The #1 Skill That Multiplies Every Other Skill

If you were teaching a 101 course on communication and there's a student who is kind of on the fence about whether or not they should take it, whether or not they should sign up, what would you tell them to get them off the fence to take the communication class? I would say to them, if you ever want to influence anyone or lead anyone or advocate for anything you care about, if you ever want to do any of those things, becoming an outstanding communicator will make you better at that. Will make you better at that. Or will help you do it in the first place. And is it just about influencing people at work or are there other like broader situations? I think every situation benefits from better communication. Your interpersonal relationships, your family relationships, your professional relationships, whether you even want to go and make those connections and reach those people. I think if you feel more at ease about communicating live, it is such an advantage in every aspect of your life. Do you think most young adults are just born good communicators or is it something that they have to learn and train? I think even the best communicators need to learn and train and hone their skills. I do think some people are born better at it than others. But it's not like, I always say this about people always bring up singing. Like, oh, I can't sing. I just wasn't. I do think singing is something, you know, you can train and you can hone the craft and you can do a lot to make yourself a better singer. But singing to me seems like something that's much more you have it or you don't. Whereas communication, there's so much more room to grow and learn and improve no matter how good you are at it. Even the very best speakers have one challenge that they know. They're like, oh, I know I'm really long winded. Right. I know I have to be more concise. They can work on that. It's really something for everybody in terms of improvement. And what have you seen just, I mean, you've been in this not communication game explicitly, but performance, law school. What have you noticed about the risk of not being a good communicator? What happens if you don't actually learn how to be an effective communicator? The things that you learn and the things that you have to offer that you bring to the table will stay with you. They won't reach anyone else. So you come up with a great idea or you land on something that might be really valuable to other people. And it doesn't because maybe you're not going to be willing to express it or you're not going to express it well, or you're not going to bring the passion that you actually have to talking about it because you're holding yourself back. I think that's the risk is then it just stays with you. Then it doesn't spread. The human connection doesn't flourish. I had a professor in college who told me one time that an A plus insight delivered in a B plus way is always going to lose to a B insight delivered in an A plus way. It's so true. And I bristle every time someone's like, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. I don't agree. I think it is what you say. What you say is of critical importance. But I love the way that that person put it because what you say is very important and how you say it will help its importance be heard. It'll help it land. Yeah. And the funny thing is it's so important and yet so many of us are scared of communicating. I saw a stat when we were preparing for this that 75% of my generation is scared to speak publicly, to speak in front of people. That could be raising your hand in class to ask a question. Definitely. It could be contributing to seminar. It could be you're in a job interview. But why do you think communication is so scary for us? It's because we know we'll be evaluated and we're scared of being evaluated poorly. We're scared of feeling embarrassed. We're scared of misspeaking, of getting it wrong, of saying something someone thinks is horrible or cringeworthy. We're all scared of someone walking away from us speaking and being like, I don't like that person. That was terrible. That's scary. That's really scary. And generally when you do public speaking, the faces that you get because people in the audience don't know how scared you are and they don't feel responsible for making you feel better generally, with great exceptions. But usually the faces that you're getting while you're speaking are like, and that's just not natural. That's the worst. That's not natural. You don't get that nonverbal, the nodding and the uh-huhs and the mm-hmms. They're all just sitting there like, what? What are you going to say right? It's terrifying. It's so scary. It's so scary. Of course people are scared. Did you have a time when you were first performing that you can remember just being terrified of stepping out on stage? The whole time. I think it's why I truly, I think it's why I care so much about trying to help people not go through that because I thought there was something terribly wrong with me. I would always say to people like, oh, I just have the worst nerves. I remember standing backstage and I loved nothing more than performing and being on stage. It was all I ever wanted to do. And we would finish, you know, a month of rehearsals of practicing and thinking of nothing but the show. And I remember standing backstage and thinking, how do I get out of this? What can I tell them? I'm sick. What can I tell them has happened that will excuse me from having to go out there because the idea of stepping out on that stage, even though it was all I wanted to do, was too scary. It was too scary. Yeah. And so I just think the whole time I was feeling that way, whether it was on stage or even then teaching a class or going into court and trying to argue something for the first time, any of those things that were making me nervous, the narrative for me, at least along the way, was this is a me problem. And this is something I should not experience, not feel. I wish someone had told me that it was the most normal thing in the world and that it could be a superpower to have that extra energy. So wait, say more about nerves. How does being nervous connect to public speaking or getting in front of a crowd and saying something? So most people, and I see this in every context with my clients at law firms, with my law students, with my mock trial students, certainly, most people feel nervous when they're going to stand up in front of other people. It's like very minor exception that doesn't feel that way. And the connection is that everybody experiences it completely differently and in completely different settings. For some people, standing up in a huge room of hundreds of people is fine, but sitting one-on-one in a setting like this would be their nightmare. And then other people, this is completely comfortable if it's just a conversation one-on-one, but then other situations, like a small group at a meeting or something. What are some of those inward or outward signs of nervousness? Oh gosh, I've heard them all. Most people feel like a tightening in their throat. That's why I see people reach for water a lot. Tightening in throat? Tightening in throat, sweaty palms, shaky hands, heart beating faster. A lot of people feel warm, like feel a flush happen to them, all kinds of different things. I have people describe all the time that they just feel like they blank out, that nerves cause them to kind of space. Like forget what they're going to say? Forget what they're going to say, not be able to listen to someone else who's talking if they have to respond. All of a sudden, it's like the words aren't going in. Oh my gosh. That's scary. What about from a, like if I'm sitting in the audience and there's a speaker, what would be some outward signs of that speaker being nervous? Is it like their body language is weird or they're speaking softer or something? Usually people race. They race through it. They start speaking really quickly. I think out of, in an effort to just, let's get through it. Yeah, let's get this going. Let me just keep spitting out words until it's finished. A lot of times it leads to not engaging, to kind of just like picking a spot on the wall and just talking and going. Yeah. I also, I love what you said earlier about how some people are scared of the one-on-one interactions and some people are scared of the audience. I had a friend who, he told me he's, when he's in a crowd, he feels more safe because there's not like a single person that he's like, oh my gosh, are they judging me right now? Right. But I think most people, including me, feel totally fine with like the one-on-one stuff and where they struggle is the, oh, I got to give a presentation at work or, oh, I guess I got to get in the courtroom. Right. Is there, do you have any like, can you think of any stories from people that you've coached or even from your own life where not handling nerves properly really ruined our performance, a presentation, an opportunity? I can't think of anything specific, but I can think of rooms I've been in when a speaker clearly feels so uncomfortable that they race through and their nerves are so palpable that it makes the room uncomfortable and ruins the moment, ruins the speech. Only because we, as the audience members, we don't want the speaker to feel uncomfortable. We root for the people generally because it's so awkward when we feel that discomfort. It's so cringey. So we're rooting for the speaker. It is, it's, we all want to feel like everyone's comfortable.