All The World's A Stage

‍All the world’s a stage, but do some stages create greater anxiety?

“All the world’s a stage” is the now famous line from the opening monologue of the comedy “As you like it”. If we take this as true and we are performers, do some stages cause us to experience greater performance anxiety than others. My experience from working with hundreds of leaders of all seniority is that some stages do in fact cause more performance anxiety than others. For some it could be a panel interview for a much desired role, for others it could be performing at senior leadership meetings or in new, unfamiliar roles. The common feature is the performance anxiety evoked.

What is performance anxiety?

Performance anxiety is a form of anxiety commonly experienced when an individual feels they are performing in front of an expectant audience, particularly if that audience is unknown. The mere anticipation of a public performance can arouse performance anxiety and it is often accompanied with a number of physical signs such as racing heart, sweaty hands and dry mouth. It triggers the body to activate its sympathetic nervous system releasing adrenaline into the bloodstream, the so called “fight or flight” syndrome.

So what can we do about it?

In working with hundreds of clients we have come up with so many strategies to overcome their performance anxiety and I include five of these below to help you the next time you are faced with a fight or flight moment.

1. Take good care of yourself in the build-up to the event.
   Every good performance starts with good self-care physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. If you find that taking a walk in nature puts you in the right headspace to perform the next day then make that a part of your high-performance routine.
2. Visualise yourself performing well in the environment which causes anxiety.
   When we visualise ourselves performing well, the same regions in the brain are stimulated as when we actually perform them and the same neural networks are created.
3. Normalize your physical and emotional reactions.
   Emotions and physical responses are a normal part of any performance. The important thing is less that we have them and need to control them but more that we need to notice them, let them go (if they don’t help) and quickly reconnect to what we are doing.
4. Break down the fourth wall.
   The fourth wall is an acting convention for the divide that exists between the actor and the audience and the thicker this wall, the more we feel it is a them versus us situation. Many of the leaders I have worked with find their performance is improved when they are able to break this divide through asking questions, getting to know people before the meeting, or simple ice breakers.
5. Give yourself a balanced review of performance.
   One of the common challenges we face when performing is a lack of feedback or listening only to negative feedback from others or ourselves. One of the practices of high-performing leaders is to take the time to give themselves a balanced self-appraisal.