The great American comedian Jerry Seinfeld is quoted as saying that “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

We can all understand this feeling as we’ve all felt the fear of having to stand up and talk in front of others at some point in our lives.  Whether it’s being asked to read Romeo & Juliet out loud in our English class at school, or those times when you go round the table to introduce yourself to a group of strangers in a business meeting and you need to say something interesting about yourself.

Add in the stress of an interview situation and you can understand why your interviewees might be a little slow in coming forward.

Sometimes it is difficult to speak in public, but the fear isn’t just about standing up in front of a group and talking, but could be about a fear of having an opinion, a fear of being wrong, a fear of being seen as not very knowledgeable, or a fear of upsetting other people. There could be a fear that saying the wrong thing might cost you the opportunity.  It could simply be the fear of muddling up your words and sounding silly. 

It's a real problem for many people, and although many people don't do anything to overcome it, others are turning to courses to help them overcome their fear of public speaking.

If you see the course "Overcoming the fear of public speaking' on someone's CV or LinkedIn profile, do you think of this as a negative (they can't talk in front of others) or a positive (they identified a problem that they had and took steps to deal with it)?  Please feedback below.

--------------------------------

Former footballer and cinema manager Robert Drury was a founding team member at the financial information service Ormsby Street, and is the co-founder of Don't Keep It To Yourself (DKITY), a training business aimed at supporting improvements in communication within software teams.