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The HigherEdJobs Podcast is dedicated to helping higher education professionals find fulfillment in their careers and be the change agents that higher education needs in today's world. Join hosts Andrew Hibel and Kelly Cherwin, along with guest experts, as they examine job search strategies and break down the latest news and trends in higher education.
E27
[00:00:00] Andrew Hibel: Welcome to the HigherEdJobs Podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.
[00:00:10] Kelly Cherwin: And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy. Today we'll be talking about acing your presentation. So, the topic for this episode is all about presentations. You may have been in this situation where you are excited to be interviewed, and then the hiring committee informs you, you will need to prepare a presentation or maybe you've asked to be a guest lecturer and you have to prepare.
So, we've called upon Steve Snyder, head of BFA, acting School of Theater at Penn State University, and he will share his expertise in performance and presentation and share some tips and tricks for acing the presentation. Thanks Steve for joining us today.
[00:00:42] Steve Snyder: Thank you so much, Kelly and Andy and Mike, it is wonderful to be in the studio with you today.
Andrew Hibel: Nice to see you.
[00:00:49] Kelly Cherwin: So, Steve can you share a little bit about your background and your role today in higher ed?
[00:00:52] Steve Snyder: Yeah, absolutely. I am in the midst of my 20th year as a university educator, [00:01:00] which makes me think about someone my dad's age when I say that. But it's true. I've been doing this for 20 years. That started with a couple years part-time in Chicago at Loyola University, and that grew to a full load of teaching there and running some afterschool programs in local high school and elementary school near Loyola University That led to teaching at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. And I was there for nine years and ran the BA Theater Performance Program. And then actually in my last two years there, I served as chair for a year and then associate chair of the theater department.
And then an opportunity came up after nine years at Bradley. Uh, my wife and I felt like there was another chapter, another move, and that brought us here to Penn State University. So here we are in State College in the midst of year number nine here. So last time I checked that math, that is 20. And so we we're, we're here 20 years in State College.
And I am indeed, as you [00:02:00] said, Kelly I'm the head of the BFA in acting and I serve as one of the heads committee, the leadership team in the school of theater. And within the BFA acting program, I get to serve in the neighborhood of 43 to 45 acting students and lead a team of faculty of eight. And we're in the midst right now, uh, one of my favorite seasons, and that is the audition and recruiting season as we're looking to bring in the students for next year, the class that will start next year. So that's, there's a, a quick snapshot of uh, who I am and what, what I do here at Penn State.
Kelly Cherwin: Great, thank you.
[00:02:37] Andrew Hibel: That's an amazing career path to hear about and sounds like it's been an amazingly enjoyable and fulfilling.
Depending on the presentation, some presentations might be predetermined and ask you to present on a certain topic. Others may ask you to be more creative and present on some sort of topic of your choosing. Either way, what is step number one in preparing a [00:03:00] presentation when you're going about it.
[00:03:01] Steve Snyder: Great question, Andy. As I started to draft an answer to this, and I went down both paths of the, if you're given a topic and what if you get to choose the topic. And then I backed it up to one of the things like the message that I have to bring today. And that is functioning from the center of who you are, what is it that you bring to the table?
And the thing that I bring to the table is an actor framework. And so, so much of what I'm gonna share today, comes from the same kind of, uh, skillset, muscle set, head place of preparing for an audition. And so that starts with knowing as I choose my monologue or if I've been given a scene, the very first question I have to figure out is, who am I talking to?
And not just like the, the name of the other character, but in a felt point of view way, who is this to me? Who am I talking to? Because the, the person I'm talking to is going to shape the, the [00:04:00] impulses that come outta me. The things that I have to say, the ways in which I will say it, the, the, and my, my relationship with that person tied to that is gonna be the environment in which I know them, what the relationship is.
All those things are gonna dictate. The things I might have to say and the way in which I'll say them. So first, who am I talking to? And then the second thing that an actor has to figure out with a piece when they're preparing is, why am I saying these words now? What do I want from the other person? How am I trying to change the other person?
So, this is at the heart of all human interaction. So these are some of the nuts and bolts of human communication as an actor prepares, and I think they apply perfectly to any kind of presentation. So, we've gotta start with that one that we learn in our speech 100 classes. The Who am I talking to? Who is my audience?
It's that same actor, homework. So who am I talking to? And then it turns out the next actor homework question also directly applies. Why [00:05:00] am I talking to them? What is it that I need from them? Or how am I trying to change them? Or what do I need to get them to do? So there's a direct one-to-one relationship comparison there.
So if you are given a topic, we'll start there. I've gotta figure out again, who is this for? Is it a, a group of new students? Are these upper division fourth year students? Are these graduate students? Is this a presentation for faculty? Who is the audience? Who am I talking to? And then again, what's the purpose of this?
That's gonna determine a whole lot. So, let's just say that in a, a given topic, I need to find a way to demonstrate my expertise, or I've got to guide someone to acquisition of a skill or a new way of understanding a situation. So step one now that I've gotten to that is I have to deliver and there is no substitute for preparation.
Right. So I, if I have to be [00:06:00] expert on this thing that I'm gonna teach on or speak on, or the skill that I'm gonna try to guide someone to acquire and be able to do on their own, I have to be expert in that. I have a, uh, an old musician friend who talks about this preparation time as going to the woodshed and cut in the wood, and no one can cut that wood, but, So the preparation time.
So that's the next phase that we're at. So you may be expert at this thing that you've been called to present on. Awesome. So then you get to go to the next actor question. And for my money, this is the most thrilling. The most thrilling is the tactics you're gonna use. How am I gonna do this? What's my methodology?
What's the step-by-step? What's the the hook, the thing that's gonna get their attention? And then make them go, oh my gosh, I need to know this. I need to learn this. That's genius. I've never thought of it that way. How am I going to lead folks through this thing that I have to teach them or elucidate or guide them to a new understanding?
And then I get to come back to what is it that I bring to the [00:07:00] table? What is my unique way of teaching this or of articulating this or a way that I teach this particular skill that is gonna make somebody who felt daunted by that before, like, oh, you've broken it down, and I can eat an elephant one bite at a time.
So yeah, I, I can totally do that thing. And that's totally repeatable. Yeah, I can do that. So, what's my unique way of bringing folks to that. Now to the flip side, what if you get to pick, so if I get to pick what I'm gonna teach on, my wife keeps reminding me about this. What's the thing that you are on fire about?
What is the thing that you love to talk about, that you love to teach on that you are awesome at? Yeah. So, oh, there's my, my Minnesotan time. Yeah. Just came out there. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So then as I, as I've articulated that stuff, then I, I come again to the, the repeatable steps. The how, what is the clear steps that I'm gonna lay out for [00:08:00] myself so that I have a clear planned, rehearsed journey that's not canned, but that I feel like my muscles can relax because I can say, I practiced this three days ago and yesterday and the day before that, and my body knows how this goes, and I can trust that if something goofy happens, I'm gonna be okay. Cuz my body has the rhythm of this thing in it already. And then the last step of it is coming back to look at it from a 30,000-foot view.
What's the whole journey of this presentation? What's the story? How am I getting us to arrive somewhere different than where we began? That's the direct crossover from acting to presentation for me.
[00:08:38] Andrew Hibel: I have a follow up question to that. In that wonderful presentation, let's just say you have the topic you're on fire on, mm-hmm, but you get a call the night before from the person who's invited you to present, and they, ‘Hey, guess what? You're in between the Pope and Michelle Obama and it's, it's actually not gonna be in person. [00:09:00] You're gonna be online. And instead of using Zoom or Microsoft Teams, we have this thing that we did on our own.
That's a great substitute for that, and that's how you're gonna present. Certain actors prefer to be on the stage. Certain actors prefer to act different ways. and so much of conveying your message really is tied to the medium by which you can do that. Mm-hmm. How do you make those adjustments when maybe you're not only not playing on your home field, but you're playing on some field that has subpar standards?
[00:09:36] Steve Snyder: Yeah. Yeah. What an awesome challenge, Andy. That's, that's a great challenge.
Andrew Hibel: And by the way, Michelle Obama's up next. So can you make this quick please?
Steve Synder: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm between the Pope and Michelle Obama, I know that people probably want me to be quick, so that's one. Me just recognizing the shot that I need to hit.
They don't want me to hit the three pointer, [00:10:00] and you could slide a piece of paper under my vertical, so no one needs me to dunk, but a 10-footer I can hit. Okay, the 10-foot shot, that's what you need me to hit. Awesome. So now that I've indulged myself and you all in that metaphor, I would breathe, first of all, as I take in that information, and I actually mean that quite seriously.
I would breathe, because this is a massive curve ball, and we have the science that tells us that our brains function so much better if we get oxygen up there. We make better choices. More of our mind gets engaged when we get more oxygen up there. So, I buy myself a second and I breathe, and then I would ask the person to walk me through the particulars, the specifics so that I can fully understand what the parameters, I'm gonna be dealing with, are.
And as I'm taking that in and I'm breathing and I'm trying to keep myself out of fight or flight level response and in the place of intake, as a person who's been doing this for 20 years, and as a creative problem [00:11:00] solver, as an artist, I can trust that the back of my mind is gonna start to see some unique ways that I can use this new set of limitations, and I know that I will find a way to do something that is unique, that's different, or that just crushes this medium.
I will nail that 10-foot jumper. That's what you need me to take. I will nail it. So first, breathe and trust that I have solved problems like this many, many times, and something is gonna come to me. Now here's the if it doesn't, so I'm talking to the Steve 20 years ago who didn't know yet that he was gonna have to deal with Covid and teach acting over Zoom for two years, then I, I would want to believe that I would be smart enough to ask, In facing this kind of circumstances before, can you talk about some things that have been particularly successful in this kind of frame? What are some things that have worked and if to whatever degree you're comfortable sharing, are there any examples you can give of things that do not work in this unique setup?
So [00:12:00] again, just trying to gather info. If I sense that the person who has asked me to speak is willing to give me that kind of info, or if they would rather just say, here's what you're doing. Okay, great. See you at 2.
[00:12:11] Andrew Hibel: It's not like before the pandemic, everything went perfectly and you always had the venue you were promised.
[Correct.] But it almost seems like today the most reasonable expectation about change is to expect that there's going to be change [Yeah] and just being able to digest it and recalibrate. It's almost like when you're using navigation, you miss a turn. You need to be able to just say, oh, I just need to recalibrate my directions now to make sure to adjust for the turn that I missed.
And absolutely it's taken a lot of people, including myself, a long time to, I don't wanna say I've embraced the change, but understand to expect it.
[00:12:51] Kelly Cherwin: Expect the unexpected as they say, huh? [Yes. Yes, absolutely.]
[00:12:53] Kelly Cherwin: Well, Steve, I must say, when you were responding to Andy's question about being in between the Pope and Michelle, I [00:13:00] love that your first response was so positive and you're like, what a unique challenge.
Like I love that your mindset went positive. And also, when you're going through your response there, how you said, take a breath. I actually just found myself taking a breath when you said that to calm down. So, for our, our listeners, there's four of us doing this podcast right now. Our manager, Mike, is in here,
[Hi] our director. So, I guess I'm, I'm gonna speak for Andy. Two out of the four of us really love to present and get in front of audiences. And Steve you talked about defining who your audience is and the purpose and preparing obviously, which is huge, and rehearsing, what about the people who don't absolutely love to get up and present.
And kind of what Andy was saying before, what if, what if like the day before or minutes before the interview, they throw you a curve ball, how can you trick your mind into, ‘I got this’ and respond?
[00:13:58] Steve Snyder: Yeah, that's a great question, [00:14:00] Kelly. Breathing again is one, and this is also me organizing my thoughts. The best thing that I can say as a lead would be control what you can control. Absolutely control what you can control. So again, to harken back to the acting frame that I led off with. I'm gonna choose material to present that I love. I'm gonna choose material that I have rehearsed well, so that I can feel grounded and give myself the best chance possible to do well on the day, when inevitably there will be curve balls.
You're absolutely right, you can count on curve balls. So best to embrace 'em. And see, and this is, this is me still working on this as, uh, 20 plus year educator of what are the curve balls gonna be today? Right? Instead of hoping for no curve balls. Rather put my head in the place of what are they gonna be today and how am I gonna deal?
So that's one. Um, control what I can control. So, whether I'm thrilled about it or [00:15:00] not, if I'm not on fire or I, I hate presenting or whatever, I can still rehearse it really deeply. I can still have my presentation organized. I can still have it backed up in multiple places. I can have it on a thumb drive and my computer and saved bizarrely on email in my phone.
So I've got it in multiple places to protect against technology, trying to do things to me, cause it always does. Controlling what I can control in terms of my rehearsal and my materials these days. As I've continued to do this longer, I've started to be prepared with a backup. What is my backup if I am thrown a curve ball?
What curve balls have I been thrown in this life so far that I can an. Can I prep a plan B going in again, just control what I can control and give myself the best chance of an easy recovery.
[00:15:50] Kelly Cherwin: I love that, that that's great control, which you can control.
[00:15:54] Steve Snyder: As, as I do think more, more and more about this, [00:16:00] there are other things that we do in actor training that are all about applying what we know about the human neurosystem and about the way that we breathe and the ways that we respond. I already referenced the fight or flight response. Through my rehearsal, I can recognize if I'm a deep-thinking person at all, I can begin to recognize, oh gosh, as I talk about this, whereas I go to do this, my body tends to respond in this way.
Are there things that I can do to settle myself? And it's so simple, but breathing is one of the best ones. Can I give myself three simple breaths? And I even use the phrasing I allow in a full breath and I release. And that already felt better. So, I allow in a second one and my dear friend, Kora Franklin, who teaches West African dance here, has taught me that three is always the best.
So, I do that one more time, and by the time I've done that, I am breathing more deeply. There's more oxygen in my [00:17:00] brain, and I have given myself a real chance to, at the very least, calm myself down before I go in to do that thing that I have to do, that I'm anxious about. People have yoga practices, stretches, moves, shakeouts, things that they do to help settle a nervous system that's being overwhelmed.
[00:17:19] Kelly Cherwin: I admire that. I, we had a guest done several months ago who would say, can we pause? And she would take a second. And it was awesome. I could see her working through it, and then she came out with a very calm response. So, I'm trying to channel a little bit of that. So Steve's switching to your faculty hat.
Oftentimes a presentation is required from the faculty perspective. So, what do you think a hiring committee is looking for when a, a faculty member is interviewing and doing their presentation?
[00:17:46] Steve Snyder: Again, I can only speak from my experience as I've been doing this for 20 years and I've been a chair, associate chair, head of an area here. I've been on a ton of search committees and I have chaired many of them, so I have a [00:18:00] particular lived experience of this. So in my experience, it tends to be three things, expertise and the ability to do the job. That would be one. Two would be humanity. What's the humanity of this person? And then three, and this is kind of tied to two, but is one that I feel like you can control a little bit less, and that is, fit, to go back to the actorly frame of controlling what you can control.
I can absolutely control my level of expertise and I can absolutely control my ability to demonstrate that I can do this job. So again, with the woodshed analogy, if I go in the woodshed and I cut the wood, preparing, building a presentation that demonstrates real relationship, real experience with these ideas or this skillset, whatever it is, then I've controlled that one expertise and demonstrating that I can do this job.
And then as far as the second one, humanity, this is the quality of my presence. So, what have I [00:19:00] done in my own life? My own habits, daily practices? This one actually the first expertise and ability to do the job. If I've prepared that well, the quality of my presence is gonna be high if I know that I can trust my presentation, I, Steve, this is again, just speaking from the eye, my lived experience, I feel very relaxed because I know I've prepared and I'm excited about what I've got, or even if I hate presenting, but I know this stuff and I know that I will survive this presentation, that tends to help me relax. And so the quality of my presence tends to be higher.
I can control that. I can just through repetition for as many jobs as I've gotten, gigs that I've booked there are double and triple that that I didn't book. So I have lots of experience of going through the process and failing and then having to ask myself, what is the takeaway from that? Maybe there are some things that I blew that I could have prepared better, or that I could have researched more deeply about them [00:20:00] or that I discovered, and here's the one that's out of my control, I'm just not a fit here. This position wasn't for me. And that's okay. I'm not a fit with this right now, so I wish them joy. It seems like a really cool organization or university or program. But I can already see, as I look at their website, they already have one of me. They've got somebody who can do what I do and that person is not retiring or being promoted to something else so shoot, they brought me in cuz they were interested in me, but they already got one of me. So that fit, that's outta my control and back to the humanity. This is, again, something that is in your control. This is a, a unique thing that I've learned over the years through the actor frame, and that is, can I put myself in the place of not needing this job, even though I may need this job, right?
Can I get myself to the place of, I actually don't need this job. I, I have a job, or I've got another set of interviews lined up. There is a quality of desperation that is not on [00:21:00] me, cause we, we all know this, if we harken back to middle school and then on into high school and my college students have said, oh, Steve, it still happens in college.
And that is the, if there's somebody we really like and we just really want them to like us, that we just, we come around them and we try to, and we do too much. And that desperation, you can smell it and it is repellent. And so, we, human animals can smell that desperation coming off of each other. Oh, and it makes us cringe and back off a little bit.
So if I can just know that about us as human creatures and I can get myself to a heart and head posture of, I don't need this job. It'd be super cool if it worked out, but I don't need it. I show up better. I put less pressure on myself, my humor, my generosity of spirit, my flexibility, my resilience all go up. If I can get myself to the frame of I don't need this job, and if it's for me, it's for me.
And if it's not, that was outta my control anyway.
[00:21:59] Kelly Cherwin: [00:22:00] I wanted to talk about the topic of perfection and is there such a thing as perfection in a presentation, in an interview? So, if you do make a word fumble or there was like a technical mishap, I don't know what you think, but I don't think anyone's expecting us to be perfect, but they are kind of judging us, I guess, on our reaction to that.
So, what are your thoughts on that? If, if, uh, something goes wrong during the, the interview presentation?
[00:22:25] Steve Snyder: That's a great question, Kelly, because you can guarantee that it will. Right? I think in all of my interview years, I think I, I've had one presentation go exactly the way that I hoped and thought it might go every other one something has come up that invariably led to something better. Led to something more interesting and let the interview folks see me adjust on my feet and go, oh, look at this. This guy's flexible. He read what happened in the moment and adjusted. And that's such a massive part of teaching and communicating and you know, being a human in, in leadership and [00:23:00] education.
So, these are the things that I've been working on as a human in prep and dealing with stuff like this. So, one, the breathe, right? Just get the oxygen up there. First step, just breath. Second, I can't believe I'm about to quote Phil Dunphy from Modern Family, but I am. This will embarrass my youngest cause he is always like, oh daddy.
But Phil Dunphy says slow is fast. He says slow is fast. And he is totally correct that in the midst of a something going on, if I can look at it slowly or do the thing, fix the thing, adjust the thing, look for the thing, slowly chances are so much better that I'm gonna solve it the first time that I'll actually see what's wrong and I will solve it.
I'll get to deal with it. So Phil Dunphy, slow is fast. A part of that is can I bring humor and my humanity into it? And this actually happened to me on Saturday. We had, uh, Zoom audition. We're keeping two rounds of Zoom [00:24:00] auditions for our program each year cause it increases accessibility. We had folks from all over the country who normally would be spending a thousand dollars to come here to central PA, which is equally inaccessible to all parts of the state.
So, we have hung onto the Zoom auditions for two of our five dates, and I like to start with music to just warm the room and bring folks into an atmosphere that's upbeat, that's positive. And I had so many tabs up and my students loved to tease me about this. I had so many tabs up that I couldn't find where I had Stevie Wonder playing Sir Duke to make it stop.
And so, I said, friends, go ahead and laugh at the old man as he searches for the tab and I finally found it and happily was going on the whole time. So there was all kinds of joy there, but my goodness, it out of the gate something went wrong, and so I tried to just breathe slow is [00:25:00] fast, inject some humor, and then as soon as it was done, the presenter in me knew I have to nail this next several minutes and just be super on it and just hit every shot for at least two minutes so that these folks can see, I can trust this guy.
He is stacked up a dozen moments of trustworthiness now, and that little goofy thing didn't throw him. And very happily, once I got Stevie who I could listen to all day, to pause, I was able to nail a bunch of shots in a row, and then we were off to the races.
[00:25:28] Andrew Hibel: In those slowest fast moments, I would say it's a very close, maybe a first cousin of desperation.
If you are daring, you're frantically fumbling for a solution or you're becoming panicked in that moment, that doesn't really show that you can handle situations that go that way. Yeah. So, when you have one of those moments, it's actually, it's an opportunity to prove how you are under pressure. The phrase grace under pressure really does mean a lot.
People who kind of lose it and give that dozen of desperation and feel to that. That [00:26:00] actually makes you think twice about them. And yeah, you do have to reestablish some baseline level of competency after that or at least cut back on the tabs.
[00:26:09] Steve Snyder: Um, one of the two. Yes. I'll be doing that for this Saturday.
[00:26:16] Andrew Hibel: Maybe use two different browsers. Keep your music and, and, and bing or something.
[00:26:19] Steve Snyder: Um, that is awesome.
[00:26:21] Andrew Hibel: Uh, so I think that, that, that really, I, I think is, is really solid advice.
[00:26:29] Steve Snyder: Thanks for that, Andy.
[00:26:31] Andrew Hibel: We felt the best way to end this podcast would be what's the best way and a memorable way to end a presentation.
So why don't you take us out of the podcast. I'll just say a couple things before we do. If, if you have any questions for Steve or thoughts about this podcast, please feel free to email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com or tweet us at HigherEdJobs. But Steve, we, we've never let somebody else. Out of the podcast, um, and, uh, [00:27:00] thank our audience, but just looking for memorable ways, maybe some words of wisdom.
And then we'll let you, we'll let you be the one to close the podcast today and try to do so in a memorable way.
[00:27:09] Steve Snyder: That is awesome. I feel zero pressure from that, Andy, uh. That is awesome. I love it. It, it's been a delight to get to talk with the, the three of you and I wish that we could talk for like 17 hours with, with appropriate breaks and maybe food and things like that, but definitely, um, to end memorably.
The biggest things for me are as a storyteller for a living. I focus on what is the fullness of the journey? Have I gotten to a place where I have landed the plane somewhere very different from where we began? That's one. Or have I said, I'm gonna do this thing that seemed impossible at the beginning and the end is we did it. [00:28:00] Or have I said, we are gonna start here and then we come back to the place we began. But we see it very differently now. Any of those three ways, there's a journey. There's a story, there's story structure that is Afrocentric and the cyclical that is, is linear in the Western. So I've got a number of different story structure approaches that I can apply.
So, but that's a key. There's gotta be a felt journey, a felt story, so, is there in terms of just great story making, is there an image that I can land at the plane with? Whether that's, if I'm presenting and I've got media at my disposal, is there an image that's gonna crystallize that thing? Is there a phrase?
If there's no media and it's just me and my humanity, is there a phrase that comes out of me like a truth that is as true as my heart blood, that people will go, whoa, a human just said something very real. Can I leave them with that? If there is, we know that music cuts right through the analytical brain and gets to the heart is, is there something [00:29:00] that's musical or cinematic that is tied to it?
So is there something that that can create an emotional response to the thing that I've done? So again, it depends on who the audience is and what the point is of the thing. But the main thing is have I arrived somewhere different or back where we started and it's brand new. There's a new thing that I understand and now I am different from how we started and the people I have just spent this chunk of time in community with are different than how we started.
[00:29:29] Kelly Cherwin: Steve, that was awesome. I'm truly captivated by the way you speak, the story you tell. So thank you so much for being our guest.
[00:29:36] Steve Snyder: My great pleasure.
[00:29:38] Andrew Hibel: Thank you. you everyone who's listened, and we really hope that you got as much from this time with Steve that we did. Thank you. And we'll, we'll see you again on the HigherEdJobs Podcast.
[00:29:46] Steve Snyder: Thanks for listening.