I have a few go-to podcasts in my playlist that help me to be better in my personal and professional life. The Happiness Lab with Dr. Lori Santos of Yale is always on my list. You might have heard Lori recently in our mini-series on communication, well-being, and happiness. Her podcast is all about how to lead a happier, more purpose-driven life.
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If you're like most of us, this is what you experience when you're about to speak publicly. Research tells us that 85% of people feel nervous in high-stakes speaking situations. And quite frankly, I think the other 15% are lying. In this episode, we're going to explore specific techniques you can use to manage both your symptoms and sources of anxiety, so you can feel more comfortable and confident when communicating in front of others.
My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today we're going to mix things up a bit and rather than having me ask the questions, I'm going to slide over and sit in the other chair so I can answer questions about communication apprehension. This means we need someone to step in and host and luckily
we've found the perfect person. Allow me to introduce Jenny Luna. She's our executive producer of Think Fast, Talk Smart and an all-around amazing person. Hi, Jenny. I'm really excited to have you here to share your thoughts and questions about speaking anxiety. Hey, Matt. I'm really excited to be here. You know, I was asked to give a toast at a friend's wedding recently.
And I was so nervous up until the reception, I didn't even get to enjoy the event. Oh, I'm sorry. So, and since we've been working on this podcast, I'm excited to think about... how I can look at my anxiety, especially in just little situations like team meetings or one-on-one with my supervisor, and how I can get rid of that anxiousness.
Well, I got bad news for you. I don't know that we can ever truly get rid of it, but certainly we can learn to manage it so that it doesn't manage us. Awesome. Okay, well, I've got questions for you, so let's jump in. All right, I'm ready. You're an expert on helping people feel more confident and less anxious when they communicate. How did you get interested in this?
There are very few people I know who can point to one event in their life that put their life on a specific trajectory in terms of the work they do. But for me, one morning when I was 14 years old, it all comes down to that. I was a freshman in high school. The very first day, Mr. Meredith, our English teacher, had all of us stand up and give a real quick speech about ourselves. Since my last name is Abrahams,
I went first. And after I was done, he came up to me and said, Matt, you're really good at this speaking thing. You got to go to this. speech competition this coming saturday so i woke up super early i'd spent a little bit of time putting a speech together i show up it's foggy it's cold the room is full of other students
parents of my friends who are supposed to judge this thing. The girl I like is sitting in the room, and I'm about to give my speech, and the nerves were just coursing through my body, totally freaked out. I am giving a presentation on karate because I was told to do something that was important to me, and I was and still am interested in martial arts. I was so nervous I forgot to put on my special karate pants. So you can tell where this is going, Jenny.
Oh, no. The first 10 seconds of my 10-minute speech, I start with a karate kick to get people's attention. I ripped my pants from belt buckle to zipper. And in that moment... I learned the impact anxiety can have on people when they speak. And from that moment on, I've dedicated my life to trying to understand what that anxiety is all about and how to help people feel better and more comfortable when they speak.
That is like a teen's worst nightmare. It was pretty, pretty bad. I still wake up sometimes dreading that moment. Oh, wow. Well, you've written a book and your TEDx talk are called Speaking Up Without Freaking Out. So I have to ask you, do you still freak out when you speak up? I wish I could say I don't, but in fact, I do. It's very normal and natural for people to feel nervous. Now, thankfully, after years of working on my anxiety, I feel much more confident, but...
There's one time every year that I get super nervous. There is a convention of professors of communication who teach at business schools. And whenever I have to present in front of these folks, I get super nervous. And by the way, Jenny.
If you ever want to see really bad presenting, you should watch a group of professors of communication present to each other. We don't do a very good job of it. But yes, I still do get nervous in certain situations. But I've learned techniques to manage that anxiety. And I know you're going to. ask me some questions about those techniques, and I'm happy to share with others so they can feel less nervous.
Why is anxiety so pervasive? We know what we're going to say. Oftentimes we know who we're speaking to. Why do we get anxious? So many of us who study this believe it's evolutionary. It's part of being human. when our species was evolving. We would hang out in groups of about 150 people, and your relative status in that group meant a lot. And when I'm talking about status, I'm not talking about who drives the fancy car or who gets more likely.
on their videos. I'm talking about your position in a hierarchy where the higher the status you had, the more access you got to things like food and shelter and reproduction. And if you were low status, that meant life was in jeopardy. So anything that puts your status at risk...
should make you nervous. And that's ingrained in us. And we see speaking anxiety in all cultures. It tends to develop when children become teenagers, which is when we become much more socially aware and part of a culture. So a lot of people... believe this is ingrained in who we are, and we just have to learn to manage it. That's fascinating. I had no idea it went so far back in being human. Yeah, it is part of our condition.
Let's get into the nitty gritty and talk about how we can actually manage this anxiety when we're speaking. Yeah, and there are lots of ways to do it. There are many academically verified techniques. When we look at... managing anxiety, I like to break it up into two different buckets. They're the symptoms that we experience as well as the sources of anxiety. So we need to focus on both to become more confident.
The symptoms are what we experience. The sources are what make our anxiety even worse. Interesting. So your thing is kind of... holding a cold bottle of water i've seen you do it i've heard people refer to this can you tell me more about that So when I get nervous, the big thing that happens to me is I perspire and I blush. And this is a very normal symptomatic response to anxiety. When you get nervous, your heartbeat goes up.
Body constricts, so your blood pressure goes up, and this drives up your core body temperature. It's like you're working out, you're exercising. So holding a cold bottle of water in the palm of your hand actually can cool you down. Your palms, just like your forehead when you have a... her.
are thermoregulators for your body. So holding something cold can reduce your core body temperature. I'm sure on a cold day, Jenny, you've seen this work in reverse. If you've ever held warm coffee or tea, you felt how it warms you up, holding a cold bottle of water can cool you. So I do that religiously.
There are other types of techniques we can use to manage our symptoms. So if you're somebody who shakes a lot, doing big, broad gestures or moving when you speak can give that adrenaline a place to go. If you're somebody who gets dry mouth, Drinking something warm or sucking on a lozenge or chewing gum before you speak, not while, can help reverse those symptoms. So the bottom line is there are things we can do to manage the symptoms. And by far the most important.
is taking a deep breath. By taking a deep belly breath, like you're doing yoga or tai chi or qigong, it really slows down your heart rate, which is the impetus and initiator of many of the anxiety symptoms that we find. So things we can do to manage our symptoms absolutely exist. I love those. They're really practical tools that I can use. Deep breath, cold bottle of water, just really kind of centering in the moment. I'm going to use the big gesture thing too.
Another source of anxiety that makes people really nervous is their fear of what might happen in the future. So my students are afraid they might not get a good grade. The entrepreneurs I coach, they're afraid that they might not get the funding or support that they need. You might be concerned that your idea isn't supported and acted upon. Those are fears that come from a future state, a potential negative future outcome.
So the way to short circuit that is to become present oriented. If you're in the moment, you can't be worried about the future by definition. So how do you get present oriented? Many things you can do. I like to do something physical. Maybe walk around the building. I love to shake hands with people before I speak because I have to engage with them. I can't be thinking about all these things that could go wrong if I'm asking somebody how they're doing. You can do what athletes do.
Listen to a song or a playlist. That can get you present-oriented. I often encourage my students to start at 100 and count backwards by 17s. You can't do that without being in the present moment. And finally, and this is a little silly, Jenny. My favorite way of getting present oriented is to say tongue twisters. You can't say a tongue twister right and not be in the present moment. So before I ever give a presentation or...
contribute to a meeting where I'm really nervous, I'll be holding a bottle of water, standing in the corner, saying a tongue twister, nobody sees me do it, and it gets me in the right place to be able to communicate confidently. Those things... probably feel silly when you're doing them, but I imagine they're well worth it if it's going to help you get through a presentation confidently. You're exactly right. Not only does it sometimes feel silly, but it also gives you a sense of agency.
can do something in this situation where you feel nervous. Many people just feel like they're swept away by their anxiety. And this actually gives you something to do that helps you feel better. Cool. Well, there's something else I've been wanting to ask your advice on. Going back to this toast that I had to give at a friend's wedding, my biggest fear when I got up there and I had the microphone was that I was going to completely blank out, that I was going to forget.
everything I had prepared. So what do you say to that? That is by far the number one fear I hear from people when I do the work I do is I'm afraid I'm going to blank out. And blanking out can happen. If you really think about it, the likelihood of totally blinking out is pretty low. So just doing that rationalization can help.
There are three things I want to suggest about blanking out. First, a great way to avoid blanking out is to take time to really map out your content. I'm not saying word for word memorize. Memorizing actually can work against you. It can make you more nervous. you have a map, a structure, that can help. Now, if you're in the moment and you blank out two bits of advice, first, just like if you were to lose your keys, go back to go forward.
Even if we can't remember what we want to say next, we typically can remember what we just said. And simply by repeating what you just said, it will often get you back on track. And some people feel like, oh, that's going to be weird to repeat what I just said. But in fact, your audience benefits from you repeating.
things. So the first thing to do if you blank out in the moment is to repeat what you just said. The second thing, in advance of speaking, always have what I call a back pocket question. A question you can pull out to ask your audience to get them engaged in something else so you can collect your thoughts. So I'm going to let you in on a little secret. And if any of my former students are listening, you're going to learn something that you saw play out in class but you didn't know.
was a trick I was using. There are times when I am lecturing where I'll forget what I need to say next. So I have a back pocket question. I will simply stop when I blank out and I'll ask my students to think about how what we just covered could be applied to their life.
And when I do that, my students actually take a moment to think. Some of them have told me it's really helpful because they're really applying this stuff. What's happening in the background is in my head, I'm like, oh, my goodness, what do I need to say next? I'm buying myself some time. All of us in our communication can think of a question or two that we could ask in most places in what we're speaking about to get our audience to think about something so we can buy ourselves time.
By simply knowing things you can do in advance and during blanking out, it actually reduces the likelihood you'll blank out because we get so nervous about blanking out, it makes blanking out more likely. So having those things at the ready can really help.
It's so great to hear that even though you're an expert in communication, you still blank out and you have all these little techniques. It's not so black and white whether you're good at speaking or not good at speaking. It's about using those techniques to really... rise above. You're absolutely right. I think everyone can learn to manage their anxiety, and it is so...
important to do. So many people have important things to contribute in their work, in their personal lives, in public discourse. And if anxiety is getting in the way, we need to do something about it. So like you always do, I'm going to ask you the same three questions at the end of this episode. And I'm really curious to hear your answers because I've heard you ask so many people. Uh-oh. All right. I'm ready. Bring it.
If you were to capture the best communication advice you've ever received as a five- to seven-word presentation slide, what would it be? So I mentioned this before on an earlier podcast when Lauren Weinstein and I were talking. But this, I think, is really critical. Tell me the time. Don't build me the clock. And the reason this is so powerful. is it contains so many important bits of advice. First, be concise. Be clear.
Be focused. And in order to be concise and clear and focused, you have to know who you're speaking to. So you have to reflect on who's my audience. So in that statement, and I heard that first from my mother years and years ago. tell me the time, don't build the clock, really focuses us on the key elements of what I think it takes to be successful in your communication. And who is a communicator that you most admire? Why?
This is so hard. I used to say any of the amazingly brave young students who survived the Parkland shooting in Florida, I was so in awe of their ability to communicate. And I still am. But I recently heard an amazing TED Talk on the topic of confidence by a young woman named Brittany Packnett. And her presentation just floored me, not just because the topic is near and dear to my heart regarding confidence, but her execution of the communication was phenomenal.
Did you notice how I snuck in a couple things there, Jenny? So I gave you two, not just one. I'm going to have to look up that TED Talk. And finally, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? Yeah. So I did a lot of work looking into this. When my business partner and I...
formed our consulting practice about 10 years ago, we scoured the literature to try to find what are the essential ingredients to successful communication. And we came down to three, and we call them the three Cs. The three Cs are... Being confident, being connected, that is making your content relevant, being present with your audience, and then finally, being compelling.
There are lots of ways to say things, but if you can say things in a compelling way that touch people, that are vivid, that use emotion, it can really, really help. So it's about confidence, connection, and being compelling. Awesome. Thank you so much. I've learned a lot and I'm kind of ready to go out and give another toast or speech now with all these skills. I hope you do. And thank you so much for asking these important questions.
You're a pretty darn good host. I've got a lot I could learn from you. Thanks for sitting in the hosting chair. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Produced by Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. For more information and episodes, visit gsb.stanford.edu or subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, find us on social media at stanford.gsb. Feel like you aren't being challenged or growing at work?
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