Vanessa Van Edwards and an immigrant speaker explore how cultural backgrounds shape public speaking openings. Americans often start with jokes; many Asian speakers open with apologies. Van Edwards distinguishes humility from apology, noting self-effacing humor adds personality without requiring an actual apology.
Being an immigrant, if I may call myself that, a happy American citizen today, is that you're always sensitive about the differences where you come from and the norms here. So Americans start speech by telling a joke to get closer to your audience. Asians start with an apology.
No, really?
Your students might shit me for this. It's a little bit of a joke that sometimes we start maybe being self-effacing with an apology because we think that that is a good way to show humility.
Humility and apology, those are two different things. They're really really similar but I think that being humble or self-effacing is a kind of joke and does add personality. I don't think it's fair to call out apology because I've heard some really good self-effacing intros before. I actually like that so—
I learned a little bit to have balance, try and tell a joke if it's bad joke apologize for it.
Yeah yeah! Good!
