National Post (National Edition)
HOW TO BLUFF YOUR WAY THROUGH PUBLIC SPEAKING.
Eight time-tested steps to conquer your anxieties and dupe a roomful of people into believing you know what you’re doing with a mic at a lectern Calum Marsh
An invitation to a speech is a grave penalty for most. Three out of four people harbour a deep-seated anxiety over public speaking, according to Psychology Today. Those polled even claimed to fear public speaking more than death – perhaps an exaggerated confession, but one that surely taps into something profound and ineradicable in human nature.
That looming dread is called glossophobia, and it entails more anguish in an average person’s lifetime than most other avoidable causes of stress, not least because, in the summertime especially, it can be nearly impossible to get out of it.
The sweaty palms and suddenly inexplicable hiccups that beleaguer the would-be speaker can be counted on to strike as soon as one taps the champagne glass at the wedding reception or takes the podium at the commencement address. We spend all day every day talking to one another without the slightest discomfort, but if it’s before a crowd of people, we’d rather light ourselves on fire than open our mouths to speak.
There are, however, ways to alleviate the strain that do not involve self-immolation.
I am not referring to methods for improving your ability to speak or mastering the art of disquisition, but rather something much easier: deluding your audience into believing you are better than you are and, perhaps more importantly, reducing your capacity to care what they think of you in the first place. After all, what matters about a speech is not that you speak well or sermonize persuasively. What matters is that you survive with minimal damage to your dignity and maximum credit to your poise.
You needn’t do a good job. People only need to think you did.
With that in mind, we here present the National Post’s official guide to bluffing your way through public speaking: eight time-tested steps to conquering your anxieties and duping the room of your choice.
1 KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Familiarity with the men and women before whom you are speaking will allow you the insight necessary to target their weaknesses. A crowd of cheerful simpletons expected by the nature of the occasion to be in high spirits should be plied with obsequious platitudes and broad punchlines at the expense of something universally disliked. A group of people who seem intelligent or seem to believe themselves to be should be flattered with arcane references and obscure language they needn’t actually understand. Bachelors are disarmed by impropriety; graduating students are stirred by treacly hope. To condescend to someone has negative connotations, but it’s illuminating to read the definition of the word: to behave as if one is on equal terms with an inferior. If you want your listeners to be comfortable and to accept you as one of them you have to condescend to them hard.
2 PREPARE AND PRACTICE
The cornerstone of any compelling speech is its successful memorization – not the memorization of every word in the speech verbatim but rather the memorization of other, better speeches and the style and manner in which they tend to be delivered well. Watch YouTube videos of experienced public speakers and train yourself to emulate their cadence and the enthusiasm of their delivery. Watch daytime news anchors and politicians and affect their brand of unctuous plastic zeal. What you say on stage will matter less to your audience than their perception of your physical presence, and this aspect can always be influenced by avidity and vigour. Be confident or pretend to be for the duration of your time on stage. Believe what you say or convince those listening that you do.
3 ORGANIZE
The structure of any speech is critical to how it will be received by those listening whether the object is to toast a bride and groom or celebrate the conclusion of the school year. Your goal in structuring your speech should be to deliver the most impressive-sounding remarks as early as possible so as to convey to your audience your eloquence and perspicacity while they are still paying attention and their patience has not yet been exhausted. Back-load the running time with filler material too vague to be criticized or even remembered at all the very moment after the words leave your lips. Finish, if possible, with the sort of poetic emphasis that suggests you have at last come full circle and have left the less perceptive members of the crowd unable to apprehend the ingenuity and meticulousness of your overarching design. Relate personal anecdotes that could be mistaken for parables. Begin a sentence “to paraphrase a great mind” and proceed to recite any quote you are certain no one present could hope to identify.
4 IMAGINE YOUR AUDIENCE NAKED
Better yet, imagine your audience debased and humiliated, in thrall to the command of your oratory and bent by the subtlest effects of hypnotic suggestion to your inflexible will. Concentrate on those members of the crowd whose eyes seem most to betray a contempt so fervent it can hardly be concealed, and then imagine your voice persuading them one perfect word at a time to relinquish their distaste and become instead enamoured of the brilliance of your speech-making. Picture others mesmerized by your animal magnetism or captivated by the manifest wit and intelligence of your rhetoric. Hold an image in your mind’s eye of yourself exalted by a fusillade of cheers, the embittered skepticism of every last member of the audience having been melted away by your magniloquence, their hearts won by the simple clarity and truth of what you have deigned today to impart to them. Think about the very tall glass of vodka you will pour the minute this speech has ended.
5 STUDY THE CROWD
Look in particular for any face not directed back at you or not fixed with a look of mockintrigue out of courtesy. Any man audacious enough to consult their phone at any point in your speech for any length of time should be dwelled upon with an intensity that impresses upon them unmistakably how indignant you are over the flagrant transgression – more advanced speakers may elect to glance away from them pointedly until such time as they return in presumed safety to their phone, the object of which is of course to meet the gaze of the distracted party with a stare of palpable fury at the precise moment they look up again and are defeated by the pressure of sheer humiliation. Feel assured in your entitlement to the respect and deference of your listeners even or perhaps especially if it seems unlikely that you really have either.
6 SPEAK CLEARLY AND ENUNCIATE
“Um” and “like” are the most obvious adversaries of appreciable intelligence and the readiest way to demonstrate ineptitude, but while you ought to eradicate them from your speech by any means necessary they are not the only dunderheaded verbal tics to scrupulously avoid. Be wary of any expression that has the ring of originality – giving your listeners pause to think will only distract them from your compelling physical presence and will draw attention unhelpfully to the content of your speech rather than its general tenor and feeling. Embrace any cliché or bromide that accords with the overall character of your speech regardless of whether it bears any particular relation to what you are saying: what matters is that it feels appropriate and true, not that it actually means much of anything. Forgo any joke that contains traces of cleverness or genuine humour, and favour instead trite wordplay, lame puns and witticisms so broad and unfunny that no one could fail to laugh at them.
7 MASTER THE MEANINGFUL PAUSE
In an effort to regulate both the speed and rhythm of your speaking, you should embrace the momentary respite of a beat between well-selected words and phrases. Taking a breath, settling your gaze on the crowd with purpose and conviction, and inhaling sharply before uttering your next remark will imbue otherwise nondescript passages of speechwriting with the potency of expressive inflection. It may in this way be possible for you to cultivate a room-wide impression of dynamism and momentum amid a mess of unvarying banality – let the tempo and cadence of your speech embody an energy and zestfulness that its content plainly does not have. Regular pauses will furthermore expand the duration of your speech without the encumbrance of additional material. A five-minute address may be stretched to a weighty 10 or even 15 merely by the artful use of such breaks.
8 ELIMINATE FEAR
Finally, it’s worth remembering that glossophobia will impede your speech only if you allow it. There is, after all, nothing to worry about – no consequence to suffer even if you botch the effort besides temporary low-level embarrassment and no long-term effect besides the lingering memory of your performance in the handful of men and women who cared enough about what you were saying to retain any of it thereafter. The most important thing to remember is that disdain for public speaking is shared by so many of us individually that, together, we accept a tacit understanding, an unspoken belief in its utter lack of worth as a practice and form. No one cares about your commencement address or your words of wisdom to a graduating class. No one cares that you are the best man at the wedding. No one has interest in your salutation as valedictorian. At the conference or the meeting or the big critical event, the entire crowd of ostensibly captive listeners are really just thinking about lunch. You would be, too. And herein lies the most important piece of knowledge necessary to avoid feeling nervous over public speaking: whether good or bad, your speech doesn’t matter.