Confessions of a Public Speaker (3 page)

Many of the same mechanisms that cause you to shrink in
horror from a predator are also used when you are having sex—or even
while you are consuming your Thanksgiving dinner. To your body,
saber-toothed tigers and orgasms and turkey gravy look remarkably
similar. An aroused physiological state is characteristic of both stress
and pleasure
.

The main advantage a speaker has over the audience is knowing what
comes next. Comedians—the best public speakers—achieve what they do
largely because you don’t see the punch lines coming. To create a
similar advantage, I, like George Carlin or Chris Rock, practice my
material. It’s the only way I learn how to get from one point to
another, or to tell each story or fact in the best way to set up the
next one. And when I say I practice, I mean I stand up at my desk,
imagine an audience around me, and present exactly as if it were the
real thing. If I plan to do something in the presentation, I practice
it. But I don’t practice to make perfect, and I don’t memorize. If I did
either, I’d sound like a robot, or worse, like a person trying very hard
to say things in an exact, specific, and entirely unnatural style, which
people can spot a mile away. My intent is simply to know my material so
well that I’m very comfortable with it. Confidence, not perfection, is
the goal.

Can you guess what most people who are worried about their
presentations refuse to do? Practice. When I’m asked to
coach someone on his presentation, and he sends me his slides, do you
know the first question I ask? “Did you practice?” Usually he says no,
surprised this would be so important. As if other performers like rock
bands and Shakespearean actors don’t need to rehearse to get their
material right. The slides are not the performance: you, the speaker,
are the performance. And it turns out, most of the advice you find in
all the great books on public speaking, including advice about slides,
is difficult to apply if you don’t
practice. The most pragmatic reason for practice is that
it allows me to safely make mistakes and correct them before anyone ever
sees it. It’s possible I’m not a better public speaker than anyone
else—I’m just better at catching and fixing problems.

When I practice, especially with a draft of new material, I run
into many issues. And when I stumble or get confused, I stop and make a
choice:

I repeat this process until I can get through the entire talk
without making major mistakes. Since I’m more afraid of giving a
horrible presentation than I am of
practicing for a few hours, practice wins. The energy from
my fear of failing and looking stupid in front of a crowd fuels me to
work harder to prevent that from happening. It’s that simple.

Now, while everyone is free to practice—it requires no special
intelligence or magic powers—most people don’t because:

I know I look like an idiot
practicing a presentation in my underwear at home, talking
to a room of imaginary people. When I practice in hotel rooms, which I
often do, I’m worried that at any moment the maid will barge in
mid-sentence, and I’ll have to attempt to explain why on earth I’m
lecturing to myself in my underwear. But I’d rather face those fears in
the comfort of my own room—with my own mini-bar, on my own time, over
and over as many times as I wish—than in front of a real crowd, a crowd
that is likely capturing my
performance on videos and podcasts, recording what I’m
doing for all time. There are no do-overs when you’re doing the real
thing.

By the time I present to an actual audience, it’s not really the
first time at all. In fact, by the third or fourth time I practice a
talk, I can do a decent job without any slides, as I’ve learned how to
make the key points by heart. The confidence that comes from
practicing makes it possible to improvise and respond to
unexpected things—like hecklers, tough questions, bored audiences, or
equipment failures—that might occur
during the talk. If I hadn’t practiced, I’d be so worried
about my material that I’d be unable to pay attention to anything else,
much less anticipate what’s coming from the audience. I admit that even
with all my practice I may still do a bad job, make mistakes, or
disappoint the crowd, but I can be certain the cause will not be that I
was afraid of, or confused by, my own slides. An entire universe of
fears and mistakes goes away simply by having confidence in your
material.

But even with all the practice in the world, my body, like yours,
will still decide for itself when to be afraid. Consider, for example,
the strange world of sweaty palms. Why would sweaty palms be of use in
life-or-death situations? I’ve had sweaty palms only once, right before
I was televised on CNBC. At the start of the taping, sitting on an
uncomfortable pink couch, trying to stay calm in the bright lights and
cold air, I felt a strange lightness in my palms. With the cameras
rolling, I held up my hands to see what was going on. I had to touch
them to realize they were sweating. The weirdo that I am, I found this
really funny, which, by coincidence, relieved some of my anxiety. The
best theory from scientists is that primates, creatures who climb
things, have greater dexterity if their hands are damp. It’s the same
reason why you touch your thumb to your tongue before turning a page of
a newspaper. My point is that parts of your body will respond in ancient
ways to stress, no matter how prepared you are.
^[
11
]
That’s OK. It doesn’t mean you’re weird or a coward, it
just means your body is trying hard to save your life. It’s nice of your
body to do this in the same way it’s nice of your dog to protect you
from squirrels. It’s hard to blame a dog for its instinctive behavior,
and the same understanding should be applied to your own brain.

Since I respect my body’s unstoppable fear responses, I have to go
out of my way to calm down before I give a presentation. I want to make
my body as relaxed as possible and exhaust as much physical energy early
in the day. As a rule, I go to the gym the morning before a talk, with
the goal of releasing any extra nervous energy before I get on stage.
It’s the only way I’ve found to naturally turn down those fear responses
and lower the odds they’ll fire. Other ways to reduce physical stress
include:

All of these things allow you to get used to the physical
environment you will be speaking in, which should minimize your body’s
sense of danger. A sound check lets your ears hear how you will sound
when speaking, just as a stroll across the stage helps your body feel
like it knows the terrain. These might seem like small things, but you
must control all the factors you can to compensate for the bigger ones,
the ones that arise during your talking that you can’t control. Speakers
who arrive late, change their slides at the last minute, or never walk
the stage until it’s their turn to speak, and then complain about
anxiety, have only themselves to blame. It’s not the actual speaking
that’s the problem; they’re failing to take responsibility for their
body’s unchangeable responses to stress.

There are also psychological
reasons why public speaking is scary. These include fears
like:

We can minimize most of these fears by realizing that we speak in
public all the time. You’re already good at public speaking—the average
person says 15,000 words a day.
^[
12
]
Unless you are reading this locked in solitary
confinement, most of the words you say are said to other people. If you
have a social life and go out on Friday night, you probably speak to
two, three, or even five people all at the same time. Congratulations,
you are already a practiced, successful public speaker. You speak to
your coworkers, your family, and your friends. You use email and the
Web, so you write things that are seen by hundreds of people every day.
If you look back at the list of fears, they all apply in these
situations as well.

In fact, there is a greater likelihood of being judged by people
you know because they care about what you say. They have reasons to
argue and disagree since what you do will affect them in ways a public
speaker never can. An audience of strangers cares little and, at worst,
will daydream or fall asleep, rendering them incapable of noticing any
mistakes you make. While it’s true that many fears are irrational and
can’t be dispelled by mere logic, if you can talk comfortably to people
you know, then you possess the skills
needed to speak to groups of people you don’t know. Pay
close attention the next time you’re listening to a good public speaker.
The speaker is probably natural and comfortable, making you feel as
though he’s talking to a small group, despite how many people are
actually in the audience.

Having a sense of
control, even if it’s just in your mind, is important for
many performers. If you watch athletes and musicians, people who perform
in front of massive crowds nightly, they all have preshow
rituals. LeBron James and Mike Bibby, all-star basketball
players, chew their nails superstitiously before and during games.
Michael Jordan wore his old University of North Carolina shorts under
his NBA shorts in every game. Wayne Gretzky tucked his jersey into his
hockey pants, something he learned to do before games as a kid. Wade
Boggs ate chicken before every single game. These small acts of control,
however random or bizarre they seem to us, helped give them the
confidence needed to face the out-of-control reality of their jobs. And
their jobs are much harder than what public speakers do. For every point
Michael Jordan ever scored, there was another well-paid professional
athlete, or team of athletes, trying very hard to stop him from doing
so.

So, unless presentation terrorists steal your microphone
mid-sentence or put up their own projector and start showing their own
slide deck—designed specifically to contradict your every point—you’re
free from the pressures other performers face nightly. Small
observations like this make it easier to laugh at nerves, even if they
won’t go away.