Avoiding a downward spiral of shame after a speech went badly

The Harvard Business Review has an excellent web article by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries titled Don’t Let Shame Become a Self-Destructive Spiral.

There also was another article by Christine Clapp in the March 2013 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled When bad speeches happen to good people (how to recover from a disappointing presentation) that you can read in a .pdf file at her Spoken With Authority web site. Her advice is to:

Put it in perspective
Analyze what went wrong - and right
Troubleshoot
Craft a plan
Get back on stage
Measure progress
Consider a coach
Believe in comebacks

Shame (and resilience from it) is a large subject. Social work researcher Brené Brown has studied, written, and spoken about it a lot. In 2013 on the Oprah Winfrey show she gave brief advice on 3 Things you can do to stop a shame spiral. You can also watch her 21-minute TED talk on Listening to Shame, or listen to a long podcast of an episode  from On Being about The Courage to Be Vulnerable.

The spiral-staircase image came from Wikimedia Commons.

We are more resilient than we might think

Resilience lets us bounce back after a bad experience. At the Harvard Business Review web site there is an article on January 25, 2017 by Andy Molinsky titled You’re more resilient that you give yourself credit for. He points out four specific ways: 

We’re more flexible than we think.
We’re braver than we think.
The situation we’re worried about probably isn’t as bad as we think.
We have more resources than we think.

The image of a bouncing ball came from Wikimedia Commons.

Bouncing back after a bad experience

On June 6th the Washington Post published a brief story by Charlene Jehle about what once happened to her at a high school sports banquet. She had coached volleyball at Catholic University, and was to be the after-dinner speaker.

A parent was clearing plates as Charlene was being introduced, and accidentally toppled the whole stack, which dumped loads of chicken bones and potato salad onto her hair and clothes. Their coach tried frantically to clean her up. What was her reaction?

“I walked to the podium with a changed attitude. Nothing I could say or do at that point would be more embarrassing than what had just transpired in front of the entire audience. It was a turning point. I gave the best speech of my life and forever lost the fear of public speaking. Amazing what a little chicken and potato salad can do.” 

Her reaction illustrates that fear is based on perception and not reality. It reminded me of an old Zen saying that at this point nothing really is left to you but to have a good laugh at yourself.