[WhompingWindows]

The best way is practice -- you simply get used to anything the more you do it.

When I was in HS, I joined debate club, where we spoke for 5-10 minutes at a time in front of anywhere from 5-20 club friends or opponents. When you do this repeatedly, for most people, your anxiety and nerves eventually go away, and it's just "what you do" now.

The same was true of musical performance: I hated performing until I did it about 50 times. Then I got comfortable and my average performance was no big deal.

Another idea: which language are you native in, and which are you using to speak confidently? If it's not your primary, that could be part of it. There's also focus-related disorders, if you have ADHD or similar, then your symptoms would make sense.

My Pet Peeve: Some people will interrupt others conversationally, and it's not nice. Conversation should be back/forth, not interrupting. You can always say "Let me finish my thought first". You can also have default responses to buy time: "Thank you, that's a great question" gives them a nice compliment and buys you 5 seconds to think.

And questions are a GOOD thing: they force you to really know the pitfalls, the details, and the trade-offs of your engineering strategy. People aren't trying to "getcha" and one-up you, they're trying to improve your approach, that's great for you if you can handle it emotionally :)

Good luck, you'll do well!!

[sergiosgc]

> You can also have default responses to buy time: "Thank you, that's a great question" gives them a nice compliment and buys you 5 seconds to think.

It's also important to realize that you don't need to buy time as much as you think you do. When in the spotlight, people tend to think they need to react quickly under penalty of seeming insecure. It's false. You can take a few seconds to prepare an answer and it still seems natural, even projecting an aura of confidence.

If you need more time than normal to prepare an answer, lay out your reasoning as you prepare it. Have some verbal crutches ready. These work well to buy you a dozen seconds:

- "Let me find an example that demonstrates this"

- "How do I explain this without being too technical?"

- "It's a complex issue, let me try to break it down"

[mindcrime]

It's also important to realize that you don't need to buy time as much as you think you do. When in the spotlight, people tend to think they need to react quickly under penalty of seeming insecure. It's false. You can take a few seconds to prepare an answer and it still seems natural, even projecting an aura of confidence.

I would add that you can take a lot more time than you probably think you can, as long as you "own it" properly. If you get asked a hard question, the audience will probably realize it's a hard question. I would have no problem standing there for 30 seconds or more, saying absolutely nothing in some cases. But I would say the key is to not act anxious, nervous, or scared in that case. Just try to convey the sense that you're a sharp, qualified person, who has just been asked a Really Hard Question and needs time to ponder it.

You can do that by not fidgeting, and by controlled mannerisms: look up and out into space, but in an obviously conscious manner... or chew your bottom lip a little and furrow your brow... or steeple your hands and look at your hands while also having a furrowed brow, etc. There are other ways to communicate what I'm getting at, so just experiment. What you don't want is a "deer in the headlights" look, or that stereotypical "blank expression" that conveys "I have no clue what's going on right now."

The key point is, you don't have to have an immediate answer to every question. Pauses and silence are OK, to a point.

[Syonyk]

If you have a beard, thoughtfully stroking it works too.

I joke it's the Windows 98 hourglass cursor of personal interactions - they can't tell if you're thinking, or have just locked up with no hope of continuing.

Pauses and silence are OK, to a point.

Absolutely. And you will, in almost every case, come across as more intelligent if you're silent while thinking, than if you try to fill space with content-free filler. It can't go on forever, but 20 seconds of silence is far better (and far more useful to put a response together) than 20 seconds of "lips in neutral" noise.

[weird-eye-issue]

30 seconds saying nothing would be way, way too long. People would begin to think you are having a panic attack or something.

[mindcrime]

I would agree that 30 seconds is getting towards the upper end of what you can pull off. But I believe that it can be done, if you manage your body language, hand gestures, facial expressions, etc. properly. Now if somebody stood there for 30 seconds doing the "blank expression" thing, then yeah, it's starting to get awkward for everyone.

Anyway, here's a thought: make a game out of it. Next time you're speaking in a group setting and this comes up, (when it's a situation where nothing of substance is at stake), try and see how long a pause you can engineer before somebody starts doing the "intentional cough" thing, or says "are you OK?" or whatever. Maybe do it a few times and see what you can work up to. Maybe 30 seconds is a bit more than can be managed. And to be fair, it's probably context / audience dependent to some degree as well.

[agustif]

The problem is not so much the uncomfortableness of it, but if you stop speaking for 30secs half your audience will be already fidgeting their magic infinte scroll glass slabs TM to try and entertain their minds / fill the void...

Smartphones are great conversation killers, lol

[isochronous]

One of the first things that made me realize this was watching an old interview with Steve Jobs. He'd be asked a question, and would just sit there, totally silent, for maybe 10-15 seconds, and it was obvious that he was pondering the question in order to give a well thought-out answer. Since seeing that, I've made more of an effort to actually ponder questions, rather than trying to give the quickest answer I can, and people seem to response well to doing that.

[taneq]

Seconded. Practice.

I'm not really a social type but at some point in the last few years and after enough repetitions, when people asked me what my company does, my response had gone from "I... uh... controls... hydraulics?" to "we provide a bolt-on control system for fixed plant hydraulic booms which integrates guarding, automation and remote operation capabilities."

Also the point on questions is spot on, nobody asks questions about your tech unless they're interested. If you're worried about a client question being a "gotchya" then rethink your premise until you can't think of any easy gotchyas.

[mnw21cam]

Absolutely. Practice.

Also, don't be afraid to speak slowly, and to have gaps when you aren't speaking. It doesn't make you look like an idiot or make people interrupt you - instead, it makes it easier for people to hear what you're saying, and it makes it sound like you are saying something well thought through (and it gives you time to think it through too).

Also, get someone to video you giving a presentation or speaking about something. Then go over that video with them, and ask them to point out any annoying things that you should stop doing and useful things to start doing. Practice that, over and over.

[tolbish]

Well stated first paragraph, but you're going to lose a lot of people with that second paragraph.

[taneq]

The people they'll lose are giving up some pretty important insight imo.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> "Thank you, that's a great question" gives them a nice compliment and buys you 5 seconds to think.

At the cost of potentially appearing insincere, since (in my experience) that's usually what the corporate talking head will say just before trying very hard not to answer a question. YMMV.

[kqr]

I mean, it could still be a great question, even if you can't or don't want to answer it. It all depends on how you follow up. If you go, "Thanks, that's a great question. I don't actually have a good answer for you. I'll get back to you in a few days." And then actually get back to them with whatever you've found out, you'll build trust, even if you tell them it is a great question.

It's not about what you say, it's about what you do.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Sure; a lot of this is heuristics and reputation. I personally suspect that in many cases, people do not associate the phrase with honest hosts who will actually try to answer, but it's definitely situational and depends both on the company culture and your own personal reputation.

[ufmace]

> My Pet Peeve: Some people will interrupt others conversationally, and it's not nice. Conversation should be back/forth, not interrupting. You can always say "Let me finish my thought first". You can also have default responses to buy time: "Thank you, that's a great question" gives them a nice compliment and buys you 5 seconds to think.

A quick note on the flip side of this - if you want to finish your statements and go back and forth, you also have the obligation IMO to state your idea quickly and simply and not ramble on for 5 full minutes about various sub-aspects of your idea. If you do that, then I think there's no problem interrupting you to say that your initial idea won't work at all or could be done in a much better way.

I say that because I hear people do this a lot, and I have no problem interrupting them if it's warranted.

[dharmab]

HS Debate cured both my "umming" habit and my relucance to speak in about a weekend.

A game we played in debate was where a person had to talk about something in front of a group without saying any "ums". If you said "um", your friends got to throw soft items (wadded up paper, plush toys) at you. It cures "umming" in seconds.

[bckr]

Great idea. It's hard to just be silent for a couple of seconds, it feels like the world is dying.

But great speakers

Use many significant pauses.

[saddington]

+1 to this.

"just practice" seems trite and over-simplistic, but, it's fundamentally true.

if you can find a partner to work with is always a better way to do it.