27th
On Public Speaking
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about public speaking, mostly since I’ve been doing more of it lately than ever before, but also because I’ve probably been watching other people do it more of it lately than ever before. Which lends to some good thinking.
Yesterday I was at a conference where all of the panelists were students, and a lot of them were really horrendous at public speaking. It ranged from a girl who read a prepared statement off of a sheet of paper without looking up, to a guy who raised his eyebrows every other word, to people who seemed like they were about to break down crying they were having so much trouble expressing themselves. Most of the speakers were smart and had done their research and had good things to say, but they were so nervous and lacking in self confidence that it was painful to watch them, and when I raised my hand to ask questions, what I really wanted to say was “Hey, you’re great, be more confident, everything’s OK!” But I didn’t.
I’m also not the world’s best public speaker. I get nervous, a lot. I saw a woman from American Express give one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard at a conference, and in the midst of her speech she confessed that she used to be horrible at public speaking, terrified, and that she just took every opportunity to do public speaking until she got over it. So that’s why I’ve been welcoming all of the public speaking opportunities that have been coming my way since I started the consulting group and got more involved with my business school.
I talked to a co-worker yesterday about the nervous student speakers, and she brought up a study that I’ve heard before as well, something along the lines that the majority of people rank public speaking as their #1 fear—with #2 being death. It’s so funny. How could public speaking possibly be worse than DYING?
But what’s persistent about the fear of public speaking is it’s resistance to logic. You can spend as much time as you want telling yourself that it’s not a big deal and that you’re going to be great, but in reality you’ll still be a bucket of nerves. Why is that?
I went to a lecture on improving your public speaking a few weeks ago. The person giving the lecture (who I was generally unimpressed with anyway) posited that the way to overcome your body’s “fight or flight” response to public speaking, is to focus on individual people in the audience rather than scanning the audience. So his pointer was to look one person in the eyes while you express one thought, then move on and look another person in the eyes while you express the next thought. His logic was that when you are scanning the audience, your body thinks you are on the lookout for danger, and that you are scanning too fast for your body to realize the people you are looking at aren’t dangerous. So when you look at one person for a little longer, it gives your body a chance to process that that person isn’t a danger. And then as you do that over and over again around the room, your body realizes there aren’t any dangers in the room.
That’s a nice thought, but I think it’s bunk. First of all, I have always hated it when I’m in the audience and a speaker zeroes in and looks at me for longer than a few seconds. It makes me very uncomfortable, and I always feel like I need to somehow then react more to what the speaker is saying, or makes me worry that perhaps it looked like I was bored or that I wasn’t paying attention. So I’m actually glad to know why they do that, so next time I don’t have to worry! I also think it’s ironic that a technique that is supposed to make the speaker feel more comfortable actually makes at least one audience member feel uncomfortable (and I’m sure I’m not alone in that reaction).
Secondly, and more importantly, I’ve realized recently that my body’s fearful reaction to public speaking doesn’t just happen when I’m speaking to a room full of people. It will happen if I’m approaching an individual person that I want to talk to but I’m nervous about doing so. For instance, around the same time I was launching the consulting group I went to a speaker event and I liked one of the speakers and wanted to ask him if he would be willing to come in and talk to the consulting group. I’d never approached a speaker at an event like that before, and I hadn’t had much practice yet explaining the consulting group. As I walked the few feet over to speak with him, I instantly felt my mouth go dry, my hands start to shake, and my mind start to race. I talked to him anyway. And he was very nice and receptive (and never ended up speaking to the group because he had schedule conflicts but he did do an email interview with me that I posted on the group’s site).
So I think (and maybe this is just me but I doubt it), the fear isn’t of public speaking itself, but of being rejected by another person. Being classified as a loser or an idiot or as insignificant. Or being classified as someone other than who you are. As someone who is usually (arguably fundamentally) an introvert, it used to feel like such a tremendous effort just to carry on a conversation with a new person, and feel like I had to somehow forcibly somehow push my personality out at this person so they could understand who I was (and some days it still does).
And when you’re not used to trying to push out who you are for other people to see, the idea of getting it out there and then having someone reject it is just, catastrophic, like a rejection of your entire being.
At least, that’s what it seems like.
Now, unfortunately, this explanation still doesn’t do away with the essentially illogical nature of the fear. Of course it doesn’t really matter if some person who you’ll probably never meet again doesn’t think your story about your neighbor’s dog is interesting. But no matter how many times you tell yourself that, the feeling doesn’t go away.
But what does help is putting yourself out there, and then realizing that in fact nothing catastrophic happened. In fact, people liked you, and if they didn’t they were jerks anyway. In fact, this wasn’t some huge event but just a small blip on someone’s radar, that will quickly fade into distant memory. And every time you do it, it gets easier.
