Beat public speaking anxiety with a group of trusted advisors

Practice is essential to overcoming the fear of public speaking.

As such, a powerful strategy to quell any anxiety associated with addressing a live audience is to rehearse in front of a small group of trusted advisors.

There are 2 main benefits to this:

The first is that going through your material in real time will help encode the flow of your talk into your mind while simultaneously identifying areas where you can tighten it up.

The second is that the live audience will provide you with both real-time visual feedback as to how engaging your presentation is as well as post-presentation feedback for areas of improvement. To do this, recruit 2-3 trusted confidantes and ask them to role-play as potential people who may be in your intended audience.

A bonus is at the end, request that your trusted advisors take the role of devil's advocate and ask you questions that intentionally challenge what you presented. This will allow you to shore up any holes in your thinking, explanation, or material.