Nick Morgan, Public Words

Why you must rehearse: To avoid a public speaking disaster like this one

A few years back, we worked with the CEO of a company on a speech assignment that promised to be both fun and challenging.  The CEO had built the company from nothing to dominant in his industry.   He had achieved a great deal, and was now ready to tell his story to the world.  He had spoken to his employees, and a few industry groups, before, but had never ventured outside of this narrow sphere of influence.

Now he wanted to go big.  He got in touch with a speaker bureau, and asked it to book him.  The bureau counseled him to go small – to begin with a modest venue and a small audience.  Just to get the hang of it. 

He rejected that advice.  He persuaded the speaker bureau to get him a large audience – 6,000 people – and a high fee for his first time out.  So the bureau called us in to help write the speech.  The stakes were high and the speaker inexperienced.  A coach seemed like a good idea. 

We wrote the speech, and it was a compelling one – if I do say so – because the CEO was an immigrant who started with nothing and built the company up through hard work and business savvy – a classic ‘rags to riches’ story.  This was a person who changed the world in a significant way and had as a result a good message for people to hear.    

Once everyone was happy with the speech, we proposed that the speaker rehearse.  The CEO resisted, saying, “I’m very comfortable under pressure, because of my extensive martial arts training.  I’ll be fine.”

We pressed hard, but the speaker ultimately did not rehearse beyond talking through the script in a 10-minute session in his palatial apartment overlooking Central Park in New York. 

I called my good friends at the speaker bureau to warn them that our speaker hadn’t rehearsed and I was worried.  They thanked me for the warning, and we all held our collective breaths. 

The big day and the debut came, and with it disaster. 

The stage was quite wide, and the conference organizers had put a couch in the middle of the wide expanse to break it up.  At one end of the stage – stage right – was the podium, and at the other end, a potted plant.   The speaker began at the podium, but soon left it to roam the stage. 

A couple of minutes in, he jumped up on the couch and executed what everyone figured out later must have been a half-remembered Kung Fu move.  It was dramatic; and the audience was riveted.  Then he jumped down, uttered a few lines from the speech, and jumped up on the couch again, performing another semi-martial-arts maneuver, and a few more lines from the speech.

He kept up this astounding mixture of speaking and martial arts ballet until he had managed to get through – incoherently – about half the speech.  Then he (mercifully) stopped and asked for questions.

There were none.  6,000 people in the audience were stunned into silence. 

The speech was a Grade-A disaster.  The CEO has never spoken in front of a large audience again to date.  The speaker bureau didn’t talk to me for 3 years, even though the CEO had the decency to call both me and the speaker bureau up and apologize, taking the blame on himself.   The organizer of the event has a ‘bootleg’ tape of the speech which is played at late night ‘after event’ parties to riotous laughter.   They coined the phrase ‘jumping the couch’ from this incident to describe a speaker who melts down during a speech. 

You must rehearse.  You don’t want to jump the couch.  Adrenaline plays funny tricks on the mind, and you need to establish the muscle memory of a full, physical rehearsal in order to give your body something remembered to do when the adrenaline kicks in.   A mental run-through is not enough.  You must rehearse. 

If find yourself arguing with me, or yourself, giving reasons why you don’t need to rehearse, that’s a red public speaking flag.  Professionals rehearse.  Amateurs jump the couch.  So rehearse.  Please. 

(Some of the details have been changed to protect the CEO in question.  For a longer discussion of how and what to rehearse, see my article here.)





 

3 Lessons for Public Speaking from the Japanese Tea Ceremony

When I was in Japan, I was fortunate enough to take part in a tea ceremony.  I don’t think I understood much of what I was doing then, beyond experiencing the simplicity and elegance of the occasion.  Recently, I ran across The Tea Ceremony, by Seno and Sendo Tanaka, and this beautiful book both brought back the memory and filled me in with many of the nuances I’d missed.  It occurred to me that 3 concepts from the tea ceremony in particular have application to public speaking and are good advice for Western minds trying to improve their own – and their audience’s – experience. 

Lesson One:  Keep It Simple.  The essence of the tea ceremony is bound up in the word that describes it, wabi, which literally means ‘loneliness’ or ‘desolation’, and refers to the simplicity and tranquility that should permeate everything associated with the ceremony.  In the same way, ultimately, public speaking is just about a conversation between people.  If we focus on that, then it doesn’t have to get too complicated.

Lesson Two:  Involve Your Creativity.  The Japanese concept here is hataraki, which means infusing the traditional forms of the ceremony with your own creativity, little touches that keep the ceremony from becoming stiff and static.  In the same way, great public speaking respects the forms and traditions, but brings the speaker’s unique differences to the mix, keeping it interesting.  Trust yourself and bring your own perspective to the occasion.    

Lesson Three:  Quit While You’re Ahead.   The Japanese concept is taru-o-shiru – ‘to know what is enough’ and it means that it’s OK to be imperfect.  If you insist on perfection, you’ll add an element of stress to the occasion that will make everyone nervous.  Instead, accept that you’re human and your efforts will be imperfect.  Let it go at that.  Public speaking is the same way – the 80-20 rule always applies.  Do your best and forget the rest. 

Overall, the tea ceremony is all about the host setting the scene for the guests, keeping it simple, comfortable, and a release from the stresses of everyday life.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all speakers could do the same!

(And if only I had known that when I was in Japan, I might have been able to enjoy the tea ceremony more and worried less about making a wrong move.)

A Speaker Scam -- Update

In June 2010, I posted a blog about an apparent speaker scam.  A friend of Public Words received an invitation to speak at a prestigious university in the UK.  There were a number of inconsistencies and oddities with the email and we all guessed that it was a scam.  Since then I have received numerous updates from -- especially -- religious folks being invited to speak at purported religious conferences in the UK.  Different venues, different pastors doing the inviting, but it all adds up, again, to scam.  Don't send out any information in response!  Especially don't send any financial information -- bank account numbers and the like. 

I get weekly inquiries, sometimes several a week, so this scam is still very active. 

Here's the original posting.  Click on the link to see the dozens of comments of people who have been approached.  And don't be fooled!

The original post from June 2010:

A good friend of ours at Public Words, a successful public speaker, recently received a speaking inquiry from a prestigious university in the United Kingdom.  The request came via email, and there were a number of indications that it wasn’t on the level.  The email address was a Gmail account, not the university’s email.  The sender purported to be a professor at the school, but there was no record of such a professor in the university’s online database.  Of course, he might have been newly appointed, but his command of the English language was so bad that our friend was immediately suspicious. 

On further investigation, there was no mention of the conference our friend was supposed to speak at on the university’s website.  In addition, there was an unusual request to “get a work permit” from the “British embassy” (via another Gmail account).

All signs seemed to point to fraud.  And, in addition, the amount of money offered for speaking was unusually large – the final straw. 

My question to everyone is:  have you run across anything similar?  What’s the point – would the scammer have asked for bank information at a later stage if our friend had continued?  If you’ve run across speaker scams like this, please let me know.

Click here to see the commentary. 

Your Presentation Secret Weapon: Grace Hopper, the Computer, and the Prop

The first motivational speaker I ever heard was the inimitable Admiral Grace Hopper, sometime in the 80s at the University of Virginia.  Hopper left her position as a mathematics professor at Vassar during WWII to join the Navy.  She was instrumental in developing COBOL and takes credit for inventing the word “debug” as applied to computers – she says because a moth disabled a computer she was working on during WWII, and she remarked that the computer needed “debugging.” 

Grace carried on her speaking career until her death in 1992 at 85.  When I saw her in the 80s, she had her message down.  She began with some self-deprecating humor about being a woman in the Navy, and in the computer world.  The truth was she was so smart she broke through the gender barriers of the day with her brains and character.  

That alone was inspiring.  But the core of her message was about waste.  A nanosecond doesn’t sound like a long time, but if you measure it in terms of how far an electric impulse travels in that time, it’s something over 11 inches. 

Grace would hand out ‘nanoseconds’ to everyone in her audience – eleven inches of green and white phone wire – and urge everyone to think clearly and precisely, avoid waste, and reach their potential. 

I still have the nanosecond today.  I’m looking at it now.   Grace Hopper was named the first “computer sciences man of the year” in 1969, but it’s not her courage and trailblazing that has made me keep this prop – this piece of wire – for nearly 30 years.  It’s Grace Hopper’s character.  That, and the prop, made her and her speech unforgettable. 

Here's a brief clip from an old "60 Minutes" program on Hopper.  It captures a little of her wit and wisdom.  Enjoy!

 

 

Go Behind the Dream: How Martin Luther King's Great Speech Happened

One of the most remarkable books in recent years for students of public speaking is Clarence Jones’ Behind the Dream:  The Making of the Speech That Transformed a Nation.  The book puts us in the moment when King raised his hand high in the air, stood on tiptoe, and said, “Free at last, free at last!  Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”  The crowd erupted in a roar that has reverberated down the years and generations to the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president, but also to countless individual dreams realized in the slow march to racial equality. 

Jones was Martin Luther King’s lawyer, and one of his inner circle of advisors.  That put Jones in a very good position to witness the development of the idea for the march on Washington, the planning for it, and the event itself.  He recaptures very convincingly the state of mind of King’s circle beforehand, not knowing whether or not the speech would be a success, worrying about harassment from the FBI, and struggling with the demands of all the groups that wanted to be involved and have their say in how the day worked. 

In the end, of course, it worked very, very well.  Jones moves on to talk about the development of the speech – he was also King’s speechwriter – and takes credit, essentially, for the first half of the speech.  This section talks (in somewhat legalistic terms) about the promissory note still due American blacks because of the injustice meted out to them over the previous several hundred years. 

Of course the magic happened in the second half of the speech, where King left his script and ad-libbed the incredible “I have a dream” sequence, as I’ve blogged about before.  What Jones adds is that the impetus to ad-lib came from Mahalia Jackson, the great singer, who had treated the audience to a heartfelt rendition of a gospel number, “I’ve been ‘buked and I’ve been scorned,” just before King began to speak.  She shouted to King, according to Jones, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin, tell ‘em about the dream!” about midway through the speech. 

Jones’ theory is that King heard those words, and in nanoseconds decided to throw away his script and begin ad-libbing. 

It makes a great story, and of course it’s possible.  But my hunch is that King must have been realizing that he wasn’t connecting with the audience several minutes before that.  A decision like that comes from a growing sense that you need to shift gears because of the unconscious messages the audience sends you.  Jackson’s urging might well have tipped the balance, but unless it was reinforced with King’s own feeling about the audience, I doubt one shouted comment alone would have had the effect Jones attributes to it.  King’s speaking style, from his Baptist minister days, incorporated a good deal of ‘call and response’, so there was lots of shouting going on.  

If you watch the filmed record of the event, all you see is the shift itself, with King mostly reading the script in the first half of the speech, to him directly addressing the crowd in the second half.  Make a decision to go off script he clearly did, but what prompted the decision?  We will never know for sure. 

Nonetheless, Jones was there and I wasn’t, and his tale adds to the lore of what is one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.  The book is wonderful, and rewarding for students of public speaking as well as of the civil rights era.  History is all too often written backward, with the certainty of future knowledge lending inevitability to the author’s insights.  Jones is particularly skilled at giving us the contingent nature of events as the happen, and that is a great gift to anyone who wants to understand where we’ve really come from.  Highly recommended. 

For more detailed analysis of King’s speech, especially of the ad lib section, see my earlier blog, “What you don’t know about King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”

Will Your Team Succeed? Take This Diagnostic To Find Out

A friend sent me a book – Team Talk, by Anne Donnellon – that inspired me to create a diagnostic tool based on Donnellon’s research for cross-functional teams to rate themselves on their collaborative strengths based on their communication styles. 

Donnellon’s basic insight is that you can predict how teams will succeed or fail by how they talk about themselves.   Teams that argue more, and work to true collaboration, rather than shutting up to get along, or pulling rank, are more likely to accomplish great things.  

The higher you rate on this simple diagnostic, the more likely your team is to succeed – and the reverse is also true. 

It’s a quick, easy test to take -- just 6 questions.  Take it today to see where your team’s strengths and weaknesses lie.

1. Identification.  Do your teammates identify themselves more with the functional area they came from, or the team itself?  Rate your team on a scale of 5, with 5 meaning ‘identifies with the team’ and 1 means ‘identifies with the functional area they came from’.

2. Interdependence.  Do your teammates take unilateral action, or do they work with the team to get things done?  Rate your team, with 5 meaning ‘works with the team to get things done’, and 1 means ‘takes unilateral action’.

3. Power.   Do your teammates pull rank, or argue based on merit?  Rate your team, with 5 meaning ‘argues positions based on merit’, and 1 means ‘pulls rank’. 

4. Social distance.   Here’s where the chit-chat and small talk is important.  Rate your team, with 5 meaning ‘lots of social connections among teammates’, to 1 meaning ‘no social interaction’. 

5. Conflict management tactics.  Do your teammates force some issues, and avoid others, or do they confront and collaborate?  If your team mostly confronts and collaborate, rate yourself a 5.  If the team mostly forces and avoids, rate yourself a 1. 

6. Negotiation.  Rate the negotiations that go on within the team.  If they’re mostly win-win, rate yourself a 5.  If they’re mostly win-lose, a 1. 

The score. 

24 – 30: You’ve got a highly collaborative team, and you’re likely to pull off win after win.

23 – 18: Your team is moderately collaborative, and is likely to be distinctly average. 

18 or less:  Your team is likely to underachieve. 

I’m fascinated by the connection between how a team talks – its communication style – and how well it succeeds.  Let me know how you get on, and what your results are.  Is the diagnostic helpful?
 

Win by Telling Great Stories with Peter Guber

Peter Guber has written a masterful additional to the storytelling library shelf with his book, Tell To Win.  In the course of showing you how to research, use, prepare, share, borrow, set, mine, and kill with a story, Guber tells a hundred wonderful stories himself, about his career in the movie business, and about many other celebrities along the way.  My only complaint is that he doesn’t tell you how to craft a story beyond the familiar three-part opening challenge – struggle – resolution that is the stuff of hundreds of similar books on the scene.  Maybe he’s saving that for his next book.  But there’s so much good stuff in this volume that you should pick up Tell To Win without delay and devour it because great stories make great speeches and this book will be enormously useful for anyone interested in communicating better as a speaker, writer, or business person. 

Beyond beginning, middle, and end, what are Guber’s insights?  Here are some of his takeaways:

1.  Beware the power of the backstory.  Guber relates a number of stories where paying attention to the client’s or customer’s backstory won the deal – and ignoring backstory lost it.  Guber himself tried and failed to steal Larry King away from CNN a number of years ago.  Ted Turner kept Larry at CNN with 5 words, “Just tell me, ‘Good bye’.”  That worked because of Larry’s issues about loyalty over his struggles with his father.  Turner knew what button to push – the power of the backstory.

2.  Who’s your audience?  With Guber’s stories, it becomes clear that he does his homework.  You’re never ready to tell a story until you know your audience better than it knows itself.  What does that audience fear?  Long for?  Dream about?  Loathe?  You’ve got to do the research.  You’re simply not ready for prime time otherwise. 

3.  Who’s the hero of your story?  Who are you going to put in the role of hero?  A good storyteller knows that you have several options.  You can put yourself in the role of hero, and rely on the empathy of the audience to make the transference.  Or you can cast a figure from history, or a fictional character as hero.  Most powerful, often, is to put the audience in the role.  That way, you make it easy for your listeners to take over the story and make it their own. 

4.  Mine everywhere for sources of story.   As someone with a long history in the movie business, Guber knows that stories come from just about everywhere – personal experience, history, myth, the classics, the news – wherever human intent and effort are involved.  Don’t limit yourself.  Be prepared to find stories everywhere.

5.  When you’re telling the story, get into the right frame of mind.  Storytellers have to be fully present, feeling the emotions of their stories, so that the magical transference of emotion to the audience will happen when it’s supposed to – and not when it isn’t.  You don’t want unintended humor – you want the audience to respond on cue.  To get that response, you have to earn it by being completely in the moment with the story. 

6.  Props can help tell a powerful story; they can also kill one.  Guber tells the story of presenting former President Reagan and former President Mikhail Gorbachev with Tiffany-designed jackknives and reminding them of playing mumblety-peg as boys.  The prop, and the story worked.  But when candidate Michael Dukakis rode in a tank to show he was tough on defense, the prop shot down his campaign, because it didn’t feel real for the peace-loving Dukakis. 

7.  In the end, you have to surrender control.  Good storytelling means giving the story to the audience.  The audience has to own it or you haven’t succeeded.  That’s brilliant advice, and a nice cap to a valuable book.

As I said, Guber leaves the structure of a story at the simple level that most other writers do.  For a more nuanced, thorough explanation of what makes a good story, see my (free) article, "How to tell powerful stories in your speeches."
 

Why You Should Talk Less And Say More

Some of the best communications advice I’ve read recently is to be found in Connie Dieken’s Talk Less, Say More.  Connie’s thesis is that world’s attention span is getting shorter, and she offers a 3-point plan for cutting through the clutter and capturing your audience’s attention quickly and efficiently.

Her main point is incontrovertible.  Attention spans are getting shorter, we are all trying to absorb more information faster than ever before, and there are more new ideas out there demanding our attention.  It’s a triple whammy, and Connie’s response is similarly three-fold:  connect, convey, convince. 

First, connect.  To connect with an audience, you have to be tough on yourself.  No wandering preambles, no endless qualifications, no screwing around before you get started.  Respect the audience’s time, and information overload.  Give it to them straight and as simple as possible. 

Most important, you have to know the audience – what it wants and needs, and what its preferred communication styles are. 

Second, convey.  Keep it simple, use clear visuals when possible, tell stories, and give your points in groups of three.  That’s about as simple as I can make it.  It’s all good advice and it all works. 

Third, convince.  The idea is to lead people to action, and you do that by sounding confident, cutting out the shilly-shallying, bringing others along with you by bringing them in and allowing them to own the solution too, and by adjusting your energy to the appropriate level for the audience and the room.  There, I summed that section up in one sentence.  Connie would be proud. 

This is a great book for the long-winded, the detail-oriented, and the footnoters of this world.  Life is picking up speed at an ever-faster rate, and we all have to learn how to keep up by cutting to the chase. 

For more on how to persuade others, see my article on How to Write a Great Speech. 

Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment: What's In It For Public Speakers?

Guy Kawasaki enchants with Enchantment.  It’s a lovely word, but of course Guy wants it to mean more than just charming the socks off someone.  He is talking about how you delight people with a purpose:  to buy your product, help you achieve something, or just be your friend. 

Can you use Kawasaki’s insights to give better speeches?  Guy offers some specific advice on giving presentations:

Customize the introduction.  Guy’s idea here is that you give better speeches when you give the same one over and over again.  Presentation practice makes perfect.  But you enchant people by tailoring the beginning to them – showing that you know or are connected with them in some way.  Guy often takes pictures of the audience or the city and puts them in the introduction. 

This is good advice, but not enough.  You really need to tailor a speech to an audience throughout.  Of course, there may be big chunks of your usual speech that fit with a particular audience, but you should never assume that’s the case.  Good speaking starts with good research, and that research may affect not only the beginning but the middle and the end of your speech.

Sell your dream.  Guy means that you need to sell the sizzle with the steak, the big idea with the product, the differentiator with the beta release.  It’s a good point, but the real way you enchant an audience is to solve the audience’s problem.  To do that, you need to know what that problem is. 

Think screenplay, not speech.  Great movies follow a 3-act structure, and so should your speech, says Guy.  This is good advice, and widely proffered, but all too often watered down to saying that a good speech has a beginning, middle, and end.  A great screenplay is much more than that.  A great screenplay takes viewers on a journey, seen through the eyes of the hero.  A great screenplay begins with a situation, then a complication that forces the hero out of her comfort zone, her daily life, her stuck situation.  It may be an event, a new person, a decision.  Then the complications begin.  A great screenplay throws obstacles in the way of the hero so that it will take 2 convincing hours for her to reach her goal.  When these complications reach their zenith, the hero faces a test that reveals her true character.  If she passes the test, the story resolves more or less happily.  If she fails the test, the story resolves more or less tragically. 

There’s a lot to a screenplay, and Guy only touches on what’s really involved.  By all means use the idea of a screenplay to jazz up your presentation, but realize that a screenplay is a complicated, subtle beast and needs to be treated with respect.  If you have a beginning, middle, and end to your presentation, you don't have a screenplay.   

Dramatize, shorten, and practice.  I’m combining three of Guy’s points here because they all have to do with upping the ante and avoiding dullness.  Dramatize your talk with great slides that convey emotion.  Shorten your speech – no one ever complained when a talk finished early. And practice, because it makes perfect.  Guy also says “speak a lot,” which is the same point. 

Warm up your audience.  I like this point, because it’s not as obvious – or as frequently given -- as the others.  Guy means going out into the audience before your talk begins to get to know them.  This is a very good idea, and not practiced enough by speakers everywhere.  ‘Visiting’ with your audience beforehand will warm them to you, help with your nerves, and potentially give you stuff to say to customize the talk.  All good, and very worthwhile. 

What about the rest of the book?  I think the real value of Enchantment for public speakers comes in Guy’s wise, funny, and spot on advice about how to catch people’s attention, hold that attention, and keep enchanting them for a long time.  It’s not that the advice is so surprising for a regular reader of advice books, but Guy puts it together in a delightful way, and his warm, down-to-earth personality shines throughout.  Highly recommended airplane read. 

For a discussion of an equally revolutionary set of principles along similar lines, read my review of Sally Hogshead’s Fascinate. 

If You Must Use Power Point, Here’s How To Do It – 5 Tips From Hans Rosling

One of the modern masters of data – and specifically data presented to an audience on a slide – is Hans Rosling.  He’s spoken regularly at TED and TEDx talks about big issues like child mortality, and his talks are mesmerizing.  He’s an example of a speaker that presents data in ways that prove his point, never become confusing or boring, and draw the audience in.  Check out one of his recent TED talks here, and below.   What the heck, check them all out.  If you have to present heavy data, here’s how you do it. 

1.  Present with passion and clarity.  Rosling has wrestled with the data, and he know to pick out just the important points.  Each of his pieces of data serves the main thesis of his talk.  But even when he’s deep in the difference between countries in sub-Saharan Africa, he never loses his passion for the subject, and that is electrifying. 

2.  Don’t talk to your slides.  Rosling occasionally points to data on his slides, but he spends most of his talks facing the audience, giving insights about his data.  I’ve worked with many presenters in fields that involve lots of data, and they always argue this point.  My answer is, “Watch Rosling!”  You don’t have to talk to your slides.  You have to talk to the audience.  The audience is why you’re there. 

3.  Vary your pace.  Numbers can be overwhelming, but Rosling keeps our interest with the instincts of a good actor, varying his pace and intensity to keep our interest.  His voice rises and falls, his volume shifts with the urgency of his points, and he pauses and delivers the main punch lines with drama, slowly, and clearly.  Take a lesson from the master.  Don’t speak in a monotone at the same pace for 60 minutes.  You’ll kill your audience. 

4.  Use the right kind of animation.  It was a cursed day when Power Point (and Keynote, and the others) added all those bells and whistles, so that you can make your boring word slide more interesting by swooping the headline in from the left, exploding the words off the screen to the right, and building – forever building – with one bullet after another.  Rosling does none of that.  Instead, he animates the data to make a point – how child mortality changes over time, for example – and then narrates it like an announcer talking us through an exciting sports event.  It’s masterful.  And not a single headline swoops in from either left or right. 

5.  Spend several minutes per slide.  Rosling makes us care about his data because he spends time with it.  It’s interesting; it repays study.  The trend nowadays is to build slide decks with 100 slides in, say, 45 minutes.  To be sure, the graphics have improved – glossy pictures whizz past us at an ever-increasing rate – but that’s no excuse for shallow talks, shallow slides, and taking your talk at speed because you don’t have much to say.  Take a page from Rosling, use fewer slides, and dig into them with your audience. 

If you must use Power Point, then use it intelligently.  Data can provide astonishing insights, offer real clarity, and motivate us to change.  If it’s used like a master does.  Hans Rosling is one such master. 

 

 

 

 

9 Tips For Success From A Steve Jobs Presentation

On March 2, 2011, a pale, thin Steve Jobs kicked off the iPad 2 with his signature new product presentation in San Francisco.  He entered to a standing ovation and was interrupted by applause many times during the course of the talk.  He was clearly playing to a crowd of fans, but nonetheless his presentation offers a number of lessons about how to present persuasively and effectively.  Use these tips to improve your own presentations.  

1.  He begins by acknowledging the crowd.  Jobs realizes that he’s there for the audience, and he shows his awareness by focusing on the crowd.  He waits for them to react, to finish their applause.  He doesn’t rush their responses.  That’s how you establish a rapport with the people in front of you.

2.  He uses mostly open gestures.  Jobs is a seasoned presenter, and he doesn’t betray much nervousness.  But he does tip us off to his nerves in the beginning with some awkward hand gestures:  he can’t quite decide where to put them.  But soon he settles down and makes his gestures mostly open.  Aside from a tendency to put his hands behind his back when he doesn’t know what else to do, which is not very effective, most of his gestures are strong and open. 

3.  He frames the talk at a high level at the opening.  Jobs begins by saying, “I’ve got some updates to talk about, and then a major product announcement.  So let’s get started.”  And then he’s off and running.  He doesn’t make the mistake so many inexperienced presenters make by wasting those first critical minutes in a detailed examination of the agenda.  That’s boring.  Instead, tell us why we’re there, in a quick framing sentence or two – or story – and then get on it with it. 

4.  He keeps his remarks both emotional and grounded.   Jobs is not afraid to quote a competitor – especially when it makes a good point about Apple – and he lets us know how he feels about Apple products.  He used words like “cool” and “wonderful” and “exciting” regularly.  He keeps our interest by letting us know how interested he is. 

5.  He uses visuals well – including video.  Virtually all of Jobs’ slides are pictures.  Very few bullets and certainly no speaker notes.  And his use of video is instructive:  the video is touching – including a moving account of how the iPad helps autistic children cope better – and takes us places that Jobs would have to work much harder to do with words. 

6.  He’s focused on the audience.  Jobs never makes the mistake less experienced presenters do by talking to their slides (or video).  He’s always talking to the audience.  He knows what he’s going to say, and uses the visuals as an enhancement, not a crutch. 

7.  He tells a good story.  Jobs builds suspense by keeping the iPad 2 announcement to the end of his part of the presentation.  He leads up to the big deal, rather than “telling them what you’re going to say, saying it, and then telling them what you said.” 

8.  He doesn’t use jargon.   Jobs’ language is straightforward, direct, and enthusiastic.  He uses little or no jargon – occasionally a tech term will creep in, but then he is the head of a high-tech company – and keeps his remarks grounded in real activities of real people.  He’s always telling us what his gadgets can do, not what esoteric features they have. 

9.  Finally, he has fun.  A speaker’s enthusiasm is infectious – literally, because we have mirror neurons in our heads that share the emotions we see around us.  If the speaker is nervous, we get nervous.  If the speaker is jazzed, we get jazzed.  That’s why a Jobs presentation is fun to watch.