Women in Business Fall 2017

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24 | WOMEN IN BUSINESS—FALL 2017 PUBLISHED BY BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER SPEAKING Do you suffer from glossophobia (fear of public speaking)? Time to conquer it to get ahead in your career (and in life)UP HAYLEY WOODIN NARGES NIRUMVALA CEO, EXECUTIVESPEAK COACHING INTERNATIONAL I think public speaking, for anyone, takes a tremendous amount of courage. So don’t expect to not experience fear Set aside snakes, forget flying and disregard the dark – the top fear for many professionals is public speaking. For some, glossophobia (as the condition is officially known) is even more terrifying than dying. It may sound far-fetched, but not to those whose careers force them to fight through the phobia. “I still am terrified before I go onstage. My heart’s pounding. I’m sweating so I always have clinical-strength deodorant on,” quips Narges Nirumvala, CEO of Vancouver-based ExecutiveSpeak Coaching International. “I think public speaking, for anyone, takes a tremendous amount of courage. So don’t expect to not experience fear.” Nirumvala faced her own “do or die” situation about seven years ago. After being fired from a menial job, she spent months in “complete obscurity and unemployment,” unable to secure even a minimum-wage position. As she turned toward social assistance, her husband suggested she leverage her talent as a communicator and venture out on her own. Today, she has hundreds of conferences and group presentations under her belt as one of Canada’s leading executive speech coaches and a paid motivational speaker. “I didn’t have an option. And often for my leaders, it’s the same situation. They’ve been promoted, they are going to be CEO in a year, maybe they’ve just become executive director, maybe they’re going to be running for election,” says Nirumvala. “All of a sudden it’s absolutely vital that they can speak well in public.” If you’ve ever been to a conference or listened to your boss give a speech before you and your colleagues, chances are you’ve witnessed someone fearful of public speaking. Many who appear confident on the outside are scared to death on the inside. Through training, practice and learning from others, they’ve overcome it. LEARN WHAT TO DO (AND WHAT NOT TO) BY WATCH- ING OTHERSA turning point in Nirumvala’s career was after watching a technology CEO give a very dull talk at a human resources conference a few years back. “He was boring people to death. It was awful,” she says. “One woman had fallen asleep next to me; the other woman was on her phone the whole time.” Putting pen to napkin, she documented 67 mistakes made by the speaker – insights later shared in her Amazon.com bestseller Capture the Spotlight. Among them: reading off a PowerPoint, speaking to a PowerPoint and failing to share stories. “That’s how it started,” she says. “I went to hear someone speak. He was terrible. I learned so much.” Reading, listening and taking notes are simple yet powerful ways to collect insights and ideas to improve your public speaking skills. There’s a plethora of content available on websites such as YouTube or TED Talks, giving professionals front-row access to the best presenters, performers and speakers in the world. It will also help you pick up on any new trends and see what works – and doesn’t work. “There’s no doubt that the expectations for an entertaining speaker today is very different than it was,” says Debby Carreau, founder and CEO of Vancouver-based Inspired HR and chair of the Young Presidents’ Organization Canada’s women’s network. “It really has shifted and it’s also upped the game.” Carreau’s advice for beginners is to start small and work within your comfort zone. Then, start slowly pushing the envelope by making and posting videos on channels such as Facebook or Instagram and ask for feedback. She also recommends people practise by reading their speech
| 25 Even with hundreds of events and engagements under her belt, Narges Nirumvala, CEO of ExecutiveSpeak Coaching International, still gets nervous before speaking publicly. The fear will always be there, she says. Success is about working through it | SUBMITTED Debby Carreau, CEO of Inspired HR, says that while YouTube and TED Talks have set the bar high for public speaking, beginners should start small and within their comfort zone | SUBMITTED out loud before delivering it live. “You have to rehearse,” she says, noting that writing and reading a speech is a lot different from saying it out loud. When you verbalize, words may sound different, breathing becomes an issue and the flow changes. FOCUS ON CONTENT AS MUCH AS DELIV- ERY“Every time that I get behind the podium, my legs still shake,” Anna Tudela, vice-president of diversity and regulatory affairs at Vancouver-based Goldcorp, says of her experience public speaking. “But it shakes for about half a second, and then you look at the audience and then you feel comfortable. And then you just do it.” One of the best ways to get better at public speaking is to just do it, and keep doing it, to boost confidence and help lessen the fear over time. That means working on both the content and the delivery. Tudela stresses the importance of fully understanding and mastering the contents of your speech to help improve the delivery. “If you know the subject matter that you’re going to be discussing, then you feel more comfortable,” she says. Remembering the five p’s her husband taught her,“Proper preparation prevents poor performance,” also helps. For Tudela, preparation also includes working on posture and choosing clothing that helps her feel more comfortable when speaking in front of an audience. Injecting personal stories into your speech is another way to help you feel more comfortable and to engage the crowd, says Kristy White, director of operations at Dale Carnegie Training of British Columbia. White says the magic formula for storytelling is to share a vivid personal experience relevant to the point, use facts and evidence to bolster a statement or case, illustrate the action audience members should take and then explain what they stand to benefit. “If you follow that format in a concise and clear way, you’ll very quickly be able to get people on board with what you need them to do,” White says. “What we teach people is to speak about something that you know. Earn the right to get up in front of a group of people. Feel confident in what you’re talking about. And if you’re telling a story, if you’re talking about your own experience and using it as an example of how to make your point, no one’s going to tell you you’re wrong.” GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND INTO THE AUDI- ENCEAs a professional facilitator, Carol Carter would deal with her “crazy fear” of public speaking by getting
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Women in Business Fall 2017

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