David G. Schwartz of University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker
Be authentically interested. This works regardless of your initial confidence level. Unless you are outrageously famous and/or charismatic, people are not going to want to listen just because your mouth is opening and closing. Instead, let them see how interesting the topic itself is, so that they can see it through your eyes. Your topic isn’t important because you are talking about it; you are talking about it because it is important.
At some point in our lives, many of us will have to give a talk to a large group of people. What does it take to be a highly effective public speaker? How can you improve your public speaking skills? How can you overcome a fear of speaking in public? What does it take to give a very interesting and engaging public talk? In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker” we are talking to successful and effective public speakers to share insights and stories from their experience. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing David G. Schwartz.
David G. Schwartz, Ombuds, professor, and gaming historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, studies conflict resolution, gambling and games, and history. He is a Certified Organizational Ombuds Practitioner and credentialed mediator.
An Atlantic City, New Jersey native and former casino employee, Schwartz has written and edited several books, including At the Sands, Cutting the Wire), Roll the Bones, Grandissimo, and Boardwalk Playground. He earned his Ph.D. in United States History from UCLA, and teaches several classes, including casino history, video games, conspiracy theories, alternate history, and jazz history. He is also an enthusiastic speaker and workshop leader.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I was born and raised in and around Atlantic City, New Jersey. My earliest memories are just before the first legal casino opened there in 1978. Even though I am not much of a gambler, gambling has been a big part of my life — first, as a casino employee, and later, as a scholar studying the history of gambling and casinos.
Growing up in Atlantic City was certainly different. I had a lot of interesting jobs in my teens — probably my favorite was cleaning the beach, but the one that people like to talk about is my summer-long stint as Mr. Peanut. It was a challenging role, to say the least. I somehow had to induce people to come into our store to buy peanuts, ice cream, fudge, popcorn, and other treats without using words. The biggest misconception people have is that the costume was stifling in the summer heat; actually, when there was a little ocean breeze, it was quite comfortable. And you get to see s different side of people when you’re dressed like a man-sized anthropomorphic peanut.
There’s not too much more to it. I’m not the most exciting person, but I like to think that I work on some interesting things.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
Sure. Like I just said, when I was young casinos had just been legalized in Atlantic City, and were a big, big deal. I remember them imploding a few old Boardwalk hotels and building modern-looking casinos in their place. So I wondered, why was gambling so powerful? How could it reshape a city? And why did people do it? More personally, I was worried that the apartment building my family lived in might be the next to be dynamited. That’s when I learned about zoning and urban planning.
But I never really got a satisfactory answer about why people gambled, and why a city would turn to gambling for urban redevelopment. At the same time, I was very into history, eventually double majoring in history and anthropology as an undergraduate, then going to graduate school in history.
When it came time to pick a dissertation, it felt natural to investigate the historical forces that powered the rise of the casino industry in the United States. That meant focusing on Las Vegas, where the modern casino resort was born. After finishing my degree and enjoying another stint working in a casino (as a surveillance officer, not Mr. Peanut this time), I took a job at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas overseeing their Center for Gaming Research, an unparalleled historical collection and archive. I’ve also been teaching classes at UNLV since I got here. It has been a perfect place for me to pursue my writing, which has always been about answering questions, and to speak with a variety of groups about gambling and historical topics.
A few years ago, though, I wanted to make a change. I’ve found answers to most of my questions about gambling that have satisfied my curiosity. And I’ve noticed that I’m happiest when I am helping people — it’s that aspect of teaching that has always kept me coming back. So when my university had an opening for an ombuds, I looked into it, and saw that it was in so many ways a perfect job for me: you get to listen to interesting people and help them consider their options. So I made the transition two years ago and have not looked back.
One of the great things about being an ombuds is that I now speak about conflict resolution, communication, and interpersonal relationships — topics that people tend to be more viscerally interested in than gambling history. It is great to be able to share concepts and techniques with a group, and then have them tell you that they will be applying them in their everyday life.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Studying gambling history I have had the chance to meet many colorful personalities, but given our focus today, I’d like to offer something related to public speaking.
I was asked to give a talk about gambling history and current issues to a business group looking to work in the field — something deep within my comfort zone. In truth, the negotiated compensation was at the bottom of my range, if not slightly below, but I identified with this group’s desire to learn more about something I specialize in and happily agreed to speak. And (this is an important detail for later), like most of the talks I have given, the venue was one of the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Working with groups on the Strip is always fun, because you are speaking in a standard convention space — that just happens to me surrounded by a multi-billion dollar resort.
As always, once I got up there, I immersed myself completely in the talk, and engaged with the group in the way that I usually do. For me, it’s a usual day at the office, and no less than what I would give, no matter what size the audience (or what the details of compensation). We had a great conversation. I sincerely thanked everyone, walked off stage, and went over to my contact with the group to again offer my thanks for the opportunity and say my farewells.
He had other plans. “That was great,” he said, and I thanked him for the compliment. “Come with me,” he added, “there’s something I want to do.”
This was not something that had happened before, but as an inquisitive type, I was open to it. We walked out of the convention area and into the casino, past the slot machines and roulette tables to the casino cage — the main bank where the casino keeps their cash, where customers can exchange chips and make other transactions. While I’m standing there, my contact — keep in mind this was the man who had negotiated my fee down from my initial request) — withdrew several hundred dollars and handed them to me.
“That was a perfect talk — this is much deserved,” he said, and I thanked him yet again.
I’m thinking about this because it smashes together the tip culture of the casinos where I have worked (and which I have studied), and public speaking in a way that I feel validates my effectiveness as a speaker. There was something more gratifying about being “tipped” for an unexpectedly good talk than if I had negotiated double the rate at the outset.
I’m not saying that if you want to speak publicly you should work for tips (this has never happened to me again, and probably never will), but it’s an example of how public speaking can open unexpected doors for you.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
As a speaker…I like to think that there are no mistakes, just doors that you open without knowing what is on the other side. You get where you are supposed to be eventually.
It is funny in retrospect, but the biggest mistake I made early on was not matching my style to the audience. Coming out of graduate school, you think that people want to be impressed by your intellectual brilliance, so you probably have a style that, to be honest, comes across as pretentious and self-satisfied. And that doesn’t resonate with most people. Using big words doesn’t make you a memorable or effective speaker: connecting with your audience does.
Beyond the style, the biggest mistake I made was not tailoring my content to my audience. My first couple talks to convention groups, I lectured about casino history — an interesting topic, to be sure, and one that groups said they enjoyed learning about. But I noticed that the questions were always about the Mob and whether card counting really worked. So I shifted my presentations to include plenty of material about both topics.
The lesson I learned was that just because you think something is interesting, doesn’t mean the audience wants to hear all about it, but if you can find something you want to talk about that they walk in wanting to know more about, you will do much better.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There have been so many people along the way. In the academic world, I would like to single out Eric Monkkonen, my dissertation chair at UCLA. I met him when I he talked to our graduate seminar about his work in the history of crime, violence, and murder. I was half-expecting him to be, fitting his subject matter, a boisterous, if not violent, man, and was struck by how at odds this mild-mannered, slyly humorous man was with his chosen subject.
Later, I was in his office when he got peer review comments back on an article he had submitted to an academic journal. Eric was one of the world’s greatest authorities on his subject, someone whose work I wanted to emulate, and someone who, I was convinced, knew everything there was to know. For those who aren’t familiar, peer review is an academic process that is supposed to ensure all work published in journals is high quality. Generally, reviewers don’t know who the author is, and vice versa. So you get an honest assessment of your work that isn’t shaded by your influence or reputation.
I figured that the reviewers would be thrilled to read anything he wrote, and that the review would be a slam dunk. But the reviewers had some serious questions about the article, questions that would need extensive research and re-writing to answer.
In that moment — when a lot of people would react with anger or challenge the reviewers’ competence — Eric just smiled and said that he had a lot of work to do. While he hadn’t anticipated the difficult reviews, he accepted that they were warranted and that addressing them would improve the article.
Seeing someone with Eric’s accomplishments accept criticism so humbly changed me. If a scholar of his caliber could go through the process with a smile and not a hint of arrogance, I knew that I had to do the same. And that has helped me at every step, in everything I have done.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging and intimidating. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?
The most important thing is to be authentic, which is being honest with yourself and with others. Whatever approach you adopt as a speaker has to be one that is natural to you. This may be different from those of other speakers you admire. For example, I grew up entranced by Carl Sagan, who was able to translate advanced scientific concepts into terms that everyone could understand. And he had a deep, rich baritone, which he used to speak slowly, confidently, and authoritatively. Another example of that style of speaking is Alan Rickman — think of him as Severus Snape, how he just oozed gravitas. You hung on his every word.
That style isn’t a match for me at all — I don’t speak slowly when I am excited about something, and I just can’t take myself seriously enough to maintain that level of somberness. Instead, my natural style is all about enthusiasm and not taking myself too seriously. When I speak in public, it is because I want to share something interesting that I have learned. Being authentic about that shades everything I do, and I have found that it helps audiences forgive small missteps — a stumble over a word here or there.
As long as you are authentic, you can’t really “fail” as a speaker. In the best-case scenario, you connect with your audience and unlock future possibilities. And in the worst-case scenario, you have learned that whatever you wanted from them isn’t going to happen. Better and less painful to learn that earlier.
What drives you to get up everyday and give your talks? What is the main empowering message that you aim to share with the world?
Curiosity is the fuel that I run on. First, with gambling history, and now with conflict resolution, I’m driven by questions that don’t always have obvious answers. Sharing what I learn with other people keeps me going. I think the main idea that I would like to share is that we can make changes to benefit ourselves and those around us. It’s not about trying to fix things for other people, since that rarely works out for the best. Instead, it is about helping them pick out the tools they can use to fix what they need to. That means accepting that you can’t “fix” everything, and being open to finding tools to help resolve any conflicts you are party to.
You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?
I’m excited about delivering a series of workshops that I have developed around effective listening and communication. I see a great deal of conflict around communication, so it is a logical place to work with people. I still have a few gambling history concepts that I’m working on, including a book focused tightly on the history of gambling in Las Vegas as well, and a few ombuds/conflict resolution writing projects in the pipeline.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Leave it better than you found it.” I don’t know where I first heard it, but it’s the first thing that pops into my head when someone asks me about my overall philosophy. There are a lot of things that need fixing, and while it’s no one’s responsibility to see each of them perfected, if we each tried to work on the one or two that were closest to us, the world would notice.
Ok, thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker?” Please share a story or example for each.
1 . Be authentically interested. This works regardless of your initial confidence level. Unless you are outrageously famous and/or charismatic, people are not going to want to listen just because your mouth is opening and closing. Instead, let them see how interesting the topic itself is, so that they can see it through your eyes. Your topic isn’t important because you are talking about it; you are talking about it because it is important.
This works for me, because like I said before, it would be hard to find someone more intrinsically boring than me. When I speak to a group of people, odds are they are more accomplished than me — often, considerably so. But I have something to share, and if I can share it in a way that feeds their natural curiosity, I will have done my job.
I don’t usually get nervous about the act of speaking in public anymore, but I still go through a period of self-doubt before a talk: Am I really the best person to do this? What if I’m not good enough? What I can’t connect with the audience? That kind of existential angst can ruin even the best-planned talk. But my enthusiasm for the subject gets me through. And once I’m up there, all those doubts vanish, because I am legitimately so excited about connecting with people over this topic. And, no matter what trepidation I might have had before I got up there, I don’t want my moment onstage to end.
2 . Be clear about your goal. What is your goal for this talk? Do you want people to like you more? Do you want to convince them of a fact? Sell them something? Design your message with that goal at the center. Every word you say should move you closer to that goal. Five minutes after you are done, what do you want them to remember? Start there and work backwards. And if something doesn’t move you closer — or, even worse, slides you away — cut it, no matter how hard you worked on it or how clever it is.
Speaking of clever, it is best to use your verbal talents to serve your overall story, rather than vice versa. Too many public speakers can string together beautiful, awe-inspiring, and ultimately meaningless words that sound great when first heard, but on later reflection meant nothing. So we are left remembering that the speaker was a virtuoso, but have a blank fog when it comes to the actual content. If the speaker was more focused on their goal, rather than trying to impress you, that wouldn’t happen. Of course, if their goal was just to impress people, mission accomplished.
3 . Respect your audience. This is so, so important. People can tell when you are talking down to them. People can also tell when you are speaking above them, trying to intellectually bully them by using jargon and concepts that they haven’t been exposed to yet. So tailor your message for their level, but give them credit for being able to connect the dots themselves. It’s like a mystery novel — the reader wants to feel just a little smarter than the detective. If they figure out the murderer on the first page or if they put the book down just as confused as when they picked it up, the book was a waste of their time. It’s the same thing with public speaking. Take your listeners on a journey, letting them see where you are going. Give them the satisfaction of your words confirming something they have just now figured out. That will help your message stick, and will leave them feeling good about your talk.
Also, respect their time by being as brief as possible. One story: I attended a lecture by a great researcher, who was asked to prepare a 25 to 30 minute talk. Twenty minutes in, I was frankly envious: I wished that I was capable of being as witty and engaging about the topic. Five minutes later, I was still entranced, but was feeling that it was time to wrap it up. But they kept going. And going. When we passed the forty-minute mark, I was experiencing vicarious embarrassment for how awful this talk had turned out. At fifty minutes, I could feel the walls closing in. Attempts to make eye contact and look pointedly at the clock failed. Finally, after more than an hour, the speaker wrapped up. Needless to say, no one remembered the brilliant first twenty minutes by then.
On a related note, the best complaint that I’ve ever gotten about a talk was, “I wish you had talked for longer.” If you leave them wanting more, you’ve done a great job. If they never want to hear from you again, you haven’t.
4 . Perfection is an unattainable enemy that you should never engage with. Accept things will go wrong. I’ve had people ask how I can be so confident about speaking in public, which lets me come off as natural and relaxed. I tell them that it is actually a complete lack of confidence that makes it so much fun for me. Before I talk, I imagine what the worst thing that could happen would be — stumbling over my words, losing my train of thought, embarrassing myself. I then have to honestly admit that it is more likely than not that I will do one or all of those things. In fact, it’s a near-complete certainty that I am going to somehow screw this up.
Once I have emotionally come to grips with that, I then let myself see two futures: One where I screwed up and didn’t have fun, and one where I screwed up and had a ball. I then consciously choose the latter, and focus on making it happen.
And you know, when I’m done, I almost always find that even if I made a mistake, the audience didn’t notice or didn’t care.
It also helps to have one-liners prepared if things go noticeably wrong. For example, sometimes I will get absolutely tongue-tied and can’t get a word out. Instead of going deer-in-the-headlights, I’ll just chuckle and say, “That was a mouthful!” or “I’m so excited, I’m forgetting how to speak!” That usually gets a quick laugh from the crowd and puts me back on track. And if I really, really can’t say a word, I’ll just ask the audience to shout it out.
I’ve seen a great example of this in practice. On July 13, 1985, Phil Collins performed at Live Aid in both London and Philadelphia, in one of the biggest televised events in history. And, with over a billion people watching, he made a mistake the opening moments of his first song, a solo piano rendition of “Against All Odds” — his finger slipped off a key, botching a note. It’s at about 1:05 in this video. And look at his response. A quick wince at the fumble, but see that smile in his eyes? I don’t know what he was feeling here, but for me, it’s an example of choosing to have a good time, even if you’ve made a mistake. Although you might miss a note, you can go on without missing a beat. If anything, the bad note makes it a more authentic and relatable performance.
And no matter how bad you think your mistake is, you can at least rest assured that it wasn’t seen by a billion people.
5 . Under promise and overdeliver. The most famous example? Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Lincoln said that “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” Yet schoolkids memorize this speech 150 years later. When you get up to give a talk, you are just trying to share something — maybe something small, maybe something big — with your audience. Usually, the best approach isn’t to awe them with your credentials or beat them over the head with your expertise, or announce beforehand how what you’re telling them will change their life. Instead, just promise to share something, and trust that they will get something out of it. You are not going to solve all of their problems — you are just going to give them a little more knowledge, a slightly different perspective.
As you know, many people are terrified of speaking in public. Can you give some of your advice about how to overcome this fear?
In addition to remembering that perfection is an unattainable enemy that you shouldn’t engage with, have a realistic idea of what’s happening here. You’re not as important as you think you are. Almost always, people will remember a few key things from your talk, and how they felt during it. How they felt mostly comes down to your demeanor — if you appear confident, they will remember that you knew what you were talking about. And if you are brief enough, they will remember that you were interesting. But you are probably not the most important person they’ll see that day, and if you flub a word or two, they probably aren’t going to remember. And if they do remember, they won’t really care.
Side note: there was a great line in that Bobby Darin biopic about how people “hear what they see.” I believe that is often true. There’s been a few times that people have reached out to say that they saw me interviewed somewhere, and when I ask them what the topic is, sometimes they’ll say, “I don’t remember what it was, but you really knew what you were talking about.” Because it wasn’t vitally important information, they were more focused on the presentation than the content. This is where appearing to be confident can
Also, distance your core identity from the task at hand. Because it involves showing your personality and a good deal of vulnerability, we tend to see public speaking as a test of our worth and character in a way that we don’t for other things we do, even when we strive for excellence. But it is a job like any other. It is okay to take pride in a job well done, but if it doesn’t go well, just remember that this is simply one task you’ve done out of many. It’s not what you will be remembered for.
You are a person of huge influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
It is hard for me to think in terms that large. Every day, I try to help the people I see professionally have a better idea of their options and more confidence in their ability to pick the best course of action and follow it through. When I speak to a group, it’s a variation on that theme. Which is a way of saying that if everyone had a more realistic idea of their options when facing conflict or crisis, and the thoughtfulness to pick the best outcome for themselves and those around them, we would be better off.
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
This is a tough one. On one hand, I would love to spend time like that with anyone else who is working as an ombuds. But I get the feeling that the question should elicit an individual that the general public would recognize, so I started to think along those lines. I was really stuck, and then someone popped into my head.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And not because of anything he did on the basketball court, as impressive as that is. I haven’t followed sports closely for a while now, and even when he was playing, to be honest, as a kid growing up in the Delaware Valley I was more of a Sixers/Dr. J. guy.
Instead, I think that lunch with Kareem (I’m hoping that if we’re eating together, we’re on a first-name basis) would be enjoyable for two reasons. One, given the role he played in Airplane!, he doesn’t seem like he takes himself too seriously despite his accomplishments, so he would be a good dining companion. Second, he writes courageously and thoughtfully about difficult topics in a way that is accessible and engaging. In his shoes, it would probably be easy to rest on your laurels as a once-in-a-generation athlete and coast, ducking controversy, but he has chosen to take public positions on important issues, and our discourse is richer for it. Someone with that level of integrity and public-mindedness is worth talking with.
Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?
Sure — I am on Twitter @DrDave702 and on LinkedIn at DavidGSchwartz. My personal website is dgschwartz.com.
This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
