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Spotlight on David Gumpert
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When
it comes to public speaking, sometimes the key to feeling prepared for
anything is doing a little less preparation. And sometimes the best way
to handle your nervousness is to acknowledge and accept it.
That’s what David Gumpert, a multi-published author, consultant, and columnist for BusinessWeek.com, has learned in his work with Carla Kimball over the past four years. These seemingly counterintuitive ideas helped him break the vicious cycle that he’d fallen into with his speaking engagements. He’d tried rehearsing his speeches beforehand, he’d tried memorizing them, he’d tried using PowerPoint demonstrations, both simple and elaborate, “but I just wasn’t comfortable,” he recalls. “As time went on, I was getting more and more tense about it. The more I spoke, the more nervous I was getting.”
He found Carla through a program she was directing at Kripalu Center, a center for yoga and wellness in Lenox, Massachusetts, and began attending RiverWays’ Speaking Circles in Cambridge, not far from his home in Needham, Massachusetts. He also took Carla’s small group coaching course. Carla’s meditative approach, focusing on awareness of the body and breath, was totally different than any public speaking technique he’d encountered before—and it made perfect sense to him.
“The whole idea of going into a speech without having rehearsed or without having memorized it was a huge revelation,” David says. “One of the things Carla teaches you is that your nervousness is coming from trying to be too perfect. When you memorize your talk, you’re not in a position to deal with the unexpected. When you have to change it on the fly because of delays, or there’s no microphone or no lectern, or you’re at a nursing home and half your audience is asleep, it’s very difficult. With Carla’s approach, I can adjust it any way I want, which makes it possible for me to walk in and say, ‘You know something, I’m ready for just about anything here.’”
While promoting his new book, Inge: A Girl’s Journey Through Nazi Europe, the story of his aunt’s experiences during the Holocaust, David encountered one of the speaking situations that made him most uncomfortable in the past: a group of friends and family, gathered at his synagogue to hear him talk.
“It was the kind of situation that is nerve-wracking for me—a new book, the first time talking about it, and most of the people there I knew,” he says. “But Carla’s approach allows you to do what you want, so I had my notes and ideas, and the speech went really well. I got a lot of great feedback and, most important, I felt good about it.” At another talk on the book at a synagogue in Boston, a mother and her 12-year-old daughter came up to him afterwards. “They were so genuinely moved by what I had said,” he recalls. “It was a very gratifying moment for me.”
Even when addressing groups on his area of expertise—small-business entrepreneurship—David rarely uses PowerPoint anymore. At a recent seminar for small business owners, he was scheduled to speak in the sleepy late afternoon slot. “I didn’t have any notes or any PowerPoint and I spoke for about half an hour,” he says. “I got such a great reaction afterward, people telling me what a relief it was to hear me speak and how meaningful it was. Because I was talking to them, not reading anything or looking up at a screen, just talking to them as a person, it made a huge impression.”
To learn more about David and his books, including Burn Your
Business Plan! What Investors Really Want from Entrepreneurs
and How to Really Start Your Own Business Plan,
visit www.davidgumpert.com.
Read David’s blog on the business of healthcare at www.thecompletepatient.com.
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