This is great, Mickey, I agree with all of it. As someone who is rather introverted and was always terrified of public speaking, what has helped me is to think of talks and teaching as giving a "performance." Not in a bullshit inauthentic sense, but rather that I am playing a role. It is not "me" out there, per se, but "me as teacher." I am not an extravert, at all, but I know how to pretend act like one when I need to. Others with similar dispositions have described taking a similar approach. It has been highly effective. (also, just to get a dig in, extreme extraverts often give terrible talks!)
Yeah, it can be a failure to take the perspective of the audience, but also chaotic organization, distracting tangents, misplaced enthusiasm, cringy attempts at audience engagement, overconfidence, oversharing personal details/stories. None of these are necessarily bad on their own, and not all extreme extraverts do all of them, but there is a pattern.
I attended a talk recently by a very famous American sociologist. I couldn't believe that he had paragraphs and paragraphs of text, alongside diagrams and screenshots of book covers, all over his slides. Everyone spent the whole talk trying to squint and block out his talking in order to read the slides. It was very difficult, like trying to reverse a car with the radio up too loud!
These are great suggestions Mickey! I give a yearly lecture on how to give presentations and I was struck by many of the tips I give overlap with yours. I have a few additional ones, though, particularly geared toward nonnative speakers (of English). You've inspired me to write a Substack post with my own suggestions, maybe I'll do so in a few weeks.
Mickey, I loved this Substack. I used to give a talk titled’How to give a Presentation’. I included many of your suggestions. A couple of things I might add: Before you begin, put up a slide outlining what you’re going to talk about. I always say: tell them what you’re going to say, say it, then summarize what you’ve said.
Also, in every single presentation and workshop, I tell stories and every evaluation often has comments that they loved the stories.
As always, thanks for giving me food for thought. Judy
This is great, Mickey, I agree with all of it. As someone who is rather introverted and was always terrified of public speaking, what has helped me is to think of talks and teaching as giving a "performance." Not in a bullshit inauthentic sense, but rather that I am playing a role. It is not "me" out there, per se, but "me as teacher." I am not an extravert, at all, but I know how to pretend act like one when I need to. Others with similar dispositions have described taking a similar approach. It has been highly effective. (also, just to get a dig in, extreme extraverts often give terrible talks!)
Thanks for the comment, Moin. Tell me more re: extreme extroverts! Is the issue there, insufficient empathy for the audience?
Yeah, it can be a failure to take the perspective of the audience, but also chaotic organization, distracting tangents, misplaced enthusiasm, cringy attempts at audience engagement, overconfidence, oversharing personal details/stories. None of these are necessarily bad on their own, and not all extreme extraverts do all of them, but there is a pattern.
I feel I'm being attacked! JK. :-)
That "performance" idea is really good, thanks!
I attended a talk recently by a very famous American sociologist. I couldn't believe that he had paragraphs and paragraphs of text, alongside diagrams and screenshots of book covers, all over his slides. Everyone spent the whole talk trying to squint and block out his talking in order to read the slides. It was very difficult, like trying to reverse a car with the radio up too loud!
These are great suggestions Mickey! I give a yearly lecture on how to give presentations and I was struck by many of the tips I give overlap with yours. I have a few additional ones, though, particularly geared toward nonnative speakers (of English). You've inspired me to write a Substack post with my own suggestions, maybe I'll do so in a few weeks.
Mickey, I loved this Substack. I used to give a talk titled’How to give a Presentation’. I included many of your suggestions. A couple of things I might add: Before you begin, put up a slide outlining what you’re going to talk about. I always say: tell them what you’re going to say, say it, then summarize what you’ve said.
Also, in every single presentation and workshop, I tell stories and every evaluation often has comments that they loved the stories.
As always, thanks for giving me food for thought. Judy
Nice to see you here, Judy! Thanks for the comment!