What lessons can "Sully" Sullenberger teach us about the fear of public speaking?
by Terry Gault
Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III relied on countless hours of practice making decisions in fear-inducing situations when he successfully ditched US Air flight 1549 in the Hudson River , saving everyone aboard. It’s the very process that I teach clients about how to stay calm during presentations when things start to go awry.
It’s called metacognition defined by Webster’s as “awareness or analysis of one's own learning or thinking processes.” It originates from the Greek “meta” meaning beyond and “cognition” from the Latin “cognitio” which means knowledge or recognition.
It has a transcendent quality, this awareness of one’s own thinking, this “beyond-knowledge.” And how can one achieve it, especially when having to make decisions quickly in moments of duress? Practice.
Fear of public speaking is prevalent among people of all ages and all walks of life.
According to a nationwide survey conducted by R. H. Bruskin Associates (“What are Americans afraid of?” 1973), public speaking ranked as people's number one fear. More than anything else on a list that included heights, insects, flying, sickness, and death, 40.6 percent of those surveyed said they were most afraid of speaking in public. In a 1988 study, Michael T. Motley confirmed the finding that public speaking was people's number one fear.
You can find a process involving metacognition at a previous post that I practice when I face fear leading workshops or delivering presentations.
'Deliberate calm' guided US Airways crewA mental state called megacognition probably kept Flight 1549's captain cool and collected. By Jonah Lehrer (From the LA Times), January 17, 2009
picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital
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Comments on What lessons can "Sully" Sullenberger teach us about the fear of public speaking?
Excellent blog post! What a great example of how to stay cool under extreme pressure.
Here's an added tip that I teach my students to help eliminate stage fright and fear of public speaking – practice this before things go awry and you'll likely be able to handle it better when Murphy's Law kicks in:
While breathing deeply , place the pads of your fingers on your forehead and keep breathing deeply as you think about "all the bad things you think may happen".
This simple technique really works and is very powerful!
Best,
David Portney
Thanks for the comment, David. My assumption is that your intention is to practice this technique BEFORE the presentation. Is that right?
Excellent post.
However, why on earth are you still bringing up that darned 1973 survey by Bruskin Associates (quoted by the London Sunday Times and then in the 1975 Book of Lists)? That data is over 35 years old! There is better, much more recent data out there from the psychiatrists. See: A. M. Ruscio et al, “Social Fears and Social Phobias in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication,” Psychological Medicine, Vol. 38, No. 1, January 2008, pages 15 to 28, which you can find online at:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=17976249
I prevously mentioned it and a 1998 article in a post on my blog http://joyfulpublicspeaking.blogspot.com back on November 2, 2008.