A quantified version of a discredited Mark Twain quotation about fear of public speaking

Mark Twain allegedly once said that:

“There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.”

 

On May 12, 2020 I blogged about that quote in a post titled Did Mark Twain really say there were just nervous speakers or liars? Both Garson O’Toole and I found no evidence that Twain said it.

 

Matt Abrahams made up a quantified version of the quote. It is based on a statistic from an article by Michael T. Motley titled Taking the Terror Out of Talk which appeared on pages 46 to 49 of Psychology Today back in January 1988. Motley opened by stating:

  

“Surveys show that what American fear most – more than snakes, heights, disease, financial problems or even death – is speaking before a group. This is surprising in a way, since even a dreadful speech isn’t as serious as illness, poverty or the grave. Yet about 85 percent of us feel uncomfortably anxious speaking in public.”

 

The latest version by Matt Abrahams is an article at Insights by Stanford Business on May 7, 2020 titled High-Stakes Communication: how to manage anxiety speaking in front of others. He claimed:

 

“Research tells us that 85% of people feel nervous in high-stake speaking situations. And quite frankly, I think the other 15% are lying.”

 

An earlier version appears in an interview presented by Nick Morgan in a Public Words blog post on March 8, 2016 that discusses the third edition of Matt’s book, How to speak up without freaking out. That one says:  

 

“Research tells us that 85% of people feel anxious when speaking in front of others, and I fully believe that the other 15% are lying. We can always create a situation that can make confident presenters nervous.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Folks is business schools often analyze situations using 2x2 tables. As shown above, Matt’s claim means that all the 85% who say they fear speaking are telling the truth, but all the 15% who say they do not fear speaking are lying. That seems an unlikely dichotomy. Why would only those who fear speaking be telling the truth?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 As shown above, to me it seems more likely that perhaps 20% of people always are lying - because they are sociopaths. The totals still are 85% and 15%.

 

In 1912 a speech may have saved Teddy Roosevelt’s life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strange things can happen while getting ready to give a speech. On the evening of October 14, 1912 former president Theodore Roosevelt had stepped out of a hotel in Milwaukee and into an open car that would take him to the Milwaukee Auditorium where he was scheduled to speak. Then an unemployed saloonkeeper, Jacob Schrank, who stood just five feet away. fired one shot from a .38 revolver at Roosevelt’s chest.  

 

The combination of his heavy army overcoat, glasses case, and the folded fifty-page text of his speech slowed down the bullet, and it did not penetrate the lung. He decided to go on and deliver his speech. Roosevelt opened by stating:

 

“Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot – but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

 

The incident is described both in an article by Patricia O’Toole in Smithsonian Magazine for November 2012 titled The speech that saved Teddy Roosevelt’s life and more recently by Christopher Klein on July 21, 2019 at History.com in another article titled When Teddy Roosevelt was shot in 1912, a speech may have saved his life.

 

Roosevelt followed his own advice from an address in Paris at the Sorbonne on April 23, 1910 in which he famously had said:

 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

 

An image of a revolver came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Playing university games with money from Idaho taxpayers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On September 17, 2020 at the Idaho Freedom Foundation there is an article by Fred Birnbaum titled BSU’s Tromp should lead by example, cut her own pay and benefits. Fred was whining about how the Boise State University president had announced a plan to cut pay of athletic department employees who earn more than $40,00 per year. He said her plan also should spark a larger discussion about leadership and priorities in BSU’s funding. Then he said:

 

“Consider for a moment that the person slashing pay for BSU workers – Tromp – brings home a hefty paycheck each year. Her cuts might not inflict much pain on football coach Brian Harsin’s pocketbook, but they will do significant damage to lower-paid staffers who make less each year than Tromp receives from BSU just to pay for her housing. According to her contract, Tromp earns an annual salary of $425,000, plus a $60,000 housing allowance and a $9,200 car allowance. Will she cut her own lavish pay and perks to show solidarity with the working men and women of Boise State?”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is BSU important? As shown above, in 2019 Boise State University had the largest enrollment of any state university in Idaho. It is bigger than the University of Idaho plus Idaho State. Only the LDS’s Brigham Young University-Idaho (BYU-Idaho) has close to that enrollment.

 

I continued reading the article, expecting to find out that Tromp had the highest salary, and a lower one for Coach Harsin. But Fred never bothered to state any other salaries. (He did whine that BSU should cut out the assistant to the vice president for equity initiatives). That got me thinking this was more a rant about that BSU president who liberal politics he disliked than a serious discussion of priorities. Sutton’s Law says to first consider the obvious. It is named after bank robber Willie Sutton, who when asked why he robbed banks, allegedly replied:

“because that’s where the money is.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a state web site called Transparent Idaho that has tables listing the salaries of all state employees who are paid more than the governor ($138,302). As shown above in a bar chart of the Top Ten, six members of the BSU athletic department (orange) are there – so that’s where the money is for a total of 3.7 million dollars. BSU football coach Brian Harsin has the highest salary of $1,650,000, followed by basketball coach Leon Rice with $725,000, and BSU president Marlene Tromp with $425,006. Next are the presidents of the University of Idaho (U of I), C. Scott Green, at $419,994 and Idaho State University (ISU), Kevin D. Satterlee, at $400,000. The only person in the top ten not at a university is Robert N. Maynard, the chief investment officer in the Public Employment Retirement System of Idaho (PERSI) whose salary of $339,518 is seventh.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above in another bar chart of the Top Twenty, members of the BSU athletic department (orange) have 9 of the top 20 salaries, while other BSU executives have just 4 more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still another bar chart shows the Top Forty, which adds just another four BSU executives in the second twenty. So the total for BSU is 17 of 40, with 9 from athletics and 8 from other executives. That 17 is almost half of the Top Forty. For perspective, the fortieth salary of $231,213 is 4.16 times the state median income of $55,583. Note that the salary for our state epidemiologist, Christine G. Hahn, is only #36.   

 

It is a legitimate question whether the BSU athletic department (or all of BSU) should be paid that much. But Fred never asked it. Many people enjoy watching university football and basketball, and might say yes. I am not one of them, perhaps because I lived in Ann Arbor for seven years and Columbus for nine. I got really tired of the local emphasis on Michigan and Ohio State football, and the entitled attitude of those athletic departments.     

 

Images of a football and basketball came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Spouting Nonsense – Nobody ever died from public speaking (without having an underlying health condition)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 31, 2017 I blogged about Spouting Nonsense – Nobody ever died from public speaking. I described about thirty people who had died while speaking. At Buffalo 7 on September 10, 2020 there is an article titled The power to overcome presentation anxiety is already within you with a narrower claim that:

“Nobody ever died from talking on stage. Not without underlying health conditions, anyway.”

 

But in my previous post I already had included two people who had no underlying health conditions. Inijero Asanuma was stabbed with a samurai sword on October 12, 1960, and Malcolm X was shot on February 21, 1965.

 

I did some more searching and found three other examples of shootings described in Wikipedia. On June 29, 1992 Mohamed Boudiaf (the seventh president of Algeria) was shot by one of his bodyguards while he was giving a televised speech in Annaba. On April 23, 1993 Lalith Athulathmudali (a former Cabinet Minister of Sri Lanka) was shot while he was addressing a gathering in Kirulapana. On December 19, 2016 Andrei Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, was shot while he was speaking at an art exhibition in Ankara.  

 

An image of the grim reaper was adapted from Wikimedia Commons.    

 

Three combinations as topics for speeches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One speech topic type is a combination of two rather different things. Some combinations are brilliant while others are more questionable.

 

Boat + Army Truck = DUKW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In World War II the DUKW  (a six-wheel all-wheel-drive Army truck with a boat hull added) was developed for amphibious landings. 21,000 were built. They could swim at 5 knots in smooth water, go ashore, and drive at 50 mph on good roads. The driver could control the tire pressure from 10 psi for soft sand to 40 psi for paved roads. There was a centrifugal bilge pump capable of 260 gallons per minute. In the two months following the D-Day landings, DUKWs delivered 40 percent of the supplies landed on the Normandy beaches. As shown above, they also could cross rivers to avoid guarded or damaged bridges. Long after the war some were enlarged, and still are used for duck tours in harbors and on lakes.   

Gardening + Model Railway = Garden Railway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A garden railway is a model railway system set up outdoors in a garden, as shown above. As a child I recall model railways being mainly for the Christmas season, and often placed beneath the tree. Often there is no room inside the house for them to be set up all year. Gardens offer more room, but being outdoors causes more wear and tear than indoors. There was a Garden Railways magazine which ends in Fall 2020. 

 

Cross-country Skiing + Rifle Shooting = Biathlon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biathlon is a curious combination included in the Winter Olympics. Jerry Seinfeld had a routine where he asked about alpine snipers, and suggested an even stranger combination for the Summer Olympics - swimming and strangling.   

 

Who owns the forests in California?

Sometimes the lack of research about and political spin on topics in the news is amazing. An article at Fox News by Morgan Phillips on September 15, 2020 titled Harris, Newsom blame climate change for California fires following Trump visit said:

 “At the urging on Newsom back in late August, Trump approved a disaster declaration for California and ordered federal funding to be directed to the state. The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly blamed the state for poor forest management. He’s called on Newsom to ‘clean’ or rake the forest floors of debris while suggesting the state implement controlled burns. The president reiterated on Monday that California needs to do better forest management – a remark that Newsom acknowledged. ‘We have not done justice to our forest management,’ Newsom said. ‘We acknowledge our role and response.’ Newsom, however, did note that a large portion of the land in California is federally owned and that he believes climate change has drastically contributed to the intensity of the fires.”

How large a portion? As shown above, another article by Dale Kasler at the Sacramento Bee on September 14, 2020 titled Fact check: Trump downplays climate change, says California must thin forests. What he got wrong pointed out that 57% of the forest land was federally owned by the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, 40% was private, and only 3% was state owned. The feds own 19 times as much land as the state does! Jim Lyons at Politico on September 15, 2020 mentioned that too in yet another article titled Trump blames California for fires. He should check to see whose land they’re on.

A YouTube video from Brian Tracy titled Six Do’s and Don’ts of Public Speaking is best either watched as a silent movie or read as this blog post

A month ago Brian Tracy posted a 5:18 YouTube video titled 6 Do’s and Don’ts of Public Speaking. As shown above, one piece of advice from it is to NOT use visual aids throughout the entire talk. But that advice was completely ignored  – it is entirely, openly captioned. It also says that if all we wanted was a visual, they we could just have read a blog post like this one.

As shown above, the captions sometimes take up almost half of the screen. Here is the entire script (~920 words) for that video, taken directly from the screen text with brackets indicating missing periods and the missing number for the sixth tip:

1)   Don’t fill every second with words. Some speakers feel as if they need to be speaking the entire time they’re on stage, filling every moment with words. But in many cases, pauses can be just as effective as speaking – sometimes even more so. A strategically placed pause is powerful and can do a lot for your audience. There are a few different types of pauses you can use. A dramatic pause can help your point stick in your listener’s minds, while a sense pause is meant to give people a moment to absorb new information. You can also use an emphatic pause to highlight an important point or a sentence-completion pause to encourage audience interaction as you start a familiar phrase and let the audience finish it. As a bonus, pauses don’t only help your audience – they also help you. Many speakers tend to rush through their speech when they get on stage. BY deliberately adding pauses, you’ll help yourself relax, slow down, and deliver your speech at a much more manageable speed.

2)    Next, don’t rely too heavily on visual aids. Visual aids such as charts, graphs, or infographics have a lot of pros and cons. When visual aids are well-designed and used at the right times, they can be a nice complement to your talk. But if you start to rely on your visual aids too often, that’s where things can start to fall apart[.] Your audience is here to listen to your speech because they wanted to hear you talk. If all they wanted was a visual, they could have read a blog post. That’s why you shouldn’t rely too heavily on your visual aids. Instead, use them sparingly. Share graphics for just a few of your key points instead of using visual aids throughout the entire talk. That way, you can make sure your visual aids are truly supporting your speech and not detracting from it.

3)   Next, don’t be afraid to promote yourself on stage [.] Do you have a product, service, or something else to promote? If so, don’t be afraid to include it in your speech! Many times, public speakers might feel that it’s pushy to mention their product in their speech. But as long as your product fits with what you’re talking about, it’s completely okay to include it. In fact, this is a way you can bring more value to your audience. Promoting yourself is an important skill. It can be a little tricky to find the balance of providing value instead of selling, but once you do, you’ll see your career and your income begin to rise. In fact, while we’re on the topic, download Brian’s ‘Five Minute Speech Formula’ by clicking the button on screen now. It’s a simplified cheat-sheet that will help you write your next speech very quickly.    

4)   Don’t fidget or pace. Fiddling with your notecards or nervously walking back and forth across the stage isn’t the best way to present yourself as a professional public speaker. Instead, practice your speech as much as you can and get comfortable with being on stage. The more time you spend giving speeches, the more relaxed you’ll feel with each one. And although fidgeting and pacing distract the audience, it’s completely okay to incorporate other types of movement into your speech if you are having trouble standing still. Just make sure that your physical movement makes sense with the speech that you’re giving. Any moves you make should be intentional, deliberate, and necessary. For example, try stepping closer to the edge of the stage to connect with your audience as you drive home an important point.   

5)   Don’t underestimate the power of practicing. Your job as a public speaker starts long before you step on the stage. Before giving your speech, you need to research your audience, prepare your talk, and make sure you’re ready to go. Not knowing your audience can be a disastrous mistake! Make sure to research your audience ahead of time so you can be sure your speech is relevant to them. Then, create a solid draft of your speech so you can rehearse it – including any physical movements you want to make – before presenting it for the first time.  

And finally [6] don’t run over the allotted time of your speech. If you’ve been given a certain number of minutes in which to present your speech, don’t run any longer. Be respectful by ending your speech on time, especially if you’re just starting off in your career. Keeping your speech concise is also helpful because your audience is more likely to stay dialed in for the entire time. Being respectful of the time you’ve been given shows humility and gratefulness, and it’s the quickest way to be invited back to speak again.

QUESTION Which of these was your favorite public speaking tip? Thanks for watching.

Editing tips for speechwriters and other writers

At Medium on September 5, 2020 there is a very useful article by Jay Krasnow titled 10 Editing Tips Writers Need to Know (one involves bean soup). They can be applied to speechwriting, PowerPoint, and blog posts. I have paraphrased them as follows:

Don’t leave out the main ingredient – be sure there are beans in the bean soup.

Look at your copy upside-down.

Check all the names (people and places).

Verify the pairs (parentheses, brackets).

Are all acronyms defined when they first are used?

Verify the phone numbers, addresses, and hyperlinks.

Do titles and section headings make sense?

Look for clusters of errors.

Make sure you read it out loud.

Check your formatting.

When you look at your printed copy upside-down, spacing errors and weird fonts will stand out. In Patrick Winston’s presentation on How to Speak (discussed in my previous post) at 31:48 he described looking at a printout of a presentation to see if the slides were too heavy – cursed with solid blocks of text.

The last thing I do with a blog post after I publish it is to go back and add all the hyperlinks. Then I view it, and click on the hyperlinks to see they all work. When reading through the post I may find errors not caught by the spell checker in Word – like accidentally leaving the h off of harm.

In Jeff Smith’s 1990 cookbook The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors the recipe for Beef Bulgogi lists ingredients for the marinade but it doesn’t say how much or what type of beef to use. The text just says to prepare the beef. A later web version at Good Food says it really is one pound of beef ribeye.

At the Gem State Patriot News there recently was a pair of articles by Dr. John Livingston with repeated misspellings. One on September 3, 2020 titled Lies and More Lies says flue instead of flu (as shown above). That’s a cluster of spelling errors. A second article on September 5, 2020 titled Do you believe in miracles? says Devine instead of Divine. (Andy Devine was a well-known character actor, but not divinely inspired). In between those two there is a third on September 4, 2020 titled What is an expert? Dr. Livingston says that:

“An expert is someone who knows a great amount about a small slice of the world, and most experts fail to see how their small sliver of the pie relates to the rest of the world.”

But we expect his small sliver to include getting all the spelling right - rather than depending on an editor to fix that detail. Another version of What is an expert? appears at the Idaho Freedom Foundation on September 8, 2020 titled Experts and the people. There the author is listed with his middle initial as Dr. John M. Livingston. That version was edited to have more paragraphs.

An article by Olivia Mitchell at Speaking About Presenting describes 9 ways to edit your presentation. Olivia says to have one focus (a core message), and no more than three main points. Cut anything that does not relate to the core message, like secondary examples or stories.

Another article by Andrew Dlugan at Six Minutes on March 4, 2008 is titled Speech Preparation #5: Six power principles for speech editing. He says to edit for focus, clarity, concision, continuity, variety, impact and beauty.

The image of beef bulgogi came from Debbie Tingzon at Wikimedia Commons.

Excellent YouTube video on How to Speak from Patrick Winston at MIT

At YouTube you can watch an excellent hour-long video from Patrick Winston on the topic of How to Speak (which is MIT OpenCourseWare). As shown above, it includes a hilarious Basic Crimes slide with what NOT to do.  

Communication is not the top attribute employers want to see on resumes from college students

Back on December 14, 2010 I had blogged about how Half of employers surveyed think recent college grads lack communication skills. That post discussed the annual Job Outlook Surveys done by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). I mentioned that:

“When I looked further I found that communications skills has topped the list for the past decade.”  

Another post on March 4, 2017 is titled According to the 2016 NACE Job Outlook Survey, verbal communication is the most important candidate skill and employers grade their average new grad/recruit as a B+ on it. But in the past decade the rank had been changing. Also, newer surveys (after 2016) instead reported just the combination of written and verbal communication being ranked third or fourth as is shown above.

Full versions of those surveys theoretically are only available to NACE members, but some members post them and you can easily find the 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 , and 2020 surveys, An article about the 2020 survey described The Top Attributes Employers Want to See on Resumes, as shown above in another in a second bar chart where verbal communication skill was ranked fifth (by 69.6% of employers). Instead problem solving skills are at the top, followed by teamwork and a strong work ethic.      

As shown above in a third bar chart, from 2012 to 2020 written communication skill was always ranked higher than verbal communication skill (which was ranked seventh five times, from a high of fourth in 2016 to a low of eighth in 2015).

Trump’s magical ‘full and complete health care plan’ never quite appears

Back on July 19th, in an interview with Chris Wallace, Donald Trump proclaimed:

“We're signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do.”

In a press briefing on August 3rd he promised it again, but as discussed by Jason Hoffman at CNN Politics on September 5, 2020 Trump promised a health care plan before the end of August. It never came.

More history is described by Victoria Knight at Kaiser Health News and PolitiFact on  August 13, 2020 in an article titled Back to the future: Trump’s history of promising a health plan that never comes.

Back on February 27, 2017 another article by Madeline Conway at Politico had the headline Trump: ‘Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.’ Obviously he has forgotten that insight.

An image of a magician was modified from this one at the Library of Congress.

Riding the Glade Runner mountain coaster at Bogus Basin

Yesterday I drove fifteen miles north of Boise to the Bogus Basin ski resort and paid $15 to ride their Glade Runner. The web page about it says:

“Experience 4,330 feet of high speed, twisting and turning, screaming and cheering through the woods! Just east of the Simplot Lodge, guests (driver and passenger) are seated in a mountain coaster cart, pulled to the top of the track, then released at the top for an exhilarating ride through the trees. You are in control of your own speed and by pressing the handles all the way forward, you unleash The Glade Runner’s full potential!”

As shown above in a YouTube video it is a fairly wild ride.

Two of my blog posts are referenced in a textbook on Exploring Public Speaking

My November 11, 2010 blog post titled All Speaking is Public Speaking or there is no such thing as public speaking and my April 1, 2018 blog post titled Misquoting Jerry Seinfeld and inflating fear five times are mentioned in Section 1.1 What is Public Speaking? of a Creative Commons ebook titled Exploring Public Speaking, which can be downloaded here.

A payroll tax postponement scam

Back on August 8th President Trump signed a Memorandum on deferring payroll tax obligations in light of the ongoing COVID-19 disaster. This scam went into effect yesterday. It just postpones paying the payroll tax until after the election. An article by Darla Mercado at CNBC on August 31, 2020 titled The payroll tax deferral takes effect Sept. 1. What it really means for your paycheck explained its effects:

“President Trump issued an executive order to defer the 6.2% tax employees pay toward Social Security from Sept. 1 until Dec. 31. This is only a deferral — not forgiveness of the tax owed.

The IRS issued guidance late last week, placing the responsibility on employers for collecting the tax deferred. It must be paid by April 30, or else penalties, interest and other taxes will apply.

Employees who partake in the payroll tax deferral would enjoy a temporary boost in their take-home pay for the remainder of the year. However, they will see smaller paychecks early next year as employers withhold and pay the deferred amount to the IRS.”

Donald J. Trump lies almost once each hour of every day

Recently I ran across an article by David Markowitz at Forbes on May 5, 2020 titled Trump is lying more than ever: Just look at the data. He said that the President has averaged 23.8 lies per day since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the U.S. That’s an astonishing level of fraud – it is roughly one lie an hour of every day. Mr. Markowitz noted that most people tell one or two lies per day on average rather than 24.  

An amazing one from his news conference yesterday was that:

“….a city like Portland, where the entire city is ablaze all the time and a mayor says, ‘We don’t want any help from the federal government.’ ”

Today Daniel Dale at CNN Politics has an article titled Fact check: ‘WE ARE NOT ABLAZE,’ Portland fire department says after Trump falsely claims ‘entire city’ is on fire. In less than five minutes you could find that is false. Just view Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) traffic cameras to see what really is going on in the North, East, NE, NW, SE, and SW.  

How many lies has he told just since he has been in office as President? An article by Rebecca Klar at The Hill on January 20, 2020 is titled Fact-checker counts 16K false, misleading claims by Trump in three years. That’s lower, just 14.6 lies per day. Another article by Lauren Aratani at The Guardian on July 13, 2020 is titled ‘Tsunami of untruths’: Trump has made 20,000 false or misleading claims -report. And Wikipedia has a page titled Veracity of statements by Donald Trump.