📣 FIELD GUIDE 18: The human element

Public speaking’s major component

I took a public speaking class in college. I couldn’t tell you if I finished that class better at speaking in front of a group, but I did learn I have tremendous stage fright. I’ve always wanted to develop this skill. My anxiety says otherwise.

This week, Ian is teaching us how to hone our public speaking skills.

—Skyler

Name

Ian Trachta

Soundtrack

Occupation

Project Manager

Habitat

Chicago, Illinois

Hi there! My name is Ian Trachta, and I like helping people. My background is primarily in healthcare. This kind of nurturing perspective has come into virtually every aspect of my professional life.

A very long time ago a very wise nurse wants told me,

“We have the opportunity to see people on their worst day, so we need to put our best foot forward,”

…and to this day I still think that that's true. No longer strictly in healthcare, but in all aspects. When I joined the United States Navy, I joined as a corpsman, a support role acting as medic for the United States Marine Corps. This led me to really zero in on what I enjoy doing which is, again, helping people.

My passion comes from watching people succeed. I'm that middle man that enjoys other people taking pride in what they're doing. Medically, I was inspired by having people return to a sense of normalcy usually following a traumatic event.

My time working with a few people and very skilled doctors allowed me to qualify as a project manager and take my project management professional examination in my last year of the military. Now, since I have left the military, I am working with a Chicago based healthcare organization that is re-establishing how primary care is viewed.

What this means is that I get to have somebody with lots of letters after their last name tell me what they want to do and I get to figure out how to do it. I am tasked with making sure that all of the steps are repeatable so that people can improve on the process established. This passion for seeing other’s success has carried over into my project management ideology through a process called servant leadership which is the most up-to-date agile approach.

This enables project managers like me to act as a supplement to an end process. Think of me kind of like the guys with the broom in curling. My biggest priority as a project manager and as a healthcare professional are to ensure that any obstacles are out of your way and not going to create any friction for you along the care/critical path. I also just got accepted into a very Orthodox Christian university and will get to focus on some goals I have.

My goal is to improve access to standardized nursing prerequisites for college students who want to get into healthcare everywhere. In 20 years I would like to have a comfy but challenging position working within a university system to make healthcare careers more obtainable and more metrically valued within the system I am in.

What has proven useful within my profession is being able to address all my stakeholders and/or shareholders at once. Instead of speaking to many individuals, which would take up every hour of every workday, I work with speaking to groups of people.

Public speaking is something I enjoy, and have become quite good at. It is also something I am tasked with regularly. It has taken many experiences and many years to work up the confidence to speak in front of large groups of people. I have narrowed in on a few things that have helped me get to where I am today:

Imagine everyone in their underwear

I have for better or worse, long given up the concept of ever being a lingerie model. Not because I look like I could be a stunt double for Nosferatu, my love handles, or even my tattoos, but due to the fact it omits one of the things I’ve told you that I am pretty good at: talking. Specifically with large groups and trying to convey a concept or idea that has to be covered in some degree of depth.

The reason I bring up my lack of a career as a lingerie model is a pretty obvious parallel to one of the most well-known suggestions to public speaking – imagine everyone in the audience in their underwear. This is counterintuitive to me because it detracts from one of the core components of public speaking – the one doing the speaking. A gifted public speaker can make crowds laugh, cry, ponder, debate, learn, and a number of other verbs I am entirely too lazy to list.

If you need proof, think of your best high school teacher and think of how they captivated their audience. It isn’t about being a silver tongued snake oil salesman, or some spartan general that defines a successful public speaker, but instead about understanding what makes people want to listen, want to learn, and maybe just maybe grow from hearing such a speaker.

Feeling it

Think back to the days when people did stand in front of large groups of people in their underwear and do a presentation – 350 BC when Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were examining corruption in front of the Greek senate. Things have only gotten easier since then; and unless you are at a really niche event, you most likely won’t have to wear a toga to be taken seriously. So why am I bringing up ancient history into a modern conversation? Mostly due to the fact that the importance to public speaking hasn’t gone anywhere, nor has the means to be a successful public speaker.

What qualifies someone as a good public speaker? What does it take to be a (semi) decent public speaker? The primary requirement is plain and simple: passion. Being emboldened by something, feeling a certain way about a certain something inspires people to be more attentive to the person talking. As people we are drawn into intensity, drawn into something that we see other people get excited about. We would much rather hear about our coworkers’ bizarre obsession with Supernatural than listen to our boss drone on and on about metrics and YTD tracking. I have personally been subjected to hearing my father’s passion for military aircraft and the lectures that came from hours of riding in the car. While I’ve never personally cared for aviation, I can still recite a few famous air battles just from hearing him speak enthusiastically about something that he enjoyed.

This is the power of passion – it can make a permanent mark on your children and coworkers alike. So rather than sending an email out on how to properly make a cup of coffee, schedule a meeting, grind up some grounds, and do a how-to on brewing the perfect mug of coffee for all of your coworkers.

“But why would I do that when I can make a diagram or table showing the importance of PH levels in coffee?” I hear the introverts in the back thinking. Well open up baby birds, because momma bird is dropping some knowledge here: It is the human element.

The human element

Think of any good horror movie (especially the ones from the 80s, the golden era of horror movies) where somebody finds written instructions. DO NOT GO IN THE BASEMENT, THERE IS A MURDERER is scribbled onto a blood-stained sheet of paper. Without any notable exception, the team of mystery-busting teenagers will proceed to go in the basement and be picked off one by one.

Now compare that to a movie where they find a lone survivor, panicked, afraid, and potentially dying. They beg the team of teenage sleuths and their dog to not go in the basement, warning them of the inherent danger that it poses and potentially answering some questions in a way that a simple blood-stained note never could. Rather than being skimmed over as a simple inconvenience or supplementary component, the human experience presented allow this mystery solving group of teenagers and their dog live to see another day.

The take-away here is that the survivor doesn’t have to know what to do or have a plan. They only have to have a passion for not being murdered by a butcher-knife-wielding toy to wholly convince their audience to not go into the basement.

I’d consider myself lucky that my profession works hand in hand with my passion of helping others find success. I wish you the best of luck in finding that balance as well.

Learn more

Ian talks about how the human element and having passion for the topic presented makes for a presentation worth giving regardless of your skill set. The origin of a great speech is the motivation to create change. Learn why here.

Matt Duczeminski has written a list of ways to connect with your audience.