Your First Real Exercise: Say One Thing to the Group
Alright. Enough talking about talking. Time to actually do it.
Here's the exercise. You're going to stand up (or stay in your chair, doesn't matter) and say one true thing about yourself for thirty seconds. Not a joke, not a polished intro. One thing. Where you work, why you signed up for this class, what you had for breakfast. I don't care. The content is not the point.
The point is doing it while your hands are a little sweaty and getting through it anyway.
Why we're starting this small
I could have you write a whole two-minute talk for week one. Some classes do that. I think it's a mistake.
If the first thing you ever say to a group is a whole speech, you're managing your material and your nerves at the same time, and that's alot to carry when you haven't done either one before. So we strip it down. Thirty seconds. One thing. No structure required.
This is the same reason I don't hand a new guy at the shop a full setup on day one. I give him one cut. He learns what the machine sounds like when it's right before I ask him to run a whole part.
How to actually do this at home first
Before you do it in front of anyone, do it alone. Here's the steps.
- Pick your one thing right now. Don't overthink it. "I'm Randy, I run a machine shop, I signed up because my daughter has a presentation coming up and I wanted to actually know what I'm talking about when I coach her." That's thirty seconds, maybe a little over. Fine.
- Say it out loud, alone, three times. Not in your head. Out loud. Your living room, your car, wherever. The first time will feel dumb. Say it anyway.
- Say it slower than feels natural. This is the thing I harp on more than anything else in this whole class. Nervous people rush. They want the discomfort over with, so they speed up, and it comes out mushy and hard to follow. Slow down more than you think you need to. It will feel painfully slow to you. It will sound normal to everyone else.
- Don't write it word for word. Know your one thing. Don't script it. If you script it you'll be reading it off the inside of your eyelids and it'll sound stiff.
Know your thing
This is the whole opinion I keep coming back to in this class: nerves show up hardest when you don't actually know your material. When you know it, your body calms down some on its own, because there's nothing to hide.
I found this out on accident, actually. Few years back I was up the canyon hiking with Darrel and Adam, and I got going on this CNC problem I'd been chewing on at the shop. Just talking it out loud on the trail, no notes, nothing planned. And about ten minutes in I realized I'd laid the whole thing out clean. Cause, what I tried, why it didn't work, what I tried next. No stumbling, no "where was I."
It wasn't because I'm a great talker on a trail. It's because I understood that problem inside and out. I'd lived with it for two weeks. When you know your thing that well, the talking part takes care of itself.
Your "one thing" tonight is small enough that you already know it cold. That's on purpose. I want you to feel what it's like to say something you're not scrambling to remember.
What to expect when you actually say it
Your hands might still shake a little. That's fine, we covered why in the last lesson.
You might lose your place for a second. If you do, stop. Breathe. Say your next sentence. Don't apologize, don't fill the gap with "sorry, um, okay so." The silence feels like forever to you. To everybody else it's four seconds and they don't even notice.
One honest caution: don't lock your knees if you're standing for this. People occasionally get lightheaded standing still and nervous at the same time, especially if the room's warm. If you feel woozy, sit down. Nobody's grading your posture.
Say it back to me
After you do this at home, I want you to be able to answer one question without checking notes: what was your one thing? If you have to think hard to remember what you just said, it wasn't simple enough. Cut it down more.
That's it. That's the whole exercise for this week.
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Before next time: practice your one thing out loud, alone, at least three times before class. Thirty seconds, no script, know it cold.