Public Speaking: Avoiding common rookie mistakes, 12 foolproof ways to grab your audience, and what to do with your hands.

Avoiding the 10 most common mistakes in public speaking.

     At some point almost all of us are faced with having to give some form of presentation in front of an audience, be it co-workers or classmates, and I hope and assume that you want to keep your audience engaged and get your message across effectively. This article by Terry Gault will help you do just that by going over and helping you avoid the 10 most common rookie mistakes in Public Speaking. Some of them are common sense, but just in case you need a public speaking refresher. Here is a quick list of the mistakes, go to the article to find out more info on avoiding them. 

1. Using small scale movements and  gestures
2. Speaking with low energy
3. Not preparing enough
4. Not practicing enough
5. Data-Centric presentations
6. Playing it safe
7. Avoiding vulnerability
8. Taking oneself way too seriously
9. Presenting too much material
10. Rushing

Start Strong: 12 foolproof ways to grab your audience. 

"Hello, my uh name is Bob and I'm here to speak to you guys now about managing your um employee logistics and how to manage some HR systems. I'm gonna outline some new research in the field and will be explaining some new things for you guys. Okay so let's gets going." 

Are you bored to death or what? 

How you start a speech or presentation matters, and it matters more than you think. In just the first 30-60 seconds of a presentation, your audience has already figured out whether or not they are going to be genuinely engaged or sit back in their seats and go into mindless-sponge mode (passively absorbing information instead of being actively engaged and really learning). That's why a strong start to your speech or presentation matters so much. 

Here are 12 foolproof ways to start a speech according to this Genard Method blog post:

1. Question
2. Story
3. Quotation
4. A Strong Visual
5. Impactful/Disruptive Statistic 
6. Startling Statement
7. Personal anecdote (story) or experience
8. Humor
9. Expert Opinion
10. Sound Effect
11. Physical Object
12. Testimony or Success Story

I also recommend going to the blog post where the tips came from and scrolling down to see some examples of great starts to speeches. Click here to see the blog post.

What the heck do I do with my hands while speaking?!?

If you have ever been given a presentation and found yourself in the awkward position where you didn't know what to do with your hands then you are not alone. I believe that hand gestures can make or break an effective presentation. Maybe "break" is a little harsh, but a great speech can be denigrated with awkward or small hand gestures. Likewise, a less-compelling presentation can be boosted with effective use of hand gestures. 

Take a few minutes and check out some tips from this article on hand gestures during presentations.

Are there any other useful tips you know of for public speaking? Leave a tip in the comment section below. 

     

Monday Video: Avoiding the Catch 22 of self-control (and why it's important!)

Start your week off with with some meaningful and thought-provoking stimulus.

     Self-control is important, no doubt about it. You've probably heard about the importance of self-control a million times. Or, you haven't figured out its' importance yet and that's why you might be holding yourself back without knowing it. However, ask most parents and teaching their kids self-control is probably high on their list of parenting priorities. (Or teaching some form of self-control, such as trying to restrict the number of hours spent watching TV or teaching them to resist certain degenerative temptations like eating too much candy).

But don't take it from what you've heard about self-control thus far, take it from the research. Angela Duckworth et al. surveyed middle school students on self-control and IQ and found that while IQ was a factor in final GPA, levels of self-control had a bigger effect on grades. Look at the graph below. IQ alone can get you to the 90's level, but self-control pushes you beyond.

Duckworth et al. 

Cool study, but i'm not in middle school.

Now, you might be thinking "so what if this worked on middle schooler's, it doesn't apply to me", and you have a fair point. However, self control has been found to be a significant factor in adulthood as well.

The Duniden Longitudinal study (Moffitt et al.) measured self-control in 1,037 young children born in 1972-73 from the same region in New Zealand (Duniden) and have been following them for the rest of their lives. So far the findings have been remarkable. Researchers pitted self-control against IQ and socio-economic status. Throughout the participants adulthood the researchers looked at wealth and financial decision-making, crime, age of becoming a parent, and long-term physical health. The researchers found that self control was just as, or in many cases more important to wealth, crime, health, etc... than IQ and socio-economic status during childhood. (Just imagine the same results graph like the one above, but instead of Final GPA on the side it is Wealth).

So how can I develop self-control?

Self-control is tricky because as Angela Duckworth puts it, there is a catch 22 involved. A lot of the strategies we are taught for self-control require self-control to implement. Example: "Slowing down and taking a deep breath." If you find yourself easily ticked off, then it is unlikely that remembering to slow down and take a breath will work, because by the time you remember you have already blown a gasket.

Have no fear though, that's where this Mondays' video comes in: Go to minute 8:20 in the video below to learn about the five most-effective strategies of self-control. The best part? You don't need a good level of self-control to implement them. (Note: Following the video can get a little tricky, so below the video I have included a short definition of each strategy).

(Here's the video link: https://vimeo.com/96079124)


Summary of the 5 strategies of self-control:

Situation Selection: Sitting in the front rows in class or meeting, selecting the right social situation. (Parents/teachers/bosses: Can't make people sit in the front or make them choose their friends, because it's not self-control. Instead, make them aware of how situation selection boosts self-control and its' benefits).

Situation Modification: Seeing vs. not seeing the reward. Study showed that secretaries are much more likely to eat candy on their desk if it is in a clear jar vs. in a jar they can't see through or reach easily.

Selective Attention: Where you look matters. Catch yourself if you are off-task and eliminate distractions to help you stay more disciplined with a task.

Cognitive re-appraisal: Think of yourself in the third person as you imagine yourself doing things versus in the first person to help regulate negative emotions. (Imagine yourself getting angry with someone from the point of view of a bystander).

Response Modulation: Direct suppression of impulses (willpower). Not as reliable as the other strategies, but if all else fails, try summoning the willpower for self-control. (The more you do the better you will get).

Interesting nugget of knowledge: Self-control is correlated with Grit and vice-versa. Duckworth found that if someone has a high level of self-control, they are likely to have a high level of Grit. However, keep in mind that having a high level in one aspect doesn't guarantee a high level in the other, it's just a correlation.

Further resources:

Duckworth Study: Self-control in school-age children: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1296633.files/Self-Control%20in%20School-Age%20Children%20072513.pdf

Duniden Longitudinal Study: http://www.pnas.org/content/108/7/2693.full.pdf

Multitasking: How to make you happier and make the time more productive; and a life-changing speech by Jim Carrey.

When multitasking makes you happy and when it doesn't.  

     Do you ever find yourself multitasking too often? A recent study by Jordin Etkin and Cassie Mogilner published in the Harvard Business Review discovered when multitasking makes you happy and when it doesn't.

They conducted a series of experiments with a broad-range of participants and then measured how happy they felt while performing tasks. You can take three minutes and read about the specifics of what they measured here.

Here are their findings: 

"Whereas participants expected that more variety would always make them happier, when looking back, more variety only made them happier for sufficiently long periods of time - like over a day, a week, or a month. Over short time periods, like 10 minutes or an hour, more varied activities actually made people less happy." 

So what are the practical implications?

"Schedule varied activities throughout your day, week, and month but make sure that you remove variety from your hours and minutes." That is, leave the cell phone alone while you are cooking dinner but don't cook the same thing every night. 

"But sometimes I HAVE to do two things at once."

If that is the case, try to think of tasks collectively: Instead of thinking "I need to get my science homework done, study for my math test and prepare for my english presentation", group it into "get my homework done." Similarly for adults, don't think of getting your kids ready in the morning as "cook breakfast and make sure they are dressed while they have the right shoes on and permission slips are signed and the right folders are in the right bags and we are out on time to beat traffic." Instead, think about getting the kids ready collectively as "'getting ready tasks'" instead of thinking about how many tasks that you need to get done. According to Etkin and Mogliner's research, thinking about tasks collectively "will make you happier and the time feel more productive." 

To conclude, leave the cell phone alone while you are cooking dinner but don't cook the same thing every night. It may sound  like common sense, but take a step back and reflect on how recently you were engaged at doing two different things in the same short span of time and think about your level of productivity and satisfaction. 

Access the full article by clicking here. 

Jim Carrey's commencement address at Maharishi University of Management. 

     This speech is absolutely brilliant. It's the perfect mix of clever, hilarious, and life-changing packed into an incredible 26 minutes. Worth the time, no doubt about it. [However, if you're really pressed for time, I included the three most powerful quotes from the speech below the video].

(original video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V80-gPkpH6M)

Here are the three most powerful quotes from the speech (in my opinion):

"Our eyes are not viewers, they are also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script, and the working title is 'I'll never be enough'"

"As far as I can tell it's just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it, while letting go of how it comes to pass." 

"Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world."