public speaking: how to rock an audience

How to rock an audience:from stage fright

tostage presence

by Tara Hunt

Outline

• Intros

• The FEAR

• The Preparation

• The Presentation

• The Gigs

• Presentations!

exercise 1: introductions. pick a topic (any topic) and pitch it to us for 30 seconds.

the fear

Our instinctual brain thinks that a group of people looking at us silently means they are about to eat us.

they are.

Well, they are about to devour our words and our lessons.

Situation -------> Thought ---------> Feeling

stop the spiral of negative thoughts/feelings here by recognizing cognitive disorders

“The Event”i.e. He says, “Well, that was interesting.”

“Your reaction”i.e. “He didn’t like my talk”

“How it makes you feel”i.e. “bad”

“Nobody liked my talk”“worse”

THE SPIRAL

“I should never speak again” “like running away and crying”

Train your brain to stop self-sabotaging...

7 Common Cognitive Disorders

Catastrophizing: taking an event you are concerned about and blowing it out of proportion. (EVERYONE is going to HATE me!)

Arbitrary Inference: making a judgment with no supporting information. (“He was giving me stinkeye the entire time” when he was trying to read the slides,

so squinting)

Personalization: taking someone else's behavior personally. (Audience member falls asleep and you take it personally)

Selective Abstraction: focusing in on one bad comment in 10.

Overgeneralization: basing future outcomes on current. (“This talk was a disaster, therefore EVERY talk in my future will be a disaster”)

Dichotomous Thinking: two extremes. No grey. (They love me/they hate me)

Labeling: making a feeling into a label. (“I answered that wrong, therefore I am incompetent.”)

exercise 2: get up and tell us the story of the scariest thing that ever happened to you.

the preparation

Ways to practice

• TECHNIQUE ONE: script it: read over that script until you memorize it enough to be able to ad lib (note: do NOT use a script on stage)

• read it to yourself 10x

• read it out loud 10x

• record yourself in garageband 2x

• listen to it on your ipod 5x

• THEN present it to someone else

Ways to practice

• TECHNIQUE TWO: let your deck tell the story

• ‘Lessig Style’ - create 300+ slides that talk as you talk (it’s artsy and, consequently, shows well on slideshare)

• TECHNIQUE THREE: story time

• Personal stories are easier to remember. Put LOTS of them in.

• TECHNIQUE FOUR: build in tons of audience interaction

• get your audience to participate (warning: some audiences do not participate)

tip: practice silence instead of fillers. (listen for your “ums” “uhs” “likes” “you knows” and practice replacing them with dramatic silent pauses)

remember: the more you practice, the better it will go.

exercise 3: blah blah blahs. yadda yadda yaddas.