The Secret to Great Public Speaking (No, It's Not Confidence) | Jess Ekstrom | TEDxSugar Creek Women — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Transcriber: Ridhee Joshi Reviewer: Simin Kazemi
2. 0:09As a kid, do you remember the absolute adrenaline rush
3. 0:14of hearing the ice cream truck?
4. 0:16(Laughter)
5. 0:17I lived at the top of my neighborhood,
6. 0:20so I took it as my civic duty
7. 0:24to hop on my bike and alert the rest of the kids.
8. 0:28Looking back on this experience,
9. 0:30did I care how I looked frantically knocking on people’s doors
10. 0:35during dinner time, drenched in sweat? No.
11. 0:40Did I care how I sounded, shrieking, “The ice cream truck is coming!
12. 0:45Smash your piggy banks. Grab your flavors!”? No.
13. 0:49Why didn’t I care?
14. 0:51Because I knew I had critical information,
15. 0:56(Laughter)
16. 0:58that they wanted to know.
17. 1:00So public speaking wasn't about me.
18. 1:03It was the information I had that I knew could serve them.
19. 1:08With AI on the rise, to say lightly, public speaking and
20. 1:12human-to-human connection is becoming increasingly important.
21. 1:17Sure, you can go on ChatGPT to help craft an email to your boss asking for a raise.
22. 1:22But what about when she calls you into her office to discuss?
23. 1:27You can’t interrupt her mid-sentence and go to AI and be like, “Line?”
24. 1:31(Laughter)
25. 1:34Public speaking is becoming increasingly more important,
26. 1:38whether it is giving a presentation to your peers, talking to your spouse,
27. 1:43or working up the courage
28. 1:47to call your favorite restaurant for takeout because they’re not on Uber Eats.
29. 1:51(Laughter)
30. 1:52Public speaking is the fuse that brings us all together.
31. 1:55It’s also the gateway to opportunity,
32. 1:58the first step in a multi-million dollar deal,
33. 2:02or a partner saying yes to a proposal or landing your dream opportunity.
34. 2:08Was someone out there who knew how to deliver what they wanted to say.
35. 2:13So why do people fear public speaking more than they fear sharks,
36. 2:19spiders and heights?
37. 2:22Or, as Jerry Seinfeld says,
38. 2:23“Most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy at the funeral.”
39. 2:29Because public speaking is one of the most
40. 2:31vulnerable, exposed human experiences.
41. 2:36Personally, I blame school spelling bees
42. 2:39or performances where we felt like we couldn’t miss a letter
43. 2:44that we had to deliver every line perfectly.
44. 2:48But the standard of perfection puts our nerves into a pressure cooker.
45. 2:53And so we've been told to combat our nerves, especially as women,
46. 2:57to just speak up, stand tall,
47. 3:01or my favorite one, take up space!
48. 3:05(Laughter)
49. 3:07But what this kind of advice does is it shifts the attention back
50. 3:11onto ourselves, which is ineffective.
51. 3:15Great speakers believe they are delivering great information,
52. 3:20whether it is about an ice cream truck
53. 3:23or about something that will increase your lifespan.
54. 3:27But the other thing that we get wrong is we believe that in order to be
55. 3:31a great public speaker, you have to be the center of attention.
56. 3:34You have to be the loudest one in the room with the most boisterous personality, or
57. 3:38you have to have the super dramatic story
58. 3:43about how you single handedly saved a species on the verge of extinction
59. 3:48or how you climbed Mount Everest blindfolded.
60. 3:53(Laughter)
61. 3:55So it makes us believe that inherently,
62. 3:58extroverts are great speakers and introverts aren’t.
63. 4:01But I deeply identify as an introvert.
64. 4:05And here I am, standing on this stage talking to you.
65. 4:10So let me tell you my experience.
66. 4:13I've made a career out of public speaking.
67. 4:16Both speaking at companies and conferences all over the world.
68. 4:21Or teaching it to women through my company.
69. 4:24But like anything you eventually become decent at,
70. 4:28you have to flop before you can fly.
71. 4:32And boy, did I flop.
72. 4:34Because, you see, I thought that public speaking was about
73. 4:39convincing people that you deserved to be there,
74. 4:41that you deserved to be worthy of their attention.
75. 4:44And so anytime I would get in front of people, I would just, like,
76. 4:47fire hose my resume or accolades or press
77. 4:51or name drop someone that I was in the room with
78. 4:53for like more than two seconds,
79. 4:55because that’s what I thought that public speaking was,
80. 4:59was about showing them that I was important.
81. 5:02And as you might guess, it wasn’t landing.
82. 5:05And so what did I do? I started to study other speakers,
83. 5:08and I was like, why am I seeing speakers lose their train of thought on stage
84. 5:13or stumble over a word and still get standing ovations.
85. 5:18Or why did I trip, going up to the stage for the whole audience to see my Spanx.
86. 5:23(Laughter)
87. 5:25And I still had women wanting to talk to me afterwards.
88. 5:29Because being relatable doesn't make you unreliable.
89. 5:34It makes you a great speaker that is wired for connection.
90. 5:39The pressure to be impressive
91. 5:43creates fear within ourselves, lack of authenticity in our delivery,
92. 5:48and drives a wedge between the speaker and the listener.
93. 5:53I mean, let's be honest, we've all been sitting across the table from someone
94. 5:57who is 45 minutes into their monologue, hasn't asked us a single question yet.
95. 6:04Our coffee is empty, and we are knee deep into hearing every detail
96. 6:10of the story about how they actually had the idea for Uber first.
97. 6:14(Laughter)
98. 6:15If only their college roommate didn’t steal their whiteboard, you know?
99. 6:20Public speaking isn’t about showing that you’re important.
100. 6:23It’s about proving to your audience or your listener that they are important,
101. 6:27which brings me to my secret:
102. 6:30If you want to be a great public speaker, ask yourself one question,
103. 6:35where are you shining your light?
104. 6:39I have determined there are two types of public speakers.
105. 6:43You have a spotlight speaker and you have a lighthouse speaker.
106. 6:47A spotlight speaker: The light is shining on you.
107. 6:50You are concerned with public perception.
108. 6:53You are asking yourselves, how do I look?
109. 6:56How do I sound? Does everyone like me?
110. 6:59And it's not your fault
111. 7:00because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to believe that public speaking is
112. 7:04being in the spotlight.
113. 7:07But a lighthouse speaker shifts the light from themselves to their listener.
114. 7:12If a spotlight asks, what does everyone think of me.
115. 7:16Then a lighthouse asks, what does everyone need of me?
116. 7:21When you're a lighthouse speaker, not only you're going to be more impactful,
117. 7:26you're not going to get as nervous because it's not about achieving perfection.
118. 7:30It's about helping someone arrive at a solution.
119. 7:35We would all rather be guided by a lighthouse than a spotlight,
120. 7:40which proves that likeability as a speaker doesn’t come from being perfect,
121. 7:45it doesn’t come from projecting some sort of forced confidence,
122. 7:49it comes from when you have a clear understanding
123. 7:51of what your listener needs,
124. 7:53and a rooted belief in what you know that can help.
125. 7:57So if you want to be a great public speaker before you speak,
126. 8:02ask yourself one question: Where are you shining your light?
127. 8:07Thank you.
128. 8:08(Applause)