5 Odd (But Strangely Reassuring) Truths About Public Speaking
Public speaking, gigging and pitching are all weird, nuanced, often intimidating activities. Here are 5 cold, hard, yet strangely reassuring things I learned as a stand-up. Warning: contains flatulence.
The audience is on your side…
If you have a bad time, they have a bad time. There’s not a single soul on earth who enjoys watching people have a car crash presentation (apart from comedians watching other comedians die onstage). If you’ve ever sat through a presentation that isn’t going brilliantly you’ll know the feeling. It’s unlikely you want to see the presenter suffer - you want them to rescue the experience and do well. You begin a pitch or performance coasting on an imperceptible tide of goodwill. It’s yours to lose.
The audience, even in difficult situations, is willing you to succeed - they’re not the enemy*
*excludes gigs in Farnborough.
… BUT They’re not really listening to you…
You might be on a raised stage, wearing your best jacket, spotlit, maybe even wearing a Britney Spears-style headpiece microphone. The room might be silent, the audience attentive. Surely they noticed that you fluffed that key line. They must have. It throws you off - you forget your next point. You take a drink of water, but your shaking hand throws it into your own face, drenching the Britney mic and starting an electrical fire which engulfs your toupee. It’s game over, right?
Well to be fair, yes in that case - there are some things it’s hard to come back from.
(I once MC’d a lively comedy night in Swindon. The headline act arrived just before his set and asked for a quick rundown of the audience. I told him how the night had been - in particular the dynamics of the front row.
Sat bang in the middle at the front were two men - who didn’t know each other.
One looked like a big lovely bear, with a huge, generous, joyous laugh. He had been very vocal, but always in a positive way that increased the general good vibes of the gig. In one early interaction he also told me (and the room) that he was terminally ill. The audience loved him.
The guy next to him was a drunk, scraggly attention-seeker, who had tried to derail the gig several times. The audience (and acts) hated him.
“Got it” the headline act affirmed, before trooping onstage and saying “Hello mate, all the acts backstage have told me you’ve been a proper knob all night”… to the terminally ill man.
He didn’t come back from that (the comedian)).
But mostly mistakes just aren’t a big deal. That sorry incident aside, you’re at most a footnote in their day - it’s unlikely you’ll make the highlights or lowlights reel when someone from your audience gets home and their partner asks them “how was your day?”
Here is the actual inner monologue of someone watching you present: This venue smells a bit weird/is it… old bread? I can feel the knee of the person next to me pressing into my knee, WHY ARE THEY PRESSING INTO MY KNEE/I wonder how long this talk is going to go on for/oh that seems relevant, I’ll try and use that in a meeting/cannot wait for some risotto tonight, how much risotto is too much risotto/yeah I’ll nick that stat too, that’s going STRAIGHT on LinkedIn/is that a typo or can I just not spell?
Yes, you feature - but no-one is scrutinising your pores, your breathing or the weird way you move your foot when you make a good point.
… SO They won’t remember MOST OF what you said.
But they will remember how you made them feel. They also won’t remember what you didn’t say - if you miss a point, fluff a line, even skip an entire section, no-one will know - they don’t know what’s in your head.
Their body language doesn’t matter.
Crossed arms. Stony faces. Even slumped over, head in hands. I’ve pitched to people doing all of these - and done well (head in hands guy just turned out to have back pain). Despite what some experts say, people’s body language doesn’t always subconsciously reflect how they’re feeling - or indeed how they’re feeling about you. It’s really easy to focus on that one person in the audience who looks disengaged and try and win them over - or panic and assume everyone is bored. Everyone folds their arms sometimes - it’s comfortable. Lots of people look bored when they’re listening. Some people find eye contact uncomfortable and their eyes will dart away if they meets yours. And, occasionally, in larger crowds, some of them might not be into what you’re saying. And that’s fine too.
You’ve probably got it wrong.
For many people the default position when they’re asked to present something is a sort of bracing against incoming pressure - “I’ll be stood up, in a spotlight with all these eyeballs scrutinising me. Horrorshow.”
It’s totally understandable. When I was gigging I had worked my way up to a 10 minute spot at the Comedy Store in London. The deal was usually this:
You win a gong show, you get offered a 5 minute spot on a pro night.
Do well at that and you get asked back again (and again).
Do well at 3 of those short spots and you get a 10-minute spot.
Do well at that and you get a paid 20-minute spot, upon which the heavens open, glitter rains down, your pockets fill with money and cocaine and the sea of professional comedians parts to accept you with warm handshakes and Michael McIntyre-style wobbling heads.
I was doing the last of my 3 short spots. The other two had been fine. Didn’t die, got laughs. But I had been so aware of what was riding on them that I couldn’t fully relax. I could deliver OK, but I couldn’t really come alive. At the back of my head was a voice unhelpfully whispering “don’t mess up. This is important”.
I was in the green room at the 3rd gig waiting to go on. I was following a raucous New Zealand act, who had a well-deserved reputation for blowing the roof off. I told him how I was feeling - that I needed this gig to really go well if I had any chance of getting through to a ten-minute spot.
He said “fella, don’t worry about any of that. Be in the moment, do whatever you need to do to have fun and treat that room like it’s your playground.”
Then he lifted up one leg, did a deep and baleful fart and bowled out onto the stage.
In that foul-smelling instant, it dawned on me that I had it all wrong. I wasn’t there to be scrutinised and judged by a crowd. I was there to have fun with them - connect with them, find something in common and have a shared experience. I went out, decided to enjoy myself immensely and the gig went brilliantly.
The minute you can switch your perspective from “All these people are focused on me” to “I’m going to focus on these people” something changes - pressure releases, nerves turn to energy and you suddenly become much more useful to your audience.
It’s a hard mental switch to flip, but when you do it you won’t look back.
As a postscript, I went back to do the 10-minute spot at the Comedy Store. I had a killer cold, couldn’t breathe and speak at the same time and absolutely died on my arse.
Can’t win ‘em all.