slow down so you can get your thinking brain back—and so your audience can follow. You are building your idea in their heads, and that takes time.
• how to shift public speaking from a “performance” to something more like a chat.
And it’s incredibly hard to learn those things while giving a high-stakes presentation.

Add to that…
About 70% of us experience impostor syndrome—so while we speak, our inner voices whisper (or shout),
“You’re not ______ enough” (good / tall / intelligent / experienced / whatever-it-is enough).

And when we feel anxious, we often see that as a flaw—as something shameful we have to resist or not have - somehow? But fighting those feelings only creates even MORE anxiety, not less. Anxiety is a normal standard human emotion, it's hard but it's not shameful. We need to learn skills to handle problematic thoughts and feelings so that we can step out of our comfort zone and into life.

So what’s the real solution?
Strangely yes—practice, practice, practice.
But only when it’s grounded in foundational new, new, new skills.