PUBLIC SPEAKING It’s Not About You, It’s About Something Else

Teachers learn to teach by gaining competency in a subject and by attending teacher training. But standing in front of others to speak or teach for real can be a shock. A jargon-filled way to say this is that when you stand up to speak in public, “A great deal happens in the dark interstices of your aphistra.”

A plain way to say it is, “Your stomach churns.” That means it’s emotional; and teaching requires emotional maturity and readiness. A way to be emotionally ready for speaking, teaching, and leadership is to turn our focus on the audience, and our message, rather than on how nervous we may feel. The following is a model (explanation below) for this attitudinal teacher turning point, or what I call the (die wende).

First, when a builder constructs a house they establish a solid foundation. For speaking and teaching, an attitude is the foundation upon which everything will rise or fall. Good teachers, just like builders, focus on the foundation. The foundation for speaking and teaching is the attitude one brings. Attitude toward listeners is the foundation and the place speakers take their stand.

Second, emotionally mature teachers will project respect and active positive energy toward the listeners. The solid foundation begins with attitude and builds with respect and positive projection.

Third, with the right attitudinal and emotional energy established, teachers can be confident in their message. They’ve prepared their emotional foundation upon attitude, energy, and confidence.

Fourth, with a strong emotional foundation, teachers demonstrate by speaking in a conversational and relaxed style. An “uptight” authoritative energy is absent, replaced by a calm, conversational confidence.

Fifth, clarity lies at the center of the delivery triangle. It can only happen when the speaker has built a good foundation and is emotionally ready.

Sixth, be confident in your role and know the results are not up to you. This gets you off the hook, and is tremendously freeing. With integrity and good faith, you present what you love. Put it out there, keep your ego out of it, act in humility, and let it go.

Finally, effective delivery grows from the right attitude leading to confidence and a relaxed and conversational style undergirding clarity of thought and purpose. Emotional and mental clarity turns into effective delivery. This is the bottom line to any speaking and teaching.

Book titles are illustrative of a strategic or process-centric approach, and many of them say anything can be mastered by focusing on tips, techniques, and strategies. But that’s not true when teaching yoga. The curriculum has been set for thousands of years and we can be confident that yoga will do its work; our job is to be emotionally and attitudinally ready to share it.

Teachers can take one simple step by putting this first on their minds. It’s not about you. Your teaching is about the people in front of you, the people who are called on to follow your directions, the people who listen for your inspirational words, for the cost of the item they’re buying from you, or for your explanation of what is wrong with your car … it’s not about you.

When teachers understand that it is not about them, the focus goes where it belongs. It’s a paradoxical approach, but one that lets you relax and think of your class as a laboratory. The reality is that you and I live in laboratories; we are surrounded by humans experimenting with life each moment of every day.

Teaching then is really a dialogue where you talk, but more importantly, it’s an occasion where you work to listen and respond. Yes, your students are listening to you but they are also talking to you. You can listen to them when you forget about yourself and put them first, but if we are too concerned about how we are doing, we’ve missed the message. It’s not about you.

With this focus, you will be relieved of worry about how you are doing and your attention will be turned to answer two questions about teaching — in every class — the only two that really matter.

1. Do you know what THEY want here and now?

2. Are you helping THEM get it?

If you can answer yes to these two questions, both of which focus on your audience, you will be ready to teach. This *turning point in your awareness does several important things:

1. Puts your focus where it belongs — on your task for them.

2. Relieves attention from you, to the audience and therefore reduces your speech anxiety.

3. Creates the central concern in teaching as attitudinal, not strategic or methodological.

4. Opens up delivery options, helping you become flexible, conversational, and relaxed.

5. Begs the question — which is answered here — of how to make the audience your ally.

6. Lets you view your class as a laboratory, where trial and error are expected, not punished.

When your attitude to your students is your foundation, and when you know it’s not about you, the teacher turning point happens and your teaching will be marked by calmness, clarity, confidence, and conversational effectiveness.

Notes:

* When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the German people had an expression for that event going well beyond the understanding that it was only a brick wall. They called that moment, die wende, or the ‘turning point.’ But die wende signifies a moment when everything that has been true up to that point takes a sudden and irreversible turn, a moment from which everything is changed. This was true with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent merger of two Germanys and the future of Germany and Europe.