The first question you should ask when preparing a presentation is, who’s my audience?  But that question requires more than a one-word answer.  It’s the beginning of an exploration of the exact circumstances of your audience – who, what, when, where, and why – everything about them you can determine. 

Why should you care?  After all, isn’t it a matter of integrity to say the same thing to everybody?  Yes and no.  The message, fundamentally, has to be the same.  But the shape that it takes may need to be entirely different.  Would you use the same words to describe World War II to a group of six-year-olds as you would to a group of adults? 

This time let’s think about gender and age.  Some of the clichés are, by and large, true.  If your audience is mainly women, avoid the football metaphors.  If your audience is mainly under 30, don’t talk about the stagflation of the 70s. 

But how do you balance authenticity and a desire to sound hip, if, for example, you are in your late 40s and have only a passing familiarity with social media?  You’re talking to an audience of 20- and 30-something techies – do you do your best to sound like an expert, or do you stick to examples of 8-track tapes and CDs?  

The solution is to make it real.  Spend a little time grappling with the issue in a real way, but be honest about your own perspective.  Authenticity means being able to say something like, “I’m not an expert on social media, but I do understand campaigns, and what I’ve learned from working on the Truman campaign is that….”

It’s your job to meet the audience more than half way by finding connections with them – but not by faking it.  Lose your authenticity and you’ll lose your audience in a heartbeat. 

The first question you should ask when preparing a presentation is, who’s my audience?  But that question requires more than a one-word answer.  It’s the beginning of an exploration of the exact circumstances of your audience – who, what, when, where, and why – everything about them you can determine. 

Why should you care?  After all, isn’t it a matter of integrity to say the same thing to everybody?  Yes and no.  The message, fundamentally, has to be the same.  But the shape that it takes may need to be entirely different.  Would you use the same words to describe World War II to a group of six-year-olds as you would to a group of adults? 

This time let’s think about the difference between audiences where most of the people know each other and when they don’t.  Examples of the former are to be found when speaking at a company annual meeting or awards ceremony, and the latter at a large convention of professionals in the same field. 

The impact on how you shape your speech is immediate.  If you’ve got some hard-hitting things to say about how bad bosses crimp profits because they decrease worker productivity – you can’t make it personal if bosses and workers are going to be sitting together. 

It’s a much different situation if it’s a group of professional managers, say, who don’t predominately know each other.  Then, you can get them talking about bad bosses and productivity and they’ll relish the chance to dish. 

On a host of levels, you can’t intelligently address an audience until you know whether or not the participants are acquainted. 

The first question you should ask when preparing a presentation is, who’s my audience?  But that question requires more than a one-word answer.  It’s the beginning of an exploration of the exact circumstances of your audience – who, what, when, where, and why – everything about them you can determine. 

Why should you care?  After all, isn’t it a matter of integrity to say the same thing to everybody?  Yes and no.  The message, fundamentally, has to be the same.  But the shape that it takes may need to be entirely different.  Would you use the same words to describe World War II to a group of six-year-olds as you would to a group of adults? 

Let me begin this week of 5 quick blogs on audience in 5 days by talking about why audience size matters – and in ways that you might not expect.

Small audiences (less than 100 people) are easier to interact with, of course, but the mistake that most speakers make is to think that real interaction isn’t possible with a large audience.  So those speakers resort to dumb shout-outs (raise your hand if you like raisins!) with large audiences because they believe that nothing else is possible. 

In fact, audiences both large and small thrive on direct interaction with a speaker.  Don’t be afraid to sally out into that audience of 600 people and have a real conversation with one person here and another person there – on the other side of the audience.  The result makes the room feel small to everyone – in a good way. 

It takes more energy on the part of the speaker, but the results are extraordinary. 

Large audiences are different in two important ways.  First, they want to laugh more than small audiences, so give them a chuckle or two from time to time.  And second, they react more slowly than a small audience, because of the sheer physics of sound waves.  So slow down, and give them time to react.

Next time – what to do when an audience knows each other, and when it doesn’t. 

A friend sent this funny video dispelling the myths of motivational speakers.  It has a good time poking fun at the occupational hazards of the job.  But let me take the idea here one step further.  There is no such thing as the job category, “Motivational Speaker.”  At least, there shouldn’t be, and you shouldn’t think of yourself as one, or even aspire to become one. 

Why, you say?  What’s wrong with wanting to become a motivational speaker?  Don’t they make tons of money?  Travel the world?  Get to stay in swanky hotels and meet interesting people? 

No, no, no.  That’s the wrong way to think about it.  Speaking is not a profession.  It’s an activity.  It’s a way to communicate your passion about a subject upon which you’re expert. 

I put it this way, because the passion has to come first.  The reason people will hire you to speak, and pay you lots of money, if you’re very, very good, and very, very well known, and send you around the world, and put you up in swanky hotels, is that you have something unique to say.  Something absolutely fascinating.  Something that no one else can put quite the way you can – and that propels audiences to do something different as a result. 

Maybe you can show people how to reach goals they think are impossible.  Maybe you can explain how the new economy works better than anyone else, guiding companies to succeed with innovative products and services.  Maybe you understand creativity and can share that understanding with teams, helping them become less stuck. 

So begin with the idea, the passion, the craft, the expertise.  Then write your book, give your free speeches, create your community, launch your blog, and create your platform of fans and fellow believers.  Once you’ve got all that down, the invitations to speak for money will come, and so will the rest of it.  But speaking itself is not a profession.  Yes, it’s a craft.  Yes, it’s hard to do well.  Yes, you can always learn to get better at it.  But focus on the passion that got you there and keep that alive, and you will indeed be a motivational speaker, not to mention colleague, worker, expert, thinker, writer, and friend. 

 

Readers of this blog will know that I often take on PowerPoint (and its cousins) as detrimental to speech giving.  It’s probably time for a corrective blog, especially after my “Imagine there’s no PowerPoint” spoof of last week. 

Let’s be clear.  Slides, done right, can greatly strengthen a presentation. 

So what’s the right way to use PowerPoint and the other slide software programs?  Think of musicals.  A character breaks into song when the emotions are too strong for mere words.  Songs in a musical mark the high points of the story – when the characters fall in love, or discover the truth about themselves, or decide to leave home. 

Slides in a speech should cover the same ground.   If you’re talking about a person, a picture of that person will bring him or her into the room in a way that mere words won’t.  If you’re discussing some part of the world with enormous visual impact, then go for the visual impact.  A client we’re particularly fond of has climbed Mount Everest, and I was the first person in line demanding pictures.  Those pictures are most likely the closest I’ll ever get to that mountain, and they had to be in the speech. 

More subtly, if you’re talking about a situation that invokes human emotion – one of great happiness or sadness – then pictures can bring that emotion immediately into play in a way that words do not.  Ask any fundraiser about the importance of pictures of children to various charitable appeals! 

More prosaically, use slides when you’re illustrating complex numbers or numerical relationships – a chart or graph can show in a glance a relationship that’s much harder to describe in words.  But don’t fall into the trap of putting all your data on the screen.  Just as a presentation should tell us what’s important, not tell us everything there is to be said on a subject, a good slide should show us the one or two important numbers, not the entire data set just because you have it. 

It’s the speaker’s job to tell a convincing story, one with a single clear point, to the audience.  Use slides to help reinforce that single point and that story.  Don’t use slides as agenda place-holders, speaker notes, or bulleted lists of things you couldn’t be bothered to narrow down to the important one.  Don’t make the audience work harder than you.  Your job is to make a persuasive case for a point of view, not to drown your audience in data, and that goes for the speech and the slides.

For my blog today, I'm pointing to a new eBook, How to Craft Your Elevator Speech, I've just written on those brief forms of business haiku known as elevator speeches or pitches -- why you need one -- or two, what they're for, how to create a good one, and some good and bad examples.  Here's the link -- at 99 cents, it's almost free!  Enjoy.

Imagine there's no PowerPoint
It's easy if you try
No screens before us
No piles of printed slides
Imagine all the people focusing on you

Imagine there's no clip art
It isn't hard to do
Nothing clichéd or stupid
No dumb cartoons
Imagine all the people focusing on you

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And conferences will be more fun

Imagine no bullets
I wonder if you could
No dissolves or fly-ins
Just stories, from the heart, and good
Imagine all the people focusing on you

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And conferences will be more fun

(with apologies to John Lennon)

Since I reviewed Kate Middleton’s first public speech, it seems only fair to check out another world leader’s maiden attempt at public communication.  Kim Jon-un, the 29-year-old dictator of North Korea, addressed one of his country frequent military shows yesterday.  The occasion was surprising because it may signal a shift in, at least, PR from that unfortunate little country.  Kim Jon-un’s predecessor enjoyed 17 years as supreme leader, and only spoke in public once.  The new one apparently plans to set a different pace, since he’s only been in charge for a few months and he’s already tied his father. 

The differences between the two speakers are instructive.  Kim needs the practice.  Where Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, was winsome and appealing, Kim, the dictator, was monotonous and rarely looked up from his text.  Where Kate connected with her audience on the subject of missing her husband, Kim never seemed to connect with his audience at all.  He even made the classic mistake of breaking his flow as he turned the page of his text.  He shifted nervously from one foot to the other at several points during the speech.  The only point at which he looked even a little animated was the end, when he waggled a forefinger at the audience as he uttered his last words.  

The audience applauded wildly when he was done, but then he can have those who don’t applaud wildly killed, so that may not signal much beyond a desire not to be slaughtered for lack of enthusiasm.  I recommended that Kate use a teleprompter until she gets a little more practiced.  I would even more strongly recommend a teleprompter to Kim Jong-un, in order to bring his head up out of the text and to give the illusion that he is speaking to the audience in front of him. 

It’s wonderful to think that even a speaker who can bump off his audience gets nervous.  That should provide comfort to adrenaline-filled public speakers everywhere.   The video below will give you a glimpse of Kim’s first nervous speech and a chance to glory in the realization absolute power isn't absolute -- it doesn't include control over butterflies. 

 

 

Every presentation is two conversations, and I find it ironic that speakers spend a great deal of time thinking about their content – the first conversation – and hardly any time at all thinking about their body language – the second conversation.  And yet the communications research has shown for a long time that if the two conversations are not aligned, people believe the second conversation every time.  That’s gambling against the house, and against long odds. 

Another way to put this is that the second conversation trumps the first when the two are not consistent.  That suggests that it is incumbent upon the speaker to make sure that the two conversations are aligned, or suffer the consequences.

Take a simple example.  A CEO is giving a speech to employees about alarming trends in the marketplace.  He arrives at the end of his prepared remarks, and then says to the audience, ‘I’d be pleased to take any questions you have.’  At the moment he says these words, he steps back a pace and folds his arms.

There are no questions.

What’s happened?  The audience has unconsciously read the CEO’s body language instead of believing the words, and correctly determined that he was hoping there would be no questions.

Too obvious, you say?  I’ve seen this precise scenario at least half a dozen times.  And I’ve seen all the hard work of a reassuring speech undone by unconvincing Q 'n A.  All because of body language.

You need to put the same effort into choreographing your body language as you do preparing your content.  If you’re not doing that, you’re only an amateur.  You might be a lucky amateur, but you’re taking your chances on hitting an inside straight every time.

As I said in my last blog, modern presentations are doomed to failure because of ancient survival instincts.  Your body goes into flight or fight mode, and your audience responds similarly, thanks to mirror neurons.  Communication breaks down.  You sense that things are not going well, and you panic more completely.  The audience responds with panic back.  What can you do to avoid that doom loop? 

You need to control the many little signals of tension your body is sending out to the audience.  There are two ways to accomplish this feat.  The first is to control your gestures, and the second is to control your emotions. 

Control your gestures.  This is hard work for most of us.  We learn as adults to control our faces reasonably well, smiling when we really want to punch someone, for example, and generally putting on a happy face when we don’t mean it.  But controlling the rest of the body is difficult because it is normally done by our unconscious minds.  It’s very hard to bring it to the conscious level, since our conscious minds are much more limited in power.  We can only process something like 40 bits of information a second with our conscious minds while our unconscious minds can handle 11 million bits of information.  No contest. 

Nonetheless, you can learn to do it, by practicing daily, and by learning your speech very, very well so that you can free up as much of your conscious mind as possible.  Start by observing how you stand, move, and gesture when you’re relaxed, and then practice doing that for your presentation.  After that, it’s repetition. 

Control your emotions.  Surprisingly, perhaps, this is the easier – and usually more successful – way to go about showing up as a confident speaker.  We tend to think about emotions that they are uncontrollable, but you can get yourself into a positive, enthusiastic state of mind by some simple self-talk.  After that, it’s just a matter of practicing that positive self-talk rigorously before the presentation, and then invoking it just before you start. 

Here’s how to do it.  Think of a time when you were genuinely in the frame of mind you desire to show up with at your presentation.  If you want to be positive, high-energy, and excited, then think of a time when you felt that way.  Perhaps when you won the bowling trophy, or your first Senate campaign?  Then practice recalling that specific state of mind, using the entire power of your memory through the five senses.  What did that moment smell, feel, sound, look, and taste like?  The more concretely you can recall it, the more emotion you will invoke.  Practice that for several weeks before your presentation, and it should soon become automatic. 

If you’re in the right frame of mind, your gestures will take care of themselves.  And you will avoid the doom of most presenters, engaging rather than alarming your audience. 

When you’re standing up in front of a group of people ready to give a modern business presentation, your ancient instincts take over.  Honed over a million years of evolution, your body says to itself I’m in danger!  I must be prepared! thanks to your ancestors’ battles of survival of the fittest from the cave person era.

Here’s what happens, thanks to evolution.  Your muscles tighten, your brain starts working faster, your breathing becomes shallow, your hands get clammy with heat and perspiration – adrenaline is coursing through your system, readying you for a battle that will never come.

And that’s the problem.  Your body language signals to the audience in front of you (the audience dressed in modern business clothes, not the cave people) that you’re defensive, ready to fight.  Because of the mirror neurons we all have in our brains, the audience mirrors your emotions.  It responds with defensiveness of its own.  Both sides of this modern attempt to communicate are being hampered by ancient instincts to fight or flee.

The possibility of open, honest communication breaks down, probably for the duration of the talk, and you haven’t even started yet.  All of this happens in the blink of an eye, unconsciously, before you even have the chance to think about it.  It’s just the bodies in the room communicating with one another.

Another modern business presentation tanks.

In my next blog:  What you can do about it. 

If a women dresses in masculine clothes, she’s more likely to be hired.  A teaching assistant who dresses up will be taken more seriously than one who dresses down.  The clothes make the woman and the man.  We’ve known these things intuitively for a long time, and studies have proved them.  Now there’s a study that suggests that what we wear affects our own internal thought processes. 

According to researchers Adam and Galinsky from Northwestern University, subjects who put on a doctor’s white lab coat thought more clearly and had better sustained attention than those who did not – and even than those who looked at a lab coat before taking a series of tests.  So putting on a lab coat makes you smarter.

That raises the question.  Does dressing well make it possible for you to give a better speech?

Anecdotally, we know this to be true.   No doubt people have told you for years to ‘dress for success’.  You naturally dress in your best for a job interview, or an important meeting.  It makes you feel better, and it’s a signal to others that you are taking the event seriously. 

We always tell clients to buy a suit or a dress that makes them feel like a million bucks when they’re giving an important speech.  If you feel great, you stand in a way that telegraphs that feeling.  And the audience picks that feeling up.  The audience gets your confidence.  You give a better speech, and the audience has a better experience. 

But now we have reason to suspect that, if dressing in a white lab coat makes you smarter, other high-status clothing choices will have a similar effect.  That’s something to think about when you get ready to give that important talk.  Are you dressed for success?  Are you dressed to get the most out of your brain? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authenticity is hard because it is hard to be open and honest about ourselves, warts and all.

Authenticity is hard because sometimes we want to hide our own less-than-perfect traits from ourselves.

Authenticity is hard because other people may seize on our weaknesses as proof of our unworthiness, rather than our humanity.

Authenticity is hard because we think what makes us human is our uniqueness, but it’s really our commonalities. 

Authenticity is hard because we can lose track of our essence in daily compromises, accommodations, and dealings. 

Authenticity is hard because most of us are growing into ourselves.

Authenticity is hard because we think it’s all about being, but it’s really all about doing. 

Authenticity is essential because it’s the only way to do good work.

Authenticity is essential because our children need to learn it from us.

Authenticity is essential because without it there is no core.

Authenticity is essential because if we open up about our weaknesses other people won’t bother. 

Authenticity is essential because it’s how we grow into ourselves

Authenticity is essential because otherwise we’ll compromise once too often and lose our way for good. 

Authenticity is essential because life is too short for anything else.

We expect a lot of speakers and presenters.  We want them to be witty, wise, and gnomic.  We want them to give us insights we’ve never had before.  We want them to change the world.  We expect a lot. 

But what about the audiences these speakers work so hard to please? Do we have the right to expect anything of them?

I think the answer is yes, and I think there are 3 ways in particular that audiences fall down.

“Just Give Me the Highlights.” 

I've all too often seen (especially) executives – but also conference organizers – ask hapless presenters, "We're running out of time; can you just give us the highlights?"  The busy executives use this as a deliberate technique to save them time and see how the presenters respond under pressure.  But this technique pushes the presenters into sloppy speaking as they rush to get as much as possible in the time left.  Besides that, it's rude.  The result is imprecision, confusion, omissions, bad feeling and more time wasted in the long run.  It will take 30 emails at least to straighten out the confusion created by one rushed presentation, you can be sure. 

“I'll Multitask While You Talk.” 

If we're going to go to all the trouble, expense, and time to get together, you should give the speakers your undivided attention.  Multitasking is for low-involvement, relatively unimportant tasks.  All the studies show that the more tasks you undertake simultaneously, the slower and more inattentively you do them.  Put away that iPhone or iPad or Android phone or Blackberry!  Pay attention if you've decided to be there in the first place. 

“I'll Come Early and Leave Late.” 

Both speakers and audiences owe each other the courtesy of showing up on time, starting on time, and ending on time.  Anything less is rude and disrespectful to those who do have watches.  That said, the speakers and conference designers must create moments, speeches, and conferences worth attending all the way through.  All too often, conference planners just fill in the time slots in the way they always have.  A conference should tell a coherent story, without filler, from start to finish.  It's not a series of time slots. You owe it to the audience to create something memorable.  And the audience owes it to you to show up on time and stay to the end. 

I think that audiences owe speakers the courtesy of paying attention politely for as long as the speakers hold their attention.  After that, audiences should still be polite.  What do you think? 

Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, who is currently half of England’s most adorable royal couple, gave her first public speech yesterday.  Don’t envy her!  Where the rest of us have an audience of maybe a score or a hundred for our first speeches, Kate had the entire world. 

How did she do?   She was adorable.  She was OK.  She was….the Duchess of Cambridge.  The speech was halting, because she read her brief comments, and had to keep looking down to get the next sentence.   That was a bit awkward.  She was obviously nervous.  But she made up for that with her charm.   

Her best moment came when she mentioned missing her husband, who’s on duty in the Falklands at the moment.  The audience reacted, she gave a genuine smile, and it was very sweet.  

OK, so she’ll gain confidence and get over the reading thing.  Perhaps she’ll get used to having a real conversation with her audiences, so that she can work from a few notes or none at all.  Memorization would be second best – and a distant second, because it’s hard work, she’s liable to forget, and people who memorize their speeches usually come off as stiff and inauthentic. 

As I was watching her, I was thinking about teleprompters.  Teleprompters make weak, nervous speakers look better.  Past a certain point of experience, though, and they drag all but the most eloquent speakers down.  Consider all the criticism President Obama has faced for not being as eloquent now that he’s President as he was on the campaign trail.

That’s because, on the campaign trail, he gave basically the same speech over and over and over again.  He got good at it.  Now, he’s gives a speech or two a day, with very little prep, and he’s reliant on the teleprompter.  It’s keeping him from reaching the emotional highs and connections he made with his audiences on the campaign trail. 

Let’s be clear:  there’s no shame in using a teleprompter.  It’s just a way of putting a speech text up in front of your eyes so you don’t have to look down every few seconds like Kate Middleton. 

Teleprompters are now less than $200 for the portable kind.  So if you’re a nervous, weak speaker, or you’re just starting out, or you have to give lots of speeches, consider using one.  It will keep you on track, and you won’t have to put your head down every few seconds like the Duchess of Cambridge.  In that way, you’ll maintain your contact with the audience. 

But if you’re a practiced, frequent speaker, and you have the time to master your material, then work from notes or memory and avoid the teleprompter.  It will only drag you down.  

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We live in an era of flattened hierarchies, informality, and collegial behavior.  And so naturally enough, many clients ask me if they can present sitting down.  It's an inevitable question -- it feels more collegial, and less exposed, to sit down around the table like everyone else.  Let’s face it; it’s easier.  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 signaling, '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 who 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. 

When I’m asked about the secret to good public speaking, my first instinct is to respond, "It's a journey you take the audience on, both intellectual and emotional, involving both content and delivery, and it’s a complex process, an art form, involving lots of moving parts." 

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 good 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, ever 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.   

You've been asked to give a speech. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When is rehearsing a presentation a bad idea?  Clients often try to talk themselves out of rehearsal, because they’re pressed for time, because they don’t like the feeling of rehearsal (you’re not in control yet), or because they argue that rehearsal will make them stale. 

Those are bad arguments.  People who ‘wing it’ usually betray their lack of preparation in their body language.  They don’t think they do, but they give themselves away.  So generally, more rehearsal is better.  But there are times and kinds of rehearsals that are counter-productive.  Here are 3 ways it doesn’t pay to rehearse. 

Don't rehearse more than once on the day of the presentation. 

I can imagine exceptions to this rule, but not many and not often.  By the day of, most people are in adrenaline mode, and rehearsal is not very helpful.  Do rehearse once, especially in the actual venue, just to get familiar with things and have the performance fresh in your mind.  But obsessive rehearsal at this point simply won't do much good.  You have to have done the work already.  It's too late.   

Don't rehearse the wrong speech or presentation. 

This may sound odd, but you'd be surprised how many times people don't have a speech set until the last minute, so if they do rehearse, it's the 'wrong' speech -- because it's not the one they're ultimately going to give.  Get the speech set, weeks before the date, and rehearse that one.  Many people get nervous as the awful date approaches, and they start to doubt themselves and the message.  So they tinker with the speech, almost always making it worse.  Don't fall into that trap. 

Don't rehearse too often only in your mind. 

Half the reason for rehearsal is that speaking, like, say, acting, is a physical art.  You rehearse so that your body can learn the speech, not just your mind.  Too many people say, "I don't need to rehearse, I ran over it in my mind."  Therein lies potential disaster.  You need to discover physically what it feels like to give the whole speech, to say a particular line out loud, to make the transitions from one section to another.  None of those things can be imagined as effectively as they can be rehearsed. 

How much should you rehearse?  A lot.  Stage actors often get up to 6 weeks, 5 or 6 days per week, 8 - 10 hours per day, to rehearse.  That's how you end up looking natural, assured, and authoritative.  Not by winging it. 

Audiences long for presenters to be real with them, and just have a conversation.  Sure, they want a focused, smart conversation, not a rambling, pointless one like so many real conversations.  But they want an authentic connection with their speakers, and the way to achieve that is with a conversation. 

That’s hard for speakers to do.  When we’re nervous, we want control.  When we’re full of adrenaline, we want to protect ourselves.  And when we’re confronted with a big crowd, most of us want to hide.  And yet a conversation with an audience requires that you give up control, open yourself up, and let go of self-protection. 

Professor Brene Brown talks brilliantly about the risks of opening up in front of an audience in her TED talk, “the Power of Vulnerability.”  She’s funny, articulate, and moving.  Brown is willing to go deep into her own vulnerabilities in order to offer up some hard-won wisdom about courage, compassion, and connection – for her the secret to a successful life. 

Along the way her example yields some helpful tips on how to have a conversation with your audience.  So do yourself a favor, watch the video, and learn a few things from this great presenter.

Talk more about problems than solutions. 

Speakers want to present themselves and their ideas as whole, complete, and – as Brown notes – a tidily wrapped package.  But audiences want to see the struggle.  They want to know about the problems.  Only once you’ve shown that you’ve been down in the valley too will they be willing to climb up the mountain with you.  As Brown points out, “When you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak.”  That’s where the best stories are to be found. 

Be willing to self-disclose, but don’t make it about you. 

Brown shares plenty about her own struggles as a control freak, and it’s both revealing and funny.  But she never makes the talk solely about her.  She’s always relating what she learns back to society, the rest of us, you and me.  She’s a parent, and she shares what she’s learned in this way: “Children are hard-wired for struggle.  They’re not perfect, but they’re worthy of love and belonging.”

Put your best thinking out there; don’t hold back.

Too often speakers settle for the superficial and avoid the deeper issues because, well, they’re hard.  Brown is willing to give us her best, whether it’s about her own therapy, or the current political climate.  As Brown points out, our political dialogue today has broken down because it’s only about blame.  And yet we can only work toward solutions when people are willing to be vulnerable and admit to the problems we’re all facing.  She says, “This is not our first rodeo, people.  We just need you to be authentic and real….and say, ‘we’re sorry; we’ll fix it’.”

Brown’s talk is top-notch, insightful, witty, and well worth 20 minutes of your time. Watch Brown’s non-verbal communication to see what open, relaxed body language can do to bring in an audience.  Watch the talk to see how to have a wonderful conversation with your listeners.  Watch Brown to learn something priceless about the importance of vulnerability in our lives.    

Many thanks to Liane Davey of Knightsbridge for the link to this great talk. 

 

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

 

I.  Thou shall speak authentically, from the heart.

 

II.  Thou shall focus on the audience.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

VIII.  Thou shall not begin with talk of thyself.

 

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

 

X.  Thou shall not exceed thine allotted time.

 

 

(*unless thou is really, really funny.)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conflict Is at the Heart of Good Storytelling.

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

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

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

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

Great Stories Begin with a Meeting or a Journey.

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

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

Next time:  the ugly truth about conflict. 

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

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

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

Storytelling is not about beginnings, middles, and ends.

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

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

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

1.  You Can’t Read This, But…..

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

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

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

3.  ‘It’s All About Me’ Introductions 

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

4.  Sales Pitches Disguised as Presentations  

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

5.  Not Waiting for the Audience

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

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

There are many ways to say the words “I love you,” but the way that counts is said without words.  The body language of love begins, of course, with flirting:  fleeting eye contact, longer eye contact, smiling, grooming, drawing nearer to each other, accidental touching, and finally close one-to-one communion that shuts out the rest of the world. 

Once two people are acknowledged lovers, something quite wonderful happens.  Watch their body language in a restaurant, or strolling down the street, or at a party, and you’ll see something the non-verbal experts call synchronicity.  That’s a mouthful that simply means that the two move together, gesture together, and react together, anticipating each other’s thoughts, intents, and desires.  To experience that kind of harmony with another human being is the cure for loneliness, the antidote for despair, and the hope of the planet.  We humans are hard-wired for empathy, and love is its culmination.  On Valentine’s Day I wish you the happiness of another human being to dance with in perfect harmony, beyond words, and as close as the beating of your own heart. 

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

It’s the season for State of the State addresses.  They get less attention than the President’s State of the Union address, but they’re arguably more important to the legislators and citizens of the states in question.  I got my start in the public speaking world writing speeches for the Governor of Virginia, and my first big test was the State of the Commonwealth address there. 

Each year, it was a down-to-the-wire, nail-biter speech.  Because it was always a policy and initiative list, there were many government officials involved, each with a policy axe to grind, weighing in, and the speechwriter was caught in the middle trying to make the words cover everything and still transmit a good speech.  We usually started about 3 weeks before the date, and worked pretty much around the clock until the moment itself.  In fact, one year I remember editing directly on the teleprompter a few minutes before the Governor was due to start.   

It was all about control – control of message, control of initiative, control of the political agenda. 

Governor John Kasich has a better way, sparing the sanity and the work hours of his staff.  He apparently ad libs most of the speech.  The result?  The staff gets a break, but not the audience.  Kasich rambles on for nearly an hour and a half, far longer than the President, and he discusses every imaginable topic, and a few you never would imagine.  He mentions his “hot” wife, God as the lobbyist for handicapped people, and low weight babies, he imitates someone with Parkinson’s disease, he ‘shouts out’ to half the audience, he admonishes winners of his new Governor’s Courage Awards not to sell their medals on eBay, he argues that ex-cons should be able to drive trucks and cut hair, while mentioning that hugs from a woman he names “made him believe in God,” he condemns the slave trade, he describes himself as “a little boy in a Congressman’s body” – and he cries. 

This is an hilarious, heartfelt, mortifying, embarrassing speech, at least for the first hour or so.  It’s the puppet master’s nightmare, the speechwriter’s joke, and the audience’s torment.  In the end, it is the best argument for a teleprompter and a script I’ve ever witnessed.  Kasich just goes on and on, enthusiastic to the end, fired up on adrenaline and self-absorption.  Meanwhile, the audience grows old, becomes grandparents, and finds religion, praying for release.

In the end, it's audience abuse, pure and simple.   

Stick to the written speech, Governor Kasich!  Your state needs to get to work!    

Here’s a link to the speech.  If you have lots of time on your hands, you’re a bored bureaucrat in some other state, or perhaps you’re retired and don’t like golf, then this is the video for you.  

Charles Dickens is 200 today, and in his honor, this blog will explore a little-known side of the great novelist:  his public speaking, and in particular 2 lessons the great Boz still can teach us today.

Dickens, a keen amateur actor, carried out several speaking tours of England and the United States during his later life, partly to indulge his love of theatrics, partly to raise money, and partly because he had more energy than a half-dozen ordinary people.  In addition, he gave many speeches at the meetings and dinners a popular public figure of the day was expected to attend. 

He was phenomenally successful at his public readings, though some say the stresses of his last speaking tour hastened his death at 58.   Tickets for his American performances were set at $2.00, but sold on the black market for as much as $26.00 each, a large sum in those days. 

One of his most popular readings was a shortened version of A Christmas Carol, and I’m looking at a facsimile of the prompt copy now that he used for these performances.  It yields some interesting Dickensian secrets. 

First of all, he cut ruthlessly.  What’s left is the bones of the narrative, with the occasional bit kept in because it was pure fun.  At the same time, Dickens adds direction to himself, to remind him of the emotional note he’s supposed to be striking at each point in the story.  So, he starts out “cheerful” when Scrooge’s nephew enters the scene, transitioning to “mystery” for Marley’s Ghost, and “melted” when Scrooge begins his transformation to kindly old man.  And he gives himself stage directions too, noting when he’s supposed to sit, stand, and move.   

This shows Dickens’ keen understanding of the importance of conveying not just the words, but also the emotion, of the story he is performing – while concentrating on the essentials of the narrative.  The same advice holds for speakers today, and raises the question, why don’t more speakers imitate Dickens and put directions for their performances in the margins of their speeches, as well as keeping ruthlessly focused on the point they’re trying to make? 

The second Dickensian tip comes from his after-dinner speeches.  Attendees often marveled at his prodigious memory, as he always spoke without notes, sometimes for an hour or more.  How did he do it?

Dickens broke his speeches down into sections, and then used an Ancient Greek trick to remember the sections.  He would associate a section with a room in his house, linking them in his mind, so that all he had to do was “walk” through the house room by room to remember what he was supposed to say. 

At 200, Dickens can still teach us a thing or two about speaking, performance, and memory. 

Bill Gates was all over the news last week in the UK talking about his charitable programs, taxes, and eradicating disease.  Here’s a brief sample clip of the billionaire in action on the BBC. 

Bill's public persona presents a fascinating dilemma for communications coaches like myself, because he’s doing one important thing wrong – but it doesn’t really matter.  What’s up? 

When we’re in front of an audience, either standing up or sitting down, the way in which we stand (or sit) has an essential effect on how we’re perceived.  There are 3 possible ways for humans to stand (teenagers can manage a fourth, but more about that in a minute).  First, seen from the side, we can pitch our head forward, and slump our shoulders, adopting the head posture.  This is the posture typically adopted by intellectuals, professors, and people who are discouraged, dominated, defeated, or dismayed.  I have demonstrated this posture many times for audiences, and they always react in a very specific way.  Audiences read the posture as subservient, timid, unhappy to be there, and shy. 

Second, again witnessed from the side, we can lead with our pelvis, adopting the pelvic posture.  This is the posture typically adopted by fashion models on catwalks, slinky actresses playing vamps, and flirtatious secretaries in ‘Fifties sitcoms.  I have demonstrated this posture for audiences, to general hilarity, and they always react, again, in a very specific way.  Depending on how ‘PC’ they are, they’ll say “a come-on” or “Don Juan!” or just “creepy!”  Audiences read the posture as flirtatious, sleazy, or, in the words of one young, enthusiastic audience member,  “You’re trying to hook up!”

Third, we can stand straight, like a soldier, only without quite so much tension in the shoulders.  This posture is the one your mother wanted you to adopt on the first day of school, or that first job interview.  When I demonstrate this posture to audiences, they will say words like “trustworthy,” “honest,” “professional,” and “normal.”  They read the posture as someone who is in charge, competent, and friendly (in a good way). 

Thinking about your posture is important because it signals an intent to the people that you meet – whether in one-to-one conversations, meetings, or in front of audiences.  That audience will read your posture unconsciously as who you are – at least in relation to them – regardless of what you’re actually thinking. 

Bill Gates adopts a clear head posture, most probably because he is a very smart man who spends a lot of time thinking.  But head postures tend to get ‘read’ by others as subservient.  But in Bill’s case, it doesn’t matter.  He can get away with it, because all the world knows that he’s a successful billionaire, and we’re ready to defer to him anyway, in most situations, because his reputation precedes him. 

For the rest of us, though, it doesn’t usually work to go through life with a head posture unless we want the world to take us as read – and think we mean to be subservient. 

And those teenagers?  Some can simultaneously adopt a head and pelvic posture, forming a kind of question mark.  Certain rock stars do the same.  The result is self-consciously focused on the sexual, something that describes those two groups of people quite well. 

 

 

We all dread certain conversations -- the one with the boss about a raise, with a teenage child about, say, a problem in school, or with a partner about a festering disagreement over the in-laws.  For some people, the anticipation is the worst part.  For most of us, though, the anticipation is bad enough, but the actual conversation is worse.  We're nervous during it, and we don't express ourselves well, and we don't get what we want out of them.  How to make the experience better?

As a first step, project the future emotional state you want, not the one you fear.  You're experiencing negative mental chatter, and it's creating a doom loop that leads to physical symptoms that in turn generate more negative mental chatter.  Instead, start a positive cycle.  Tell yourself something like, "I am confident and serene.  I will handle the conversation beautifully."  Use your own words and ideas, specific to your situation. 

For the rest of the steps to making a tough conversation better, please follow this link to my new e-book on Amazon, iTunes and Barnes & Noble, Tough Conversations.  In it you'll find the 7 steps to more successful talk.  Enjoy!

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

5.  Make your speaking personal – talk to individuals.  Many people have been told to talk the foreheads of the audience, or look just over their heads.  That’s the wrong approach.  But don’t just make eye contact.  When trying to use that advice, most people find their eyes darting all over the room.  That makes you look furtive. 

Instead, focus on real individuals in turn, and talk to each one as if you were having a conversation with them.  How long you spend with each person depends on the topic, where you are in the talk, and a host of other issues.  But if you talk to one person for 30 seconds to a minute or so, and then move on to the next one, that’s good starting practice.  And pick people in different places in the audience, so that you bring everyone in and make the room feel small.  If you’re willing to walk around a bit, you can make even an audience of 500 or 1,000 people seem small. 

There you go.  5 days, 5 ideas, 5 quick ways to improve your speaking this year.  Good luck and here’s to better speaking in 2012. 

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

4.  In delivery, don’t fall into the Power Point Triangle of Death.  I have seen so many speakers, even confident, highly paid speakers, talk to their slides instead of the audience.  It’s a dead giveaway that the speaker is using the slides as speaker notes, and it’s a nearly unforgiveable sin.  Here’s what happens.  The speaker stands between the computer and the screen, forming a triangle.  Then, all of his motions and gestures are confined to that triangle, and are not focused on the audience.

Why is that bad?  Because we’re only interested in motion toward (or away from) us.  Motion by the speaker that is toward the screen or a random computer causes us to check out.  If you don’t think this is the case, watch how interested you are when someone half-turns away from you, or gives you the ‘cold shoulder’.  You check out; you can’t help it.  Same thing is happening to your audience if you’re not always moving toward them, and away when you are changing the subject or moving to a new topic. 

Learn your slides so that you don’t talk to them, or your computer.  Talk to the audience.  Always.

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

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

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

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

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

2.  Don’t do Q and A at the end.   Most people who have an hour speaking slot talk for 45 minutes or so and then take questions.  Here’s the problem with that.  People’s attention spans last about 20 minutes, by most measures, so by 45 minutes, you’ve taken your audience through 2 attention cycles and haven’t given it a chance to respond or clear up any confusions.  And once the questions do come, you’re at the mercy of the questioners.  The session ends, not with your brilliant, prepared thoughts, but with the last dumb question some yo-yo finally dredges up.

Instead, stop for questions at 20 minutes and 40 minutes.  Then, if you wish, give people one last chance to ask questions at 50 minutes, but save 5 minutes of your speech to finish with, so that you deliver a killer close and control the ending, which is what the audience remembers best.