Good morning everyone and welcome back to the breakroom! Thank you so much for understanding my need to take a day off last week to celebrate my birthday! Overall, it was a very relaxing day which started off with some amazing brunch at my favorite local restaurant (shoutout to Sara’s Table here in Duluth, MN should any of ever find yourself here in my neck of the woods). Even better was the gift from my husband, we found a pretty sweet cabinet on sale which we have used to put together a coffee/tea nook at home. Besides being cute, this suddenly opened up a nice chunk of counterspace in the kitchen. So overall, a pretty dang good birthday and an amazing gift. But enough about what I did over the weekend for my birthday, I know you came to me to hear all about what happened in the office today and I can promise you that today did not disappoint. So let us get down, to the breakdown.
The morning started off pretty much like any other in that Michael was doing something that most of the rest of us found annoying. He and Dwight were exchanging “ideas” while they were tossing a football to each other in the bullpen. I’m sure he only thought of this because he watched a movie last night where the characters were tossing a ball to one another in their office and he thought it was the coolest thing. Of course, his excuse is that he doesn’t like to be cooped up in his personal office all day because he needs to be able to think. Now, I am not one to advocate doing anything at your job which can distract people. It is actually a smart idea to get up for your desk throughout the day to help clear your head, not to mention just to get moving. You want to toss a ball around with a colleague for a few minutes? That is a great idea, just don’t do it in the middle of the office with your colleagues around. I know some colleagues who used to spend their breaks walking around the complex since it helped get their steps in, plus it was great to get out of the office itself. So while it is good to get up from your desk every so often, please don’t use this as an opportunity to distract the rest of the office.
Aside from the little start to the day, the primary topic of discussion was our very own Dwight K. Schrute was named the top salesman for Dunder Mifflin. He was awarded a cash prize to do with as he will, which he is gleefully lording over Jim in deciding what he will spend his money on. Jim actually ended up with ninth place and for this was awarded a free pizza. Perhaps the only person more excited for the honor was Michael, as he feels Dwight is following him in his footsteps. Turns out that when Michael was still in sales, he also won the Salesman of the Year award back-to-back. If anything, this causes Michael to get into Dwight’s head because as the recipient, Dwight must provide a speech at the awards ceremony happening that afternoon. While he was calm about it at first, Michael has built up the importance to the speech so much that now he is starting to panic.
Michael decides to take it upon himself to help Dwight prepare for his speech, and evidently this also include the rest of us in the office. He decides to do a round of “toastmasters” to encourage each of us to standup and speak to the crowd to show Dwight how easy it is. Interestingly, this is where we find out that Jim has decided to take a trip someplace but doesn’t know where to go so he is hoping one of us might be able to offer some insight. Well Dwight intends to go to New Zealand someday and walk the Lord of the Rings trip to Mordar; as a big fan of LOTR I think this would be an amazing trip, plus New Zealand is beautiful. Toby suggested going to Amsterdam; this would also be a cool place to visit, although Toby didn’t go into too much detail on what he did while there. Creed suggested going to Hong Kong; again, another cool idea on a place to visit. And then Kevin suggests going to Hedonism which is an adults only, clothing optional resort down in Jamaica. While this would not be my preferred destination, I suppose to each his own. While I haven’t traveled too much in my life, I have gone to France the last two years so I would say that Jim should consider Paris and I could then give him some recommendations and tips when he goes there. What about you, where would you recommend Jim should go? Let me know in the comments!
In the end, this didn’t really seem to help. Michael only recommended inappropriate jokes, while everyone else talked about travel. But in the end, Dwight isn’t intimated to speak to the rest of us because he is our superior. Well, in his mind he is our superior but that means he can speak in front of us freely. So comfortable, he was able to tell us “I’m public speaking, stop public interrupting me.” Dwight seems stressed about this all, and in the end Jim decides to give him so pretty good advise. Now, I know he was trying to pull one of his classic pranks but I think he actually ended up being very helpful to Dwight. He told him that when it comes to public speaking he needs to be true to himself. Dwight is a person of authority so rather than telling jokes, he needs to focus on waving his arms in the air and pounding his fists. He also printed up excerpts from speeches by famous dictators to peruse, so good job Jim.
Dwight being nervous about getting in front of people and speaking is by no means a rare occurrence. Looking across numerous articles online, there appears to be a range of 70-76% of the population as citing they have some form of public speaking. Some of us are like Dwight where are okay presenting in front of people we know but panic in front of a large crowd of strangers, but there are those who are not comfortable regardless of who they are presenting in front of. Myself, I do get nervous in front of speaking to others and will start to stress out about everything that could go wrong. Thankfully, I do not have to do it very often and I have learned techniques which work for me to address this anxiety. So what are some of the best techniques to improve your public speaking. I first went to the Harvard Division of Continuation Education for their recommendations. Their very first tip is the one that I use the most, and quite simply it is “Nervousness is normal. Practice and prepare!” I do my best to practice my presentation and will even make mental notes of specific changes in my tone of voice or certain gestures. This way the presentation will feel more normal, especially if you’re able to put your focus more on getting your prepared presentation completed rather than the people watching you. Another tip is to let your personality be reflected in your presentation. Perhaps part of the reason you are so nervous is you feel like you need to emulate someone else while you are up there. Anyone would feel uncomfortable being anything other than ourselves, so try your best to remain true to yourself. Dwight is not a joke teller, he is a serious individual who commands respect and that is where he started to shine. And they mention about using an outline, not a word-for-word script. While it is good to have specific phrases or wording you might use, by doing it this way you are awarded more flexibility in your overall speech. More importantly, this way you are not simply reading from a piece of paper which could ultimately cause the audience to loose interest. I think we have all sat in this presentations where a person has a power point and all they do is read from it like a book. Think of this as constructed flexibility, and use it to your advantage1!
I also went my old friend, Forbes, who also provided some insight into tips on public speaking. Their first tip was to speak as if you are trying to inspire change in the listener, and I hadn’t heard that one before. Rather than simply trying to sound like you reading a presentation, they suggest tapping into that passionate side. Instead of simply relaying information, you are trying to convince the listener to agree with you. They also emphasized the use of a three section model of your presentation in the form of a grabber, middle, and closer. The grabber is the beginning of the presentation and is meant to be something interesting to grab their attention right from the start. Often this could be a joke, a unique story or interesting factoid that helps set up what you will be speaking about. The middle is the meat of your presentation sandwich, so this is were all of your important facts and information will be. And then the closer is meant to close out the entire presentation; most often this reiterates your original topic and might even call back to the grabber or itself be an interesting ending. Another great tip is to know the audience; if you can find specific people you know before the presentation starts you can try to put some focus on them. If you start to get nervous, find your friend in the audience and try to look at just them to help ease that anxiousness2.
I only mentioned a few tips from each article, but there are many more that they mentioned so feel free to review these the next time you have a presentation coming up and are worried about being nervous. But if you have any of your own unique tips for those who are anxious with public speaking, let us know!
With Dwight slightly more prepared, he left with Michael to head on down to the convention center for the award ceremony (none of the rest of us were going). Oddly enough, shortly later Angela ended up leaving because she was feeling under the weather. That was a weird coincidence but she said it had to do with how cold it was in the office. Which brings us in to the real drama of the day, the thermostat debate.
You might not realize this, but people are adjusting the thermostat all day long because everyone has their comfort level. I know Oscar prefers it to be at 66 degrees since he runs warm, while Kevin likes 69 just because he thinks it is funny. For those wondering, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) recommends an office temperature between 68 to 76 degrees F. So why is there such a debate over the comfort level of office temperatures when OSHA has recommendations? Well, an incredibly interesting article from Business News Daily breaks down the entire story for us. I do not want to steal all of their thunder but I will give you the highlights. First, due to different body compositions it is true that the average woman will prefer a higher temperature than the average male, so already we have a problem. Initially, the average office temperatures were calculated off of those set by a middle aged male, which does help explain why my female colleagues are always so cold in the office when I’m comfortable; the entire formula was set up against them. This article also points out that in most offices, it really comes down to the preference of the manager. It breaks down some larger companies and many seem to prefer colder offices, including Mark Zuckerberg who prefers 59 degrees (in case you needed another reason to find him obnoxious). So this is all well and good, but what is an office to do in order to keep everyone happy? The simplest option would be to find a very neutral temperature, neither too hot or too cold, so that way it should be as comfortable as possible. Then, employees should be allowed to have options like blankets, sweaters, or desk fans so that way they can govern their own spaces3. I just have to say to those leaders out there, you are only one person in an office and it is incredibly selfish to expect the temperature to revolve around your own personal preference. Otherwise, we have colleagues who all adjusting the thermostat and causing some major temperature fluctuations. But I will say, most offices have these controlled electronically and a lot of those old thermostats do not even do anything.
And that was the big talking point of what happened today. We discussed the struggles associated with public speaking and what sort of tips are there to combat it. And we addressed the age-old topic of the thermostat war, proving that it really was never set up for a comfortable office space. I hope you all have a great week and weekend, and be sure to say hello the next time you are around the breakroom.
- North, M. (2020, March 17). 10 Tips for Improving Your Public Speaking Skills. Harvard Division of Continuing Education. Retrieved February 15, 2024, from https://professional.dce.harvard.edu/blog/10-tips-for-improving-your-public-speaking-skills/ ↩︎
- Neille, C. (2016, April 18). 12 Tips For Public Speaking. Forbes. Retrieved February 15, 2024, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/iese/2016/04/18/12-tips-for-public-speaking/?sh=68f9f3843a18 ↩︎
- Kuligowski, K. (2023, October 20). 12 Tips For Public Speaking. Business News Daily. Retrieved February 15, 2024, from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10964-office-temperature-debate.html ↩︎
