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Christine Clapp is the founder of Spoken with Authority, a Washington, D.C.-based presentation skills consultancy that elevates the presence and expands the influence of professionals through coaching engagements and training programs. Connect with Christine Clapp Twitter LinkedIn Presenting at Work Spoken with Authority Victor Ahipene:Speaking nation, what’s happening? Uh, welcome to another episode of public speaking secrets here from covert studios. I’m your host Victor. I am looking forward to introducing you to something that I think will be very beneficial to develop now and then with the world and how it’s going to change in the new world that we’re going into I think is going to be really beneficial. So Christine, clap onto the shows today and she’s based out of Washington. She’s written a book called presenting at work and she is the founder of a company called speak spoken with authority. So little that being said, welcome to the show Christine. Christine Clapp: Thanks for having me. Victor Ahipene: One of those things that I think, you know, we’re obviously on a public speaking podcast, so um, a lot of people have that fear when it comes to public speaking. And then I think a lot of people just put out the BM minimum when it comes to obligatory public speaking, which I think the most often that that happens in day to day life is in the, in the workplace. And so it’s something that I always find really, really interesting because you can teach someone potentially how to, how to give a good keynote presentation. But when it comes to, you know, when you’ve got to insert graphs or information or those repeated presentations that you’ve got, it can be a whole whole different ball game. So how did you kind of get into, uh, I guess that that space, the business space and the presenting at work and, and, and all of that, and your journey? Christine Clapp: Yeah, thanks for asking. So my journey started back when I was a college student. I went to a small school in the State of Oregon. It is called Willamette University and it was one of just a couple of schools that had an undergraduate major in rhetoric. And that’s the study of persuasion. I was really interested in it, but it had a requirement for oral communication proficiency, which meant doing the debate team for a semester. And that terrified me. I was not a comfortable public speaker or a polished presenter. I really didn’t want to do it. But I decided I really love this idea of studying persuasion. I think it could be useful in a lot of different professional paths, so I’m just going to sign up for debate and see how it goes and if it’s a complete disaster and I don’t get oral communication proficiency, I’ll just switch to chemistry or another subject that I liked. So I did debate and have my first two debate tournaments. I won zero debates. I lost every single one. There wasn’t even someone who forfeited because they were running late. I just, I was terrible. I was the worst person on my debate team and even though I never actually read the fine print that you could get your proficiency by participating, you didn’t actually have to win any debates. I came back my sophomore year to debate because it was really, it was a frustrating experience. I knew that my opponents weren’t better, smarter, they were. We’re poised and polished and articulate and I knew that as an 18 year old kid, if I didn’t figure out how to do that, it would put you at a disadvantage no matter what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. My sophomore year, I came back, I ended up getting a really great debate partner who was a freshman who had debated in high school. He actually is the coauthor of presenting at work. The book that I wrote with Bjorn Stiliyan Southern and we debated and we had g