Read an Excerpt
The Articulate Attorney
Public Speaking for Lawyers
By Brian K. Johnson, Marsha Hunter, Barbara Richied Crown King Books
Copyright © 2013 Crown King Books
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-939506-98-6
CHAPTER 1
Your Body
In public speaking, the goal is to look confident, comfortable, and credible when you stand up to address an audience. The way you stand, move, breathe, gesture, and focus your gaze significantly affects how listeners perceive you. Audiences unconsciously scrutinize your physical behavior as they listen, and if your demeanor signals nervousness and discomfort, it will make them feel ill at ease too. But if you act confident and enthusiastic, listeners will concentrate on your topic, not you. To achieve this initial goal — looking dynamically at ease and believable at all times, even when feeling nervous — requires a fail-safe technique for controlling your body.
Understanding the function of adrenaline is likewise of paramount importance to your development as a speaker; few things have greater impact on your performance. Feelings of anxiety and excitement inevitably trigger the flow of adrenaline, which sends excess energy coursing through your system. This leads many speakers to pace or sway, breathe fast and shallow, gesture awkwardly, and fidget with their hands. Even the eyes are affected by adrenaline: nervous energy makes it hard for them to focus, and they tend to flit around the room, depriving the audience of eye contact and the speaker of concentration. However, by learning to control your breath as well as the movement of your legs, arms, hands, and eyes, you can channel the power of adrenaline and dictate how your body responds to it.
With guided practice, you will discover how to instruct your body to act in an appropriate and effective way. You can gain conscious control of your body by making desired behaviors part of a performance ritual. You will then look comfortable and confident from the very beginning of every presentation, regardless of how you may feel.
Understanding Adrenaline
Adrenaline is a natural hormone released by the adrenal glands. It flows through the body when your instinct signals a need for extra energy, perhaps to defend yourself, run away, or respond to the pressure of performance. Performance pressures often take a positive form, such as excitement or anticipation. When athletes talk of "being pumped" for the big game, they are responding to that adrenaline being pumped, literally, by their bodies in anticipation of performance. Adrenaline also assists athletes by producing the extra energy needed to throw a ball farther or run faster, and by helping them to concentrate and focus the mind in the heat of competition. Likewise, adrenaline can be a positive factor while speaking.
The body also pumps adrenaline in response to negative pressures, such as nervousness, anxiety, and panic. Excess nervous energy is often referred to as the fight-or-flight syndrome, because adrenaline energizes and animates muscles in our arms to help us fight and in our legs to help us flee.
Although our need to outrun predators has been reduced in modern society, thankfully, we're all familiar with adrenaline-induced energy: it makes your limbs tremble. If you stand up to speak and feel your hands shaking, this is the result of adrenaline preparing your arm muscles to fight. If you feel your knees knocking, adrenaline is pumping extra energy into your thighs and quadriceps to prepare you to run from a threat. The trembling occurs because every muscle in the body is paired with another muscle — for example, biceps and triceps work together to move your forearm — and when adrenaline energizes both simultaneously, they tense and pull against each other, causing the arms or legs to shake.
The common form of nervousness known as "having butterflies in your stomach" takes place in muscles of respiration. The flutter of those metaphorical butterflies occurs when the diaphragm and intercostal muscles in the ribs pull against each other in response to adrenaline. As you speak, you feel a flutter, which sometimes becomes audible. Your voice shakes or cracks when this excessive muscular tension robs you of adequate breath support, without which you will not be loud enough to be heard. Chances are good you will be so distracted by these butterflies that you won't be your most articulate self.
For many speakers, adrenaline pumps because of an ever-shifting balance between excitement and nervousness. It is not only invigorating to confront the challenge of speaking effectively, it is nerve-wracking — often just a little, sometimes quite a lot. Even experienced speakers admit they experience this phenomenon. Although it is impossible to predict how much adrenaline you will generate at any given moment, it is guaranteed that you will feel the effect of at least some. Regardless of its source, the secret is to channel adrenaline's corresponding energy in the most effective and appropriate way.
If adrenaline isn't channeled and released, it triggers various inappropriate, unconscious mannerisms that make you look and feel ill at ease. However, if you learn to recognize the impulses to fight, flee, or freeze, you can counter adrenaline's negative effects by proactively gaining control of specific parts of your body.
Conscious control of your behavior can be established by counting several seconds of silence after you stand up but before you begin to speak. You may feel an extra rush of adrenaline as you face your listeners. During the silence, run through a short physical checklist designed to help you prepare your body and focus your mind. Olympic athletes use just such an anticipatory silence as they prepare to dive into a pool, ski down a mountain, or race around a track. Like the preparatory rituals used by these elite athletes, you will develop your own practice.
The Ultimate Performance Ritual
In 1992, a 72-year-old retiree walked onto a basketball court in Riverside, California, and made 2,750 consecutive free throws without a miss. Dr. Tom Amberry — who had such confidence in his technique that he brought along 10 witnesses to sign affidavits for his submission to the Guinness Book of World Records — readily admits he is not a great athlete, and never was. So how did he accomplish such a feat? He had great technique.
In his book Free Throw: 7 Steps to Success at the Free Throw Line, Amberry describes the mental and physical ritual that gave him such astonishing control and consistency. Every move Dr. Amberry made prior to each throw was part of an unvarying routine. During the silence between throws, he went through a physical checklist. How he planted his feet, how he breathed, how many times he bounced the ball, how his fingers held the ball, how he focused his eyes on the basket — every move was precisely the same all 2,750 times. Because this ritual was so consistent, he achieved remarkable results on the basketball court. As demonstrated by Amberry's amazing feat, consistent ritual and other discoveries of sports psychology can help you achieve success in public speaking.
Sports psychologists teach that if you want to perform at a high level, you need a consistent mental and physical ritual on which to base your performance. This is to enable the mind, through repetition and practice, to control the body, and to enable the body to control the mind. Together, body and mind help control emotion.
To achieve a consistently effective style, devise and refine a physical ritual that you can use every time you stand up to speak. In time, this routine will become "second nature" — behavior that looks natural, but is actually the result of technique and diligent practice.
Reliance on a physical ritual frees your brain's prefrontal cortex (the area of your brain responsible for higher intellectual function) from being distracted by pacing, fidgeting, or gesturing, and ensures that your body's actions will be governed by your motor cortex, the brain's overseer of natural automatic functions. Your prefrontal cortex can focus then on more important things, such as what you want to say and how you want to say it. Hence, by ritualizing your physical actions, you have engaged your instinct to move and gesture naturally.
For your own ritual, start with your feet and move up the body to your head. Use a mental checklist to position and align your body: feet, knees, hips, breath, arms, face, and eyes. Running through this quick checklist will help you get control of your body, positioning and aligning it for optimum performance every time you stand to speak.
Think from the bottom up, focusing briefly on each part of your body. As you do this, become conscious of the details of your alignment. Use your own body as a mnemonic device to memorize your physical ritual.
Controlling Your Lower Body
In most sports, athletes start by planting their feet in the proper stance. The golfer adopts a stance and then swings a club. The baseball player ritualistically plants both feet in the batter's box and then swings a bat. The basketball player positions himself on the free throw line and then shoots the ball. Similarly, public speakers begin by planting their feet on the floor.
Plant Your Feet
Stand with your feet a comfortable distance apart. Don't place them so close together that your shoes touch; this stance is too narrow for a solid, comfortable foundation. Do not adopt a stance that is too wide or you will look like a gunslinger in a Western; somewhere between the extremes of too narrow and too wide is a stance that is just right. Avoid standing with your feet in perfect parallel position, as if you are gliding along on skis. Such perfect symmetry can make you look slightly square and wooden, like a soldier at attention. Don't cross your ankles, which looks too casual. Instead, try planting one foot — whichever one feels more comfortable — an inch or two ahead of the other, with your feet slightly asymmetrical and out of alignment with each other. Slight asymmetry of the stance makes the body look more relaxed.
Stand up and experiment right now with finding the right stance. Better yet, stand in front of a floor-length mirror so you can see how your stance looks. Once you are satisfied, use it every time you stand up to speak. Soon it will become second nature, and your body, just like an athlete's, will assume the position automatically, without your needing to think about it.
Plant your feet in the moment before you speak. Do not utter a word until you have planted your feet and are standing still. Then, pause for another moment, take a breath, and feel the floor.
Stand Still
Newton's first law of motion applies to public speaking: A body at rest tends to remain at rest; a body in motion tends to remain in motion. When you plant your feet and stand still, you look calm, comfortable, and in control, and your body will tend to stay at rest. If you start talking while your feet are still moving, your body tends to stay in motion, and may never stop. Random movement will make you appear nervous and ill at ease. Because adrenaline energizes your leg muscles, it is natural — but undesirable — to rock unconsciously, sway, pace, or shuffle your feet. So obey Newton's Law by planting your feet and standing still at the beginning of a presentation.
Flexible Knees
The next step in the ritual is to align and balance your knees and hips over your feet. Your knees should feel flexible. Don't lock your knees by pushing them backward, tightening the thigh muscles and drawing your kneecaps upward. The desirable sensation of flexibility is a feeling of the knee joint floating perfectly balanced. Think of it as "subway knees," similar to the adjustment you make when standing on public transportation as the door closes and the bus or subway is about to move. You flex your knees ever so slightly to maintain your balance when you feel forward movement. The adjustment is subtle and virtually invisible. The knees do not bend as in a crouch, but adjust enough to flexibly absorb the forward lurch of the train as it pulls out of the station.
With flexible knees your legs will feel comfortable, even when standing still for long periods of time. Stand up and briefly experiment to find this subtle feeling. Lock your knees backward and feel the sensation you want to avoid. Crouch slightly to move the knees in the opposite direction. Now find the perfect midpoint where the knee joint is floating and flexible. On the checklist, add these flexible knees to your planted feet as you continue to move up your body.
Center Your Hips
Center your hips over your feet and knees. This balances the weight of your torso evenly over both legs, allowing each leg to share the load equally. Although it may feel comfortable to stand with your body weight and hips shifted temporarily off to one side, this off-center position puts most of your body's weight onto a single leg. Eventually that leg gets tired and your body shifts the weight to your other leg. Soon your body is rocking side to side, as each leg in turn tires and shifts the burden to the other. This rocking motion distracts the audience and makes you look nervous. Note that some looseness and flexibility of the body is desirable, however; you shouldn't feel as if you've been sunk in concrete. So, avoid both repetitive rocking and absolute rigidity.
For women wearing high heels, be aware that they can subtly shift your weight forward onto your toes, causing the buttocks to shift backwards and up. This position shortens and tenses the muscles of your lower back. To counteract this, consciously center the pelvis over your feet and rotate it forward slightly — dancers refer to this as "tucking the tail bone." This will lengthen and relax the muscles in your lower back.
Once you have planted your feet, softened your knees, and centered your hips, you have conscious control of the biggest muscles of your body: buttocks, thighs, and calves. This allows you to control your adrenaline and stand still, even if you are feeling nervous. When you first stand up, start by standing still, and then later on make a conscious decision about when and where to move, assuming that choice makes sense. If you have the freedom to move, and it makes sense to do so, move with a purpose.
Move with a Purpose
Any movement made while speaking should be motivated by and connected to your words and ideas. A purposeful move occurs when you walk to a new location while beginning to discuss a new topic: "We've explored the changes in the regulations, now let's talk about the effect of those changes on your clients." Or, "I've talked about patents, now I want to focus on licensing agreements." Once you have reached the new location, remain there until you have finished discussing the new topic. Such a purposeful use of movement clarifies the structure of your presentation for the audience. The move signals a new beginning, and helps to recapture the attention of any listeners whose minds might have wandered. It invites a distracted listener to re-engage.
Your decision to move must always be made by the thinking brain, not the adrenalized leg muscles. The largest muscles in your body will move of their own accord when they are energized by adrenaline. Powered by instinct and hormones, such movement is truly natural — but it doesn't make you look natural, and it certainly isn't desirable. Random movement may feel good because it uses and dissipates the adrenaline in your legs. But resist random movement; move only when it makes sense.
Movement has power if it starts from stillness, because the change from stasis to motion attracts attention. Incessant pacing robs movement of its impact. Don't be fooled into believing that constant motion keeps listeners interested. And don't be misled by the frequent moves of speakers on television. When television performers move around, the camera follows the action, giving the shot visual variety. The camera does the work, not the viewer: the television stays in place and the viewers' eyes barely move at all. In everyday life, when listeners are forced to watch a pacing speaker, they must do the work of the camera, panning back and forth as if tracking a ball in a tennis match. They quickly tire of following a moving target.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Articulate Attorney by Brian K. Johnson, Marsha Hunter, Barbara Richied. Copyright © 2013 Crown King Books. Excerpted by permission of Crown King Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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