Tips for Executives to Relieve Anxiety While Communicating, Offered by Business Communications Expert

Business executives today face the challenge of communicating with increasingly skeptical employees, media, analysts and other audiences. Leaders at every level in organizations, from CEO to manager, experience anxiety during communications, according to John Millen, president of MPA Executive Communications, a Columbus, Ohio-based speech and media training firm. Millen offers tips to reduce anxiety.

Columbus, OH (PRWEB) June 17, 2005

Business executives today face the challenge of communicating with increasingly skeptical employees, media, analysts and other audiences.

Leaders at every level in organizations, from CEO to manager, experience anxiety during communications, according to John Millen, president of MPA Executive Communications, a Columbus, Ohio-based speech and media training firm. Millen offers these tips to relieve anxiety:

Focus more on your mission to communicate with your audience, and less on your self. Being too self-aware may start an internal cycle of escalating tension.

Prepare: Nothing will reduce anxiety more than the confidence that comes from knowing you’re fully prepared to communicate—knowing your audience, your messages, and how you plan to convey yourself.

Rehearse: Your confidence also comes from being well trained in delivery and practicing your remarks. Paradoxically, the most skilled communicators continually rehearse their lines until they seem natural and almost spontaneous.

Don’t expect perfection: Due to their competitive personalities, executives often will create an unwarranted expectation of perfection for themselves in making a speech or doing a media interview. Ease up.

Breathe. Tension tends to constrict breathing. Take several deep breaths before you begin speaking. Remember, your audience doesn’t notice most of the signals of anxiety, which you feel, such as butterflies in your stomach, racing heart, and sweaty palms.

More tips and a free e-newsletter are available at http://www.MPAexecutive.com/enews.cfm.

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