94. Presentation Anxiety Q&A: Language Barriers, Online vs. In Person, Preparation Tips (Part 2)

Upskiller Flora Xue chats over a Q&A session with Michel Shah, President & Founder of UpSkill, about overcoming presentation anxiety. She gives her advice on:

• language barriers
• online vs in-person
• presentation practice tips
• the HBLT method 

Over the last few weeks, we have been talking about pitching: how to prepare a pitch and how to deliver a pitch. Check out the series in previous episodes 86-89:

86. 5 Step Method To Prepare A Perfect Pitch For Founders, Leaders & Storytellers (Part 1)

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Transcript

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Welcome to Upskill Talks, I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, lead Upskill at Upskill Community. Upskill Talks is a podcast for leaders, leaders who are actively seeking innovative and creative ways to interact. Lead themselves and others in every episode through real life stories and enlightening conversations, we will explore the challenges and opportunities real leaders face in today's everchanging workplace. We will present you with real strategies. For you to leverage your soft skills and produce transformative results. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let us begin. So the number one tip. Trick, guideline, best practice for managing performance anxiety is to de center yourself and center the audience that you are here to serve. Think about the value that you add to them and how whatever you're going to do can help to improve their lives in some way or another. If you think about that, we're not usually nervous when we're serving. We're nervous when we're self centering, wow, that's really powerful. That's really good. I think like what I'm hearing is a lot of the time, like when all eyes are on us, we get nervous. Cause we feel like there's like, I don't know what I'm giving. Like I have nothing to give. So it's like, you guys are just looking at me for what, you know, but if I'm really, really intentional with preparing and making sure that I have something good and people are looking at me suddenly, it's not about me. It's about here's this thing that I spent a long time preparing that I really want to give to you. Right. It's a gift. It's a gift. You are given a gift. Upskiller Sylvia always says it's about reframing and when you reframe it that way you have to decenter yourself to be able to reframe it, right, to think about them and not you. And reframe it in favor of them and not you seeing it as something you're offering rather than you being on stage and being judged. And that happens whether you're in an interview situation, performance situation, whether you're teaching, presenting, sales, customer service, whatever it is to see what value am I bringing? What value am I adding? How am I making someone's lives better? How am I making this person's life better? And once you're doing that, you're not usually nervous when you're out to serve others. And so if we think about it in the, in the, in the way that we're serving, we'll reduce the nervousness because most of us are all about serving others. And I really like what you said earlier about practicing, like to start where you are at. So don't start with a big presentation, although I do find it funny that both of us shared like a very traumatic thing that happened to us with a big presentation that I think kind of sparked this quest to perfect presentation skills. So I don't know, maybe you do need that big traumatic moment to be like, I really want to get good at this. Um, but some people learn to swim by getting thrown in the deep end. Yeah. I Yeah, yeah, but I do think like it is like a step by step thing where you need to start where you're at and not chase that big presentation like you don't need to get thrown into the deep end. When I was in school looking for internships, I, Uh, practice my interviews a lot, a lot, a lot, because I would get huge anxiety because that's, it's like pitching myself. So I would practice with my mom every night and she would write down all of the questions and I would have like my bullet point responses that I could just like, I could remember them like from the back of my hand. And for one interview, I would probably practice like 10 times. It would be like 10 separate occasions for like an hour each and we'd run to the questions and by the time the actual interview came, it was like I could do it in my dreams, like with my eyes closed. So that was really helpful. And then every single one of those interviews that I did that for, I got the job. Always preparation, preparation is key and preparation is more key when you're new to it. So I'll share one of my personal stories. When I started doing presentations online to leadership teams, that was nerve wracking because I'd always been teaching in the, you know, a lecture hall and so on. And then it had to be online, sort of a new platform. This was pre COVID long before COVID. It was online and it was. To leaders. And so you're beginning to think these are, you know, executives. This is the C suite. I've got to bring my a game. And you know what? The perfectionist in me, I would make notes in my PowerPoint slides. I mean, I would go back and make sure every comma was in the right place. I would put spaces in my notes. I would write space. I would write pause. I'd put everything in my notes. Pause. I'd write pause, count one, two, three. Oh, wow. Yeah. I literally had every single comma scripted, every single I dotted, every T cross, every comma, a space would say space, pause, count one, two, three. I had every single thing scripted because I had to hold onto that because I didn't have the confidence in this new format yet. I was accustomed to being in big lecture halls, 200 people, whatever, but I had not gained the confidence online and I couldn't see the people, I couldn't walk around and I feel like I was going to lose my magic. And then I went through that process and the first time I did it, you know, I did my introductions and so on. And when I was going to start the presentation, I literally asked permission to turn off my camera because I plan to read it. And I didn't want them to know that I was going to read the whole thing. So I said, okay, I'm going to just turn my camera off so you can focus on the slides. Right. And I did that whole thing and came out of that presentation. I thought, got through that. The second presentation, I had kind of learned how to read the slides, read my notes and make eye contact. And I had to balance all of that. And, you know, you, you do it one at a time until. I was comfortable enough to not rely on my notes like that. And today when I do a presentation, I actually don't need to see my notes. I don't need to worry about that. Yeah. This conversation is organic. Yes. I, now I'm at, but that's taken practice. And as I said, I'd been an expert in the in person space and I went through this same nervous transition. Difficulty when I came online many years ago. And so what I, I shared that story to say, it's not a straight road. You will start and you'll be doing really great in one context. And I have a lot of international students who say, I'm really confident in my, in my own language. I'm just not confident in English, for instance, so something can change and really disrupt your confidence. The important thing is to get back down to that preparation, rebuild that confidence, dive back into it. You don't have to be at the top of your confidence game every time, but you must always be working on building that back up. I had this where in person in any lecture hall, no matter the size, any stage, as long as I was in person, I was really super comfortable when we came online. I came online for the first session about four years before COVID. That was a nerve wracker, like managing all of the technology and having to do all of this online. And. Fortunately for me, by the time COVID got here, I was ahead of the curb, I had already built the confidence in an online space when everybody else was coming to it. My students who come from international destinations who speak other languages other than English, when they come into the classroom, they, they sometimes take a dive, a nosedive with their confidence. And when I speak with them, they'll say, I'm really confident in my language, or I'm really funny in my language, or I can do these things well in my language. But here. The confidence has taken a nosedive. And so it's about how can we rebuild that confidence going back to preparation? It's a new language, giving yourself that space. It doesn't need to be perfect. Let's go and it will take time, but we're going to get back there. It's really, um, it's really like reassuring or like inspiring to hear where you started from versus where you are now. That is like, now I see you go into presenter mode like, whoa, you know, it's like, it's like, how did she like, was she born like that? Cause she always present like that. But hearing you literally like write the spaces into your script, it really helps with the growth mindset of people who are just like, I'm just not a good public speaker, you know, I'm shy, I'm an introvert, but it's like, you can always change yourself and you can always practice and like, the amount which you can grow is kind of insane. Insane. Absolutely insane. And I think, you know, you make a really good point because a lot of people see people who are really good at their craft, whatever that craft is and go, Oh, wow, it must be nice. Probably were born that way. So I know I really admire ice skaters. And I thought I did not grow up in a country where we had ice skating and I eventually went I, it looks so easy and flawless to me, just almost look like magic, you know? And so I thought I'm going to go and learn to do it. But I was an adult. And when I went on the ice and touched the ice the first time, I'm thinking. This is nuts. How do they do that? Like it took me so long just to walk, And I thought, Hmm, that flawlessness that I saw, how do you get to that? And so it does take a lot of effort to get to any, any level of expertise in anything like people aren't born with this, but you start from somewhere and anywhere you are now, that's where you start. And I think that's the key. Some people want to start where other people are ending up. Just start where you are. And get on your own journey. You never know. Luck might hit you when you bypass others. You never know. You may have some natural tendencies that make you go faster. But start where you are. And do the work. Do the preparation. Take the time to connect with the audience. Make sure, whatever you do, de center yourself. That was really good. Those are some really great tips and great stories. Thank you for sharing. My pleasure. So I really want to tell you something that, um, this is a code that we use in teaching a code that I discovered many years ago, included it in our textbook. And I I'm a strong believer. We do not learn by doing, we learn by reflecting on what we do. You're not learning by writing, you're going to learn by reflecting on what you've written. John Dewey. And so I encourage you to think about that. When you write it down and leave it, go back over it. That's when the real learning happens. Michelle, you have so many great quotes. I'm writing that one down. I'm stealing it. So, if we learn that this is a journey and we start somewhere where mistakes are made, where, where we don't get it right, where we tumble or bumble, where we slip and slide, if we are comfortable to start at that place. And know that we're going to develop the skills over time to be able to get to the end. I think we're going to be okay. It's the, you know, we can borrow from children lessons. They know that they're going to fall off their bikes when they start learning to ride. They're not expecting to get in the Tour de France the first time they get on their bikes. They land to fall, they fall, they get up, they get back on it, they don't even budge and they continue doing that. And then one day, they're the ones in the Tour de France. Yeah, yeah, there's, um, Gabriel García Márquez is one of my heroes and writers, and he's quoted at saying and saying that it takes him, took him eight hours to write one paragraph, eight hours, and he's, you know, we admire for his writing and everything that we see, you know, a hundred years of solitude and so on. But those don't come easy. So expertise is, is the accumulation of pain, wisdom, reflection, and learning from every experience. Yes. I have something to add to that. I forget which artist it is, but they got really famous, like Picasso or Van Gogh, one of those guys. I just heard this little story that he did, like someone asked him to do, uh, Drawing on the back of a napkin and then it was like, this is worth so much. It's like worth my meal. And then someone was like, that only took 30 seconds. And then he was like, no, this took me my entire life. That's the culmination of a life. Yes. Yes. On that note, I want to say thank you very much for this beautiful conversation this evening. Quiet, deep. And I think we got a lot out of it. thank you for listening to this episode of Upskill Talks. We bring you new episodes every Monday. Please take a moment to subscribe. Leave a five star rating and a written review at Apple Podcast or follow us on Spotify, Google podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Don't forget to share Upskill talks with other leaders like yourself, so they too may gain the skills and insights to produce amazing results. Please go to upskill community.com to review show notes, and learn how you can join a community of leaders from across the globe. Collaborating to lead in a more meaningful and impactful way. I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, and again, thank you for joining me on this episode of Upscale Talks.