Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking

Three of 10 people can walk in front of an audience, dazzle them with an opening "grabber" statement to capture their attention, and transition to three key points that provide information or elicit a decision. Three of 10 people can do that with accuracy, brevity, and clarity. Moreover, they can do it without fear. You are probably thinking, "What about the other seven?" Well, when the other seven walk in front of an audience they are trembling with fear. Speaking in front of people is the number one fear in the nation. People are more afraid of public speaking than they are of snakes, ghosts, and even death. What are they afraid of? There are two possibilities. The first is that at some point in their lives, they had a very bad experience in public. That experience is indelibly imprinted in their long-term memory. And now every time they walk in front of an audience that one bad experience bursts forth and the stomach butterflies and the shakes begin. The second reason is they project onto the audience, believing the audience is just sitting there waiting for them to forget their lines or make a mistake. So the self fulfilling prophecy steps in and they make a mistake or forget their lines thus confirming their belief about what the audience is thinking. But hold on! You can overcome this fear with what I call "self talk." Here's how it works. There is something positive and rewarding that you can do better than anybody else, something you have done so many times, you can do it in your sleep. Tell yourself over and over again how good you are at it. In fact, tell yourself so many times that you indelibly write it on your long-term memory, overwriting the one bad experience that you had. Furthermore, when you look out at the audience and see them staring at you, waiting for you to make a mistake (you briefly think), say to yourself, "I bet you can't sing a song, paint a picture, play the piano, or write a poem (insert whatever is your forte) like I can. This "self talk" will put you head and shoulders above anybody in the audience. After all, they need you! That's why you are standing in front of them making this presentation. So seize every opportunity to speak publicly and eventually the fear will be gone.

Email's Darkside

The technique used to move information from A to B dates back to 2400 BC in ancient Egypt. The Pharaohs printed their decrees on scrolls and sent them out to the people by courier. Certainly, that must have taken days, maybe even weeks. We have come a long way since then. Just in the last 60 years our electronic geniuses have led the evolution of information transfer to the point where we can create a decree, click the "send" button and have it appear virtually anywhere in the world in seconds. A round of applause for email, one of the greatest innovations of our time! But, hold on! This is the bright side. Just like yin and yang, email also has its dark side. Similar to a few alcoholic drinks, email can give us the courage to say what should have been left unsaid. To further exacerbate the situation, it's now in writing--etched in stone. Sometimes even for public view, depending on the distribution. And once it's in writing, it can come back to haunt us at a later date. In some instances, email supplants the vital face-to-face communication necessary for effective interpersonal relations. For example, a supervisor, afraid of confrontation, will use email to correct an employee's errant behavior when face-to-face communication would have been much more effective. These are just two examples among many of the dark side of email. In my opinion, before we click the "send" button, we should click the "delete" button and have a face-to-face conversation instead.

The Grapevine

There is a very famous song by Marvin Gaye entitled, "I Heard it Through the Grapevine." What is the meaning of the grapevine? When we hear something through the grapevine, we are learning it informally and unofficially by means of gossip and rumor. This information is usually passed from one person to another by word of mouth, text, or email. It is passed perhaps in a confidential manner among friends or colleagues sometimes with the accompanying statement, "Don't tell anybody I told you." Yeah, right. Thirty minutes later, because every person has a trust partner, everybody in the organization knows. But what do they know? Usually nothing because the grapevine mostly contains what happened but the reason it happened or the real problem that created the situation is missing. When these facts are missing, people make up facts to fill the gaps. Everybody wants to speculate or "juice" it up. The grapevine can also imply information obtained from overheard conversations or other anonymous sources. For instance "I heard through the grapevine that Jack got a nasty email from the boss and is considering leaving the organization." The grapevine can be a deadly virus in organizations. It has created enemies, lowered morale, hampered productivity, dampened spirits, broken confidences and created mistrust. Formal and official communication should be the antidote to combat the deadly grapevine. The top manager should prevent these negative consequencies by having the courage to either formally and officially communicate the truth or take steps to strip all the grapes off the vine thereby quelling the gossip and rumor.

Bypassing the Boss

The relationship you have with your manager is critical. It is your utmost responsibility to always meet your manager’s requirements. Unfortunately, this can sometimes place you in a very awkward position. Managers are not perfect and you don’t always agree with their requirements and decisions. When you have such a disagreement, common sense protocol tells you to discuss the matter with the manager and make well supported alternative recommendations. Unfortunately some managers are not reasonable. They think their way is the only way and tell you, “Do it my way, or else.” Now you feel trapped and think the only solution is to plead your case to higher authority. So, you bypass your manager and go directly to your manager’s boss. No, stop! This is one of the worst mistakes one could make in the workplace. Never ever bypass a manager and go to higher authority. This is the quickest way to get in trouble with your immediate boss. It sets up an element of mistrust that is sometime difficult, if not impossible to repair. When your manager wants you to do something and you have a different way of doing it, show how your manager will befit by doing it your way. If that fails, then ask yourself the LEM question: “Is my manager’s way of doing it Legal? Is it Ethical? Is it Moral?” If the answer to these three questions is “Yes,” then stop arguing. Just do it and move on to the next requirement.

The Butterfly

I have a spot in my home that is my dream spot. It’s a new glassed-in porch with lots of sunlight and a beautiful view into the back yard. Yesterday I was sitting on a comfortable chair looking out at this gorgeous plant with bright red blossoms. Out of the blue came a monarch butterfly that started flitting from one bright blossom to the next just sucking up the nectar from those beautiful blossoms. And I said to myself, “That’s just like a supervisor going from one alternative to the next trying different things to fix a problem that has not yet been identified.” Wouldn’t it be great if every supervisor could learn that the best way to fix a problem is to define it first and then it would be easy to find the one alternative solution and fix it. It should not be necessary to be like a butterfly flitting from one alternative to the next trying to fix a problem that has not been defined. What do you think? Please share your thoughts.

The Crab Cake Sandwich

What a wonderful day this has been. I had the opportunity of a lifetime. I had lunch with my grandson who is a chef at a popular restaurant in Washington, DC. We met at a very nice place that serves wonderful food. As we sat down to eat my grandson asked me, “What are you having?” Without blinking an eye, I said, “You know what Jay, I’m gonna have the crab cake sandwich.” Now, when he asked me that question, I was able to answer it instantaneously. And the thought occurred to me how many times I have been in a restaurant and watched people spend precious time agonizing over a 10-20 page menu trying to decide what to eat. And I thought to my self, there’s got to be a way that a person can walk in a restaurant and make a decision in a reasonable period of time what they’re gonna eat. And you know what? That will eliminate the waiter coming every 5 minutes saying, “Have you made a decision yet?” only to turn away in disgust because people haven’t made up their minds. There really should be a way to walk in and, in an instant make a decision. I can compare this to the task of being a supervisor or a leader in the workplace. Many of them take an inordinate amount of time to make a decision. The employee is standing there waiting and waiting and waiting. But the supervisor just will not decide. Just like selecting from the menu there should be a way that people could make decisions quicker. They have all the information they need and they are not gonna get any more. So what do you think? What’s a good way to make a decision quickly? Share your ideas with me.

Motivation

In my work as a facilitator, I get a lot of questions about interpersonal relations between supervisors and employees. One question asked over and over is, "Given the lack of resources in this stressed economy, how does one find ways to motivate employees that do not involve financial resources?" I think it is key for supervisors to understand the first step to motivate employees is to find out something about them--what turns them on and what turns them off. We should then focus on doing as much as we can to turn them on and refrain from doing things that turn them off. Employees are motivated by praise, challenge, being in on decisions that affect them, as well as other forms of recognition that do not cost money. I invite other examples of actions supervisors can take to motivate employees.