Some of us may be tempted to take a beta blocker, a shot of booze, or a gummy to help with public speaking anxiety.  Before we do, please consider the audience and the right they have to a great talk.  The drug may dampen our own anxiety, but it may also dampen our performance.  There are certainly other ways to manage our anxiety that do not hurt our delivery.

I work from the premise that when a reaction is caused by a thought, it can be managed by an action.

I worked for several months with a brave soul who had taken a strong stand against the unethical practices of the company for which he had worked.  His talk preparation progressed beautifully until a few days before when he showed up to rehearse.  His words seemed labored and leaden; his speech was…Read on.

“Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

—Frederick Buechner--

This practice can apply to any kind of interview where we (feel) we are being chosen for something—jobs, schools, internships. All of these situations set up a power dynamic—the chooser and the chosen—that can rattle us, make us feel desperate, make us feel like we have to brag about ourselves and our accomplishments. We can fall into the “pick me!” mentality, rather than picking ourselves.

Please let that go.

Aside from the basics (to make enough money, to get experience and education), why are we applying for this opportunity? Usually, it is to find a great fit for what we want, what they want, what we have to offer, what they have to offer.

RESEARCH

Well before the interview...Read on.

In this series about rehearsal using the five senses, we’ve talked about using sound, taste, sight, and touch. This last rehearsal prompt, invites us to use the sense of smell in rehearsal. There is a wonderful saying in the movement practice, the Nia Technique: “smell the moment.” As speakers, in that liminal space just after we’ve rehearsed and warmed-up and just before we open our mouths to speak, we take a breath and smell the moment. We look into the audience, read the room, take in the faces, the space, this specific, particular, unique, exact moment. This is perhaps my favorite moment, when we are ready, alert, and waiting, peeking over the precipice, through the curtain, our hand on the door before turning the knob. I remember waiting back stage in that liminal space. I was listening to the audience, their chatter and laughter, the programs murmuring, the chairs scraping, the ushers ushering, the expectation and delight. One of the actors asked if I was nervous. I said...Read on.

In this rehearsal process, we first start with…SOUND. Of course, communicators must be heard, so sound matters. The mic matters, how we use the mic matters, how we articulate matters, our volume and tone matter. But before we find ourselves on the stage or in a heated conversation, we must rehearse. A rehearsal technique that bakes one layer of life into our communication is to focus on the sound of the words and allow for that sound to inform our performance. In my early twenties, I was lucky enough to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with…Read on.

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” — Gustave Flaubert. I love this quote from Flaubert. It makes me think of the small, repetitive movements of a farmer moving along a row of earth, planting seed after seed after seed, orderly and regular. The farmer knows that this calm and mundane routine will coax wild roots to descend and twisting tendrils to wind their way skyward.

All of the work we do together—in blog posts, trainings, coaching sessions, key notes—has the same message: prepare, become fluent, then play.

In the workplace, this means…Read on.

This is just ridiculous. Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin with this. Ludicrous. Is the point to dehumanize our audience so we feel superior? To humiliate them? To infantilize them? Make them less threatening? Why do we think of the audience as an adversary to begin with? And how indeed do we hope to force ourselves to see something that isn’t even there? Should we ignore the dressed audience? Look away or over their heads? Squint? Sheesh. What a waste of everyone’s time to focus energy on what isn’t there when we could be falling in love with our audience, including our audience, giving a gift to our audience, engaging, embracing, dancing, playing with our audience. If we are scared, as most of us are, of speaking in public, there are many, many wonderful skills and techniques we can use to help us enjoy our time in the limelight. The basics are…Read on.

There is a myth out there that public speakers must be WILDLY ENERGETIC!!!! Like Tony Robbins. ALL THE TIME! Some people caffeinate, put on loud music, jump up and down, frantically pump themselves up for every talk. They will actually say, “I need to be anxious to have a good performance,” and worry if they are calm. I promise you, a caffeinated, anxious, intensely pumped up performance is not a great performance. What distinguishes a talk or performance is…Read on.

If Tom Peters, renowned author of many best-selling books on business including, In Search of Excellence, were to say that he is good at anything—writing, teaching, connecting with others—he would have to admit that all of his skills come together when he is on stage giving a talk. I am honored to know Tom and often pick his brain about the skills and techniques that make him so compelling. He is always, “generous company.” Below are just a few of the tips he has shared over the years. And, trust me, there will be additions long after publication of this post! Tom is never done generating ideas! We begin here…Read on.

Imagine a circus performer moving directly from practicing aerial feats in a studio to performing those same feats in a circus tent, in costume, with blinding lights, for a large crowd of rowdy onlookers. Nobody would expect that to work out well. Any performer knows that we need a transition between practice and performance. In the theater, we set aside a full week to be awful: we call it “tech week.” During tech week we are awkward, make big mistakes, lose any spark, while we get used to the props, set, stage, lights, music, sound design, people in the seats, and begin to bring it all together. As speakers and presenters, we can give ourselves this gift. We can do a mock-up rehearsal or two in our own space and, if we are really proactive, a “tech rehearsal” in the presentation space with all the tech—slides, clicker, lights, mic, everything. Here is what a tech rehearsal might look like for a corporate speaker…Read on.

Years ago, as our kids waited for the school bus, a car careened up onto the sidewalk forcing us to flee up the grass hill to safety. We often witnessed cars come to a pause at the stop sign, then continue into the intersection not knowing the vertical street was (is!) a straightaway. The intersection has an elementary school, a city school bus stop for grades pre-K through high school, and a city bus stop. Our then seven year-old daughter wrote to City Council requesting a 4-way stop. A traffic study found there were not enough accidents to call for the change (don’t get me started). So, we painted a mandala to slow down the traffic through the intersection. We were proactive. Speakers, too, need to be proactive—we can’t assume event coordinators or venues will have all details covered … Read on.

One of our kids’ favorite soccer coaches, Coach Erick, used to say, “I won the parking lot!” I asked what he meant by that and he said that he always parks in front of the other coach’s car. He knew that the game began in the parking lot, if only psychologically. And that psychological “win” set the stage for the game itself. He was in his role as coach from the moment he pulled his car into the lot. When does an event begin? When are we officially in the public role? Read on…

When working with theater director and actor, Deb Gottesman, we immediately spoke the same language: the language of the theater. Deb knows what goes into crafting a performance that sings. She knows just how much time and work it takes to prepare a piece so that it comes alive in front of an audience. The day we began, Deb told me that the organization she co-founded with Buzz Mauro, The Theater Lab, had its annual fundraiser a few weeks before our TEDx Charlottesville event. Deb asked to front-load her preparation so that she would have the weeks before the fundraiser to focus just on that. We mapped it out and…Read on.

“Never work with animals or children.” —W.C. Fields. Last week we talked about focusing our attention on the speaker while sharing the stage. Wise performers have always known that they will easily be upstaged by both children and animals. Why? Because children and animals do not know that they are performing. They are simply being. And that simple state—guileless, egoless, effortless and unexpected—is riveting. How can we be the cat? How can we have that ease and presence? Read on…

The work is done. Or not done. It makes no difference. Let it be. Nothing new can be truly integrated 24 hours before an event. In fact, adding, changing, editing in the last 24 hours usually leads to anxiety and “trying to remember” rather than connecting, enjoying, playing. This is time to take care of ourselves. And let the content rest. DAY BEFORE: 1) Sneak into the space and run our talk2) Find the tech folks and make friends with them—tech always goes wrong and they have our backs. 3) Where is the light? Find the light…Read on.