I was leading a group in some coaching recently, and each participant was telling a brief story about how they embody their values at work.
Unexpectedly, one woman got choked up. It clearly surprised her, and she apologized before moving on. She wasn’t sobbing, and the emotion did not derail her presentation.
After she was finished, I led the group in some structured appreciative feedback. One person said that, while in general the presenter had done a good job, obviously she would not want to “get emotional” while she was presenting. The presenter apologized again. Another person hesitantly piped up to say that she had really found the emotion powerful, and it connected her to the woman, her story, and the value she was discussing. Many heads nodded.
I’m going to interrupt this story to give some context. This workshop was for a large corporation with a culture that rewards long hours and big sales. I have coached many people there, and when it comes down to it, many of the folks there are uncomfortable with styles of self-presentation that don’t fit neatly into “I’ve seen this many times before.” They’re not unique in this way! Most of us identify “good presentation skills” with what we have seen most often in our lives and work. Familiarity leads to comfort. For this company, “emotion” equals unpredictability and perhaps weakness, and definitely has the potential to make listeners uncomfortable.
Back to the story. When I began coaching the presenter, I asked her how she felt about getting teary during her speech. She shared that it had taken her by surprise, and that she didn’t want to risk that happening in an important talk or presentation. While some of the people listening had appreciated her emotion showing through, it felt too risky for her in this context.
My role in this situation is to help the client create impact and feel confident in her message, not to try to make her a test case for overthrowing the corporate culture she works in. It was important that she feel she could share her story without running the risk of an unwelcome distraction.
This is true in many contexts—interviews, toasts, eulogies, TED talks. It’s not always that emotion is unwelcome or unexpected by the audience, but often the speaker themselves would rather have potential tears under control.
I gave this speaker several recommendations:
- Practice early and often. Sometimes what trips us up is the newness of expressing these thoughts and ideas, and rehearsal allows us to keep the emotional impact for the audience without the unpredictability of the first time.
- Remember your intention. Knowing how you want the audience to feel shifts your focus from your own emotions to theirs.
- If, in practicing, the emotion continues to come up, that’s okay. You can try telling the story another way, identifying words, images, or phrases that seem to trigger the tears and replacing them with something more neutral. Or you can decide that a moment when you clear your throat and move on is okay with you, and the audience will be with you.
Emotion is great. Audiences have hard time connecting with speakers who don’t have it. And, like lots of other things, we want to be able to manage it and not have it sabotage our message.
