Comfort is Your Enemy

I was at an event recently, and what I saw reminded me of a piece of advice that I have shared with a number of interviewing and presentation teams. That piece of advice is: sometimes, comfort isn’t your friend. Sometimes, you actually want to pursue discomfort. Now, what I saw at this event was a handful of events, presentations, and little panels where one person was behind a podium, and two other people were seated. And as a result, the person behind the podium and the people who were seated, whenever they spoke, they were kind of low energy; they were pretty flat, and it was hard to stay focused on them. And I think part of the reason why they were low energy, part of the reason why they were flat, is that they were a bit too comfortable. And I think what happened was the people in charge of this event recognized that these folks weren’t terribly comfortable with the prospect of getting up in front of a room full of their peers and speaking to them. So they went out of their way to make them as comfortable as possible by setting up the podium and setting up these two chairs. And ultimately, I think it didn’t serve anyone for them to do that. I mean, sure, it did make the speakers more comfortable, but in the long run, it made them less effective at speaking because they didn’t keep their audience awake. Their audience was challenged to stay focused on them, and I could tell; I was looking around the room, and a whole lot of people were checked out. They were looking at their phones, they were multitasking, there was just not enough energy from the stage to keep them focused. So, what I recommend is a reminder to speakers, whether you are the person leading the conversation or just participating in the conversation, reminding them that energy is required, or at least energy is encouraged. That we don’t want to get too comfortable because too much comfort reduces our energy and makes us flat and makes us hard to stay with. So, for the person leading the conversation, I would have encouraged them to walk the stage, to get away from the podium and be in front of their whole audience, allow them to be fully visible. Moving around creates more energy. As for the folks seated, I totally understand, in a panel, you want to have folks seated. The thing that you want to have panelists do is have them go out of their way to add more energy into how they’re speaking. The best way to add energy to your presentation is to add volume, but that doesn’t mean staying loud the whole time. It’s like every time you start speaking, be louder than you normally would and then allow your volume to change. And then whenever it occurs to you, be loud again. It’s a nice, simple way for a person who’s on a stage to sustain the attention of their audience by playing around with a variable, playing around with a dynamic, having something change. The whole reason speakers lose the attention of their audience is when they are the same for too long. So this is a message for all speakers, this is a message for all people who are helping, or assisting, or facilitating speakers: remember that comfort is your enemy, you actually want to be a little stressed, a little elevated so that your elevated energy will keep your audience awake.