How to speak and present successfully

There are few feelings worse than the feeling of being put on the spot. It can be tense, stressful and pressurising. Matt Abrahams, though, has a solution. He’s a lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, teaching classes in strategic communication and effective visual presenting, and has now put all his expertise into his new book Think Faster, Talk Smarter. Abrahams has already caused something of a sensation with his advice, as his podcast, of the same name as his book, has topped the international podcast charts and receives 2 million downloads per episode.

His new book aims to help you shine in job interviews, make small talk, respond to spontaneous digital communications and navigate difficult conversation. The book draws on research from a variety of fields in order to do this, from psychology, anthropology, communication and improvisation.

In this particular extract, Abrahams tells you how to survive conversations with new people and how to approach them as true conversations, not performances.

Whether we realise it or not, many of us approach certain spontaneous interactions as we do formal speaking situations—as performances. When meeting people for the first time, making small talk, or speaking in front of a larger group than you normally would be comfortable with, we can feel as if we’re onstage before an audience. We presume that this audience is critically assessing our every move, judging it according to some set of rules and expectations. This perception ratchets up the pressure, leading us to monitor and assess ourselves in an attempt to please our audience.

We can relax more by reframing spontaneous interaction as conversations rather than performances. Conversations are more casual and familiar than performances. We usually don’t rehearse for conversations—we just have them. We usually don’t think in terms of mistakes—we just try to sustain a flow and connection. Although conversations can be uncomfortable at times and we might still feel judged, these feelings are much less pronounced than in performance situations. We can relax and just be ourselves.

Reframing your communications as conversations can improve your public speaking and social skills. Here are three ways that you can improve your delivery when speaking:

When we feel ourselves to be on a stage, or at least in the spotlight, we sometimes use words that are cold, formal, and passive. We do this because we’re anxious and seek to establish authority. Otherwise, we might get physical distance by stepping back and folding our hands in front of us.

Let’s say you’re a doctor, and you’re standing in front of a group of your peers. You might find yourself making statements like, “It is imperative that doctors help solve this problem.” Language like this creates distance between yourself and others. When you say, “We must solve this problem,” you are not only speaking more simply and economically, but more persuasively. The word “we” is more inclusive. The communication feels more direct—more like an informal conversation. When you use language like this, your audience members might begin to do so as well. Your joint sense of the interaction as a performance dissipates, and you become more connected with one another. You get closer to actually solving the problem simply by directly pointing out that it is all of yours to solve.

Questions, even rhetorical ones, are two-way interactions. You and others around you enter into a back-and-forth. No longer are you alone “onstage” in front of your audience—you’re engaging in a dialogue. Even when you’re making a statement, you can think of it as an answer to an unasked question. That in itself can give the encounter a conversational feel and lower the pressure you might experience.

Answering your own unasked questions can help ease pressure in formal speaking situations as well. One distinguished academic I know, a Nobel laureate, wanted to improve his public speaking, which he regarded as good but a bit stiff. He began structuring them around important research questions, using these questions as the titles of his slides. These in turn served as cues to relay his intended content; he simply provided the answers to his questions for his audience. The technique makes his presentations more connected and conversational, allowing him to feel more relaxed. He doesn’t worry about presenting his every idea in a pre-planned way that his audience will perceive as elegant or perfect. He’s just speaking casually with his audience members, asking questions they might have and answering them.

In advance of job interviews or other situations where we’ll likely have to speak spontaneously, it is tempting to have some key lines or talking points nailed down in advance. That way, we’ll know just what to say when the time comes.

Writing down what we might want to say can help, but memorisation also can come back to haunt us. Giving our communication the feel of a formal, over-rehearsed presentation, it can ratchet up our nerves as we struggle to remember a great zinger that we’d thought of in advance of the actual conversation. We wind up scrutinising what we’re saying, paying attention to every little deviation from our script and framing it as a mistake. Also, by taking valuable mental energy to remember our lines, we inhibit our ability to react naturally to others around us. We have less cognitive capacity at our disposal to listen to others and react in kind.

Instead of rushing to memorise, try writing out what you'd like to say and then turning that into a short, bullet-pointed outline. Doing so allows you to think through the material in detail while giving you a brief structure that’s easier to keep in mind. Using that structure, you can more confidently fill in the gaps as you go.

Banner credit: Public speaking (Jacoblund)