
What They Don't Tell You About Public Speaking - philipp-spiess
http://zachholman.com/posts/what-they-dont-tell-you-about-public-speaking/
======
nostromo
"There’s one mistake I consistently see made by speakers both novice and
experienced: they’re not excited about their talk."

I'm a nervous presenter. The way I used to combat this was with a poker face.
No smiles, no laughing, no gestures, monotone voice... I'd do anything not to
clue them in to my nervousness.

This is a flawed approach for me. People are very forgiving of humanizing
nerves and foibles. People aren't so forgiving of boring, monotone talks.

What I try to do now, with some success, is to embrace (not suppress) the
nervous energy. To 'feel' the same way I do before a challenging ski slope.
I'm in my 30s and I don't get adrenaline spikes very often like I did in my
20s (like say, when flirting with someone new that I really like). So I'm
teaching myself to seek out places to present, so I can get and enjoy that
intense energy spike.

Adrenaline is the best, cheapest, healthiest, and most legal drug available to
you; don't shy away from it. And give some of that energy back to your
audience.

~~~
esrauch
This is a bit off topic, but according to wikipedia; "Adverse reactions to
adrenaline include palpitations, tachycardia, arrhythmia, anxiety, headache,
tremor, hypertension, and acute pulmonary edema."

I've always thought that a true straight-edge person wouldn't deliberately
trigger adrenaline releases. The fact that your body produces it given a
particular stimulus doesn't seem to really be relevant to the "goodness" of
the substance. If your body produced cocaine when you get in a mosh pit is
that different than just taking cocaine?

~~~
corin_
Adrenaline doesn't have any long-term health risks, unlike cocaine. If cocaine
was safe in the long run, and I found that I didn't get negative side-effects
and it helped me do <x>, I'm not sure what the downside would be in me using
cocaine.

When I used to be a singer I personally found adrenaline would only come with
more important performances (bigger concerts, live radio), never with smaller
concerts on recording sessions - I never experienced any downsides, and it
helped me do better. If I could have found a way to get an adrenaline rush all
the time, I definitely would have grabbed it with both hands.

edit: Given the topic of this actual thread, an interesting side-note is that
despite never having problems with music, I'm pretty terrible at public
speaking.

------
krschultz
Great post, especially the concept 'Talks should always be reactionary rather
than anticipatory'.

A public speaking ancedote for all those that are nervous at public speaking
or currently aren't that good at it.

My father excels at public speaking. He has done many conferences, TV
interviews, company all-hands meetings, regular presentations, etc. He is
natural, comfortable, excited, etc. Most imporantly, he can really read a room
and react to people and tune his presentation on the fly to what interests the
crowd.

But it was not always so. When he was in his 20s, he was absolutely terrible
at speaking in front of a room. At one point early in his career he was giving
a presentation and his boss turned to the HR guy that had hired him and said
'is it too late to undo this one', purposely, loud enough for him to hear.

Over the course of 5 or 6 years he dramatically improved at public speaking.

Public speaking is a learned skill. You can practice it. Do not leave making
the presentation to the last minute, finish it a week before hand and practice
40 times. Comfort comes from being prepared. Walk the room beforehand. Check
all of your gear and have backups of everything just in case. Be prepared to
use no slides so it won't be a completely new experience. Have fewer slides,
it makes you feel more naked but the audience won't notice if you get things
out of order a bit.

Toastmasters helps. If you are younger, join a debate or model congress club.
It's like shooting a foul shot, you just need more reps.

~~~
why-el
It will be awesome if your dad had a book on what happened in those 5 to 6
years.

Of course I am in no position to provide as useful an advice, since I am still
a student and the toughest audience I presented against are themselves
students. However, I find the preparing by replaying the presentation to
yourself a little daunting. I used to do that and there always seems to be
something that goes wrong, especially that I am supposed to have memorized the
presentation. I don't really trust my memory that much, so what I started
doing is knowing the topic very well, have some general enough guidelines, and
just talk to the audience. It's classic improvising and it worked for me up to
now.

~~~
krschultz
I wouldn't say you want to memorize the presentation.

In fact I think the more you write out for yourself, write on your slides, or
try to memorize, the more difficult the presentation becomes.

The practice is more about stumbling a bunch of times. I hate when I repeat
the same word or phrase within a few sentences of each other. If I notice that
I say the same thing twice on one slide, maybe I'll stand there for a second
and think of a new way. The next time I practice through I might use a 3rd
way, but at least I'm not repeating.

I only really memorize maybe the first two sentences I'm going to stay just to
get the ball rolling smoothly, and maybe a final sentence so my exit is clean.

~~~
saraid216
I'd go so far as to say you absolutely don't want to memorize your speech,
unless you're at the level of Important Remarks for Important People like the
State of the Union.

Instead, you want to memorize all the key features, jokes, and wry remarks.

You can write out your speech, if it helps. But read it. Out loud. To a wall.
About ten or fifteen times. Read it, without looking at the paper (except when
you forget what goes next), and without trying to duplicate it verbatim.
You'll learn what phrasings come naturally to your tongue rather than your
hand, and it'll flow a lot better when you give the speech itself.

~~~
scott_s
To extend your point on key features: I think of it as memorizing the overall
structure of your talk. You may have a dozen or so topics you want to hit in
your presentation, and that is what you end of memorizing - not on purpose,
but because if you're well prepared, you can't help but _not_ memorize it.

If you know that you want to hit points A, B, C, ..., in your talk, and you
know your material cold, then you don't have to memorize how you want to
connect A and B, B and C, etc. That is what you re-create on the spot. The
practice is important because sometimes you _can't_ connect two points on-the-
fly. Practicing your talk at least once will reveal those places, and you can
either: figure out what the connecting bits are, or decide you don't want to
cover that.

In addition to the jokes and wry remarks, I find that I also tend to replay
the same body language in talks that I did in practice.

~~~
mindcrime
I've given more than a few public talks, and I ran for Lieutenant Governor of
NC a few years ago, and did some campaign speeches as part of that... what I
have found is that they key is to be _able_ to improvise your entire talk if
need be. That is, if you know the points you want to make, and a rough order
you want to make them in, you can construct the talk as you go if need be.
Then you never have to worry about "forgetting your lines" or whatever. If you
can develop this ability to give a speech totally unscripted, you can then
choose whether or not you want to use notes or whatever to help you stick more
precisely to the plan... but in the worst case, you're never totally screwed
with no ability to proceed.

FWIW, when I ran for office, I never memorized a single speech, nor did I use
notes. I mentally rehearsed the key points and structure on the way to the
venue, and then improvised. Take the fact that I didn't get elected however
you want, vis-a-vis the effectiveness of my approach. :-)

------
silverbax88
It's tougher to be a solid public speaker than it looks. I've given talks to
big rooms, gyms and moderately sized conference rooms. I rarely get nervous
but occasionally it hits us all. I do have some notes on watching great
speakers in person and learning from my own mistakes.

1\. Do NOT ask for a 'show of hands' from the audience. Even some practiced
speakers do this. They think that it engages the audience, but it is a crutch,
an attempt to turn the focus away from the speaker onto the audience. It's
always clumsy and delays the audience from hearing the content. Some speakers
claim that they want to know more about the audience before they proceed. We
all know that's not true. Are you really going to completely modify your
speech, dropping that five minutes of solid material just because not enough
hands were raised when you asked about it? Of course not.

2\. Note cards are not 'bad'. I had to learn this one the hard way. If you are
professional orator, you will eventually get to the point where you can
pontificate the same speech verbatim without a single note. But for the rest
of us, a note card of bullet-point topics can keep us on track. Just don't
have a ream of pages and stare down at them, reading monotonously without
looking up.

3\. Everyone hits that middle 'death valley' at some point. It's the point of
a talk where you are very aware of your own voice, and you aren't getting any
perceived feedback from the audience. This is the hard slog where you have to
know that while time has slowed to a crawl for you, it hasn't changed for the
audience. Remember how you feel when the situation is reversed - how often
have you ever seen a speaker so bad that you actually noticed it and
remembered it? Not often, if ever. Boring speakers are forgotten - bad
speakers are ignored - great speakers MIGHT be remembered. So just keep going,
and the worst that could happen is that you are boring, which no one will
remember anyway.

~~~
crazygringo
> _Do NOT ask for a 'show of hands' from the audience._

I completely disagree. If you ask people to raise their hands 10 times on
inane questions, then of course it's useless. But correctly used, it:

1) Wakes people up and gets everyone in the room focused

2) Gets people aware of the rest of the audience, and "on the same page"

3) Ideally provides a natural segue into how the point of the lecture directly
connects to _you_

I taught English for years, which was basically public speaking every single
day, and getting my students to tie an aspect of the theme/question of the day
into their lives, and respond, in the first couple minutes was always _key_ in
terms of getting them all on the same page and relating to the material in the
rest of the class. It would only occasionally be a show of hands, there are
hundreds of other techniques as well (shouting words, asking the nearest
person a question, writing a word on a piece of paper, etc.), but these are
all _fantastic_ public-speaking techniques. Of course, you need to have the
personality to pull them all off, so the audience trusts you and wants to go
along, but you can develop that.

Indeed, I think it's a real shame most public speakers don't interact _more_
with the audience through these kinds of things. They boost attention levels
and retention levels so much more.

~~~
scott_s
While I defended the practice below, I consider teaching to be a special case
of public speaking. I have "presentation mode" and "lecture mode." There is a
lot of overlap, but they're not exactly the same. In presentation mode, I will
not stop everything and wait for someone to answer a question. When I'm
presenting, I don't expect people to understand everything that I'm saying to
the point that they can apply this new knowledge. I would _like_ that, sure,
but I think it's presumptuous to assume they would like it as well.
Presentations are also often made to peers, and I don't like quizzing my peers
in such a way.

In lecture mode, that's the entire purpose of my presentation, so I do it. I
have no problem quizzing students in such a way - because if they can't answer
the question, then I should change the focus of the lecture to make sure that
everyone can before I move on.

Note that I am differentiating between quizzing and polling. I'll poll in both
lecture and presentation mode.

------
ctdonath
My breakthrough in being comfortable with public speaking came from a quote:

 _"...though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it
does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least
_definitively_ inaccurate."_ \- Douglas Adams

If I am to make a mistake while presenting, then by gum I'm going to make that
mistake with the most confidence and gusto I can muster. I will own up to
being wrong, I will turn that into a "teaching moment" for the audience, I
will plow forward confident in the spirit of Kipling's "If" knowing that while
I may have screwed up I did so in a good-faith effort at taking the lead and
making things happen for an audience that chose to follow. If I am wrong, then
I shall be _definitively_ wrong!

That's pretty good for an awkward introvert.

~~~
danso
Not only can you get away with mistakes by moving past them with gusto, but
your entire speech can be a mistake if you pull it off with confidence.

The Dr. Fox effect:

> _Forty years ago, a singularly interesting lecture was held at the
> University of Southern California School of Medicine. The subject was
> "Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education." The speaker
> was Dr. Myron L. Fox from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a pupil of
> von Neumann and an authority on the application of mathematics to human
> behavior._

> _The attendees were psychiatrists and psychologists (MDs and PhDs) who were
> gathered for a training conference. They listened to the lecturer with great
> interest, asked many questions and were satisfied with speaker's replies._

> _They gave him flying grades in the satisfaction questionnaire. Nobody
> suspected anything wrong. In reality the speaker was an actor and knew
> nothing on the subject of his lecture._

[http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/123...](http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/1237447/PhDs-
couldnt-tell-an-actor-from-a-renowned-scientist.html)
[http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r30034/PSY4180/Pages/Naftulin.ht...](http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r30034/PSY4180/Pages/Naftulin.html)

~~~
CurtMonash
That was the secret of Ronald Reagan's political success.

------
filmgirlcw
I like this a lot. I'll add a few of my own points too (though I think Zach's
are great):

1\. Practice, practice, practice. Now, I'm a hypocrite for saying this because
I do tons of speaking engagements with little or no practice (which is a
combination of hubris and the fact that I'm often pegged to do stuff at the
last minute). Still, if you aren't comfortable speaking off the cuff or in
front of a crowd, practice makes perfect.

Something I've often done is to do screen recordings like Zach says -- but
instead of doing them of the talk live, I do them before the presentation. The
advantage here is that I can practice what I want to say, listen back to my
cadence and then adjust and readjust if necessary. By the third or fourth
time, I'm usually golden and I have a great master copy that I can try to
mimic live on stage.

2\. The better you get. -- This is true of almost anything, but it's
especially true of speaking in public. You'll become more comfortable and
natural on stage (or on camera) and have a much better sense of how to steer a
talk, how to keep your energy up and how to come across as assured.

3\. Record yourself in advance. For beginning public speakers, it's important
that you record what you sound like so that you can adjust your speed (slow
down or speed up) and cadence. It can be odd to hear yourself speak at first,
but once you get used to it, you can adjust what you look and sound like. This
is especially important if you are doing any media appearances.

4\. Watch Yourself After -- If your speech or conference is being recorded (or
if you are recording yourself) -- watch it back after. Again, it can be
disconcerting but it's a great time to learn how you can improve next time.
It's also a great way to see how you progress over time. If I look at my first
CNN appearance in April of 2011 and my most recent appearance, it's like night
and day. That helps me when I get up to present at an event, keynote a
conference or do another media appearance.

~~~
dacilselig
Recording yourself is extremely important. Although it may be awkward to look
at yourself stumble through a speech, you will get good understanding of how
you are presenting yourself. I'd even go as far as trying different clothing
and see how each changes the image your reflecting. As I use to co-host a
radio show, I found that listening to yourself live is the best way to ensure
a high quality show. It makes sure you don't speak too slow,fast, if there's
an echo etc.

------
dctoedt
Legendary senior partner at a law-firm sandwich seminar: "The most important
thing about public speaking is to say it with _confidence_!"

Young associate (me), raising hand: "But what if you really _aren't_
confident?"

Senior partner, fiercely: _"FAKE it!"_

~~~
gruseom
Totally off-topic but: I wish you'd comment more often here.

~~~
dctoedt
I'm flattered! (Ditto to Thomas.)

I do lurk here a lot.

------
molbioguy
"Talks should always be reactionary rather than anticipatory: they’re going to
come off as more natural, more interesting, and above all, more valuable."

I agree with the sentiment here. My presentations are all about science and
bioinformatics, and I find they go best when I have a story to tell. The
audience loves to hear stories, especially when they can experience the aha!
moment themselves before I get to the end of the story. It's a much better
story if the project is almost complete rather than mostly unfinished.

As a minor aside, being a grumpy old guy, I would suggest that rather than
"reactionary" (which means something altogether different than what I
understood Zach to be saying), the proper term might be "retrospective" and
paired with "prospective". I misused "reactionary" myself in younger days and
still cringe when I think about it. Strange word indeed.

------
abarringer
For those that do much public speaking there's an interesting article on
rhetoric here [http://www.european-rhetoric.com/rhetoric-101/modes-
persuasi...](http://www.european-rhetoric.com/rhetoric-101/modes-persuasion-
aristotle/)

In a nutshell For communicating a message Pathos(emotive "Be Excited") is more
important then logos(the words). Ethos(Ethics, character) is more important
then Pathos.

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds.
The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on
putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or
apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. Persuasion is
achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as
to make us think him credible. -Aristotle 1356a 2,3

------
postwait
"Talks should always be reactionary rather than anticipatory: they’re going to
come off as more natural, more interesting, and above all, more valuable."

I think that's not true at all. There is room for both. I would say do not mix
them. Talks can either share what's been done or share what can be from a
visionary perspective.

~~~
holman
Admittedly I slipped an "always" in there when I shouldn't have; I agree that
anticipatory talks can be great, too.

Let's put it this way, though: for a beginning or first-time speaker, I'll
maintain that talks should be reactionary. There are more than enough other
things to worry about going into your first talk that it's really comforting
to talk about your past experiences than try to prepare a new project or a
"what-if" for an arbitrary conference date. That's more the target market I
meant with that (admittedly broad) statement.

~~~
follower
I would recommend you seriously consider re-wording the "reactionary rather
than anticipatory" sentence on your blog. (The number of confused/questioning
comments here on HN about the use of those terms suggests I'm not the only
one. :) )

The sentence in your post above explains your intention much more clearly:

"There are more than enough other things to worry about going into your first
talk that it's really comforting to talk about your past experiences than try
to prepare a new project or a 'what-if' for an arbitrary conference date."

As I understand it, what you're wanting to convey is that it's better to
choose a topic where you can talk about "what I've done" rather than "what I
hope to do". The "reactionary"/"anticipatory" terms don't clearly convey that
intention and seem to me to be incorrect terms to use.

(I don't have a specific suggestion for replacement terms--"retrospective" is
one option but has a slightly negative connotation.)

Aside from that, thanks for sharing your experiences. :)

------
apitaru
Great post. I used to often speak publicly. Last week I gave my first talk in
years, to a large crowd. I was nervous because of how long has passed since
I've last done it, but then I remembered my old habit. Before my talks I used
to spend time with the conference goers in the hall, just chatting with them
about whatever comes up. This seems to play a trick on the mind, making me
feel like I'm speaking to friends rather than a faceless crowd. It worked last
week as well. I highly recommend trying it out.

~~~
pacaro
I love it, I have no problems presenting to people I know - however vaguely -
but a room full of strangers fills me with cold dread.

------
philmcc
I would give serious consideration to taking an Improv Comedy class. If you
can't, I'd like to share the concept of "Yes, and--"

Invariably something will go wrong during one of your presentations.

A slide will look funny. There will be a weird noise from outside. An audience
member will say something strange.

The idea behind "Yes,and-ing" in improv is basically you treat every single
thing as if it were planned and part of what you were doing, rather than
negating it or ignoring it, which is dishonest and creates a disconnect.

I've given three presentations in my life (all this year) and each time
something went wrong I ran with it and the audience responded very positively.
My slide about "Internal Leaks" was missing the first two letters. Second time
public speaking. Crap.

Instead of negating ("Oh this was supposed to say Internal"), I Yes-And'ed.

"Up next, a very important problem, Ternal Leaks." And I then verbally chopped
off the first two letters of the next slides (verbally), my name, my company
name, and closed with "Anks, I hope you enjoyed it."

(Yes, it's a little corny, but it breaks the wall between audience and
speaker. I find, in life, if you make someone really laugh, even if it's just
once, everything else works out.)

------
pgrote
Be excited about what you're presenting is key. You have to engage people
through your excitement and by cuing off what they react to.

Many times I find myself including the audience feedback into the presentation
in terms of spending time on certain points that get the most reaction.

The author is dead on about the questions, though they don't have to be after
the presentation is over.

------
kingkilr
I had a laptop hard lock in the middle of a talk once. That was fun. For the
record, I handled it by immediately swapping out my laptop for the session
runner's (can't risk it happening 2x during the talk), my slides were online
and I just re-downloaded them and tried to go forward losing as little time as
possible.

------
bajsejohannes
An obvious thing that took me a little too many talks to figure out, is to say
"Thanks" when you're done. The audience wants to applaude, but the speaker has
to initiate it. It always gets weird if the speaker goes to Q&A without it. Do
we clap now? Later?

------
Shoomz
This blog has a ton underlying something I think of each time I go into a
large presentation - be a rock star!

I realize that's oversimplifying it a bit, but if you think about presenting
there are many items that do coincide: know your material in and out, think
about your audience, bring the enthusiasm...etc. I realize not every
presentation is going to be rock star material, but if nothing else it makes
me strive to elevate what I am discussing and has given me something more to
strive for whenever delivering material to a larger audience.

~~~
davidw
... and if you feel you're losing people's attention, biting the head off a
live bat is a way to get it right back! Try that next time people are nodding
off while you drone on about cloud architecture.

------
scott_s
A presentation is a performance. When you are on stage, you are _on stage_.

------
swdunlop
"Most conferences are a crap shoot when it comes to video. Half the time they
won’t record your talk, and the other half of the time it may take months
before your talk is published.

Something I’ve been doing recently is making a screen recording of my talks
using QuickTime on my Mac."

This is really true, and really good advice. Organizers have a lot on their
hands leading up to a conference, and, after, getting recordings posted
languishes until they manage to recover enough of their personal lives to
start ramping up for the next.

I've had several instances where I've given a talk, been very happy with the
response, and then realized that I had no way to share it with a wider
audience except trundling off to the next conference. Next time, I'm making my
peace with a screen recording app.

------
jberryman
I've always been bad at speaking (all my experiences were in school, so far...
Not really "public"). But my one really good presentation happened in college.
I'd stayed up pretty late the night before finishing the thing along with a
handout we were required to give to the class (also my notes), which I was
going to print off in the library before class.

Went to bed and next thing I knew my alarm was buzzing and class had just
started. I had time to throw on pants, jog to class and immediately start
talking about the French horn; no notes or props. I didn't have time to be
nervous or worry, and was just genuinely engaged in the topic and it went
great.

------
WalterBright
I find that engaging the audience into a back-and-forth has been very
successful for me, and I get more positive feedback on the talks afterwards,
too.

------
stretchwithme
Exceptional advance. Thanks.

I would add that one should not try to get excited about a topic that does not
excite you. Authenticity is important. Rather, give talks about topics that
you are excited about.

------
qdpb
The title is a little misleading: they do tell you all these things and more
if you don't rely on blog posts that will unavoidably focus on a couple of
things and go for a good book.

------
oblique63
Yesterday's episode of "Back to Work" went over public speaking and confidence
as well -- it's definitely worth a listen:

<http://5by5.tv/b2w/72>

~~~
benatkin
It may have been worth a listen for you, but I think YMMV applies very
strongly to podcasts.

~~~
oblique63
in general, I'd agree, but if you're interested in the subject matter of the
article here, the podcast does cover some good tid bits about public speaking.

I guess I should have mentioned that the real meat of this show doesn't
usually kick in until about 30% of the way through (which I could understand
might annoy some people)...

------
ckaustin
best public speaking advice that has made me a 10x better presenter: "a
presentation is about the audience, not about you."

------
nerdfiles
Steven Wright's stage presence should be a github repo.

------
mjwalshe
mm Nothing at all about the art of rhetoric and how to do public speaking well
though you could try watching

[http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-art-of-
rhet...](http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-art-of-rhetoric)

