Stay Over with Them and Out of You

Yesterday, I got a phone call from my friend, Nancy, as she was about to go into a presentation. She was feeling distracted, tense and disconnected from a phone call she just received with upsetting news about a close friend. An experienced public speaker, Nancy was used to going into presentations feeling focused and excited. As we brainstormed ways that she could clear her emotional state enough to perform a dynamic and engaged presentation, I recalled one of the best pieces of advice I ever got about public speaking. It is this:

Stay over with them and out of you.

Every bit of angst and fear we feel as public speakers comes from our internal dialogue (conscious or not) about how we will appear to others. Will I be funny? Will I sound smart? Will I be clear, concise, interesting... name your adjective. What follows this internal inquiry is usually some combination of confidence and uncertainty as well as both a realistic and unrealistic sense of the boundaries of our knowledge on the topic. If we have significant confidence in our content and some positive feelings about public speaking, we may convince ourselves that we will do a good job. We may not. It depends on a zillion factors, all vying for position in our internal debate. Stir in some emotional unrest, as occurred when Nancy got this phone call about her friend, and you are sure to be so distracted by your inner turmoil that the thought of having a room full of eyes studying your frailty is overwhelming. Even if you are an experienced public speaker like Nancy.

In the majority of situations, it is impossible to resolve all of these issues before we do a presentation. The fact is that we do have boundaries to our knowledge (the very fact that virtually all things are debatable makes this inherently so) and we can't know what our audience is thinking, even if we know that we are prepared with great information to share. And life is happening all around us, even as we are preparing for one of the most fear-inducing activities possible, as public speaking is for many.

What we can know is that we have valuable information that will be useful to the members of our audience. We can know that we practiced the delivery of that information so that it is most accessible to those people anxiously awaiting our presence. We have control over our own research, information organization and presentation delivery practice. The rest - out of our hands.

So, let it go. Get out of your head. No dramatic ceremony required. You can even let those internal, conflicting thoughts hang out there in the living room of your mind and await your revisit after your presentation. Just move your consciousness from that swirling mist of anxiety provoking thinking and set it out there in the middle of the audience. Give it a chair, right there in the center of the room, and imagine your consciousness simply sharing what you know with the people who have shown up to hear from you.

That's what Nancy did. I got an email after her presentation in which she said that she had a great time, the presentation went really well and they all shared an engaging discussion after the presentation (often a good sign of a successful presentation.) She removed herself from the chaotic internal dialogue going on in her own head, and placed herself squarely into the interests and energy of her audience. It worked. It virtually always works.

Because the truth is, it's not about you. It's about your audience - and how you can improve their life in some way by sharing what you know. That's what public speaking is about.