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Speaking with Confidence: How Engineers can Master High Stakes Communication
56 Plays29 days ago
In this episode Dr. Jill Fennell has a conversation with Kathryn Woods about the principles of confident communication in high stakes scenarios, sharing important strategies for giving effective presentations and forming positive public speaking habits.
Notes and Timestamps:
- 00:43 - Introduction and Guest
- 01:14 - Transition from SLP to Coaching Professionals in Public Speaking
- 02:34 - How personal experience influences teaching
- 04:31 - Background in SLP and the Science of Communication Confidence
- 08:04 - Physical reaction to nerves and public speaking
- 11:57 - Strategies for staying calm during high stakes speaking situations
- 14:40 - Voice, Tone and Pacing in presentations
- 24:31 - Presentation habits that undermine confidence and correcting them
- 31:43 - Making improvements to long term struggles
- 40:36 - Final Tips and Notes
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Episode edited by Lee Hibbard.
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Transcript
Introduction to Season 3
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to Season 3 of Communication Mechanics. I'm Jill Fennell, Web Chair and Communication Skills at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. And this season is all about communication across professional growth.
00:00:24
Speaker
How engineers build skills to navigate job fairs, public speaking, leadership, internship, and providing useful feedback. Let's get started.
Building Confidence in High-Stakes Communication
00:00:43
Speaker
welcome back to season three of communication mechanics. Today, we're diving into one of the biggest communication challenges engineers face, speaking with confidence in high stakes situations.
00:00:55
Speaker
Our guest is Kathryn Woods, communication trainer, speaking coach, and speech language pathologist. Kathryn specializes in helping professionals feel calm, confident, and in control when they communicate, even under pressure.
00:01:09
Speaker
Kathryn, welcome to the show. Thank you, Jill. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. Can you start by telling us a little bit about your journey? How did you transition from speech pathology to coaching professionals at Public Speaking?
00:01:22
Speaker
Well, what I really love about communication is helping people who are at the top of their field sound like the experts that they truly are. So what I love even more than helping people achieve functional communication is working with people who are already out there doing amazing things and training them how to communicate at their peak level, whatever that is for them.
00:01:53
Speaker
and By the way, even high stakes or high pressure situations are individually defined. so It's whatever it means to you. and You can definitely learn how to feel and sound confident so that people take you and your expertise seriously, even if you don't currently love the way you sound when you speak or you feel nervous about the speaking, even though you know you're an expert.
00:02:20
Speaker
That's a great position to be You get to work with experts all the time. It's so interesting because I'm curious by nature, so I get to learn about all the fabulous things that my clients are
Communication as Personal Growth
00:02:32
Speaker
doing. It's very exciting.
00:02:33
Speaker
I saw on your LinkedIn that your story emphasizes being a recovering shy person. How has your own experience influenced the way that you teach others? Quite significantly, I would say, because when I was a young child, i was scared not only to talk to people that I didn't know, but to even look at them.
00:02:53
Speaker
So I went on this personal growth journey and It really parallels, i think, with what my clients are going through, which is learning to speak publicly or even learning to speak privately in meetings and sound like the authority that they are.
00:03:10
Speaker
And working on that in a coaching paradigm is very much a personal growth journey. So I feel that I'm able to be their Sherpa and guide them through how to do this and feel good in their own skin when they communicate because It doesn't only matter how we sound when we speak or how we look when we speak.
00:03:33
Speaker
It really matters how we feel when we speak. A lot of people have to do a lot of speaking in their business. And if you feel uncomfortable every time you're speaking, number one, that's going to come across.
00:03:48
Speaker
most of the time to your listeners and then it can impede trust because they don't know why you're uncomfortable or why you seem uncomfortable.
Physiological Aspects of Communication
00:03:59
Speaker
But also, you should genuinely enjoy as much as you can of your job. And if that includes communication, how can we help you to enjoy it so that it's a pleasure and not a stress?
00:04:14
Speaker
That sounds great. One of the things i I like about my job here at the Woodruff School is that I know our students are passionate about engineering. I know that they love it. And so i love that in my job, I get to help them share that love with others by communicating it to others.
00:04:31
Speaker
Here at Communication Mechanics, our audience is primarily engineers. And one of the things that really stands out about you as a coach is your background in speech mythology.
00:04:43
Speaker
So I'd like to spend a little time talking about really the science of communication confidence. Oh, we can nerd out about this for a while. So when I was in graduate school, they taught us about the importance of things like proper posture and aligning ourselves, not for the sake of you just have to do it this way, but everything physiologically has a purpose to it.
00:05:11
Speaker
and our breathing, we're intended to breathe from our diaphragm, which is a big sheath of muscle under our rib cage. And we were designed to breathe from our diaphragm every second of our lives.
00:05:22
Speaker
But what happens to most of us is that we get to about five or six years old, Jill, and they send us to school and they put us at a desk and they don't let us get up till we retire.
00:05:35
Speaker
so All of a sudden, we're spending hours and hours every day sitting. Worse yet, we're hunched over things, reading, typing, and now looking at ever and ever smaller devices. so Our head and chin are down, our shoulders are hunched forward, and it's not our fault.
00:05:55
Speaker
Our human bodies weren't designed to do the things that modern society and professional demands place on us. You were mimicking that with the body while you talking. and It's like almost like you're squeezing your lungs with the smaller and the smaller devices, just curling in on yourself.
00:06:13
Speaker
Exactly. so That's the point. We start curling in on ourselves. and Now, because our posture has changed, it makes it harder to breathe from our diaphragm.
00:06:27
Speaker
Breathing from our diaphragm is not only the most efficient way to oxygenate the cells of our body, but it also is the most efficient way to power our voice with air.
00:06:38
Speaker
Speaking in voice is a secondary or overlaid system, meaning the primary function of our respiratory system and even our vocal cords is to allow us to breathe to get air to our body. And even our vocal cords have a function other than speaking and that function is protecting our airway when we swallow and coughing if we need to expel material from our lungs or our throat.
00:07:05
Speaker
And so if we don't have enough air power to adequately fuel our body with oxygen, we certainly don't have enough for our voice. So diaphragm breathing and the efficiency of that is really, really critical and you can rewire your habits to go back to what I call your factory default settings, which is assuming you were lucky enough to be born healthy, how we were all born breathing from our what what people call the belly, but it's really the diaphragm and having this properly aligned posture that facilitates that and makes us feel
00:07:42
Speaker
and look and sound more calm and confident. The more we hunch over, the more it sends signals to our brain that we are not confident, open, and engaged.
00:07:53
Speaker
and Of course, other people pick up on those signals as well, and it impacts, do they want to connect with us? Do they trust us? Are we someone they want to work with?
Managing Stress in Public Speaking
00:08:02
Speaker
so Many engineers struggle with public speaking, not because they don't know their material, but because of the nerves that can take over.
00:08:13
Speaker
What's actually happening in the brain and body when we feel nervous before public speaking? This is really important because i think most people who have done any speaking, whether it's in front of a class for a required verbal or oral project, or whether this is part of what you do in your day to day professional life, most of us have had the experience of preparing for something.
00:08:37
Speaker
and getting up in front of people and forgetting what we were going to say, losing our place, rambling, stumbling over our words, and we feel nervous.
00:08:49
Speaker
you feel You might feel sweaty. Some people feel or get sick to their stomachs. You might feel your heart pounding out of your chest. Your armpits might be soaked. You might feel a dry mouth.
00:09:01
Speaker
All of these things have nothing to do with your capability. What they have to do with is your nervous system hijacking you. And when that happens, we're essentially in fight flight, which is really more broadly fight flight, freeze or fawn.
00:09:16
Speaker
And so our brain and our body are doing this death spiral and our brain starts to send out stress hormones because when we start to breathe faster and our heart beats faster and all of that, it sends signals to our brain that we're under stress.
00:09:33
Speaker
and our brain thinks, oops, she might need to run from a bear. he might be fighting off a predator, right? So the brain releases stress hormones, which are really great if you are running from a bear or fighting off a predator.
00:09:48
Speaker
Not so fantastic when you're trying to speak calmly with composure and convey your expertise. So all of a sudden, these stress hormones flood your body, and this all puts you in the more primitive survival oriented part of your brain, the amygdala. Often we call it the lizard brain.
00:10:07
Speaker
And when we're in this part of our brain, it's extremely difficult to access all of the information which is in the higher cortex of our brain, our thinking brain, where our wisdom, our training, our knowledge, our experience, and our preparations are stored.
00:10:24
Speaker
So we want to stay out of that part of our nervous system and stay in the calm division of our nervous system, which is the parasympathetic division, that state of creativity, flow, joy, fun. Yes, you can have fun speaking in front of people. It is possible, trust me. and It's way more effective when we're in the parasympathetic division of our nervous system versus the sympathetic division, which is that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
Human Element in Technical Communication
00:10:55
Speaker
In talking about this, it's really emphasizing just how much we are human animals. We are in our bodies. And I think maybe especially, maybe not, engineers.
00:11:06
Speaker
you know They're doing hard, serious work. They're using their minds a lot. We like to think that it's just the work. It's the science. It's the theory. But we can't escape the fact that we're animals.
00:11:18
Speaker
It's true and this is not just engineers. That's kind of the good news, bad news. This is something that so many people struggle with and it really is possible to flip the script from struggle to calm, confident, successful communication.
00:11:41
Speaker
It's all about our habits and layering. Basically taking instead of focusing on I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to ramble, I'm not going to forget, I'm not going to get nervous, I'm not going to do this, that or the other. Let's focus on what we do want to do.
00:11:57
Speaker
I've seen in the past that you have done some speaking about controlling your nervous system instead of it controlling you. What are some strategies engineers can use to stay calm before or during high stakes speaking situations?
00:12:11
Speaker
It goes back to those physiological patterns, breathing and posture. And here's the thing. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make is saying, oh, great, Catherine, I'm going to do this breathing thing. I'm going to check my posture right before I walk on stage, right before I walk into this meeting.
00:12:33
Speaker
right before I deliver my presentation. And the problem is that's great. You can and should check in on those things before a high stakes situation. But when you're in those situations, we need to be other focused. We need to be listener focused, audience focused, not focused internally.
00:12:52
Speaker
So how do you accomplish altering your physiological patterns if you're not supposed to focus on them once you get into the interaction? And the answer is,
00:13:03
Speaker
You practice them when you don't eat them. Muscle memory? You practice it all the time. And it doesn't have to be a huge chore that takes up a lot of your time.
00:13:14
Speaker
It can be things that really fit into the crevices of your
Voice Dynamics and Audience Engagement
00:13:19
Speaker
life. So bookend your day by adjusting and aligning your posture from the first thing when you get out of bed in the morning.
00:13:29
Speaker
In fact, I encourage people while you're still laying in the bed in the morning, Lay flat on your back and just practice breathing from your diaphragm. So you start your day with healthy breathing from your diaphragm.
00:13:43
Speaker
Sets the tone for the day. You get out of bed. You just be sure that your posture is aligned properly. You can practice it again while you're brewing your coffee or tea.
00:13:54
Speaker
You can practice it again while you're waiting on hold on the phone, while you're waiting for that team so that Zoom meeting to start, while you're sitting in the waiting room in the dentist office, even potentially while you're driving. The postural part can be a little challenging while you're driving, but you can still focus on diaphragm breathing.
00:14:14
Speaker
And then end your day. As you go to sleep at night, lay there and practice your diaphragm breathing while you're on your back. That's actually the easiest position to do diaphragm breathing in and sitting is the hardest.
00:14:28
Speaker
So if you do this several, I mean like seven, eight, ten times a day every day, it will become your habit and then it will be there for you solidly when you need it.
00:14:40
Speaker
Engineers often focus on the technical accuracy of their presentations. I see this all the time in the classroom. But delivery matters too. How does voice, tone, and pacing impact how a speaker is perceived?
00:14:55
Speaker
So much. And absolutely, the content and the language and the words are important. And what happens is, again, another mistake people make is thinking that if they say the right words, the message will land and it will be successful.
00:15:19
Speaker
And the reality is that message has to connect with other human beings. And we have our own preferences of how we like to hear things, but also frankly, we're wired in a certain way neurologically. So for example, our brains are wired to start to tune out things that are too much the same.
00:15:43
Speaker
So if we talk at the exact same tone like this all the time, people are going to tune us out. They don't mean to. It's not our fault. It's how our brains are wired.
00:15:58
Speaker
And so introducing a little bit more vocal variety can really keep people attending to what you're saying can hold their attention longer.
00:16:10
Speaker
Even changing the rate of our speaking. There is not a right rate of speech. We need to speak slowly enough people can understand us and not so slowly that they get bored.
00:16:21
Speaker
And that is something that we have to adjust according to the audience and their level of familiarity with what we're saying so that we adjust for their needs.
00:16:33
Speaker
how much time do they need to process what we're saying and then on top of it if someone has an accent it is possible to communicate very clearly but understand that our brains are really wired to understand the patterns of our first language primarily or a language that we're highly familiar with from childhood so when not only pronunciations can vary, but vocal inflection patterns can vary. And it can take listeners extra time, whether it's seconds or milliseconds, to process what a non-native speaker of English is saying. And this is true, of course, of English speakers going to speak in another language as well.
00:17:24
Speaker
Or even dialects here in the United States. A hundred percent. Everything that is not what our personal individual brains are attuned to takes a little extra time to adjust.
Role of Visual Aids in Presentations
00:17:38
Speaker
So pausing a little bit more for a little bit longer to be sure that not only we are articulating our words correctly and they're not running together, but also we're giving people the gift of the time to really process what we're saying and what it means for them.
00:17:58
Speaker
You said that sometimes speakers think if they can just say the right words, then they're golden. This reminds me of something that i tell students a lot whenever they're getting ready for presentations and doing those slide decks and everything else is that you are the presentation.
00:18:16
Speaker
The slide is the visual aid, but they are here to hear from you. You're the speaker with the ethos. you are the ones that they need to connect to and ultimately it is through you that they will be making decisions.
00:18:30
Speaker
Absolutely. And this reminds me of a story from when I was taking my master's degree in speech pathology. I had a professor who was ah very wonderful woman, really an expert in her field.
00:18:48
Speaker
And while she spoke very clearly, was so nervous that she literally hid behind a slide projector. This was back in the 90s, the early 90s, and there was a little slide projector, an overhead projector where you would write with marker on these transparencies and put it on there.
00:19:11
Speaker
This woman knew her stuff like nobody's business. She was an expert, but there was one day where the overhead projector broke down.
00:19:25
Speaker
And this woman was so nervous that every person in class was physically uncomfortable for her. And she really hid behind those transparencies. She knew everything on those slides.
00:19:40
Speaker
She did not need that overhead projector, but she canceled class because it didn't work. And she would stand behind it and hide behind it. So I think that that really illustrates a very extreme example of dependence on a visual aid.
00:19:59
Speaker
and so Now we can do the same thing with a slide deck, whether it's PowerPoint or whatever it is, it is not your presentation. You are representing the material.
00:20:10
Speaker
Those other things, those visual aids are to help your listeners process and comprehend what you're saying. They should never ever get in the way of it.
00:20:24
Speaker
In your experience, have you seen elements like voice, tone, and pacing impact the likelihood a presentation's effectiveness? Absolutely.
00:20:35
Speaker
Every single time. If somebody tells you it doesn't matter, they are either not telling the truth or they just don't realize. It makes a huge difference because communication is a holistic thing. It's a whole body thing.
00:20:52
Speaker
It happens with our eye contact. It happens with our body language. It happens with our words. It happens with our voice. It happens with how we connect with our body language, eyes and voice with the people who are sitting there in front of us. So don't be afraid to look at people and connect with them and take that time to pause and visually check in with your listeners and see if it's resonating.
00:21:21
Speaker
Do I need to backtrack and explain something in a different way? Is there a question? Is someone sitting there dying to share something that adds to what you're saying?
00:21:33
Speaker
A lot of people really feel like they have to stay on this strict schedule. They have to go from point A to B to C to D in their talk. When we can stay calm and regulated in our nervous system, it gives our brain the capacity to be more flexible so that we can check in with people. We can divert a little bit. That doesn't mean that every diversion is a valuable diversion.
00:21:58
Speaker
But if someone wants to share something and and have a dialogue in the room that can advance the conversation, rather than getting in the way of the message, it can really enhance it.
00:22:11
Speaker
Now there's a fine line because sometimes people will take you off track, but the calmer you are, the more you will learn to come back to where you were. And some of the most unexpected angles and participations from listeners have really led to some of the most meaningful conversations I've had when leading discussions or speaking in front of a room.
00:22:38
Speaker
Don't be afraid to let other people speak. That is really emblematic of one of the key learning goals that we have here in the web communication program, which is responsiveness, the ability to be responsive in communication environments, including evolving communication environments, which is hard to do. It requires you to be very prepared for what is appropriate in the situation so that you can guide people back on track if you need. But it also requires that confidence that you're talking
Creating Connections in Communication
00:23:11
Speaker
Absolutely. and I want to emphasize something and go a little deeper on it. and that's If somebody interrupts your your flow of what you're saying, and heaven forbid you might not get through the entire exact presentation that you have planned, but you create a dynamic, exciting engagement and people in the room want to talk about what you're saying, that is go And if you don't finish everything and and every situation is different, there are some situations where you need to stick to a program.
00:23:47
Speaker
But if you really create a vibrant dialogue with people, then you are going to have another chance to speak with them. That conversation is going to continue at some time in some way, shape or form.
00:24:02
Speaker
Don't cut off those opportunities for real connection because this is the thing. The point of communication is that connection. Connection of you to other people, connection of your message with other people.
00:24:18
Speaker
Perfection is not necessary. So the point of communication is connection, not perfection. Never forget that. Don't get in the way of that connection so that you can stay perfectly on plan.
00:24:30
Speaker
What are common voice habits that undermine confidence and how can speakers correct them? There are several, I would say one of them, if you look at it as voice, is simply speaking too quickly for people to process what you're saying and keep up with it.
00:24:47
Speaker
Doesn't necessarily mean they don't understand stand the words coming out of your mouth, but there's that saying something went in one ear and out the other, and it means literally there's nothing, there's not much processing happening in between your ears and your brain.
00:25:01
Speaker
So your brain isn't interacting with the information. and therefore the opportunity for impact can be lost because then they think, oh, that's great, that's really interesting. They walk out of the room and they forget all about it.
00:25:13
Speaker
However, if we give them time to interact and really process that information, what would I do with this information? How might this shift how I think about something?
00:25:24
Speaker
How might this shift how I handle something and let them really think through that? then there's a real opportunity for your communication to make an impact.
00:25:36
Speaker
I think this is especially true for engineers, given that oftentimes when they're communicating, especially verbally, they are informing decision makers who need to make a decision.
00:25:46
Speaker
And so allowing them to really understand how this might be implemented or the effects of the choices that they have available to them make it more likely that you can guide them to the correct choice. Yes.
00:26:00
Speaker
And so regulating our pace and rate properly is one of the things that is a hallmark of confident, poised communication. That doesn't mean i speak haltingly and slowly like that.
00:26:16
Speaker
Those are those subtle verbal, those subtle vocal cues And then people could say to me, well, I don't understand. I spoke slowly. So why didn't it land? Well, well, if you speak slowly, but you have a very halting tentative tone to your voice, then you're going to be prone to interruption.
00:26:38
Speaker
People are going to be more likely to interrupt you, which is one of the things that's a big fear for people pausing more. But there are pauses that are masterful and there are pauses where i sound like I'm waiting for someone to rescue me from the speaking. and so you want to fall into the first category, not the second.
00:26:59
Speaker
And then of course there is the vocal. Do I sound confident in my voice? Do I have an assertive tone? For women, it doesn't mean you have to speak in a deep voice like a man.
00:27:10
Speaker
It does mean you shouldn't end every sentence in an upton. like this, like you're asking a question because that sends a signal that I don't know if you believe yourself, so why should I believe you?
00:27:24
Speaker
Right, and you even see that in students, both male and female, because they're they're seeking that approval, like tell me I did it right. Whenever what we're looking for as teachers is for you to see the data, figure out what your truth is and own it.
00:27:40
Speaker
You're right and I shouldn't really single out women because men do it too. I see it more in women but I will say both genders are offenders in this category and it is really important to sound like you know what you're talking about if you do.
00:27:57
Speaker
Don't sound like you're asking for approval to have an opinion either. When you're leading or guiding you want to end your sentence in a lower pitch tone.
00:28:09
Speaker
like I just did.
Maintaining Voice Stability
00:28:10
Speaker
Not a lower volume where you're dropping off your voice at the end, but a lower pitch tone versus, do you understand what I'm saying? versus Well, that was a question, so that's not a good example because do you know what I'm saying is a question.
00:28:25
Speaker
But if I were saying, this is that, did you hear how I brought the tone down? I could say, this is that, and now I don't know if I believe you.
00:28:37
Speaker
because you've given us a cue that we normally associate with questions that necessitates an answer from the other. Right. and ah A voice quivering can be another one and it's one of those things that's hard to control until you learn to regulate your nervous system, which is why that is really the foundation of every other technique because you can learn 10 fabulous techniques for speaking in voice, but if you don't first learn how to regulate your nervous system to stay calm and composed,
00:29:09
Speaker
when it really counts, then all of that is going to go out the window as soon as you get nervous and go into fight or flight. One of the worst offenders see is turning your back to the audience. Yes, yes,
00:29:24
Speaker
Looking at the slides behind you. Yes, the slides are really for the audience, not for us as speakers. Now, if you can look at it without turning your back, great.
00:29:38
Speaker
but the slides are really meant to supplement learning. They aren't really meant to be cheat sheets. Right. and That brings up another point that I often feel like I need to tell students, which is, and this is not ah dig at anyone, but oftentimes our teachers, because they're in classrooms ah all the time, are not the best examples for presenters because they're in doing a different genre.
00:30:05
Speaker
They're teaching a lecture. They're not giving a 10-minute presentation. When you're a student, you're expected to take on cognitive labor. That is why you are there.
00:30:17
Speaker
and teacher's slides are oftentimes used as notes that are expected to be reviewed later. Neither of those things are necessarily true for a professional presentation.
00:30:31
Speaker
Absolutely. And I would say, i think we all bear the responsibility, every one of us, of being sure that our communication lands. However,
00:30:43
Speaker
The fact that somebody else doesn't do something is not a reason why we shouldn't try to do it in the optimal possible way to help our message land with our listeners.
00:30:57
Speaker
Again, while it's not about perfection, it is about connection. So anything that breaks that connection, whether it's turning our back or forgetting to take the listener's perspective into account,
00:31:10
Speaker
can interfere with that connection. and Communication is a two-way street. It's a two-way responsibility, but we shouldn't really ever be saying, well, that was their responsibility because they didn't listen.
00:31:25
Speaker
I think the best approach to this is if both the listener and the speaker takes 100 percent responsibility, not 50-50. I'm going to take 100 percent.
00:31:36
Speaker
and I hope you take a hundred percent but I'm going to put my one hundred percent in. If someone has been struggling with nervousness or unclear speaking for a long time, how can they start making improvements today?
00:31:52
Speaker
The first thing, and these are two separate things, nervousness and unclear speaking. So if unclear speaking refers to perhaps not articulating their sounds, clearly some people just Speaking is a fine motor activity.
00:32:09
Speaker
So some people don't have as much precision with that fine motor activity and they might speak a little bit more imprecisely. It's like when you're a little intoxicated and you slurred because your fine motor skills have gone out the window.
00:32:25
Speaker
Great example. And then there's another example which is not related to there being anything wrong. But if English is not your first language.
00:32:37
Speaker
You might have certain habits from your native language that you bring with you into English, which can make it more challenging for others to understand you.
Enhancing Speaking Effectiveness
00:32:48
Speaker
And that's where the slowing down and exaggerating your speech movements can really help.
00:32:55
Speaker
So imagine and really feel your jaw moving, your jaw opening and closing as you speak, your tongue touching the roof of your mouth.
00:33:06
Speaker
your lips moving, really exaggerate those articulation movements in order to be more clear. And again, i wouldn't practice that for the first time in front of me for a presentation, but you can start practicing that in low stakes situations so that you learn to do that.
00:33:27
Speaker
And then as far as mastering the emotion of it and feeling uncomfortable, I think that was the other thing that you said. Start practicing that diaphragm breathing.
00:33:39
Speaker
I can help you with that. You find YouTube videos on that. But practice controlling your nervous system by building proper posture and diaphragm breathing habits so that you will stay calm in high stakes situations. And by the way, it will help you immensely in your personal life too. You'll feel so much better.
00:34:05
Speaker
This breath work, is this a way, can you even convince your body that you're not nervous when you genuinely are nervous? It's not really about pretending to not be nervous.
00:34:20
Speaker
It's about creating physiological conditions in your body so that you don't get as nervous. Okay. It's not faking it till you make it.
00:34:33
Speaker
It's how can I embody it so that I be calm. Eliminating the effects of nervousness has a similar result as eliminating nervousness.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yes. So if I train my body to stay calm and composed and confident, then it helps me to genuinely stay calm, composed, and confident.
00:34:58
Speaker
yeah I think I just made the same mistake that a lot of people make, which is I was intellectualizing nervousness. and Nervousness is an emotion. Yes. Of course, there is an intellectual component to it because if we start telling ourselves things that make us nervous, that does not help. right so There's a saying I love, if you find that you're digging yourself a hole, the first step is to put down the shovel.
00:35:27
Speaker
So if you realize that you're saying things to yourself like i can't do this, this doesn't go well last time, what's going to happen this time? I don't really know if I know this, I'm not a good speaker.
00:35:41
Speaker
Put down that shovel. Stop saying that. You're reinforcing it. Stop saying it. Say something positive. Now, I don't personally believe that when we say things that seem outrageously untrue to us that it really helps us believe them.
00:35:59
Speaker
But we can say something like, I'm learning to be a better speaker. I can do this. I can learn to do this. I'm getting better little by little. and That seems there's less cognitive difference dissonance with that. and so We can believe that.
00:36:16
Speaker
It's a reasonable bridge to cross. and Now I'm not using my brain to make my body nervous. So it's two pronged really. It's what do I do with my body?
00:36:28
Speaker
And now for heaven's sakes, if you're doing all this work with your body, don't undermine it with your mind and what you tell yourself. We are animals. They communicate with each other, our bodies and our minds.
00:36:40
Speaker
Thinking about things that are related made me think about, I caught myself one time when I was a little nervous. I had talking engagement I had to do, but I was also kind of excited. So I just told myself that what I'm feeling is excitement.
00:36:54
Speaker
Yes. Because it wasn't untrue. i was just able to lean into that. And that really helped me open my chest more and breathe deeper and be in my body in front of people.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yes, I'm excited. I get to speak in front of these people. I get to talk about the thing that I love most.
Embracing Nervousness Productively
00:37:11
Speaker
And I think it's Simon Sinek, but it may not have originally come from him that says excitement is just the flip side of the coin of nervousness.
00:37:21
Speaker
And by the way, i want to mention if you have the butterflies when you speak, if you feel that little bit of nervousness, that's okay. Butterflies aren't bad. How do you get them to fly in formation?
00:37:34
Speaker
If you don't feel anything, any butterflies before you get up and you talk about something important to you, you might not care enough to be speaking about it. I still get a little bit of butterflies when I speak, but it works in a constructive way rather than working against me because I have done the work to build the habits to stay calm and composed when I speak. and I can tell you if you would have known me at nine years old, this would have been
00:38:06
Speaker
completely unpredictable than I would ever volunteer to speak in front of people. One piece of advice that I have for a lot of students is that you need to speak a little bit louder.
00:38:19
Speaker
This is oftentimes a big issue in crowded places when I'm going out to see individual booths or posters or things like that and everyone's kind of crushed and and whether it's nervousness or just not empathizing with your audience enough, You need to make sure that your audience can hear you.
00:38:38
Speaker
Absolutely. And I would put this in the bucket of things that we can learn that are tremendously valuable feedback and insight for us when we listen to recordings of ourselves speaking, when we ask trusted people for their opinion.
00:38:54
Speaker
It doesn't mean we want to listen to everyone all the time, but people we trust. It's okay to seek feedback. and act on it and evaluate, does this feedback apply to me, does it not?
00:39:06
Speaker
One of the reasons that people often can fall into the trap of using a very low vocal volume that is hard to hear is that we don't have adequate breath support for our voice.
00:39:22
Speaker
Breath powers our voice the way gas powers a car's engine. so If we're not pausing enough, we're gonna run out of air. If we pause, but we forget to take a breath when we pause, we're gonna run out of air.
00:39:39
Speaker
When we run out of air, we're either straining ourselves to get our voice out,
Final Tips and Resources
00:39:44
Speaker
which isn't good because it's creating tension that could be transferred or picked up on by our listeners, and also, frankly, isn't good for our voice, but also it causes our volume to drop.
00:39:58
Speaker
So pause, take a breath, Continue and one great rule of thumb that you can start using right away is pause where you would see punctuation if your comments were in writing.
00:40:13
Speaker
Punctuation is an ideal and natural place to pause because it is the juncture of one thought or idea or piece of information to the next. So it's creating this time where you get to breathe.
00:40:25
Speaker
and your listener gets the gift of an extra second or two to process what you're saying before you move on to the next idea. Before we go, any final tips, resources, exercises, last thoughts you want to add?
00:40:44
Speaker
Breathe, breathe and breathe from your diaphragm with a properly aligned posture and If you notice that you're tense and your voice is tense every time you speak,
00:40:57
Speaker
One of the best vocal warm-ups, believe it or not, is to yawn. A really, really big, I'm not talking a delicate little restrained yawn. I'm talking a kind of yawn where you stretch your throat from the bottom up to the top all the way. Your jaw is wide open, your mouth is wide open, your jaw is stretched.
00:41:19
Speaker
What this does is stretch out the chambers of your body where your voice resonates. And it gives you a richer, fuller, more relaxed sound as well as relaxing all these muscles, which is great for your vocal health and for how you sound.
00:41:37
Speaker
Except like the way my cat yawns. He has no shame in showing all of his teeth. Yes. Did you notice how big I was yawning before we got onto the podcast? That was my vocal warm up.
00:41:49
Speaker
Nice. Where can listeners find you if they want to learn more about your coaching and resources? You can find me on LinkedIn at Catherine Woods, K-A-T-H-R-Y-N Woods, or confidentcommunications, with an S, dot net.
00:42:07
Speaker
And you can email me at K-A-T-H-R-Y-N at confidentcommunications, again with an S, dot net, not dot com. I would love to hear from you or reach out to Jill and she'll put you in touch with me.
00:42:23
Speaker
Absolutely. We'll also put all of that information in the show notes too. So your your links can be clickable there. Thank you so much. This has been a really valuable conversation for all our listeners. Remember that communication is a skill and like any skill, it gets better with practice.
00:42:42
Speaker
If you found this episode helpful, be sure to check out Catherine's resources and let us know what you'd like to hear in future episodes. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time.