Every once in a while I’ll post a Storybreak like this one with some thoughts on communication and politics. A lot of what I write will probably feel familiar. But it might be less so for others in your life — such as your students for the teachers on this list. I’d be grateful if you considered passing this along to them!
At Stanford, I gave public speaking workshops. I loved it. Most students have an intuitive sense of what constitutes powerful communication. I saw my job as helping them formalize that intuition.
In every workshop, at some point I’d ask “Who here hates listening to a recording of their voice?” Pretty much every hand shot up. Mine did too.
That’s because listening to your voice can be…. um… awkward. Do I really sound like that? You’re telling me that’s what other people hear when I open my mouth? Why is every other word I say “Like” or “you know” or “but uh …”?
I commiserate about this awkwardness. But I insist students do it anyway.
Recording is a way to step outside of ourselves. We notice things that we otherwise don’t. Maybe we’re talking too quickly. Maybe we’re using more filler words (“like” “um” etc.) in a particular section — indicating that we probably are less comfortable with the content there. Maybe our tone is off, and we sound like we’re delivering a thundering speech instead of a conversational presentation.
It’s really, really hard to notice those things as you practice or perform. In that regard, communication is like a frenetic team sport. Too much is going on during the play to analyze it in real time. Commentators use replays. Teams use footage. And communicators record themselves, listen back, adjust, and record again.
But recording isn’t just a way to revise an existing presentation. It can be a phenomenal tool to develop that presentation in the first place.
Full credit for this strategy goes to an Oral Communication Tutor I shadowed during my training. The tutor asked a student to close their computer, hit record on the Voice Memos app on their phone, and just talk about their topic — the way they would to a family member or friend.
The student spoke conversationally and logically. At the end, they had a recording that could serve as a skeleton draft of a new presentation. And the best part? They didn’t have to agonize over what structure made the most sense or stare down the tyranny of a blank Google Document. They just talked.
Recording to develop a presentation is a successful strategy because all of us are already experienced communicators — just in other contexts. We talk to family members and friends, colleagues and strangers. Becoming a good oral communicator is taking something you already know how to do and transplanting it to a higher-stakes context that can feel unfamiliar and scary.