"Public Speaking"

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Now, without further ado, Doctor Rich Vogel is a neurophysiologist, a fellow, and two time president of the ASNM, and this is his 10th year as a member of ASET. Rich has devoted his career to advancing the science and practice of neurophysiology for the betterment of patient care. He holds PhDs in both neuroscience and psychology and has more than 25 years of experience in public speaking. In fact, if you've attended an ASET conference recently, you've had the extreme pleasure of hearing one of his presentations. He's here today to speak to us about public speaking and presentation skills for neurodiagnostic technologists. Please welcome Doctor Vogel. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Thank you so much for that kind introduction. It is truly an honor to be here to address this important topic. So I want to start by talking about this moment right here. I want to dissect it because this is the moment so many people fear. I'm standing up here all alone in front of a crowd of people who. Who are all staring back at me. In this moment, I feel what many people might call butterflies, which is a really cute way to describe my sympathetic nervous system switching into overdrive while everyone is watching. But if I take a moment to dissect and do a systems check, I notice my heart rate has increased, I have some muscle tension, my hands feel a little shaky, I'm starting to sweat, and I suddenly feel so thirsty. If I weren't describing all of this to you, I'd wonder if anyone is noticing in this moment what I'm experiencing and what so many others experience is that classic fight or flight response, right? And it's the body's natural response to an actual or perceived threat. But let's think about this rationally, shall we? What exactly am I fighting or fleeing? Where's the threat? It's not you. I mean, look around this room. Everyone is calm and relaxed. There's nothing threatening about this audience. And I'm very thankful for that, by the way. So it's not you, it's me. The threat is here in my head. A perceived threat, which I know is totally unwarranted. It's also, if you think about it, a self perpetuating cycle of nervousness, fear, and anxiety. Right? So I'm nervous before I come up here, and then I get a little bit more nervous when I stand up here and look at everyone. And then I wonder if you notice that I'm nervous, which makes me more nervous. I'm afraid I'll forget something or say the wrong thing, which makes me even more nervous. And it's madness. So what do I do to stop this? Well, I'll show you what I do to stop the madness. I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm going to adjust my posture, lock eyes with someone I know, smile, and carry that smile to the rest of the audience and keep moving forward. And I will project confidence from here on out. But just know that inside I'm a little anxious and nervous and it's okay. In fact, it's perfectly normal. Over 75% of the population experiences some degree of nervousness or anxiety when it comes to public speaking. And that's more so, way more so, than other common fears like falling and death and spiders. And I'm just one of those people that gets nervous. Not for any particular reason. It's just a natural response that my body has. But many people respond to this nervousness by avoiding public speaking. And doing that can negatively impact your career trajectory, your personal growth, and even your social standing. Personally, I love public speaking, but I've been a shy person for as long as I can remember. It goes all the way back to childhood. Look at these pictures of me as a shy child, looking away from the camera, hiding behind trees and tree stumps and giant Heineken cans. I was clearly shy as a kid. Right? But what about these pics? They appear to show someone who's outgoing and fun. How do we reconcile that? Well, it turns out after some self analysis, that in this context here at this conference, for example, I am a shy extrovert. Alright, what do I mean by that? Well, if you map these different personality types as shown here, so introvert to extrovert on the x axis and shy to brazen on the y axis, you end up creating four quadrants. And I often fall into this quadrant here, which is a shy extrovert. Not always. So sometimes I get energy from quiet environments, but I also happen to like parties and conferences and giving talks like this. But I get so nervous. You know, people often think that being shy and introverted are the same. And you hear them say it in a sentence, right? Like, oh, he's a shy introvert. But they're not the same thing. Shyness is a fear of negative judgment, and introversion is a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments. They're very different. So just to give you an idea of different personalities that fall into these categories or quadrants, let's look at some celebrities. Here's Bill Gates, well known to be quiet and bookish, but by all accounts does not care what people think about him, brazen introvert. Miley Cyrus, a brazen extrovert, larger than life and doesn't care what people think about her. Barbra Streisand, a shy extrovert, larger than life, but gets paralyzing stage fright. And Johnny Depp, the shy introvert, quiet, reserved, gets tremendous anxiety when performing. So I have over 20 years of public speaking experience, and I've given hundreds of lectures all around the world, and I still get nervous every time I stand in front of a group. And yet, despite this nervousness that I experience, I've managed to speak in front of crowds like this, thousands of people. So here's what I want to do today. I want to help you find your voice. So I just gave you a couple of minor tips and tricks that you can use to manage those fears on stage, and I'll give you some more later on to help you prepare for a talk. But I also want to show you a systematic approach to how you develop a speech from beginning to end. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to shift gears here, and I want to spend some time talking about building and delivering a presentation. I like to approach giving a talk through four stages, what I call the four p's, planning, preparation, practicing, and perspective. So let's start with planning. And I like to think about it as having three pillars. Three pillars of the planning phase are, in this order, audience, occasion, and purpose. The absolute most critical component to giving any kind of public speech is analyzing the audience. And I cannot overstress this. It's important to understand what are their demographics? What knowledge do they bring to the table? What's important to them? What are their core beliefs? How large is the crowd? Learn as much as you can about the audience so you can craft a message that resonates with them. How about if I give you an example? If I were to give a talk on cranial nerve meps, that's my topic, and I'm going to give a talk on that topic at ACNS, and I'm also going to give a talk on that topic at asset. At the end of the day, the talks would be very different because the audiences are different. ACNs tends to be filled with physicians who have gone through medical school and residency and fellowship training and may have been in practice for a while. An asset tends to be composed of neurodiagnostic professionals who haven't gone to medical school, so they come with different backgrounds, and I need to take those things into account when speaking with the audience at the end of the day, I need to deliver something that will resonate with the people in front of me. And that's a big mistake that a lot of people make out there on the speaking circuit, is that they, they put together a talk and then they recycle the exact same talk for different audiences. Remember this, always tailor to your audience. Let's move on to occasion. So occasion helps you to understand formality. What do I mean by that? Well, you might initially start asking yourself questions like, can I give a fun talk filled with anecdotes and jokes? Or should it be a serious talk filled with data, like a business pitch? Later down the line, you might be thinking about things like your attire in the context of the occasion and the formality. Do I need to wear a suit to establish credibility with this audience? Or will they accept me in a polo shirt and a wrinkled jacket? Finally, there's purpose. This is going to frame your entire approach to your talk. Is your goal to inform the audience? Is it to persuade the audience? Are you giving a ceremonial talk or is it some combination of them? And this is what we're going to talk about next. When you give an informational talk, when your goal is to inform the audience, you're essentially sharing knowledge, educating, coaching. Your message is crafted for everyone in the audience. So it's really important to balance the level of detail to match their background knowledge and demographics. You will have people in the audience, likely that some of whom are experts and some of whom are novices and a bunch of people in between. So you need to have a little something for everyone, because this is an informational talk that tends to be educational and purpose. You really want to focus on showing the audience as opposed to telling, because that's how people learn best. And these types of talks, you generally end by summarizing key information that you want them to remember. When you give a persuasive talk, you're essentially asking the audience to embrace your perspective. Your message is going to be crafted primarily for the portion of the audience that's undecided or opposed to your perspective. I mean, if you think about it, you don't need to persuade people who agree with you, right? So you may rely on data and fact, or you may share opinions about the accuracy of information. You'll address values about what is right, wrong, good and bad. And in these types of talks, when you're trying to persuade people, you tend to suggest actions that should be taken to resolve a problem. Obviously, you're going to preempt any common objections that people have but the end of the talk is going to be a call to action. So remember the informational talk. The end, you're going to summarize the key information you want them to remember, but a persuasive talk, you're trying to persuade them to do something. So you're going to end with a call to action. Now, a ceremonial talk. You're either celebrating or denigrating someone or something. In this case, the audience could be anybody. Just think weddings, funerals, any kind of an occasion like that. But because ceremonial talks really aren't relevant here for us today, I'm going to spend time focusing on the informational and persuasive talks. So the next part of the planning process is choosing your topic. And four things need to come together in order to identify your ideal topic, your knowledge, your passion for the topic, the audience and the purpose. So obviously you need to have knowledge of your topic, but you also need to care about it because you'll lose the audience if they sense you don't care. I mean, why should they care if you don't, right? Passion just can't be faked. So choose a topic that means something to you. As mentioned before, you need to have an understanding of the audience. And the final component is knowing whether your purpose is to inform, to persuade, or perhaps some combination. But your ideal topic is where these four categories overlap. So let's use today's talk as an example. So I know a lot about public speaking. I have over 20 years of experience, and I've given hundreds of talks. Right. But also I am a dedicated, career long student of public speaking, speaking and the psychology of persuasion. So that's the knowledge part. What about passion? Well, I'm passionate about public speaking, but more importantly, I'm passionate about educating and empowering people. So when I give this talk on public speaking, I'm hoping that the end result is that I transfer knowledge about public speaking to you and empower you to engage in public speaking and advice advance your career. So my passion is really ultimately for you, the audience. Okay, so what do I know about this audience? Well, I know some of you, and you know some of me personally, and that helps a lot to start to understand the audience. But I also know this audience largely consists of neurodiagnostic professionals, many of whom are missing out on career opportunities by avoiding public, public speaking. And I know that's likely due to some fear or anxiety that you feel. And that's not a big jump for me because I also know that 77% of the population has some fear, nervousness or anxiety around public speaking. So it's a safe bet in that regard. And then finally, my purpose is twofold. One, I want to inform you, to educate you about public speaking, and two, I want to persuade you that it's an important aspect of personal development and professional development, and honestly, that you can do it. But we'll come back to that. So this is going to be a little bit of a tangent, but I want to take a minute to talk about the principles of persuasion, because it's something that you see every day and in fact, you're bombarded with it in your media consumption, and so am I. We all are. But it can be a critical approach, really, to developing a strong presentation. So if I go all the way back to Aristotle and his contemporaries, to the folks from his time, but primarily, Aristotle described three pillars of persuasion which are formally referred to collectively as rhetoric, and those pillars are logos, ethos and pathos. Let's start with logos. So logos is about logic. You're focusing on evidence and reason and persuading people by presenting them with facts, data, statistics. So I'll give you an example. You turn on the tv and you see a climatologist on television who is presenting the results of their research, the topic of climate change, or you see an epidemiologist presenting the results of their research on vaccines. That would be an example of persuading with facts, data, statistics. Now, you have to be care of what I call, and I can pick anybody here, but I'll call it the doctor Phil trap, right? So if you turn on the television and you see Doctor Phil, who is a. An unlicensed psychologist and celebrity, talking about vaccines or climate change, well, they're actually taking advantage of trying to persuade you with the next pillar, which is ethos or credibility. So in ethos, you're focusing on character and reputation, and you're persuading people simply through the appearance of expertise. So it could be expertise, it could be competence, it could be assumed. Goodness. So examples are, as I just said, advertisements that show someone in a white coat, or commercials that say things like, nine out of ten dentists choose crest. So that's reliance on credibility, ethos. The third pillar is pathos or emotion. This is where you focus on humor or passion or. Or anger. So you're going to persuade people with metaphors, stories, anecdotes, inflammatory language, accusations. You may see data presented as fact, but which has been altered. So an example. And you see this all the time, right? Especially right now. An example might be political speeches, cable news Sarah McLaughlin SPCA commercials and commercials that say things like Choosey moms choose Jif stated to make you feel like you're an uncaring parent. If you buy skippy, they're toying with your emotions. Pathos. You know what's really interesting is that people from Aristotle's time thought that those who were persuaded by logos, logic, evidence were of the highest intelligence. And those who were persuaded by pathos emotion were considered ignorant. But they also recognized that pathos persuading people through by toying with their emotions was actually the most effective. And if you've ever watched cable news, not much has changed in 2000 years. Okay, so that all of that is the planning phase. Now moving on to the preparation phase, which is the second PDE. This is really going to be the bulk of your work. And the steps begin by creating an outline. So do you remember back when you were in grade school and teacher had you write an essay and the teacher said you have to start by developing an outline? It's the same way you start putting together a presentation. So first, state your goal. My goal is to inform the audience about x or my goal is to persuade the audience to. So write that out. And then you want to write out a general flow. So you have your central idea, and then below that, what are your main points that you want to communicate? And then you want to think, okay, how am I going to introduce this and how am I going to conclude this? So that's just a general outline. Next, you want to think about how you're going to establish your credibility. And the reason I put this here is because, because one of the best ways to establish credibility with an audience is to begin your talk with a strong opening. You need to capture their attention, their engagement within the first 10 seconds, because if you don't, you lose them. So you're thinking about how am I going to demonstrate my competence, my reputation, my character, my goodwill? And that could be through a strong opening. Whether that's a quotation or a statistic or a funny story or joke, whatever it is, those first few seconds are really important. So we just finished talking about the outline and how you're going to introduce the topic. Well, part of that introduction may be your strong opening, and that's why I put that here. The next part in your preparation is thinking about how you're going to inform or persuade the audience. So if it's an educational talk, what kind of resources do you need in order to transfer that knowledge from you to them? If it's a persuasive talk. What types of reasoning are you going to use? Or I should say approach more so than reasoning. But that's what I call it here anyway. Logos, ethos, or pathos or some combination. So are you going to use evidence? Are you going to use credibility? Or are you going to use emotion? And then the fourth is assembly. So this is where you're going to get organized. You're going to gather all of your materials and resources that you've identified, and you're going to build a slide deck. And the last part of that in the building of the slide deck is to absolutely carefully review it to make sure there are no errors. And I can't stress this, as you know, I've coached people who are seasoned business leaders, put together slides with spelling and punctuation and grammar errors and inconsistencies, and they don't seem to think that's important. And it's shocking to me. And they're shocked to hear. When you have errors on slides, they're actually subconsciously distracting to an audience. Not to mention how it makes the speaker look. So your audience already has a million distractions, right? They have phones in their pockets and laptops in front of them, and apple watches. They've got a million reasons to not pay attention to you. But you have a strong opening, you're giving a great talk, the audience is engaged, and you have some error on your slide. And you know what? The audience might not consciously know it, but you'll notice. They will look away. They will find something else subconsciously distracting. So make sure your slideshow are perfect. Okay. In the preparation phase, the very last thing you want to think about is the anticipating piece. So you want to anticipate questions that may come from the audience or challenges or objections they may have to what you say and you want to think about, okay, what are these things they may say and how am I going to respond to them? That way you're not caught off guard during the Q and a session. So all of that is preparation. Now we'll move on to practice, which is the third p after planning and preparation here, you want to go through your talk out loud as if you were giving it live at least six to eight times. And you're going to focus on three language, timing and delivery. So language is really about identifying keywords that you want to make sure that you use a repeat during your talk. Making sure that the things that you say are consistent with the audience that you're speaking to. Next is perfecting your timing, making sure that things flow well if you use animations that you know when you're going to hit the button, so everything goes seamlessly. And also importantly, making sure that you stay on time. So if you're given a 30 minutes presentation, making sure you're staying within that 30 minutes and not bleeding into the next person's time. And then finally, delivery. This is really about paying attention to your style of delivery, including hand gestures and body language. And I really can't overstress the importance of body language. So when people are nervous, if you notice, they tend to cover their vital organs. Look for someone putting their hand on their neck or playing with a necklace, arms crossed over the heart or hands crossed over the abdomen. People even cross their legs while standing up on stage. But the best way to look confident is to avoid doing these things and really instead focus on a couple of key poses. So, for example, all public speakers, they use certain gestures to project a sense of confidence, like this box in front of them, or openness by having their arms out and their palms up, authority by pointing their finger or having their hands sideways pointing toward the audience or hands on their hips in what they call a power pose. Demonstrating power. So if you look at these photos, politicians are very well trained when it comes to using hand gestures and I body language. Different politicians in these photos. Different sides of the aisle, different countries, different decades, same hand gestures. Now, usually when people watch debates, they look for differences between candidates, right? But look closely during the next debate, and I would encourage you to watch it and focus on hand gestures and body language. In fact, you want to have some fun. Watch the debate with the sound off, because there's nothing worth hearing anyway. What you'll find though, is that there are a lot of similarities between these folks. They are very well trained and practiced. Okay, so the fourth and final p is for perspective. And this is about overcoming the fear, the anxiety and visualizing success. Start with the fact that you selected your topic very early on in the process, during the planning phase, and at that time, you recognized that it was something that you were knowledgeable about, something that you cared about and have passion for, something that was appropriate for the audience, and you identified a goal that you wanted to accomplish. So, believe in the importance of the topic that you selected for you, for the audience. Second, believe in your plan. You spent a lot of time planning, preparing, practicing. If you put in the time like I told you, you will have confidence, comfort. I always recommend that you spend some time getting familiar with the room where you're going to be speaking. The layout, the technology. Just anything you can do to troubleshoot before your talk, as opposed to during, is really going to help you. I always go up and talk to the sound guy and make sure that I understand how everything's going to work before I give a talk. And I would recommend you do the same. Dissect. So get to the root of your fears and control the narrative. So for me, I recognize that this thing, this threatening thing that makes me feel nervous, it's not the audience, it's in my head. And I recognize that the audience wants me to succeed. All audiences want the speaker to succeed. Remember that. So if you feel fear, dissect it. Get to the bottom of it. Flip the script. The next is demeanor. And I can tell you that no matter how nervous you are on the inside, there are certain things that you can do to project confidence. And people will see that confidence. They won't see your nervousness. So you don't need to necessarily feel confident to look confident. And the best ways to look confident are in the way that you dress. So I would recommend that you choose a tire that makes you feel confident, but that is also comfortable and appropriate for the venue where you're speaking. Also, when you're walking around, walk tall. Walk with confidence. You don't need to feel confidence on the inside to project confidence. And finally, on the moments when you step up on stage, focus. Find those friendly faces out in the crowd and let them be your grounding points. Don't be afraid to pause now and then and reground. Find the face. Smile. Carry that smile out to the rest of the audience. Make sure you adjust your posture sometimes. Take that deep breath in. Everything is going to be okay and the audience is on your side. Focus on that. Speaking of controlling the narrative, which I just mentioned a couple of minutes ago, if you think about it, we perform aspects of public speaking in everyday life. So here are some examples. Coaching a sports team informational convincing your kids to reduce their screen time. Persuasion, and toasting the bride and groom at a wedding ceremonial. In the work environment, we may train or educate our colleagues. Informational. Or we may try to convince our bosses to purchase new equipment. Persuasive. Or we may even try to convince a state senator to support a licensure bill. There's another persuasive example. In all of these situations, the basic principles are the same. You're just applying them to a different context. Also, another great way to gain confidence is to start small and work your way up to higher stakes. So when I was in graduate school and really started to have to speak all the time. I didn't start by giving talks to the entire school. I actually started by practicing talks with friends, and then I would give them in front of classmates and then in front of the faculty. So it was a progressive approach for you. I would say start with friends or family, then move on to giving talks to your teammates, and they could be educational talks. Then move to conferences. And it doesn't have to be a big conference like this. Initially, I would say start with a small regional conference, get comfortable there, and then move to a national conference like this. With that level of comfort. Then you'll feel more comfortable speaking to your medical directors and department chairs. After that, folks in the C suite. And who knows? After that, you may find yourself trying to persuade a state senator to support a licensure bill. The world is your oyster. There are so many benefits to public speaking, from improving your communication and confidence, to becoming more persuasive, advancing your career, and so much more. So I actually made an extra slide in your handouts to describe these in more detail because I think understanding the benefits is so important. I wanted to have all of that information written out on the slide, so be sure to check out the handouts. Also within the handouts is this slide here. Here are some great books that I can recommend on the topic of public speaking and persuasion. You know, the fact is, the public speaking, it's a topic that can take up several semesters if you really want to dive into subject. But this is really just intended to be a 30 minutes overview. So, winding down here and in the interest of being persuasive and giving a persuasive talk, I want to end by sharing a problem, recommending a solution, and then really ending with a call to action. The problem is this. We need more people advocating for the neurodiagnostic profession, and we need fresh faces with new perspectives speaking at these conferences. And the way to solve that problem is for people like you to get involved in public speaking. Everyone in this room would benefit personally and professionally from giving it a shot. Now, I've given you a roadmap for building a presentation, and I've given you some tips and tricks for overcoming these fears. So my call to action is give it a shot. Start small, build your way up. I believe in you because I know that each and every one of you can do it. Today is just day one. I hope to see you out there speaking soon. Thank you.