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Published in The Plain Dealer Cleveland Ohio, Monday,
November 1, 2004
Feeling the heat of public speaking? Preparation is key to conquering your communication fears Monday, November 01, 2004 Good morning. And thank you for coming. Today I'm going to talk about our flabby males . . . er, flagging sales. See what can happen when you imagine your audience naked? I blame it on an old episode of the '70s sitcom "The Brady Bunch," which popularized the notion that picturing listeners in their underwear can help speakers overcome their nerves at the lectern. Something about Jan, the middle Brady sister, being uptight before a debate. But if you ask Mary Step, an instructor in the Department of Communication Science at Case Western Reserve University, that's not a very mature approach to public speaking. "In fact, picturing your audience naked can be highly distracting," she said. Step advocates a more serious method. One that's as old as Aristotle. Preparation. In fact, it was the ancient Greek philosopher who laid out a series of canons on rhetoric. Master the first three - invention, organization and style - and the fourth, delivery, should flow much easier, Step said. For some it's not that simple. Aristotle may have been a master toaster at big, fat Greek weddings, but for about one-fifth of the population that suffers from what Step calls "communication apprehension," talking before a group can cause them to - in scientific terms - totally spaz. Public speaking remains one of the great human fears - to some, greater than death. The inability to address a crowd, even one that could fit inside an elevator, can be especially debilitating at work. Otherwise competent professionals never get above the floor they're on because they can't express an idea to a roomful of bosses or make a presentation to an outside group. It can also be costly in financial terms. Dave Oldenburgh, 39, an optometrist who lives in Bay Village and practices in Brooklyn, passed up thousands of dollars in honorariums early in his career because of the fear he felt speaking publicly about his craft. "I would be just extremely anxious," he said. "I was sweating bullets. It was just very traumatic for me to get up and do it." So what explains this behavior? Why do some people feel their chests heaving during a simple introduction to a support group, while others can prattle on Bill Clinton-like before a seething mob? It has a lot to do with our level of self confidence and how we think we will be perceived, according to experts. "We're concerned about looking like a jerk," Step said. Apparently, it's an affliction that takes hold over time. Ask a kindergarten class for volunteers to stand or sing and a million arms shoot for the ceiling, said Marilee MacAskill, an instructor with Dale Carnegie Training of Northeast Ohio. Pose the same question to a group of adults and maybe two hands timidly rise. Fortunately, we don't have to succumb to our adult inhibitions and can recapture some of our youthful confidence. With help we can overcome our anxieties and assume our rightful leadership roles in business and elsewhere. Oldenburgh conquered his fear of public speaking by taking a 12-week Dale Carnegie course in confidence and leadership, although it meant doing some extra laundry. His nerves were so bad early on that he would sweat through his shirt and sweater during the 3½-hour meetings, necessitating a clothing change during a break. But as Oldenburgh practiced and applied the lessons he learned, his anxiety melted away. Now he welcomes the chance to discuss such things as epidemic kerato conjunctivitis in front of his peers. "I love it," he said. "I don't even give it a thought." Yet another Dale Carnegie testimonial comes from Kevin Watts, 44, who until recently was a sales manager at WDOK FM/102.1 in Cleveland. Not only did Watts become a better speaker, but he also overcame his fear of singing solo in front of anybody except his family and mixed-breed dog, Malli. He performed his first solo on Christmas Eve 2002, singing "O Holy Night" at Rocky River Presbyterian Church. "I mean, that was like a dream come true to do that," he said, "and I did it in front of about 250 people." Watts is now a Dale Carnegie instructor. Others seek help from Toastmasters International, a public speaking organization that started in a YMCA basement 80 years ago in Santa Ana, Calif. Thousands of Toastmasters groups gather regularly. Downtown Toastmasters Club 2550, for example, meets Thursdays from 12:05 p.m. to 12:55 p.m. on the 24th floor of Eaton Center in downtown Cleveland. Members deliver both prepared and impromptu speeches in a nurturing environment. Club 2550 President Janet Belardo, 38, recently hauled out her classical guitar to perform her eighth in a series of prepared talks. Her task this time was to demonstrate effective use of a prop. Each member of the group grades the speech. A designated grammarian counts ums and ahs and any misuse of the English language. Someone else gives an oral evaluation. "You used very good gestures," said the evaluator after Belardo's speech. "You pointed to your ear when you were talking about tuning." Belardo, a project manager in the information technology department at Eaton, has come a long way since joining Toastmasters. She's learned to channel the nervous energy that debilitated her years ago during an engineering presentation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "I can't tell you what I said to this day," she said. The goal for the public speaking-challenged should not be to eliminate all stress and anxiety associated with the task. Some butterflies are necessary to help keep you focused, said William Hale, a psychologist and assistant director of University Counseling Services/Center for Collegiate Behavioral Health at Case. But when anxiety becomes so great that it hinders performance, it crosses the line into social phobia. Such sensitivity to criticism or social scrutiny can be passed along from one generation to the next, like hair color, he said. The phobia often can be beaten by consciously changing our behavior and the way we think, Hale said. Those of us suffering such debilitating fear are filled with irrational thoughts. We think we have to be perfect, that we can't tolerate any anxiety or stress during a speech or that bombing before a group means we're a failure in general, he said. What should be ingrained is that perfection is not possible, discomfort can be tolerated and eventually will pass, and that tanking a speech does not make you a complete flop. One great tip is to not even think of yourself as a public speaker but as someone simply sharing information with a friend. "Recognize that your audience is just fallible human beings like yourself," he said. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: Changing perceptions Monday, November 01, 2004 Ingrained irrational thoughts often contribute to our fear of public speaking. Changing them to rational thoughts can help us to better cope with the stress of public speaking. Irrational: I have to be perfect. Irrational: I can't tolerate any anxiety or discomfort
during my speech. Irrational: A negative review is the end of the world. Irrational: If I fail, then I'm a failure. Irrational: If people rate me poorly, then I am totally
worthless. To give a successful speech ... Monday, November 01, 2004 DO Know the room DON'T Apologize as you speak
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