072 Nervous Before A Talk? Advice To A Friend

This is Dr. Ed Tori. Welcome to the Influence Every Day Show, where we make every day better and we influence for good. Several months ago, I received a request from a colleague and friend who was about to join a webinar as a guest speaker, and she was particularly nervous. She reached out to me. Her email said something like, "You always say, 'If you can ever serve me to let you know.' Well, I'm letting you know. I need your help. I'm preparing for this big webinar and I'm incredibly anxious and nervous. So I'm wondering if you have any tips or advice or if there's anything we can do." So in addition to offering a practice session where she would present to me, I also sent her a video of some tips and a list of 10 major tips before she logs into a webinar or a guest on a podcast, et cetera. Over the next couple months, a few people asked me a similar question. I removed her name and every reference to her or her particular situation. And I gave them the same video and just said, "Hey, I recorded this for someone else. Perhaps you find it helpful." And everybody said that they found it helpful. They came back, "Oh my God, thank you so much." Now I am sharing it with you. If you ever find yourself about to speak publicly and you find yourself to be nervous, perhaps it might be good to watch this video while you prepare. Let's have a look. First of all, congratulations on your webinar coming up. I know that you said you're in a panic, but there's not much difference physiologically than the feeling of anxiety and the feeling of excitement. They're actually very similar to each other. So hopefully I'll give you some tips, some advice, some words of encouragement that will get you from this panic/anxiety to feeling full-on excitement and ready to serve. I have 10 points actually, and then a tool that you can use and you can practice from. Or at least consult. The first point is that you have years of experience and that's probably why you're on the webinar. In other words, you have a lens because of all those years of experience. You've seen things, you've recognized patterns, you've done things, you've seen organizations change, how mindsets have changed and how they proceed differently in a newer climate. Yeah, sure. You've been out of it for. A year and a half, actually I have too, right? And if anything, there's a time of what we call a subconscious simmer. So when we're removed from it, sometimes we see it differently. And so this is actually perfect. The fact that you have years of experience. So keep that in mind, keep your years of experience in mind. So that's point one. Your years of experience is exactly why you're there. So there's that. The second thing is that webinars are conversations. That's all they are. And from all of the times that I've spoken to you, I can tell you are superb at conversations. So that's all it is. Webinars are conversations and you're already good at it. So that's point 2. Point 3 is that what you're doing is an act of service. Oftentimes we think like we get anxious because we're preparing for a performance, but you're not performing, you're serving. That's exactly what you're doing, which in fact gets me to point 4, which is this is about the audience. It's not about you. It's not about you. You bring stuff to the table, your years of experience, your excellence at conversation, your lens on the world, and your service-mindedness, your service heart. You're bringing all of that to the table, but not so that you can perform. You're bringing it for the audience. It's about them. So when you make it about them, all of your attention comes off of you and goes on to them and how what you know, what you've experienced, what you see can serve them. So that's what it's about. And then the fifth point, and this is advice that was told to me. I was once getting ready to go in to speak to the strategy for the entire health system. So there's the head of strategy and then there's all of the heads of strategy of all the different clinical entities in the health system, and I'm being asked to speak there. So I'm sitting outside getting ready to go in, cuz they were having some retreat and I was about to go in, and my mentor and boss happened to be sitting next to me, Mark Smith. And he said to me, I've never seen you nervous like this before a talk. And I was like, yeah, but I'm speaking to all these strategy people. Like, this is important stuff. And he said, Ed, Ed, Ed, they need you. More than you need them. They need you more than you need them. Now, that's not something special about me. It's the fact that I'm being brought in to talk. That's exactly what's happening with you on the webinar. They need you more than you need them. A, you're there to serve them, and B, they need what you have. You don't need their approval or any of the other things that come from it. The fact is, no matter what happens after the webinar, they will have benefited and they will move on. So it's low stakes, but high yield. That's point number 5. Point number 6 is that this is an opportunity to get more reps in. Yeah, we've both been out of this, out of the work, in the day-to-day work. I say work, air quotes, in the, in death by committee and all the other things that come with work. We've been out of that for a year and a half. Okay. All right. But this is an opportunity for you to get the reps in. This is an opportunity for you to present in a way that maybe you haven't done as much. So get the reps in because this is a great place to practice. So that's number 6. Number 7, and this is by far the highest yield stuff in influence and persuasion, is to manage your state. I'm sure you've heard me say that 9 million times, managing your state. So with the email that I've sent this link with, in that email, I've also included a handout, 101 Ways to Manage Your State. The reason it's so important to manage your state is because, and by the way, you manage your state however you manage your state. You might need to drink a cup of tea or lay off of coffee for a couple hours beforehand or go for a walk or listen to your favorite music or light a candle and put aromatherapy in your house, like whatever you have to do to get yourself into a state to serve, right? Then, then you do that thing. Now, I've included this 101 Ways to Manage Your State in case you see something there that sort of grabs you that might be worth checking out. Why is managing your state so important? It's because your state, basically, if you manage your state, if you get into an optimum state to serve, an optimum state to have a conversation, then what will happen is your body language, your word choice, the stories you have available to you, all of your memory, your energy level, all of that will be reflected outwardly by your inward state. So get into the optimum state. That optimum state is probably excitement, service, conversation, like I'm gonna share my experience and things that I'm passionate about and stories. That is the optimum state to shift away from. Anxiety, performance, that sort of stuff. And what are they going to think of me? And what is this going to mean for potential jobs or whatever? So don't— so just try to optimize your state for what is optimum for this scenario, which is a conversation on a webinar about stuff you have a lot of experience in. So that's all it is, a conversation. So manage your state to that. Now, there are a couple other parts to states that I often don't bring out in my influence talks, but they're very important. So managing your state before you hit login is a momentary thing. It's like what you do in the now. Before that though, there's something else and that's preparation. So you could prepare, obviously you're preparing partially by reaching out, partially by practicing, partially by checking in with the other person you're doing the webinar with to say, hey, what kind of stuff are you gonna cover? What am I gonna cover? What's the flow? That sort of stuff. So that's all preparation, but you could also do something like I did just to make this video for you. It might not look like I've prepared. It might feel like this is a conversation, but I have a little card here with 10 points on it. And so what you could do is you could also do the same type of preparation and you could have a little card with take-home points next to you. When you're doing a webinar, no one needs to know that you have stuff right in front of your face, and that's okay. You could even pin it up like right underneath the camera. I used to put a little picture of like a, a little, like a funny picture right behind the camera so that it would just keep me in a good mood and keep me focusing on the camera, by the way. And then the other, so keep a little index card or some notes that say take-home points and just points, not descriptions, not a script, just points that you can glance over and say, oh, that I'm gonna elaborate on that. And then I, sometimes I keep another one that says stories or potential stories. I list out stories that might resonate with the audience or that might be good to bring in. And I only bring them in if a time comes to bring them in. That's it. So preparation. So part of managing your state is in the moment. Part of managing your state is preparation. Another part of managing your state is recognizing all of your years of experience. This moment of a webinar is an event., but all of the time leading up to this moment, you have years of experience in the very space that you're talking about. This, so this is part of managing your state. In other words, you're already showing up with years of experience and that is part of what you bring to the table. And then even before that, and this is something I'm gonna comment on about you from what I've known of our interactions. Before experience, there's character. And your character is impeccable. At least outwardly, every single time I've seen you in a professional setting, your character is awesome. So now, going into that day, which is all, by the way, all of this is point number 7. All going into that webinar, manage your state in the moment, manage your preparation in the days before these next 2 days. You've already managed your experience for decades. And you already have great character. You're ready. So that's point number 7. Point number 8 is that, is that very thing that I already told you, preparation with index cards. Prepare a couple index cards, one with stories, one with take-home points. And if we get to a point like in the webinar where it's like, conclusion, do you have any, do you have any parting words? They're going to say, and you just glance over your take-home points. And you just say, hey, if there's one thing I want you to remember, it's this. And if you're able to remember 2, here's this. So give them a take-home point. Give them 1, maybe 2, but definitely not more than 3. So 1, 2, or 3 take-home points. Write them down, put them on the card, and there it is. Number 9 is, is that I have my AI clone available for you to look at. So if you log in to drtori.ai, D-R-T-O-R-I dot A-I. If you go there, you can actually have a conversation with me, sort of, with virtual me. You can have the conversation. You can call it and say, hey, I'm about to log into this webinar. I'm talking about X, Y, and Z. What do you think? Or I'm nervous about this. Do you have any tips? Or just say something, ask it questions, and it will answer you based on influence and rapport and getting yourself ready for that presentation. And, and I said initially that I had 10. Points, but I actually, the 10th point relates to going through and let me just, I want to give you perspective on the prior points, because when I think about this from an influence point of view, you already have everything there. I'm going to jump to a screen and show you the framework that I coach people from on influence and persuasion, but essentially all of the things that I've distilled from all the influence domains. I put them into a single framework and I coach around it. And I wanna show you that you've already accounted for most multiple points in there. So let's jump to that screen right now. Okay, so what we're looking at now is the framework that I've created for all of the domains of influence that I've studied. So over the past 20+ years, all those domains that I've studied from, I've condensed all of their concepts, their principles, their practices. Their patterns, the way they view the world into this one framework. And this is the framework that I coach people around. I typically coach people around these four domains or phases or buckets of influence. I typically talk about states. We talked about how important states are. Your state affects your word choice, your body language, your tone of speech, your rapport, your performance at tasks, your memory, all those things. So there's your state. There's their state, and there's how to change states. There are your frames, their frames, and how to change frames. Your patterns, patterns of thought, patterns of behavior, patterns of decision-making, your body language, all that. Your patterns, their patterns, and how to change patterns. And then there's context, your context, their context, and also how to affect and impact contexts. So what when we look at all of the advice that I just gave you, those tips, those 9 preceding tips, I guess the first 8, they all fit somewhere on here. The first one, manage your state. You manage your state, optimize it for whatever you're about to do. And one of the ways to manage your state is right in between here. If you're coming in with a service frame, it affects your state. On how you show up. So that is powerful. Another frame that we said was that webinars are just conversations. Webinars are conversations. That's a frame. And by the way, in terms of patterns, you're really good at having conversations. You're really good. That's your pattern, right? What happens between frames and patterns is experience. Your experience in the work that you've done all these years in the organize, organizing, bringing together different groups of people from within your industry, from within your practice, all those things like that affords you a lens that other people don't have. That's your experience. It is simultaneously a frame and you recognize patterns in it. Now, the context itself is that it's a webinar. It's a virtual webinar. You can have all the resources you want in front of you. That's part of the context. Another part of the context is some people will be distracted. They won't be focusing on you because they might be multitasking. You take that as you will. You do your best. They will not notice if you don't say something. They don't know what you were going to say. They only know what you said. And if they are, if you're, if you do a phenomenal job, you might stop them from multitasking. And if you do a great, a good job, they might still be occasionally checking on other things, but take a few points from you, et cetera. It's a webinar. It's not a heavy lift. You're not on stage. You're not going to trip going up the stage, none of that. And by the way, you have someone else with you. That's another part of the context. If something happens, you have a technical glitch or something like that, they'll just take over. And if they have a technical glitch, you'll take over. It's a conversation. So that's the context. The other part of that context is you can have all the resources in front of you. So that's a beautiful part of the context. And then your preparation. This goes into patterns and states. The pattern of you preparing, right? Reaching out to me, doing any kind of prep you have for notes, having any conversations with your speaking partner, all of that are, all of those are patterns of preparation. When you are prepared, it affects your state. It affects how you show up. So you're covering all these bases. Now what happens in the middle here? That's where your character shows up. It's where your optimized state meets your optimized frame of service, which meets preparedness and experience, which meets the context of it's just a webinar and webinars are conversations. This is where you thrive. This is exactly where you thrive. It's right in the center. That's already you. So I think you're gonna crush it on Thursday, and I hope you found this video helpful. At least I hope you took a nugget, but I actually hope you took 9 nuggets. And in the meantime, you can also talk to my clone, cuz my clone might actually give you better advice than I did. So anyway, I hope it goes well. Please let me know. And by the way, make sure it's recorded because you might benefit from the recording, either looking back and rehashing it. The other thing is you might benefit from the transcript of it or repurposing it for some other reason. Just make sure it's recorded. All right. I'll talk to you later, I guess. And if I can help in any other way, reach out. This is only the end of today's show if you let it be. Who needs to hear what you just heard? Go ahead and share it with them right now. The Influence Every Day podcast is free. We don't sell advertising space, so telling others is the best way to pay us back But more importantly, it's the best way to pay it forward. If you enjoyed today's podcast, take a moment to rate and review the show. Then check out the additional links and materials that go along with it. They offer more ways to take your influence, your impact, and your relationships to a whole new level. Now go forth and influence for good every day.