Nick Morgan, Public Words

Use the 5 basic stories to add power to your speeches

I’ve written about using the power of the 5 basic stories that Western culture has to make your speeches stronger, ‘stickier’ and more instantly graspable.  Look here: http://tinyurl.com/6sdl5v or here: http://tinyurl.com/nxblef for more detailed information.  Today, I’m going to revisit the stories as a quick refresher course. 

The most fundamental of the stories is the Quest.  Here, case the audience as the hero.  Enlist them in your quest – bring them with you to accomplish something difficult.  A new product launch, a business launch, a re-organization – quests are best invoked when you want to ask for sacrifices from your audience and you need them to overcome obstacles. 

The nature of change today readily involves the second story:  Stranger in a Strange Land.  In this story, the rules, the terrain, the marketplace – something complicated and pervasive – has changed, and the audience needs to learn new rules in order to master the new situation.  Most consultants should invoke this story, since it allows them to play the mentor – the expert – in the story, the one who knows the new rules and can explain them.

The third story is the Love Story.   We can use this in organizational life more often than you might think.  Mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, even different parts of an organization working together – all of these can be love stories.  The strength of the love story is that we expect the road to be rocky – boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back is the old-fashioned version.  That means that you have ways to deal with problems when they come up if you use this story. 

The fourth story is Rags to Riches.   This story is always powerful, but never more so than in a recession.  The strongest version is the individual one, which is why the lottery does well in good and bad years.  So cast your story in personal terms and you’ll engage your audience strongly.  Tell them how they’re going to get rich, not how the company is going to get rich.

The fifth story is Revenge – never underestimate it.   Revenge is a very powerful motivator, so don’t leave it off the list because you’re squeamish.  Many a business pushes itself to succeed because of the competition, and that’s at base a revenge story.  Think of all the small software companies that began in order to take on Microsoft!  Think of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. 

Invoking each of these stories on a thematic level can be a wonderful way to increase the impact and power of your speeches.  Don’t be too literal about it.  Don’t say, ‘we’re on a quest’.  Instead, say, ‘the journey will be long and difficult, but at the end of it is a pot of gold and glory we can all share’.  You’ll have the audience engaged instantly; everyone knows and loves these stories.  And we all want to be heroes.   

 

Ellen's 3 rules for a great commencement speech

It’s the commencement address season, and the advice of the age is:  be yourself.  This advice has a variety of forms, some interesting, some less so.  Sometimes it comes under the rubric of ‘following your bliss’ and other times it’s more about authenticity.  But everyone is agreed that being yourself is important. 

How do you make that new and compelling?  If you’re Ellen Degeneres, you make it funny: http://tinyurl.com/r8vavt.  The speech is a great reminder that humor always makes its own rules.  In other words, if you’re funny, you can get away with just about everything else. 

So think of this as Ellen’s Three Rules for a Successful Commencement Speech. 

1.  Be funny.   Humor is so rare at the podium, that a funny speech will fall like manna from heaven.  But humor is hard to do, and hard to do well.  You run the risk of offending some portion of your audience.  So be warned.  Humor takes guts.

2.  Be real; tell real stories.  Ellen leavens her humor with some very serious stories from her own life and her struggle to find her niche.  Authenticity is essential, especially if you’re going to be funny, because we only trust people who show us their hearts.

3.  Be brief.  Ellen’s speech lasts less than 10 minutes.  It’s hard to imagine why you would want to go longer.  Attention spans used to be 21 minutes; recently some have argued that they are shrinking – to 10 minutes.  If that’s true, then it’s the new right length for commencement speeches.   

Where President Obama went wrong on the Guantanamo Speech -- and how you can do better

How do you argue your side of an emotional, contentious issue in a way that doesn’t further divide people?  President Obama’s recent speech on “Protecting Our Security and Our Values” delivered at the National Archives on May 21, 2009, was an example of a well-argued speech that unfortunately will only inflame the debate further. 

The speech is a clearly-constructed brief on what the Obama Administration has done to keep America safe – and how it has diverged from the previous administration’s attempts to do exactly the same thing.  However you feel about the politics of the matter, if Obama was hoping to still the debate, here’s where he went wrong:

After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era — that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out.

Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that — too often — our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us — Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens — fell silent.

In other words, we went off course.

Whether you agree or disagree with the analysis, you have to believe that this does not describe what the previous administration thought it was doing.  So, from the point of view of the other side, you can only feel that Obama has distorted your position.  And when you feel that your position has been distorted, you dig in, you don’t come around. 

What should Obama have done differently?  If you want bring the other side in, then you have to give its arguments full scope and credence.  You can’t ascribe haste, fear, and the trimming of facts and evidence to them, even if you believe that to be the case.  You can’t accuse them of setting aside their principles.  You have to argue the other side’s case on its own merits. 

Then, and only then, you can give your own position.  To forestall criticism and avoid inflaming a debate further, understand and be ready to give the other side’s position.  Fairly.  First.  And forthrightly. 

3 ways Improv can strengthen your public speaking

One of the best ways you can train to become a better public speaker is to take a year of Improv. Most major cities have at least one great Improv troupe that takes on beginners. In Chicago, there’s Second City (http://www.secondcity.com/), in NYC there are a number of choices (try Peoples Improv Theatre: http://www.thepit-nyc.com/), and in Boston, I can recommend ImprovBoston highly (http://www.improvboston.com/).

Why Improv?

Because it helps you become more comfortable on your feet, trains you to react in the moment, and helps you learn not to take yourself too seriously. If that’s not enough, here are 3 lessons from Improv that will improve your public speaking.

1. Yes…And. In the business world, many of us spend a lifetime saying, “yes, but….” in response to every new idea that’s presented to us. Improv trains you to say “Yes, and…” – in other words, to embrace what someone else has offered and create something with it or on top of it. That helps enormously in responding to your audiences as a speaker. You learn to take whatever is thrown at you with a smile and do something positive with it.

2. There are no mistakes. In Improv, you learn that apparent mistakes are often your best opportunity for comedy. In public speaking, we often get in the trap of thinking that there’s only one way to do things. We have a script in mind, and we think something is wrong when we deviate from it. In Improv, you learn to embrace the apparent flub and do something fun with it. Mistakes like that often lead to new insights and understandings.

3. Always stay grounded in the emotional truth. In Improv, you learn not to try to be funny, but rather to tell the truth – the emotional truth. Real comedy comes from that – audiences delight in watching people struggle with true emotional quandaries. In speaking, it’s the same. If you stick to the emotional truth, you’ll never get too far wrong. If you try to fake it, the audience will soon catch on, and you’ll lose them.

How to interact with an audience -- 7 questions to get you started

Audiences today expect to have a conversation with speakers, and they crave real connection with successful speakers.  The best way to ensure that these good things happen during your presentations is to involve your audiences throughout. 

But that takes some art.  How do you think about it?  How do you avoid the lame arrangement of too many presentations where the speaker drones on for 45 minutes, then stops and says, “Any questions?”  As the audience shakes itself awake, and starts wondering if it does in fact have any questions, the speaker stands there for what seems like an eternity, then gives up and concludes that no one cares.   

How do you avoid this dysfunctional state of affairs?  How can you involve audiences in your presentations? 

Following are a series of questions to ask the audience, in order to start connecting with them.  The questions have to be tailored, of course, to your particular situation.  They are intended as a guide, as a way to think about connecting with an audience.  Take the questions in the broadest possible sense and apply them to your particular subject and audience. 

1.  Ask them who they are – get them to report on their personal stories, insights, attitudes, connections to the material, perspectives on the topic, etc.  

2.  Ask them to brainstorm – get them working together to solve the problem at hand.  Brainstorming works best when it’s specific and involves a piece of the issue, not the whole issue. 

3.  Ask them to play games – most groups enjoy friendly competition to solve a problem, issue, challenge, game, or treasure hunt.  Make the prize good enough that the audience doesn’t perceive it as tacky, but not so grand that people will be seriously upset if they lose.  A gift certificate, a bottle of wine, that sort of thing. 

4.  Ask them to report to the group – once you’ve imparted some new information to the audience, it’s good to ask them to work on solutions, reporting back to the group on some aspect of what they’ve found.  Again, keep it specific. 

5.  Ask them to teach others – if an audience has learned a new skill or idea, then get them to teach each other to reinforce the learning.  Keep it specific. 

6.  Ask them to design responses  -- if you’re presented an issue to a group, and they’ve taken your thoughts on board, then it’s good to ask them to design responses.  You might have them structure a new system to handle the IT problems you’ve been lecturing about.  Keep it simple; don’t expect too much off the top of the audience’s head. 

7.  Ask them to initiate a path forward – if your talk involves some aspect of future thinking, planning, solving, re-designing, and so on, then get the audience to create the first few steps – and even take the first one.  If you’re talking to an audience about solutions to our health care mess, for example, you might want to get participants to establish a process going forward for ensuring that everyone’s voice gets heard. 

Jim Collins and his new book, How the Mighty Fall

It’s always dangerous to take on an icon, but here we go.  Jim Collins has written a new book, How the Mighty Fall, and he’s on camera talking about it: http://tinyurl.com/rymn9m

Collins is the Marcus Welby of the business world.  He looks and sounds the part of the sage business adviser.  And the first thing that has to be said about him is that he is a consummate, technically near-perfect speaker – at least on camera and on the small screen.  That doesn’t always translate to the large stage, of course – and vice-versa. 

On screen, then, he’s got wonderful pacing – talking quickly, but every now and then slowing down markedly on a key point to emphasize it.  His voice is authoritative, his gestures passionate.  This is one smart, articulate guy. 

It’s the message that’s the problem.  Good to Great  purported to identify the characteristics that made a company great, and the recommendations in it at least were actionable.  The issue was that the companies identified as such soon fell off the lofty perch Collins had put them on. 

That made How the Mighty Fall inevitable, I suppose.  But the problem is that the five stages here are not actionable points in the life of an organization.  Instead, they’re moral judgments.  From ‘hubris born of success’ to the ‘undisciplined pursuit of more’ to the ‘denial of risk and peril’ to ‘grasping for salvation’ and finally ‘capitulation to irrelevance or death’, these so-called stages are actually moral states lifted from the religious classic Pilgrim’s Progress.  The title gives away the plot, in this case. 

I won’t get any thanks for saying so, but Collins is a preacher talking sin, not a business thinker showing us how to revivify ailing companies or an ailing economy. 

 

Gary Vaynerchuk's 3 Rules for Success in Public Speaking

So I don’t know why I haven’t talked about the wine guy Gary Vaynerchuk before, but here goes.  You can see him waxing passionate about wine here: http://tv.winelibrary.com/.  And you can see him on Web 2.0 giving a talk on following your bliss and social media here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqZ0RU95d4. 

Either way, you have to agree:  you can’t take your eyes off this guy.  Why?  Three simple reasons.  In honor of the Wine Guy, I’ll call them Gary Vaynerchuk’s 3 Rules for Success in Public Speaking.

1.  Be absolutely passionate about what you’re doing.  Gary’s passion spills out all over the set, the stage, the audience.  He’s taking no prisoners, and the result is captivating.  It covers the many little ways in which he breaks some perfectly good rules of public speaking.  For example, in the Web 2.0 talk, he’s constantly pacing back and forth.  He only comes to a halt occasionally, and if the talk had gone on much longer, it would have become distracting, and ultimately wearying for the audience.  In small doses, it’s fine.  And of course, on his show, he’s behind a table for the most part drinking wine, so his energy goes into his face and his commentary, where it belongs. 

2.  Be absolutely authentic about what you’re doing.   Gary’s geekiness and occasional clumsiness are endearing because they reinforce his authenticity.  Authenticity is the single most important quality for speakers today.  Historically speaking, that’s because of the current mood in the country (and the world) thanks to AIG, bank bailouts, rampant hypocrisy in high places, 9-11 and probably Watergate too.  Whatever the precise reason, we are drawn to people who are authentic because we’re tired of being spun, lied to, conned, and generally abused by authorities.  I go into the need for authenticity (and how to achieve it) in my new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

3.  Maintain a sense of humor about yourself.   If you follow rules # 1 and #2, you’ll get noticed.  But if you don’t have a sense of humor about yourself – and occasionally let it out for air – people will quickly tire of you.  Gary’s saving grace is that he’s funny about his passion and doesn’t take himself too seriously in the end. 

Study Gary for his inner qualities, not for his mastery of the technical detail of public speaking.  He's not a polished speaker, but he’s the real deal, and he’s absolutely wonderful to watch. 

Questions for speakers to ask meeting planners

Following is a list of questions that speakers should ask meeting planners in getting ready to speak at an event.  You won't need to ask all of them all the time; the list is meant to give you a broad set of ideas. 

A.  The Venue

When is the speech taking place?
Where?
How many in the audience?
What time of day? How long should the speech be?
Will the audience be eating or have eaten?
What is the hall like?
Is there lighting?
What is the sound like?
The layout?
Are there backdrops, sets, stages, props, podia?
Are there barriers between speaker and audience?
How long is the audience’s day?
How many other speakers?
What is the nature and content of those speeches?
What kind of chair is the audience in?
How long have they sat there?
What is the event theme?
Slogan? 
What is the arrangement for slides and other visuals?
How quiet is the hall? 
Is there background noise?
When can we get in the hall for rehearsal?

B.  The Audience

Describe the audience
What is the age range?
Socio-economics?
Do they know each other?
Do they work for the same or difference orgs?
Describe the organization(s)?
What should my talk be about?
What is the point of the event for the audience?
How is the audience feeling?
What is the business climate?
What does the audience fear most?
What are their hopes and dreams?
What makes them laugh or cry?
What makes them worry?
What do they need to succeed?
What are their cultural references?
What is they worst speaker they’ve ever seen?
What would you like them to do differently as a result of the talk?
Who are their heroes and villains?
What are their recent successes and failures?
Why are they there?
Have you made any arrangements to get feedback? 
A DVD?

C.  The Speech

Why did you pick me?
Who or what determines the success or failure of this event?
How will that be measured?
How does the idea of my speech work for your event?
Give me some audience members that are great (or bad) examples of the points of my speech?
Can I interview them?
What is the problem the audience has for which my expertise is the solution?
Is the audience expecting interactivity?
Is the audience used to Power Point?
Can I ask for volunteers?
How many of them will have read my book?
Can we arrange for a signing/sales event?
What journey do you want the audience to go on?
Why should the audience pay attention to my speech?
How will you know if they have taken something important away from the speech?

What should Seth Godin have done? How do you respond to a last-minute change?

Yesterday, I commented on Seth Godin’s TED.com speech, overall finding it impressive, and making a few suggestions for improvement.  Seth commented on one of those, and his comment has raised an interesting question:  what do you do when you discover that the event organizer has thrown you a last-minute curve?

In Seth’s case, it was a piano in the middle of the stage, eating up the space he normally has for working the audience.  What could Seth have done to cope?

First of all, let’s say that the event organizer had no business messing with a speaker’s mind at the last minute.  The speaker is in adrenaline mode, and it is very hard to change directions under those conditions and with that kind of time pressure.  A pro like Seth has a last-minute series of preparations to go through, and it is unfair and unprofessional to interrupt those with sudden, 11th-hour changes.

But it happens.  So what do you do?  You’ve got to confront it, come up with a plan, deal with it immediately, and get it off your mind.  Otherwise, the result is that it detracts from your performance because it takes up that part of your brain that would normally be delivering a brilliant speech. 

That’s what adrenaline is for:  facing and dealing with problems.  So focus on the issue, come up with a solution – probably imperfect – and then move on.  Don’t second-guess yourself.

The most common curve thrown by meeting planners is the following:  “We’re running a little late, and we need you to shave 20 minutes off your presentation.” 

What do you do? 

This happens so often that you need to have 1-hour, 40-minute, and 20-minute versions of your talk ready to go at all times.  In other words, deal with this one by being prepared in advance so that you won’t be surprised. 

The other kind of last-minute issue that happens all the time is the technology problem.  The room is too bright, making your slides invisible.  The sound system doesn’t have enough volume to make your video audible.  The computer you have is not compatible in some way with the system.  And so on.  The possibilities are endless. 

The response?  Bring back ups.  Lots of back ups.  Everything technological that your presentation depends on should have back ups.  And one more thing:  have a version of your speech ready to go that involves NO TECHNOLOGY.  Think of it as the candlelight version.  One day, you’ll thank me. 

So what should Seth have done when he found that instead of a stage to work in he basically had a closet with no walls? 

He should have used the piano.  In some way.  Always recognize the gorilla in the room.  He might have started by sitting on the piano bench.  Or on the piano.  Perhaps he could have begun by singing (and playing) happy birthday for the event organizer, if in addition to his other talents Seth is musically gifted. 

The exact solution depends on the moment.  But when an event organizer throws you a curve like that, you’ve got to deal with it and move on.  If it’s a real problem, like a sudden decimating of the size of the stage, then it’s best to bring it up, briefly and positively, and move on.  The audience will be on your side if you handle the issue expeditiously and with charm and dispatch. 

 

What we can learn from Seth Godin

Seth Godin’s TED.com talk on his latest book, Tribes, recently became available on TED’s web site: http://tinyurl.com/o8cx5f.  What does Seth do right, and what does he do wrong as he tells us his latest idea?

We can all learn from Seth Godin on both counts.  First, what he does right.

Seth makes it all about the audience.  The typical speaker tells us about all the research he has done, and what it shows.  Seth tells us about – us.  How we all want to create change, lead a movement, and stand out.  Even if you personally don’t want that, you get caught up in the underlying emotional message:  you’re special.  It’s very hard to resist. 

Seth’s passion comes through because he is open to the audience.  Godin’s openness comes through in his body language and his inclusive language.  That creates a strong connection with the audience, so that we are ready to receive his passionate message.  If a speaker doesn’t begin by being open, we will reject the message.  It’s that simple. 

Seth uses humor to disarm any potential critics.  If we were inclined to say, ‘hang on a minute, not everyone can be a leader; that doesn’t make sense.  The world needs followers, too,’ Seth’s humor stops us from insisting too much on the logic.  His humor is contained in his slides – great visual humor that you can get in one blink, like the shot of the firefighters sitting posed for a picture outside a burning house. 

What does Godin do wrong?  Not much, but here are a few ways in which he could improve.

He wanders around the stage.  Seth has what we call ‘happy feet’ – he allows some of his adrenaline to come out in wandering around the stage.  The result is distracting and undercuts the effectiveness of his message.  It’s just harder to get what he’s talking about when his body provides a random visual distraction that way.

He allows his volume to get away from him.  Sure, it’s a big audience, and sure, he’s passionate.  But too much shouting quickly gets tiresome on the ear.  He needs to vary his pitch more, like he does his pacing.  Seth is an expert pauser for effect, and he should vary his volume too.

His speech strings too many ideas together that don’t really connect logically.  Godin begins with an assertion in the form of a question – what do ‘we’ – that is, the audience and Seth – do today?  We all want to change things, he says.  It’s an assertion grabbed from the air, and it doesn’t bear much logical thought.  To the contrary, most people hate change.  But never mind.  From there, he launches into a quick history of recent times:  from factories to television to leaders (and tribes).  Soon he’s talking about how to do it – ‘it’ being start a movement.  It’s all a bit loosey-goosey, logically speaking, and it’s really an emotional argument (that everyone – you and you and you – are potential leaders, all special), not an idea per se. 

But overall, this is a great communicator with a deep understanding of how to connect with audiences.  Study this TED.com talk for how to up your own game. 

The Four Essential Elements of Open Language

I often blog on the importance of open body language in giving a presentation.  But no less important is openness of language.  Following are 4 keys ways that people test openness of language against the ideal; fail in one of these and your audience will write you off as not forthright, or honest – and ultimately not worth listening to. 

Openness in Intent.  As humans, we believe that actions, especially ones directed toward us, are meaningful, and we want to know the meanings. Children learn early to ask, “ Why? until their parents run out of answers. They are trying to delve into and broaden their understanding of intent.  Because intent is so important to us as humans, clarity of intent lies at the very heart of being open. If I know what you intend, I can understand you, and my willingness to be open to you increases. The simplest way to be clear about your intent is to tell me early in our communication together.

Openness in Responsibility. “ Mistakes were made ” is a classic way politicians use to apologize or admit errors without actually doing so. That’s a passive construction that leaves the crucial actor, the politician, out of it. Unfortunately, we all know what he really means, so once again the politician reveals more than he intends by attempting to conceal. And we assume the worst. Open language therefore favors active verbs.

Openness in Framing.  The first questions on everyone’s minds when people communicate are about the whys of the meeting or event or conversation: Why are we here? Why is this important? Why is this relevant to me? We are trying to frame the encounter, whether it’s a negotiation, a keynote speech, or an intimate conversation. Our first need is to be oriented, and we can’t begin to pay attention to anything else until that’s taken care of.  So answer your audience’s need to know why, and do it quickly, simply, and directly. Clear, honest framing is essential for open communication. If you fail to create the context, that question will dog the proceedings from then on. And if you’re duplicitous about the context, then when the betrayal comes, it will be fatal to trust and the possibility of further open communications.

Openness in Agenda.  In casual communications, this step is accomplished quickly and effortlessly because of understandings that already exist. When two friends meet, for example, one will say, “ Wassup? ” to the other, and the conversation will pick up where it left off. Indeed, it will take a conscious effort in reframing to move the conversation off its usual tracks if one of the conversationalists wants to talk about something serious or different from the normal course of affairs.  In more formal settings, a good communicator knows that openness requires agreement on the agenda in order to avoid problems and recriminations later. The phrase, “ You never told me that . . . ” is a listener’s way of registering that an agenda item was not agreed on. The danger is that when the other person says that, he is letting himself off the moral hook, at least to some extent. You may be stuck with the problem and the blame.

When an issue has been announced, briefly discussed, and added to the agenda, it becomes everyone’s issue. If it is sprung as a surprise later, it will be your problem and your fault. The more intimate the relationship is, the more like a betrayal it will seem. Everyone (until they learn better) has had the experience of neglecting to tell a spouse or significant other some vital bit of information. For example, you go to a party where the host is about to move to Bora-Bora. You forget to tell your spouse that vital detail, who finds out what everyone else knows at the shindig. Brace yourself for an indignant, “ Why didn’t you tell me! ” on
the car ride home. 

Paying attention to these 4 openness issues will ensure that you connect fully with your audience and that they perceive you as an authentic communicator.  I talk more about these issues in my new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authentic and Charisma.   

How to survive a panel

Panels are a low form of public speaking.  It's a lazy, cheap way for a conference planner to fill an hour or 90 minutes.  But you get what you pay for in this as in other things.  Rarely does a panel provide memorable content. 

The success or failure of a panel in the end all depends on the moderator.  A good moderator can tie the ideas together, challenge people, and keep the conversation going.  I've probably seen that happen twice in my 20 years of conference-going.  Usually a panel is a depressing spectacle of speakers overrunning their time, repeating themselves, or rambling inexcusably because they haven’t prepared since ‘it wasn’t a real speech'.  There’s very little interaction between the panelists, the moderator just sits back and watches the train wreck, and the audience’s time is wasted.  

How can you improve upon this pitiful record?  Let’s imagine you’ve been invited to be on a panel.  Audiences always say they wish the one good person on the panel had been allowed to speak for the entire time.  So your goal is to be that one good person.  What are the secrets?

First, make it a little easier for the moderator by preparing a good introduction that provides some 'hooks' for the moderator to know what to ask you.  "Jim is well-known for his controversial opinions on the proper temperature of yak milk for optimal storage life."

Second, prepare a 10-minute speech that leaves out detail but hits one controversial point, and has the overall structure of a good, persuasive speech, just in 'lite' form.  Prepare questions and answers by deciding what you would like to be asked and then prep the answers so that no matter what the question, you get to put yourself forward in an interesting way and in a good light.  "I'm glad you asked me that question about little green men.  What I find, in my experience, is that it's not so much the specific case that matters as the general rule.  So, for example, when I'm thinking about the issue of how IT can help the business......" OK, an extreme case, but you get the idea.

Third, if you want to overachieve, study the other panelists and their ideas in advance, and make friendly, polite comments when answering your questions that refer back to them.  "As Bill rightly says, it's not the bytes, it's the bits.  What I find, in my experience is that...."  or "Let's not forget Jane's point about the future of Oracle.  Just the other day, I was talking with President Obama about where IT was headed, and I told him...."

The other panelists will be so pleased that you mentioned their names that they won't care (too much) if you don't spend a lot of time on their ideas.  Just reference them and move on.   Even better, link your ideas and theirs in meaningful ways.  Your audience will deeply appreciate the help. 

Finally, if you really want to overachieve, call the other panelists in advance and interview them.  Ask them what they're going to say.  You'll find out a lot about their personalities, which will help you prepare for the spotlight hogs and the cranky, idiosyncratic nay-sayers.  And you can do the moderator’s work to an extent by linking the ideas together and drawing some conclusions for the whole. 

How to establish trust and credibility with an audience -- and why

There was a study done a few years back that asked audiences what they looked for in a speaker.  What came up at the top of the list was trust and credibility.  Over the years, I’ve studied how best to create those good feelings in the minds of audience members, and observed both good and bad speakers with these ideas in mind.  Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Both trust and credibility have a verbal (content) and a non-verbal (body language) component.  Credibility is established by showing audiences that you understand their problems.  Trust comes from showing audiences how to solve them.

In non-verbal terms, trust is built up with physical openness to the audience.  The opposite body language – all the forms of closed behavior that speakers are prone to exhibit – creates the inverse feeling, distrust.  I’ve seen that happen over and over again with even experienced speakers who wrestle with the urge to protect themselves from the gaze of hundreds of pairs of eyes – by closing off their body language, even if only partially.

Credibility is created with authoritative body language and with an authoritative voice.  Stand tall, holding your head high, with good posture, and you’re half-way there.  To go the rest of the distance, use pitch properly, going up to show emotion, and coming down at the ends of phrases to show certainty.

In terms of content, credibility is best established by someone else – the person who introduces you.  If you don’t get a good introduction, then demonstrate your expertise with carefully selected statistics and factoids from your field of endeavor.  I say “carefully” because you don’t want to overdo it.  Audiences resent know-it-alls who bury their listeners in useless, hard-to-recall data. 

Trust in content comes from taking your audience on a journey that changes their view of the world in some meaningful way.  Take them from “why” – the question they ask at the beginning of a speech (why am I here, why should I care) to ‘how’ – the question they’ll be asking at the end if you’ve done your job right.  I say much more about this in the new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

Humor, Part 3: Wit.

For my final blog on humor in public speaking, I’m turning to wit.  Wit is the humor that creates charm, impresses with intelligence, and gets the girls.  So be witty.

Of course, that’s easier said than done.  How do you achieve wit?  I have three suggestions, but first begin by watching J. J. Abrams, the TV and movie producer and director of hits like MI-3, Lost, and the new Star Trek : http://tinyurl.com/6649cn.  The talk is witty, as is the man.  This TED.com talk is also full of insights into creativity that will stick with you once the wit has worked its charm and moved on. 

First Suggestion:  Don’t try too hard.  Wit flows from passion for the subject.  If you feel strongly about something, you will find wit in the subject and you will share it with your audience.  Unless of course you’re a corporate accountant who’s idea of fun is a late night with a multi-celled spreadsheet. 

That said, one of the wittier speakers I’ve heard was a lecturer on accounting, who used the Wells Fargo company as his example, back in the day when it had to account for losses of the strong box because of marauding Indians.  His passion for the subject of accounting led him to this witty way to explain an otherwise dreary subject. 

Second Suggestion:  Wit is all about upending expectations.  The wit is in the surprise.  J.J. shows a clip from the “Lost” pilot episode, with a downed aircraft and lots of gore and mayhem, with very impressive special effects.  He says, “Ten years ago if we wanted to do that, we would have had to kill a stunt man…. Take Two would have been a bitch.”  You’re not quite sure where he’s going, but the second sentence is witty because it is surprising. 

Third Suggestion:  To be witty, take the subject, but not yourself, seriously.  Wit begins with yourself, with self-deprecation.  It’s one reason why the British are so much better at it, culturally speaking, than Americans.  The British are expert self-deprecators, probably because they have to put up with more pomposity in the form of 2,000, rather than 200, years of tradition and history.  But when pressed, we can do it too.  J. J. Abrams says, of filming Mission Impossible III, that his favorite scene is the one that involves shooting a dangerous drug up Tom Cruise’s nose.  He says, “I quickly learned that there are 3 things you don’t want to do.  Number two is hurt Tom’s nose.”  The scene, which you should now go back and watch again, actually has Tom Cruise’s hand shooting the dart-filled gun up his own nose (because he knew how hard to push). 

That’s the magic of the movies.  And that’s wit. 

Why is most public speaking so awful?

Why is most public speaking so awful? Why do we subject our fellow human beings to this form of torture when there are so many better things we could all be doing, like cutting our toenails, baking snickerdoodles, or watching re-runs of The Prisoner? You’re in a ballroom with no windows in some random airport hotel. The lighting is dim. The whir of the heating system fills your ears with white noise. The colors around you are shades of grey and beige with puce trimmings. You’re only awake because you’ve had 1300 cups of coffee from the urn in the hallway. Let the speaking games begin. It’s a diabolical sensory deprivation experiment. Why is most public speaking so awful? Beyond soulless venues and Death by Power Point, speakers make the same four mistakes over and over again, continuing the sorry state of the art.....

For the rest of this free e-book:  http://www.changethis.com/58.06.PublicWords

Humor, part 2: 3 Rules for Mastering Irony

Irony is the humor of the era.  At its worst, irony is a cheap, easy way to get a chuckle and avoid making a commitment.  At its best, irony is a memorable way for the alienated to comment on the ‘in crowd’, the powerless to bring down the powerful, and the hip to skewer the not-so-hip.  John Hodgman provides a brilliant example of wonderful irony on TED.com:  http://tinyurl.com/6abzzm.  Check it out for how to do irony well.   There are 3 rules for making irony memorable rather than cheap. 

Hodgman begins by talking about Enrico Fermi, the brilliant Italian physicist, and aliens.  The kind that come in space ships and land in the Nevada desert, that is.  Hodgman says, “Isn’t it strange that he only asked for one thing?  A gift of two healthy sperm whales?  That’s not true, but it is strange.”

Rule Number One.  There’s considerable wit in what Hodgman does, but the predominant mode is ironical.  “The aliens might be very far away,” he says, in explaining why we haven’t seen them yet, “Even on other planets.”  He brilliantly illustrates the first rule of great irony by providing an overall narrative that is different from what he is apparently talking about.  Hodgman’s apparent narrative is all about his (non) encounters with aliens, but his real narrative is all about how he, a nerd, found love, got married, and remains in love today. 

It’s a very sweet story, told with delicacy and tact – and irony.  Most cheap irony lacks the meta-narrative that gives a good story its structure.  Cheap irony is usually just a pot shot at something the narrator doesn’t like but can’t do much about.  

Rule Number Two.  The second rule of great irony is that something important has to be at stake.  In Hodgman’s case, it’s love.  He is traveling in Portugal with the girl who becomes his wife, and she goes off on her own to check out a beach.  She’s a long time coming back to the hotel, and Hodgman realizes how alone he is in the universe.  As he says, “I could not call her on a cell phone because the aliens had not given us that technology yet.” 

But what’s at stake can be anything important that the speaker-narrator cares about.  Cheap irony has nothing behind it – no alternative that it is proposing.  Powerful irony points to a better way. 

Rule Number Three.   The third rule of irony is that its viewpoint has to run counter to the one held by those currently in power.  Again, in Hodgman’s case, the predominant viewpoint is that nerds can’t find love.  After all, it’s the Prom Kings and Queens that get love, right?  Hodgman quietly and ironically insists on the contrary, that nerds can find love, too.  “Even though we are married, I love her and wait for her still,” he says, perhaps the best last (ironical) line of a love story in recent years. 

Humor in public speaking -- 1: How to use traditional humor

Humor is hazardous to the health of public speakers.  Most speakers want to be funny, but you’ve got to do humor well, or it falls flat and that’s worse than no humor at all.  This week, in honor of May and May Day, I’m going to talk about how to manage humor in public speaking. 

Traditional jokes – with punch lines – are the hardest to do.  My first rule of the week is, don’t try traditional humor.  But if you’re determined – or you think you’re funny – then here are a couple of tips for making the experience good for both you and the audience. 

Let’s start with an example of a funny speech:  http://tinyurl.com/c67xez.  Emily Levine is a self-proclaimed trickster and a very funny person.  She’s Harvard-trained and still manages to be hilarious.  Does that make her a Type-A comedian?  Anyway, Emily’s humor is all about finding the contradictions in modern life that we’ve stopped noticing.  Stuff like the following sign in a beauty salon:

Ears pierced while you wait. 

Just imagine the alternative.  I’ll leave my ears hear until 5.  I’ve got a couple of errands to run.  But I’ll be back to pick them up.  What?  I couldn’t hear you. 

Trickster humor is all about finding those sorts of contradictions and pointing them out.  Also about crossing boundaries that are normally left intact.  If there were an Olympics in martyrdom, my grandmother would have lost on purpose…..

Check out Emily and learn from her.  She’s a comedian in the classic sense – she tells jokes.  That’s very hard to do.  As you watch the talk, note how she ‘sells’ her jokes with her body.  When she talks about not hanging up on telemarketers, because Emily Post says it’s rude, she devises another strategy.  After the telemarketer has delivered about half his pitch, she says, “I interrupted with, ‘You sound really sexy’.  He hung up on me!”  She says the ‘really sexy’ line with a husky voice, and sells the punch line with a pelvic stance.  The tone of voice and the posture are essential to the humor. 

So, if you’re determined to attempt traditional comedy in your speeches, then practice selling the jokes with your body language and voice.  You’re got to be 100 percent committed to the joke – body and all.  And then you’ve got to have a back up plan for recovery.  Study tapes of Johnny Carson – he was the master of what to do when the first joke goes flat.  Often his comebacks and reactions were funnier than the original line. 

Beyond that, look for the contradictions.  That’s where the humor is, and the punch lines.  Traditional humor is all about setting up expectations and then violating them, crossing the boundaries of expectation.  And finding connections where no one else sees them.  Good luck.