I teach a lot about using stories. Stories are incredibly powerful speaking tools.
I coach clients to choose stories that support a point, that supplement data and that make data come alive.
But not always.
The image above is, of course, Hans Rossling presenting data. It comes from the Superflux blog And Hans has a wonderful ability to present data – but in this case to a TED audience who respond well to his particular style of data wrapping.
Sometimes an audience is different.
It expects the data, thinks in terms of data, has an inbuilt radar that rejects the stories behind it as irrelevant.
Sometimes, the data tells its own story. It builds engagement on its own because both presenter and audience know the story behind it. It is a language, a communication, all of its own.
For that audience, probably, stories will have their place, but the story placement will need to be very judiciously chosen, using criteria that are very different from those for an audience, say, that needs to have data wrapped up in story… or the visualisation that Hans Rossling has made his own!
Quick tip? … as always … know your audience… and for me as a coach – part of the coaching process it to remind clients to check in mentally with the culture in which they will be speaking.
Cloak yourself in the attitude and face the danger zone of public speaking.
Last night, at a presentation I gave on speaking your story, someone muttered “Yeah … public speaking – the greatest fear of all!” We all laughed and empathised, and then shared our stories – speaking in public but not “public speaking.”
This morning on the way to the supermarket, I heard “Highway to the Danger Zone” remembering the thrill of the music, and the movie and the Tom Cruise persona …
… and then thought of that comment last night – facing public speaking for some people is like walking into a danger zone – a combat zone – a place where they feel they may have to fight to survive, and maybe it would be better to turn and run – right now!!
So let’s get our Tom Cruise on.
Before this goes any further, let me say I don’t know anything about Tom Cruise as a person beyond what the gossip columns tell me. I have never (well almost never) seen him in a movie except as a sexy, strong, cocky individual, with an appealing soft side. And I am well aware that there are all sorts of movie techniques that enhance that – not least pumping music like Kenny Loggins’. And here’s an audio to remind you just what that feels like.
What was it about Tom Cruise? Ah yes “sexy, strong, cocky, with an appealing soft side”!!
He was good and he knew it. Yes he loved speed, but he was also a good pilot. Want to get your Tom Cruise on? Be good, get good. Read this blog. Read other blogs. Get coaching. Watch other speakers and TED talks. Practise. Capture the moments when you know you are good, when you are in flow speaking, when you feel like a rock star. Rinse and repeat and find out ways to increase those moments. But most importantly, remember what they felt like and take that feeling with you, whenever you speak. That is getting your Tom Cruise on.
If I were to define “cocky” I would think it would involve the word “confidence”, and something to do with the body language of confidence. Looking like you are confident, moving like you are confident, talking like you are confident, works in two ways. Firstly it makes you feel confident. Those who work with laughter know that it is therapeutic. Laughing when you feel least like laughing lifts a mood and stimulates all sorts of therapeutic physiological changes. Acting “cocky” when you are feeling least confident changes your attitude and stimulates all sorts of therapeutic changes in your behaviour and especially in your presentation style. The second way that acting as if we are confident works is that people see confidence. In The Tom Cruise movie persona, this is sexy, attractive. We want to feel that way too. In our speaking situations, it inspires trust in the audience. They see a person who is confident in their knowledge, confident that they can communicate with this audience, and confident enough to be authentic throughout the experience. Do I suggest you be cocky? Not if it’s not your style. But do “Get your Tom Cruise on” if it means behaving with confidence.
Another part of the “cocky” definition would have to be the aspect of fun. Here is a person enjoying what they are doing. The Top Gun fliers enjoyed the need for speed. When the feeling of fear, of danger, appears as it does for all speakers, get your Tom Cruise on. The adrenalin is running because you are taking on a challenge. It’s good. It’s fun. You will achieve. You will also learn. Challenge is where we find flow. Challenge is also where the greatest learning happens. Turn the fear of fear into excitement at doing something that is going to feel so good (and if it doesn’t there will be fabulous lessons to learn. Unlike the pilots you are not facing complete obliteration!)
Before I wrote this article, I went to Youtube and watched a version of “Highway to the Danger Zone” that features clips of the movie. I didn’t watch it all the way through. You can watch it here if you want.
What I did notice, though, was the number of times Tom Cruise is featured with other people. Though it feels like we speak alone when we are on a stage or in front of an audience, we rarely are. “Cocky” needs an audience to enjoy it, to share the fun of it. There will be moments when you can share the “rock star” in-flow speaking moments with your audience. Watch a comedian as he delivers a punch line. Watch Brene Brown as she makes a humorous point. There is a connection with the audience that asks “See what I did there?” – not always, but enough to enable you to take your audience into the experience with you. You are not alone. Nor are you alone as a speaker who is learning to be a Tom Cruise. There are competitors, if you are the competitive type. There are close friends and allies. All are having their successes and failures. You can learn from them. You can support them. They can support you. Some of the failures will be absolutely devastating. But those failures, as I wrote before, are often the greatest learning opportunities, and also the greatest opportunities to bond tightly with colleagues and friends.
And that is one of the places where the “appealing soft side” of the Tom Cruise persona comes in.
Do I want you, or me, for that matter to be “sexy, strong, cocky, with an appealing soft side”? Not if that’s not you already. It’s not me. We are each unique, with our own unique story to tell and to share. But if Getting Your Tom Cruise On can change your attitude as you go into the Danger Zone of public speaking, makes you a superstar speaker, or even just the very best you that you can be right there and then, I will be applauding wildly as the lights dim and you leave the stage.
Image source: http://bit.ly/1npG58c
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Yesterday you heard a fabulous speaker – wonderful, inspiring, eloquent – with so much to share. You walked away buzzing, happy, enthusiastic and you remarked what a fantastic presenter they were.
That was yesterday. Today. What do you remember of that presentation, that fabulous, wonderful, inspiring, eloquent presentation?
Do you remember the next step that you were inspired to take? Are you feeling different about something? Have you changed your behaviour? What do you remember?
Do you remember the clothes they wore? Do you remember the joke they told, or just that they were funny?
Three weeks later. What do you remember?
Chances are it will be one thing – one idea, one word, maybe one graphic, or maybe the person’s style.
No matter how much information the speaker gave you, chances are, still, that you will not remember much more than that one thing.
Chances are also that it will have been attached to an emotion … happy, sad, euphoric, devastated, frustrated, angry … and that’s why you remembered it.
Where will you be adding or creating emotion next time you speak?
Nobody likes a mental blank; not the speaker, not the audience.
As a speaker you really would like to remember all of the points that you so carefully researched and constructed and that you designed to work together to get your message across.
We all have our own ways of remembering our presentations and speeches. Some are based on our preferences for sound or images or body language. Some are simply based on what works for us.
I am working, at the moment, with a client who is moving away from a script to presenting in natural, unscripted language. She is a very creative person, especially in visual media – creates amazing paintings, patterns, and rejuvenates a flagging spirit with what she calls “creative time’ which might involve painting, or doodling or setting significant messages in a beautiful surrounding. I made several suggestions based on using visuals so that she could remember her speech and create useful, unobtrusive notes, and it was like watching a light bulb glowing. She is now in her element.
So for those of you looking for ways to remember your speech or presentation and to create prompts for yourself, here are 5 ways that visuals could work for you.
1. I will call the first one “mind mapping”. This involves “mapping” the ideas for your speech. Usually people put the central message in the centre, perhaps surrounded by a circle or border. Then they connect the points of the speech to the main message as one would spokes to a wheel. From those points, then, further connections reach out to the supports for the points. You can use decorations, colours, pictures, whatever most represents the content of each part, and the connections between them and the order in which you will present them. This is a standard mind map.
You might, on the other hand prefer to draw waves that represent the more emotional flow of the speech, somewhat similar to Nancy Duarte’s spark lines, or curves that represent a new point, or a change in direction of the speech. So each wave or curve represents the points to be made, the climax of the point that will really hook audience response, or the points of the presentation that represent, say, problems and solutions. Write the main message beneath the waves, perhaps, and transition techniques between the waves.
I simply use the sort of note-taking skills I learned in uni – main message at the top, then bullet point system for points to be made and further indented bullet points . I don’t use this system to creating slides, incidentally – yuk, how boring that would be, but it’s the way I learned to organise content and it works for me, in conjunction with other memory techniques.
So however you visually represent the flow of your speech or presentation, you can memorise that image, and the connections between its parts and that will be with you when you need to remember what to say next when you actually present. It will also be there with you, should you need to change the flow of the speech in response to the audience or the environment, and the logic will allow you to make the changes in a way that works for you and for the audience.
2. Visualisation. This is a technique used in many areas where performance is focused and adrenalin-driven, particularly in sports. And while it certainly involves the visual and imagery there are so many other aspects involved – training your subconscious to store what I call “muscle memory”, injecting positive emotion to reinforce the memories. For the purposes of this article, though, the visualisation involves using the mind’s eye or imagination to “watch” yourself as you present, your body language, how you appear on the “stage”, how you are interacting with the audience, and what you are saying. It also involves “seeing” how the audience is reacting to what you are saying, how the equipment is functioning, how you are using the particular setup in the room. I used it from the beginning, I think, of my speaking, long before the word became such a large part of our language, “visualising” successful presentation, and visualising overcoming the possible hurdles to successful presentation. It’s a way of committing the presentation to memory, and ensures that much of the presentation can be put into a state similar to auto-pilot while the front of your brain deals with interacting with, and customizing for, this particular audience.
3. For many people the simple act of writing something is a memory aid, but it can be combined with the visual memory. You can commit the look of the writing to memory, having simply written on a normal blank page. Or you can use the ubiquitous, totally indispensable sticky notes. Use colours, create patterns of shapes and colours, use diagrams on the notes, make diagrams with the notes, write a word or words for each point with points in one colour, supports in another, transitions in another. Lay out the whole speech, in point form, and that process alone may just be enough if you have a photographic memory. Or you can then transfer the whole thing onto a sheet or folder or series of cards to use as a prompt. Take a photograph of it, and use that. Your creativity comes into play, here, to learn, by trial and error, just what works best for you.
4. Maybe it is images that work for you. After all, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’, and our minds remember information better if that information is combined with an image. So you could use an image as a prompt. The storyboarding process that can be so useful for creating a PowerPoint presentation would work well here. One idea – one image, with maybe a word or two to reinforce the memory. Again – perhaps the creation of the storyboard will be enough, if the photographic system works for you, or you can use the board as a prompt. Or you can rehearse the presentation and when you know the points that will cause you grief, just use images for those. It’s all a matter of finding, through practice, what works for you.
5. And, of course, the logical extension of this thought is to use the PowerPoint slides themselves as a memory aid. I know people do this and can make it work for them. It takes practice. I watched a speaker use this system recently. She was a dynamic presenter, with a fluent presentation and had the audience captivated. She had no remote for the slides, so had to ask or signal to the computer operator to advance the slides. When that operator made an error, then the whole speech ground down as the speaker had to wait to find out what was supposed to happen next. Her dynamism saved the day, but it was a glitch that could have been avoided.
Each of these 5 is a way of using images to remember your presentation. Each allows you to be creative in producing a visual to memorise and guide your presentation. Each will need your constant creative attention in honing its success, and maybe you will go even further and combine them.
Perhaps you are already using one or more of these or have your own way of using the sense of sight in memorizing your speech, ensuring there are no blank moments and that it progresses as you dreamed it would. I would love you to share them in the comments below.
The quote today is from Jonathan Swift …
In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
And that’s true …
but sometimes it’s fun to share a little dig at the art with an audience!!
And the question to answer today is …
Why are you speaking?
Yes, that’s right, why?
Because you can? Because it feels good? Because you can make money? Because you can build your business? Because you can share your message?
What else …?
Because you can position yourself as the expert in your niche? Because you can make back-of-room sales?
Wow all that from public speaking! What a fabulous thing, is public speaking!
But this particular speech or presentation that you are giving. Why are giving it, why are you presenting this particular one?
To be successful, all speakers need to refine this question and then provide an answer – one answer.
First we need to refine it down, and change the wording a tad to …
What do you want your audience to do next?
How will they be different?
What will they be thinking that is different?
What will they do that is new or different? What will they say that is different?
You can define this as an outcome. It’s a useful word, “outcome”. It’s been trendy lately.
An even more specific, useful term is “next step.”
What will be your audience’s next step?
Notice that is a singular noun, not a plural. Much as you would probably like them to sign up for your newsletter, give to your charity, send out a referral to their friends and buy your book, it’s probably not going to happen… well not all at once, anyway.
K.I.S.S.
The next step is one step, a single step.
It is easier to make a single step into a focal point in your presentation, easier for your audience to remember one step, easier for them to implement.
Give your audience 5 options and they are muddied in your message, forgotten and lost in the to-do lists. Give them one, just one, next step.
So … why are you presenting? The answer is: this one next step.
Being able to speak “off the cuff” / impromptu / when called upon is a valuable skill.
Some people have it, usually having built it, and some don’t, well … to the extent that the whole idea is paralysingly abhorrent to them.
But for those who can, confidently, fluently and effectively speak whenever they are asked, the rewards are many.
All of the effects that speaking gives are amplified – communicating your credibility, your personality and your message among so many others.
So if you are finding the very idea of speaking impromptu paralysingly abhorrent, or just a bit too challenging, but you understand that valuable chance to communicate your credibility, personality and message, then let’s begin at the beginning when you stand to speak.
Though your mind may be racing and your heart doing the same, you can benefit from making yourself be calm and deliberate.
Stand very deliberately and take time to begin.
Pause.
Smile if it is appropriate.
Take a moment or two to think if you need to, and to ground yourself physically.
Stand up straight to build confidence.
There is always power in pause. It gains attention and can create a bit of intrigue.
Meanwhile it is gaining you the moments you need to gather your thoughts, and remind yourself of your confidence.
Do not apologise.
You will have something to say even if it is about what you don’t know about the subject and why.
Apologising ruins your confidence, deflates the audience’s confidence in you and is generally demoralising.
It is also a waste of the opportunity to create a great attention-getting opening that leads into your ideas.
Open deliberately and positively then, and you set yourself and your audience up for a confident, engaging delivery. It’s a great start to communicating that credibility, personality and message.
Once upon a time, in the dark dark past …
– no it wasn’t dark as in scary or bad – I had a fabulous time. I learned and enjoyed and created and learned and enjoyed. I mean dark as in dim in the memory and maybe even “Dark Ages”
… I was a member of a speaking club called Toastmistress.
International, liberating, polishing, encouraging, teaching … and much much more, was Toastmistress.
As members of the organisation, we were discouraged, severely, from using “ums” – or any other filler – for that matter. There was often a “Grunts Mistress” (don’t you dare snicker!!) whose sole job was to count the ums (or grunts) and we were fined for them. It was a fabulous exercise in that it taught me to speak fluently – without fillers. It was a terrible exercise in that it made me hyper-aware of every um any speaker ever uses.
So now that um has become a trendy part of so much of our speaking, both on-stage and off-, it is making me really think about its place in speaking. I still think we need to learn to speak fluently without fillers, and that the skill is a powerful contribution to our success as speakers. I also think that it can be a hindrance if the content of a speech is in any way not engaging and if it is repeated way too much.
(And if another sports person begins their answer to an interview question with “Look …”, I will …. do something serious.)
I also still think we need to be aware of just how we are using our ums.
Yes, many of us use them when we are thinking. It signals that we are thinking.
Many of us use them to begin a new point or section of the speech. It signals a change or something new, a new thought.
And now I have just become aware of another use.
It happened to be Brene Brown who made me aware of it. I love her speaking – the content, as well as the authentic delivery style she has. Part of the self-effacement of that style is the use of um following something humorous. So I get the impression that what the um is signalling is “I have just said something that you might think is funny. I’ll wait in case you want to laugh.”
And since noticing this phenomenon in that TED talk, I have seen it several times since – used by comedians as well.
My internal response is to think that yes, it would be so much better if you had just paused.
Pauses are powerful.
… or just used a face/body gesture
…. or a foregrounding tool of some sort.
But the um did the job, in a haphazard kind of way.
Just as we need to be constantly using bits of our brains to watch ourselves as we speak, so we need to be aware of how we are using ums. Run your internal camera or use a piece of video machinery. If you are happy to choose an um to signal that you are thinking, or that you are introducing a new topic, or that you are allowing time for humour to sink in, then make that choice.
But make sure it suits your style, and the image you want to present, and doesn’t detract from your engagement and message.
And make sure you have considered the alternatives that just might be so much more suitable and powerful. I don’t think it’s just my “Dark Ages” training that makes me vote for the latter if it can be achieved at all.
What do you think?
Does the trend to “authenticity”, “rawsomeness” and conversational speaking justify the proliferation of ums?
And I’m sure I’m a latecomer to noticing the use for humour. When did you first notice it?
………………………….
© Bronwyn Ritchie
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Learn how to turn your anxiety into a great public speech with this free video lesson from a professional public speaker.
“Presenters using visuals conduct meetings in 28% less time, increase audience retention as much as five times, and get proposals approved twice as often”
~ Claire Raines and Linda Williamson
How you stand and walk has to be congruent with your message
and your image.
If you are a passionate speaker who simply cannot stand still, then hopefully you will use that to support the passion of your message. Try to use standing still to give the same sort of impact that a pause in the middle of rapid speech would give.
If you choose to move or change position just to provide relief because you think your speech is boring; be careful. It may be that your movement will have more impact than your message.
Timing can help so that you change position
with a new idea or
with a new visual support,
or with a change in your story or its dialogue.
Where you are
and how you move between spaces
are as much a part of your presentation as your message and your body language.
Orchestrate them as you will the whole presentation to form one complete impact.
And no, that does not mean being anything other than your authentic self. It means being your authentic self at its speaking best.
Sometimes it’s necessary to dig down to the roots of our fear of public speaking. And there can be a lot of those, but if you dig them out, one by one, confidence grows.
Does fear of public speaking run in your family?
I’m not sure if there is a genetic cause for this but I do know that if you have seen your parents or a family member speaking or performing confidently in public, then you will most likely see it as something you can do too. But if you see fear and aversion to public speaking then you will probably adopt that as part of your culture as well.
So it may be time to kick it out of your culture again, disown it. You could have a “coming out” party where you announce to your family that, in fact, you are a confident pubic speaker, and even though that is so different to everything they believe in, you just have to go ahead with it. Can’t do that in real life? Then do it in your head. It’s just as effective.
Otherwise … rebel! Imagine yourself dressed in something absolutely outlandish – entirely different from your family’s normal, raising your fist in the air and speaking with confidence – the “rock star” speaker you always dreamed you could be.
You will know what works for you when it comes to being independent, just do whatever it takes to dig out that attitude that you have inherited, and grow a new one. Be the successful speaker you know you can be.
Many speakers fear and avoid a Q & A.
Why … because they fear a disaster spiraling out of control.
“What if someone asks a question and I don’t know the answer?”
Experienced speakers know, however, that rather than being a disaster, a Q&A is a wonderful opportunity and they prepare to leverage that opportunity.
“But how can you prepare for every question? No-one can know the answer to everything!”
Let’s look, instead, at preparing for the opportunity buried within this seemingly impossible disaster.
First step … If you don’t know the answer, admit it. That is not a disaster, in itself, or in the making.
Admitting to not knowing the answer is a chance to build authenticity.
Audiences are reasonable. They understand that in the avalanche of information available, no one person can know it all.
There is nothing authentic or credible about someone trying to side-step a question with blustering. Much better to tell the truth.
But before you lose your credibility as an expert, have a plan for response to these questions.
1. If it’s possible, know the experts in the room. Throw the question to one of them, and you are providing a resource just as much as if you had given an answer. You have provided an answer. You have created or reinforced a connection with the other expert. And you have positioned yourself within a community of experts.
2. You can also refer the question back to the audience in general. You are building engagement here with your interaction. If it is possible to allow discussion, you can build a sense of community within the audience. If it’s appropriate you can ask for opinions, stories and examples as well as facts.
3. Finally, saying “No comment” just doesn’t work. You appear either to be completely ignorant and helpless on the subject, or worse still, trying to hide something. If there is no way to answer in the moment, commit to getting the answer to the questioner as soon as possible – to either giving them good sources/resources at the end of your presentation or to communicating an answer in coming days. If you cannot answer because it is not appropriate or you are not at liberty to answer, explain why. Again, audiences are generally reasonable and understanding.
This is also providing an opportunity to reinforce your respect for your audience and its members. Answering with integrity and an honest effort to help, you are showing respect for the person asking the question and for the question itself, no matter how awful the question or the motives of the questioner.
That respect is all part of the process of building and maintaining your credibility and your authenticity. And Q&A has given you the opportunity to contribute more to that process. Rather than being a disaster waiting to happen, Q&A becomes a valuable opportunity.
Tim Minchin, the former UWA arts student described as “sublimely talented, witty, smart and unabashedly offensive” in a musical career that has taken the world by storm, is awarded an honorary doctorate by The University of Western Australia.
He speaks our language!!
I just loved this presentation, this speech – not just his style, but his content, based around our culture and our language – so wise and so hilarious.
Persuasion/inspiration/information/entertainment at its best!
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“In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.”
William Hazlitt
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I don’t particularly like X_Factor videos and the emotional hype that goes with them, but watch this one, and you have to be inspired, especially if you suffer from performance nerves. If this man can do what he did, so successfully, so can you!!
So What? How to communicate what really matters to your audience
Mark Magnacca
The people a business tries to communicate with, sell to, or convince don’t really care about the business. Nor do they care what it is offering them—until they understand exactly how it will benefit them. In this book, world-renowned sales consultant Magnacca shows explains how to answer the “So What?” question brilliantly, every time. => http://bit.ly/Zxn7TI
People notice change. You notice the hum of the air-conditioner when it comes on and when it goes off – but not in between. So change will get attention in your presentations as well.
Change what the audience sees of you and your environment.
Change your stance and gestures.
Change your position and location to emphasis a point.
Change the type of visual aids you are using – maybe from flip chart to object to slides.
Introduce a video clip into your presentation.
Make sure your slides do not follow a template.
Introduce something very different or unexpected.
Change the way you present. Use silence and pauses. Change your tone of voice and your speaking volume. All of these will match what you are trying to deliver – facts, stories, data, persuasion, all require different presentation styles, but the change caused by this will also keep attention.
Change your material.
Signpost changes, or new points you are making by using a sentence or a word, and a gesture, that heralds something new. This regains audience attention as well as whetting their appetite for more. Change topics.
Change the state of the audience. Have them move into groups to discuss a concept or share ideas about a topic. Change later to simply discussing with a neighbour.
Ask questions. Have them raise their hands to answer. This changes their physical state and allows a change in mental attention as well. Get them moving in some other way.
Changes in your presentation, in your presentation style and in the audience’s own physical, emotional and mental states will keep their attention focussed and re-focussed.
(c) Bronwyn Richie
If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but only if you include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, a writer, and an award-winning speaker and trainer.
She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk , a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. Boost your speaking success, click here for Bronwyn’s FREE 30 speaking tips. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before. So if you have been hiding under a rock for the last year or so and have missed this – it’s a great read – Jobs and Gallo are both speakers we can all model….
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
Carmine Gallo
“The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs reveals the operating system behind any great presentation and provides you with a quick-start guide to design your own passionate interfaces with your audiences.” Cliff Atkinson, author of Beyond Bullet Points and The Activist Audience => http://bit.ly/14Kp90g
True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and that only.
-La Rochefoucauld
Mention impromptu speaking and many people shiver with fear and loathing. Given that many would rather die than give a speech, then to do so “of the cuff” is completely beyond the pale.
Impromptu speaking certainly is speaking “off the cuff” and we often think of it as speaking without preparation. That, I think, is where we go wrong. A great deal of preparation can be put into impromptu speaking. As Mark Twain said, “It usually takes me about three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”
Consider everyday conversation – “Hello, beautiful day isn’t it?” If someone says that to you in passing, you can answer and probably choose from a range of answers, “off the cuff”. Much of your ability there comes from habit combined with thought. If someone asks you about your business or what you do for a living, you can answer, and again choose what to say “off the cuff”. And your ability there comes from habit and from having thought out your marketing or why it is you do what you do.
These are both examples of impromptu speaking and we deal with similar impromptu situations on a regular, frequent basis, usually with success and without too much difficulty.
All we need to do then is apply the same skills to Impromptu speaking in a more formal setting and we have the same achievement.
Generally when we are asked a question, the best thing we can do is talk about what we know and particularly what we know best. Confidence comes from knowing that we are familiar with the information. And because we are familiar with the information we can give more thought to how best to present it.
This works particularly well if you are being asked to talk about your specialty. You can choose what to say, just as you do when you answer a conversational question. You can choose based on your audience what you want to be the result of your talk, and how much time you have.
If, on the other hand, you have been asked your opinion on something you are not familiar with, you will also need to choose from our own knowledge and experience in choosing what to say. The worst case scenario is being asked about something that you know absolutely nothing about. Then it becomes a case of talking about the value of the subject itself rather than its information. You can also talk about why you know nothing about it, that you have no experience of it and why, that you would like to know or need to know more and why, or that you would prefer not to know and why.
So when you are asked to speak, think of your own life and what you know about the subject. Think also about what you feel, and what your opinions are. If you have stories from your life that relate to the subject, it’s highly likely that you can construct a speech around those – and again how they make you feel and how they may have influenced your opinion.
So state an opinion in terms that will engage the audience. Use your experience and knowledge to support two or tree points about that opinion. Conclude with the same statement of opinion, adapted to the new information that you gave and you have quite a powerful completely impromptu speech.
So given that you have a way to access your own experiences and knowledge to create “a few words”, you can set up a mindset of being prepared to speak off the cuff or impromptu. This preparation involves being aware, always, of things you could use in a speech. Be aware of stories happening in your own life and the lives of those around you and those in the news or movies. Be aware of your own experience and life story. Be aware of your own knowledge. It is often broader and deeper than you knew until you catalogue it.
Then you can also collect phrases and ways of saying things that will support you in your presentations. Collect phrases that can stall for time, that can cover for any mishaps during the speech, that can link between ideas, and that can introduce humour. Think of clever or witty ways you could tell your stories, and ways to tell them so that they truly and succinctly support a point.
Now you are prepared to speak seemingly “without preparation”!!
(c) Bronwyn Richie
If you want to incude this article in your publicstion, please do, but only if you include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, a writer, and an award-winning speaker and trainer.
She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk , a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. Boost your speaking success, click here for Bronwyn’s FREE 30 speaking tips. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
Basically, when it comes to gestures, you can probably forget them. If you don’t care about your subject, if you don’t connect with your audience, if you don’t have a clear message, then gestures won’t matter one iota. They can’t save a bad speech or a bad speaker. Harsh, isn’t it? But true in the majority of cases.
And on the other hand (pardon the intentional pun)oftentimes, if you get those three things right, (enthusiasm, connection and message) the gestures will flow naturally and again, you can forget about them.
But … and there’s that pivotal word … but …
there are occasions when – and there are people who
have a distracting gesture.
They click or twiddle a pen, play with their hair or their clothes, hold a microphone with fingers unconsciously making a rude gesture, take glasses on and off, put hands in pockets and take them out.
All of these things are not necessarily detrimental in themselves, if the audience is absolutely focused on the speaker and the message. But if there is any reason for the audience’s attention to stray (and we all have short attention spans) then they will become fascinated, at best, and possibly annoyed, at whatever it is that the speaker is doing with their hands.
So you either get a coach to point it out, or you join a public speaking group who will point it out for you.
Or … and there’s another pivotal word, but a much more encouraging one this time
or … you learn to be aware of your gestures.
It’s a skill that can really only be learned and refined by practice.
You need to have the back of your brain sending out little spy satellites on regular intervals as you speak. One will be checking the energy of the audience, their attention. And another will be watching you, as you speak – your face, your body, you hands and your eyes. It will particularly be watching for repetitive gestures, odd gestures, incongruent gestures and gestures that are taking away from your enthusiasm, your audience connection and your message.
It’s a skill worth building through feedback and through practice, because gestures can make or break a great presentation.
The lessons you are about to learn can be applied to all of your presentations, from sales, internal or boardroom presentations right through to your keynote speeches. No matter whether you deliver in PowerPoint, Keynote, Google’s presentation app, or any other — the methods revealed in this show will have you delivering killer presentations.
After watching this show, you’ll be armed with eight things that you can do right away to dramatically improve you presentations! => http://bit.ly/11tdh5z
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
Alfred North Whitehead
Presentation Skills 201:
How to Take it to the Next Level as a Confident, Engaging Presenter
William R Steele
Included with the tips are scores of real-life examples and stories from the author’s over 16 years of helping highly-accomplished presenters find that one more thing that they can do to take it up notch and build their careers by making strong, positive impressions on their presentation audiences. => http://bit.ly/16hissB
Well, are they?
Probably not.
If your words are on the screen or sheet of paper, then let the audience read for themselves. This will have enormous impact, especially if your audience is used to presenters slavishly following the test on their visuals.
You are presenting your message verbally, and visuals are just that – images or groups or words that support your message. They are not the message itself. If necessary, you may have to explain this, first, because many audiences have been trained by presenters who cover their inadequacies by using their visuals as the message.
This may just be why you will make an impact if you can present without using this method. You will be different. You will be seen as so much more confident and competent as a person.
But underneath all of that is the fact that your audience is not illiterate. Don’t annoy them by reading to them what they can read themselves.
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Winston Churchill
If your body is declaring that you are not sincere in what you are saying then your credibility decreases and there is no way your message will have the impact it should have. So everything that implies relaxed, enthusiastic confidence and sincerity is vital now.
Think about the tone of your message. Is it relaxed, conversational? Then make your body language relaxed. Is it passionate, strong and powerful, then create body language that conveys that power. Is it alert and enthusiastic, then your body language will be upright and reflecting that enthusiasm.
When you start building a speech or presentation, the first thing you think of is the content. What will you say? How will you say it? What message do you want to communicate? And what do you want your audience to say or think or do differently? So you start researching that content – on the internet, at the library, with your friends and from the experts.
Content, however, is not the only thing you need to research if your speech or presentation is to be a success. If you want your audience to say or think or do something differently, you will need to know how to “pitch” your content to this particular audience.
Everything that you say or do in your presentation has to be geared to that audience… what they will be receptive to, what their triggers are, the language that they will respond to.
So in researching that presentation to write it, or prepare it, you will also need to research the audience.
Find out as much as you can – their age range, gender, income levels, dreams, needs, wants, culture. What are their likes and dislikes? What will excite them, offend them, unnerve them? What do they wear? What keeps them awake in the middle of the night?
You can gain much from a registration form, especially if you can design it yourself, or have a hand in designing it.
You can ask the event manager, or the person who hired you. You can research their company or organisation, talk to them and their friends and colleagues.
In your preparation routine, you can mingle with audience members before your speech.
Then you can use the information you have gained in constructing and presenting your speech. Use your knowledge of their interests and dreams, to choose your most persuasive stories, points and suggestions.
You will choose language that they understand, and that is not irritating or offensive to them, and subject matter to suit that audience – themes, supports, anecdotes all will be tailored to them.
One of the strongest engagement techniques in presentations is WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) and you need to be reminding your audience regularly of why they should keep listening to your presentation, and of just what they would gain from your suggestions (or lose by not following them).
I’m not sure whether researching the audience is more important than researching content. What do you think?
I do know that for the content to be effective, the research you do on your audience will be vital.
©2012 Bronwyn Ritchie
Please feel free to reproduce this article, but please ensure it is accompanied by this resource box.
Bronwyn Ritchie has 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking – from those too nervous to say their own name in front of an audience to community groups to corporate executives. To take your public speaking to the next level, get free tips, articles, quotations and resources, at http://www.pivotalpublicspeaking.com
And the first tip is to know your audience.
This is what underlies the construction of most of your content. It is the reason to talk about the benefits of a product instead of the features. It is the reason to use language the audience understands. Look at your technical terms, and any jargon that they may not understand. Use examples, stories, quotes and other support material that has relevance to their lives and their interests. You will keep their attention and their interest. And if your presentation has been advertised in media or in a conference program, the material in that advertising is what drew people to your session, so try to stick to it, or they will disengage very quickly.
So research you audience before you create your presentation if you can. Find out how best to dress, speak and what will meet their needs, or solve their problems and you have the first step to keeping their attention.
The One Presentation Skills secret you need to make your next presentation easier to prepare and deliver
Consider your audience when you are choosing the words that you use –the vocabulary. Speak to them in a language they understand. Look at your technical terms, and any jargon that they may not understand. Use examples, stories, quotes and other support material that has relevance to their lives and their interests. You will keep their attention and their interest.
Presenting data is a very difficult challenge. The first step is engaging the audience with a strong emphasis on why it is important for them to understand what is being presented. Nevertheless they do need to be able to understand the data you present. While ensuring its relevance is understood is vital, so is it vital that your audience understand each and every piece of data that you present, or they will just as surely switch off, and your outcome is lost.
Visuals are very useful here. Use pie graphs and bar charts; insert them into your slides if you are using slides. If you are using a whiteboard, draw as you tell the story or make the point. If you are using PREZi you can let the audience look at the data from different angles. The visual representation will reinforce your explanation and the point you are making.
If it is necessary to use graphs, diagrams and charts, make sure they are as simple as possible. While you probably want to impress with your understanding of complicated data, being able to simplify it will have far more of an impact, particularly in terms of getting your message across.
And make sure that everything about those visuals is clear. Sometimes it’s necessary to explain so that all the implications are clear as well. There may have been a very good reason for choosing the axes in the graph. There may have been a very good reason for choosing the increments that are used. While it may seem obvious to you, it may not be to the audience, and it may make the data relationships clearer.
You can also add to the impact of the visuals. There may be a story behind the points on a graph. It is the intersection of two values and maybe the relationship is reasonably clear. But if you can give the reason why this relationship exists or maybe the history behind it, then it will be so much clearer. And if you can put a human face on it, with a human story then the relationship and the point you are using it for will have so much more impact. If wages are going down and costs of living rising, for example, then a story about a family forced to live in a car will make the impact so much more real. Another way to add a human face, or a realistic face, is to use a graphic representing the actual item being quantified. This can be particularly useful in a bar graph. If the bar consists of pictures of dollar coins to represent money, or of groups of people to represent populations or groups, for example, again the impact is multiplied.
In the midst of all this, it is important to remember, still, that you are presenting points towards a persuasion of some kind. It can be useful to have the point you are making as the heading for the slide that contains the visuals.
And while the visuals should be as detailed as is necessary to make them understandable, too much detail will overwhelm. Remember the visuals only need to make a point, not necessarily present all the data. If all the data is necessary for later inspection and verification, put it in a handout, and leave the slides as simple as they can be.
Visuals are your greatest ally in presenting data. They can add impact and keep your audience engaged with the thread of your message. Your simplification and design of the material to support that message and the thoughtful explanation you add to it, will support the success of your data presentation.
©2012 Bronwyn Ritchie
Please feel free to reproduce this article, but please ensure it is accompanied by this resource box.
Bronwyn Ritchie has 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking – from those too nervous to say their own name in front of an audience to community groups to corporate executives. To receive her fortnightly free tips, articles, quotations and resources, subscribe now, it’s free!. Visit http://www.pivotalpublicspeaking.com/ps_ezine.htm
Carmine spoke to an audience of grad students at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. His topic: The New Rules of Persuasive Presentations pulled from his best-selling book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Here’s an excerpt.
How will you hook your audience – get their attention – make them focus on you and your speech? Anecdote? Dramatic statement? Question? Personal experience? Make your choice on the basis of: the composition of your audience, the theme of your presentation, and its length, and what you hope to achieve with it, and then apply all of your confidence and practice to making it effective.
Your audience knows whether you are speaking to them, or just presenting information. They will either feel the connection or tune out very quickly. With any conversation, whether it be informal or a formally presented speech or something in between, you keep that conversation going by choosing things to talk about that interest the other person, get them responding. So you need to know what interests your audience, what they will respond to.
This is what underlies the construction of most of your content.
It is the reason to talk about the benefits of a product instead of the features.
It is the reason to use language the audience understands. Look at your technical terms, and any jargon that they may not understand. Use examples, stories, quotes and other support material that has relevance to their lives and their interests. You will keep their attention and their interest.
And if your presentation has been advertised in media or in a conference program, the material in that advertising is what drew people to your session, so try to stick to it, or they will disengage very quickly.
So research you audience before you create your presentation if you can.
Find out as much as you can – their age range, gender, income levels, dreams, needs, wants, culture.
You can gain much from a registration form.
You can ask the event manager.
In your preparation routine, you can mingle with them before your speech.
Then you can use that information in constructing your speech. If you need to persuade, for example, you can use your knowledge of their interests and dreams.
You will choose language that they understand, and that is not irritating or offensive to them, and subject matter to suit that audience – themes, supports, anecdotes all will be tailored to them. Find out how best to dress, speak and what will meet their needs, or solve their problems and you have the first step to keeping their attention.
…………………………………………………
(c) Bronwyn Ritchie
If you want to include this article in your publication. please do. but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian. writer. award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being confident, admired, successful, rehired. Click here for 30 speaking tips FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
Million Dollar Speaking: The Professional’s Guide to Building Your Platform
Alan Weiss
Make your move into, or improve your position in, the powerful world of professional speaking
If you think you have what it takes to speak professionally, or you’ve already been doing so with insufficient reward, now is the time to make your move. => http://bit.ly/13QGLwa
You can avoid losing your audience by being sparing with dates, figures and statistics.
These are all very powerful ways to support your points, but overuse them and they just become boring, and your audience will turn off.
If data is absolutely necessary, use your slides to create a visual rendition of it.
Tell stories about it.
Find some way to relate it to your audience – percentages of people like them, for example, or of their country.
Visuals can provide you with powerful support in your speeches and presentations … if you let them.
If you allow it, visuals are a wonderful way of keeping attention, because they add another element of variety and change.
If that attention, however, is aimed more at how you are dealing with an object or if it is more on the object itself than on your message, then it has failed in its duty. If the PowerPoint slides are more interesting in themselves than what you are saying about them, then they have failed in their duty.
These visuals have to be used to support, not detract from, you and what you are saying.
You need to prepare, for this to happen. Think about how you will use them in terms of your own physical presence and stage design. It is you and your message that the attention needs to be aimed at.
Practise how you will handle your objects, how you will display them so that the process is seamless and amplifies your message – at all times. Turn off the screen if you want the attention to be on you. Keep the slides simple if you want people to listen to what you say rather then read what is written. Design your presentation so that the visual aids are just that – aids – and they can be a powerful source of attention and engagement.
If you allow it, visuals can also work as a powerful multiplier of the impact of the words you use. Your audience’s brains are tuned in to pictures and images. So an image will multiply the point and the message that the words deliver (“a picture paints a thousand words”), and will reinforce what your audience is hearing as they look.
Keep the slides simple with as little text as possible to allow the images to do their work.
You will certainly lose engagement if your audience thinks you are treating them as stupid – needing you to read to them something they can read for themselves.
You just need to remember that the image needs to support the message of your words, so choose it wisely.
Choose, too, where and when in your presentation to use visuals so they will create their most impact and support.
Choose them, too, so that your audience relates to them, so that they support your credibility and support your authenticity and support your brand.
Visuals really can do all of that – build credibility, authenticity and brand, build engagement and maintain audience attention. If you plan, prepare and strategize their use they are powerful allies in your presentations.
© Bronwyn Ritchie … If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it: Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. Get her 30 speaking tips FREE and boost your public speaking mastery over 30 weeks. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
