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Communication · a life skill

Public Speaking Basics

your nerves show less than you think

Most people who dread speaking dread being seen to be nervous. The research says the audience sees much less of it than you feel, and that knowing this makes the talk itself better. So spend your preparation where it counts: one sentence you want them to leave with, an opening that gets to it, three points that hold it up, and a close that says it again. All of it fits on one card.

  • Moderate
  • High impact
  • Learn it: 2-4 weeks
  • One takeaway per talk
the nerves the audience didn't see
Speakers thought they looked more nervous than they felt, and their partners saw less nervousness than either Forty students gave three-minute impromptu talks in pairs and rated nervousness from 0 to 10. They felt 5.95 on average, thought they had looked 6.55, and were rated 5.25 by their partner. Asked who had looked more nervous, 27 of the 40 said they had. In 8 of the 20 pairs both speakers said so, in 11 pairs they split, and in 1 pair both said the other person had. ONE 3-MINUTE TALK, RATED 0 TO 10 How nervous they felt 5.95 How nervous they thought they looked 6.55 How nervous they looked to their partner 5.25 ↑ 1.3 points nobody rated 0 · not at all 10 · very WHO LOOKED MORE NERVOUS? 20 PAIRS 8 pairs both: me 11 pairs split 1 pair both: them “I looked more nervous” · 27 “They did” · 13

Means from Study 1 of Savitsky & Gilovich (2003): 40 students in pairs, each speaking for three minutes. Each pair of dots is one pair of speakers.

The method

One sentence, said twice, held up three ways.

  1. Write the takeaway first

    One sentence they could repeat to someone who missed the talk. “The Q3 update” is a topic; “From Monday, every bug goes in one tracker” is a takeaway.

  2. Open on it, or on a moment

    Start with the takeaway, a small scene, or a question they'll answer in their heads. Skip the apology and the agenda; both spend your best seconds.

  3. Three points, a line each

    Each one should hold the takeaway up. If a point needs a paragraph on the card, it's two points, or a different talk.

  4. Close on the takeaway again

    Say the same sentence, nearly word for word, then what you'd like them to do. “So yeah, that's it” hands the last word to the silence.

  5. Say the first and last lines out loud

    Practise the opening and close until they come without the card; speak the middle from the card. If you feel nervous, remember that it barely shows.

    Takeaway, open on it, three points, close on it, rehearse the ends.

Example: Ana has five minutes at Monday's team meeting. Their card says, at the top: “From Monday, every bug goes in one tracker, or it won't get fixed.” They open with last Thursday's bug that got fixed twice, give three one-line reasons, and close on the same sentence.

The cue card

Fit the whole talk on one card.

1 · Pick a talk

2 · The takeaway

3 · The opening

4 · Three points

5 · The close

6 · Your card

    The checks are our own rules of thumb, not a test from the research. They count words and look for a few phrases; they can't tell whether your point is a good one.

    Before you stand up Know that if you become nervous, you'll probably be the only one to know. The last line of what Savitsky & Gilovich told speakers in the group that did better.

    Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere.

    The research behind it

    Nervousness leaks less than it feels.

    Kenneth Savitsky and Thomas Gilovich call it the illusion of transparency: our own feelings are so loud to us that we're sure they show. In their first study, 40 Cornell students took turns giving three-minute talks on topics they hadn't prepared. Speakers rated how nervous they had looked at 6.55 out of 10; their partners put it at 5.25.

    Partners might be poor judges, busy worrying about their own turn. So the authors ran it again at Williams College with 17 speakers on video, rated by groups of observers who never spoke. The gap held: 5.71 against 4.24.

    A 2010 study by Cara MacInnis and colleagues moved it into a real public-speaking class: 93 students, each speaking to around fifteen classmates. Speakers guessed the audience would rate their anxiety at 23.3 on a scale from 6 to 42. The audience gave 17.3. Only about a third, 36%, expected the audience to see more than they felt; most simply assumed it all showed.

    In three studies, speakers expected to look more nervous than the audience rated them: 6.55 against 5.25 and 5.71 against 4.24 on 0 to 10 scales, and 23.3 against 17.3 on a 6 to 42 scale THREE ROOMS, THE SAME GAP Cornell, speaking in pairs 5.25 6.55 0 10 Williams, on video 4.24 5.71 0 10 A public-speaking class 17.3 23.3 6 42 what speakers expected what the audience rated
    Each row on its own scale. Savitsky & Gilovich (2003), Study 1 and its replication, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; MacInnis, Mackinnon & MacIntyre (2010), Current Research in Social Psychology.

    The second study asked whether knowing this helps. 77 students had five minutes to prepare a three-minute talk on race relations at Cornell, a topic few would find easy. One group heard nothing extra. One was told not to worry about what others think. A third was told about the illusion itself: audiences can't pick up on anxiety as well as speakers expect.

    40 observers then watched the videos without knowing who had heard what. They rated the informed speakers as more composed, and their talks as better, than either of the other groups. Plain reassurance did no better than saying nothing.

    The differences are modest, on a seven-point scale, and these were students in a laboratory. The authors suggest it worked by breaking a loop: worrying that your nerves show makes you more nervous. The cue card is our own addition, built on the idea that preparation should go to the message rather than to hiding.

    Observers' ratings on a 1 to 7 scale. Looked composed: 4.65 for speakers told about the illusion, 3.90 with nothing extra, 3.94 when told not to worry. Speech quality: 4.23, 3.50 and 3.62. WHAT 40 OBSERVERS SAW, 1 TO 7 Looked composed Told the finding 4.65 Nothing extra 3.90 Told not to worry 3.94 Quality of the talk Told the finding 4.23 Nothing extra 3.50 Told not to worry 3.62 1234567 not at all very
    Mean observer ratings from Table 1 of Savitsky & Gilovich (2003), Study 2: 77 speakers in three groups. The informed group differed reliably from the other two on both.

    The idea

    Why it works.

    Nerves take up the attention a talk needs. Knowing they barely show frees some of it, and a card with one sentence at the top tells you what to spend it on. When you lose your place, you look down and find the takeaway, not a script.

    For the audience, a single takeaway said at the start and again at the end is something to hang the middle on. Three points is a handy number for a short talk rather than a rule; what matters is that each one plainly holds the takeaway up.

    When it goes wrong

    Habits that help.

    • Don't announce your nerves. “Sorry, I'm terrible at this” tells them to look for what they wouldn't have noticed.
    • Pause instead of filling. A second of silence before a point reads as thinking. It feels much longer to you than it looks.
    • Rehearse out loud, once at least. A talk read in your head always runs shorter than the same talk spoken.
    • Cut, don't speed up. If it runs long, drop a point. Rushing through all three keeps none of them.

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