What do the speakers featured in this book share in common?  Yes, their speeches were captivating. Many went to the same schools. Many are Millennials.  But an important similarity is that they all took a course on The Arts of Communication.  From ancient times with Aristotle’s Three Appeals (Logos, Ethos and Pathos) to the modern age with hundreds of speaker trainings, thousands of Toastmasters groups, and millions of communication books around the world, the art of communication is still viewed as a natural skill bestowed upon the chosen few, and not a muscle we can exercise over time.  Let’s face it: our lives tend to be so busy that when it comes to public presentations, we write down what we want to say a few days before, go over it two or three times, and then just “wing” it on the day.

Like many of us, I have difficulty communicating what I want to say to others.  By the time an idea appears in my brain, speeds through neurons and synapses, races into my mouth muscles and exits my lips, it comes out jumbled or just down right incoherent.  For me, having trouble speaking is linked to fear—fear that I’ll sound silly in front of my peers.  

When I first took Mihir Mankad’s Arts of Communication course in 2014, I learned that public speaking forces you to face your fear.  Throughout the course, you’re constantly speaking in front of other peers, so your mind no longer has time to produce self-doubt.  But, more importantly, it forces you to be vulnerable.  Time and time. again after seeing dozens of speeches, I noticed how a speaker’s message became more impactful when he or she shared a personal story or setback with the audience.  

Two examples come to mind.  The first was a Syrian classmate whose family fled the civil war to become refugees and seek political asylum in the U.S.  She had the bravery and fortitude to share this story at our annual “Faces of Community” event.  Before that time, she had never shared this personal story, and the plethora of challenges she had to overcome in adapting to a new country, a new culture while retaining her core identity.  Yet she shared it in front of a 200-person audience that night.  People cried, and lives changed that night.  The other example is a German classmate who was very stoic, but had a streak of dry humor.  We were able to use that dry humor during his speech about the difficulties of moving to a new place.  He explained how his very first apartment was so cramped it could only fit one bed and one chair.  He couldn’t do anything with the chair, so he simply called it the “sitting chair”.  The crowd erupted in laughter, and he responded with a cool smirk.  That was his authentic self, discovered that very night in front of hundreds of strangers.

Such vulnerability leads to something else entirely: authenticity.  Even if you view yourself as a good public speaker, everyone can work on unleashing full authenticity.  We all often struggle with being our true selves in front of an audience instead of putting on a “public persona”.  The truth is many public figures do have a public and private persona.  Beyoncé said that although she’s normally quite reserved, her stage-persona is Sasha Fierce.  When criticized for not being authentic, Hillary Clinton commented that her husband Bill and former boss Obama both worked at forging their authentic public personas through years of practice.  Winston Churchill, who was considered one of the greatest orators in history, was purported to meticulously practice every single speech—even the pauses!  The point is that many public figures come off as relaxed and polished precisely because they have spent hundreds of hours rehearsing and refining what they say, how they say it, their mannerisms, their intonation and inflection.  The art of communication drives home the idea that we should all practice at least one hour for every minute in our speech to make them into magic.  In other words, authenticity takes WORK!

Now I work as a U.S. diplomat, having served in China and the Caribbean.  I conduct TV and radio interviews to explain U.S. policy, and help craft traditional and social media content to attract more people to view our website and platforms.  I’m a communicator, and I apply everything I’ve done in that Arts of Communication course on a daily basis.  But at the end of the day, aren’t we all communicators?  In the 21st century, communicating through various media has become ever more important, regardless of your profession.  Facing your fear, being vulnerable, and finding your authentic self—those are the life lessons I and so many of my peers in this book learned from a semester course.  It’s cliché to say that there’s “power in words”.  But I hope that after having read this book, you too have become a believer.

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[Fletcher School, Fall 2014; Teaching Assistant: Spring 2015; Faces of Community, Spring 2015]