Charisma

I gave a presentation the other day and it went really well. I prepared general guidelines for myself, but I mostly wanted it based upon questions from the audience. The crowd had lots of questions (there was maybe a ten second pause after 45 minutes, followed by more questions for the rest of the hour), so most of my talking was impromptu. I was joking and people were laughing and I felt like I made a good impression even on people who had never spoken to me before. I think I sounded well informed and gave good advice that would actually be useful to them.

So how did I do that?

Honestly, I consider myself to be a shy person. I sometimes find it very hard to speak in front of people (which ironic since I'm going to be a teacher). Sometimes when I have something to say in research group, I will get everyone's attention (like by saying, "wait a sec", or "I have a question") and then I will have to physically force myself to start talking. I want to have my sentence thought out before I begin so I don't stumble all over myself. It sometimes takes a second or two of dead silence before I can get myself to start speaking. I usually get myself off the ground before it becomes awkward or anything, but I'm very conscious of the difficulty I have in speaking up. In this talk that I gave the other day, I really didn't prepare much of anything. I had a few things to say if no one had any questions, but if those things hadn't sparked any questions from anyone, there would have been a lot of dead space.

I think I owe a lot of my success in my talk to my audience because of how inquisitive they were and how many questions they wanted to ask, but a lot of it was me too. This isn't the first time something like this has happened, where I've felt like I was the charismatic center of the room, full of interesting anecdotes and funny comments. Those situations are lovely, but they also aren't the norm. Most of the time, I feel like I make a negative first impression. My usual opinion of myself is that people have to warm up to me because I'm kind of abrasive at first. I think I come off as harsh or critical. Maybe I am. In my talk from the other day, I criticized myself and my research nontrivially (my design was awful, my decisions the day of were questionable, and my findings didn't really show much), so any criticism I had of other people was probably not taken poorly. I think I criticize or tease often, but most people don't realize I either don't mean it, or I don't mean it to be so harsh. I criticize myself as well and it doesn't stop me from thinking highly of myself.

I think part of it was also that I was just being myself. I feel like I give off the worst impression when I'm trying to impress someone or when I feel like I have to behave a certain way. I came into this talk with a fairly low level of stress since it wasn't exactly being graded or anything and I wanted it casual. I noticed that in my classroom as well. When I stopped acting "like a teacher" and started acting like myself, it seemed to flow a lot better. Of course, if you take this tact and then someone dislikes you, then you can't rationalize their dislike away. It can be a little upsetting sometime to bare yourself and then get shut down.

I don't know. I guess I have to keep thinking about it and trying things out. I would love to be that charismatic person more often, especially since job interviews are coming up (ahhhh!!!).