Confessions of a Public Speaker (14 page)

There was one obstacle I never overcame. I’ve met my public
speaking nemesis, and it’s not hecklers or tough rooms. It’s the
teleprompter. Until I was on
The Business of Innovation
, I’d never actually
seen a teleprompter. I’d heard of them. I vaguely understood what they
did. But the big surprise is that they are integrated into the cameras.
When you look into the lens, which you are directed to do for things
like B-roll, you see whatever words you’re supposed to say, scrolling
upward like the intro to
Star Wars
. In this case,
my lines were short promotional sentences for the show. Goofy things
like, “Innovation will transform the future” or “Breakthroughs are more
important than they ever were.” Vague, fluffy comments that mean nothing
if you think about them for more than five seconds. It’s the kind of
thing I make fun of other people for saying or writing in their books.
The producers on the show did let us edit copy for the actual lead-ins,
but on day one there was no time, so we read what they had
prepared.

I figured I’d ad lib around
these bits of dialog, confident I could provide the
effects the producers wanted (pithy and provocative was the goal), but
with language that wasn’t so annoying. No problem. I’m good at
improvisation…or so I thought.

When I stood all in black in the
CNBC cafeteria on that first day, staring into the lights
and the cameras, pressured to satisfy everyone around me (and to get off
the set as quickly as possible), I looked into the camera…and totally
choked. Instead of being creative and original, I actually just said the
text in the teleprompter. I didn’t really want to—it sounded even
stupider than I imagined. But I couldn’t stop. During this B-roll
filming session, I had the chance to say five different lines, one for
each episode. And since they let me have multiple takes, toward the end,
feeling more confident, I tried to say something other than what the
teleprompter commanded. I practiced it quickly in my mind to memorize
it. I used my full powers of concentration and had my improvised version
of the line down cold. And when the director shouted, “Action!”, I
looked into the camera and said, to my own surprise, exactly what was on
the teleprompter. I may as well have been lobotomized. You could have
put the entire contents of
Green Eggs and Ham
in
that thing, and I’d have read every last word.
Figure 7-6
shows my view on
the set.

Figure 7-6. On right is camera 2, with the teleprompter showing my lead-in.
At left is the monitor of what camera 2 saw, which in this case is me
taking this picture.

Teleprompters are used by many TV shows, including news
broadcasts. It’s another reason I suspect many newscasters sound the
same, speaking in that disembodied, distant, I-might-actually-be-a-robot
voice. With a teleprompter in your face, it’s hard to ad lib, it’s hard
to pause, and, most of all, it’s hard to be natural. Perhaps if I wrote
the copy myself or got to know the producers better, I’d feel
differently about these things. But it was the one part of actually
speaking on television that got in my way. I hope someday I’ll get the
chance to have another go at conquering these things. For now, whenever
I watch television and stare into the eyes of people speaking into the
camera, all I can think about are the words scrolling past, being read
as if they were their own.

I’m in Sydney, Australia, in 2006, and I just gave what I think is a
killer presentation. The audience laughed at my jokes and enjoyed my
stories, and my points hit home. It could not have gone better, and I’m
sky-high from the buzz. I hop
off the stage and Cory, one
of the organizers, tells me enthusiastically, “You were
fantastic! Totally amazing!” I shrug it off as if I’m too cool to take a
compliment. Basking in the warm glow of my own ego, I happily stand with
Cory and watch the next speaker. Turns out, he’s bad. He’s dull and
unclear, his points are a mess, and the audience looks ready to leave. I
feel for Cory—I know how awkward it is to talk to speakers after they
bomb. When the speaker finishes and exits the stage, he’s greeted by Cory
just as I was. I can’t look, but I want to: it’s like a car accident
happening in slow motion. And then I hear Cory say, “You were fantastic!
Totally amazing!” The verbatim praise he gave me. Given the laws of
physics in this universe, it’s impossible we earned the same score. Maybe
I deserved an F and him an A, but no functioning brain could score us
equally. In that moment, I learned that the things people say often mean
something other than what you think they mean. In this case, “totally
amazing” did not mean I was amazing at all. It was just a post-lecture
encouragement Cory gave each speaker, regardless of his
performance.
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]
If I wanted data on how well I’d done, I would have to look
elsewhere.

How do you know how good you are at what you do? Probably from your
boss, or maybe your coworkers. But I don’t have a boss—no performer does.
It’s easier to find out how popular you are, but that’s not the same as
being good. And since people have their own preferences, what’s good for
one person isn’t good for another. Above all else, people are bad at
giving
feedback. We often focus on the superficial (“Did you see
that shirt?”) or have our own opinions swayed by how others feel. Now and
then, someone complains if I swear a few times, even if it’s appropriate
and in the spirit of things. And feedback is subjective, meaning one
person’s, “You were awesome,” equals another’s, “It was mediocre.” I had a
boss who, when shown a design for something, would say, “Well, it’s not
horrible.” For him, this was high praise. Had I shown him plans for the
2009 iPhone in 1995, he probably would have said, “This doesn’t suck.” He
judged everything against an ideal so grand nothing could ever come close.
Since I worked with him for years, I learned to calibrate what he said,
teasing out the real meaning from his caustic comments (I’m sure you do
this with certain people you know). But as a speaker, it’s hard to
calibrate. Feedback from the audience is a one-shot deal—either you can
make sense of it or you can’t.

Once after I finished a lecture at MIT, while standing among a
circle of interested people asking questions, a student pushed his way
forward. He shoved his laptop in my face, pointing with his free hand at
all the things I’d said that he thought were wrong. Clearly, it was
thrilling for him to give feedback; he was smiling, fully engaged, and
passionate. Was it good that my lecture provoked such interest, or bad
that he found so much he thought was wrong with what I’d said? The short
answer: I believe any attention at all means you did something of value.
But sorting out the value is not easy to do.

Writing books, giving lectures, or doing anything interesting puts
you in a position to regularly hear
conflicting feedback. One person says speak louder, another
says softer. And sometimes the feedback isn’t even about your work—you’re
just an easy target for whatever venom has been building up in their
lives. You are simply the first thing people have been put in a position
to judge after days of being cruelly judged by others. They want to vent,
and vent all over you, especially if it’s just on some feedback form where
they can be anonymous.

But most often, people give mixed messages. I’ve had people tell me
the workshop I taught was awesome and then ask a question I answered seven
times already. I’ve ended lectures in complete silence, only to get the
highest scores on surveys. And I’ve had big applause where almost no one
wanted to talk to me after I was done. Feedback in life and in public
speaking is bewildering. There is no panel of judges like in the Olympics,
no scorecards or championship rings. You’re on your own to sort out which
bits of feedback matter, and more importantly, the differences between how
you feel about how you did and how the audience seems to feel.

But before we sort this out, there’s one important fact to know,
illustrated best by the following situation.

Imagine you’re at a lecture about the future
of the human race by Professor Moxley, the department chair
and overlord of the Future of Human Race Studies at Pretentious
University. And, sadly, Dr. Moxley turns out to be awful. He’s a total
bore. He’s clueless about the audience. He’s full of himself, doesn’t make
eye contact, speaks with endless pauses and umms and uhhs, and reads
exclusively off of his very boring slides. He’s wearing a leopard-print
bathrobe that hasn’t been washed in weeks, and he even goes so far as to
talk about his pet poodle Poochie’s medical issues for five long minutes.
It’s perhaps the worst lecture you’ve attended in your life. The lecture
ends, and with notable speed you head for the door.

Suddenly, you realize you left your jacket on the chair, so you turn
around to go back. When you turn, the dreaded Dr. Moxley is right behind
you. With a big smile, he puts his hand on your shoulder and asks, “So,
what did you think?” You know exactly what you want to say. Do you say
it?

If you’re like most people, you would not be honest. I certainly
wouldn’t. Being honest invites a long conversation or hurt feelings,
neither of which I want to cause. I’d want to leave, and the fastest way
to achieve that is to play nice. Perhaps you’d hide behind suspicious
compliments like, “It was interesting” or “It was fine.” Odds are good
you’ll nod your head affirmatively and smile as you do, hoping to escape.
When talking to a performer after his performance, most people will say
nice, simple, positive things.

As a result, there are thousands of bad public speakers running
around under the impression that they’re doing OK. The feedback loop for
speakers is broken, and they have simply never been told (in friendly but
firm, clear terms) they did not perform well, much less how they can
improve. Like singers in the early rounds of
American
Idol
who sincerely can’t believe they’re not the next Whitney
Houston or Frank Sinatra, many people live inside a bubble of denial.
They’ve heard enough polite compliments to safely ignore any painful
truths that slip through. They may even jab back, decreasing the odds that
people will offer any future critiques. Considering how much we like to
talk, we suck at both being honest with others and at listening openly and
nondefensively when others are honest with us.

One reason we’re not fully honest is because we don’t want to appear
rude. I suspect in your imagined version of Dr. Moxley’s lecture, you
probably gave him a round
of applause when he finished. What is that about? No matter
how poorly someone performs, we pay respect for his willingness to even
try by applauding his efforts. It’s the polite thing to do, and if you saw
people who didn’t applaud at all, you’d think they were snobs, independent
of how good or bad the speaker was. How bad would someone have to do in a
lecture to earn zero applause? I’ve never seen this happen. And since many
people see applause as validation that they did well, they will always be
satisfied. They step off the stage, ask a friend, “How did I do?”, are
told, “You did fine,” and move on.

Even if you do find people who give you honest feedback and you
listen carefully to it, the challenge isn’t over. It turns out, we’re all
too easily deceived.