Fighting speaking anxiety

When you get ready to speak, you might feel anxious. In fact it's more unusual if you don't feel anxious. Speech anxiety can happen before you speak, while you're speaking, or--more rarely--after the speech is over. Feeling nervous before you speak is probably the most common. Let's talk about some concrete strategies to combat pre-speech anxiety.

1. Jump up and down! Get your heart rate up! When your heart rate drops and you start breathing more deeply after you stop exercising, you'll feel calmer. As a bonus, you'll be even more ready to speak.
2. Make silly noises! Now that you've exercised your body, take special care to exercise your main speaking body part: your mouth. In an upcoming post I'll give you some exercises in detail. For now, get creative! Pretend you're playing sound games with a baby. See how wide you can open your mouth. Pucker your lips like an exaggerated kiss. This will definitely get rid of some of the physical feelings of being tongue-tied, and it will improve your ability to get through every word in the speech with smoothness. You might even make yourself laugh!
3. Visualize success! Visualize the steps leading up to your speech. You'll rise from your seat with grace. You'll button your jacket. You'll walk to the podium. You'll place your notes on the podium. And so on. If there are tricky things in the way, like an electrical cord, a set of stairs, or a narrow aisle, visualize those things, too; visualizing overcoming small obstacles like that will give you confidence, and thinking through how you'll get over those obstacles will ensure that you do it with grace.

Give these tips a try the next time you find yourself with a prize-winning butterfly garden inside your belly before a speech, and you'll feel calmer for sure.

Making just one person the star

Tom Antion has just put up a great post: Public Speaking: Make 'Em The Stars. I love audience participation too, and frequently I like to create presentations and lectures where it's not "audience participation" but just "participation"--where the boundary between me actively talking and they passively watching is paper-thin, where the "audience" is guided in ways that allow them to come to the ideas themselves, with only a little prompting.

Making the audience the stars of your speech is excellent. Public Speaking: Make 'Em The Stars makes me think about how making the other person the star applies to everyday speech, too. Specifically, I'm interested in how it applies to one-on-one conversation.

The best conversationalist in the room is the one who makes the person he's talking to believe that she's the best conversationalist in the room.

How do you make your conversation partner believe that he or she is the most interesting person in the room--and thus, that he or she feels that you bring out interesting things?

Ask engaged, interesting questions. Try to make them specific and tailored to what you already know. This is good for personal questions to existing acquaintances, because it shows that you're invested in the other person. If your coworker has a kindergarten-aged child, don't just ask about the family--ask how the five-year-old is enjoying school. If you're talking about work things or cultural knowledge, don't be afraid that asking questions will make you seem ignorant. If someone you've just met tells you she's just seen Verdi's Rigoletto and you're not well acquainted with opera--let alone Verdi--ask her to tell you about it. Try to ask specific, but open-ended questions. You can ask her to "play the teacher"--many people enjoy sharing their knowledge with others--by asking her to explain the story to you, or to tell you whether there are well-known arias in it, or by asking what makes Verdi's operas different from others. Or, you could push her to make evaluative statements--always a great way to get a conversation going--by asking whether she found the performance better or less good than other operas performed by the same company, or whether she prefers Verdi to other composers. You could ask questions that get at her personal preferences in other ways, too: for example, does she often see opera, or was this unusual for her?

Show that you're interested. Sometimes we get so involved in a conversation that we forget to signal to the other person that we're interested. Lean forward. Nod. Let your face show expressions, as is appropriate. Interject short encouraging statements: "Go on," "Of course," "And then what happened?" Asking questions helps, too!

Take turns. Although it's great to bring out the good conversationalist in others, make sure you're not just interviewing them! Hold up your end of the conversation, too. Elaborate on your conversation partner's comments. Improv performance rests on the technique of accepting the points established by your scene partners and building on them--a technique nicknamed "Yes, And..." This is a good technique for conversation, too. Acknowledge the point the other person has just made, and build on it. You can take it in a new, branching direction. You can add a piece of information, or refer to a related blog or article or book you just read. Although in improv you have to agree when you're building a scene, in conversation that's not true. You can acknowledge the other person's point and add to it by introducing a contrasting perspective. Disagreement can really spice up a conversation, but like any spice it needs to be used with care.

Reveal yourself slowly. Burlesque was born of striptease, not of disrobe-in-thirty-seconds contests. Don't blurt out everything at once--whether it's your elevator pitch at a networking event or your story of where you grew up that you tell on every first date. Instead of inserting a prepared point into the conversation, slip in bits of information about your pitch or yourself where they seem appropriate. And when you tell people about yourself, or your project, or your company, always leave the story open for them to ask interesting, engaged questions that let you unveil another layer.

All these tips hold true for many conversation situations--both conversation just for fun, and when you're conversing with an express purpose, like when you're networking. Ask engaged, intelligent questions, and you'll come across as a clever and interesting thinker. Respond with encouragement by listening actively, and you'll seem like a nice, collegial person. Hold up your end of the conversation by contributing elaborations and new information on points you discuss--information about topics that interest you, which can include or point at the project you want to promote--and you'll seem like a creative, busy, and independent mind. Slowly and deftly, reveal bits of knowledge about yourself, inserting them naturally into the conversation, and you'll seem complex and charming. I'd want to know that kind of person better, and if I were building a team, I'd want that kind of person around. Often, even the best elevator pitch won't be quite as effective as an intelligent and freewheeling conversation.

National Grammar Day!

For the holidays, my mother-in-law gave me a t-shirt that said "I am the grammarian your mother warned you about."

Which is sort of true.

However, absurdly slavish adherence to grammar is a thing up with which I will not put.

I think splitting infinitives is often perfectly fine. Warnings against it are a relic of the fact that English grammar, unusually in European languages, has two-word infinitives. You can say, "to plainly see" in English, because the infinitive is "to see." But really, you can't split in half the French word for "to see": "voir".

Passive voice can be very useful. It's passive and not as firmly committed, so it's discouraged in writing focused on making and supporting arguments (and consequently, in introductory college writing courses) but sometimes passivity is what you want! What if you're speaking before a group and you don't want to single out one person as the architect of a bad decision? Then, some ambiguity about the responsibility of the action--the much-mocked "mistakes were made" option--can help your case.

On the other hand, while grammar has some rules that don't make sense, by and large it helps us understand one another better, and I'm all for clarifying your message. Often, even when your meaning might be clear enough with a grammatically incorrect sentence, it's not beautiful. Perhaps a spoonful of beautiful, grammatically correct prose makes the message go down in the most delightful way.

Even though I don't want you to become so encumbered by rules of grammar that you can't communicate, I do try to keep in mind the useful rules of grammar. So in honor of National Grammar Day, today, I'd like to point out some common and tricky matters of grammar, style, and English usage.

Momentarily and Presently
Momentarily means for a moment.
Presently means in a moment.

This might seem like a silly distinction, but think about it. If your coworker is going to meet you "momentarily", isn't it important to know whether she'll just drop by for a brief chat, or whether she'll be there soon?

The late George Carlin put this a bit more bluntly. "Momentarily means FOR a moment, not IN a moment. The word for "in a moment" is 'presently'. "I will be there presently, Dad, and then, after pausing momentarily, I will kick you in the nuts."

They're. Their. There.

"They're waiting. Where? There! That's their location, over there."

They're is short for "they are" or "they were." A test: can you insert "they are" where you've got "they're"? Think about it: They're engineers (they are engineers). They're waiting for us (they are waiting for us.) They're engineers, they're waiting for us, and they're plans look great. (They are engineers, and they are waiting for us, and they are plans look great--hey, wait a minute! That last one doesn't sound right!)

Their is a possessive. "Their hats." "Their skills." But: "My friends have arrived. Their waiting in the hall." isn't quite right. To test it, ask: could you use plural possessive language--language used to refer to something belonging to multiple people--instead of "their"? "Bob and Kathy's hats." "Our skills." These work just fine. "My friends have arrived. My friends' waiting in the hall"--huh? If that doesn't strike your ear wrongly, imagine flipping it into the first person. "We have arrived. Our waiting in the hall." Our is equivalent to their. Instead, for those unfortunate people who are still waiting in the hall for us, we should say, "They're waiting in the hall."

There denotes location. "The diner is over there." "It must be wonderful to live there." But never: "My friends brought there coats with them." It doesn't need to be a concrete location--it's perfectly correct to say "There is a problem with the software." However, putting other location words in where you're writing "there" is a way to test it in many contexts. "The diner is on Elm Street." "It must be wonderful to live on Cape Cod." Sounds great! "My friends brought on Elm Street coats with them--" Huh? Another option is to replace "there" with "here". Your meaning won't be the same, of course, but the sentence should still make sense if it's grammatically correct, and it should still be a good test if it isn't. So, "Here is a problem with the software." "The diner is here." "It must be wonderful to live here." "My friends brought here coats with them"--again, it strikes your ear oddly, and makes you go back to the sentence and look at it again. Which, for most of us, is all we really need to get it right in the final version.


Number
You want to make sure that your verbs and their subjects agree in number. So:

Please say:
"The group of students is going on a trip."
Don't say:
"The group of students are taking a trip."

Why?
Because the verb ("is/are") corresponds to "group," which is singular. You wouldn't write "the group are taking a trip" right? This is tricky for some because the number of the immediately adjacent word ("students") does not dictate the number of the verb--in other words, a plural noun, or plural pronoun, right next to the verb, is not necessarily the subject of it, and thus is not necessarily the one that needs to agree with it.

Similarly, you would always say:
The speaker who gave the presentations is one of the most eloquent speakers in Massachusetts.
and you'd never think of saying:
The speaker who gave the presentations are one of the most eloquent speakers in Massachusetts.

Why? Because the presentations can't be an eloquent speaker--much less the most eloquent speaker in Massachusetts!

In closing
Finally, do not trust Microsoft Word. It's a computer, and doesn't understand grammar, style, or usage--or, for that matter, spelling--as people do. Unfortunately it tends to enforce some of the least useful rules (like prohibitions on passive voice), and to overlook some of the most common mistakes.

Enjoy celebrating the rest of National Grammar Day! Maybe I'll watch some old episodes of Frasier later tonight. Oh, wait--that's right. It's not National Grammer Day!

(Yes, that's a very bad pun. I know. Does it make it less painful if I tell you that that's a specific kind of pun, called paranomasia?)

Prehistoric social skills

There's a new article up on the International Herald Tribune website today. Natalie Angier reveals some very intriguing suppositions about where our social skills--our skills of interpersonal relations, the skills that let us communicate our selves to others--come from, and when they developed--much earlier than we've previously thought!

Angier writes:

A baby may look helpless. It can't walk, talk, think symbolically or overhaul the nation's banking system. Yet as social emulsifiers go, nothing can beat a happily babbling baby. A baby is born knowing how to work the crowd. A toothless smile here, a musical squeal there, and even hard-nosed cynics grow soft in the head and weak in the knees.

In the view of the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the extraordinary social skills of an infant are at the heart of what makes us human. Through its ability to solicit and secure the attentive care not just of its mother but of many others in its sensory purview, a baby promotes many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one's guard, uncurl one's lip and widen one's pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me, myself and mine.

For the full article, click here.

Barometer people

So, you're looking at the audience, making good eye contact, focusing on specific people. You're conveying to them not only your message, but also your character, and your investment in them.

But wait: communication is a two-way street. You're communicating messages--both overt messages communicated by what you say, and subtle messages of character communicated with your body language and tone of voice. What are they communicating to you?

I'm bored.
I'm excited!
I'm confused?

You probably already know how to tell the difference between these categories. The bored one is fidgeting, maybe doodling, slumped back in his seat. The excited one is leaning forward, maybe nodding or smiling, possibly jotting down ideas in a notebook or on a keyboard. The confused one has his brow furrowed. If he's lost because he doesn't understand a foundational idea (you're explaining the finer points of itemized deductions, and he's not clear on what exactly is getting deducted) his eyes are darting back and forth as he rifles through his memory to place your message within what he already knows. While there are finer points of body language to talk about, remember, you're already a very experienced communicator--you can read some elements of body language already.

Trying to read the collective emotions of the whole room before you is hard, and, luckily, unnecessary. Instead, remember those people you're locking eyes with to help convey your message? Take note of how they're reacting to you. I call those individuals "barometer people." If you were having a conversation with a friend, and he or she looked confused, you'd probably start to explain your point in a different way, responding to that confusion. Try the same thing here, with that one friend that you're addressing in the crowd of fifty. When you're looking at someone for the sake of good eye contact, tune in to his or her emotional response. Use all the cues you use in ordinary interpersonal conversation--shades of body language, posture, facial expression that you might not be able to identify, but that you can absolutely respond to. If you're familiar with the techniques of sampling, this is a version of it applied to audience reactions. You're using those individuals whom you connect with to gather information about the whole of the room.

Then, now that you've gathered information, if you're light on your feet in the speech, try to respond accordingly!

I understand that it's hard to be nimble in a prepared speech. But as you get more comfortable with your message, and more comfortable as a speaker, it gets much easier. It's always easier when you're speaking from notes or from a memorized plan than when you're speaking from a manuscript or a memorized script. You can employ the techniques of impromptu speaking to respond to the needs of the audience, and often, audience members will remember best those moments when you stepped outside your prepared speech and started talking to them, reacting to what they expressed. That reflects how a "public speech" is a two-way experience, and it makes you a truly dynamic speaker. But the first step is to "read" the audience, and the easiest way to do that is by sampling the reactions of selected "barometer people"--the people you're already making eye contact with.

Shifty eyes?

A few days ago I was coaching a dynamic young entrepreneur on a pitch to venture capitalists. He and his team had written a smashing speech, in which he used a series of rhetorical questions. "Do you do X every day? Do you wish you could do X faster and better? Have you thought about how improving X can expand the number of people you reach?" (I won't share the project here without permission, but, Dynamic Young Entrepreneur, if you're reading, I'd be happy to link to it!) As we worked together, I asked him to try picking out individuals in the audience to address each question to. What a difference that made!

We've established that moving your gaze around the room so that you connect with several people in the crowd is a good idea. We've also established the need to make direct, focused, sustained eye contact with one person for a few sentences, and then move on to another person, to convey a sense of personal connection.

The question is, when do you stop looking at one person and start looking at the next? In fact, breaking your gaze and turning in a different direction can be a great way to signal a change in focus or change in thought.

Like my entrepreneur, you could ask each of your rhetorical questions to a different individual in the audience. If you were suggesting ways to solve a problem, "We could do A. Or, we could do B. Or, we could try C," then you could look at a different member of your audience for each suggestion. This would help your audience to understand the difference between the items in the list.

Similarly, change your gaze when you want to transition from one thought to another. This could be as small as a sentence that shows an alternative: "However, we shouldn't go for D, because...." You'd break your gaze on "However" and change to focus on a new person.

It doesn't have to involve a contrary or difference. Any change in thought can be a good reason; beginning a new point, either a new major point (paragraph-sized or even sub-heading-sized) or minor point (sentence-sized). Shifting your gaze doesn't necessarily signal that two things are opposites; it just signals that the two things are distinct, discrete, or different. You have to use other techniques--words like "On the other hand" or "However" and changes in your voice and body position--to signal contraries or opposites.

You can use the need to connect with everyone in the room as useful "punctuation" for your speech! Now that you've learned the importance of looking at specific people, make sure you change focus from one person to another with intent and meaning.

Eye Contact--where to look?

Sometimes when you arrive at the podium--especially if you're nervous--you might not know where to look. But when you stand up in front of people to speak, remember that you're speaking to people; your message is meant to reach people. So the answer is easy. Where do you look? At the people you're talking to!

The first step toward using eye contact to connect with your audience and communicate your message is to look in their general direction--to disconnect from your notes, or the podium, or the PowerPoint monitor, or the blackboard--or your shoes, which often become really, really fascinating when you stand up to speak.

Now you're looking at the audience! Your head is up, and your eyes are forward. This is a big step in the right direction--but don't stop there! Now that you're looking at the audience, connect with them. Look directly at individuals within the crowd. Lock eyes with them. If you make sustained eye contact with individuals, your message will become so much stronger. You can talk directly to each person, as if you were having a conversation.

In a 2 minute speech for a group of 100, it's impossible to make meaningful eye contact everyone, so don't try. If you try, you start scanning the room and you don't make meaningful contact with everyone. Instead, pick out a few people from the crowd, and speak directly to them, as if the person you're speaking with is the only person in the room, and it is imperative that that person must understand exactly what you mean. If you connect with the woman in the green sweater there, and the man in the blue shirt there, then their immediate neighbors will feel like you're connecting with them, too. I call this "secondhand eye contact."

By connecting with selected people, you'll connect with their neighbors in a secondhand way, but you'll also improve your connection with the whole audience by communicating a sense of intimacy and establishing the potential for meaningful, sustained eye contact. You see, if I'm watching you have a direct, focused conversation with that woman in the green sweater, even if I'm not sitting next to her and getting your peripheral eye contact, I'm still getting the impression that you're connecting directly with that person, that you care about all of us here in the audience, and that you could connect with me that way too. Each of us listens more closely. Why? Because if you're talking to her now, then maybe you, that charismatic, brilliant person at the front of the room, might speak directly to me next!

You might be wondering: how do I make meaningful and sustained eye contact when I have to look at my notes to find out what I say next? You can! Watch for another post--we'll talk about that later this week. Watch out for two other posts besides that: how you can use eye contact both to impart your message to your audience and to gather information from them, and how you can use shifts in eye contact to emphasize points or to show a change in direction!

Breaking down the communication process

We've spent the last few posts talking about the practice of communication. Let's step back for a minute and talk about the process.

Communication--especially dynamic communication, like a conversation or a speech before an audience--is a complicated operation. But we can break down its structure into three key steps, which hold true for conversations, for speeches, and for writing of all kinds.

1. Prepare the audience to receive your message
"I'm about to tell you something really important. Get ready! Here it comes!"

2. Communicate the message to the audience
"Here it is!"

3. Verify that the message has been received
"Did you get it? Yes? Good!"

The cycle can begin all over again then.

A colleague of mine likes to use an exercise in playing catch to make this point. You're getting ready to throw the ball. You establish eye contact to signal to one person that he or she should catch the ball when you throw it--preparing him or her to receive the message. You throw the ball--communicating the message. You verify that the ball has been caught--that the message has been received. This exercise is fun to do in groups--the last time I tried it in the classroom, I found out that a few of my participants were on the college's baseball teams!

Each one of these steps in the communication process can be improved through developing skills and strategies. You can learn how to pick out body language cues that signal that a silent person has or has not received the message, and then you can learn to respond accordingly. You can prepare an audience to receive your message in a wide variety of ways--sometimes you might want a simple review of the problem that you're going to suggest a solution to, while other times you might want an attention-getting device, like an anecdote or a stunt. If you're interested in particular aspects of this communication chain, just let me know! Send me an email, or leave a comment!

Posture(ing?)

Stand up straight!

Listen to your inner grandmother and pull your shoulders back, elongate your spine, and draw in your abs. Imagine a hook in the top of your head drawing you all the way up to the ceiling, and follow it upward. Good posture helps you in so many ways.

First, standing up straight makes you seem more confident. It makes you taller, and if the reasons why are controversial, we know that taller people make more money and are seen as more attractive and more responsible. In fact, the taller presidential candidate wins the popular vote two-thirds of the time. Even aside from being taller, good posture suggests a comfort and a strength in your own body. You have nothing to hide, and you are perfectly capable of withstanding challenges. Standing up straight helps you project a positive image.

Second, standing up straight improves your voice. You can't draw sufficient breath to support your voice if you're hunched over, because your lungs and diaphragm and intercostals--the muscles that help opera singers support those amazing tones--can't expand. It's like trying to blow up a balloon in a jewelry box--it can't go anywhere! If you've dropped your head forward over your chest, you're also crimping the alignment of the parts of your body that make your voice warm and resonant and attractive to hear. If you compress the volume of your breathing space and also crunch up the resonators in your head and throat, it's ten times harder to project your voice so that the back of the room can hear you, and it's twenty times harder to do it without straining and while keeping your tone of voice pleasant to listen to. Standing up straight helps you with the techniques of good voice and speech.

Third, standing up straight makes you seem less nervous. If your posture allows you to expand your breathing space, you can take deep breaths. It's almost impossible for your voice to wobble with deep, diaphragmatic support for your breath. As a bonus, deep breathing can often make you relax! Good posture will send clear cues to the audience that you're sure of yourself and of your message. Standing up straight helps you manage speech anxiety.

If you're standing up straight, you're comfortable in your own body, your voice is pleasant and easy to hear, and you're showing me that you're proud of what you have to say. You're attracting the attention of the room in the very best of ways.

Uptalk

Keep it down! The end of your sentence, that is.

"Upward intonation" or "uptalk" is when the pitch of your voice rises at the end of a sentence. Using a rising intonation at the end of a sentence is entirely appropriate when asking questions, but many people---often women under 35--use upward intonation at the ends of sentences that are not questions. This makes it seem like an assertive statement is a question. Upward intonation has been mocked as "Valley Girl" speech, although it's a much wider bad habit. Teenage girls who spoke this way in the 1980s and 1990s have grown up, yet the habit persists. I should know! I, like, used to speak that way? And ended sentences with rising pitches? As though I were asking for approval? And I kept doing it, even after I was out of high school and it wasn't cute anymore?

But then I learned to put periods at the ends of sentences, and to use upward intonation only when I meant to express questioning. I managed to become conscious of uptalk and learn to stop by imagining the sentences visually, as though they were typed out in my mind's eye, and then imagining myself pronouncing them as they were "written" in my mind.

But my opposition to uptalk isn't that interesting. Take a look at the following exchange from the play by Donald Margulies, Collected Stories.

RUTH. Do you mind if I ask you something?
LISA. Uh. Okay. Sure.
RUTH. Why do you talk like that?
LISA. Excuse me?
RUTH. You have a tendency to add question marks to the ends of simple declarative sentences. Do you know that?
LISA. Oh, God...
RUTH. When a simple declarative sentence will do, you inflect it in such a way...When I asked you where you got your bachelor's, you didn't simply say, "Princeton," a statement of fact, you said "Princeton?" You hear how my voice went up?
LISA. I can't believe I'm still doing that. I used to talk like that, when I was younger...
RUTH. (Talking over her) I'm not saying you do it all the time but you do it often enough for me to notice. And it's very striking because you're obviously an intelligent, gifted young woman but it's really kind of dopey, if you ask me.
LISA. It is, it really is, it's awful.
RUTH. You're not alone. Most of my students speak this way. I'm not absolutely certain but I think more young women speak this way than young men. And there's something almost poignant about it, all these capable young women somehow begging to be heard, begging to be understood. "Can you hear me?" "Are you with me?" "Am I being heard?" [...] Listen to yourselves! Nobody's going to take you seriously in the real world! Who's going to take you seriously if you talk like that? No one! Why should they? If I were you, I'd do everything I could to erase it from my memory; expunge it from my speech center. The moment you hear yourself doing it, stop and correct yourself.

I couldn't say it better myself. You're not asking me, you're telling me. Keep it down.

Impromptu speaking and Q&A

Most of the speaking we do is impromptu speaking--speaking done without any preparation, on the spot. Speeches that you've rehearsed are very important, but they make up a very small portion of all the oral communication you do--less than 1% for most people! An especially tricky kind of impromptu speaking involves answering questions posed on the spot. Interviews are based on this kind of speech, and many prepared speeches include questions and answers. We've been very impressed by President Obama's well-organized impromptu comments at debates, interviews, and press conferences--they have even inspired some wry humor. And equally, we've been less charitable to politicians who have delivered less well organized remarks off the cuff.

So, how do you make sure your impromptu speaking is coherent, elegant, and engaging? How do you stay in control of your message when you're answering a question you didn't expect? How do you organize your thoughts on a subject you had never really thought about before?

1. Pause. Take five seconds to gather your thoughts.
2. During those five seconds, decide on a central message. What's the key point--only a few words--that you want your audience to take away?
3. Once you've determined your central message, make sure to structure your impromptu statements in a way that helps you to show off your central message. Make sure they have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
4. When you begin, repeat the question in your own words. Not only does this make sure that you've understood the question correctly, it buys you extra time, and it helps you to signal to your audience the focus of your answer.
5. To help the audience to grasp your message, make sure you use good structure and organization in the middle of your statement. One way to stay organized is to use the classical topic of division. "There are two major reasons to save the whales. First... And second..." "There are three key organizations opposing our efforts to save the whales: First Name, Second Name, Third Name." "There were four pivotal events in the American Revolution. First..."
6. While you're speaking, make sure you finish your sentences. Especially if you're figuring out what you think as you speak, an idea might occur to you while you're in the middle of expressing a different thought. Don't give in to the temptation to interrupt your thought! Instead, finish the first sentence. Imagine it with a period at the end. Then, begin a new sentence with the new (and probably very clever) thought that occurred to you.
7. What if that new idea is completely different? That can be perfectly fine! Show relationships between thoughts with transition words and phrases. However. Moreover. In fact. On the other hand. Therefore. Nevertheless. On a different note. Moving on to.
8. Conclude. Sometimes impromptu answers to questions begin very well, but decline and then trail off because the speaker doesn't know how to end the statement. Make your point or points, and then conclude, summarizing what you have to say and returning to your central message. "And so, that's why we need to save the whales." If it seems like you've gotten lost in the middle of your point, a strong, clear conclusion that repeats your central message will make sure that your audience gets your most crucial point.

Keep in mind these eight tips for organizing impromptu statements, and you'll be able to answer any unexpected question with grace and lucidity!

Resting hands

I often see people who lose control of their hands when they speak. Some people over-gesture, emphasizing every! single! word! with a wave of the hand. This is about as effective as underlining every word; all the words are emphasized, so none of the words is emphasized. Others just fidget. The hands go in the pockets, they tuck the hair behind the ear, they twist the wedding band. Neither of these helps to project confidence, and both can distract the listener from your message.

As a speaker, you're probably aware of these tics, and you might tell yourself, "Stop fidgeting!" or "Stop gesturing!"

Telling yourself to stop moving your hands is about as effective as telling you to not think of a tasty ice cream sundae, with caramel and almonds on top...er, excuse me.

Sound of ice cream scoop clinking against bowl.

Right! Focusing on what you want to avoid just makes you go and do that. Instead, focus on what you want to do, affirmatively.

In order to still your hands, give yourself a rest position, or a "default setting" for your hands and arms. The best all-purpose choice is to let your arms hang at your sides, with your hands cupped against the outsides of your legs. This makes you seem open and neutral and comfortable--you have nothing to hide, and nothing to protect yourself against! You might also clasp your hands loosely in front of your hips if you want to suggest that you're nonthreatening and peaceful. If you have a table or podium in front of you, you could rest your hands on top of it--keep all your weight on your legs or seat, just rest your hands and wrists on the podium or tabletop.

This way, you're not "doing nothing" with your hands--you're doing something with them--something still, calm, natural and controlled. This quietness of body will help your audience to focus on your words, and it will help you to make sure that the well-chosen and varied gestures you do make have a great impact.

Give it a try! Next time you give a speech, rather than thinking, "I will stop fluttering my hands," think "I will keep my hands still and quiet at my sides, in their resting position."

Perpetual Pitch

This is not a post about singing.

While the pitch, or highness or lowness, of your voice, is a key element in how you're perceived, it's not a post about that either. Nor is it about the talents of Curt Schilling. This is a post about another kind of pitch.

When we think about public speaking, we talk about "elevator pitches" and "interview pitches" and "VC pitches". One of the key points about an elevator pitch is that you're always ready to begin it, whatever the situation--that you're always on your toes, ready to begin to promote your product, or your company, or yourself.

But that's not quite right. While it's critical to be prepared for formal speaking situations, and to imagine rehearsed pitches, you should not be waiting at the metaphorical starting block, ready to launch your pitch at a moment's notice.

That's because you're always pitching. Sometimes you do it more formally or more deliberately than others-sometimes you're giving an actual speech, or you're in a conversation about the subject you would promote. Being prepared for these events is absolutely vital. But it's just as important to be ever conscious of how you present yourself and how you communicate, to speak intentionally, mindfully, and reflectively, even when you're not "making a speech."

Maybe you never stand up in front of a group, so you don't think public speaking applies to you. I have news: anytime you're speaking with another person in the room, you're engaging in public speech. The clarity of your communication, the character you present to others, the emotions you evoke in your explanations--all these things matter, whether you're speaking informally to a friend or formally to a thousand people. The size of the speech is different--I would never project my voice or use expansive gestures if I were speaking intimately to a single person--but the presence of a style, and the need for a conscious, careful approach, is the same.

Let's take an example. Consider an interview. You're speaking before one, two, maybe three people. You're almost never standing, and while you might have imagined the possible answers to questions in advance, you're almost never asked to give a prepared speech from notes. Yet you're speaking with a persuasive goal in mind. You want to convey both a character (I'm a fabulous coworker!) and a message (I've got the skills you need!) in order to inspire a specific action from your auditors (Hire me!). If that's not public speaking--if that's not speaking that requires attention and awareness and skill--I don't know what is.

An interview may be a one-on-one conversation, but it's a formal event. What about professional informal conversation? Networking is based on informal speech. Can you present an interesting character and message in an informal conversation--not through launching into a rehearsed pitch, but by deftly tossing the conversational ball back and forth? Can you be charming, without being too pushy? When you express an arguable point of view, can you do so in a non-confrontational, but persuasive and well-organized manner? Do you know how to express to others with voice and body that you're interested in what they have to say? We've all heard that networking is an ongoing process, and that it's vital to our careers. The key to effective networking is the ability to communicate your best self with skill and care in unrehearsed, unpredictable situations.

Even non-professional, informal situations involve conscious speaking. Suppose you had to break some bad news to a friend. In order to be as gentle as possible, you'd want to be conscious of your body position and tone of voice, adjusting them so you clearly communicated, "I'm here for you, I care about you, I'm so sorry this happened." You're not making a "pitch" for a company or for yourself as a colleague, but you're still intentionally communicating a message (the bad news) portrayed in the best way possible (with gentleness and clarity) and in a way that conveys your personality as it affects the situation (sympathetic and caring--we hope!)

We all want to reveal our personalities to others and communicate ideas to them. Otherwise, we wouldn't talk to anybody. Often, we want to inspire action--whether it's asking our spouse to take out the trash or asking an investor to give us millions of dollars. You're always presenting yourself, and you're always communicating an idea. In order to reveal your best self, and in order to communicate your ideas most clearly, you can learn skills to improve speech, voice, gesture, diction, and other crucial elements of public speaking. We'll talk about those skills more here in the next few posts. The key now is to remember: communication is perpetual. Public speaking is not an event; it's a way of life.

Welcome!

Welcome to Not Another Toast, the blogging home of Not Another Toast, a company offering dynamic, personalized coaching in public speaking, communication, and self-presentation. Not Another Toast harnesses the techniques of performing arts, classical rhetoric, communication psychology, and common sense to help individuals and groups to become effective, powerful, and unforgettable communicators.

I'm Monica Poole. I offer consultation in public speaking, interview skills, elegant writing, speech anxiety management, and self-aware self-presentation. I offer intimate one-on-one coaching as well as workshops for groups of 20 to 100 people. Do you want to improve your elevator pitch for your new company? Want to make your interview memorable--in the good way? Want to make your business presentations, political speeches, or sermons shine? Want to help everyone in your office to have more powerful and sensitive interpersonal communication--oral or written? Want to learn to "schmooze" without being schmaltzy? Send me an email!

While my personal coaching services are generally limited to Boston, MA and surrounding communities, here on this blog I will share tips and tricks for improving your communication and presentation skills that you can apply wherever you are. We'll talk about how to make your life a "perpetual pitch," how to tailor your gestures to help others to perceive you as you want to be perceived, how to manage the emotions in the room (always important, even in speeches not intended to be "emotional"!), how to identify your dialect and embrace or erase it as you choose, how to break down the components of charm and charisma, and how to harness the techniques of the stage for the boardroom, the classroom, and the courtroom. We'll amass a rhetorical toolbox, and we'll learn how to use each tool in it.

First point: I'm saying "we" because I want to create a sense that this blog is collaborative--that you, you there, the reader, (hey, you!) are in this with me, and you are meant to participate and communicate. If I were standing before you, I'd have my arms opened, palms facing outward, my cheeks and eyebrows slightly raised. I might even be smiling. I'd signal: I like you, I want to hear from you, we're having a conversation. So: join in!