Public Speaking Advice and Commentary

Is your non-verbal 'conversation' helping or hurting your career?

How are you showing up?  Is your non-verbal 'conversation' helping or hurting your career?  My partner and I worked with an executive of a major financial institution who had fought his way up from the streets to a top position. When we were brought in to work with him, he had been promoted to a board–level role, and that required that he act in a statesmanlike manner, and as a mentor to others.

He had no idea how to behave in this way. All of his experience had taught him that he had to fight to keep his position and that colleagues were competition. So when he went into a meeting with the board, he behaved the way he always had.

He was close to being fired.

Why?  We quickly discovered what it was that so turned off the board when we had him role-play his executive meetings. He would go into an ever-so-slight defensive crouch, tensing himself, lowering his brows in a suspicious stare that had successfully intimidated many rivals in his earlier days.

He was completely unaware of this closed behavior.  The 360-degree review he had received just after taking the new position had shocked him. He had no idea that people saw him as a nasty guy.

But now he realized that he had to learn a different way to relate to his colleagues. The board had no wish to spar continuously with a defensive, hostile executive; they wanted a colleague.

He had to change.

When we showed him the videotape of his role-play, the moment was transformational. He had had no idea that his body language was signaling defensiveness. His reaction was, “Oh, my god, I look like a punk!”  He knew that he couldn’t look like a punk and continue as a C–suite executive.

That ten-minute video review probably saved his career. 

It gave him the motivation to change, and he slowly but surely learned to open up and become more of a colleague. He adopted a new posture and began to sit up straighter. Gradually he was able to open up his hands and arms. All of this took time and conscious effort before the new behavior became as comfortable and automatic as the old.  But eventually he began to be perceived as the executive and colleague he wanted to be. 

How are you showing up?  Check your non-verbal communication before it undercuts your best conscious efforts to succeed. 

Penn and Teller and the Happy Feet problem

I have a secret fondness for magic acts – the professional ones.  Acts like Penn and Teller.  So I was thrilled a while back when I was in Vegas for a convention and had an evening to catch their act. 

Penn and Teller are two accomplished showmen:  Penn is the talkative one, and Teller is largely silent. Penn keeps up a running commentary designed to distract and bemuse the audience while they both perform the magic tricks.

I was astonished to see that, at this performance, the talkative one, Penn, had a bad case of “happy feet.”  He had so much energy that he was wandering all over the stage randomly while chattering away. The random movement of his feet was his method for discharging that adrenaline-induced energy we all experience in performance, whether magicians or actors or speakers.

The result was so distracting, though, that I found myself unable to attend to his patter or even the magic tricks with any reliability. Nonetheless, he managed to hold his audience reasonably well until an unpleasant trick that involved apparently putting a live rabbit through a wood chipper. He lost his audience then and never got it back, making it clear that the bond was weak throughout, partly because his motion was random and not purposeful, toward the audience and away from it.

How do you avoid the Penn problem?  Two ways.  First, get control over your motion, and make it purposeful – toward your audience and away from it when appropriate.  Those are the only motions the audience will be interested in.  Moving toward an audience builds trust.  Use it. 

Second, become conscious of your adrenaline and treat it as energy to be used rather than a problem.  Let it come out in your voice, in your gestures – in your charisma. 

‘Happy Feet’ detracts from the performance of many a public speaker.  Don’t let it be your problem.  

Can you 'thin-slice' listening? Malcolm Gladwell and the Kouroi myth

One of the most pernicious concepts widely circulated about listening is in the otherwise admirable book Blink. Malcolm Gladwell introduces the idea of what he calls ‘thin-slicing’ as a way of talking about how a very small sample can stand for a whole host of evidence under specific circumstances and conditions. Unfortunately, he equates the thin-slicing idea with the expert’s ability to instantly size up, for example, an ancient statue as real or fake because of a myriad clues unconsciously weighed, evaluated, and sorted.

Here is what Gladwell wrote:

In September of 1983, an art dealer by the name of Gianfranco Becchina approached the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. He had in his possession, he said, a marble statue dating from the sixth century b.c. It was what is known as a kouros — a sculpture of a nude male youth standing with his left leg forward and his arms at his side. There are only about two hundred kouroi in existence, and most have been recovered badly damaged . . . . But this one was almost perfectly preserved . . . . It was an extraordinary find. Becchina’s asking price was just under $10 million.  The Getty moved cautiously. It . . . began a thorough investigation. . . .A geologist from the University of California. . .spent two days examining the surface of the statue with a high-resolution stereomicroscope . . . . [He]concluded . . . the statue was old. It wasn’t some contemporary fake . . . .The kouros, however, had a problem. It didn’t look right. The first to point this out was an Italian art historian named Federico Zeri . . . . He found himself staring at the sculpture’s fingernails. In a way he couldn’t immediately articulate, they seemed wrong to him. Other experts weighed in, and the statue was finally judged a fake. The Getty was embarrassed, and the art world has a great story to tell.

What does this have to do with listening? The idea has lodged in the public mind that somehow we can all be expert thin-slicers based on a quick look, a brief listen, a glancing moment of attention. But Gladwell has confused our ability to make snap (because unconscious) nonverbal judgments about the intent of people and the danger quotient of situations we’re thrown in with an expert’s ability, when her learning is profound, to size up something quickly. The result has been that too many people now say, “Just let me thin-slice this.”

The only thing we’re doing there is getting a quick read on our impression of the other person’s intent. We are pretty good at it, but we can certainly be wrong, and it is most emphatically not the same as expertise in a field like art history.  They’re two completely different activities.

The former is almost entirely unconscious and instant, whereas the latter is primarily conscious but drawing on an unconscious sifting of the physical evidence brought to the conscious mind.  And it often is a slow process, where something niggles at the back of the mind for days before the expert is able to become fully aware of what is going on. That is what in fact happens to several of the experts in Gladwell’s fake masterpiece story.  They take weeks to figure out why the statue doesn’t seem real to them or to piece together their analysis, impressions, and unconscious deciphering.

My point is this: we can’t listen to other people by thin-slicing them. Listening takes time. When it is done right, it is primarily an emotional activity and only secondarily intellectual.

Emotions take time to express, be heard, be validated, and so on.  To listen well and deeply to another person, you must quiet your own two conversations, and let your verbal and your nonverbal channels attend to what’s being said to you. Listen with your whole body.

Making a film? Appearing on camera? Check out these tips

For my blog today, I'm linking to an interview I did this week with Thomas Clifford, filmmaker and Fast Company expert blogger on how to use the principles I talk about in creating and appearing in film and video:  http://tinyurl.com/mehdhr

Enjoy!

20 body language myths debunked

Thanks to Suzanne Smith, who sent a very interesting list of 20 “defensive” and “positive and powerful” body language tips.  I can’t resist commenting on them, because they are such an admixture of good and bad advice.  The original posting is here:  http://tinyurl.com/nb4osk.  I’ll list each “tip” and then comment after in boldface. 

"Defensive Body Language Tips"

1. Invade someone’s personal space. This is a sign of dominance. 
•    Potentially dangerous advice.  Never invade unless you’re willing to back up your bluff with thorough follow-through.  In other words, be prepared to fight.  And why are you picking a fight, anyway? 
2. Unblinking eye contact can be intimidating. Essentially you are staring someone down until they look away.
•    Yes, too much eye contact can be intimidating.  It can also seem downright weird.  Why are you staring?  Again, if you’re going to pick a fight, you have to be prepared to duke it out.
3. Standing up straight and tall. In nature, animals make themselves appear larger to avoid conflict and establish dominance with predators or competition. The same technique works in the human world.
•    This is good advice – standing straight means that you are assertive without being aggressive or hostile. 
4. Speak first. Speaking first gives you the upper hand immediately.
•    Only if you have something to say.
5. Touch the person first. Extend your hand to shake hands, touch a person’s elbow, cover their hand while you shake hands. Being the first person to touch another opens up conversation while maintaining control.
•    This only has a minor effect on the flow of a conversation.  And too much familiarity too soon can be off-putting.
6. Turn your body at an angle to squeeze an uninvited guest out. The third wheel will get the idea.
•    This is junior-high-school stuff – effective, but obvious, cheap and potentially nasty -- and rude. 

"Positive and Powerful Body Language Tips"

7. Maintain a steady even tone. Appear calm, cool and collected by not raising your voice or speaking too quickly.
•    This works, just as your mother (or your psychologist) told you, to keep things calm.  I thought we were trying to take charge.  The aim appears to have changed. 
8. Speak heart to heart, or straight forward, to show interest in the conversation.
•    Yes, other things being equal.  Listening is a more powerful way to show interest. 
9. Steer your listener in the direction you wish to go while talking.
•    This will only have a minor effect on the flow of the conversation.
10. If you are sitting, keep your feet flat on the floor. Uncross your legs and sit straight up. You’ll appear more confident and interested.
•    Trivial
11. Gradually nod in agreement while you are listening to another person speak. Don’t jerk your head around with impatience.
•    Nodding builds agreement. 
12. Keep your arms open. Crossing your arms is a defensive motion. Keeping your limbs open and relaxed makes you seem comfortable with the situation.
•    True, but if you’re feeling defensive, you’ll signal it in many other ways besides this obvious giveaway. 
13. Don’t touch your face or cover your mouth with your hands. This movement can make you appear as if you are lying or trying to cover up something.
•    Depends on the context.  Not a reliable indicator of lying. 
14. Lean in slightly while another person is talking.
•    Generally, closing the distance between you and someone else indicates interest and builds trust. 
15. Use your hands confidently during a conversation.
•    Too vague to be useful. 
16. Don’t fidget while speaking. Fidgeting shows nervousness.
•    Fidgeting can also show impatience, or ADD behavior. 
17. Be aware of your facial expressions while you are talking and listening. Remember to smile when you greet and leave someone.
•    Smiling is always good, except when the situation demands a frown. 
18. Don’t reveal too much information. It can get awkward very quickly.
•    I have no idea what this means.  Are we talking about body language or something else?  The CIA or the PTA?
19. Don’t steal someone else’s thunder when they are telling a story. Allow them to finish and relate if you can.
•    That’s basic politeness. 
20. Relax your shoulders to avoid appearing uptight or nervous.
•    Again, in isolation this won’t help much if you’re nervous. 

As I explain in my book, Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, this kind of blow-by-blow approach to body language misses the point.  Body language is behavior and has to be interpreted in a context of a situation, a person, and a content.  In terms of decoding someone else’s behavior, you can’t look at isolated bits of body language.  There are simply too many reasons for human behavior.  It’s a fool’s game. 

In controlling your own behavior, to appear more confident, or open, or in charge, again, it is a fool’s game to try to manage a specific bit of body language.  Instead, work on your intent.  Then your body language will take care of itself. 

Who's the most powerful person in the room?

Sociologists Stanford Gregory and Stephen Webster of Kent State University conducted some fascinating research into the question of leadership at a very simple level.  They studied interviews on the Larry King Live show and tapes of British politicians and former U.S. presidents. Why this particular grouping of people? Because the issue of power and deference is bound to come up when high-status individuals are involved.

What they studied were the low-frequency sounds (below 500 hertz) that we all utter as we speak. The existence of the sounds themselves was well known to researchers but had been dismissed as irrelevant. Gregory and Webster found that in conversations and meetings, people rapidly match each other’s low -frequency sounds. In short, to have a productive conversation or meeting, we need to literally be on the same wavelength!

It gets more interesting: the researchers found that lower-status people match the higher-status people in the room.  You might expect that everyone would meet in the middle, but that was not the case. When Larry King was interviewing someone of very high status, he matched the high-status individual’s tones. When the interviewee was low status, he or she would match Larry King. The quickest to match Larry was Dan Quayle, presumably someone who had good reason to be deferential.

What’s going on here? Sorting out who is the most powerful person in the room is a game that humans have used for time out of memory because relative status is important to us. This need to defer and assert probably goes back to more primitive times when our lives depended on it. Now it’s more likely to be important when picking up sides for a sports team, jockeying for power in a business meeting, negotiating, or perhaps picking a new pope.

The point is that there is an unconscious element to it that is literally beyond our ken. Which happens first? And what are the criteria? Gregory and Webster’s research suggests that the process happens quickly, in the first few minutes of the conversation. So it’s hardly the case that much conscious thought has gone into determining who should be top dog. Rather, we see that an important part of our relationships to others is determined, at least in part, unconsciously. We are not the rational beings we like to think we are.

Conscious awareness of this unconscious process will arm you to resist the powerful and enable you increase your own personal power. 

What is the most important rule for success in public speaking?

I'm often asked what is the single most essential thing to remember in order to give a good speech.  My first instinct is to respond, "it's a complex process, an art form, and it involves lots of moving parts.  So there's no one single thing."  But if I'm pressed for one rule only, it would be this:  have fun. 

That's right -- have fun. 

Could it possibly be that simple? 

Audiences have provisionally given up their authority and bestowed it on the speaker.  They want the speaker to succeed.  Otherwise, they've wasted their time, and who can afford to do that these days?  The best thing the speaker can do is to signal to the audience that he or she is having a good time.  It will let the audience know that it is in good hands.  It can relax and enjoy the experience. 

That creates a virtuous circle -- happy audience, happy speaker -- and those good vibes go a long way toward creating a positive experience for all. 

Of course, the hard part about having fun is that most people are nervous when they speak, at least at the start.  So how do you relax and have fun when your heart is hammering away, your palms are clammy, and you're thinking to yourself, I will never, never agree to do this again?

Focus on the audience.  If you can stop thinking about yourself, and start thinking about the audience, you've got a chance to begin to enjoy yourself.  Remember, a speech is not primarily about you, the speaker.  It's about whether or not the audience is moved to action. 

So relax, forget about you, and have fun.   

I'm often asked what is the single most essential thing to remember in order to give a good speech.  My first instinct is to respond, "it's a complex process, an art form, and it involves lots of moving parts.  So there's no one single thing."  But if I'm pressed for one rule only, it would be this:  have fun. 

That's right -- have fun. 

Could it possibly be that simple? 

Audiences have provisionally given up their authority and bestowed it on the speaker.  They want the speaker to succeed.  Otherwise, they've wasted their time, and who can afford to do that these days?  The best thing the speaker can do is to signal to the audience that he or she is having a good time.  It will let the audience know that it is in good hands.  It can relax and enjoy the experience. 

That creates a virtuous circle -- happy audience, happy speaker -- and those good vibes go a long way toward creating a positive experience for all. 

Of course, the hard part about having fun is that most people are nervous when they speak, at least at the start.  So how do you relax and have fun when your heart is hammering away, your palms are clammy, and you're thinking to yourself, I will never, never agree to do this again?

Focus on the audience.  If you can stop thinking about yourself, and start thinking about the audience, you've got a chance to begin to enjoy yourself.  Remember, a speech is not primarily about you, the speaker.  It's about whether or not the audience is moved to action. 

So relax, forget about you, and have fun.   

What can you get an audience to do?

A speaker asks a lot of an audience.  Understanding, enthusiasm, support -- and inactivity.  Audiences are expected to be passive by most speakers 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, and they will thank you with higher ratings, better response, and 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. 

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, we had the speaker ask 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. 

We 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. 

A speaker asks a lot of an audience.  Understanding, enthusiasm, support -- and inactivity.  Audiences are expected to be passive by most speakers 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, and they will thank you with higher ratings, better response, and 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. 

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, we had the speaker ask 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. 

We 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. 

Can you present sitting down?

Many clients ask me if they can present sitting down. It's a natural question -- it feels more collegial, and less exposed, to sit down around the table like everyone else. And isn't it a good thing to be collegial? Doesn't it send out a nice message about what kind of person you are?

The answer is, unfortunately, not always.

Standing up while others are sitting automatically bestows some authority on the standee. And there are times when it's important to claim that authority, just as there are times when it's OK to be collegial. Just be aware that when you sit down, you are first and foremost saying, 'I'm one of you.' Don't 'say' it unless you mean it.

Of course we don't like arrogant, pushy people who claim authority that's not their own. But we also don't like people who pretend to be humble folks when in fact they're running the show. Both are annoying, and poor leadership.

Stand when you are leading a charge. If you are addressing the troops in order to present a new plan or direction, the decision has already been made, and you want to bring the people along with you, then stand. Sitting in that sort of situation is a form of non-verbal lying. Sitting is for discussion.

Stand when you are announcing a decision (after hearing a variety of opinions). Let's say you've listened to your team discuss some options and you've arrived at a decision. That's a good time to stand, to show that discussion is over and action is at hand.

Stand when your expertise is called upon. If you're the expert in the room, then you should stand to deliver your expertise. Sit down when you're done, and the others can have their day too.

Know when to sit, and when to stand. It does make a difference. We all give provisional respect to those stand up to make their points; after that it's up to you to earn continuing respect with the quality of the decision, the announcement, or the expertise.

Authenticity - 4: 5 ways to listen to your audience

This is the last in a series of blogs on achieving authenticity in public communications.  Authenticity is the sine qua non of our age. We all want it, and when it’s lacking in a public figure, we turn off to that person.  I talk more about authenticity in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, but these blogs cover a condensed discussion of the topic. 

The final step in achieving authenticity is to listen to your audience. 

Communication is always a two-way activity.  If you think of a persuasive communication as a journey you take your audience (one or one thousand) on to change minds, then you’ll see that listening is a vital part of that process. Changing one’s mind occurs in a series of steps, and you need to know what step the other person is on in order to be effective in leading the process.

At its most basic, good listening offers feedback.  Feedback, which is often critical, is simply a response, usually involving evaluation of some kind.  Here’s how to do it without destroying the ego of the receiver and ultimately the relationship. Begin by describing the actions of the person to whom you’re giving feedback.  Then describe the consequences of the behavior, and the reasons for them.  Finally, check for comprehension and agreement.  Avoid criticism and emotional words.  Just the facts. 

To go a little further as a good listener, try paraphrasing what your audience is saying.  Paraphrasing means simply saying something like, “So let me be sure I’ve understood. What you’re saying is that the green ones are tastier than the brown ones?”  The point is to play back, like a recorder, what the person has said to you. That’s all. Resist the temptation to embroider (“But that’s ridiculous! That can’t be true!”) because that undoes all the good work of the paraphrase.

A subtle improvement on paraphrasing is clarifying what the speaker has said while essentially repeating it back to him.  The point is to translate and clarify what the other person is saying and play it back in order to check understanding. This is much harder work than merely paraphrasing, because you have to think about what you’ve heard and offer a fair summary or restatement.

So far, we’ve been dealing with the surface level of communication: the ostensible meaning of the words that are said.  To really begin to listen, you need to hear, see, and reflect the deeper, emotional meanings of the dialogue. This level might be called empathic listening.

Here, you identify the emotion underneath the words and respond in kind:  “I understand how painful this is for you, Joseph. I too had a project go bad early in my career. It really hurts.”  Note that this response first identifies, and accurately, the pain that the other person is feeling and then takes it on, sharing a similar experience or emotion from your own life story to identify with the other.  That’s empathy.

Finally, the most powerful form of listening — the one that people most strongly react to, feeling that they are both heard and understood — is a form of empathic listening where you identify the emotion and state its underlying causes without trying to solve the problem.  This form of active listening is the hardest to undertake. In a contentious situation, it can feel as if you’re giving in to openly express how the other is feeling. But you’re not; you’re just stating the other’s position as fully and honestly as you can. Agreement, compromise, or resolution will come later. For the moment, active listening is a powerful first step toward solving any serious problem in a communication.  And forming a strong, authentic bond with an audience. 

Authenticity - 3: 5 ways to show your passion through your words

This is the third in a series of blogs on achieving authenticity in public communications.  Authenticity is the sine qua non of our age. We all want it, and when it’s lacking in a public figure, we turn off to that person.  I talk more about authenticity in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, but these blogs will cover a condensed discussion of the topic. 

The third step in achieving authenticity is to be passionate.  How do you effectively communicate passion through your content? Recognize that all the verbal expressions of emotion are not as strong as the nonverbal ones, and if the two are at odds, the person you’re communicating with will believe the nonverbal always.  That said, there are some ways to express passion through content.

The first, and simplest, technique is to label the emotion.  And yet this technique is one that people deny themselves all the time, because of our reluctance to talk about negative or strong emotions. Is it easy to look at a loved one and say, “I’m angry with you?” How about going into your boss’s office and saying, “Boss, I’m really frustrated because you have systematically under-funded and understaffed this initiative, and you know my career depends on its success?” And what about telling an old friend that he’s let you down by not showing up at a performance that really mattered to you?

A second equally simple yet profound technique to show passion in your verbal expression is to tell an uncomfortable truth.  It’s important to distinguish telling the truth from labeling the emotion. Certainly there can be overlap, but to tell an uncomfortable truth can often mean keeping your emotions in check. The passion that shows up in these instances is courage.

A third technique is to focus on the physical details of a situation without labeling the emotions. This technique works when everyone knows that the situation is emotionally charged.  Think Hemingway.  The idea is to let the audience inject the emotion precisely because you hold back.  Let them do the work. 

What other verbal techniques convey emotion?  Two main techniques, the rhetorical rule of threes and (appropriate) repetition, are the most powerful ways to convey emotion through rhetoric.

I’ve blogged about the Rule of Three’s before.  Basically, we like things – they sound complete and stronger – grouped in threes.  If the phrases or ideas are of unequal length, put the longest one last. 

There’s a real art to repetition. How do you manage it so that it doesn’t sound simple-minded but rather creates a crescendo of emotion that builds with each repetition?  The key is the phrase that’s repeated. It has to be able to bear the weight, and the words have to be affirmative, simple, and evocative. It’s not easy to find the right ones. The political world is full of repetitive phrasing and chanting of key phrases that the speaker begins and the audience takes over, but most of them are quickly forgotten.  An exception, of course, is Martin Luther King, Jr’s famous “I have a dream.”

Each of these devices heightens the emotional content of the words for effect; these are ways of conveying your passion with the words themselves.

Announcing the Worst Conference Experience Ever Contest

Recently, I called for an improvement in the way conferences are run and pointed out that the current downturn is an opportunity to make some long-overdue changes in conference behavior.  Conferences should involve their audiences more, and in more significant ways.  Conferences should tell coherent stories, not fill endless time slots. And conferences should use MCs as audience representatives.  Among other changes. 

To further promote these ends, I’m announcing a contest for the best story about the worst conference experience you’ve ever had.  First prize is an hour’s free telephone coaching either for a speech or a conference design.  Second and third prizes are copies of my new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

The contest begins with this posting and will run through the end of next week.  Entries must be 200 words or less, and my decision is final.

So bring it on.  Was it a memorably bad speaker?  A particularly stupid theme or breakout session?  A location?  An audience?  What made the experience awful?  Dish it out, and we’ll compare notes as they come in.  It’s time to raise the game by punishing the evil-doers.

How to begin a speech

How do you begin a speech?  There are still human beings who wander this earth recommending starting with a joke -- and even attempting it themselves.  The problem with that is, for the majority of us who aren't professional comedians, it's hard to deliver jokes successfully.  As any professional will tell you, most jokes fall flat.  That's why they have so many comebacks up their sleeves.

It's even harder to deliver a joke when you're beginning a speech, because that's when you're most nervous.  So don't try it.  Just don't.

Begin instead with something that will capture the audience's attention in a way that's relevant to what you're talking about.  Frame the discussion in some way.  You might have a startling statistic.  You might have a factoid that puts things in perspective.  You might have a question to ask the audience that gets its attention.  You might have a personal anecdote -- a relevant one, well told -- that shows your interest in the subject matter.  "I first became aware of the plight of Asian yak herders when I was trekking up the North Face of Everest, looked down, and saw three yaks dangling off a cliff a thousand feet below me with three herders desperately trying to get them back on the thin ribbon of trail...."

OK, so there probably aren't yaks that high up on Everest, but you get the idea.

Another great way to open is to involve the audience directly in some way.  Challenge them to do something, ask them questions about the topic, get their input in some fashion.  Try not to ask "guess what's in my head" questions, or difficult questions with right and wrong answers secretly designed to show off your expertise.  Instead, ask open-ended questions about the audience's experience with the topic.  The point is to involve the audience and make them feel important and smart, not to make you feel important and smart.

Finally, you can begin with a story.  Again, make it relevant to the topic.  Have it frame the discussion in some way that opens up new ideas for the audience rather than closes them down.  Have it make an emotional as well as intellectual point.  And tell it well.  Cut out the extraneous stuff.  Get clear on why the story is relevant and only include details that make the story comprehensible and refer directly to the frame.

Fundamentally, your job is to include the audience and let them know, in the first 1-3 minutes, why they're there, and why you're there, why the topic is important, and what your theme and emotional attitude is toward that topic.  If you can do that you're off and running.

Did Obama's body language match his rhetoric?

Every communication is two conversations, the content and the body language.  When the two are aligned, a speaker can be powerful – even charismatic.  When they are not aligned, the audience believes the non-verbal every time.  How well did President Obama’s Cairo University speech yesterday measure up in this regard?

Obama’s elegant and sweeping rhetoric talked about openness, listening, and peace.  What did his second conversation talk about?  Caution, restraint, and an unwillingness to risk very much.  This was not an emotional performance.  It was a careful, measured one. 

Let’s take the second conversation apart.  President Obama has the posture of a leader.  He strode out to the podium with the confident and upright posture of someone in command.  His wave to the audience was that of a leader acknowledging the many. 

As he began to speak, Obama folded and unfolded his hands in a constrained, protective manner on the podium.  It’s one of the few ways he betrays a little nervousness, typically at the beginnings of his speeches. 

To set against that, his posture continued to be upright and confident, and as he started the speech, he nodded repeatedly, acknowledging the crowd and building agreement with them. 

The President has great stillness in his body; this is charismatic and signals confidence, because it’s at once poised and yet relaxed enough to show that his nerves haven’t got the better of him.  (Contrast this with all the lesser public speakers you've seen who repeatedly shift their weight from one foot to the other.)  He is a practiced and expert public speaker.  It’s just that he can’t quite figure out what to do with his hands. 

While he occasionally got the gesture right -- as for example when he talked about the overlap in views between Muslim and Christian he overlapped his hands quite naturally – most of the time, he used his characteristic and prissy thumb-and-forefinger gesture.  This gesture is less admonishing than the raised forefinger, but it retains something of that off-putting feeling, and it is not one in the natural human retinue.  It looks calculated and fake.  For example, when he called for people around the world to “say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts,” he used the thumb and forefinger instead of a more natural, open gesture that would have matched the words. 

The President repeated this pattern throughout the speech.  His non-verbal conversation was careful and half-closed even when his words were open.  Later, when he spoke of the “interests we all share as human beings” being “far more powerful than those that drive us apart,” he gestured as if he was holding something about the size of a loaf of bread in his hands.  Apparently, those shared interests are not very big.   

Similarly, when he talked about “equal justice” for everyone, his hands came back to the ‘parade rest’ folded position on the podium.  The hand gesture in that way spoke of a very carefully parsed out justice rather than a broad vision. 

The conversation of his hands was most natural when he said, “America doesn’t presume to know what is best for everyone.”  His open hand swept out across his chest in a gesture that unequivocally dismissed the presumption. 

At the close of the speech, when Obama said that “America respects all voices,” he used again the admonishing forefinger, suggesting that he was looking for a quid pro quo of respect back. 

President Obama is an extraordinarily polished, powerful, and persuasive speaker.  His posture, confident voice, and command of pacing together mean a highly accomplished delivery.  But he has still not figured out a natural set of gestures to go with his soaring rhetoric.  Overall, he radiates confidence and dignity.  Now he needs to figure out a set of gestures for his hands that is equally effective.

What did President Obama's Cairo speech achieve?

The reactions to President Obama's Cairo University speech are falling along predictable fault lines in the Middle East: http://bit.ly/pETKy.  But for more dispassionate observers, how did the speech go?  You can check out the text and video here: http://tinyurl.com/oz48ly. 

Opening with a greeting of peace, assalaamu alaykum, President Obama told the assembled Cairo audience that he had come to seek a new beginning:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles - principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

The speech went on to follow the classic problem-solution format of a persuasive speech.  Obama stated the problem in honest and forthright terms:

We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world - tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust.

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

His solution for this tension is the new beginning he calls for, as well as specific progress on 7 issues that contribute to the tension:  extremism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear weapons, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, and economic development. 

This is elegant rhetoric indeed, and to the extent that good speech-making can open a door, or start a new dialogue, or re-set expectations, President Obama’s talk today should accomplish all those worthy goals.  

A note on his body language.  President Obama still has not figured out a natural set of gestures to go with his sweeping, well-delivered words.  His posture radiates confidence and dignity.  Now he needs to figure out a gestural rhetoric that is equally effective. 

Obama closed with a broad call for peace, repeating his theme of a new beginning: 

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you.

Peace-loving people around the world can only agree.  Now the hard work of practical steps, real commitments, and compromise needs to begin. 

Can a weak speaker with a great message hold an audience?

Can a weak speaker with a great message hold an audience?  That’s the question that a speaker like Ray Anderson poses.  And can he improve?  I’ll answer that question at the end.  But first, who is Ray Anderson?  You can watch him speak at TED.com: http://tinyurl.com/ndkn5w

Ray Anderson likes to call himself someone who’s made a journey from “plunderer” to “reformed plunderer” to “the greenest CEO in America.”  It’s quite a journey.  Ray is the CEO of Interface, a maker of carpet tile and broadloom carpets.  Some 15 years ago, Ray read Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce (http://tinyurl.com/ra4z4d) and decided that he had to turn his carpet company from a typical “take-make-waste” company to sustainability. 

The results have been – and continue to be – extraordinary.  Ray’s company makes Flor carpet tiles, which are sustainable and eco-friendly and also just plain cool (http://www.flor.com/).  The company has reduced its carbon footprint 82 % while growing by 2/3rds.  Ray estimates that the company is half-way to its goal of zero emissions by 2020.  More than that, costs are down, the products are better, the workers are more inspired, and the free advertising is incalculable. 

Now, Ray’s goal is to transform all of business.  As he says, ‘more happiness with less stuff’ is the big idea. 

So he’s got a great message.  The full story is told, by the way, in Tim Sanders’ excellent book, Saving the World at Work (http://tinyurl.com/r9t3qe). 

Unfortunately, Ray’s not an inspiring speaker.  His voice needs work; it’s pitched too high and his sibilants are too pronounced.  Worse, he doesn’t connect with his audience.  He reads his speech with his nose in the paper, and the result is a sing-song, solipsistic delivery that doesn’t inspire. 

But the audience at TED did get on their feet, slowly, and in sections, to applaud him when he was done.  Why?  The message is great, the man is a hero.  And the speech was short.

The solution?  Rehearse him in brief segments, getting him to get his head up from the page.  By looking down too much of the time, Ray appears to the audience to be closed off from them.  He needs to practice talking to a close friend, or a grandchild, and then he’d get the idea.  I talk more about how to do this here: http://tinyurl.com/qrv3yk.  Ray needs to learn to be as open with an audience as he obviously is to a great idea. 

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.

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. 

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 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 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. 

Obama's 3rd Prime-Time Press Conference -- How did he do?

Saying he’s “pleased but not satisfied,” President Obama presided over his 3rd prime-time press conference last night, marking the first 100 days of his presidency (http://tinyurl.com/ceaerq).  I’ll leave the politics to others to dissect; how is he doing as a public speaker?

Overall, Obama continues to grow in mastery.  However, he’s a very different speaker in governing than he was campaigning.  Obama the campaigner was dynamic, uplifting, charismatic.  Obama the President is serious, thorough, thoughtful, authoritative, and even a little dull.  Clearly, for him, governing is serious business, and the days of the fun and adrenaline of the campaign are long gone.

How quickly he has settled into the role of President!  If the press conference is any indication, Obama is completely comfortable in the role.  His voice, posture, and gestures are indicative of a man who stepped into the Oval Office ready to govern.  His legal training and intelligence show in every answer.  Look at his answer to a question about Pakistan’s nuclear security:

I'm confident that we can make sure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure. Primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands. We've got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think that they're immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan. I'm more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don't seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people.

And so as a consequence, it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the loyalty of their people. So we need to help Pakistan help Pakistanis. And I think that there's a recognition increasingly on the part of both the civilian government there and the army that that is their biggest weakness.

Here, he manages both to reassure and yet warn the public and Pakistan at the same time.  It’s a careful, thoughtful answer that doesn’t leave much room for follow up questions – there are few chinks in his armor. 

Throughout the news conference, Obama ranges authoritatively over swine flu, world events, the economy, politics – everything that the press dishes out, Obama easily fields and responds to decisively.  In fact, compared to the last President, the balance of power with the press has shifted enormously.  Where Bush was combative, and occasionally flat-footed, Obama is confident and assured.  Even when Ed Henry tries to catch the President out on the difficult issue of abortion, Obama is more than equal to the task, giving a long, articulate, and carefully worded answer. 

This is a press that treats the new president with deference.  Obama is clearly the authority in the room. What he lacks in sparkle, he more than makes up in presidential heft. He is a master of the genre.

How to Get Ready to Speak: 3 Quick Tips

A speech is performance art.  Each time you speak, you are creating a live experiences for a new audience, and that raises a question:  how do you stay fresh for each occasion, and how do you prepare so that each occasion will be up to the same standard?

 

Speaking is at once head, heart, and body.  It has a lot of moving parts.  So here’s a quick program to carry out before each speech that will get you in peak form.

 

1. The Head.  Every speech has an intellectual ‘spine’ – the basic ideas that you’ll discuss during the course of the speech.  You should know what those are.  In order.  If you don’t, figure them out.  If you do, then run over those in your mind before your speech.  Think of it as the outline, and in an hour-long speech it shouldn’t consist of more than about 10 headings, give or take a few.  If you’re coming up with a lot more than that, you’re going into too much detail for this activity.  

 

This way, you’ll know the intellectual journey you’re taking the audience on and you’ll be more likely not to get lost.  If you know where you are, the audience will too. 

 

Finish this little activity by getting your first couple of lines in your head, so you don’t go blank when you first walk out on stage.  That’s a trick that actors use for opening night, and it helps get you through the beginning jitters.

 

2.  The Heart.  A speech is also an emotional journey, and you need to get that into your head (and gut) before you start, as well.  So spend a moment thinking to yourself, how do I feel about the material I’m discussing?  Excited?  Passionate?  Angry?  Try to experience that feeling, however you bring it to mind.  Recall a time when you felt that way strongly, or just focus on the feeling.  The point is to get into the emotional state you need so that you’ll make that clear to the audience when you begin.

 

3.  The Body.  Finally, you are a physical being delivering sounds in space to other physical beings, so pay attention to the state of your body.  If you’re nervous, that’s a good thing – that’s adrenaline helping you be on your best game.  It will help you think a little faster, stand a little straighter, act a little larger than life. 

 

But not too nervous.  If you’re quite jittery, or if the effects of adrenaline cause you to wander around the stage, or gesture like a windmill, or speak too fast for human ears to understand, then you need to practice some deep belly breathing before you start.  That will calm you, and if you practice it regularly, give you a consistent confidence over time.  Belly breathing starts, not surprisingly, in the belly.  You should expand your stomach like the bulb of an eye dropper as you take air into your lungs.  Hold the air with your diaphragmatic muscles (the ones just underneath your rib cage) and let it out slowly as you exhale.  Remember to breathe occasionally as you speak, too!

 

Paying attention to these 3 aspects of speaking just before you start will greatly increase the quality of your art.  Don’t neglect any of them; they work together to make up the performance art that is public speaking.  I talk more about this in my new book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

The single easiest and fastest way to increase your charisma and impact as a speaker

Working with clients, I spend a lot of time coaching them on delivery skills as well as, of course, helping them write great speeches.  We get the whole range of ability, from brilliant to considerably less than brilliant, and I’m often in the position of conducting triage with a speaker who was trained (or learned his speaking habits) in the Cro-Magnon era.  I’m talking about the type who has 60 Power Point slides for a 30 minute talk, wants to stand behind a podium to read those slides in a monotone, and begins every speech with, “What I’m going to talk about today has seven parts.  The first part….”

Where do you start?

It’s always a battle to wean the speaker off the slides, but it’s worth fighting.  Once you persuade the client that there really is no reason to show the audience his speaker notes, you’re off and running. 

But issues like lack of expressiveness are much harder to combat.  They may be ingrained habits acquired over a lifetime.  And you may not have enough time to work with the client in the depth that it takes to free up the charismatic speaker lurking within.  Deep within.

So, when I’m performing triage, I often turn to a simple, easy way to increase your impact and charisma as a speaker:  get out from behind the podium.  Because we tend to trust people, broadly speaking, who move closer to us (excluding psychos and other scary folks), if you move toward the audience on your key points, finish the point standing near an audience member, and then move to another quadrant of the audience for your next main point, you will instantly increase your effectiveness. 

There are other reasons why this works, based in neurology, but this is quick version for a quick fix.  I go into this in much more detail in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, but this is enough to get you started. 

9 rules for survival in rock climbing and public speaking

Matthew Childs gives a remarkable talk on the 9 rules of mountain climbing on TED.com: http://tinyurl.com/cqjd8v.  Obviously, he means the rules to apply to life, too.  What’s interesting is how well they apply to public speaking and communications.  Childs is not a great speaker; he’s too nervous to put the audience at its ease.  But his message is powerful nonetheless. 

1.  Don’t let go.   Just as in climbing, the consequences of giving up in public speaking are unpleasant.  Both disciplines require commitment and follow-through. 

2.  Hesitation is bad.   Passion and intensity of almost any kind are better than hesitating in public speaking.  Emotion attracts our attention, but the half-hearted approach does not. 

3.  Have a plan.  Trying to wing it in speaking, as in climbing, is almost always self-destructive.  Some climbs – and some speeches – are easy enough that you can fake it.  But preparation tells in the long run.  Have a plan.  Please.  For the sake of the audience as well as the speaker.

4.  The move is the end.  The point of this rule is that the moment is important, too.  Don’t be thinking so hard about finishing that you forget to be there when it counts.  Make your move.  Say what you have to say.  Be there.  Then finish the job.

5.  Know how to rest.  Getting proper rest before a speech, and taking little breathers during a speech, are both good ideas.  No one requires that you race at top speed from start to finish.  In fact, we prefer that you don’t.

6.  Fear sucks.   While audiences expect the jitters at the beginning, they also expect you to get over them.  Fear sucks because it gets between you, your message, and your audience. 

7.  Opposites are good.   I love this one, because contrast is one of the best ways to make meaning clear and to sustain interest.  Opposites are very, very good in public speaking.

8.  Strength doesn’t equal success.   What is the translation of this one into the public speaking realm?  It’s not just about volume, or speed, or size?  I suppose the lesson is that you can’t just power your way through a talk; a little judicial use of psychology and audience involvement will get you much further than just doing it all yourself. 

9.  Know how to let go.  The toughest time to be a public speaker, or any kind of performer, is right after the event is over.  At that point, you just want to have someone say, “You were wonderful!”  and let you collapse in your hotel room.  But many speakers do themselves psychic injury by second-guessing, replaying, and critiquing themselves right after a speech.  Wait.  Let go.  Look at the tape 24 hours later, when you’re back to yourself again. 

And finally, as Childs says, ‘balance rules.’  As in most things, success comes from keeping your balance.  That's a great final lesson for both speakers and climbers. 

Timothy Ferriss and the 4-hour workweek

Timothy Ferriss is the author of The Four-Hour Work Week ( http://tinyurl.com/cf5wxt ), a book that has generated an enormous amount of comment from reviewers who are cross with him because they believe it to be virtually fraudulent hucksterism, and those who sing his praises because the book (for them) exposes the fraudulence in the 40-hour work week. 

In short, the message provokes. 

Good message. 

But Timothy Ferriss the speaker is even more provoking and problematic.  His talk on TED.com (http://tinyurl.com/czrkbt )  either elicits strong praise or real dislike from those who have watched it.  The difference seems to be that those who can get past the man’s evident ego appreciate the intellect lurking behind the conceit.  Those who can’t get past the ego find him repellent. 

So why is it that so many audience members dislike ego so much?  And is there anything Ferriss – or another speaker afflicted with the same problem – do about it?

The short answer is that we dislike ego because as audience members we’re on the speaker’s side until he or she rejects us.  We want the speaker to succeed.  But if that speaker makes it all about him (or her) then we’ll eventually give up and turn off.  The solution?  Always make it about the audience.  Put your ego on hold and don’t talk about yourself. 

Ferriss starts his speech by committing the cardinal sin of inexperienced, highly egotistical speakers:  he tells a childhood story about himself.  He even shows us an awful childhood picture.  Amateur stuff.  Thus he digs a hole for himself that no amount of later charm will help much. 

What Ferriss is able to do is to look at certain human activities with fresh eyes, deconstruct them, and figure out how to become pretty good at them very quickly.  He needs to apply this skill to public speaking and figure out how to do it better.  Much better.  

In the TED talk, he mentions swimming, foreign language acquisition, and ballroom dancing as examples. 

Let’s see what he’s actually figured out in these areas.  Is it worth the fuss?  In swimming, he’s figured out that it’s better to stay below the water as much as possible, in order to be as streamlined as possible.  This is not news to anyone who watches the Olympics.  In foreign language acquisition, he’s figured out that if you memorize the 2,000 or so words that are most important, along with a few grammatical rules, you can get on pretty well.  Again, not news to anyone who has learned a language quickly. 

As for ballroom dancing, I’m less qualified to analyze this because my ballroom dancing is about as good as Ferriss’ apparently was before he started.  He basically offers 3 quick tips that (he claims) allow you to advance quickly in the art.  Fair enough, but once again, it strikes me that this is pretty simple stuff. 

His book is like that – it’s full of cheap tricks and shortcuts.  He won some kind of martial arts contest on a trip to Asia essentially by cheating – he figured out a way to get around the rules.  He got the prize but no one can admire him for the performance.  In case after case, the modus operandi is the same:  Ferriss games the system. 

What’s missing from the book, the talk, and Ferriss himself is some kind of passion for some aspect of human endeavor besides gaming the system.  That’s the other thing that audiences respond to – genuine passion for your subject.  Failing that, you won’t win an audience over – and you shouldn’t be talking.  Sit down, Timothy, and let someone who cares about something give a speech that will change the world. 

Character is king in public speaking

If you’ve never seen Coach John Wooden of UCLA speak, then check him out on TED.com:  http://tinyurl.com/cz6765.  He’s a reminder that Aristotle was right about his insistence that there are 3 ways to persuade an audience:  logic, emotion, and character.  In the end, it’s Wooden’s character that shines through and wins us over.  His essential kindness and humility are hallmarks of the man and we feel fortunate to ‘meet’ him as a member of his audience. 

There are a number of reasons why you might not give 'Coach' more than a cursory listen. He speaks too quickly, he doesn’t make much eye contact, and he speaks from a sitting position because of age and infirmity.  His message is simple and straightforward. 

And yet, it’s magic, because of the charm of the speaker.  This is what Aristotle meant by character. 

What’s his message?  Never try to be better than someone else.  Be the best you can be.  Study others, but only to learn from them.  Peace of mind comes from the self-satisfaction of knowing that you did the best you could.  Don’t whine.  Don’t complain.  Don’t make excuses.  The journey is better than the end, often.  Never be late.  No profanity.  Never criticize a teammate. 

As you can see, there’s nothing earth-shattering here.  But delivered by a great human being, even the simplest messages take on profound meaning.  Study Coach John Wooden, not for his speaking technique, or even for his content, but for his character.  In the end, it's the emotional connection a speaker makes -- or doesn't make -- with an audience that is at the heart of successful public speaking. 

4 Steps to Authenticity and Charisma

For my blog today, I'm posting a video blog.  At under 2 minutes, it's a quick 'read'.  Enjoy!

http://tinyurl.com/cnyhzz

3 Reasons to Rehearse a Presentation

Is rehearsal important?  Can you get by without it in an over-scheduled world?  It’s odd that I should even have to pose these questions, but a surprising number of the people we've worked with over the years have tried to wiggle out of rehearsing even important speeches.

Speakers want to deliver charismatic, assured, memorable performances.  Some of them say they want to 'wing it', because thinking too hard about it or preparing too much will make them stale or boring.

Don't believe it, and don't credit that urge in yourself if it comes up.  It's just avoidance.  It's the fear talking.  And more importantly, it's wrong. 

Here are three reasons why you must rehearse in order to deliver a great performance. 

1.  A presentation is both a mental and a physical activity.   So for a presentation to look good and sound good, both your brain and your body have to know the speech.  You can ‘walk through’ a speech in your mind, but the only way for your body to learn the speech is by doing it.  In order to achieve the apparently effortless, natural-looking performance a great stage actor delivers, he or she rehearses for four weeks, give or take, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it has become part of not only the intellectual memory, but also the sense memory.  You should rehearse, at an absolute minimum, three times.

2.  Transitions are the key to an effortless-looking performance.  It’s in the transitions that the differences between a mediocre and a good speech show up most obviously.  The average business speaker creates a speech by pulling together a collection of Power Point slides, some borrowed, some new.  The speaker then shuffles the slides into some kind of order and thinks he’s ready to go.  What we get, then, is the following:  “What this slide shows is….What this next slide is talking about is…”  This kind of clumsy hopping from slide to slide is the mark of a half-digested, under-rehearsed speech.  In rehearsal, you’ll find the ways to make the transitions smooth and logical.

3.  Rehearsal gives you the strength to go the distance.   I’ve seen many an under-prepared speaker suddenly realize, half-way through the speech, that she’s still got 30 minutes to go.  There’s a moment when the speaker signals to the audience that it’s all taking longer than she thought, and everyone in the room picks up on the signal.  The result is that the audience begins to think of the speech, even if the content is good, as an endurance contest.  If you rehearse, you get a sense of beginning, middle, and end, and you learn how to pace yourself. 

Audiences will forgive the occasional verbal slip, but if you look like you don't know what you're doing, they'll write you off as a loser every time.  Rehearse.  Please.  For all of us.

The 3 most powerful ways to increase your personal charisma

In this information-saturated, attention-deprived age, your message has to be sharp and vital to stick in the minds of your listeners – and you have to be even sharper and more vital.  Following are 3 ways to increase your personal charisma to attract the attention you want.

1.  Increase your ability to be open.   At its heart, charisma is emotion.  Great actors and celebrities who have charisma reveal real emotion to us – that’s what captures our attention and draws us in.  The first step in that kind of revelation is openness.  Most of us close ourselves off to others without even realizing it.  It’s part of the automatic, unconscious danger signals our bodies send out to strangers and crowds and people in general when we meet them for the first time.  That’s a survival skill we’ve evolved from the cave, and it worked well then.  But now, we need to be open to audiences rather than braced for flight or fight. 

So, rehearse your presentations and speeches as if you were talking to a close friend, a spouse, or a family member with whom you’re completely comfortable.  Then practice transferring that openness to your actual presentations.  It will be difficult at first, but you will soon learn to have a relaxed, open conversation with your audience, and your charisma will take a giant leap forward. This technique works just as well with meetings, one-on-one conversations, and informal gatherings. 

2.  Get a clear emotional focus in mind.   Most of us, when we’re getting ready to present, or meet with someone important, are thinking about all the things that can go wrong, or we’re stressing out about the technology, or we’re wondering how long it’s going to be until we can get to the bar for a drink.  To increase your charisma, instead focus on the underlying emotional attitude you have toward your message.  Are you excited?  Passionate?  Eager to spread the word?  Focus on one of those sorts of positive emotions, and you’ll show up with much stronger charisma and clearer focus.

3.  Practice physical stillness.  Watch our most charismatic speakers, leaders, and celebrities.  You’ll notice that they avoid extraneous motion and fidgeting.  There’s a stillness at their ‘core’.  It’s at once physical and emotional.  They’re clear about what they’re projecting, and they’re physically focused on the task at hand.  Think in terms of keeping your torso still, upright, and regal, like a king or queen, and you’ll have a rough idea of how you should be holding yourself.

I talk much more about these ideas and techniques in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, but these 3 should get you started. 

The 5 worst (and widespread) rules about public speaking

We work with clients all the time who have absorbed rules from somewhere about public speaking.  Usually those rules are bad and get in the way of successful presenting.  Following are the 5 worst we regularly see.

1.  “Tell ‘em what you’re going to say, say it, and tell ‘em what you said.”  This old chestnut is still widely believed.  It comes from WWII, when the Army worked out a way to ensure that all soldiers got the same marching orders and remembered them.  The soldiers that survived the war came back, went into business, and started spreading the word.  The problem is that the Army’s presentations didn’t have to be interesting or engaging.  These were soldiers!  They were taking orders!  You do have to be interesting and engage your audiences.  So unless you want the people in front of you to be diving for their Blackberries, don’t repeat like they did in the Army.

2.  “A good presentation has to have slides.  Has to!”  So widespread is the use of Power Point and its clones that there is a widespread belief that you have to use slides to give a presentation and it is always better if you do.  In fact, while there are certain kinds of presentations that do benefit from slides, many do not.  Keynote speeches should NEVER use slides, unless you’ve climbed Mount Everest and you’ve got some amazing summit shots.  Can you imagine President Obama using slides during his inaugural address?  Real leaders don't use Power Point.  Slides all too often become a barrier between speaker and audience, not to mention a crutch for the speaker.  If your slides are actually speaker notes that you read, mostly, that’s a sign that you are horribly misusing slides.  Think of slides as illustrations for the audience of points that you’re making that can really only be appreciated through pictures (or graphs or pie charts).  Everything else is speaker notes, and should not be shown to the audience.  Just to anticipate one set of comments, yes, if you're a trainer, and you're speaking for a day, or three, then slides can help. 

3.  “A speech is a formal occasion.  It’s not the same as a conversation.  Different rules apply.”  This is a tricky one, because it used to be true.  When FDR and Churchill strode the earth, a speech was a more formal occasion.  Both of those orators began to change the genre by using colloquial language and direct address to the people.  Television then accelerated the process.  We now expect our leaders, celebrities, and stars to speak to us conversationally, because we’ve seen them do it for years.  As a result, unless speakers do the same, they look and sound ridiculously stiff and pompous.  A speech is a conversation with the audience.  Get used to it.  Enjoy it!

4.  “When I speak, I have to stay behind the podium.”  The reasons offered up for this bad advice are various.  Sometimes it’s the technology – you’re speaking at a big conference and you’re on those big screens in a live feed, and the tech folks tell you that you have to stay behind the podium so they can keep you on screen.  Don’t believe it.  Unless the camera guy is asleep, he can follow you as you move around the stage, and even into the audience.  He might prefer to snooze away at his camera, but he’s being paid to stay awake, so make use of all his talents, including his ability to hold a giant cup of coffee and follow you at the same time.  Other reasons include fear, nervousness, and sheer terror.  Oh, and also that your notes, or the button to advance the slides, are on the podium.  I’ve got four words for you:  Be brave.  Use wireless. 

5.  “We have to save the last 15 minutes of the speech slot for Q ‘n A.”  This is just a habit, and not a particularly good one.  For one thing, if you close with Q ‘n A, it means that the last thing your audience hears from you is the answer to the last question that is asked.  This may or may not be a good place to end.  Often the last question is one from a crank who has been working up the courage to ask you if you wear boxers or briefs.  So instead, save 5 minutes of your remarks for the end, and take your Q ‘n A just before that.  Or, if you know your speech well, and are good at fielding questions, take them throughout.  That’s the more spontaneous and engaging way to do it, but it takes practice to stay on message and not get distracted too much by the questions.  For some people, it’s better to take Q ‘n A for most of the presentation, because the speaker is more comfortable that way, after a brief set of opening comments (and a closing at the end.)  This is the format of most presidential news conferences, for example. 

Five Creative, Interesting Alternatives to an Agenda Slide

Imagine you’re settling into your seat in the movie theatre, popcorn and soda at the ready, waiting happily for the latest James Bond movie to start.  You can’t wait to see what the proverbial high stakes opening chase before the credits will be – how many explosions, how fast, how many bodies littering the ground. 

Instead, as the lights dim, an image of Daniel Craig, wearing a business suit and tie, appears in front of you on the big screen.  He’s standing in front of a Power Point set up, and he proceeds to put up an agenda slide for the upcoming movie.  He then reads the half-dozen or so lines off the screen, telloing you in some detail about what's going to happen, saying between each one, “And then, and then, and then.”  And at some point, he says, “Oh, and the item you’ve all been waiting for, the coffee break.  We’ve got donuts and muffins.”

How’s your experience of the movie so far?  And yet, this is precisely what way too many speakers do in meeting after meeting, presentation after presentation, telling people what they’re going to say before they say it.

How much of a Bond movie is the surprise and the suspense?  Why do people purposely set out to kill the surprise and suspense (what there is) in a business presentation? 

Instead of an agenda slide, then, here are several ways to get your audience through the experience with a little more grace and excitement.

First, since audiences come into a presentation asking Why? – why am I here, why should I care, why is this important to me? – answer that question for them with a quick story that sets the scent.  It should be one to three minutes, tops.  And at the end, point the moral and set the scene by saying something like, “So it’s people like Jack that are demanding change, and that’s what I want to talk to you about today – why change is so important in this industry.” 

Now the audience knows why it’s there, what the subject is, and they have some taste of the urgency of the subject because of the compelling story you’ve told them. 

Second, begin with a startling statistic.  “Did you know that one out of every three students at State Univ is considering dropping out because of financial difficulties?”  Again, that sets the scene and tells everyone why they’re there without giving away everything in advance. 

Third, begin with an audience poll.  “Let me begin by finding out something about you.  How many of you have done time?  How many are on the lam?  How many are considering returning to the state of their original arrest to clear their records?”  This kind of interaction with the audience immediately involves them and begins to make the room “smaller” – and your talk more of a conversation.

Fourth, start with a contest, or a quiz.  Award prizes.  I’ve seen this work well many times.  Ask easy questions.  Or provocative ones.  I once saw a speaker (back when the Internet was young) use this technique to talk about coaching businesses to use the power of the Internet to make boring products into interesting (and profitable) services.  She held up a tube of toothpaste and asked the audience, “Is this toothpaste a product or a service?”  After a second’s thought, some smart, awake person shouted out, “A product!”  The speaker smiled, said, “Great!” and gave the toothpaste to the audience member.  Again, she held up another tube of toothpaste and said, “Is this a product or a service?”  Another bright spark in the audience said, “A service!”  Right, said the speaker, and handed out the toothpaste.  Now the audience had the idea, and soon they were shouting out answers with enthusiasm in order to pocket the (modest) gifts.  It was a perfect way to energize the crowd and introduce the topic, which the speaker then went on to discuss seriously.

Finally, begin by appealing to a different on of the five senses than hearing or sight.  Hold up a prop, one that is relevant to your talk, and pass it around.  Let people touch it, heft it, smell it, and so on.  I once saw this technique used very powerfully by a doctor who was advocating for a kind of radiation therapy in front of a Congressional committee.  The topic was intensely technical and complicated.  The doctor was asking for more money and insurance coverage for a treatment program that worked better than the standard one.  It involved a copper tube that aimed the radiation more precisely than the standard treatment.  So the doctor passed the copper tube around the congressional committee members.  It made an otherwise mysterious and difficult-sounding treatment surprisingly down-to-earth and understandable. 

Avoid the agenda slide.  Be creative.  Keep your audiences awake with these other techniques. 

The Rule of Threes

I blog a good deal on non-verbal communications because every communication is two conversations, the verbal and the non-verbal.  When those two are aligned, you can be an effective communicator.  When the two are not aligned, people believe the non-verbal always.  That makes the non-verbal conversation extremely important – a show-stopper, in fact, for someone giving a speech.

But let’s say you’re passionate about your topic, you’ve rehearsed, and you are open to the audience.  In short, the speech goes well in non-verbal terms.  OK, all of that is ‘table stakes’.  In order to get a message through to the audience, you still have to put the content together in ways that the audience can hear it. 

One of the most important ways in which you can increase your verbal power – and the audience’s comprehension – is to use rhetoric that works well on the ear.  It’s difficult to assimilate information through the ear.  We only remember 10 – 30 percent of what we hear as audience, so it’s up to you, the speaker, to make it as easy as possible for us. 

And the single most important rhetorical device you can use is the ‘Rule of Threes’.  What is it?  I’ve already used it in this (written) blog – look at the first sentence of the second paragraph.  When you give people a series of items, always make sure there are three items in the series. 

Why is this so important?  It’s a psychological thing – groups of three sound complete to us.  In this way, you will sound authoritative, and the audience will listen more closely to what you’re saying, and remember it better. 

There’s a comical instance of this rule that shows how powerful it is.  The great orator Winston Churchill, speaking to the House Commons just after he had been appointed Prime Minister as WW II was getting underway, on May 13, 1940, said:  “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the Government, ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’” 

So popular was the line that the public took it up and turned it into ‘blood, sweat, and tears’, and that is the way it was remembered.  And, indeed, a pop group was formed with the name in the 1960s, Blood, Sweat and Tears.  Thus the power of the rule of threes. 

Churchill’s remark came in a speech that had an even better line:  “You ask, What is our aim?  I can answer in one word:  Victory – victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”  Here, he obeys the rule of threes, in spite of the fact that he repeats the word ‘victory’ five times in the sentence, because the structure of it is framed around the three repetitions of the word. 

Use the rule of threes whenever you can.  Your audiences will find it satisfying, authoritative, and compelling. 

The 5 best ways to conquer your fear of public speaking

I often get asked about the nerves, fear, butterflies, and sheer unadulterated terror that, for most people, accompany public speaking to some degree.  Following are a few ways to ease that fear and make your public speaking more fun.  I’ll start with the best and work my way down to the quick and dirty.

1.  Rehearse and practice.  By far the best way to get over the fear of public speaking is to do it, over and over again.  Both rehearsal and practice help enormously, because you learn that you will live through the experience, that the audience is not going to tar and feather you and make you leave town, and that you do know your stuff.  The best way to rehearse?  In front of a video camera – not the mirror – assuming you haven’t hired a coach like me.  The video camera will show you things that you don’t realize you’re doing and greatly speed up your learning curve. 

2.  Engage in positive self-talk.  The fear comes (for most people) from the mental doom loop that starts up as soon as you get close to giving the talk.  You begin to get a little nervous, and your mind notes the symptoms, and says to itself, “Whoops, my heart is racing, my hands are clammy, my knees are wobbly – it’s going to be a disaster!”  That, of course, makes your physical symptoms worse, and soon you’re in a fine state.  Instead, cut off the doom loop before it begins by chanting to yourself, “I’m going to be fine.  I’ve rehearsed (see #1), I know my stuff, and the audience wants me to succeed.”  Do this constantly, if necessary, and at least whenever a worry thought creeps into your mind.  With practice, you’ll find your negative thoughts virtually disappear.

3.  Breathe deeply and slowly.  I’ve blogged many times on the importance of breathing, but it is the single most important thing to get right after having good content.  We inhabit physical bodies, and they run on fuel – calories and air.  Without the calories, you’ll live for at least a week, but without air you’ll die in minutes.  So breathe!  If you breathe deeply, from the belly, like well-trained singers and yoga instructors, you’ll find that it calms you and grounds you.  With practice, it will dissipate your fears whenever you take a deep breath before you speak. 

4.  Work on your unconscious.   The fear of public speaking comes from deep in the unconscious part of your brain.  We know a lot more now about how that works.  See my new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, for the science behind communication and the fear it provokes.  In the space I have here, I’ll just say that the way to eliminate that fear may sound a little ‘New-Agey’ but it works.  Every night, as you’re falling asleep, chant something to yourself over and over again, like, “I love public speaking and I’m confident when I do it.”  If you do this regularly EVERY NIGHT for at least 3 weeks, your fear of speaking will leave you. 

5.  If all else fails, do what the musicians do:  take beta blockers.   The other ways are much better for you, but if you lack the discipline or the will power, then get a beta blocker prescription from your doctor.  It’s what three quarters of professional musicians do, by one poll.  It’s the pharmaceutical way to calm you down.  You’ll still have the panicky thoughts, but you won’t care. 

Good luck!

What research on play can tell us about public speaking

Pity poor Stuart Brown, who runs the National Institute for Play.  His job – and his passion – is to study play seriously.  That means he has to take an inherently fun subject and make it, well, god-awful serious, so that the NIH will fund him. 

His talk on TED is enlightening on the subject of play, and enlightening on the subject of public speaking, at the same time:  http://tinyurl.com/bgat4c.  In spite of the flaws, this is must-see video. 

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first, and then get to the good – and fascinating – news second.  The bad news is that Stuart Brown is a very serious scientist who takes a fun and funny subject and analyzes it way too thoroughly – to the detriment of his humanity and the topic’s.  Like all the talks on humor I’ve ever seen, he kills the subject, and not in a good way.  He goes into a head posture from the start, which makes sense, since he’s intellectualizing fun, and tells us some very serious things about play in a slightly pompous way that makes the whole thing not at all playful.  He barely looks at the audience, his delivery is slow and slightly ponderous, and he sounds more like a bank manager refusing a mortgage than someone talking about play.

And that’s the important public speaking point to take away from the talk.  Your subject and your delivery have to be consistent.  That’s so important that I’ll say it again:  your subject and your delivery have to be consistent.  If you can’t be consistent, your audience is going to reject you at some level as hypocritical, even if you’re just trying to be really, really helpful. 

That’s why people who present to children can’t be adult in the bad sense of the word.  It’s why business people who talk about putting the customer first can’t give a slapdash, under-rehearsed speech.  (The audience is the customer!  Hello!)  And, it’s why people who talk about humor have to be funny. 

OK, so the talk on play is not playful.  Inconsistency.  That’s bad.  But there is so much that is good in the talk that redeems Mr. Brown that overall the presentation does succeed.  The main reason is Brown’s evident passion for the subject.  He replaces the lightness of play with devotion to the subject, some beautiful pictures (of animals playing, for example) and even a slightly ponderous joke or two. 

Brown cares because his work began with a murderer who didn’t play as a child, and Brown saw the connection to the evil that came later.  In many ways, playing as children prepares us for life.  Did you know that people who don’t engage in building, carving, constructing, and so on with their hands as children don’t make good problem-solvers as adults?  And that the lack of play leads to depression?  The opposite of play is not seriousness, but – depression. 

Play improves memory, makes more of the brain more active, and helps with creativity and critical thinking.  And that’s throughout life – humans are unusual animals in the sense that most play during a specific time in their childhood and then don’t play (at least as much) when they become adults.  Humans play – should play, need to play – all their lives. 

Brown describes a fascinating study in which a group of rats were prevented from playing during their childhood.  Another group was left alone.  Both groups, now adult, were presented with a cat collar smelling of cat.  All the rats ran and hid.  The control group who had played eventually came out of hiding and resumed normal life.  The play-deprived group never came out and in fact starved to death. 

So get playing.  We need all kinds of play as humans – body play, object play, social play, fantasy play, transformational play.  Brown has categorized them all.  But don’t let his seriousness about the subject prevent you from taking away some wonderful and wonderfully important lessons from this video.  The play’s the thing.  So get playing.