Faulty Assumptions Poison Presentations

            It was the best of speeches. It was the worst of speeches. That is how I feel about a speech I gave last night. Most of the people enjoyed my speech. I received quite a bit of feedback, some from a friend who is willing to tell me the truth. So, what went right and what went wrong?

            My delivery was strong. I was animated and my friend mentioned my eyes were “piercing”. There were some points of strong humor in the speech. I also had some vivid description both in wording and how I used body language to portray a story.

            The weak point was I didn’t make a genuine connection with the audience. The speech was too rote. It simply lacked the dynamic of someone dropping their guard and having a heart-to-heart with the audience. It was a good speech, but not a great one.

            So, why was it lacking? Much of it was due to me approaching things with faulty assumptions. I’ve spent about ten years teaching college. A group of college freshmen is one of the toughest audiences I’ve ever dealt with. In some ways they are even tougher than addressing a bunch of strangers at a comedy club. At least at the comedy club, the audience is there to have fun. A college student often enters the class reluctant to listen. While a minority may love the topic at hand, it is often a battle to gain consistent enthusiasm. For many my class is simply a line on a checklist of classes needed to obtain the degree.

            I have seen students’ attitudes change tremendously over the course of a semester. Some students have entered reluctantly and left loving my class. The problem is that constantly motivating others is tiring. I used to enter the classroom with the assumption that it was my responsibility to energize the class. After nearly having a nervous breakdown, I realized the fault in that assumption. In terms of motivation, I had to allow students to meet me halfway. I know in some cases that means I’m a less energizing presence in the classroom. But, I also know that a true give-and-take is more conducive to real learning. My assumptions were directly impacting my teaching and even my sanity.

            In many cases we are basing things on assumptions without even realizing it. But, if we look inward and are honest about how we approach an audience, we can uncover what is truly guiding our speaking.

            So, what assumptions were guiding my presentation last night? I think a part of me was approaching the audience like they were students—expecting a degree of reluctance and expecting that the success of “the show” was dependent on me. I wasn’t thinking in terms of the audience meeting me halfway. Instead of forming a two-way relationship with the audience, I was an actor on a stage. Sure, I may have been a good actor with piercing eyes, but I didn’t reach that highest level of being real, genuine and fostering a heart-to-heart with my audience.

            A second assumption was that I needed to be perfect. I had carefully prepared what I was going to say, even memorizing much of the speech. I’m not sure my audience was aware I was reading a script, but the script in my head was a barrier to me dropping my guard. There is an assumption in my mind that I need to be in control. Intellectually, I know control is an illusion. You cannot control an audience. You can put yourself out there and the audience can give you control, but they can take it back at any moment. My own desire of wanting the big laugh, the perfect line and the poignant description became a barrier to just meeting my audience at a person-to-person level.

            At a deeper level, a need to be perfect and “in control” is grounded on a fear of failure. I want the audience to embrace me. I want the applause, the laughter and the accolades of being the greatest speaker they’ve ever heard. In order for me to reach the next level, I’m going to need to deal with my own ego. This is the interesting thing about public speaking. While it is a communal event, for the speaker it requires one turning inward if they want to reach the highest level. A good deal of it might have to do with loving myself more than the audience. Once I love my audience more, will fear all of a sudden drop away? Is my biggest issue not dealing with mechanics, organization or any mastery of skills? Is my biggest issue really dealing with a mastery of myself and overcoming my own assumptions of self-importance? Ouch! Maybe I shouldn’t have written this blog! 

The Power of Failure and Public Speaking

            Teaching public speaking, my students are filled with fear. They’re afraid they’ll faint, forget their speech, sweat profusely, look like an idiot or say “um” uncontrollably. My experiences doing standup comedy have taught me that our perception of failing is based on a false assumption: that failure destroys an audience’s perception of us. I’m defining failure loosely to apply to anything that goes wrong while speaking. In truth, I've found that a certain amount of failure—if one has the right attitude—actually endears the speaker to the audience.

            Let me share some experiences I’ve had on stage. One was during a comedy competition. It was a three-night competition. The second night I bombed badly. I had a joke about a mouse caught in a trap and described the poor fellow as felt covered in maggots. Apparently “maggots” is the trigger word that mystically causes all funniness to evaporate.

            I continued with my juvenile parody of the Mickey Mouse song. The audience just stared in disgust. Looking back, I can understand why. The material I had wasn’t funny. I hadn’t been doing comedy long and I was trying so desperately to be funny that I was grasping at anything.

            Is that awkward moment I created the death of comedy? I’ve seen more skilled comedians tell worse jokes than that and recover from it. My failure wasn’t what killed my performance. My attitude killed my performance. I heard that little self-critical voice in my head say, “You’ll never get this audience back!” And, that night I didn’t.

            The next night of the performance the pressure was off. I wasn’t going to win, so I took the stage and just had fun. I talked about my failures the night before. I even roasted the judges. Of all the competitors, that was one of the strongest performances. A different night and a different mindset made all the difference.

            I remember another performance at a small comedy club. No one that evening was getting laughs. The audience just stared blankly. At this point, I was a little more experienced doing comedy. I had accepted the fact that I was going to have some failures on stage, but I had changed my mindset on failure. I saw failure as an opportunity. Failure is real and relatable. People understand failure. When a joke bombs, it’s the most human moment a comedian can have on stage. So, why view bombing a joke as a failure? When a joke bombs, just find the funny in the experience. That night most of my jokes bombed, but I just reacted to the awkward silence with a positive attitude and made light of the situation. Those attitudes and reactions were receiving big laughs—bigger laughs than others who took the stage.

            What is true of comedy is true of all public speaking. Your mindset is often the determining factor. If you allow the fear of failure to poison your mindset, when something unexpected happens on stage (the mic doesn’t work, your joke bombs, you drop your note cards or whatever) your inner, self-critical voice is going to tell you, “You’ll never get this audience back.” Those unexpected circumstances that we view as failing are often ripe with the opportunity of endearing us to the audience. All it takes is a change in mindset.

The Music of Language

            You’re driving down the street when a jamming tune comes on the radio. You start bobbing your head in rhythmic unison. “I love this tune!” Music is a universal experience that transcends cultures. Everyone likes music in one form or another. Our brains are hard wired with an internal time-keeping system. I like to think of this as our rhythm center.

            In terms of language, we are attracted to language that has a beat. This is one reason why Dr. Seuss is so popular. He tells stories in poetic form. There is a strong sense of rhythm that gives his stories a sense of movement, purpose and direction. All exceptional writing has a beat to it. In some cases it’s far more apparent than others, but when it is missing the writing seems lifeless. People may be clueless as to what is missing. They may describe the writing as “choppy”, “stilted” or “lacks flow”. It would be more accurate to say the writing doesn’t tickle the rhythm center of the brain.

            This explains why things that are technically wrong sometimes sound right. When speaking, it is sometimes more effective to use “ain’t” than “is not”. Technology, it’s not good grammar, but at times the single beat in “ain’t” sounds more natural than the double beat of “is not”. Ever hear someone overly cautious about pronoun agreement using “he or she” instead of “their”? While “he or she” may be technically accurate, sometimes “their” feels right. “He or she” is simply more awkward rhythmically.

            Great public speaking has a beat to it. Comedians will refer to this as cadence or timing. A master of timing was Rodney Dangerfield. His setups and punch lines had the rhythmic point and counterpoint sometimes evident in brilliant music—like Mozart. All successful comedians and public speakers have a sense of timing interwoven throughout everything they say.

            Having taught college speech classes, I see students struggle with this concept all the time. As they produce their speeches, their minds are in academic writing mode. The problem is writing and speaking have different rhythms. In writing, one is able to use longer, more complex sentence structures. For speaking, one often uses shorter, simpler sentence structures. It is more common to use ellipsis, which is a fancy way of saying leave parts out. The context and delivery fills in the missing pieces. The transcription of a great speech doesn’t always make for great writing. The same can be true of great writing—that it doesn’t always transfer to the spoken word.

            I have had some experience on stage doing standup comedy. When I first started, I was terrible. The material I was writing was grammatically flawless. My sentence structures were masterfully composed. At the time I was teaching several writing classes, so all the sermons I was giving about grammar were spilling over into my comedy writing. On stage, my material was lifeless and longwinded. It didn’t have the right rhythm for the spoken word.

            The take home is to become aware of the rhythm of language. Study the musical beat that underlies great writing and speaking. In so doing, you will become a stronger writer and speaker.

Public Speaking and the Learning Process

            A panic fills your mind. “Ah! Tomorrow is the big final!” You open your notes to page one. The notes stare back at you, piercing your soul with the question, “Did we cover this?” You flip through eighteen notebooks filled with unfamiliar material. You seriously wonder what you paid tuition for; thinking, “If I wanted to read a book, I would have gone to the library.”

            Unfortunately, this is the all too familiar outcome of the average college lecture. Much is covered; little is absorbed. Why? Why are paid educators often the worst teachers?

            Your mind fades for a moment and you remember the comedy club you attended last weekend. Now, that guy was a communicator! You can vividly recall the story of his grandmother and her nylons. You remember the intimate details of his dad’s fishing trip. You also remember the argument he had with his wife. Apparently Mr. Comedian was a far more effective teacher than Mr. Lecture. At least you remember what he covered! Why?

            The answers to the why’s come down to the learning process. The process involves at least three distinct steps: inputs, processing and outputs. The input is when you take in information. Processing is where your mind does something with the information—perhaps you come up with a theory, see how the material relates to your life or ask yourself an intriguing question. The output is where you take what your mind is processing and put it into action. This brings us to three key principles of the learning process: 1) The deeper the processing, the move vibrant the learning experience. 2) The output completes the process. Without output no deep learning occurs. 3) The more meaningful the output, the greater the learning. This by necessity means the learner is emotionally engaged.

            Think for a moment about Mr. Lecture. Mr. Lecture approaches people like they are sponges. He dispenses knowledge and the audience is supposed to absorb it. For the most part, this involves passive processing—little depth and little emotional involvement. There is also little output, beyond some rote regurgitation for the midterm and final.

            Now, think about Mr. Comedian. The fundamental structure of comedy is setup followed by punch line. The setup gives the mind something to process. When he tells the story about his grandmother, you can picture your grandmother. You can see her struggling with her nylons. He is talking about everyday life, which is far easier for the mind to process than lists of terms, definitions, names and dates (the diet Mr. Lecture gives you). During the setup the comedians gives the audience information the mind starts processing. During the punch line, he introduces a twist. Sometimes that twist is misdirection. Sometimes he ties things together in such a succinct way, that you chuckle while thinking, “That is so true!” In both cases, you experience a deep emotional release when you laugh. Any deep emotional release is an output! Laughter is connected to the learning process.

            Compare the two speakers. For forty-five hours of instruction with Mr. Lecture, you only had two, emotionally meaningless outputs: the midterm and the final. For an hour comedy show, you had two-hundred-fifty emotionally gratifying outputs. While it may not be popular to say this within the hallowed halls of academia, in many cases Mr. Comedian is a far better educator than Mr. Lecture!