At one of my first jobs, I was told I needed to substantially improve my public speaking skills. I spent a lot of time building those skills and I’m happy to report that it was time well spent–I was able to improve significantly. There is still much more to learn, but you can’t Poogi everything. I’ve given many talks at conferences, school districts, and other events. Without the training I received, it wouldn’t have been possible.
Many jobs BCBAs hold involve doing at least a bit of public speaking (e.g., presenting at meetings, conducting trainings). Unfortunately, many never get the necessary feedback and take the time to improve this critical skill. One great place to get training is an organization called Toastmasters.
At Toastmasters you can learn all the basic skills in a safe comfortable environment. I believe the training is quite consistent with what we might do if we were training this skill as behavior analysts. At a Toastmaster’s club, they will start you off with easy tasks, take some data on your performance, and as you gain skills the tasks become more challenging.
One such challenge that likely leads to fear of public speaking is dealing with people who respond rudely to your talk. If you speak frequently, it is bound to happen at least occasionally. A few examples I can remember include:
- A lawyer challenging my expert witness testimony.
- Someone repeatedly interrupting my talk to bring up things that were completely off-topic and then loudly complaining that I wasn’t addressing the questions.
- A graduate student loudly complaining about university requirements in a public forum.
I recommend that all BCBAs get some public speaking training. It is well worth the time. But the real lesson I’m focused on today is that beginner skills are usually pretty easy. At first, focus on getting comfortable in front of an audience, what constitutes a good opening, not having your head buried in your notes, etc. Those skills are relatively easy to practice and learn compared to much more challenging “advanced” skills like dealing with a heckler disrupting your talk.
Sometimes when we work with children with autism, we focus on the easy beginner skills and consider something “mastered” without testing it under challenging conditions. Maybe the child no longer has problem behavior throughout the school day. The child has gone months without a problem behavior and we think the issue has been solved. But you don’t know until you test under challenging conditions. What if the 1-1 is out sick? What if the cafeteria is out of chicken nuggets? What if a peer says he doesn’t want to play at recess today?
This lesson applies to anything you might teach; social skills, language, academics, and motor skills. Until you have tested whether the behavior works in real-life challenging conditions, you don’t know if you are finished.