Unlike myths, these surface obstacles are real. But it’s their very reality that makes them almost as easy to overcome as myths. You see, they stem from problems that are easily recognizable—in this case, lack of a particular skill (or set of skills). The easy solution, therefore, is to acquire that skill or skills. Of course, this solution takes a bit more effort to execute than simply dispelling a myth, but the actions required are concrete and easily mastered (depending, of course, upon how much time and effort you devote—because, as with acquiring any skill, you will get out of it only what you put in).

Lack of Communication/Presentation Skills

Ever heard of “The Peter Principle”? It was named after the late Dr. Laurence J. Peter, a teacher of business at the University of Southern California. Fundamentally, Dr. Peter’s principle comes down to this: whenever someone in an organization, public or private, becomes extremely proficient at his or her job, the odds are that person will get promoted to a bigger job with different responsibilities demanding skills and expertise the person does not have. In other words, Dr. Peter says, sooner or later, everyone gets raised to his or her level of incompetence (i.e., lack of profi- ciency).

Dr. Peter’s theorem is truer today than ever as companies increasingly require workers to do more with less and to multitask in different, often highly divergent, areas of the business because of the constraints of downsizing and stiff global competition. As a result, a financial whiz whose expertise is numbers and not people may suddenly be upped to CEO. An efficient factory floor worker may be thrust into the role of manager. Or a secretary may have to take on the responsibilities of a customer relations representative. As a consequence, each will suddenly have to communicate on a different level to a broader, potentially unfamiliar audience, via speeches, presentations, sales pitches, video demonstrations, conference calls, and so on. Since they haven’t been taught the required skills or had a process for developing these skills on their own, their performance more often than not falls well below their employers’ expectations. Their public words lack persuasiveness and credibility. Their self-confidence erodes. And so they do what comes naturally: they get nervous (rightfully so) and develop their own particular case of fear and loathing at the podium.

Fortunately, fear of public speaking due to lack of skill is among the difficulties easiest to overcome. All you have to do is acquire the skill(s) you lack, then work on it, adapting it to your own style, until it becomes almost second nature to you. I learned a lot about this fear during my years as an aspiring actress auditioning for parts on Broadway. It was a heady time, coming to New York City and auditioning for parts on the legendary stages where the likes of A Chorus Line, Evita, and 42nd Street were playing. That was my dream—to be on those stages— all the while I was a little girl growing up in Syracuse, New York. And now, here I was.

One particular audition still stands out. I was one of five actresses called back for this particular role. At first I was very excited to be called back, but as the auditions became progressively harder and more demanding, my excitement turned to fear. At the first audition, I was asked to demonstrate my singing skills, and that went rather well. At the second audition, I had to act, and that too went well. But now I was being called back to show how skillfully I could dance, and to be honest, my dancing skills were . . . well, a bit light. In the world of the theater, there’s a category for people like me: we’re known as singers who move well.

I could dance, but I wasn’t a trained dancer of the type you would find in the cast of A Chorus Line or Chicago, those tall gazelles who could touch their heels to the top of their heads and twist themselves into pretzels. I could touch my toes. Well, at this final audition, the five of us were lined up onstage, and a tall—I do mean tall (as in six feet, seven inches)—man stepped before us. He was the show’s choreographer and director, Tommy Tune. I thought I would faint, because I could only imagine what we were going to be asked to do by such a legendary taskmaster. Maybe I could hide behind one of the gazelles, I thought, and no one would notice!

There was no way out of this one. In a very soft voice with a slight Texas twang, he instructed us that when he gave us the cue, we were each to make our way across the stage, one after the other, doing what is known in dance circles as a grand jeté. For those of you who are unfamiliar with a grand jeté (as was I), let me see if I can describe it to you. You leap several times with your legs spread wide like an open pair of scissors, landing gracefully on your feet, Baryshnikov style, each time until you’ve made your way successfully across the stage. As far as I was concerned, the choreographer’s instructions might as well have been, “Speak your lines in Chinese, then fly.” I distinctly remember one of the fifteen producers watching the audition turn to another and whisper, “Keep your eye on the little one [me]; she’s good.” And my thoughts were, “No, please, don’t keep your eyes on the little one; keep them on the big ones, the gazelles!” I felt like I was in a Woody Allen movie, and here comes the scene: Lights . . . Action . . . Splat!

I was going to be humiliated, and there was nothing I could do about it. But it was too late to back out now. “Okay, ladies, begin,” said Tommy Tune. One by one, the gazelles made their way across the floor, leaping—flying— through the air. Then it was my turn.

My mind and heart were racing. I had to do something. But what? On the spot, I came up with a brand-new form of grand jeté. There would be no leaps, no spread-eagle jumps, not even any little bunny hops from me. I sidestepped my way across the stage, like a crab on Prozac, arms flailing, desperately trying to smile through clenched teeth until I finally reached the far side of the stage (I knew I’d reached it because I practically crashed into the wall).

Well, you could have heard a pin drop. I looked out and saw fifteen horrified faces looking back at me with their mouths open, and one very tall shocked Texan in front of me, who then proceeded to politely give me the classic showbiz dismissal of: “Thank you. Nexxxxxt!”

What I learned from this incident was invaluable; it determined me never to be caught in a fix like that again. Although I had no ambition to become a professional dancer, I knew I needed to go back and take as much dance training as I could so that I would be able to at least get by. This was the big league, and if I wanted to be successful, I had to learn how to play the game. So, I took dance classes every day, sometimes several each day, to become proficient enough so that the next time I auditioned for a part that required me to appear dancerlike, I would get the job!

Language Barriers

If you are not yet fluent in the language of your prospective audience, or if you have a distinctive accent from growing up in a different part of the country or a foreign land, it’s natural to feel a bit self-conscious and, thus, develop a case of the jitters. Your nervousness is a well-founded reaction, because audiences do size up a speaker’s intelligence, background, and level of education by observing his or her command of the language. Think of the public perception of President Bush’s smarts underlying many of the jokes we get from David Letterman and Jay Leno about the president’s difficulties with the English language. It’s human nature to make such judgments, justified or not. The important thing is to understand, and to believe, that you are doing your best at the time—and to acknowledge the certainty that you will get even better if you keep working at it. Don’t fall into the trap of becoming so self-critical that you make yourself feel that no matter what you do, a language barrier will always be there.

For example, I have a client who is Chinese. He came to one of my seminars because he felt his heavy accent was holding him back from his goal of becoming a lecturer on the public speaking circuit, like me. I gave him my professional opinion that his heavy accent was not the overriding obstacle; it was his speed of delivery. He spoke too quickly (as do most speakers when they are nervous, whether they have a language barrier or not). This made him difficult to understand.

If he could learn to tell himself to slow down and pronounce his words clearly, I told him he would become more self-confident and begin to feel better about his voice and accent, which were unique and distinctive.

Poor Grammar

Several clients of mine who are otherwise smart, dynamic, and extremely talented people demonstrate a fear of falling short of their professional goals because they are self-conscious over their habit of using poor grammar.

I use the word habit here because these people happen to be educated and, in some instances, very strong communicators, except they get lazy with grammar when they speak. We live in a society that celebrates “relaxed and natural” in all things, including communicating. In trying to achieve this relaxed and natural style as speakers, however, we sometimes fail to recognize the distinction between casual and improper. There is such a thing as being too relaxed, especially in the use of words, and too colloquial. On the other hand, some people may use improper words in a public speaking situation because their grammar is weak through lack of education.

In either case, nothing erodes your credibility faster than uncertainty over your use of words. Fortunately, poor grammar is an easy obstacle to overcome. You can take an English course at a local college, take an online course in grammar, or pick up a selfhelp book on improving your grammar (many good ones are available).

Bad Past Experiences (Logistical)

Some people I work with become agitated at the prospect of giving a speech, making a presentation, or being interviewed for a job or for college because they had a bad past experience of a logistical nature and are concerned next time will be a case of déjà vu. For example, maybe the microphone went dead just as you were about to launch into your speech, and the few minutes you spent waiting until—and praying for—the technician to hurry up and kick the microphone back to life again seemed like an eternity.

Or, maybe you tripped on your way to the lectern, and the unnumbered pages of your presentation went flying every which way, forcing you to scramble to retrieve them and, worse, have to make sense out of them again. I even saw a beginner speaker lose his place, not in his presentation but on the stage where he was giving it, and fall into the orchestra pit! That, of course, is an extreme example of a bad past experience, and a rare exception to the typical mishaps that occur, but it’s the exception that proves the rule: Stuff happens. And some people can rebound quickly from that stuff and move on, while others panic and become paralyzed. Let’s face it, if you’ve had a bad experience like this once, you can’t help but worry at least a little bit that it will happen the next time. There is reality to what you fear; it did happen before. Your fear is justified, but it need not be fueled over and over again until it becomes magnified.

Bad past experiences of this kind drive home the important lesson that there are certain things, like microphones going bad and dropping your prepared text all over the floor, that are unexpected and, therefore, out of your control. But these experiences also drive home another equally, perhaps even more, important message about what is in your control. As the saying goes, “Forewarned is forearmed.” Past experiences, bad or good, can be great teachers of how to go about achieving a different result next time.

The Good News

The good news about these surface obstacles is that they are just that. They are surface issues that are easily addressed—and, in the case of myths, released just by identifying them as such. So, while you may have been thinking you had an incurable disease, now you have discovered you have only a minor skin irritation, and there is a simple procedure to remove it. You realize you are not suffering from a serious condition, and relief can be immediate, or is not far off.