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.