I tweeted recently that every speaker needs a 3-minute and a 20-minute version of her speech.  To that I would add that every speaker needs to know how to give a minute-long response, in answer to a question, for example, or for responding to the media. 

So how do you all of these well?  What are the pitfalls to avoid?  It can be surprisingly hard to say something interesting in a very short time, and to avoid running on at the mouth and saying too much.  What's the happy medium, and how do you think about it?

The minute speech is best handled as follows.  Decide what you're going to say, take a deep breath, and then give the headline.  "I don't think that mice should be allowed in the Vatican."  Then go on to give up to 3 supporting reasons, depending on your thinking and the time allowed.  Hygiene, worry about the destruction of precious manuscripts, and the eek factor during prayers.  Finally, finish off with a repetition of the headline:  "So that's why I think that mice should be banned from the Vatican."

When you've got more than 3 but less than 7 minutes, think in terms of problem-solution.  If you have a great story to begin the problem section, then do so, but don't allow it to take over the problem section entirely.  You need to spend half of your allotted time discussing the problem in as much detail as you can (which is not much).  Heretical mice are running amok throughout the Vatican.  This deplorable plague has led to illness, destruction of some of the Vatican's most precious artifacts, and the discomfort of many visitors and residents....About half way through your total time, switch to the solution and buttress that with as much logic and passion as you can muster.  I recommend beginning with an excommunication, followed by mice traps, poison, and the playing of Barry Manilow recordings in the basement....

That's really all there is to it.  Keep it simple.  If you want to conclude by describing the benefits of your solution, then go ahead, in a sentence or two.

Repetition and simplicity will help you keep your remarks organized and under control, and will help your listeners follow you.

The same advice holds for the 20-minute version.  You basically have to remove half of the detail that makes for a solid hour-long speech.  And watch your stories, because they will loom much larger in a 20-minute précis of your speech than in the full version.  You’ll need to shorten those too, without cutting the essential detail that enables your audience to make sense of the story. 

A good way to prepare a 20-minute speech is to create the logical ‘spine’ of your full speech – the step-by-step logic of the speech that explains the thought structure, shorn of the detail.  It should take the form of a series of declarative sentences.  Then, once you’ve  worked out the logic, add back in just enough detail to fill the allotted time. 

You'll want to have these versions of your presentation on hand, ready to go, for times when your full speech is too long.   If you're a professional speaker, it's part of the pro's arsenal to be ready to give the shorter versions in order to be ready for any occasion. 

The oldest chestnut in public speaking advice is to “tell ‘em what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell ‘em what you said.”  The idea is that repetition will hammer things home to your audience and help them remember.

Unfortunately, that’s bad advice today for a number of reasons.  First of all, the only thing that your audience will get when you go at them with a hammer is a headache.  Audiences these days are extremely sensitive to having their time wasted, and they’re easily distracted.  So when you start with that agenda slide (tell ‘em what you’re going to say) their attentions immediately wander, they pick up their phones, and you’ve lost ‘em.

Instead, launch right in with a framing story or an idea that will grab their attention and at the same time tell them why they’re there.  That’s what audiences want to have answered right away – not what you’re going to say, but why they’re there. 

After that, the art of public speaking is the art of deciding what NOT to say.  The urge, when you combine expertise, adrenaline and an audience, is to tell that audience everything you know.  Unfortunately, long after the audience's enthusiasm has waned, because they're overloaded with information, you'll still be going strong -- because you love the subject! 

So you need to decide what the one vital idea is that you want to get across.  And one more thing:  your emotional attitude toward that idea. 

A great presentation is composed of two things:  one interesting idea and the speaker's emotional attitude toward that idea.  It's that simple.  Don't lard up your speech with caveats, asides, extras, nuances, added thoughts, one more thing, or anything else.  Stick to your well-honed subject and make your attitude clear and your audience will love you. 

Even more important, they'll understand you.  And remember what you say. 

A speaker asks a lot of an audience.  Understanding, enthusiasm, support -- and inactivity.  Speakers expect audiences to be passive most of the time. 

That's after all what speakers are paid for -- to inform and entertain the audience.  Not the other way around.  And the higher the price, the more entertaining the speaker better be.  But that means that most speakers figure that they should be doing the majority of the work. 

That's unfortunate, because if a speaker does a good job, pouring out lots of energy into an appreciative crowd, the audience is soon ready to give that energy back. 

And it wants to give that energy back in the form of -- action.  Happy audiences want to do something, to show their involvement, their appreciation, their connection to the speaker.  (Unhappy audiences want to do something else:  leave.) 

A wise speaker gives the audience an opportunity to express that collective energy in the form of action. 

So think of something that you can get audiences to do at the end of the speech (if not before), and they will thank you with higher ratings, better response, and a more lasting connection with you.  Look for some sort of action step for the audience to take that is relevant to your talk and closes your speech with dynamism. 

By “action step,” I don’t mean, “give them a bogus assignment to do at some future date.”  That’s what politicians do:  Let us work together to reduce this and increase that for the greater glory of this country!  Everyone knows that it’s just feel-good rhetoric.  No, what I mean is that you get the audience to do something small and achievable right there in the room – that relates to the overall point of the talk. 

I'll give you one example.  We helped a speaker design a talk to a large audience on a religious and charitable theme.  For the action step at the end, the speaker asked everyone in the audience to reach into their pockets and purses, grab all the loose change they could, and, on the count of 3, throw it on the floor of the meeting hall. 

He then sent 'runners' around to pick it all up.  The speech raised $12,000 for AIDS relief in 5 minutes.  That's an action step.   That’s the best way to end a presentation.  

You've been asked to give a speech. 

Perhaps you're expert in some topic, or you've headed up some organization, or you've done something wonderful recently, or you’ve made the news.  You've got an occasion, an audience, and an opportunity. 

How do you decide what to say?  How do you pick a topic and narrow it down?

Here's where it gets ironic.  You've been called upon because of something you possess, but what audiences really want to hear about is -- wait for it -- themselves. 

If you don't spend a third to a half of the speech talking about the audience's problems, your best efforts will fall flat.

The reason is that audiences show up to a presentation wondering why -- why is this important, why should I listen, why is this relevant to me?  If you answer that question successfully, they'll start wondering how -- how do I apply your insights, how do I act upon what you're saying, how do I take this experience and make it my own?

So, here's the way to think about it.  What is the problem the audience has for which your information or experience or wisdom is the solution?  If you begin by talking about that problem, you will take your audience on a journey, from why to how.  And they will trust you completely.  And they will love your speech. 

Once you've got that problem figured out, you're practically home free.  All that’s left to do is to research the audience, very, very thoroughly.  Find out who they are, what they’re thinking about, what their hopes and fear are, and everything else you can about them.   

Spend the first part of the speech talking about their problem, and the second part talking about your now relevant solution or expertise, and you'll be a hit every time. 

There are lots of subtleties, and they can be important, but that's the main idea.  Take your audience on a journey from why to how.  Both you and the audience will be much happier for it. 

A few years back I did a version of these.  Today, I was inspired to update them. 

 

I.  Thou shall speak authentically, from the heart.

 

II.  Thou shall focus on the audience.

 

III. Thou shall not use Power Point as speaker notes.

 

IV.  Thou shall not begin thy speech with a joke*. 

 

V.  Thou shall speak with all appropriate passion, and not be boring.

 

VI.  Thou shall tell stories and not kill thine audience with endless data.

 

VII.  Thou shall not make a sales pitch for thy company or thy services.

 

VIII.  Thou shall not begin with talk of thyself.

 

IX.  Thou shall not speak through thy nose, or at the floor, or while advancing thy slides.   

 

X.  Thou shall not exceed thine allotted time.

 

 

(*unless thou is really, really funny.)

 

When you stand up to speak in front of others, you're risking a great deal.  You can fail to engage the crowd, you can make a fool of yourself, you can attempt too little or too much and miss the mark.  And while the risk is almost always greater in your own mind that it is in reality, it is a real risk nonetheless.

Knowledge of that risk is what causes people to play it safe when they’re preparing their presentations.  Ironically, that’s the most dangerous tack to take.  Playing safe means you go for the dull rather than the emotional, the read rather than the conversational, and the preachy rather than the interactive.  All of those choices feel safer and are in fact liable to produce a much worse presentation.  They are choices that close you off to your potential audiences rather than opening you up to them. 

Then, when you get up to speak, you’re thinking to yourself, "Why did I agree to do this?  It could all go horribly wrong!  People are going to think I'm an idiot!" or something along those lines.

The result of that emotional self-talk is a series of behaviors that, alas, tends to increase the likelihood that precisely the feared result will occur.  People who fear failure in speaking are defensive, and that defensiveness shows up in a variety of ways, all bad. 

They may pace nervously -- the familiar 'happy feet' of some speakers.  They may clutch and un-clutch their hands in front of their stomachs.  They may cross their arms, hide their hands behind their backs, or keep their arms firmly fixed to their sides, only waving their forearms, in a characteristic gesture of many business speakers that I call the 'Penguin flap'. 

All of these gestures, and others besides, signal nervousness to the audience.  But more than that, they signal that the speaker is trying to protect himself.  The speaker, in fact, is shutting off part of herself from the audience. 

The result is that the audience begins to feel the same way.  That’s because we have these neurons in our brain called mirror neurons that copy the emotions of the people around us.  When we’re focused on a speaker, and that speaker is behaving as if it’s important to protect himself, we feel danger and want to protect ourselves too. 

The result?  Everyone closes down when it’s most important to be open. 

And it gets worse.  If the audience sense that the speaker is holding back, it will not connect with the speaker – in fact, it will fail to trust him (or her).  The work of shutting down and closing off will wrap up with everyone the opposite of where they should be. 

That's not of course what the speaker intends, but that's the tough luck of public speaking. 

If you're preparing a presentation, then, go for openness. Risk big, rather than playing it safe.  Then, when you’re actually delivering, try to begin right away avoiding self-protection.  Get over yourself and your nerves.  Put your focus on the audience.  Be open to the audience.  If you can manage that, they will carry you and give you back far more energy that you put out. 

The irony is that the best way to protect yourself in public speaking is to give up any thought of self-protection at all. 

This is the fifth and final blog in a series about storytelling – 5 in 5 days.  Everyone seems to get it that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all.  But we do remember stories.  That’s because they are how our brains work.  For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite.  We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats.  Our brains are constructed that way.  

Want to Tell a Memorable Story? Allow your Characters to Change.

At the heart of a great story is a hero that changes, that learns, that suffers, that grows, that changes.  We love ‘coming of age’ stories for that reason, and of course love stories not just because there’s a ‘happily ever after’ but also because the hero or heroine has learned something, or grown in some way, and accepted a new reality in order to win the person of his or her dreams. 

Stories about second chances, about comebacks, about sadder-but-wiser people – all of these compel our interest.  Allowing your characters (or your company or your idea or your product) to change is hard because your instinct (and the advice of your legal department) is to protect your baby and keep it the same.  But change wins us over.  It’s so much a part of human experience, that to keep it out of your stories is to restrict them unnaturally and to deny them life. 

Change is hard, in life and in stories, but it’s essential. 

This is the fourth blog in a series about storytelling – 5 in 5 days.  Everyone seems to get it that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all.  But we do remember stories.  That’s because they are how our brains work.  For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite.  We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats.  Our brains are constructed that way.  

Great Stories Let their Audiences in on the Secret Before their Characters Know

This idea is a tough one for many storytellers to swallow.  Instinctively, we want to surprise our audiences with startling revelations, to keep their interest and to impress them with our storytelling prowess.  But in fact, there’s nothing more delicious for a reader, a moviegoer, or a listener than to be in on the secret.  This concept works in a couple of ways. 

First, as the director Alfred Hitchcock realized, there are 2 ways to reveal a scene to the audience.  Let’s say two people are talking in a café, about nothing much.  In fact, you risk audience boredom unless the conversation is very, very fascinating.  After a while, a bomb goes off.  You give the audience a moment of shock and surprise.  Why did that happen?  Then, the scene moves on.  If, instead, you let the audience know beforehand that a bomb is going to go off at some point in the scene, suddenly that conversation about nothing much is exciting, suspenseful, poignant, and fascinating.  When the bomb goes off, there’s an awful confirmation.  The bomb did go off!  Much more compelling.  The audience is still shocked, but it’s not surprised.  And it’s had 10 minutes of compelling moviemaking instead of 10 seconds.  The difference is dramatic tension.  Too many storytellers want to surprise their audiences.  

Second, there’s a deeper kind of recognition.  In the third segment of the first Star Wars saga, we learn that Darth Vader is Luke’s father.  Only the dimmest members of the audience are both surprised and shocked.   We’ve had many hints leading up to the moment that let us in on the secret.  It’s still a shock when the revelation comes to Luke, but we’re not surprised.  We’re in on the secret, and we get to watch with fascination how Luke responds.

Let your audience in on your secrets.  You’ll create much better stories as a result.  

This is the third blog in a series about storytelling – 5 in 5 days.  Everyone seems to get it that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all.  But we do remember stories.  That’s because they are how our brains work.  For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite.  We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats.  Our brains are constructed that way.  

Conflict Is at the Heart of Good Storytelling.

Without conflict, you don’t have a story.   But it’s not just any conflict.  It’s a struggle between a hero and a villain, to put it as simply as possible.  The conflict can be as big as World War III or as small as who will win the flower show.  The hero can be flawed, and the villain can – and should – have his good points.  But it’s all about the struggle between the protagonist and antagonist.  Without that, you have an anecdote:  We were in New York City.  We spotted Stanley Tucci coming out of a drugstore.  We asked for his autograph.  He obliged.  That’s a fine celebrity-spotting anecdote, but it’s not a story. 

And there’s more.  For a story to be a good one, you have to put the hero in jeopardy.  That turns out to be surprisingly hard for most people – and organizations – to do, because they don’t like to admit weakness, or uncertainty, or anything remotely associated with flaws.  And yet, it’s how our hero responds to jeopardy that makes a story interesting, and great.  In the recent enormously popular series of books, The Hunger Games (soon, as they say, to be a major motion picture), the heart – and strength – of that trilogy is that the heroine is in terrible jeopardy for most of the three books.   We get to see how Kat struggles, fails, and deals with danger and tragedy, and her own flaws, and we’re mesmerized. 

In the business world, telling good stories is difficult because you have to get past the unwillingness of the organization to contemplate struggle, failing, and flaws.  The legal department doesn’t want to go there.  The marketing department doesn’t want to go there.   But the same rules apply.  No conflict, no struggle, no jeopardy – no story.  

This is the second blog in a series about storytelling – 5 in 5 days.  Everyone seems to get it that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all.  But we do remember stories.  That’s because they are how our brains work.  For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite.  We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats.  Our brains are constructed that way.  

Great Stories Begin with a Meeting or a Journey.

Great stories are all about disruptions to the status quo.  The classic ways that happens are either meeting someone new – Romeo and Juliet – or going on a journey – The Odyssey – or a combination of both – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.   For these approaches to work, we need to establish at the beginning of the story a sense of what the status quo is.  Harry is stuck in a miserable existence with the Dursley family, and we need to experience that for a few pages so that we can appreciate the contrast with the excitement and wonder of the new friends (and enemies) he makes and his trip to Hogwarts. 

If your story doesn’t begin with a meeting or a journey, then you need to look at it carefully to see if it has the necessary interest and contrast.  Is there a status quo to disrupt?  Has something new come along?  Have things always been done in a certain way in your industry until a new product, market entrant, or idea comes along to disrupt it?  Sounds like the beginning of a story to me. 

Next time:  the ugly truth about conflict. 

I’m going to do a series of quick blogs about storytelling – 5 in 5 days.  Everyone seems to get these days that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all.  But we do remember stories. 

They’re even more important than that.  They are how our brains work.  For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite.  We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats.  Our brains are constructed that way.  So storytelling is essential if you want to use the brain the way it's meant to be used.      We remember the emotional, the particular, and the violent especially. 

OK.  Let’s start with what storytelling is not.  Let’s clear away the detritus and get to the core.  5 blogs, 5 days, 5 ideas on storytelling. 

Storytelling is not about beginnings, middles, and ends.

My favorite wrong cliché about storytelling is the oft-cited, “it has a beginning, middle, and an end.”  Well, yes.  But so do pencils, as my good friend from the IBM learning world, Peter Orton, is fond of saying.  As a definition, this one is not specific enough to be helpful.  Airplane flights, dentist appointments, and pencils all have beginnings, middles, and ends, but they are not stories.  They might become the fodder for stories, but stories in themselves they are not. 

Forget this one.  It’s not helpful.  Tomorrow, what storytelling is. 

Speakers do stupid things, like any other group of people.  The problem is that they subject whole audiences to boredom and, yes, pain as a result.  So it’s not only the speakers themselves who suffer.  In an effort to mitigate the suffering, here are 5 of the most egregious stupid speaker moves.  If you know someone who perpetrates these, tell them!  Stop them!  You’ll be doing the windowless meeting room world a huge favor. 

1.  You Can’t Read This, But…..

As regular readers of this blog will know, one of my particular pet peeves is badly done Power Point.  Well, the worst offense is all too common.  The speaker throws up a slide (I choose the phrase deliberately) and it contains a dozen lines of text, or a chart that has dozens of boxes, labels, and tiny data points.  Then the speaker says, “You can’t read this, but what it’s saying is…..”  If you know we can’t read it, why are you showing it to us?

2.  ‘Guess What’s In My Head’ Questions

There’s a truism in the legal world that you should never ask a witness a question to which you don’t know the answer.  I’m sure that’s good advice, but when you’re working with audiences, you should never ask a class of questions that involve haranguing the audience about things that you know better than they do.  “Why isn’t it a good idea to choose the red ones over the green ones?”  Questions of that sort are “gotcha” questions and they kill audience enthusiasm and participation.  Instead, ask open-ended questions about the audience’s experience.  “Which have you found work better in your life, the red ones or the green ones?”

3.  ‘It’s All About Me’ Introductions 

I have seen an astonishing number of speeches start with the speaker going into a 5 – 10 (15!) minute description of himself and his company.  That’s not only boring, it’s rude.  It’s bad enough in a conversation when someone you’ve just met insists on talking only about himself, but in front of an audience the offense is compounded because the audience has no escape options.  If you’re not going to be introduced by someone else, then begin the talk with a brief frame for why the topic is important to the audience.  Then, once you’ve established what’s in it for them, spend one or two minutes – no more – telling the audience very briefly why you’re passionate about the subject. 

4.  Sales Pitches Disguised as Presentations  

I was at a conference recently where one of my competitors was presenting the afternoon before I had the keynote address.  Naturally, I attended his talk, curious as to what he would talk about, and anxious not to repeat advice if he had already given it.  I was appalled to discover that all he talked about was advertising his business and what clients would get out of working with him.  “This is how our patented method for improving your company’s communications works….”  Once again, this is a rude and thoughtless way to proceed with a captive audience. 

5.  Not Waiting for the Audience

How many times have you sat in an audience and watched a speaker ask a question, only to answer it himself after waiting a nanosecond or two for a response.  Getting none, the speaker plows ahead, creating a perfect feedback loop that entirely eliminates the need for the audience.  Why ask questions if you’re not interested in what the audience thinks?  People often ask me how long they should wait, and the answer is 6 full seconds.  If you count 6 seconds out in your head, by the time you get to the end of that seemingly interminable sequence, someone will speak.  Promise.  Don’t answer your own questions.  You’re just telling the audience it doesn’t need to be there. 

That’s my list for today.  I confess to having committed one or two of these myself, partly why I know them so well.  What stupid speaker tricks have you, ahem, witnessed?  Friends don't let friends make these mistakes!   

For my blog today, I'm pointing to a podcast I did with digital marketing guru Mitch Joel.  He's always interesting to talk to -- you can check out the results here.  Enjoy!

What are the 5 most important quick ideas for improving your public speaking?  I’m going to go for broke this week and blog on 5 quick takes in 5 days.  Put them together and you should have a good ‘cheat sheet’ for fulfilling your resolution to improve your public speaking in 2012. 

3.  Don’t start with Power Point.   Most people create a presentation by sifting through the collection of slides they’ve accumulated – and maybe a few from Ed down the hall – and grabbing the ones that seem vaguely relevant to the talk.  Then, a little shuffling around, and maybe a few new slides, and you’re good to go, right?

Wrong.  That almost guarantees that your talk will be a collection of slides, weakly linked together, rather than a strong story, a narrative that makes sense for your audience and engages them for the full 45 minutes.  The collection of slides may make sense to you, because you already know the territory, but will it to the audience, who is hearing the talk for the first time?  Unlikely.

Instead, think of a talk as a series of steps you take the audience on, beginning by framing the idea, then delving into the problem, then the solution, then closing with the action that you want the newly convinced audience to take.  Figure out what you want to say for each of those 4 steps, and then – and only then – decide if a slide will help illustrate each step.   That's an audience-focused speech.  It takes a little more work than shuffling slides, but your audience's response will make it worthwhile.   

What are the 5 most important quick ideas for improving your public speaking?  I’m going to go for broke this week and blog on 5 quick takes for fast quality enhancement in 5 days.  Put them together and you should have a good ‘cheat sheet’ for fulfilling your resolution to improve your public speaking in 2012. 

1.  Think of your job as persuading the audience.   Most people think of speaking as dumping information on the audience.  And there are lots of schemata that tell you some speeches are persuasive, some are informational, some are ceremonial, and so on.  But it’s simply better to figure out what it is that you want the audience to do differently as a result of your presentation, and then persuade them of that. 

Here’s how you do it.  Begin by talking about the problem the audience has for which your information is the solution.  Then give them your information.  If you’ve presented the problem well, your speech will be persuasive.   It’s that simple.  And your audience will be much happier, because you’ve presented your information in a way that both makes sense to them and is interesting to them.  If all speeches were persuasive, the speaking world would be a much better place for audiences.   

How do you take an ordinary presentation about 3Q profits or the S-17 update and turn it into a powerful story? And why would you want to go to that effort; is it worth it?

Let’s deal with the second question first. Our minds remember stories, especially stories with emotions attached, much better than they remember lists, or even ideas. Our brains are constructed that way; something happens to us, and it hurts, or feels good, or moves us, or makes us deliriously happy, and so we remember it. Events stick. The emotions associated with them make them stick. Facts, lists, ideas, theories, and so on do not.

So, yes, it’s worth it to turn a presentation into a story, because you’ll greatly increase the chances that people remember what you say. A CEO who gives us a rational argument for increasing profits, backed up with all sorts of numbers, is liable to put us to sleep. He certainly is not likely to get us to put extra effort into the workday to make those profits happen. If, on the other hand, he links our efforts (somehow) to finding the Holy Grail, or beating the Evil Empire, or winning one for the Gipper, we're far more likely to remember – and act – upon what he's saying.

The question is, how do you do it? Once you understand the basics of powerful stories, you’ll get how to transform your presentation into one. Here’s how it works:  http://bit.ly/tRD7QN. 

Can a speaker inspire an audience with a negative message?  The short answer is ‘no’, but of course you’re thinking about politicians – just to take a particularly blatant example – who appear to inspire their followers with all sorts of negative messages, so you’re thinking, ‘certainly a speaker can!’  But you would be wrong.   

Why?  The answer is important, because it tells us something about how to construct a good speech.  If you give us a problem, we want to solve it.  That’s the way our minds work.  Problem-solution.  Our minds easily follow the logic of that structure, which is why it makes such a good one for many speeches. 

Now, there are two kinds of problems audiences can respond to – new problems, or problems they already know they have.  If we know we have a problem already, we want to hear that you (as a speaker-leader) understand it.  If you do that much, we’ll grant you our credibility – we’ll decide you know what you’re talking about.  If you show us how to solve the problem, we’ll trust you.  Think of the doctor that successfully diagnoses a condition – that earns our credibility.  But when that same doctor leads us to health, we trust him or her.  That’s the deeper connection. 

If it’s a new problem – one we don’t fully understand, or haven’t articulated well, then we grant huge respect to the speaker who can do that for us.  A real expert, we think. 

But if the speaker can’t offer a solution, we eventually turn off.  And that’s why you can’t inspire with a (solely) negative message.  All those politicians offer solutions with their trenchant analysis of current woes.  You may not like the solutions.  In that case, you won’t trust the candidate, even if you grant, grudgingly, credibility because you at least partially buy into the analysis of the problem.  But most of those politicians find a group for whom their solutions make sense.  Hence the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and so on.  For some, it’s tax breaks.  For others, it’s revenue enhancements. 

The same holds true for business speakers, and speakers in other walks of life.  A clear, compelling analysis of a problem will get you credibility.  But unless you have an equally compelling solution, you won’t inspire trust, and you won’t galvanize your followers. 

For my blog today, I'm linking to a new ebook I've just published on Amazon and iTunes:  How to Give a Great Presentation.  Most presenters start with their slides; I explain why that's backwards and how to do it right.  It's a quick read for less than a small cup of coffee, and it just might revolutionize the way you think about preparing a presentation.  Enjoy!

Too many people structure their presentations by pulling together slides and then assembling them like a deck of cards, in what seems like an OK order.  That usually means that no one except the presenter can divine where the speech is headed. 

That’s a bad idea. 

At the heart of a successful presentation is a clear structure.  Which one should you use?  The best structure for what you’re trying to do depends on the nature of your talk.  Following are five possible situations in the organizational world for which you might be called upon to present; pick the one that best suits your actual situation.   

1.  You might be called upon to report progress.  In that case, use the following structure:

1.  Describe the issue or assignment, including why it’s important
2.  Describe the critical outstanding problems
3.  Prioritize them, and describe how they’re being addressed
4.  Describe successes to date – positive progress made
5.  Close with action steps

2.  You might be called upon to recommend a strategy.  For that situation, here’s a good structure:

1.  Define the objective
2.  Describe the current conditions
3.  Describe the desired state
4.  List the possible strategies, with pros and cons of each
5.  Identify best one, describe next steps

3.  You might be called upon to persuade your audience of the excellence of a particular product, service, or idea – a sales talk.  Here’s how to organize that one: 

1. Frame the need that the product, service, or idea addresses
2. Describe the need in more detail
3. Describe the ways in which your solution addresses the need
4. Describe the benefits of buying in to your solution
5. Get agreement on a next step

4.  You might be called upon to choose among several alternatives.  Here’s the best way to present:

1.  Frame the situation
2.  Describe the criteria for success and prioritize them
3.  Describe alternatives
4.  Compare to the criteria and eliminate alternatives that don’t meet criteria
5.  Recommend best remaining alternative

5.  You might be called upon to teach a procedure or a skill.  In that case, proceed as follows:

1.  Frame the skill in terms of its importance to the audience
2.  Explain the skill or procedural steps involved
3.  Get the audience to try some aspect of the skill or procedure
4.  Review and summarize, including anything the audience did not try
5.  Describe what the audience can do on its own to acquire the skill or procedure
 

I ran across this list of the 50 most inspiring movie speeches (warning: language and mature themes) and it inspired me to think about what makes a great movie speech – and to figure out the lessons for great speechmaking in general.  So here, in time for the holiday weekend, are my 5 lessons for creating similar inspirational moments.  

1.  The stakes must be high. 

Many of these speeches come before a battle where the lives of the tribe, the country, or the species are at stake.  To inspire people, pick your moment.  Life and death is best; life and death of your organization is next best.  It’s hard to inspire people about 3Q earnings unless you’re on the brink. 

2. What’s at stake must be clear. 

Inspirational speeches don’t thrive on the nuances of morality or human behavior.  Rather, they focus on clear issues of right and wrong, competition – us v. them – and winning or losing.  When you want to inspire, go for the black and white. 

3.  The inspirational speech must be short. 

The longest of the speeches here is 8 minutes.  Most are 2 – 4 minutes.  It’s difficult to sustain the fever pitch for very long.  So, if you’re giving a longer speech, save the inspiration for the end.  That’s all anyone will remember anyway. 

4.  The inspirational speech must be emotional. 

This one should be obvious – doesn’t inspiration = emotion? – but especially in the business world, clients tell me all the time that they’re uncomfortable with emotion.  They don’t want to “go there.”  If you want to inspire, you have to tug at the emotions.  It can’t be done any other way.  Figure out what the emotional ride is that you want to take your audience on and commit to it.  Fully.  That's what the speech is about. 

5.  Finally, it helps to have a soundtrack.   

Robin Williams can deliver heartfelt emotion without music, as he does in Good Will Hunting, but most of the other clips have a stirring musical soundtrack underneath the actor’s lines.  Music takes a shortcut to our emotions and activates them faster and more reliably than words.  So, at the very least, add some walk-in music to your speeches. 

I often get asked about injecting humor in speeches, and that other question, which might be summarized as “how blue can I go?” 

Let’s take humor first.  The clichéd advice is to begin your talk with a joke, ‘just to put the audience at its ease’.  That’s bulls**t.  Beginning with a joke may or may not induce a laugh from the audience, but it won’t put the audience at its ease.  The audience is already a whole lot easier than the speaker will ever be.  The real reason speakers tell jokes to start is to put themselves at ease.  If you’re getting a laugh in Minute 2, you’re going to think, ‘they love me already!’ 

Bad idea.  First of all, because you're typically full of adrenaline, especially at the beginning of a speech, there’s a danger that your mouth will move faster than the audience’s ears.  And if the joke falls flat, then everyone feels bad, and you’ve blown the opening.  Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself.  Begin with a story, or a question that brings the audience in, or a fascinating fact. 

Of course, humor is its own defense.  If people laugh, that’s a good thing, right?  True as far as it goes.  But it doesn’t go very far.  I’ve heard many stories of speakers that told jokes the audience laughed at – and then had to deal with the complaints from the meeting planner because some person or persons in the audience was offended. 

Humor is topical, personal, aggressive, local and in your face.  That makes it inherently risky.  If the humor is funny, it’s usually at someone’s expense, and that means you’re likely to offend someone.  If the humor isn’t funny, you look stupid.  My preference is to allow your wit to play with the content in (appropriately) funny ways, rather than telling set jokes. 

The bottom line?  Know your audience.  Everyone loves to laugh – and we need laughs these days as much or more than ever – but watch out for the few that love to be offended, and to make a case out of it. 

Humor doesn’t travel well, so if you’re determined to use jokes, then do your research in advance, and make sure that your great line about rednecks will play as well in Iowa as it does in NYC.  And forget about taking a joke across country boundaries.  Humor is virtually incomprehensible from one country to another.  Even the US and the UK, the two countries I know best, laugh at very different things.   

On to sex!  Here there’s very little upside, and plenty of career-limiting downsides, to offending an audience with sexual references.  Of course, you have to judge your audience.  A church group and a squad of Marines in Afghanistan will have different attitudes toward and tolerances of blue comments.  But you also don’t want to get a reputation for making comments that might be offensive to a percentage of your potential audiences, and you don’t want sexual innuendo to get back to other audiences even if your comments were safe in front of a particular group. 

My advice?  Don’t tell an audience anything that you would blush to say to your mother, or you would mind reading on the front page of the New York Times.  Keep it clean.  Squeaky clean. 

The definition of clean varies from region to region and country to country.  Once again, the cardinal rule is Know Your Audience. 

What the people who hire speakers look for can be summarized in one word:  consistency.  They don’t want to be surprised, because in the speaking business, almost all surprises are bad ones.  If you want to be a working speaker, have that word – consistency – tattooed somewhere you can see it, and never forget it.  That’s your job.  So ask yourself, is a chuckle, or a leer, in one moment for one audience worth my reputation? 

What has been your experience?  Has humor paid off for you?  Where do you draw the blue line?  

This is the 4th podcast in my series based on Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  In this podcast I discuss open content -- the rhetorical rules for an open communication.  In looking at these essential conditions for successful communication, I discuss why the debt limit talks are failing as currently undertaken.  The podcast is just under 6 minutes - enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 4

 

 

In an era when everyone feels overwhelmed with information and many think that their attention is the most precious gift they can offer someone, clarity of speech and writing is essential.  If you’re going to ask a friend, a colleague, or an audience to pay attention to you, you need to have your thoughts in order.  Following are 5 simple but powerful ideas for improving your clarity in both areas.  

1.  In writing, start with the known and move to the unknown.   In writing, you want to begin with something that your audience knows and agrees with you upon, by and large – call it a situation.  Associated Widgets has had many years of uninterrupted growth.  That will get your audience nodding its head.  Then, you want to hit them with the news, your reason for writing – the complication:  But these last two quarters have seen tough competition from Global Undercutters.  Then ask the question that is the purpose of your communiqué:  What can we do to respond to this incursion?  And then you’re set up to answer the question in the body of your memo, or proposal, or whatever:  I’m proposing a new kind of widget, priced at half the competition’s price, to grab market share back.  The rest of the proposal will describe this widget.  And it can do so in a series of sub-heads answering the inevitable questions about cost, design, manufacturing, and so on, each of them following the same structure of situation – complication – question – answer. 

2.  In both speaking and writing, get the bad news out of the way first.  We’ve all made the classic mistake of pulling our punches – saving the bad news for last – because we’re reluctant to hurt someone’s feelings, or distress people unduly.  But if you hold out on people, they’re going to feel sandbagged.  Don’t do it.  Always get the bad news (when you have some to deliver) out of the way first. 

3.  In speaking, begin by answering the question ‘why’.   Audiences come into speeches asking why – why am I here, why does this matter, why should I pay attention?  If you answer that question quickly, in the first 3 minutes of the presentation, you’ll avoid a host of troubles and give your audience a reason to rejoice.   You don’t answer that ‘why’ question in detail, just at a high level to orient everyone.  Today, I’m going to talk to you about how we as a company can re-launch ourselves, take on Global Undercutters, and win our market share back.   

4.  In speaking, talk first about the problem, then the solution.  The Ancient Greeks figured this one out; this format has worked for persuasive speeches for 2500 years.  Don’t mess with it.  Ask yourself, what is the problem that the audience has for which my information is the solution?  Then talk about that problem first (after you orient the audience at a high level – see #3).  Follow it with the solution.  You want to spend roughly the same amount of time on each.  So, if you’ve got 30 minutes, spend a minute or two orienting the audience, then 10 minutes on the problem, 10 on the solution, and that leaves about 8 minutes for Q and A.  Done. 

5.  If speaking off the cuff, give a headline, support it, and repeat the headline.  If you have to give extemporaneous remarks, or if you find yourself in the middle of Q and A, then give yourself a few long seconds to come up with a point of view.  State it.  Then give some reasons – 3 is a good number – for why your point of view is the right one.  That’s the proof.  Then restate your POV in a concluding headline.  I believe that Associated Widgets is well-positioned to take back the market share we’ve recently lost to Global Undercutters.  That’s because, 1…..2……3…… And that’s why I’m so confident that we will win in the battle with GU.  

If you follow these 5 simple rules, you’ll find yourself speaking and writing with clarity and persuasiveness. 

For more information, see my blog: http://publicwords.typepad.com/nickmorgan/.  For further reading, check out The Pyramid Principle, by Barbara Minto; Style:  Toward Clarity and Grace, by Joseph M. Williams; and Revising Prose, by Richard A. Lanham. 

I’ve blogged often about the abuse of Power Point and other slide software programs – using them as speaker notes, and making them more about words than images.  And of course, the over-use and over-dependence on software instead of just connecting with your audience, person to person.

But there’s a further problem with the software, one that’s even more insidious and destructive to good presentations.  Because slides are created one at a time, they encourage people to think in terms of vertical slices rather than horizontal storytelling.  As such, they promote an ADD approach to presentations – and thinking in general, since so much of organizational life and intellectual capital is captured in slide decks rather than in documents. 

It’s hard to tell a good story with a slide – or a series of slides.  And stories are what we remember – because stories naturally fit our brains.  We remember good, emotional stories especially easily.  Data is something that we forget just as easily. 

That storytelling power is undercut by Power Point deck building.  You create a slide by putting data (or words) on it.  Perhaps you find a slide from a co-worker that has a great chart on it.  You put the two together.  And then you repeat the process until you have enough slides to fill the time allotted.  What you now have is a data set, or a set of boxes with words in them -- both hard to deliver in a presentation in an interesting way, and harder still to remember.  Your Power Point slide creation technique is therefore ensuring that your presentation will be forgettable and boring. 

So don’t start with Power Point at all.  Tell your story first, so that you can be sure you have one.  Tell it in a word doc, or a storyboard, or scratch it with a quill pen on vellum, but whatever you do, create a story first.  Make sure it flows horizontally.  Then, add some illustrations with a slide program if your story calls for illustrations.  Don’t start with Power Point – it will only hurt your storytelling and therefore your presentation. 

The bad news:  there are thousands of presentations every day, everywhere around the world.  Most of them use Power Point, badly, as speaker notes, with more words or numbers on each slide than anyone can read. 

The results are predictably boring – no, excruciating  -- for their hapless audiences.  That’s human misery on a massive scale. 

The good news:  in an effort to make the world a better place, here are 10 things to do instead of Power Point.  Ways to make your points without the sleep-apnea-inducing effects of boring slides.  Ways to pep up your presentations without much additional effort.  Your audiences will thank me.

1.  Use props.  For most workers, in a cubicle world, it’s sensory deprivation from 9 – 5.  The whirr of computers and the A/C.  The hum of colleagues chattering away.  The beige walls of the cube farm.  The fluorescent lighting.  It’s amazing anyone stays awake.  Offer the audience, then, something physical.  Instead of describing that new product on a slide, show them a prototype.  Pass it around.  Let the audience get physical.

2.  Use music.  We have an emotional response to music which is much more powerful than we do to most words.  Especially words like “3rd Q results” and “product optimization.”  So add a soundtrack to your presentation.  It will bring it to life.  Do obey copyright and licensing laws, please. 

3.  Use video.  Video –good video -- has all the life in it that static slides lack.   A good clip can enchant, move, and thrill and audience in 60 seconds.  You can create the right emotional atmosphere to begin or end a speech – or to pick it up in the middle. 

4.  Use a flip chart.  Create any visuals you need right there in front of the audience.  No need for technology.  Just a magic marker and your arm.  The act of creation draws the audience in where a slide doesn’t. 

5.  Ask the audience.  Of course, the best way to draw the audience in is to draw them in.  Ask them to tell you their stories – as they relate to the topic at hand.  Ask the whole audience or just selected volunteers. 

6.  Ask the audience – 2.  Break the audience up into small groups and get them to respond to a challenge that you set, a question that you ask, or a problem that you pose.  Then have them to report back to the whole group. 

7.  Ask the audience – 3.  Play a game with the audience – relevant to the topic.  Award prizes.  Audiences love to compete.  Just don’t make the questions too difficult or the prizes too expensive – or too cheap.  Only Oprah gets to give away cars. 

8.  Ask the audience – 4.   Get the audience to design something – new products, plans, or ideas.  Give them plenty of paper, sticky notes, ipads, or whatever you have on hand that they can play with. 

9.  Ask the audience – 5.  Have the audience create video responses to what you’re talking about.  Hand out a dozen flip cams and get them in groups.  Give them a limited amount of time – 10 minutes, perhaps.  Then show some of the video to the whole group on the big IMEG screen. 

10.  Combine any 3 of these to create huge audience buzz.   Stop thinking of a presentation as a static activity where you show slides to a catatonic group of fellow humans.  You passive, them active.  Instead, treat them as co-conspirators in something exciting, educational, and fun. 

People often ask me some variant of the following question:  OK, so I get the idea that presentations should be interesting, and speakers should be passionate.  But I’m an accountant (or engineer, scientist, nuclear physicist, doctor, etc) and what I have to present is highly technical and data-heavy.  How can I possibly make that interesting?

My answer always begins with one of the best college lecturers I ever heard.  Yes, he was a professor of accounting.  He made profit and loss fascinating by talking about the early days of the Wells Fargo company, complete with cowboys, Indians, gunfights, and desperate men riding their horses past human and equine endurance to get to safety. 

There was plenty of passion, and interest, and I learned something about double entry bookkeeping. 

It can be done. 

But seriously, my questioner will continue, how do you make it interesting?

It’s not easy.  I’ll grant you that.  But it is possible.  What it takes is passion.  If you’re thinking to yourself that you have a whole bunch of dull stuff to get across to the audience, then you’re already thinking wrong, and you need to start differently.  Here’s how you do it. 

1.  First, realize giving a presentation is all about persuasion, not information.  The first step is to figure out what you’re really doing – what are you trying to persuade the audience of?  Once you know that, you’re ready to get started crafting a presentation.  Summarize that in one sentence – e.g., “I’m going to persuade the audience that double-entry bookkeeping is essential to making modern commerce work, because it allows us to measure, understand, and control what we’re doing.” 

2.  Ask yourself, what is the problem that the audience has for which my information is the solution?  Talk about that problem first, and I guarantee you the audience will be interested.  Then they’ll want to hear your solution.  That’s when it’s appropriate to give them said information. 

3.  Don’t give out information, give examples and case studies.  Case studies and examples bring dry information to life.  Data about a study of drug efficacy is boring – even that much sounds boring – but seen through the eyes of one potential patient, it has a completely different aspect. 

4.  Use vivid metaphors and analogies.  If your information is highly abstract and you can’t figure out a way to turn it into a case study or an example, give us a metaphor.  What is it like?  Is it like music, or medicine, or cowboys and Indians?  Use your imagination.  Great teachers understand this and give their students metaphors and analogies to help them begin to understand the field and the theories they must master. 

5.  If all else fails, turn the information into a contest for the audience.   In the 90s I taught public speaking at Princeton.  I had a certain amount of the history of rhetoric from the ancient Greeks to get across, because I thought it was important.  Imagine trying to teach pre-law students about anadiplosis, epanalepsis, and paronomasia!  The students were not interested and I despaired of getting 100 kinds of tropes and schemas into their heads.  Until I thought of Jeopardy.  I made the whole thing a Jeopardy contest (what is anadiplosis?) and the students woke right up.  Years later, the same students would shout “What is synecdoche!” across the campus at me when they saw me.  I gave out Princeton t-shirts I had designed for the occasion, and the students cheerfully put hours in committing the terms to memory.  Just about everyone gets cranked up when there’s a competition involved.  It makes your information more memorable.  Do remember to give out prizes.    

With a little creative thought, any topic – any topic – can be made riveting.  I guarantee it.  Failure to make a presentation interesting is a failure of imagination.  Send me your worst topics and let’s get going.  We have a whole world of boring presentations to spare audiences. 

Every communication, and so every presentation, ultimately has to be 2-way to have integrity and to feel authentic.  That means that you should involve your audiences in your presentations -- and not just at the end in Q and A.  That's so 20th century!  In this podcast, based on my book Give Your Speech, Change the World, I talk about 4 ways to involve your audience with real client examples for each.  It lasts about 8 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

 

You know you want one -- that spontaneous eruption of applause and enthusiasm that has the audience leaping to its feet in approval.  Every speaker's dream.  OK, this podcast will show you how.  Follow the steps I outline, and I can just about guarantee a standing O.  I qualify the claim only because you have to do a decent job of delivering the speech as well, but that's for the next podcast.  One giant step for mankind at a time.  This podcast is based on my book, Give Your Speech, Change the World, and it lasts about 7 and a half minutes.  Enjoy!

 

The secret of good storytelling in presentations, or anywhere else for that matter, is not to make up a new story, but to tell a familiar one.  Here's why -- and how to do it -- in my 6th podcast based on Give Your Speech, Change the World.  It's about 7 minutes.  Enjoy! 

 

Podcast #6 - Stories

So you're ready to get started working on your next presentation.  You've thought about your audience, and you understand who they are (see podcast #4).  Here's a quick podcast on the first two steps to take crafting a great presentation.  It's about 4 and a half minutes long, and it's based on my first book, Give Your Speech, Change the World.  Enjoy!

 

Podcast 5 - First 2 steps

 

 

For podcast #4, I focus on the one step you must take before beginning to prepare a speech -- understand the audience.  It's a quick one; just over 3 minutes.  Enjoy! 

For more discussion of the topic, see Give Your Speech, Change the World, or Trust Me. 

 

 

Podcast #4 - Understand Audience

 

For podcast #3, I've put all my best tips from 2 decades of coaching into a top ten list.  The podcast is 7 minutes -- but you'll get a lot out of it!  Enjoy. 

 

 

10 tips - Podcast 3

 

Here's the second in the podcast series on Give Your Speech, Change the World.  It's about 4 minutes long, and I discuss why most public speaking is so awful, and what we need to do about it. Enjoy!

Podcast 2 - Why Is Public Speaking Awful?

I'm beginning a series of podcasts briefly summarizing the ideas in my first two books -- Give Your Speech, Change the World, and Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma -- as a way of celebrating beginning work on my third book.  Also, I've had repeated requests for audio versions of the two books, and the publishers have so far refused to oblige.  This podcast series, then, is by way of two free audio books for you and a review of the ideas for me as I begin the next book.  Enjoy!  The podcasts will each be a few minutes in length; this one is about 4 minutes. 

Podcast GYS-STW-1

For my blog today, I'm pointing to a new ebook published recently by my friends at New Word City:  How to Tell Great Business Stories.  Everyone says you should be a storyteller, but no one tells you really how to do that.  In this short ebook, I take all the mystery out of telling stories so that you can get started right away and make your next presentation, marketing program, or event memorable.  Enjoy!

Amazon | iTunes

I get asked all the time about the best ways to structure a speech.  The answer is that it depends on what you’re talking about.  Here are 5 quick ways to structure a speech that will get you from blank computer screen to presentation in no time.

1.  When you’re persuading an audience . . . use the Problem-Solution Structure.  Since I believe that the opportunity to persuade an audience is just about the only good reason to go to all the trouble to give a speech, the Problem-Solution structure is my favorite.  Begin by framing the problem at a high level, in 1 -3 minutes.  Then go into the problem in depth, making both intellectual and emotional arguments for the severity of the problem.  Assuming an hour-long speech, you should spend 15-20 minutes in the problem.  Then, give the solution, including the benefits of it to the audience.  Finally, give the audience something to do at the end – an action step, something simple and relevant to the solution. 

2.  When you’re debating a particularly contentious subject . . . use the Residues Method.   If the subject has strong partisans on both – or more – sides of the issue, then use this method, which is a variant of the Problem-Solution structure.  Here, you frame the problem quickly and then explore it in more depth.  Then, you tackle the possible solutions of your opponents.  You do this in a real, thoughtful way, first presenting the pro side of the solution, and then giving one or 2 reasons why you think it won’t work.  Do this for each of the other established positions.  Don’t play ‘straw man’ games; give these positions real credit, as if you believed them.  Then, once you’ve discussed all the other alternatives, and the problems with them, give your own.  It’s the residue, or the one that’s left when all the others have been shot down. 

3.  When you’ve got a story to tell . . . use the Classic Story Structure.   Let’s say you’re talking about your new company, or a new product, and you want to enliven the description with some narrative.  Begin by describing the basic situation giving only the relevant detail, and introducing the hero (if there is one) in quick brush strokes.  Next, introduce a complication – a rival, a new marketplace entrant, and so on.  Finally, resolve the crisis that follows from the complication. 

4.  When you’ve got a history to relate . . . use the Chronological Structure.  What happens next? Is the natural response of someone listening to an interesting history.  The key word is ‘interesting’; I’m not a big fan of chronological storytelling unless it’s compelling because it’s inherently interesting.  Otherwise, you want to use the Classic Story Structure.  A variant of this method is to begin at the end of something, with a startling result, and then circle back to tell the beginning – how we got to where we are.  That’s interesting if the stakes are high and everyone’s fascinated by the end result.  If you were telling the story of Facebook, for example, you might start with the end – billionaires, fabulous success, and a lawsuit – and then go back to the beginning to see how everyone ended up there.  You’d have the plot of The Social Network. 

5.  When you’ve got a product to demonstrate . . . use the Demonstration Structure.   This is what Steve Jobs does better than almost anyone else.  First talk about the why – why the product is amazing, why it’s needed, what problems it solves for people, and so on, and then demo the actual product in all its glory.  The exact form the demo takes will of course depend on the product, but make sure it works and don’t get bogged down in the details.  Just show it doing something really cool for the audience, and then hint at all the other things it could do.  Leave ‘em wanting more. 

These 5 structures should cover most of the situations in which you find yourself speaking.   Each of these structures can be enlivened with brief examples, stories, and factoids along the way.  Specificity is the stuff of life in public speaking – but only when used sparingly.  Too much detail and any good structure immediately becomes deadly.  A speech is not a good way to convey information.  It is a good way to persuade, to move your audience to action, and to change the world.  

Today, for my blog, I'm linking to a piece I just published on HBR.org, taking lessons from President Obama's State of the Union address last Tuesday for chief executives and how they can improve on the President's approach:  http://bit.ly/gCLMPn.  Enjoy!

The other day Harvard asked me to boil down the creation of a great speech into 5 quick steps for busy executives.  Here's the result in a short video.  Enjoy!

How to Create a Great Presentation from Harvard Business Publishing on Vimeo.

 

It was fifty years ago today that President John F. Kennedy delivered one of the shortest and most memorable inaugural addresses by a U.S. president.   As most people know, the speech was the product of a collaboration between Kennedy and Ted Sorensen, Special Counsel to the President, and his speechwriter.   But what you don’t know is that Kennedy changed the speech on the fly as he delivered it, departing from the agreed-upon and much revised text in the moment – even making a small but essential change to the most famous sentence in the speech, and one of the most famous sentences in American history. 

Work began on the speech in November, and intensified around Christmas 1960.  Sorensen sent a telegram on December 23rd to 10 leading thinkers of the day – including Adlai Stevenson, Dean Rusk, and J. K. Galbraith – asking for ideas.  Responses varied, but the most voluminous was a 2-and-a-half page single-spaced letter from Stevenson with over a dozen suggestions for things Kennedy could talk about.  Many of them made it into the speech, including “a frank acknowledgement of the changing equilibrium in the world and the grave dangers and difficulties which the West faces for the first time.” 

The speech began to take something like its final shape on January 10th, 10 days out, when President Kennedy flew to Palm Beach and dictated a draft to his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, based on an earlier written draft by Sorensen.  On the flight back, a week later, 3 days out, Kennedy wrote a draft in his own hand so that there would be a holographic version for history.   I’m looking at a facsimile of that handwritten draft now, and it follows the final closely in general, with many minor emendations to phrases here and there.  When you get to the end, and the famous phrases “asking not,” you see the following in Kennedy’s difficult scrawl:

My fellow Americans, ask not what your country is going to do for you – ask what you can do for your country.

Then, in the final, large-print reading copy that Kennedy took to the podium, the sentence had become this:

And so, my fellow Americans:  ask not what your country will do for you – ask what you can do for your country. 

What’s astounding about that phrase is precisely that it’s not memorable, because of the lack of repetition.   And what’s even more amazing is that when Kennedy actually delivered the speech, he changed that sentence on the fly to:

And so, my fellow Americans:  ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. 

A small change, yes, but one that turned a good line into an unforgettable one.  And it was ad-libbed.  (Kennedy made a number of other small changes as well, simplifying the diction and eliminating words as he went, but none as vital as this one.)

In speaking, you have to sweat the details.  Tiny changes in phrasing make huge differences in impact.  

David McCloud, the Chief of Staff of the Governor of Virginia, taught me how to write a great speech: 

•    Great speeches are primarily emotional, not logical 
•    Small shifts in tone make an enormous difference to the audience, so sweat the details 
•    A great speech has a clear voice speaking throughout
•    A great speech conveys one idea only, though it can have lots of supporting points
•    A great speech answers a great need  

The lesson nearly killed me.  I had a PhD in literature and rhetoric, and I was teaching at the University of Virginia, when the Governor, Chuck Robb, plucked me from academic obscurity to write speeches for him.  The previous speechwriter had cracked under the strain, and had taken to shouting Nazi war slogans and charging around the office barefoot using his hatrack as a battering ram.   So of course he had to go; he alarmed the Governor’s State Police detail too much.   

I don’t know why that didn’t worry me too much at the time.  I suppose I was blinded by the opportunity to put my academic ideals into practice.   I was installed in the same office, and I spent most of the first day or two looking at the hatrack and wondering how bad it would have to get before I was tempted to pick it up and go horizontal with it too.

David called me into his office on Day Three for my first assignment.  Four death-row inmates had escaped from Mecklenburg State Prison and were wandering around loose in the Virginia countryside alarming everyone.  The Governor had to give a speech to show that he was in control of the situation. 

“The truth is,” said David, “that no one pays any attention to prisons until someone escapes.  Then everyone wants to know why we don’t spend more money, hire more guards, do whatever it takes to keep scary people from getting out.  Write a speech which says that we care about voters’ security but won’t waste their money either.”

I made a face.  “But those two things are logically contradictory.”

“Your first lesson in real speechwriting,” said David.  “Logic has nothing to do with it.  Figure it out.” 

Clutching my logic and my expensive education in rhetoric, I went back to my office to figure it out.  For about half a day I stared at the computer screen with no idea how to begin.  At some point, David popped into my office to see how I was getting on.  He took in my lack of progress at a glance. 

“Think John Wayne,” he said.  “Make the Governor tough.” 

So I thought about what John Wayne would have said if he’d been the governor, and shortly a script began to form on the screen.   I wrote, re-wrote, and finally had a draft that I thought was pure gubernatorial magic.  I handed it in to David.

A few hours later, an email arrived.  “My office.  Now.” 

David scowled at me when I walked in.  “This is the worst first draft I’ve ever seen,” he said.  “It’s ridiculous.  It’s too much John Wayne, not enough Governor.  Go back and try again.”

So I did.  I took John Wayne out and let in the sweet light of reason instead.  I handed in what I thought was a much more measured draft to David the next morning. 

This time he came to me.  “This is the second worst draft I’ve ever seen,” he said.  “The governor sounds like a Sesame Street character.  Give him his cojones back.” 

He left.  I bowed my head over the screen.  This was not the enlightened political discourse I had been expecting.  I looked at the hatrack.   Then I wrote another draft.

Before I got that speech right – and David satisfied with it – I wrote twelve drafts.  John Wayne and Sesame Street came and went.  I added sections on prison spending and took them out.  I put in an update on the search for the escapees and revised it over and over again.  I researched Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward prisons and put in a section quoting him.  It wasn’t until Draft 11 that David thought it was even worth sending it to the Governor for him to look at. 

“OK,” he said.  “It’s not great, but it’s OK for a first try.” 

David was not my favorite person in the world that week, or for a number of weeks after.  But in the end I realized that in being tough on me he had given me an enormous gift:  he had taught me how to push myself to do better than I thought I possibly could.  And he taught me how to write a speech.  In the real world.  Great speeches are primarily emotional, not logical.  Small shifts in tone and phrasing make an enormous difference to the audience, so sweat the details.  A great speech has a clear voice speaking throughout.  A great speech conveys one idea only, though it can have lots of supporting points.  And most of all:  a great speech answers a great need. 

Thanks, David.