Alexander McWilliam – Presentation Anxiety | MBM Expert Interview

Performance Psychology Consultant, Dr. Alexander McWilliam, Talks Presentation Anxiety and Performing Under Pressure with MBM CEO, Darren A. Smith.
Join Darren as he asks; 'What makes Dr. McWilliam the best person to talk Presentation Anxiety?'. With perhaps the only PhD, globally, that specialises in why and how we feel nervous when public speaking, Dr. McWilliam has the utmost knowledge and expertise on how to combat presentation anxiety.  Watch or listen to the podcast episode to experience Darren and Alexander exploring the ins and outs of this subject.
 
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Read The Full Episode Transcription Below:
Darren A. Smith  
Welcome to the world's stickiest learning. My name's Darren Smith, and more importantly, I'm here with our guest. Thank you for coming. Alex, how are you?
 
Alexander McWilliam  
I'm very good. How are you doing?
 
Darren A. Smith  
Hey, I'm good. I'm good. We've both got our funky shirts on and striped. You're in check. We better not go to the same party. We'll clash. But hey, we're good. We're good. Let's get back to you. We're going to talk about presenting and about being nervous and speaking up and those types of things. We'll get to that in the nicest possible way. Why should we listen to you when you talk about this topic?
 
Alexander McWilliam  
Well, we said my name is Alex, which is true, but my full title is Doctor Alexander McWilliam. I've got a PhD in public speaking anxiety and performing under pressure. To my knowledge, the only person in the UK potentially globally with a PhD specialising in this field, and I've been coaching presentation skills confidence when presenting for almost  decades, so a wealth of experience. It makes me feel old, but.
An expert in the field of anxiety and performing under pressure.
 
Darren A. Smith  
Two decades we haven't even got any grey hair. What's that about? OK, so you're the only one with the PhD potentially in the world in this. So just tell me about that. How long did you study for to get this?
 
Alexander McWilliam  
So my PhD took  1/ years in total, so it was three years. Multiple studies I looked at AI looked at all the interventions available for public speaking anxiety into reduction. That was one area of study. I developed a questionnaire to help identify specific public speaking concerns because there's so many in the world. But actually when we're coaching, we need to identify what it is specifically.
 
Darren A. Smith  
Yeah.
 
Alexander McWilliam  
And then a last study was using acting and improvisation to help reduce public speaking anxiety.
So over the three years, there was all of these studies going on with multiple participants trying to figure out why they get anxious. How do we overcome that? And as there's so many interventions available, can something alternative, like acting in improv, which hasn't seen many mainstream sort of interventions, you see CBT, you see exposure therapy, things like that. But acting in improv, that was the unique route I wanted to go down and bring on my own expertise of being an actor and being an improviser.
 
Darren A. Smith  
Yeah. Yep.
 
Alexander McWilliam  
With that so 3 1/2 years of lots and lots of studying, lots of reviewing, lots of writing, and if anyone's doing it, if anyone's done it, they know that it is a mammoth of a task. But so rewarding once it's done.
 
Darren A. Smith  
Impressive. OK, so 3 1/2 years doing that and and just would you just paint a picture for us? So what did you do? You did some research, not some. You did research. You looked at research you practise it. Is that we did for 3 1/2 years.
 
Alexander McWilliam  
I read a lot of papers looking at theories, different theories from sports psychology, from psychology, looking at why people fail to perform when it when it matters, and what's happening in our bodies and our brains when ...