Thanks for coming.

I hosted this talk-- I initially was introduced

to Clarity Media when I was interviewing.

As many of you know that the Google interview process

can be a little challenging, especially from the outside.

And it's even weirder when you see it from the inside.

So I worked with Clarity Media to become more effective

in interviews and learned how to prepare

to be more effective in general in speaking.

And I was able to take the things I learned from them

and apply them to wedding speeches I gave,

to be more effective in meetings.

Even one of the wedding speeches I gave

was actually in Japanese, and I don't speak Japanese.

So there's a lot of really incredible stuff.

So hopefully it's really useful to everyone.

And a pleasure to introduce Bill McGowan.

[APPLAUSE]

BILL McGOWAN: Thank you.

I had no idea we specialized in bilingual wedding toasts.

That's actually even a surprise to me.

I appreciate everybody coming.

And presumably, everybody here or watching

is here because you'd like to be better

at public speaking or external communication.

So I want to give you a bunch of tips today

that I think would up everybody's game.

Right off the bat, just about every year

some kind of publication comes out

with a list of what the biggest fears in our life are.

And every year, the list stays pretty much the same.

Our fear of our own mortality is usually at number one,

getting on a plane is number three,

and I'm sure it comes as no surprise to everybody what

the number two fear is.

Everybody knows that it's public speaking, right?

And there are a number reasons why

this can throw us and send us into angst before we

have to get up and present.

Most of the people we work with are

on the left side of this spectrum.

They either have a fear of doing it,

or they can tolerate it if they're asked to do it.

They're on a team and it's their responsibility.

But very few people actually get a buzz from doing it.

And what we tend to do is try to get people from apprehension

to being OK with it.

And the encouraging news is once you get to being OK with it,

there is a way to actually get to the point

where you enjoy it.

And that's really the sweet spot,

because the more you enjoy it, the more you'll raise your hand

and volunteer to do it.

And the more you do it, the better you'll get at it.

So my key advice would be embrace every opportunity

to get up and talk when somebody on your team

suggests you do it.

Or don't shy away from an opportunity to public speak.

It's the best way to get better at it.

The one thing you should definitely

stay away from though is winging it.

And I find this is not a strategy.

Thinking that magic fairy dust is going to sprinkle down

on you and you're going to be eloquent and articulate and

effective and persuasive in the moment is really not realistic.

And this isn't just about giving a keynote speech

or giving a presentation.

This about heading into a meeting where you may think,

I'm probably going to be a spectator in this meeting

and I'm very likely not going to be asked for my input.

You can't assume that.

You should even go into a meeting

that you think you're going to be a spectator at with an idea

of what am I going to say if somebody wheels around asks me

for my opinion on this subject.

Let me plan what my point of view is and make it succinct.

Sometimes we work with very accomplished, grade A speakers.

And we'll be in a private session with them

and we'll be role playing, we'll be videotaping them.

And their energy level is not that great,

and I'll tell them I think you need to bump this up.

You're sort of mailing it in here.

And oftentimes what we'll hear from a client is don't worry,

when the adrenaline is going and I'm doing the real thing,

everything's going to be fine.

I'll be great.

And my urging to them was about practicing

the same way you play for real often fell on deaf ears

until the first presidential debate of the last election

cycle.

And if anybody has read the dissection of what

happened there, the present went out to Las Vegas

and he set up debate camp.

And he was handed videotapes of Mitt Romney

and his primary debates, and he was

asked to take a look at them.

Next thing you know, he was off at Hoover Dam

shaking hands and doing some photo ops

and he's just not engaged.

And David Axelrod, his chief adviser, came up to him

and he said Mr. President, we're a little concerned.

You don't seem plugged in.

You don't seem like you're investing the time.

And the president's response to Axelrod

was very much what I hear from people

who realize that they have a tremendous aptitude for this.

So my point is if that guy can't magically flip a switch

and be great because he has short changed the prep,

there's actually very little hope for the rest of us.

Same thing with Bill Clinton.

Somebody very close to him said best communicator

I've ever known, I've ever worked with,

when he was prepared.

But when he wasn't and all hell was breaking loose

and we were crashing in the limo on the way over to an event,

it always showed up.

So don't think that there is an elite crew

of gifted communicators who can just

mail it in and be spontaneous and great.

It actually doesn't happen.

And when you're rehearsing, when you're practicing a speech

or presentation-- which you absolutely should do-- the four

words you should never say is let's just start this again.

When you make a mistake in rehearsal, don't give up.

The important thing is to teach yourself

how you pull out of a moment where you're having brain lock

or you've lost your transition, or something's gone wrong.

If you don't practice that in rehearsal,

you'll never know how to do it when you get up

and give the speech for real.

It would be almost like a pilot in training

going into a flight simulator and then

just giving totally normal conditions,

never making them fly through turbulence

or learn how to navigate the plane in trouble.

So try to force yourself through those rough patches

when you're rehearsing.

How many of you here battle with this?

Feel anxious and you get a little sick to your stomach?

It is a perfectly natural byproduct of public speaking,

and it's what usually keeps us from doing it.

The very simple equation is the more you're prepared,

the less anxious you're going to be.

It happens every single time.

And you're probably going to be most nervous in the first two

minutes of a presentation.

Until you get your feet under you and you relax into it.

So really know that opening backwards and forwards.

And I mean the first line of what you're going to say.

Don't leave the first 15, 20 second warm up to ad libbing.

Even know that.

Whenever you hear somebody at a podium who

has that little shake, that little tremble in their voice

which is a dead giveaway that they're nervous,

those are a product of nerves.

But it's also a result of not breathing properly.

And when we get really nervous, we start mini hyperventilating.

These short shallow breaths which actually winds up

depleting our lungs of air, and that's

what gives the shake to our voice.

So if you find your pulse is running away with you

and you're extremely nervous, find a nice quiet place

down the hallway before you go on.

Three or four deep yoga breaths, long intake through your nose.

Hold it.

Long, slow, steady exhale through your mouth.

It's going to slow your pulse, it's

going to replenish your lungs with air,

and it's going to bring stability back your voice.

Because you don't want to be up at the podium

and looking like you're a wreck.

But even if you don't battle real anxiety,

we all get a shot of adrenaline when we get up to speak.

And that can have a good result and it can have a bad result.

You're probably going to talk a lot faster in the first five

minutes from just being a little anxious.

So make sure you come out of the gate

in a nice, controlled pace.

Your eye movement is going to accelerate the more nervous

you are.

So right now, I'm communicating directly with you.

And I'm going to move off and connect

with somebody else in the room.

That is ultimately what you're after.

What you don't want to do is what

I'm doing right now, which is actually

ping ponging around the room and not

landing on anybody specific.

I'm looking at all of these heads as an abstraction,

or I'm drifting over the tops of people's heads.

And it doesn't have the same level of connection

that landing on people actually does.

And we have all this pent up physical energy

from this shot of adrenaline.

And our bodies like to get rid of it.

And our feet typically wind up being the portal through which

we like to expunge this energy.

So many times, you'll see people in front

of a room doing what I call the stationary march.

Which is, I'm not really moving anywhere,

but I'm also not standing still.

There's a lot a rocking, there's a lot of swaying.

And I see this all the time.

It just gives a fidgety, nervous appearance

to your presentation.

To avoid that, you want to stand with you weight a little bit

forward on the balls of your feet.

You should feel a little bit of pressure in your toes.

What that does is it keeps you off your heels

where you wind up swaying and rocking the most.

The only place you want to be leaning

is actually into the audience to connect with them.

And I'm going to show you a clip of Reed Hastings who

commits this.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

BILL McGOWAN: Reed's feet actually never planted

that entire time.

They were in constant motion, and it's

only because his body is trying to get rid

of that excess physical energy.

It looks a little antsy.

And you should probably stay away from it.

Good news is all that nagging we got

as children was absolutely right.

Don't stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning working

on a presentation you have to do at 9 AM.

You'd be better off going to bed early, getting up at four,

and finishing it.

You're going to be a lot more alert.

And never do anything-- public speaking,

presentation on an empty stomach.

It's been proven medically that the synapses in your brain

do not fire as efficiently if you

don't have fuel in your body.

We just talked a little bit about making sure

that you're not slumped.

And if you're tall-- anybody really tall in this room?

Don't be apologetic about your height.