Don't be afraid of being afraid of public speaking

I'm trying to reboot the La Crosse Programmer User Group for 2010: Meeting on the fourth Thursday of the month shoots November (Thanksgiving) and, in 2009, December (Christmas Eve). So I nearly did the Snoopy Dance in my chair when a new presenter stepped up to the task. (You know who you are: Thankyouthankyouthankyou!)

But asking/encouraging someone to speak in front of other people is a thing that makes even a gentle nudge feel like you're crossing palm with shoulder-blade. Why? Because giving an original presentation really is a double-whammy: Not only are you (the presenter) faced with the smug double-dog-dare that is the blank page in front of you, there's public speaking at the end of it. Like that's a reward for the hard work of wrestling your ideas into some semblance of order?

For all that, I never regret the experience. Never mind how disgracefully rusty I've become since the college speech team days with their daredevil adrenaline rush of impromptu/extemporaneous speaking. Never mind the painful-but-necessary pruning of ideas that spill onto the page once the mind's floodgates give way under the passion for the topic. Never mind the minor panic of mid-presentation improvisations when you realize that you've lost part or all of your listeners. It's all worth it. Worth it because you realize that you have to justify the answers you've taken for granted for so long. In essence, you're sending yourself back to school like a scouting party in advance of the main army.

Sharing knowledge in a public speaking scenario is a skill that few want to learn, for the perfectly reasonable reason that it's scary. (I once started a staff meeting presentation by asking whether, given the choice, my co-workers would prefer starting their car at three am on a minus-thirty degree morning over giving a presentation to their co-workers. Not surprisingly, every last one of my twenty-odd co-workers chose the minus-thirty scenario.)

But it's the scariness that makes it something more than a commodity--and worth cultivating as a skill. (Suggestion: If you interview a candidate whose resume claims "Excellent communication skills," ask her/him about her/his last presentation. Definitely a put-up-or-shut-up kind of question, that...) And here's the thing--I've never met a person who isn't nervous. The best have just learned to hide it...to some extent from themselves. Maybe that's why, when I look back on five years on the UWEC Forensics squad, there's such a Band of Brothers vibe...and why so many memories involve silliness: We were all helping each other through the nervousness.

Public speaking is one of those things you can't learn except by doing and failing and trying new things and paying attention to what works (and doesn't) for other people. But once you find your own way through the nervousness, you run with a fairly elite crowd. Which is a bonus even above the learning experience that each new presentation offers.