Telling someone just to “be yourself” might be terrible advice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The F Minus cartoon by Tony Carrillo on February 1, 2026 has a caption that says:

 

“For too long, we’ve ignored the devastating effects that ‘be yourself’ messaging can have on those people who happen to have rotten selves.”

 

Back on March 19, 2010 I blogged about Just be yourself (act naturally)? and I asked:

 

“Well, which self would you like to see: best or worst, relaxed or scared, et cetera?”

 

And there is a LinkedIn Pulse article on April 2, 2024 by Laura Bergells titled The Trouble with ‘Just Be Yourself’: A Deeper Look into Public Speaking Anxiety. A Mathew Hussey blog post on September 22, 2013 titled ‘Be Yourself’ – Bad Advice says:

 

“When someone says ‘be yourself’ all it does is give us validation for staying the same and not taking risks.”

 

My cartoon was adapted from a tee shirt and dragon at OpenClipArt.

 

 

How to get results with communication

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not everything good is out there on the internet. I was looking up articles about public speaking in the EBSCOhost databases via my local public library, which are available in the Libraries Linking Idaho (LiLI) Databases. I found an excellent four-page article by Robert D. Ramsey in the May 2022 issue of Supervision magazine (on pages 10 to 13) titled Achieving results with communication. Then I saw that was the third time it had been reprinted by them. It initially had appeared back in their March 2006 issue, and also was reprinted in the March 2018 and May 2019 issues. It has the following list of 20 Ways to communicate more effectively:

 

Say what needs to be said as plainly as possible 

    and as soon as you can possibly say it.

Be prepared.

Remember who you are talking to.

Stick to the truth.

Remember half-truths are also half-lies.

Check for understanding.

Don’t communicate when you are angry.

Be yourself.

Use examples.

Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself.

Remember Goldilocks.

Be consistent.

Don’t take cheap shots.

If you don’t know, say so.

Remember, shorter is better.

Give reasons for actions, not just policy references.

Know when to shut up.

Write like you talk.

Dare to be passionate.

Listen to yourself.

 

Dr. Ramsey has written a bunch of books, including How to Say the Right Thing Every Time (which you can find both at Amazon and Google Books). In that book he has an opposite list, titled The twenty biggest communication mistakes school leaders make and how to avoid them:

 

Overreliance on jargon

Walking on eggs

Bending over backward to be politically correct

Too much formality

Overgeneralization

Sermonizing

Obsfucation

Practicing dogmatism

Patronizing

Making empty threats

Whining

Grammatical or spelling errors

Lying and denying

Communication overload

Overuse of slanguage

Showing off

Being Cute

Using profanity

Overfamiliarization

Using sexual innuendos

 

The image was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons

 

Tips and icebergs

In my previous blog post on September 28, 2017 titled Alan Alda on public speaking tips and rules of three I quoted how he didn’t much like tips. I don’t either. Tips often are so vague they are  useless – not even half truths. A comical illustration is in a YouTube video clip from Monty Python’s Flying Circus showing a mythical children’s TV program called How to Do It. John Cleese describes how to play the flute:

“Well here we are. You blow there, and you move your fingers up and down here.”

That tip just is the tip of an iceberg. There’s a lot more going on underneath the water. Both parts of an iceberg (or at least Antarctic ones) have useful jargon names. Page 48 in a 2011 book by Vijay P. Singh, Pratap Singh, and K. Haritashya titled Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers explains:

“The floating upper side of the ice, projecting over the water is termed the ‘hummock’; while the downward projection of the ice, which is hidden beneath the seawater, is termed the ‘bummock.’ These bummocks are dangerous for ships navigating in Antarctic waters.”

On February 1, 2017 I blogged about Incomplete and useful advice about recordings of your speech rehearsals. I noted that David McGimpsey had vaguely said to:

“….If you have time, record yourself (video or audio). You’ll find areas where you need to elaborate and give additional information. You’ll also find areas you can cut.”

More detailed and useful advice came from Fred E. Miller, who said you can view the video, just listen to the sound, or view the video with the sound off (to see gestures, etc.).

At her Speak Up for Success blog Jezra Kaye lists 100 Top Public Speaking Tips, each of which is a separate post with enough detail (bummock) to be useful.

The Arctic iceberg image came from Wikimedia Commons.

A little fear of public speaking is good, but a lot is awful

Is public speaking fear good for you? Maybe yes, maybe no - as is shown above. It depends on the level of fear. An article by Dean Burnett in The Guardian on October 16, 2014 titled Social anxiety: why the mundane can be terrifying pointed out that:

“....Sometimes, stress and pressure can increase performance. 


This is actually a reliable occurrence, and gave rise to the Yerkes-Dodson law. This law can be represented by a simple curve, and basically shows that as nervousness and stress increase, performance increases. 

 
You’ve heard people say they work better when a deadline is imminent? This is probably true. And maybe the brain is piling the pressure on in social situations where you want to impress – to increase your performance, upping the odds of you doing so?
 
But this increase in performance only occurs up to a point. And that point is all important: too much stress or pressure and your performance declines to nothing. People can’t function properly when they’re incredibly stressed, and it shows.”

That curve also has been discussed in a 2011 article by Jennifer K. Paweleck-Bellingrodt on Anxiety, a 2012 article by Scott Duggan titled You Need Stress - Really! and a 2015 article by Till H. Gross titled 4 public speaking tips from a professional public speaker. A more detailed 2012 article by Dan Goleman at Psychology Today discussed The Sweet Spot for Achievement - what’s the relationship between stress and performance?

Another half truth - There’s no “I” in team

If you’ve listened to sports talk radio, or watched movies about sports or business, then you’ve probably heard that tiresome old cliche. But, if you step off the beaten track and use a font like Silom with a round top as shown above (or another with a square top) you can see that the space inside the “A” really does make an “I.”

Chris Muller included it on his list of Business Cliches That Must Die, and ranted:

“Seriously? We’re using spelling now for motivation? Although there’s no ‘I’ in team, there is a ‘me’, ‘am’, ‘eat’, and ‘meat.’ Not sure if that means anything, but based on spelling, I think the team should go out for a burger.”

British cartoonist Royston Robertson added:

“You’re right, there is no ‘I’ in team. But there is ‘tea’, so I’m nipping off for a break right now...”

Better still, if you look up team in the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find a 1688 alternate spelling of taime. So, there really is both an “I” and a “me” in team.

Three half-truths about flip charts

On April 15th Oliver Adria’s Rethink Presentations blog had a guest post by Joanne Westley on on Why Flip Charts Will Always Outlive PowerPoint.

Her four section headings were:

1. You’ll be a better presenter.
2. PowerPoint bores your audience, but a flip chart entertains them.
3. Using a flip chart gives you room to be spontaneous.
4. Your audience will remember you and your message.

Her first half truth under #1 was that:

“...there are no technological excuses, because the equipment can’t possibly fail! If the electricity goes out, you and your flip chart are still good to go.”


Got Markers?

That’s silly because it assumes that there are both the right markers and enough paper in the room. Make sure that you bring along a couple of wide chisel-point permanent markers. Fine or ultra-fine point versions just won’t do.

Yellow or pink highlighters also won’t do, but that may be what is left in the room for you. They won’t have enough contrast to be visible from the back of the room. 

Got Paper?

Don’t assume that there will be a pad with enough sheets for your presentation. Bring a  pad of paper with you. Remember that to avoid bleed-through you will want to leave a blank page between each page that you use. I prefer a pad with a one-inch grid of light blue guide lines. They help me keep my letters two-inches tall, and avoid them running downhill. 

Got Casters on your Easel?

There is a third technical problem with flip chart easels - casters, that was mentioned last year by Max Atkinson. If you don’t lock the casters before you begin, then the chart may roll away (or you may knock it over while trying to stop it).  

Her second half-truth under #2 was:

“With a PowerPoint presentation, the lights are dimmed and all attention goes to the screen.”

That’s only true if you chose to use light colored text on a dark background. If you use dark colored text on a light background (like a flip chart), then you can leave some lights on so your audience won’t go to sleep.

Her third half-truth under #3 was:

“A flip chart lets you be flexible with your delivery, depending on the feel of the room. And since you can decide how much to pre-draw, you can adjust the spontaneity level to suit your audience.”

If you learned PowerPoint in ten minutes, you probably didn’t discover that in Slide Show view you can change the pointer into a pen and draw on the screen. That’s the last item in Dave Paradi’s excellent article on Ten Secrets for Using PowerPoint Effectively. Put some plain slides in your presentation, switch to the pen, and you will have the equivalent of a flip chart for adding ideas spontaneously.

Here are two good YouTube videos - a two minute Flip Chart How To and a five-minute Top Tips for using a Flip Chart.

Images of plain and rolling flip chart easels are from Wikimedia Commons.

Advice on eye contact not followed by the man giving it

Andy Harrington has a teaser YouTube video called Public Speaking Fear - The Truth, which gives the following numerically challenged advice:

“Public speaking is considered by many people to be their number one fear. But, there are a number of ways of overcoming the fear of public speaking.

Here’s one you may have never thought of before. Essentially, when in a large group of people, what you do when speaking is just talk to one person at a time. By doing this, and making it conversational, and holding that contact for say, seven to ten seconds, what happens is you won’t get overwhelmed by all the many eyes staring back at you.

Let’s watch a live demonstration of this as I present at the London XL Center and the London O2 arena alongside Sir Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, and Anthony Robbins.

....Eye contact! So, here’s what you do. There’s 8000 people in this room. My job is to have 8000 individual conversations with you. Meaning, I pick one person out, I focus on you, I speak to you for five seconds. I pick somebody else out, I speak to you for just five seconds.

I look in the back, and I look at my focus over there. Pick one person. I look directly at you and I look at you, and I speak to you personally for that time. I come right back here, and I speak just to you for that period of time. I look at the back, and find someone else, and speak to him for five seconds, and hold that gaze.     

You do that and you’ll do something very important. It meets a very important human need, if you looked at Tony Robbins’ human needs. It fulfills your need for significance. Write it down!”

Well, Andy, write this down. Multiply 8000 times five seconds, and you get 40,000 seconds. Divide it by 60, and that’s 666.66 minutes. Divide it by 60 again, and that’s 11.11 hours. Did you get to talk to that audience for over eleven hours? If you instead had looked at each person for ten seconds, you’d need to have talked for 22.22 hours. So, you didn’t really follow your own advice.

However, I have spoken to an audience of 80 people for 40 minutes, so I actually could have taken less than 7 minutes to look at and briefly speak to everyone.  

The All Eyes Are on You image was derived from a March 5, 1913 Puck magazine cover.

Public speaking tops every list of fears???

One of many persistent half-truths about public speaking is that fear of it consistently ranks number one in survey after survey. This pernicious nonsense has been around in books for at least 25 years. The basis for it is good old hubris - grandly generalizing from a few surveys about adults in the U.S. to the entire world. Lilyann Wilder opened the introduction to her 1999 book 7 Steps to Fearless Speaking by claiming that:

“Fear of public speaking consistently tops every list of human fears.”

A decade later Gary Edward Haymes used more adjectives on page 166 of his 2009 book Go Beyond Stress: Twelve Self-Hypnotic Stress Buster Sessions:

“In every poll taken since the end of World War II, the absolute number one fear of all living humans is delivering a public speech.”

Obviously neither Lilyann nor Gary had seen the counterexample of lists in the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study I discussed on Monday. 

An overblown statement containing every rather than mostly (or often) is a great way to instantly destroy your credibility as an author or speaker. Think hard before you make one. Your audience may be appalled rather than impressed.

Myths of preparation and expertise

Today Seth Godin blogged about the Myth of Preparation. He had a prettier graphic than the one shown above. On mine I have labeled three stages of preparation for a craft of trade: apprentice, journeyman, and master. They will result in quality that might be terrible, mediocre, or great. That is not what Seth calls the three stages though. He instead says:

"There are three stages of preparation. (For a speech, a product, an interview, a sporting event...)

The first I'll call the beginner stage. This is where you make huge progress as a result of incremental effort.

The second is the novice stage. This is the stage in which incremental effort leads to not so much visible increase in quality.

And the third is the expert stage. Here's where races are won, conversations are started and sales are made. A huge amount of effort, off limits to most people, earns you just a tiny bit of quality. But it's enough to get through the Dip and be seen as the obvious winner."

When I read his words I was puzzled. Why didn’t he take a minute to check a dictionary and find out that novice is a synonym for beginner? His word use today was not expert at all!

Just be yourself (act naturally)?

Yet another half-truth about speaking is the common advice to just act naturally. In an often referenced article on How To Conquer Public Speaking Fear Morton C. Orman says to:

“Just go out there, armed with a little knowledge and a few key points, and be yourself.”

Well, which self would you like to see: best or worst, relaxed or scared, et cetera? Laura Bergells discussed how this advice can be confusing in a post titled Just who do you think you are? which she referred to on March 12th in another post asking Be Yourself? Why not be someone else?. Hopefully you will show your best side, once you figure out what it is.

Who we are changes over time as well. In his song Pacing the Cage Bruce Cockburn remarked that:

“I’ve proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip’s worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And everyone was taken in”

Say the phrase “act naturally” and some baby boomers will recall a popular song with that title. There is a version by the Beatles, which has the lead sung by Ringo Starr.

Is it all about the audience?

One of the more common half-truths regarding public speaking is that it’s not about you, it’s about your audience. Mary Darling used it for the title of an article posted on a Psychology Today blog on March 5: How to Give a Presentation, Part 1: It's not about you. She said that:

“….The bottom line is: It's not about you - it's about your audience.”

Similarly, in a blog post on February 25 Lisa Braithwaite said that:

“….It's ALWAYS about the audience. It's not about you.”

Last April in a CIO magazine article on how to Conquer Your Fear of Public Speaking Maryfran Johnson also said that:

“…your focus needs to be in one place only—on your audience. It's not about you. It's all about them.”

Is this the whole truth?, Well, not exactly (as some Hertz car rental ads used to say). Without the presenter there would be no presentation, and the audience would not be sitting there listening. However, the statement is intended to wake the speaker from narcissism and the commonly held opposite viewpoint that it’s all about me. For a hilarious illustration, see this Savage Chickens cartoon about cell phone users.

A speech is a two-way communication. There is a transmitter (mostly the speaker), and receivers (mostly members of the audience). Information is being transferred, like the painting shown below, with some of the contents of a bucket being poured into a vase or jar. If things go well there is a focus on the audience, and the vase doesn’t get overfilled.

Audience-centered speaking is not a new idea. In his 1936 book on How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie said to:

"Talk in terms of the other person's interests."

In the February 1938 issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine, the Denver writer and novelist Marian Castle lamented that:

“….I am tired of the Gimme school of oratory. I beg that every speaker who is about to take from his hearers their only irreplaceable possession - time – be required first to spend five minutes in silent meditation examining his motives to see whether his speech is being given for the good of his hearers, or only for the good of his own soul.”

The Wikimania audience photo is by Joi Ito.

Why less is more – or even less

On March 7th Bob Malloney posted an article titled Public Speaking - Why Less Is More. He began by lamenting that most business presentations he heard suffered from information overload. They could have been improved by presenting less information. Cut your presentation down until it is simple and powerful, with just a few main points.

The aphorism of minimalism that “less is more” is commonly associated with the German-American architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who lived from 1886 to 1969.

Stephen D. Boyd also said it about speech writing for public speaking with a few more words:

“…follow the proverb, ‘Less is better than more.’ Never use three words when you can say it in two.”

Similarly, the chief engineer of Douglas Aircraft, Ed Heinemann, said to:

“Simplicate, and add lightness.”

Heinemann was particularly famous as the designer of the agile, little, delta-winged A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft. If you saw the movie Top Gun, then you saw the instructors in their Skyhawks merrily harassing the bigger, faster F-14 Tomcats. (For 13 seasons the Navy’s aerobatic team, the Blue Angels, flew Skyhawks).

Minimalism in all kinds of design involves an optimum, so “less is more” is a half-truth. It really calls for cutting out the fat while leaving the meat. You cannot keep cutting and expect that a design with zero content would be infinitely effective. Instead it probably would be completely ineffective. So, really less is more – until it is less.

Half-truths and public speaking

Don’t you hate hearing half-truths? I do! It doesn’t matter whether you think the glass is half-full or half-empty. Either way you are getting an incomplete story. In the next couple of posts I’m going to look at these two half-truths:

“Less is more!” and “It’s all about the audience!”

Stay tuned for more.