👨🏾‍🔬 ☪️ ↔️ How to quit programming and start performing 🗄️ 🥁 🍥

Over the 20 years of work in IT, I spoke dozens of times.

In Mail.ru, at Bunin conferences, in Bauman and the Higher School of Economics, in the Federal Tax Service, at HR meetings. But each time before the performance I catch myself thinking that I am still afraid to speak.

When I was asked to speak on the topic "How to Stop Programming and Start Performing", I didn’t think for a long time - of course, yes! Preparation began with reflection - why am I afraid of speaking? Am I alone in my fears? Not alone. According to some sources, 75-95% of people in one way or another are afraid of performances. There are suitable phobias in the list. Glossophobia, peyraphobia and so on.

I formulated the reasons for which I was afraid. And surveys of acquaintances confirmed - yes, these fears are familiar to them.

Reason 1. Why do I need it?

What will I get besides stress by speaking to an audience?

Reason 2. What can I talk about?

What is so unique to know to go talk about it? Nothing is new under the moon. Why repeat it?

Reason 3. How will they react?

Who are all these people? How will listeners or viewers perceive the performance? Do they shower with tomatoes? Will they be accused of lack of professionalism or called Captain Evidence?

Reason 4. And how to speak?

Where to start for the first time? How many slides should be? How to interest the audience? How to work with questions?

Why do I need this?

One of the reasons for the fear of speaking is the lack of an answer to the question “Why do I need this?”
Here are five answers to this question.

1. Personal brand

No matter how experts we are, our team will know about it without speaking.
Public speaking increases your fame. And it may in the future bring an increase in salary. Or something similar. When I spoke about the experience of teaching at the Higher School of Economics at the Leaders of Russia, this added weight to my actions and words in the eyes of my rivals. And sometimes they pay for public speaking. My first fee is 30 servings of ice cream. Giant fortune in 1990 for a seven year old kid.

Performance is one of the investments in your value.

2. HR-brand of the company

We are able to name five or two well-known companies. Someone would like to work at Google, someone believes that Yandex has great specialists. Is your company on this list? No? But the HR brand is important, it reduces the cost of hiring and retaining experts. Hiring IT professionals in Russia will be a pain in the next five to ten years.

If you do not want to experience problems with the team, upgrade your HR brand.

3. Training persuasion skills

We constantly sell something to others.

Vacancy - to the candidate. New technology for the team. Quarterly results and salary increase - to management. Lumps in semolina - to the child. Performance great pumping skill "sales". Especially speaking to an incredulous audience. Learn to quickly answer uncomfortable questions in front of the audience and no one will catch you off the stage.

4. Exchange of experience and testing ideas.

Speech is a great place to meet people who have stepped on the rake that you are walking along. After an honest account of the problems, get a solution. Or, make sure cheaply and quickly that a new idea doesn't take off.

5. Hormones

Where without them. Dopamine is a great motivator. A successful performance brings a surge of hormones to the body, and positive emotions come after them. You need to recharge your energy - go to the public.

What can I tell others about?

What do I know that others do not know? Why will they listen? Will they act as I suggest? The bad news is that it’s rare to tell something really new. Surely, someone already wrote about the start of personal performances, right?

The good news is we are all different. And the well-known one will be news to others. The graph comparing candidates shows that knowledge varies.

Do you see the profiles of two front-end? The difference is obvious.

It’s more important not what I’ll tell the audience, but whether it is important for me personally. Speeches that make no sense to the speaker are dreary and dull.

If inspired - it is noticeable. You can be heard when fans talk about golf. Even if you do not understand anything in golf.

Meaning gives rise to passion. Passion attracts attention. For attention are actions from the audience. From simply informing the actions will be much less. From the endless slide reports I want to die.

Therefore, if you do not know what to talk about, find what is important to you. And after the speech, someone will share this relationship with you.

How will they react to my performance?

Manifestations of this fear are fears “not to reach the audience”, worries due to uncomfortable questions, doubts “will they believe me”, “will I be able to speak in front of a group of 50..200..1000 people”.

When one of the fears comes out fear - you will not guess. In 2017, he spoke to a hundred or two recruiters. I was preparing for the performance. But he felt disgusting - he was worried. Still - not a speech, but a hundred interviews at the same time. In 2019, two appearances to the same audience were much easier.

An easy way to defeat the fear of an unfamiliar audience is to speak to a friend. Among friends, colleagues. In a group of 10 people in a meeting room. Friends will not eat.

Another group of grateful students is students.
They look at the lecturer in the mouth, catch every word. They will ask questions that are ready to answer.

About questions

Sometimes they ask: "What if there is no answer to the audience’s question." The fear is understandable - just showed the audience the expertise and suddenly stalled. Yeah, the impostor!

In such cases, I do the following:

1. I redirect the question to the audience.
The reaction of the audience shows if they have faced a similar situation and know the answer. I love this method: as long as they answer for you, take your breath away, gather your thoughts.

2. I think out loud.
Together we are trying to find the answer.

3. Honestly, I do not know the answer.
It does not hurt. Everything in the world is impossible to know.

Do not be afraid of haters. They will always be.

The good news is No. 1: there is only one hater for 20 people. Those who are interested - two to three times more. The rest do not care for the performance. They kill time.

Good news No. 2: you can increase the number of those who care. If you understand the purpose of attending performances and help the public achieve goals.

Why do people come?

1. People come for emotions.
Emotions help to remember. Emotions lead to action. Give people emotions. Once I took a dog for a performance. Would have seen the reaction!

2. People come for the benefit of
Learn about the latest. Get a new tool. As a last resort - a discount or a gift

Give listeners emotions or benefits. And stop being afraid. People do not eat each other. Almost.

Where to start preparing?

There is something to tell, I understand why, I understand to whom. But how?

It just seems that putting together slides and telling them is a trifle. If it were so simple, there would not be thousands of dull presentations with unreadable slides and falling asleep listeners.

To make it easier, in preparation I use a two-structure approach.

Structure 1 - The overall structure of the performance .
This is the answer to three questions: “What I want to tell”, “To whom I want to tell” and “How I will tell”.

What I want to tell is my explicit and implicit goals; actions that I expect from listeners; abstracts.
Implicit goals - what else do I want from the audience? Maybe unobtrusively advertise a product?

To whom I want to tell - social + classes + interests of the audience; what examples will be clear to her, what questions are possible from this audience. The same thing can be told to employees, management and customers. But the design, examples and presentation will be different.

How I will tell - the structure of the story, which story or stories I will base, how the abstracts will be displayed on the slides, how I will emphasize the accents, how I will introduce myself, how I will induce action.

Structure 2 is the structure of the story itself.

Most often I use two options for the structure.

The problem → the process of solving it → the result
Problem → the chosen solution → arguments in its favor

Other options are possible, but life stories overlap well with these two.

The structure of the story and life stories allow you not to look at the slides during the performance. It's comfortable.

About slides

1. Less text and numbers.

No "5-7 sentences of 5-7 words." People do not come to read, but to listen. Or look at the speaker. The numbers on the slides are hard for the listener. The fewer there are on the slide, the easier it is for the listener to perceive the performance. Need a number - leave one or two on the slide.

2. One slide = one thought.

Not three different thoughts. One. Slides cost nothing, they are free. Who says that 1 slide needs to be told for 3 minutes, he knows nothing about holding attention. Presentations of 50 slides can be told in 15 minutes.

3. Emphasis is important.

Imagine that the presentation will be watched without you. The emphasis in the sentence “they will look without you” can be put into four words and the meaning of the phrase will be different.

A picture for attracting attention or for emotion is an emphasis. Highlighting one or two words of color from a sentence is an emphasis. The size of the numbers when comparing is an emphasis.

So, to overcome this fear, it is enough to understand the objectives of the speech, determine the structure of the story and understand who will be the listeners.

How to perform?

How to remember the story, what to do before the performance, how to behave on it.

In order not to forget the story, you need to:

a) Make a story out of the story. Storytelling helps a lot in moving around the plot.
b) Rehearse at least once.

I do not like to rehearse for a long time.

A few half hour rehearsals are a huge waste of time. Especially if you speak with the topic only once. But at least once I say it out loud - to understand the timing.

I don't practice rehearsals in front of the mirror. Familiar girls-speakers say that they sometimes forget why they stood in front of a mirror. And they begin to correct their appearance.

Sometimes I rehearse in front of dogs. One of my dogs clearly understands everything said. And obviously I do not agree with everything.

But even if the performance is rehearsed several times, not everything depends on yourself. Sometimes the technique intervenes.

Over the years of performances, which was not there:

The flash drive with the presentation was not recognized
Organizers included an old version of the presentation
Clicker did not work
The microphone did not work
The projector format and presentation format did not match.

And many, many other unpleasant things.

Therefore, at the speeches I have my own clicker, spare batteries for it, a presentation in two formats (pptx, pdf), in two sizes (4: 3, 16: 9). Presentation on a flash drive and in the mail. Loud voice. To be prepared for any incidents. And do not worry if something goes wrong.

Rehearsing and preparing for equipment malfunctions greatly reduce excitement. The physiological cause of the disturbance is adrenaline.

High levels of adrenaline can be reduced by exercise:

calm breathing. Inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale, about three minutes.
physical exercises. Of course, not at 140 heartbeats.
hugs with friends or organizers. Friendly support soothes. Familiar eyes on the contrary are the best remedy against fear.

And of course, positive reinforcement.

It’s better to remember only the good moments from the speeches, not to focus on what went wrong. Idle clicker, tricky questions - these are trifles. And here are the jokes that the audience reacted to; many questions showing interest in the report; the dog that helped to perform - all this coolly calms the nerves and will allow you to go on stage over and over again. And overcome all fears.

But if you do not speak at least once, then fears will not be overcome. Only practice, only hardcore! Speak out!

How to quit programming and start performing