When a part of you can't speak in public, apply a part of you that can

We are all multi-faceted personalities. No one is totally, consistently in the same frame of mind all the time. Sometimes you're up, sometimes down. Sometimes you prefer to do things a certain way, at other times you want to try a new approach. Every day you make unconscious decisions about which facet of your personality to apply in any given situation. These decisions are within your control.

And so it is with public speaking. Whether you like to speak in public, or dislike it: it is a decision that is within your control. You can revisit this decision every time you are asked to present.

Not long ago, a training participant walked into our studio for a media skills workshop with a seriously anxious look on her face. She didn't even say good morning.

When I greeted her and asked her how she was, she admitted she had been worried sick about this workshop ever since her boss signed her up for it, and just wanted to get it over and done with.

It didn't take long to discover why.

CLIFTONSTRENGTHS ASSESSMENT

One of her Top 5 CliftonStrengths Talent themes is #Restorative. People exceptionally talented in #Restorative love to solve problems. They are attracted to problems, and love nothing better than to get in there and fix them. It's an awesome talent.

Often, people with a #Restorative talent like to fix objects or things. Sometimes they like to fix other people. But on occasion, they see themselves as the problem. And so it was with this participant.

In the course of the discussion it turned out that what she hated most about speaking in public was not the presentation itself. It wasn’t even stage fright, or the audience.

It was the fact that after each and every presentation she got into a spiral of self-criticism and self-doubt, where all she thought about was how badly she had performed. She would kick herself endlessly for the smallest slip-ups. What she feared and hated most about presenting was not the presentation, but her own reaction to it.

But in the course of our workshop we also discovered that she was exceptionally talented in #Command. People with a #Command talent like to take charge. They grab the wheel when things go off track. They drive others to improve their performance.

She was not unaccustomed to taking charge. We walked through what this looked like in the office when she had to take charge, and how she felt about it. She described how she rose to the challenge, and how her colleagues admired her and respected her for it.

And so I enquired what was stopping her from getting into this zone, this headspace, this mindset when she had to give a presentation.

She paused. She considered this for a few moments. You could see by the look in her eye she was making new connections in her mind. All of a sudden the dark look on her face lifted, as she found a new way around the blocker that had given her nightmares about presenting for so long.

When she then took to the stage she was disarmingly engaging. She moved through her presentation at a pace that was easy to follow but conveyed urgency, gravitas and her command of the stage.

When I asked her afterwards how her view of public speaking had changed, she shrugged and said she was fine now. She had been in #Command, not #Restorative mode, for the duration of her presentation.

And the little slip-ups?

No problem, she said. In addition to applying #Command to her presentations, she was also going to take charge of her own #Restorative talent. She was still going to be a problem-solver, she was still going to review her presentation critically. But she would take charge of her emotions and stop kicking herself endlessly over it.