Rule number one is just to have fun

Last week Nick Morgan answered the question of: What is the Most Important Rule for Success in Public Speaking? with just two words – have fun.

It is all too easy to forget that if you are not enjoying yourself, then your audience also probably is not enjoying themselves.

The photograph of a laughing Theodore Roosevelt commemorates the 111th anniversary of him leading the Rough Riders, who charged up San Juan Hill and into the history books.

You are not alone: fear of public speaking affects one in five Americans

by Richard Garber, Ph.D., ACB and Michael Kroth, Ph.D., ATM

For people who are trying to improve their speaking skills, fear may be the most important factor influencing the decision to attend that first Toastmasters meeting. Where does fear of public speaking in the U.S. rank compared with fear of other social situations? Does it get the “gold medal” in the “Olympics of Fear?”

Some people still quote a survey of 3000 people from 1973 that was mentioned back in 1977 in the Book of Lists. However, there is a very large, but almost unknown, survey of the public which was published just last year. It is one result from a large ongoing mental health program called the National Comorbidity Survey (NCS). Their first survey of 8,098 people in the U.S. was conducted between 1990 and 1992, and results on social fears were published back in 1998.

About a decade later a second study called the National Comorbidity Survey – Replication (NCS-R) was conducted. This survey of 9,282 people was conducted between 2001 and 2003.

Data were analyzed, and those results on social fears finally were published in January 2008. You can read the entire article by A. M. Ruscio et al. here. Social fears are shown in the following bar chart:

First, 21.2% reported a fear of public speaking/performance, which was larger than any of the other 12 specific categories. Second, 19.5% reported a fear of speaking up in a meeting/class which is a similar question answering situation that Toastmasters will recognize as the impromptu speaking portion of their meeting known as Table Topics. Only 11.5% feared a dating situation, so almost twice as many people feared public speaking as feared going out on a date. The lowest specific category was using a public bathroom, which was feared by just 5.7% of Americans.

Fear of public speaking is the most significant social fear for residents of the U.S. Fear of speaking up in a meeting or class is a very close second. Both affect about 1 in 5 Americans. Toastmasters, the best way to overcome both of those fears, remains the number one antidote. Don’t be snake bit – tell everyone how they can feel confident and competent behind and, yes, even in front of the podium.

Richard Garber, PhD., ACB Is Vice President-Education for Capitol Club Toastmasters in Boise, Idaho.

Michael Kroth, PhD, ATM is an Assistant Professor at University of Idaho in Adult and Organizational Learning. He is the author of Career Development Basics, Transforming Work: The Five Keys to Achieving Trust, Commitment, and Passion in the Workplace, and The Manager as Motivator.

The above article is a revision of the article that appeared yesterday in the Summer 2009 issue of The Pulsebeat, the electronic newsletter for District 15 of Toastmasters International.

A speech needs a skeleton before it can stand up.

A structure from an outline is part of the basic planning process for creating a speech. Eventually that structure must be converted into a sequence of words and images.

There are many approaches to planning and outlining. Andrew Dlugan has one, and Susan Dugdale has another.

A graphical bullseye

In the latest issue of American Scientist magazine there is an article, That’s Funny, that discusses two examples which show how what we emphasize can make it either easy or hard to find data in a graphic. A complicated example uses the famous bullseye chart shown here. It very concisely depicts which of 3 antibiotics are best targeted to control growth of bacteria in glass lab culture dishes (in vitro).

Three columns in the table at the right also show results for those 3 antibiotics: penicillin, streptomycin, and neomycin. Each entry in the table shows the concentration of antibiotic required to stop bacteria from growing (the minimum inhibitory concentration, acronymed as MIC). Values for the MIC cover a huge range: from 0.001 to 850. The fourth column in the table shows whether the bacteria are colored by Gram stain when viewed with a microscope.

The chart shows how Will Burtin plotted the data in 1951 on a logarithmic circular chart, like a rifle target with a bullseye. The outermost ring is an MIC of 0.001, followed by 0.01, 0.1, 1.0, 10, 100, and 1000. In the bullseye chart the response to Gram stain is color coded as purple for positive and orange for negative.

The article points out how other graphics are required to show some puzzling behavior exhibited by a few of those types of bacteria.

Geographical graphics

The latest issue of American Scientist magazine has an article titled That's funny that discusses two examples which show how what we emphasize can make it either easy or hard to find data in a graphic. One example uses the two US maps shown here.

The map on top has captions showing commodities that are produced in each state. A series of maps on the bottom instead are blackened to show the states that produce each commodity. When you look at the upper left in the top map, you will see that my state, Idaho, produces phosphate rock (used to make fertilizer).

There is no map on the bottom to show which other states also produce phosphate rock. When you look around starting from Idaho you almost immediately can find that its two adjoining states of Montana and Wyoming also produce phosphate. What other state produces phosphate? It probably took you five or ten seconds to find that the answer is Florida. The graphic shown below makes it easy to find Florida.

In fact, Florida produces most of the phosphate in the US, as is discussed in a recent Scientific American article: Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply.

F Minus: the joy of single panel cartoons

There is a wonderfully-strange daily single-panel cartoon called F Minus, which is written by Tony Carrillo. I look at it online very week. Sometimes his caption has to tell a lot of the story, as shown below:



When you click on the image you will see that the “space alien” is just a cyclist with an aero helmet and sunglasses.

Last Friday he showed a presentation mishap involving a balloon drop (which I pointed out to Breaking Murphy’s Law"):



In Carrillo’s cartoon world the animals sometimes are running things, as in the following one that reminds me of Gary Larson’s The Far Side:

3 YouTube videos about using hand gestures by Sean Buvala, Don Varney, and Dante Mena