Maya Angelou is one of my all-time favourite authors. She’s written some drop-dead astonishing stuff. Her autobiography runs for seven books and stops when she started to be a writer. (Go read them.) Writing about writing, she said, was a bit of a mess. That means that presentations about presenting are a PITA. For a start, there are the expectations engendered by the apparent arrogance. (“Right then! Let’s see if he makes any mistakes!”). Then there’s the natural defensiveness that people have when they feel critisized (“That’s a good point that I can see my boss needs to listen to!”). Add to that the natural inclination we all have to not be very self-aware sometimes (“I’m so glad that doesn’t apply to me!”).
That means, generally, that I tend to be a bit shy of doing it.
Audiences tend to be quite un-sympathetic, I feel, to the obvious truth that the best coaches, for example in tennis, aren’t necessarily the best players.
That said, however, I’ve recently been doing a series of presentations to regions of the Professional Speaking Association, and they’ve really liked it. (You can see some of the responses to the tour on the YouTube channel playlist here.) The feedback has been great, because I’ve been concentrating on the proven science of what works rather than just the rather more common idea of people just discussing how they do it. Despite the positive feedback, I get nervous… even more nervous than for a ‘normal’ gig – and that takes some doing! 🙂
This post is pretty personal, but here are a few of the tips I’ve found work best for handling trips where you’re particularly anxious about the gig – and by this I don’t mean the actual bit on stage: sometimes that’s the easy part. 🙂
[jcolumns] I’ve incorporated stuff from other people too – partially to broaden the reach of this blog but also to protect my privacy! 😉 The big question is this: if you’re off to an event such as a conference, how you handle your nerves? I’m not talking just about when you’re a speaker here (because I’ve posted a million and one tips on handling nerves over on the presentation-skills-blog over the years!) or the big, professional conferences where no one knows anyone and it’s all anonymous-but-hugely-professionally-organised. All you need to do there is follow the instructions, turn up on time, and take notes from the presentations (yeah, I know it’s not that easy but stay with me)…[jcol/] [jbox color=’red’ title=’Why? Just why?!’] As you read this blog you’ll probably end up asking yourself why the heck I’d go to conferences at all! 🙂 Long story short, I have no real choice from a professional point of view. My absence could have caused problems for a number of other people, as well as being detrimental to my professional aspirations.
It’s important to have ways of handling the rest of the event: if you aren’t confident about the off-stage stuff, it will really impact upon your on-stage performance.
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I’m talking about the middle ground conferences where it’s your professional body, for example – or at least your would-be-professional-body-if-you-could-face-the-conference, or the thing-you-need-to-go-to-for-some-serious-professional-reason. It’s the worst possible circumstance for the newby, because there are so many friendship groups already established which are, frankly, intimidating and exclusive, even though the people in those groups don’t recognise themselves as cliques. How do you handle that kind of circumstance? (By the way, I’d say a lot of these suggestions apply to things like parties, which could be handy, with Christmas not too far away.)
Unlike most of my posts, this one isn’t based on research and scientific papers, it’s a reflection of what I did, in response to what, and how well it worked…
Issue one – the braggiado in public before hand
Stories about drinking and/or other japes of previous years don’t help, but they spring up over social media sometimes. I understand that it’s just friends goofing off, but doing it in public looks excluding to newcomers. How the hell is one supposed to break into group where there is so much history? It’s made worse, of course, by the fact that much of the bragging involves alcohol. I drink (not teetotal!) but I don’t drink like that. 😉
Action before setting off? Consciously recall all the times when your stories of past events were bigger than the events themselves. Chances are there’s a degree of ‘inflation’ going on here. It doesn’t mean the bonding effect of the bragging isn’t real but it might mean it’s not as bad as it appears when you’re actually there. That put things in a bit of context. Put it another way, it’s worth remembering that the posts on Facebook (either literal or metaphorical) don’t always resemble reality in any significant way: reserve judgement until you see the reality rather than react to what people project.
It might be worth spending some time actively thinking ‘you poor sods’: if the best thing they can brag about from a conference like this is how much you misbehaved at the last conference, are you really the kind of person I should be intimidated by? 😉
A dirty trick I’ve used sometimes too, is to book a room in a hotel a mile away from the conference, not the hotel where the conference was being held. That meant I could claim I ‘had to leave’ at any point. It also had the advantage of giving me somewhere to retreat to if I needed to spend some time, have a shower and mentally regroup. An hour of being my more natural introvert self can work wonders.
Issue two – the horrible scale of it all
Looking at pictures of previous conferences can give you a cold sweat. Sure, I can perform on stage with the best of them (well yeah, I am one of the best of them, durrr!) but I’m not comfortable off-stage in nearly the same way. Pictures of the crowds gave me a tight stomach. I’ve learned/been told/devised a number of tactics here.
Firstly, see the hotel-room-trick above. 🙂
Secondly, arrive early and do a fly-by. Call it a reckie if you like. Call it what you will, but I find from personal experience that knowing the physical layout of where I’m working intimately makes me a lot more confident. It means I can automatically stand with my back to walls, not entrances, for example. At the same time I know where the exists are. And the toilets. I’m not saying you should arrive so early you look like a lemon, but I am saying you shouldn’t arrive when your over-view of the venue is blocked by crowds. Balconies are a great starting point. 😉
Lastly, know exactly what you’re trying to get out of being there. Split such a list into priorities. That means that if you hit your basic targets and then hit your emotional-sanity limit, you can sensibly and justifiably take a break before heading back into the maelstrom. I found it really helpful to have a set of (say) four things I wanted and a target of hitting (say) two of them – and it didn’t matter which two.
Issue three – the big conference event
I can do smart. I can do flashy. I’m not bad looking and I have enough money to buy clothes that make me look good. But I’ve not got a DJ.
Sadly, that rules out wearing full ‘black tie’ for the inevitable conference gala dinner. Now, technically, that black tie often isn’t a requirement but it’s sometimes optional in much the same way as breathing. That means your options are to
- hire or buy the appropriate clothing
- go dressed in some other way with a ‘stuff you’ attitude
- not go to the gala dinner.
YMMV, but for a recent convention, after conversations with my wife, I went for option three. I didn’t make a fuss about it at the time, just made sure I had any obligations to be there covered, and didn’t turn up. I went to the fair instead 🙂 Having something positive to do instead was a great help. Remember, if the event is big enough to be troublesome, it’s also likely to be big enough to mean that you’ll not be missed – everyone can think you’re somewhere else. 🙂
[jbox color=’red’]One final idea… if you can, take a wingman. For a recent conference/event I was speaking at I had my wife with me. She handled pretty much all the interaction I had to deal with after I got off stage. Like I said earlier, sometimes speaking is the easiest bit of the event. Knowing I was covered that way allowed me to concentrate on what I was really there for – delivering a kick-ass presentation.
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