Leveraging Leadership

Overcoming Presentation Anxiety: Focus on Meaning and Emotion, Not Perfection

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 228

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Emily answers a listener’s question about feeling stuck to a script during presentations. She explains how to focus on key points instead of memorizing every word, suggests adding emotion and attitude to messages, and demonstrates this technique with a “baseball is boring” exercise using different emotions like anger and sadness. Emily gives practical tips to build real confidence by practicing with main ideas, knowing the audience, and being flexible during presentations.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 

 

Time Stamps:

01:18 Emily's Personal Experience
01:45 Identifying the Problem
02:55 Focusing on Key Messages
04:31 Understanding Your Audience
06:18 Dynamic Presentation Techniques
07:49 Attitude and Emotion in Presentations
18:49 Conclusion and Final Tips

emily-sander_1_09-25-2025_133316:

Our listener question for today comes from Catherine F and she says, Emily, I've got a big presentation coming up on our company's new customer engagement strategy, and my natural style is to prepare by writing everything out word for word. I script it, I practice it. I try to anticipate every possible question so I don't get caught off guard. The problem is when I present it, it feels like I'm on tracks. If something throws me off, I completely lose my place. It's stressful because I'm spending all this time memorizing and controlling for every scenario, and yet I still feel shaky. Part of it is that I'm trying to be so exact with the words I choose because I wanna make sure I'm conveying the meaning I intend, but it ends up adding even more pressure. How do I prepare in a way that helps me feel confident without having to hold onto a script for dear life? All right, Catherine, I feel you. I have been there. I have been there. I have prepared the exact same way or very, very similar, and it sucks. It sucks. There's so much anxiety and there's so many like exact words. And if it goes this way, what do I say? Let me prepare for every single scenario and hope I don't get caught on a scenario I haven't prepared for. And then of course, then of course my experience has been like, you get in there and stuff has totally not gone to plan on my script is like pretty much useless. Okay, so good question. This is gonna help a lot of people. Two things that I keyed in on when I was reading your question. Uh, thing number one is there's a sense of exactitude, exactness and precision. And this is the right word, and this is the right thing to say, and here's the wrong thing to say. That's one lens to use, one paradigm to use. I think it's probably hurting you more than it's helping you in this particular case. So being methodical, being precise, being prepared are all good things, like definitely good things. And if you take them too far, or if you apply them in the wrong ways, it can hurt you more than help you. And I think what I'm hearing, and I think you're identifying this as well, is you've gotten to that point where it's like, uh. This is kind of a double-edged sword now, and I'm kind of impaling myself in certain ways, so I would just share that as an observation and an awareness for you. Second thing I keyed in on was this sentence around, where is it? The sentence around meaning. Um, because I wanna make sure I'm conveying the meaning. I intend. Okay. Conveying the meaning you intend is great. That's golden. That's what I think. Catherine, you should. Center your prep around. So you're talking about like, how do I prepare for presentations? I would center around that. What is my main message here? What's my main message at different levels? So the biggest level is for my overall presentation about new customer engagement strategy. What is the main message I wanna convey to my audience? Then there's probably. Subsections within that. So it might be, um, let's say just three sections, section one, two, and three. Within section one. What's the key idea there? What's the main message there for section two? Same thing for section three. If they take nothing else away from section three, what do I want them to know? What do they have to know by the end? So you can go through that exercise and that is a, a theme, a thought, a word, maybe a phrase, maybe a sentence, but no more than that. We're not writing out bullet points with, you know, sub bullet points and sentences that turn into paragraphs, and now we're back into a script. We're not doing that. We're saying, okay, let me sit back and think about what is the main message that I'm trying to intend trying to convey. I'm intending to convey. For this whole presentation and then for any distinct sections or themes I have within that, how do I, how do I think about those and inherent in that? Are elements such as follows. So you could say, look, I'm in this every day. So Catherine, you might be giving the new customer engagement strategy presentation because you've come up with that and you've been in that day to day, you've looked at the metrics, you've spoken with people, you've spoken with the. Team leaders, you've spoken with the team members, you've maybe spoken with clients themselves. You see all the reporting. You're immersed in the data, and so you know this stuff like you, you take for granted what you know. So you're saying, okay, how do I distill this and bring the most relevant parts of this up the surface and say, okay, I'm gonna capture that as my main message for section two. I need to key in on this. They've gotta know this. Okay, that's important. And then you might marry that up with, okay, what do I know about my audience? All right, so I've got a couple people I'm presenting to. Uh, two of them were in a previous meeting and that's where we identified some problems in our original plan. And that's why we had to revamp this thing and push it for six months. I'm making this stuff up, right? But you might know that about two or three people you're presenting to these other folks who you're presenting to are coming in cold. They have no context for this. Okay? So knowing my audience, knowing that I'm immersed in the data, what's most relevant for them? What's gonna be most important for them? What questions do they have? What biases do they have? What context do they need? What is my key message that I wanna convey for this entire presentation? And then I'm gonna break it down for them in three sections. What's my key message and idea for section one, two, and three? Alright. Now, once you have those, and again, don't go crazy with it, just a word, a theme. If you wanna write it down maybe, but just think through it too. You know it, and then you can speak to those points in one of a hundred different ways. And that's the beauty of it, right? You're not, you're not fixed to, I, I have these words in this script and I can't derail myself from that. I can't go off track from that. So instead of the exact words, instead of the quote unquote right words, it's, I know my key point. I can talk to that. This way I can talk to it that way. I can use this example, I can use that example. Um, in the course of this conversation, this dialogue with the audience, a new. Thought path might come about, or a new example, or they're talking about it like this. They think about it like this. Maybe I go with their analogy and go with the visual. They just threw out there like, oh, okay. Well if you're thinking about it like a house, then think about it like this type of house or whatever it might be. Oh, they think it's this. That is actually not connected to the root core issue. I've gotta connect those dots. Okay. Given what they just said, how can I get them there? And you're right with them in the moment. You're not on a script on your own. You're right with them and you're, and you're listening and you're, and you're paying attention to what they're saying, what they're not saying, what they're picking up on, what they're not picking up on. All of this is more dynamic, right? It's more dynamic, it's more alive, it's more engaging than just like. Here's my script. I'm reading it word for word. I cannot do anything but verbatim the script, There's a difference. So I would key in on things like that. Okay? The another thing you can do, and this is an exercise that you can, that Catherine, you can apply and other listeners listening. This is just a good communication tool. This helps you get away from words, get away from the exact words you wanna use. Sections one, two, and three. You have the main bullet points and main messages for each one. Now, apply the attitude that goes with those main messages. and I don't, I don't mean sass by attitude, although you can be sassy in your presentation if, if it, your presentation calls for that. What I mean is the, the emotion behind it. So the sentiment behind it. Here's some examples. Let's say that, um, I'm gonna make, I'm gonna make some stuff up here, Catherine, for your new customer engagement strategy, section one might be. Level setting on where we've come from and maybe where we've come from is not great. We had to push this thing six months. Remember we ran into some. Unforeseen obstacles, stuff didn't go our way. We had to do hot, like whatever, like you, something bad happened. So the sentiment is like, Hey, like this wasn't great. I'm gonna acknowledge it again and level set folks from how, where we came from and, and talk about how far we've come. Okay. The attitude for section two might be, um. Hey, we figured it out. You know, our team went to work. It wasn't easy. We had to investigate. We had to throw out some hypothesis and guesses and figure out like what actually was causing this thing. Um, and that section two, section three might be, and then we found it, and now we have the plan. So now we're hopeful, and now we're excited. We end on a high note. So it might be. Layering the, you have the messaging, the key messages across each section. You have the information you wanna convey to back up your message, and then you have this story arc that kind of develops. And within a story you have, it's not a monotone story, it's, it's this dynamic story where it's like, Hey, like people were involved here and then we learned this, and then we did this, and now we're happy. So you apply the attitude and emotion to those key points you have. A fun game for this. A fun exercise for this, and again, anyone can use this, this is a good exercise for communication in general, is, um, here's, here's how the game works. You pick a topic, let's say we're gonna pick a topic outside of work that's more fun. So something you do as a hobby, a pastime, something you know a lot about, something you look forward to, something that makes you happy, any of those types of things. So you pick a topic and then you pick three. Opinions or stances or positions around that topic. So let me just, um, make it real life. Emily. Let's just pick, uh, something fun sports. Let's just pick baseball, for example. Baseball is my main topic. Then I'm gonna come up with three kind of sections, so to say, three opinions about baseball. Uh, baseball. Baseball is boring. That's a boring sport, man. Holy cow. What? What in the heck are we doing? Baseball's boring. That's number one. Um, number two could be, but baseball got a lot better when they put the new rules in that made it go faster. Okay, A third one can be, uh, baseball opinion on baseball would be, uh, baseball is amazing. It's the greatest sport ever because it has such dynamic players to watch. Okay, so those are main topic baseball, three opinions on baseball. Now the exercise is time yourself for a minute and you can pick whatever time you want, but a minute's a good one. The reason we time ourselves is to. Know what a minute feels like when we're speaking.'cause when we're speaking time can like do weird things. You can be like, oh my gosh, that was, that was like only 10 seconds. It felt like five hours. Or it can be like, oh my gosh, I was speaking for like 90 minutes and it was supposed to be 45. Okay. That's why everyone is glazing over and checking out and actually like leaving the meeting. Okay, got it. So learning how to speak for a certain amount of time is good. And just for this example, like one minute. So what does speaking for 60 seconds actually feel like? Okay then, so we're, so we have our three opinions on baseball. We're gonna speak to each of them for a minute. Let's take the first one. Baseball is boring. You can apply different attitudes to that opinion. And this is just for fun. This is just like a game to, to stretch our muscles and to exercise those muscles. So let me do a real life example. This might be, this might be weird for you, but here we go. Um, baseball is boring. Uh, what is an added, what's an emotion around that? Um, anger. I could be angry about that. How dare baseball be boring? Okay, so let me speak for about a minute. I don't have a timer here, but just I'll do my best here. Um, okay, here we go. Baseball is so fricking boring. Like why do we have to have this? Why is this America's like favorite pastime? That's total bs. Baseball is the slowest moving sport I've ever seen. Give me basketball, give me hockey, give me football. Something's actually happening. Fricking baseball, like someone walks up to the plate. Takes their sweet time to put their gloves on, taps their cleats for good luck. Is this like superstitious? What are we doing here? Pitcher is like doing their thing up in the mound. They pitch the ball. Oh, he misses it. Okay, guess what? We're gonna wait here. For several more minutes while he does his gloves again. What are we doing? He misses again. I'm sitting here. I'm still sitting here. All right. Now he gets on base. Okay. Hallelujah. Freaking a like that. I'm asleep. I'm already asleep by now. Baseball is so boring. All right. That was my angry example. Um, what is a different emotion? What is the opposite of anger? Uh, what is the opposite of anger? Disinterest like. Apathy. Um, sad. Okay. I could be sad. That's a good one. Um, okay. Same, same ap, same topic, same section. One. Baseball is boring, but this is a different attitude. Apply to it. All right. Here we go. Um, baseball is so boring. I have to go to baseball every week with my family, and I wanna cry tears of boredom. Every time I'm sitting there in the stands, I'm watching this dude slowly walk up the plate. He's putting on his gloves like he has not a care in the world. Like we have all the time in the world to watch you put on your gloves and tap your cleats, and then the pitcher's not in any hurry. He's doing his thing and he throws the pitch and he misses it. Okay. Oh my gosh. Like people around me, I'll get all excited. That was, that was a swing and a miss. I don't, I don't care. I don't care. I really don't wanna be here. People are eating nachos. I'm eating popcorn. I had some bad popcorn and some bad peanuts and now I'm sick. But mostly I'm sleepy'cause I'm bored and I'm sad and I'm bored.'cause baseball is the most boring sport ever. Okay. So that was my best. Sad, that was more like, just like, I'm bored. But anyway, you get the, you get, you get the gist, right? So same thing I was talking to, but with a different attitude. And it sounds different. It comes out a little bit differently. And so that's something you can just play around with too, and you can go through it kind of like it. Um, so baseball's boring with section one. Um. What was the, what was the last one? Uh, baseball is the most amazing sport ever because there's these dynamic players. So this could be like you're excited, like, oh my gosh, like this is the best thing ever. So. Baseball is the best, most amazing sport ever because it has dynamic players. Bri Bryce Harper is like in your face, in the umpire's face. He gets ejected because like you don't, you're a horrible umpire. You called that wrong, and you're a horrible umpire in multiple games. I'm gonna get in your face. I'm gonna tell you how bad you are. And he gets ejected, but he doesn't. He doesn't care. Bryce Harper got injured. He had to get surgery, but he came back in record speed. And you know what? He had to switch positions to first base. Now he's playing first base and he is kicking ass there. So this is like the most dynamic player ever. You watch these players, you get invested in their storylines, you know their personalities, and that's why baseball is the most amazing sport ever because of these dynamic players. Okay. That was enthusiasm. That was excited. So hopefully you can hear little differences in the attitude that you apply. And if you are applying different, different emotions to your presentation, it helps convey that message, right? The reason we apply these things is because it helps convey the message we intend. Back to your point, Catherine, like, I wanna con, I'm, I'm conveying the meaning I intend. Having the key point helps you do that and be flexible and fluid in the way you do that Applying. The attitude and emotion also helps your audience pick up on what you're trying to lay down, right? It's, it's a nonverbal cue, but it's like, oh, we pick up on the emotion. She's really excited about that and therefore I am excited about that. Oh, that was a sad part. There was some challenges. That was rough. I'm picking up on that too. Ah. We talked about that six months ago. A lot has happened, but I remember that. I remember how tough that was for the team. So you add the emotion to it and it helps convey your message. Okay. Now hopefully like the exercise I just demonstrated, like to use the baseball analogy, when people are on deck to go at bat, they're swinging two bats because it's heavier than one. They have those rings on'em, the weighted rings, they're, they're swinging with a heavier bat. So when they get up to. To be actually at bat at the plate. It's easy to swing. So some of the reasons we do these exercises, and we do it in an exaggerated way, are like, oh, I'm so sad, is because we're swinging with two bats. So when we get, when we get up to present, sorry, I'm super excited. My, my mouth is like moving faster than my thoughts. Or I think it's the other way around. Anyway, when you get up to your presentation, it's easy. It's like swinging one bat instead of two. I just, I just knocked over the mic. I'm so excited about this exercise. Um, my point is that you practice harder than the game. That's what I'm trying to say. You practice harder than the at bat itself. So when you get into your presentation, this is easy. This is swinging one bat. I'm like paying attention, of course, but I just did my exercises with two bats or with a weighted bat situation. So this is easy. So that was what I was trying to say there. Holy cow. Bring it in. Emily. Here we go. Catherine, let me make sure I'm answering your question here. Um, how do I prepare in a way that helps me feel confident without having to hold onto a script for dear life? Yes. Okay. So we've talked about the key points, not a script, the key points. You can talk to them any one of a hundred different ways to get to that key point. You know your stuff, you know your audience. You can be flexible and fluid and dynamic within that conversation and within that presentation itself. Um, you know what it's like to talk for a minute. You know what it's like to talk for five minutes'cause you've been practicing and so you can be like, oh, they have a question. I know my time slot here. I know how much time we have left. Let me talk to like this three a point here in section three and my first point here for about a minute. Here we go, boom. Okay. You could deploy that, right? You have confidence in that. You've practiced that. That's what you center your prep around. What are the key ideas I wanna convey? One other thing I would say here to help me feel confident right now, it seems like your confidence is derived from having the exact words. so your perceived confidence is derived from having the quote unquote right words to say. I would tilt that and angle that over to what we've been talking about over to, having confidence that you know your key points. So instead of spending your time around about, around finding the exact right words, you spend your prep time around sitting back, zooming out, big picture, what do I know? What do I maybe take for granted?'cause I'm in it every day. And the audience doesn't know that's actually, they want that information, they need to know that information. Maybe it's thinking through, okay, who is on. This call that I'm gonna be on, who am I presenting to? And understanding what's important to them. Okay. What's the best way to convey that message to them? You wanna be centering your preparation around those types of things instead of the exact words to use here, here, here, and here. Right. So I think. Pointing your confidence towards like, yep, I got my key messages and I'm confident and I can deliver these in a hundred different ways depending on how the actual conversations go. If you believe that, if you truly believe like, yep, I know my key points and I can be flexible with anything that comes up, I think you would, you would truly be confident. I think you would have true confidence walking into your presentation, so. All right. I went a little crazy with this one. So hopefully that exercise is, is valuable to you, Catherine, and also to other folks in different communication scenarios. But hopefully you have some tools and some tactical and practical takeaways, to apply to your prep for this presentation and for future presentations and a overarching framework, kind of different mindset to have around confidence going into these types of things. And with that, I will catch you next time on leveraging leadership.