Confessions of a Public Speaker (20 page)
Read Confessions of a Public Speaker Online
Authors: Scott Berkun
Tags: #BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Skills
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A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms
, Richard
A. Lanham (University of California Press), p. 56.
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You can watch these two speeches online at
http://bit.ly/ahouse-ottersdef
and
http://bit.ly/ahouse-blutto
. For greatest effect, read
Thank You for Arguing
first, and note every
rhetorical device used and abused in both speeches.
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This exercise is based on one found in
Lend Me Your
Ears
, Max Atkinson
(Oxford University Press), p. 58.
[
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]
(Jossey-Bass), p. 32.
Should you discover that a talk you are preparing to do, or one
you’ve given before, sucks, this is for you.
While some books on public speaking have long checklists of little
things, this is my short checklist of big things. If I see a presentation
I think is
bad, it’s for one or more of the reasons that follow.
No one wants to have his brain surgery performed by a rookie.
When you step to the front of the room, make sure you don’t behave
like someone who has never been in the front of the room before, even
if it’s true. People who are baffled by their own laptops, confused by
how their remotes work, or who spend most of their time looking at
their own slides with their backs to the audience are indicating they
are doing this for the first time. No audience wants to feel they are
your dry run, unless somehow your experimenting makes it fun for them
(which it probably won’t).
Solution: Practice until it feels
good
. Anything you plan to do in your talk must be
practiced. If you get a new laptop, remote, or presentation software,
give those things trial runs well in advance. Do a dry run in the
lecture hall to get used to the space. And work hard on the
transitions between slides and points, since this is often where it’s
easiest to seem lost. When you practice, look to eliminate things that
make it seem like you’ve never done your presentation before (see
Chapter 2
).
Turtles are slow. Turtles on crack are still slow, but they’re
also unpredictable. They stumble, they stop, and they no longer move
in a straight line. Trying to follow a turtle on crack is extremely
frustrating. If the
pace of your presentation is unclear, or you’re not sure
what
direction you are going in, you are a turtle on
crack.
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Solution: Provide a rhythm the audience
can follow
. Have a well-defined, simple, uniform pace.
Divide your time into the number of points you want to make and spend
an equal amount of time on each one. You can subdivide each point into
individual arguments, which should also have a clear, simple rhythm to
follow. Top-10 lists and frequently asked questions are easy formats
to use because they create natural rhythms for your presentation (see
Chapter 6
). No one is timing
you, so if some points need to be longer, that’s fine. Just make sure
your pace and rhythm makes sense to your audience and not just to
you.
People love to sound smart. We love to use the biggest words we
know and say the fanciest, most cryptic jargon and acronyms. Doing
this makes us feel superior. And when intimidated by an audience, as
many professors and experts clearly are, superiority seems to be the
best defense. The problem is that no one likes feeling like an idiot.
There are 10 million
bad, obscure ways to say something for every clear,
direct one. If you choose one of the 10 million, no matter how proud
it makes you feel to be obscure, you are inviting your audience to
start daydreaming. The presentation is now about your fear of making a
clear point, rather than about the audience’s experience. They should
not be doing the hard work—you should. You are up there to share,
persuade, or teach, and that means you have to drop the defenses,
think clearly, and be at the level your audience wants.
Solution: Clarify your
points
. Find simple, clear ways to make your points. If you
are a quantum physicist or have 12 PhDs, your arguments and details
might be very complex. But are you sure everyone in your audience has
12 PhDs as well? Do you know why they are in the audience and what
they hope to learn? If you are speaking to serve your audience and not
yourself, every point you make should be understood by most
of the room. They might not agree with your points, and
they may miss the nuances, but few should be confused about the points
you are making and why you are making them (see
Chapter 5
). Stephen Hawking was at least
trying to explain everything in
A Brief History
of Time
(Bantam), despite few mortals making
it past
Chapter 2
. If he sees
the value in explaining to lesser minds, so can you.
Most of us like sex quite a lot. It’s a natural fact since we
come from an ancestry of people who were required to have sex to get
us here. It’s the most
interesting and exciting primal drive we have. Yet it is
still possible for a presentation about sex to be boring. Anyone can
kill a topic by speaking in monotone, looking disinterested, picking
uninspired examples, and behaving like he doesn’t care about what he’s
saying. If you are not excited and energetic about your message, how
can you expect your audience to be?
Solution: Take an
interesting angle from the beginning
. If you
choose your topic and opinion, pick something interesting. Take a
stand. Force a point of view into the title, and let it grow into the
points you make. Even if your topic is only interesting to you, if you
express your passion well, the audience will want to follow simply
because of your enthusiasm (see
Chapter 6
).
Slides are dangerous. There are so many ways to annoy an
audience with slides. Ugly, overloaded, confusing slide decks are
common despite how little knowledge they convey, and how much they
distract speakers from making their points. There are many kinds of
information that cannot be given in a presentation. We have documents,
reports, websites, and movies for good reason. No one wants to read
10-point text off a projector screen. No one wants to try and
interpret the 50-element flowchart you’ve made. It’s the wrong medium.
Unless slides are essential and the clearest, simplest way to make
your point (which they almost never are), use fewer of them. If a prop
does not support your point, it has wasted your audience’s
time.
Solution: Do not start in PowerPoint;
start by thinking about and understanding your audience
.
Use visuals and pictures to support the points you want to make. If
you put notes in your slides so you don’t feel scared, do it in a way
that does not annoy your audience. Or instead, have an outline that
surfaces in your talk, or bring simple notes on stage with you (see
Chapter 5
).
We have good reasons for being afraid of audiences. But if
fear is the primary thing you feel while speaking, the
audience won’t enjoy or learn anything. Averting your eyes, hiding
behind the lectern, and pacing the stage all indicate you are afraid
of the audience, which makes them mostly not want to watch you.
Solution: Find a way to enjoy
yourself
. Bring giveaways to warm the audience up to you
and get some easy smiles, which may help you relax. Get there early so
you can meet some of the crowd, making them less intimidating. Pick
topics you love, so the pleasure of sharing it with others can give
you some positive energy to balance out the natural fear you
feel.
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No turtles were harmed in the making of this book, as it
appears turtles enjoy crack immensely. (If you work for PETA, this
is a joke. If you don’t work for PETA, I have a great video to
show you.)
These are definitely small things, but people are picky. If you do
an annoyance often enough, and people notice it, it can distract from
all the good things you’re doing. No one ever eliminates these issues
completely, which is why I keep this list around. If everything else is
good, don’t worry much about these. But if you want to seem polished and
avoid people missing your message for superficial reasons, this list is
for you.
There is no way to catch these annoyances unless you watch a
videotape of yourself or have someone track these for you while you
speak.
Umms and uhhs
. These are
verbal placeholders. They make sense when
talking casually, but when you’re speaking to an
audience, they’re annoying. You can overcome the habit by learning
to simply pause in silence. It’s unnerving at first to be at the
lectern in a silent room, but it creates a new kind of power that is
free and easy to get at any time. When the room is silent, all eyes
return to you.Distractions and
tics
. Little
gestures you repeat can be
distracting. If you keep rubbing your nose or putting
your hands into and out of your pockets, eventually this draws
attention
away from what you are saying. My
nervous tic, as odd as it
sounds, is itching the second rib on my right side.
Watch enough presentations where I’m talking, and you’ll see it
about 30% of the time. No idea why I do this (perhaps I still have
some chimpanzee genes in me). I do it less now than I used to, but
sometimes I still do it.Putting the audience behind
you
. You should always avoid showing your back to the
audience. If you need to look at your slides, do it from an angle so
your audience can still see your face. This is one of the reasons
confidence monitors are useful.Repetition
. We all have pet
phrases we use too much, like saying, “This is about,”
“So now…,” or “And here we have” to introduce every slide. There are
always alternative ways to say the same thing, but first you have to
notice which phrases you rely on more than necessary.No
eye contact
. Where are your eyes? Rookie
speakers look at their shoes, at the same person the entire 60
minutes, or into outer space. At least look at the back of the crowd
so that people in the audience will believe you are looking at
someone else. The ideal is to look at different parts of the room at
different times, paced long enough that it seems natural, even
though it never entirely feels that way.Discomfort
. Some people
seem very comfortable with their hands in their pockets. Most don’t,
but so what? Everyone experiences comfort differently. The point is
that you need to appear natural enough that people can focus on what
you’re saying, and you seem happy to be up there. If you constantly
stare at the pitcher of water on the edge of the lectern for fear
of it falling over, you will seem uncomfortable. So,
move it. Don’t wear a suit if that makes you miserable, but dress
with respect for your crowd. Always err on the side
of what will make you more comfortable. If you don’t
take time to breathe or give pauses for people to consider what you
just said, no matter how strong your powers of denial are, you are
not yet comfortable speaking.Dispassionate
. One of the basic lessons of
the Dr. Fox story in
Chapter 8
is
that enthusiasm counts. The more you seem to care, even if you don’t
make sense, the more people will want to understand what it is
you’re trying to say. Few people speak passionately. They think
they’re being passionate, but to the audience they come off as only
mildly engaging. Watch the video of a passionate speaker (MLK’s “I
Have a Dream” speech is a good choice), and then watch a video of
yourself. Take notes on how to close the difference while still
being you.Referenced data
. If
research or a study is quoted, it better be referenced
somewhere. Saying, “Studies have shown…” but not being able to name
at least one source means you are making things up or don’t really
know what you’re talking about.Inappropriate for this
audience
. Have the right assumptions been made about who
is in the crowd, what they want to know, and what they need to
hear?
If you’re giving a
presentation in five minutes and you don’t have time to
videotape yourself, you can still get feedback. As a general rule,
what people
do
matters more than what they say or
write on feedback forms (and depending on how the survey was
constructed, it might be useless anyhow; see
Chapter 8
).
If my audience does any of these three things, I know I did at
least something right:
They make
eye contact with me
. Every culture has
different etiquette about laughter, applause, and even asking
questions, but eye contact is universal. The litmus test: if you
were to say, “I will give $10 million away to everyone who is
looking at me in five seconds,” and count down from five to one,
you will get 100% of the audience’s attention every time. So it is
possible to win the war against people playing Solitaire on their
cell phones, typing on laptops, or daydreaming if what you say is
interesting enough. It’s good to reestablish the attention of the
room every 10 minutes just to get a baseline of who is still with
you. Give away a prize or ask a trivia question to reset the
room.They ask questions or comments of
any kind
. All feedback is good. Even if it’s to tell
you how much you suck, it means they cared enough to fill out the
form or write you an email. Any effort expended to respond to you,
be it criticism, questions, suggestions, or references, is an
indication you chose the right topic and held enough attention to
generate a response. If they give advice or correct something,
thank them, even if you disagree. It’s a sign of respect that
someone in your audience invested any energy in you at all.The hosts invite you
back
. The organizer’s feedback is sometimes different
from the audience’s, but the rule of thumb is if you get invited
back, you did better than most of the other people who spoke at
the event.
