Don’t start an article with a tired old statistic and joke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Training on March 7, 2022 there is a decent article by Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts titled From Stage Fright to Stage Might and subtitled 9 tips to keep in mind before your next foray into the presentation spotlight. Those tips are:

 

Know your audience

Use presentation aids sparingly

Engage your audience from the start

Practice, then practice some more

Bring notes

Use pauses to your advantage

Avoid distractions

Get in the zone

Look them in the eyes and “listen’

 

Under the third tip, to engage your audience from the start, she says to get your audience’s attention with something like a shocking statistic or headline. But the first two sentences of her article, don’t follow her advice. They are:

 

“Would you believe that speaking in public is the No. 1 human fear of people, while death is No. 7? So at a funeral, would you rather be lying in the casket than delivering the eulogy? – Jerry Seinfeld”

 

The survey and joke both are very old news, as shown above via a time line. That ranking comes from a survey almost five decades old. Back on October 27, 2009 I blogged about the 1973 Bruskin survey in a post titled The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from? And the Seinfeld joke is from 1993, almost three decades ago. I blogged about it in an April 8, 2018 post titled Misquoting Jerry Seinfeld and inflating fear five times. What would be startling instead? On September 26, 2021 I blogged about how Fear of public speaking was only ranked #54 of 95 fears in the 2020/2021 Chapman Survey of American Fears.

  

 

 

Chain or round-robin storytelling for Table Topics at Toastmasters club meetings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One format for conducting Table Topics, the impromptu speaking portion of a Toastmasters club meeting, is to have the participants tell a sequential or continuing story. Bea Gogate used this format at our March 9, 2022 Pioneer Club meeting in Boise.

 

Several other names have been used to describe this format. Liberty Village Toastmasters called it chain storytelling, and the Toastmasters Wiki on Table Topics Ideas calls it a round robin story (#15). Shirley Kelly Presents calls it a continuous story, as does page 15 of the District 106 Toastmasters Club Programming Idea Cookbook which has the following description:

 

“Begin a story and ask Topics participants to continue it. The last line used by each participant is the first line used by the next participant.”

 

Back in high school I participated in a handwritten literary magazine which called a similar format the continuing story. Someone would write for a page. Then he would copy his last sentence onto the top of another page. That page got passed to the second person, who wrote for the rest of that page, and then copied his last sentence onto the top of yet another page, and so on.  

 

An article by Jessica Stillman on March 18, 2022 at Inc. is titled Researchers say they’ve developed a method that can train anyone to be creative. It describes using storytelling for training. Her article is based on one by Angus Fletcher and Mike Benveniste in the March 10, 2022 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences titled A new method for training creativity: narrative as an alternative to divergent thinking.

 

The United States only ranked #16 in the 2022 World Happiness Report, while Finland was #1 for the fifth year in a row

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week was the tenth anniversary of the World Happiness Report. It uses survey data to report how people rank their level of happiness in almost 150 countries on a scale from zero to ten. You can download the 2022 report here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bar chart above shows the Top 20 happiest countries, and also selects five others. The Top Ten are Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Israel, and New Zealand. Surprisingly five of the Top Ten are Nordic countries, and 14 of the Top 20 are in Europe. The United States is #16, just behind our northern neighbor Canada (#15). Our other neighbor, Mexico, is way down at #46. Four others with relatively low scores are #46 Japan, #72 China, #80 Russia, and #136 India.        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finland was #1 for five years in a row. Another bar chart compares the rankings for Finland and the United States over the ten surveys. We have been as high as #11 in 2012, and as low as #19 in 2019. On March 25, 2019 I blogged about how According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, Americans are not exceptionally happy.

 

The cartoon with a happy couple comes from pdf page 35 of Punch magazine from July 1920, found here at the Internet Archive.

 

Three tips or pitfalls for group presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I blogged about Group (and hopefully team) presentations. As some infomercials say - but there’s more. The Buckley School has an article on December 7, 2021 titled Three Tips for Better Group Presentations. Those are to:

 

Collaborate and coordinate in advance

Minimize the handoff [as shown above via a statue]

Pay attention when you’re not speaking

 

The Harvard Business Review has a second article by Allison Shapira on November 22, 2021 titled 3 Group Presentation Pitfalls – and How to Avoid Them. She says that three common missteps are:

 

Each slide looks like it was designed by a different person.

Presenters talk over one another.

Forgetting that you are “on.”

 

And three best practices are to:

 

Strategize in advance.

Practice as a group.

Deliver with confidence and authenticity.

 

The statue of passing a baton in a relay race (in Leipzig) was adapted from this image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Group (and hopefully team) presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they are done well and flow smoothly (as shown above), group presentations may not attract much thought. But when done poorly they can stand out like a sore thumb, with different fonts and graphic formats, etc. Careful planning is needed.

 

At the Six Minutes blog on November 3, 2009 there is an article (a post) by Charles Stanton titled How to deliver group presentations: the unified team approach. He says you need three ingredients for a great group presentation: clarity (of purpose, of roles, of message), control (of introductions, of transitions, of time and space), and commitment (to a schedule, to rehearsing, and to answering your audience’s questions).

 

The November 2015 issue of Toastmaster magazine has a second article by Christine Clapp titled Multiple Speakers, One Message. And at DeFinis Communications on June 17, 2020 there is a third article titled Working with co-presenters: how to organize a team presentation. At Training Industry on August 5, 2021 there is a  fourth article by Janine Kurnoff and Lee Lazarus titled Team Presentations: Who does what? which discusses planning why, what, and how. 

 

What were you doing a decade ago?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every month I read an online amateur microscopy magazine called Micscape. This month’s issue only has three articles, but also indexed their March 2012 issue. And that issue had my construction article titled Building a double gooseneck white LED illuminator for a stereomicroscope using modular coolant hose.

 

As shown above, I used 1/4” Loc-Line coolant hose parts to attach an LED headlamp to my StereoZoom7 microscope pod. Loc-Line consists of snap-together ball and socket segments. My collection of photo equipment also includes a Grip-It triple arm clamp made from Loc-Line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joby has copied the ball and socket idea for their GorillaPod line of tabletop tripods (as shown above). The three legs on that little tripod can be wrapped around a vertical post or horizontal rail to support my little Nikon Coolpix L110 digital camera for travel photography.   

 

 

A worthwhile blog from the National Speakers Association’s magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The U.S. National Speakers Association (NSA) publishes a bimonthly Speaker magazine that you can read and download here. The latest issue is for March/April 2022.

 

There also is a worthwhile, weekly blog you can read at this web page. For example, on January 19, 2022 there is a post titled 10 Common public speaking mistakes and how to avoid them at all costs. Those are:

 

Starting with facts & figures

Forgetting to rehearse

Using too many filler words

Not knowing your audience

Overusing visual aids

Sharing too much information

Not including your audience

Hiding behind a podium

Speaking too fast or not speaking loudly enough

No CTA [call to action]

 

The cartoon was modified from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Two more magazine articles about hybrid meetings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On March 18, 2021 I blogged about A very interesting magazine article on how to conduct hybrid (live plus online) meetings. In that post I referred to an article in the March-April 2021 issue of NSA Speaker magazine. The January/February 2022 issue of NSA Speaker magazine has another article on pages 18 to 21 titled Hybrid May Be Here to Stay.

 

There also is an article by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene at Harvard Business Review on June 3, 2021 titled What it takes to run a great hybrid meeting. They mention the following eight best practices:

Up your audio game

Explore a technology boost

Consider video from the remote participant perspective

Make remote participants full sized

Test the technology in advance

Design meetings for all attendees

Provide strong facilitation

Give each remote participant an in-room ‘avatar’

 

I have been impressed by how Chris Frye runs hybrid meetings on Zoom as the Sergeant-at -Arms for the Pioneer Toastmasters club in Boise. As shown above, Chris uses two cameras: one following the speaker (aimed at the lectern), and another aimed at the audience. Each camera connects to Zoom via its own laptop.  I attended last night’s meeting online rather than in person. Initially the audio was fine, but then it dropped out. I immediately mentioned that on the chat, and Chris quickly got it back again.

 

The composite image of a Zoom meeting contains faces from page 29 of Cory J. Campbell’s 1912 book, The Cartoonist’s Art, in Which the First and Last Word is Spoken (at the Internet Archive), and a cartoon and audience photo from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Five things you need to be a highly effective public speaker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Authority Magazine (Medium) in February and March there is a series of 25 articles resulting from interviews with Fotis Georgiadis on the Five things you need to be a highly effective public speaker. Those five things are the main take-away. (The interviews also asked a long series of other questions). Here are the dates, interviewees, and their five things:

 

February 13, 2022

 

Julie Navickas [university communications instructor]:

Understand Your Audience

Engage Your Audience

Be Aware of Your Non-Verbal Communication

Use Humor Effectively

Practice

 

Natalie Sullivan of Vegas Improv Power:

Know what you know.

Know what you don’t know.

Care about what you are saying.

Comfort in discomfort

Connection.

 

February 16, 2022

 

Jennifer Best of AAE Speakers Bureau:

Your “why.”

Lots of practice.

A niche.

A compelling story.

A community.

 

Andrea Heuston of Artitudes:

Audience Research.

Location Research.

Practice. Practice. Practice

Hook them with an opening ‘heart’ story.

Pay attention to language and cadence.

 

Lynn Mason-Pattnosh of ConciergeQ Media:

Public speaking as performance.

Smile.

Breathe.

Audience.

Pressure is a privilege.

 

Dr. Angelia Registad [communication consultant and coach]:  

Be Authentic and Vulnerable

Tell a Story

Use Visuals

Be Organized and Prepared

Practice, Practice, Practice

 

February 20, 2022

 

Keenan Beavis of Longhouse Media:  

Understand that being nervous is completely normal.

Confidence in yourself.

Belief in what you’re saying.

Individuals, not a crowd.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

 

Kyle Bose of Kettering Fairmont High School:

Great body language.

Inflection of voice.

Pacing.

Knowledge.

Awareness.

 

LaQuita Cleare of Clear Communication Academy:

Ability to have a conversation

Storytelling skills

A powerful hook: first impressions matter

Dynamic delivery skills

A clear message

 

Maria Cormier of Emerging Leader Training:

Greet people at the door.

Get the audience involved.

Make it a conversation.

Know your topic.

Gain confidence through practicality.

 

Dan Faill of Faill Safe Solutions:

Your Mindset

Your Message

Your Story

Your Speaker Friends

Your Voice

 

Jonathan George of Unleash Your Rockstar Personal Branding Agency:

Clarity

Content.

Preparation.

Practice.

 

Tommy Hilcken [speaking coach]:  

You must be trained.

Be confident.

Be prepared.

Do the biz.

Love what you do.

 

Joseph McClendon III of the Neuroencoding Institute:

Identification.

Logic/Reason.

Attack and confess.

Solution.

Assume the action.

 

Simba Nyazika of Lenica Research Group:

Have a clear vision (why) for the presentation.

Clarify the one primary thing you want the audience to leave with or to do.

Use stories to engage and make your speech memorable.

Use your non-verbal behaviour to make your speech more impactful.

Make eye contact with sections of the audience, especially during key portions which you want them to remember.

 

February 23, 2022

 

Paul Krismer [keynote speaker]:

Genuinely have something to say.

Be in a business frame of mind.

Be a bit funny.

A good talk is filled with stories that leave an emotional impact.

Prioritize (individualize) your audience for every speech.

 

February 27, 2022

 

LeAnn Brazeal of Missouri State University:

Authenticity.

Conversational style.

Appropriate practice.

Passion for your topic.

Content you’re proud to share.

 

Kelly Charles-Collins [attorney and TEDx speaker]:

You must know what you are going to speak about, who you are going to speak to, what you are going to charge, who will pay you for what you are speaking about, what is the value you will provide.

Whatever your rate is, you must be able to say it and shut up.

Be authentically you.

You must have a depth of knowledge about your topic.

Who you say you are on social media, your website, marketing materials, etc. must be congruent with who shows up for a client.

 

Debra Jason of The Write Direction:

D is for dream.

A is for authenticity.

N is for nurture.

C is create connection.

E is for engagement.

 

March 1, 2022

 

Maria DiLorenzo of MFD Style:

Practice

Pay attention to your speech cadence

Get personal

Be emotive

Believe in yourself and your message

 

March 6

 

Jon Saunders [business leader]:

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Bring energy to the presentation.

Content. Balance between actual points you are trying to make and stories.

Deliver your presentation with a calm confidence.

If using a PowerPoint, remember that less is more.

 

Kyle Slaymaker of The Slaymaker Method:

Be your authentic self.

Be honest.

Be confident.

Place yourself behind others.

Learn from your audience.

 

March 8, 2022

 

Holly Dowling [keynote speaker]:

Lose your ego.

Find your “why.”

Throw out the script and stop memorizing!

Be relatable, be trustworthy, and be empathetic.

Start focusing on bringing your light to your message so you can shine a light on everyone else.

 

March 10, 2022

 

Matias Rodsevich of PR Lab:

Confidence brings credibility and authenticity.

Being yourself relates to your ability to keep it natural.

Relating to the audience also establishes a connection that helps convey what you are saying.

Keeping it short is vital.

Lastly, practicing your speech is a guarantee for having the natural flow needed.

 

March 13, 2022

 

Jackie Kallen of Bruce Merrin’s Celebrity Speakers Bureau:

Motivate.

Inspire.

Entertain.

Be creative.

Share your personality.

 

What words show up most in those lists of five things? They are: practice (10), confidence (6), story (6), audience (5), clarity (3), conversation (3), and why (3).

 

Dan Faill claimed that:

“In fact, nearly 77% of people have glossophobia, or fear of public speaking.”

 

But back on October 12, 2020 I blogged about Do 77% of Americans fear public speaking? No! That percentage described stage fright in Swedes who also had social anxiety disorder.

 

Avoiding false dichotomies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On February 28, 2022 I blogged about critical thinking in a post titled A life preserver for staying afloat in a sea of misinformation. One logic problem discussed there was that of a false choice - presenting only two options when more exist. Wikipedia titles it more generally as a False Dilemma. As shown above, when you head north or south from Boise typically you run out of pavement before you run out of road.

 

The March 11, 2022 xkcd web comic titled False Dichotomy has the following dialogue:

 

"White Hat: That’s a false dichotomy!

Cueball:        Yes, but we have to embrace false dichotomies,

                       because the only alternative is cannibalism."

 

Since 9/11 we have been subjected to other versions like:

 

“We need to do [THIS] or else the terrorists win!”

 

You can even buy a print of a New Yorker cartoon which says:

 

“I figure if I don’t have that third martini, then the terrorists win.”

 

Words that make you sound smarter or more pretentious

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Preply there is an article by Matt Zajechowski on March 9, 2022 titled Words that make you sound smarter, according to Americans. It reports results from a survey of 1,916 Americans done on October 14 and 15 of 2021. There are three Top Twenty lists: A] Which words make someone sound smarter? B] Which words do people use the most to seem smarter? and C] Which words most make someone sound pretentious?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Results from all three lists are collected above in a single table. Ten words you should consider using (listed on B] but not on C]) are: adept, adequate, amicable, anomaly, charisma, coincide, condone, contemplate, exacerbate, and impeccable. The other ten pretentious ones (listed on both B] and C]) are: aesthetic, ambiguous, articulate, audacious, bonafide, brevity, candor, capitalize, caveat, and concur. Why do all these words begin with a letter in the first half of the alphabet?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five things that people feel about complex vocabulary are shown above via a bar chart. Nearly equal percentages were either annoyed (36%) or impressed (35%). An infographic in the article collects some other negatives from fancy talk. 54% have actively tried to end a conversation with someone who used unnecessarily complex vocabulary. 43% believe someone with a complex vocabulary is trying to sound smarter than they are, and 28% assume that someone with a complex vocabulary is insecure.  

 

A cartoon image was modified from this at Openclipart.

 

Humorous Exaggeration in Cartoons and Speeches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One way of providing humor is via exaggeration (employed by Toastmasters for Tall Tales speeches, as described in a December 2020 magazine article by Kate McLure titled True Lies). I have been looking at some old cartoons from the English humor magazine Punch with wild exaggerations. As shown above, rather than just a double decker bus you could imagine one with five enclosed stories, more like a skyscraper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You also could imagine speeding up an escalator to where it flung passengers onto a mattress.

 

The bus cartoon came from page 241 of a pdf at the Internet Archive from 1923, and the escalator cartoon came from page 98 of a pdf from 1925.   

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two more examples with baggy trousers and daily newspapers are from pages 288 and 526 of that pdf from 1925.

A false narrative from The Gem State Patriot News about a big tech ‘invasion’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I saw an article by Bob “Nuge” Neugebauer in the Gem State Patriot News on February 27, 2022 titled Big Tech Invades the Treasure Valley While KTVB Attacks the IFF, I shook my head no. It was preceded by another on February 20, 2022 titled Liberal Trojan Horses set to Turn Idaho Blue which had whined about (and tried to demonize) Facebook and Amazon coming here recently. In the February 27, 2022 article Bob began by claiming:

“While the whole world has turned their eyes and ears to the Ukraine our president continues to talk about sanctions as the Russians push towards the capital. Unfortunately there is little that we can do but watch the carnage as long as Bungling Biden is president.

Right now Idahoans need to be more concerned about the big Tech invasion of our state which is taking place without a single shot being fired. We have been under siege for years by corrupt politicians who have united with big business to turn our state a bright blue and change our culture. What most Idahoans don’t understand is that much of this change begins in the workplace especially the large corporations like the major hospitals and companies like Micron.

The question of the day is why two of the largest liberal thinking technology companies have decided to locate in the heart of the Treasure Valley? It’s simple, this is the largest population center in Idaho and a great place to grab a liberal foot hold and promote their agenda….

 

We are sorry to say that it is no longer the company that was spawned by the likes of Steve Appleton. It has become one of the largest technology companies in the world and it ranks #19 in the Fortune 500. Its management has been moving left of center for a number of years. The workforce at Micron has decreased gradually from a high of 11,000 to the current 6,000 in the Boise facility. One has to think was this a purging of conservative employees as it appears those who are still employed have become a controlled group of yes workers.”

 

But the tech ‘invasion’ of Idaho didn’t begin with Facebook and Amazon, or even the local Micron Technology founded on October 5, 1978. In August 1975 Hewlett Packard (HP) began construction of its 154,000 square foot Boise plant. By March 1976 HP had 400 employees at the Boise Division, and by late 1991 there were more than 4000. (Micron reached 5,000 workers in 1994). A lot of excellent printer technology came from HP Boise, and their presence here has been positive.

 

The 200-acre HP campus in Boise is on the south side of Chinden Boulevard between Cloverdale Road and Five Mile Road. Unless you are an ARF promoting a false narrative, it would be impossible to miss. (For aerial views, look at an article at BoiseDev on March 16, 2017 titled News release: State of Idaho to buy H-P campus).

 

The image was modified from one found on page 109 in the January 30, 1924 issue of Punch magazine found at the Internet Archive.  

 

Don’t be a source for ignorance about stage fright!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Google alert on public speaking led me to a mediocre article about overcoming stage fright by William W. Brown in The Greenville Journal on February 28, 2022 titled For Goodness’ Sake with William Brown: Don’t freak out! He unfortunately opens it (provides ignorance) by stating:

 

“Public speaking is something we’ll all be tasked with at some point in our lives, even though, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 73% of adults suffer from fear of public speaking.” 

 

But that link to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) doesn’t lead to a web page for that 73% statistic. Why not? Because it’s a bogus statistic that didn’t come from NIMH. Instead it was made up a decade ago by some jerks at a commercial web site called Statistic Brain. On March 22, 2019 I blogged about An apparently authoritative statistic about fear of public speaking that really lacks any support.

 

How far off from reality is that 73%? It’s almost 3-1/2 times too high. On August 12, 2015 I blogged about how There’s really no mystery about how common stage fright is.

 

And on January 10, 2022 I blogged about the seven Chapman Surveys of American Fears in a post titled The opening paragraph of an article on public speaking earns two pinocchios for telling us lies. The widely quoted 2014 one found 25.3% feared speaking, and the average was 26.8%.

 

The cartoon image was modified from one on page 14 in the April 16 1913 issue of Punch magazine.

 

Today’s Pearls Before Swine cartoon has a fake Buddhist quote

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s Pearls Before Swine comic strip has the following dialogue:

 

Pig: How do you know whether or not you should say something?

Rat: I use the old Buddhist test.

Pig: What’s that?

Rat: I ask (1) Is it nice? (2) Is it true? (3) Is it necessary?

If it fails all three, I say it.

Pig: You may have that wrong.

Rat: Hmm… should I say what I’m about to say next?

 

Is that a real Buddhist quote? Nope. Bodhipaksa’s 2018 book, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha! What Fake Quotes Can Teach Us About Buddhism says this about it (as quote #18):

 

“ ’If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?’

 

When I first saw this one I thought it might be a paraphrase of something from the scriptures, although it seemed too neat to be a direct quote. But there are close parallels. For example, we’re told that there are five factors that mark words a being well spoken:

‘It is spoken at the proper time; what is said is true; it is spoken gently; what is said is beneficial; it is spoken with a mind of loving-kindness.’

 

The actual origins of the quote in question lie, however, not in ancient India but in eighteenth-century Britain. The Reverend James Haldane Stewart (1778-1854), who was the son of a Scottish clan chief, is quoted as having advised people to ask themselves before offering criticism, ‘First, is it true? Second, is it kind? Third, is it necessary?’

 

The similarity between the scriptural quote and Stewart’s is likely due to a kind of religious convergent evolution, since at the time Stewart died the early Buddhist scriptures hadn’t even begun to be translated into English.”  

 

An earlier blog post at his Fake Buddha Quotes, also titled “If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?” instead said it came from an 1872 poem by Mary Ann Pietzker titled Is It True? Is It Necessary? Is It Kind?

 

The Buddha statue came from Wikimedia Commons.