Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

I had the opportunity to take a public speaking skills workshop recently and decided it would be a useful exercise. I’m a decent speaker with lots of experience from high school and college, but not that much recently. The main thing I knew would be useful is getting a video recording of myself speaking. It’s really painful to watch yourself speak, but it’s very informative.

The main things I wanted to work on projecting more likability. I don’t want to change my speaking personality or anything, but ever since Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” speaking style went to the national level, the art of public speaking changed drastically. It is less about ideas or logic, and more about making the audience think, “I’d like to be buddies with that guy”.

I’ve seen a lot of people that go to speaking workshops and come up as almost robotic where they do every little thing they have been taught and it’s almost too perfect. The end result is that it is almost disingenuous. So I wanted to keep my current style and personality in my delivery and make some minor tweaks.

Based on my analysis of my recording and some feedback from the coach, here are the things I need to work on:

• What I do when I’m thinking - I’m used to speaking from a brief outline, so even when I don’t have notes I glance down as I organize my thoughts for my next point. This can be a liability, because looking down sends an unconscious message of submission. The instructor recommended looking slightly to the side for this. I’m not sure if I like that as it looks a little unnatural.
• Longer eye contact - Normally when speaking I look around the room at different people in the audience. The main thing I’m looking for is interested expressions and nodding heads. If I don’t see this, I know I need to make some adjustments. The instructor mentioned that the new style of speaking requires the speaker to make eye contact for 3 to 5 seconds per person before moving on. This is a more intimate, personal eye contact; one that, presumably, would help improve likability.
• Voicing - I noticed that towards the end of my sentences, I tend to eat my words a bit. This is partly because I’m already thinking about the next sentence. To fix this, I need to (1) speak more from the gut, which will project my voice more, (2) move my lips more to increase crispness (and increase facial expression) and (3) try to restructure my sentence so some of the “money” is closer to the end. This will force me to enunciate through the sentence.
• Stand straight - I noticed that I was leaning to the side a bit while talking. Though no one else noticed it; maybe the camera tripod wasn’t level. :-)

The instructor told me that these things would help me go from “good” to “great”. It was nice to know that I wasn’t a total failure. :-)