Last week, I was invited to read at the 6th Annual Edgy Moms Event, part of the acclaimed Brooklyn Reading Works series. This pre-Mother’s Day jam drew more than 50 people to hear six short stories written by local author moms—and the last person up was me, reading my 1994 opus, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Barbie (Sort Of).”

I was naturally a little nervous, but the piece, about struggling with my then-five-year-old daughter’s crush on Barbie, got a wonderful reception.

A Public Speaking Failure

So what did I do then?  Did I say, “If you liked this story, you’ll love my novel”?

Did I say, “I’ve also brought copies of my novel, to sell and sign”?

No.  What I said about my beloved novel was… (you can see this one coming, right?) nothing.

Why Self-Promotion Feels Hard—and How To Overcome That

My favorite introvert place to hang out

I’ve thought a lot about how I made this elemental and embarrassing mistake, and two things come to mind:

1. I’m an introvert.  No matter how good we get at “pseudo-extroverting,” we don’t really like to talk about ourselves. So in a situation where all else is equal, we’re likely to “forget” to do so.
2. More importantly, I let that situation happen, because I practiced the wrong thing.

What’s Your Larger Public Speaking Goal?

Yes, I practiced reading my story out loud until I knew that I could nail it.  That was the good part.  But I neglected to also practice asking people to buy The Tattooed Heart.  That slipped by me because:

1. It felt hard, and
2. I was focused on the immediate goal of reading my story, and not on the larger goal of building an audience.

Public speakers do this all the time.  We think, “I’m going to give a speech,” instead of “I’m going out to build my reputation.” We think, “I have to practice my remarks” instead of “I have to practice asking for what I want.’”

This is an understandable mistake.  But it can be prevented, if you:

• Practice saying the thing that’s hardest.
• Practice asking for what you want.
• Practice focusing on the big picture, and your true goals in giving this speech.

Public Speaking and Self-Promotion

Third time's the charm, I hope!

I’ve made this mistake (and written about it) before, and I really don’t want to make it again.

So is third time the charm?  Will my hot tips really work?  I’ll work on it, and let you know!

Thanks to Susan Cain’s superb book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, people have suddenly made a stunning discovery:  Introverts aren’t shy, reclusive losers; we actually add value!

Why Is That a Surprise?

This is surprising to many, in part, because introverts like Cain (and me), have done such a good job of pretending to be extroverts.  We’ve done this because, if we wanted to be noticed by an extrovert-oriented world, we had to.

As Cain notes in her book’s introduction, “You wouldn’t be reading [this] if I hadn’t been able to persuade my publisher that I was enough of a pseudo-extrovert to promote it.”

The Pseudo-Extrovert Skill Set

Many of my public speaking clients are introverts who feel that being quiet and thoughtful isn’t winning them points at work.  (In fact, the research bears this out.)  They come to me to learn how to “pass,” and I teach them pseudo-extrovert skills such as:

• Making small talk (it’s like ping-pong, where you hit the conversational ball back to your partner)
• Using body language to command more space
• Speaking more loudly and confidently
• Talking “off the cuff,” and more.

According to Cain, these are the same skills you learn at Harvard Business School, an extrovert bastion that’s famous for producing leaders whose motto might as well be often wrong, but never silent.

How to Be a Proud Introvert

Of course, you don’t want to take pseudo-extroversion too far.  While it’s useful to occasionally open a not-quite-natural bag of tricks, it’s far more useful—and sustainable—to tap the steady power that comes from  being your best self.

Here are some ways we introverts can make that happen:

• Come out of the closet.  When I leave a party after 45 minutes, I’ve stopped pretending to have a conflict, and started saying, “I need to go home and be an introvert.”
• If you have something important to say, push yourself to get the words out, even if they’re not as perfectly crafted as you would prefer.
• Strive to be “off” when you’re not actively “on,” including just before you give a presentation (this is not a good time for introverts to mingle).
• Express your desire for a smaller group at dinner, a quieter restaurant, a less frantic schedule, and whatever else you need to keep outside stimulation at a manageable level.

There’s Nothing Wrong with How We Do Things!

Perhaps the most debilitating part of being an introvert in an “extrovert ideal” society is the constant message that you’re doing things wrong.  Susan Cain makes this point in her superb, 18-minute speech at TED.  If you grew up hearing things like, “Why have you always got a book in your hand?” or “What’s wrong with you for staying inside?” or “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” it’s all too easy to feel that you’re lacking.

You may decide to speak up, or not.  You may play the pseudo-extravert, or not.  You may fight to be noticed, or not.

But whatever else you do or don’t do…  start by not believing that hype!

Lots of new clients are showing up lately with fear as their presenting complaint. That fear can range from mild to maddening to career-killing.  But whatever its level, fear of public speaking sucks—and there are two things you should know about it:

#1:  Your Fear of Public Speaking Makes Perfect Sense

When most people get up to speak in public, they don’t have a clue about what they’re doing.  They don’t know how to prepare, how to practice, or how to engage an audience.

Giving a speech without knowing how is the equivalent of going off Niagara Falls in a barrel. Sure, you might come out of it unscathed, but obviously, the odds aren’t in your favor.

In this situation, being afraid makes perfect sense.  In fact, the fear is your brain’s way of telling you to get help so that you don’t crash and burn.  The good news is, you can learn how to speak in public; and once you’ve learned, your chances of succeeding increase astronomically.

On the other hand…

#2:  Your Fear of Public Speaking is Totally Irrational

Some of the fear that you experience has nothing to do with your level of skill.  (I’m scared to death before I speak in public, and believe me, that makes zero sense.)

from http://brainmadesimple.com

The irrational portion of our fear comes from an ancient, pre-verbal, fight-flight-or-freeze center in our brains called the amygdala.  The amygdala’s job is to take over under dangerous conditions, and do its best to keep us alive.

It’s not the amygdala’s fault that ancient dangers like rabid wolf packs have been replaced by recent “dangers” like presenting an important report with no notice.  When danger strikes, the amygdala gears up, and gets your attention by triggering fear.

Skills Trump Fear for Public Speakers

It’s one thing to get up and speak in front of people when you know the outcome will be hit or miss.

It’s another experience, entirely, when you know that you’re skilled and well-prepared.  In that case, you can laugh at fear, because you know you’re about to succeed.

Once you have public speaking skills, fear of public speaking doesn't matter.

Public speaking skills are the source of this confidence.  They can’t shut down your amygdala, but they can help you ignore or marginalize the fear it creates.  Skills allows you to tell yourself, “Hey, this fear is bullshit!  I know what I’m doing.”

So yes, fear of public speaking sucks.  But once you have skills, it doesn’t matter.

Clients often ask me to help them slow down.  They think they’re talking too fast, and suspect that the audience isn’t catching everything they say.

If you think this is true, it probably is—and the best way to change it is to add more space between your thoughts.

You and Your Audience Both Need a Break

Pablo Casals

My husband told me a story that’s attributed to the great cellist Pablo Casals.  Casals performed well into old age, and a student supposedly once asked him, “Maestro, how do you maintain your energy?”

Casals replied, “I rest between the notes.”

As a public speaker, you can rest between “the notes” (the ideas), and give your audience a chance to do the same, by adding pauses in between your thoughts.

Words Without Pauses

If, like many educated people, you’re used to writing complex sentences that have subtexts, subordinate clauses, asides, embellishments, and—not to put too fine a point on it—elaborations that exist primarily to show that you can manage the interweaving of several strands of complex thought at once, it would be a mistake to assume that this kind of sentence structure translates successfully from a written to a spoken milieu, because, as any audience member can tell you, hearing is a very different sort of activity than reading, for reasons that are probably too arcane to warrant consideration at this point in time.

So Here’s the Deal

Pauses Have Power

When you rest between thoughts, you’re giving yourself a nice break.

(pause)

You’re making the space to slow yourself down, relax, and check out how your audience is reacting.

(pause)

That same pause also gives your audience time to take in what you’re saying.

(pause)

And best of all, it increases the chance that they’ll remember what you said.

(pause)

This happens because they now have time to “file away” your thought.

(pause)

Without the pause, your thought will fly past them.

As a novelist and speechwriter, I like words.  I also have a nostalgic fondness for the good old days when they meant something.

It’s easy to blame the Republican party, Rupert Murdoch, and the rest of our press-release-aping press for the fact that words have been largely separated from any meaning in our political discourse.  But there’s a commercial side to this trend as well, as I was reminded when I walked by the “Gorgeous Luxury Rental” sign that Corcoran Group Real Estate has placed on the second floor balcony of this building, four blocks from where I live.

Atlantic Yards, the permanent construction site one block from Corcoran's "gorgeous, luxury apartments"

I don’t know about you, folks, but in my day, the words “gorgeous” and “luxury” did not describe a $2390 studio apartment in a featureless, ticky-tacky building that sits next to a gas station on a run-down corner one block from a permanent construction site (the Atlantic Yards project).

I guess you can’t blame Corcoran for not trumpeting “Overpriced  Apartments in a Disastrous Location.”  But at least those words would have meant something.

NOTE:  My book launch partner Ellen Greenfield and I will be celebrating, selling, and signing ours novels this Thursday night, April 5th 2012, from 6:30-8:30PM at In Good Company Workplaces, 16 W. 23rd St. NYC—and yes, you are invited!

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Five years ago, when I started my business, Speak Up for Success, I spent lots of time looking for an organization or place where I could meet other entrepreneurs and figure out how the hell to do this.

I didn’t like the breakfast club model, where you vow to recommend your French toast friends.  And I didn’t like the Association model, where you win visibility by serving on a committee.  I “just” wanted a place where I could be myself, show up for what I needed, and make friends with who I wanted.

Was that really too much to ask?

Why I Love In Good Company!

Amy (left) and Adelaide (right)

Then I chanced upon In Good Company Workplaces, a networking, co-working, and learning center for women in business.

Founded by Amy Abrams and Adelaide Lancaster—two successful and creative young businesswomen who are passionate about helping other women succeed—IGC was everything I’d dreamed of but hadn’t dared to hope I’d find:  Warm, welcoming, flexible, fun, and more dedicated to its members’ needs than to its own status or survival.

In the four years since I joined, I’ve taken classes on everything from business planning to social media marketing.  I’ve led dozens of workshops, under my own name and IGC’s.  I’ve been part of discussion groups that solved my business problems and support groups that kept me on the path.  And I’ve met a veritable “A team” of talented mentors and wonderful friends.

Celebrating My Business and My Book

Read Chapter 1, or Buy the Book, at www.thetattooedheart.com

That’s why I’m so thrilled to bring my business and creative selves together by launching my novel, The Tattooed Heart, at this week’s book signing and launch party at IGC.  (We hope you can make it!)

In the arts world—unlike politics!—it’s long been the case that people were only “allowed” one identity.  Writers took different pseudonyms when they work in different genres (lots of people still don’t realize that J.D. Robb is Nora Roberts), as did musician, actors, and many others.

Launching The Tattooed Heart at IGC allows me the luxury of being fully, three-dimensionally myself:  A speaker coach who’s always fretting about the next step to build my business; a sometimes-novelist who writes from the gut; a friend and member of a community; even a mother and wife, since my daughter and husband will both be there to help make sure this party rocks.

How often do we get to experience that sense of richness, of integration?

It’s yet another reason I’m grateful to Amy and Ad for creating IGC!

Talk abut a duh moment!

I recently gave a workshop for women entrepreneurs at New York’s In Good Company Workplaces.  The topic was “Talking About Your Business,” and I thought it went quite well.

Almost 30 women got up in front of the room and talked briefly about their businesses.  They got feedback from me and the group, and left, I believe, feeling clearer and more confident about how to promote themselves.

The only business that didn’t get talked about was…   (wait for it)…    mine.

We All Need Feedback!

I didn’t even realize this delicious irony until today, when I was back at IGC doing a series of short consulting sessions and Robin Cole, of Robin Cole Recruiting, pointed out that, at the workshop (which she attended), I’d neglected to:

• Explain the speaker coaching services I offer
• Describe the reasons why people should work with me
• Offer them an incentive to sign up for coaching right away, and
• Give them a reminder of how to get in touch

If one of my clients had neglected to promote themselves at a workshop, I’d probably have read them the riot act.  But here I was, making the exact same mistake.

What I’ll Do Differently Next Time

Because it’s all too easy to fall into the “my work speaks for itself, I don’t have to promote it” trap, I’m going to take these steps the next time I lead a workshop or make a speech on communications:

• Build time to discuss my services into the agenda
• Be sure that people understand the specific benefits I bring (I’ll probably need to script this out and practice it, just as I would script out and practice any difficult part of a speech)
• Make a special, time-sensitive offer to the attendees—and encourage them to take advantage of it.

While I’ve worked hard over the years to improve my marketing skills, self-promotion is still not a natural stance for me, as it’s not for many of you who read this blog.  Fortunately this incident (thank you, Robin!) reminded me that there’s always some small thing that we can do better.

What I hope and believe is that those small things eventually add up to big success.

What do you think?

Heading to the subway on Saturday night, I found myself walking in front of a couple that was quarreling.

The woman was cold.  She wanted to go home and get a sweater.  The man wanted to get where they were going on time, and thought that going home would cause unreasonable delay.

When I tuned in, they were having one of those sidebar skirmishes that come up so often between couples (you’ve probably had one of these yourself).  It went:

Woman: It’s not going to take that long to go home.
Man:  It’s going to take two hours. What do you need a sweater for?  It’s not that cold.
Woman:  It is cold.  I’m cold.
Man:  But I told them we’d be there between 6 and 6:30.
Woman: No, you said we’d be there between 6:30 and 7:00.
Man:  No, I said between 6 and 6:30.
Woman:  No, you didn’t.  You said…

Having run that hamster wheel many times in 36 years with my own husband, it was all I could do to not turn around and say, “Hey, Young Couple, cut this out!  Woman, go home and get your sweater.  Man, go straight to wherever you’re going.  That way, you both get what you want.”

Fortunately, I didn’t say this, because my idea that they should separate to pursue their individual ends was wrong. It turns out that, while she wanted to be warm and he wanted to be on time, what they both wanted most was to be happy together.

Not His Way, or Her Way, but Their Way

How do I know this?

for quarreling couples, the trick is to find a third way

Because, a minute later, I heard the woman giggle.  I turned to walk down the subway stairs (and also to sneak a peek at them), and saw that the man had taken off his jacket and was wrapping it around her shoulders.

Later, on the subway platform, they were laughing and standing close together, all the tension between them gone.

Instead of getting bogged down in debating whose solution was more “reasonable”—and particularly in the false issues of whether it was really cold enough for a sweater, or what time he’d actually said they would show up at their destination—this couple found a third, neutral path that worked for both.

And, whoever they are, I’ll bet they had a great Saturday night!

One thing I learned during my years as a jazz vocalist is that, when it comes to accomplishing a big task like writing a novel, or developing your public speaking style, a small amount of effort, repeated regularly, trumps the occasional all-out push.

For example:  The first draft of my novel, The Tattooed Heart, was written in 17 minutes a day.  That wasn’t an arbitrary number; it was the amount of time that I learned, through trial and error, I could devote to writing, most days of the week.

Sure, I could have waited for my next vacation, gone away and cranked out an entire draft.  The number of total hours would have been similar.  But working every day gave me a deeper connection with the novel—and the same thing is true for public speaking practice.

A Little Bit of Practice Counts A Lot

To make public speaking practice a daily habit, first decide how much time you can reasonably and consistently put in.

Three minutes a day?  Five?  Seven?

It doesn’t matter how much time you can spare.  What matters is that you commit to spending even 30 seconds a day practicing your new public speaking skills.  Most of the things that will gradually build your ability are small, finite, and easy to focus on during the course of your day.

In just three minutes, you can practice:

• Delivering a key message
• “Being in” your public speaking personna, or avatar (here’s a discussion of avatars with attitude)
• Speaking more slowly, while clearly articulating every word
• Focusing on the person you’re talking to

Of course, this list could go on and on.

None of these things are difficult.  What’s difficult is getting so familiar with them, so comfortable with them, that they become part of your “public speaking DNA”—effortless and automatic habits that are there for you when you need them under pressure.

Skip the Heroics, Go for your Goal

Sheila Jordan, Jazz Master

As a music student at the fabulous New England Conservatory, I was constantly regaled with stories of musicians who’d dedicated their entire lives to their craft.  Duke Ellington, whose “music was (his) mistress.”  Sonny Rollins, who my husband played with for many years, and who practiced in solitary splendor on the Williamsburg Bridge.

But the musician whose story inspired me most was that of Sheila Jordan—a brilliant vocalist, and single mother who worked for decades as a bookkeeper to support her child.  Sheila once told a group of young singers, myself included, that she practiced while walking to work each day, because that was the only time she had.

This year, Sheila was honored with a National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Masters award for her lifetime of musical achievement.  Those minutes of street practice she put in each day eventually powered her major body of creative work.

That’s how it works with public speaking, too.

‘Nuff said?

Since I got the word “breathe” tattooed on my left wrist (yes, really), the idea has understandably been on my mind.  And now that I’m deep in the throes of anxiety about releasing my novel, The Tattooed Heart, there’s plenty of disruptive feeling to breathe through.

Sometimes it works.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  But this ongoing effort is reminding me of how little most of us exercise our ability to breathe; an ability that is — surprise, surprise! — the power behind our ability to speak, and to speak up for ourselves.

So here’s the physical basics of how to breathe:

1. See that baby in the picture above?  (No, it’s not my daughter, though she looked a lot like that 23 years ago.)
2. See how her belly is hanging way, way out?
3. Let your belly hang all the way out and then open your mouth.  I can promise you, you’re going to get a rush of air like you haven’t experienced since you were a toddler!

That’s what actually breathing feels like.

Why This is Tough in Real Life

First, there’s our culture’s obsession with six-packs and tight abs.  It’s hard to grab a good belly breath when you’re synched into some cute little clothes, or trying to appear youthful and trim by holding your stomach in.

The second thing that makes it hard to breathe deeply when you need it most, which is when you’re under stress, is your amygdala.  This handy-dandy pre-verbal center in your brain exists to help you survive in conditions of physical danger.  And one of the ways to survive when there are, let’s say, wild animals nearby is to stop breathing so they’re less likely to detect you.

So Grab It Where You Can

All of which means that it’s good to practice taking a deep breath — and using that breath to calm yourself — whenever the opportunity occurs.

I’m not suggesting you make a special trip to the dentist, or a tattoo parlor, to practice.

I’m just saying that, if you find yourself in either of those places…   stick your belly out!