Nervous Energy and Dancing During Speeches

 In December I was invited to participate on a panel of judges for presentations delivered during a university competition. The participants all did quite well. I’ll offer some observations that address some public speaking habits in general.

As this was a masters level business program, the students skewed towards late twenties or older. Some were very skilled presenters; however, it was clear many had little experience. There is no substitute for experience.

I didn’t notice any of the speakers rely on notes to any great extent, which is very commendable. There were five teams of five to six people, and each team member delivered a short speech as a contribution to presenting team results. 

Purposeful Movement Versus Purposeless Movement

I noticed many of the speakers managing nervous energy unconsciously with near continuous movement, dancing away.  It is better to move a little while not speaking, then plant the feet, and speak.  Finish a component, move, plant the feet, and speak. Constant moving is distracting for many audience members, and visibly demonstrates nervousness.

Word Choice and Use of Non-Words

Most participants used a minimum of filler noises like ‘um’ and ‘ah’ but several used a quantity that I found distracting. When someone’s speech is full of ums and ahs, I need to work to filter them out to concentrate on the words and sentences, to interpret the overall message.  As a listener, you filter them out too, and this is additional work for the listener. If you need to work too hard on filtering, you will feel some mild fatigue as the speaker concludes. You might even comment to a colleague that such a presentation was exhausting.  

Few people will entirely eliminate filler noises, but we can all work to be aware of our usage and minimize them.  We concentrate hard on good word choices. Most of us can do a better job on concentrating on filler noises and catching them before they escape.

Managing Questions and Answers

In my experience, when managing Q&A sessions with a team of varying experience, it is best to have an experienced leader field the question, perhaps shape the response, and invite another team member to expand on details when appropriate. It was evident during these presentations that any member was enabled to answer a question. That’s wonderful empowerment for the team members, but not ideal for sharing and managing information. 

At times, those answering went far beyond the initial question, which in some situations, might expose more information than is necessary. The students were eager to jump in – they were being graded – however, in a public environment, a respondent should simply answer the question clearly, usually addressing only what was asked, and being cautious about elaborating, as this could lead to a more penetrating discovery.

There were a few occurrences during the team presentations where an elaboration to a question queued me to ask a more penetrating follow-up question, although I didn’t.  In respect for the students and our time limits, neither the judging panelists nor I followed up on these elaborations. In general, speakers should only answer the question asked. Be cautious when elaborating and illustrating additional knowledge and details. I’ll mention my desire to follow-up dealt mainly with exposure of team dynamics, which in my opinion is the real value of these team exercises. It appeared some teams had some challenges working together.

Time

Many of the teams did a poor job of managing their time allotments.  This is a cardinal sin in public speaking.  Don’t exceed your time limit as it impacts the remainder of the program.

Summary

In summary here are my observations;

1.    Be aware of nervous energy and use purposeful movement instead of purposeless movement

2.    Be conscious of word choice, but even more conscious of non-word choices, that is, filler noises like um and ah. Too many and you’ll exhaust your audience, who will then be unfriendly towards your proposal.  

3.    Field each question with professionalism and invite team members to elaborate only when appropriate

4.    Answer the question

5.    Avoid elaborating when it offers little value and could expose more information than the team might like.