Public Speaking Advice and Commentary

What do you say when you only have two minutes?

What do you say when you have to make your point in two minutes?  A community board in Maryland decreed everyone who appeared before it had to limit their remarks to two minutes.  That’s not much time for your particular burning issue.  And it’s not unusual.  In our time-starved age, everyone wants you to make your point as quickly as possible.  Interviews on CNN rarely go more than a minute or two.  Commercials get Tivo’ed and thus compressed further than their already brief format.  And the fashion in books is to write shorter and shorter.    

Two minutes is approximately 250 words at normal speaking rates, though, and you can say a surprising amount in 250 words.  Here’s a good way to think about it.

First of all, decide what your one-sentence headline is.  “Leaf blowers make too much noise and they should be forbidden in our community.”  It should take the form of a need or a problem you want to meet or solve.   

Then, deliver three supporting points.  Point one:  “First, I’ve tested them at over 120 decibels.  That’s as loud as a plane at the end of a runway.  Last I checked, we’re not living near a runway.  Should we be subjected to that much noise?’

Point two:  ‘Second, they don’t really clean up leaves.  They just move them around.  Often, that means the neighbor’s yard.  So they really just move the problem down the road.”

Point three:  “And finally, they’re hazardous.  Last year, an employee of a landscaping firm was injured when a leaf-blower blew some leaf matter into his eyes.  He couldn’t see, and he tripped over a rock, injuring his leg.”

And then repeat the headline:  “So that’s why I believe that leaf blowers should be forbidden in our community.” 

And close by asking for the appropriate action your headline and supporting points lead to:  “Please join me in banning leaf blowers from the fair town of Quietville.  Thank you.”

There you go.  Problem solved in two minutes.  Provided everyone goes along with you.

Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma is just out from Jossey-Bass.  Get your copy here:
http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Steps-Authenticity-Charisma/dp/0470404353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229113611&sr=1-1   

Trust and credibility -- 4

And what of trust, the other feeling that audiences look for in a speaker, and that speakers need to establish with their audiences?  Trust has both a verbal and a non-verbal component, and I’ll start with the verbal (the content).

You establish trust with an audience by solving their problems.  Think of the doctor you take that mysterious ache to, for her diagnosis.  If she holds forth on all the possible diseases that could be causing the pain, she’ll establish her credibility with you.  But if she cures your ache, you will trust her as a doctor. 

So building trust is in large part the art of understanding your audience deeply enough to ensure that your expertise will solve their problems.  I once gave a talk on creativity to a group of CIOs in South Africa.  The talk was not, let’s say, a success, because I had misjudged the audience.  I thought their biggest problem was a lack of creativity, but they sure didn’t think so, and thus my witty, wise, and highly entertaining prescriptions for enhancing creativity in the workplace fell on profoundly indifferent ears.  I did get some nice press coverage because the local press was quick to pick up the idea that more creativity for CIOs was a great idea.  Just not the CIOs.   

There has to be a good match between audience, topic, speaker, and the speaker’s expertise.  If they don’t match, be prepared to leave town quickly. 

Remember, too, that solving problems is both an emotional and intellectual activity.  Doctors who form a good (communication) bond with their patients are much less likely to be sued for malpractice, regardless of how good their advice actually is.  It’s all about trust.  Use your expertise for the solution, but remember to tell stories about how your work has transformed people for the better, so that your audience can imagine itself in the same position.  It’s the stories that build the emotional bond and cement the trust relationship you’re creating with your audience. 

Also, remember that speaking is a poor way to convey information.  We only remember something like 10 -30 percent of what we hear in a typical speech.  So keep your solutions simple and allow the audience to interact with you to try out the solution, or take the first step toward it, or something similar.  If they have a chance to be active, there’s a much greater likelihood that they will remember what you’re preaching.

Next time, I’ll wrap up with how to build trust non-verbally. 

The TSA and body language

I was interviewed yesterday about the TSA and your security for a public radio show, Weekend America, running this weekend, probably mid-afternoon Saturday, but check your local listings at:  http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/. 

The question host Bill Radke put to me was, “We hear that the TSA has a week-long training program in non-verbal communications designed to root out people who are intending to do harm.  How would such a program work?”  

My reply was that it’s better than racial profiling, but not much.  Basically, you train people to recognize the little physical signs of nervousness, attempts to conceal strong emotion, and other anomalies.  Anyone triggering alarms would be pulled aside for a secondary screening. 

So what’s the problem?  My Mom doesn’t fly very often, she’s 79, she gets pretty nervous, and she would certainly try to hide it.  She’s a perfect candidate for secondary screening, which would scare the life out of her.  

So I don’t like the idea much.  

But there’s lots more to be said.  We are all unconscious experts in reading body language (to a greater or lesser degree depending on our narcissism, preoccupations, general street smarts, and so on).  The problem comes when you try to become a conscious expert.  We ‘read’ body language unconsciously in a deeper, older, faster part of the brain (some call it the limbic brain) than conscious thought.  So when you think consciously about it, you’re slow. 

You can, with some work, learn to read micro-expressions and some of the physical signs, but the body sends out a myriad little twitches, adjustments, movements, motion, and so on that is overwhelming for the conscious mind to react to in a timely way.  And it’s not like in the movies where, miraculously, the hero has a video to review and all the time in the world to review it. 

Also, we’re much better at detecting anomalies in people we know, than the intent of strangers.  That’s because we build up a database of information about familiar people, and we very quickly notice something different.  When your spouse comes home, bursting with news about a promotion, if you’re even a reasonably attentive partner, you know before she opens her mouth that she’s got an announcement to make. 

That’s the point of our unconscious expertise – it’s fast enough.  It responds to all the physical signals by decoding intent at amazing speed. 

My wife and I were riding the subway the other day, and a person walked on, holding an old-fashioned boom box.  He was dressed in scrubs, but we both noted instantly that he was walking oddly.  Something about him raised alarms in the car – other people eyed him and moved closer to each other, and away from him.  He proceeded to sit down and give us all a very odd physical display.  He stretched ostentatiously.  He did chin-ups on the hand straps.  He stretched out his legs, rubbing them, taking up enough space for 3 people.  He prowled the car, looking out of the door at each stop, leaving his boom box where it was.  His display was at once sexual and threatening.  We all breathed a sigh of relief when he finally got off – with the boom box. 

The point is that we knew instantly that the guy was odd, and perhaps dangerous, but that was not based on lots of conscious thought.  It was an instantaneous, intuitive reaction.  Lots of conscious attention subsequent to that made us no wiser.   We didn’t know what the man intended, just that he was scary.  But it’s highly unlikely he was a terrorist. 

The TSA is in the same position – only worse.  It has to screen thousands of people daily – strangers, like our man in the train.  Lots of training in conscious ways of looking for nervousness is going to turn up plenty of oddballs, psychos, moms, and overstressed ‘type A’ consultants worried about missing their planes.  But is it going to turn up terrorists? 

Surely, they’re trained in suppressing those signals as part of their terrorism training.  And what is their underlying emotion, anyway?  If they’re true believers, intent upon going to their deaths, couldn’t their underlying emotion be excited, even happy, to be doing what they’ve trained to do? 

I wish the TSA lots of luck, of course, but I hope they don’t rely too much on reading body language to detect terrorists.  

A better approach would be to replace the two stupid security questions with two new ones:  Are you carrying anything dangerous to others on the flight?  And, Do you intend anyone harm?  Then, train people to look for mis-matches between the content of their answers and their body language.  As I’ve written before, the ‘two conversations’ of content and body language are either aligned, or not.  When they’re aligned, you can be a successful communicator.  When they’re not aligned, we believe the body language every time – and we’re very quick to pick up on mis-matches. 

 

Don't over- or underestimate radio

People still listen to the radio, and as such you shouldn't underestimate it as a medium for getting your ideas out to a waiting world.  Nor should you overestimate its importance.

Mostly, people listen while commuting, and as background at work and home.  Your best opportunity for spreading your words is thus during drivetime.  But keep in mind the limitations of the genre.  You're only holding people's attention with your voice -- and watch out for that semi!

So think of the game as putting all your energy into your voice, all the energy that you would normally expend waving your arms and walking to and fro to catch the attention of the audience.

And you get no Power Point slides.  None. 

Instead of thinking visually, listen to the voice of a DJ that captures your attention.  He or she will use a combination of arresting content and a rich voice.  Here's how it works:

1.  Sit up straight and breathe.  You can't produce a good tone slouched in a chair with a little bit of lung power going to work.  Sit up very straight, with your back against the back of the chair, and breath in big lungfulls of air through your gut.  Better yet stand, if that's possible technically. 

2.  Say something pithy and provocative.  Sound bites are just as important on radio as they are on TV -- more so, really.  Figure out what are the few points you want to get across during interview -- well beforehand.  Then practice them.  Then, during the interview, get your points in no matter what the question asked.  Do this by 'bridging' from an answer to the question to your prepared material.  It's an art form, doing this well.  If you do it clumsily, you sound like a politician evading the question. 

3.  Allow the host to shine.  If it's a humorous show, let the host land all the best lines.  If it's not a humor show, allow the host to land all the best lines.  I once was interviewed on a morning show in Texas, and I managed to get off a couple of jokes on the host.  I enjoyed myself, but the host did not.  It was not a good idea, and I was never invited back. 

Radio can be fun and useful, but you gotta play by the rules of the game.