CHICAGO (Reuters) – Forget about what mom said about keeping your hands in your lap while talking.
Gesturing while speaking appears to free up the brain to perform other tasks, such as remembering a list, scientists said on Thursday.
In experiments with nearly 100 adults and children, psychologists at the University of Chicago found that gesturing while explaining a math problem improved the recall of a previously memorized list of numbers or letters.
To draw the conclusion, memory test results were compared when subjects were permitted to gesture and when they were told to keep their hands still.
The value of gesturing to convey meaning to the listener has been shown in previous research, but it also may help the conveyor of the information, researchers Susan Goldin-Meadow, Howard Nusbaum, Spencer Kelly and Susan Wagner wrote in a report published in the journal Psychological Science.
They said that even blind people gesture with their hands when talking to blind listeners, suggesting another purpose to all the hand-waving.
“Producing gestures can actually lighten a speaker’s burden,” they wrote. The report suggested that by tapping into a different part of the brain dealing with visual and spatial subject matter, gesturing may make demands on other memory stores and allow the speaker to remember more.
“Whatever the mechanism, our findings suggest that gesturing can help to free up cognitive resources that can then be used elsewhere. Traditional injunctions against gesturing while speaking may, in the end, be ill-advised,” they wrote.
NOTE: complete details of this same story can found here
When most people get an interview, the following goes through their heads:
-I’m just happy to get this interview.
-I’ll be happy to get THROUGH this interview.
-I’m most concerned with the questions.
-I’ll be happy if I don’t embarrass myself.
-Maybe this interview will help me, my company, or product. I’ll worry about that later.
-I guess this will just be good to have on my web site.
Don’t be like the masses. Successful people leverage media interviews.
As for the definitions of leverage, in the physical sense, leverage is an assisted advantage. As a verb, to leverage means to gain an advantage through the use of a tool. You are doing both with interviews. You have an advantage because you were just given a platform to speak to thousands or millions of people. If you were given a platform like that, would you just throw it away? If I told you that I’d give you a free 30 second ad on cable news, I bet you’d spend weeks trying to figure out how to make something great for that ad. Any time you are featured in the media, it is a potential ad for you or your company. I’m not saying you should sound like an ad, but understanding this concept is half the battle.
As a verb, we said that leverage means to gain a advantage through the use of a tool.
Can you guess the tool here?
The MEDIA!!!
Many people make the mistake of thinking “wow, it’s only a conference call. I don’t have to prepare or rehearse because it’s no big deal.” Wrong!
It can be even more challenging to present your ideas on a conference call, because your audience is distracted by so many things beyond your control. You must be more interesting and engaging on a conference call than in a face-to-face talk.
For starters, have something interesting to say right from the beginning. Next, don’t simply dump data. You can send people an email if all you have is data to dump.
Whatever you do, don’t read documents on a conference call. If your lawyers insist on legal gobbledygook being read, then make them read it. There is no sense in ruining your reputation just so a lawyer can feel powerful.
Don’t forget that when you talk on a conference call, you still must fulfill the basic objectives of any presentation. You must have a clear and simple water cooler message and you must accomplish four things with your audience: 1. Speak so that people understand you. 2. Remember your message. 3. Take the actions that you request, and 4. Tell other people what you said.
While you are on the conference call, give it you total focus. That means get off the internet, turn off your TV, and stop typing letters. Instead, give the call your 100 percent focus. Really listen to what other participants or questioners have to say. Engage.
If you give the call your best efforts than you will get the most back from listeners on the other end of the phone.
More Insights from TJ Walker & Jess Todtfeld
http://www.tjwalker.com and http://www.SpeakingInsider.com
As I have mentioned and written before, the hardest thing for a speaker to do well is to read a speech in such a way that the audience does not fall sound asleep. It is nearly impossible for the average executive to read a speech well.
Still, if you feel you absolutely must read a speech, here are some more tips:
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Read the speech over and over and over again silently.
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Re-format the words on your page so that you can see the words easily while
standing up (and the page is further away than it is normally when you are holding the paper directly in front of your face).
- Format each page such that paragraphs end on the same page they start on (no
sentences or thoughts continuing from one page to the next).
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Next, read out-loud the speech over and over and over again.
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Edit out any words from the final scrip that don’t come out of your mouth
easily and smoothly.
- Next, read one paragraph at a time (you want to start forming snapshots in
your mind of each paragraph.
- Don’t memorize each paragraph, but become so familiar with it, that the
shortest glance at its opening words brings an almost total recall of its contents to your mind.
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Figure out how you FEEL about each word.
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Next, read your speech in front of another person while trying to give that
person as much eye contact as possible.
- Next, have that person use a stop watch to determine how much of the time you
are looking down at your notes versus how much time you spend giving him or her direct eye contact.
- Continue rehearsing this speech with your friend until you are told that you
are giving eye contact at least 90% of the time and staring down at your speech no more than 10% of the time.
Reading a speech is not for the weak or lazy. The decision to read a speech is like choosing to run a marathon instead of 5K jog. Yes, it can be done, but only after a great deal of training and preparation.
Never read a speech to your audience. Never read a speech. NEVER READ A SPEECH!
I say that all the time to my clients. Every presentation coach says this. Why?
Because 99.99999% of the world reads a speech in such a way that their voice becomes flat, monotone, lifeless and boring. The audience falls instantly to sleep.
However, there is a way to read a speech effectively, even though the method is rarely used. Ronald Reagan was a practitioner of this art form. (I’m not talking about when he or others use a TelePrompTer)
Here is the process. You reformat your speech on your page so that there is only one phrase per line (not a whole sentence, just one phrase). The phrase must be short enough that it fits on one line and does not have to continue onto the next line.
Next, you put a space between each line of text. Now comes the reading part, and this is the hard part. You must silently look down at your paper and read a line, then look up and give someone in your audience direct eye contact. Then and only then do you verbalize the line. You must say it in a conversational way, full of inflection. It doesn’t have to be memorized, because it is very short and you just read it a second ago. If you change a word here or there, it shouldn’t matter. The key is to say it so that you sound like you are just talking to one person in an informal way.
The next part is tricky for most people. You must pause, silently, while you glance back down at your notes to read the next line. Your audience will appreciate the pause; it gives them a chance to catch up and digest what you are saying. Your pauses will make you seem much more confident and relaxed.
The problem for most speakers is that it feels awkward and weird to pause while they are reading the next line. So what do they do? They figure, “I’ll kill two birds with one stone and read and talk at the same time.” The puts us back to the beginning: sounding flat, boring and monotone.
The key is to remember never to read when you are talking and to never talk when you are reading. If you can master the concept of doing one thing at a time, you can read a speech effectively to any audience.
Excerpts from the February 7, 2006 New York Times coverage of the Coretta Scott King funeral :
Of the four presidents, Mr. Clinton was the obvious favorite of the crowd. A huge cheer went up as he reached the open area near Mrs. King’s coffin, and the crowd gave him a thunderous standing ovation when he approached the microphone with his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
He (Clinton) delivered the longest speech of the four presidents, apparently without notes. After former President George Bush lost some of his prepared remarks, he told the crowd, “It may be your lucky day, I’ve lost a page.” As they cheered, cameras caught the current President Bush laughing heartily in the background.
We can debate all day on whether there is a left-wing or a right-wing bias in the mainstream media (just kidding, please don’t send me your opinions on this tiresome issue), but one thing is beyond debate: the news media has a definite bias in favor of speakers who don’t read speeches and a pronounced bias against speakers who work from fully prepared texts.
The clear-cut implication of this article is that Bill Clinton is loved by the audience, in part, because he comes across as sincere and likeable because he can simply talk from the heart. Former President George Bush, on the other hand, is out of his element and awkward, as demonstrated by his losing a page of his speech. Granted, the
New York Times still showed Bush in a positive light — he was able to make fun of himself. Still, one former president was able to communicate messages of profound emotional importance, while another former President was cast as an amiable nerd who has to be content with making fun of his own failings as a communicator.
Which message would you rather convey?
Note that the New York Times wrote that Clinton spoke “apparently without notes.” As I teach all of my clients, it is very easy to use notes while speaking in a way that is undetectable to an audience, as long as you keep your notes to one page and never have to pick it up.
Bush blundered on several accounts:
1. He should have personally double checked his speech right before going on to make sure every page was in order.
2. He should have condensed his notes to a single sheet of paper so as to avoid the problem of missing or mixed up pages.
3. He should have been familiar enough with the messages he wanted to convey at the funeral so that he could have adlibbed though the missing page without ever calling attention to his missing page.
Former President Bush does not have a reputation as a vain, self-aggrandizing politician, but in this case, he took the spotlight off of the dead and the mourning process and put it on himself. And that’s the last thing you want to do if you have been invited to speak at a funeral.
The reality is that you don’t have to be a natural born comic or even the class clown to develop a reputation as a humorous speaker. It’s really just a function of hard work. If you speak on a similar subject on a regular basis, the trick is to occasionally say something that strikes you as amusing or funny. If it is funny to you, it might be funny to someone else. Then, if you get a laugh, make a note of it. If it works with one audience, it might work with others.
Once you have a funny observation, reuse it. It’s now much less risky saying the same thing to other audiences because you know some people like it. One note of caution, don’t try to say anything that sounds like a “joke.” You don’t want to be seen as a joke teller. Instead, try to cultivate a reputation as someone who can make interesting, amusing or fun observations and connections with different ideas and events going on in the world.
I often start my full day presentation training class by looking out at individuals with a stern expression and saying “the goal for today is that by the end of our training session you will walk and talk and sound just like me.” This usually gets a laugh. If it fails to get a laugh, I quickly say “I’m just kidding.” Then, I usually get a laugh. While I am getting them to have a little fun, I am able to reassure them that I don’t want to change their speaking styles, but just to bring out the best in their own natural style. So I am making a very important point to set off the training.
But sometimes, I don’t get any laugh at all. That’s OK; I’m still making my point. The key here is don’t panic. It doesn’t matter if your audience didn’t laugh. Remember, you weren’t hired to be a standup comic. The hard part comes with your next speech. You must remember to try your line again. Chances are it will work. I know my opening line usually works the next time, even if it didn’t work today.
Somewhere during the next 20 minutes of your presentation, you may get a chuckle or laugh—even though you didn’t plan it. Great, but write it down so that you can use it next time. Even though you didn’t write your humor in advance, doesn’t mean you can’t write it out after the fact and then reuse it.
This way, you can add humor to your presentations naturally, slowly and organically. You won’t seem like an old-style Catskills comedian, but you will seem sharp and fun.
Another great way of getting your message quoted is for you to quote someone or something that is opposing your or providing a contrast to your viewpoint.
“My opponent, our current governor, said ‘Elect me and I’ll create 1,000,000 new jobs.’ But what he didn’t tell us at the time is that he would create those jobs in China!”
That is an opposition quote. You are putting words into the mouth of someone else and then answering them. This sound bite element is often coupled with attacks, for obvious reasons.
At least once a month, I see some major celebrity who is going though an expensive divorce quoted this way:
“As Shakespeare once said, ‘the first thing we should do is kill all the lawyers.’”
It’s not original (and lawyers can make the case that the quote is taken out of context), but the quote is irresistible to most reporters.
Opposition quotes can often be complex and usually rely on some explicit or implicit attack; therefore they aren’t appropriate for most corporate executives.
But opposition quotes remain a favorite of reporters, so use them only if and when they are appropriate to your message.
Nothing is more intellectually shallow than the Power of Positive Thinking, right? What could be more annoying than local TV anchors doing “happy talk”
during the middle of a newscast?
If you pride yourself in being a “straight shooter” or one who “tells it like it is” you are in for a real surprise when dealing with the media. Of course the news media will appreciate you if you trash your boss, your competitors, or especially yourself, but nobody else will. In fact, going negative is a sure-fire way to talk yourself out of friends, an employer and even a career.
If you are in the middle of an interview, regardless of the questions being asked, you must try to answer them in positive terms. I’m not advocating telling lies or even sugar coating, but how about dipping reality in a small vat of honey before distributing it to the world via the media?
The problem with answers that attempt to be “balanced” in the sense that they convey negative, neutral and positive statements is that only, and I mean ONLY the negative statements are likely to make it into the final story. For example, if you say, “It’s true, my family connections did help me get my first job 25 years ago, but ever since then, I’ve had to work twice as hard to prove that I am not just the son of a celebrity. In fact, I know that blah, blah, blah (more stuff about how hard you worked)”
The only quote that might end up in the story is this:
Walker conceded what his critics have always contended, “It’s true, my family connections did help me get my…job.”
End of quote.
Remember, a media interview is not a true conversation where you are rewarded for balance and objectivity. The “balance” in the story will come from the reporter getting quotes and perspectives from a variety of sources, some of whom may have negative views on you and what you do. So if you want to ensure balance about yourself, you must strive to be overwhelmingly positive in all of your comments to the news media.
When you get up to speak before a live audience, or if you are already standing and moving toward the front of the room to speak, all eyes are on you—and your posture. Your audience is instantly forming opinions about you, your confidence, your enthusiasm, and how interesting you will be. And a great deal of this is based on how you are standing.
Many of us are nervous or shy when we have just been introduced. So without realizing it, we shrink ourselves by looking down, curling our shoulders down, and compressing our bodies. At a subconscious level, we are thinking “if I make myself small enough, nobody will notice if I screw up.”
This is the exact opposite of what you want to do.
Instead, you want to stand as tall as possible, without appearing to be stiff. It may be helpful to think of it as though you were trying to get the top of your head to touch an imaginary ceiling that is three inches above you. (I’m not suggesting you get on your tip toes or that you grimace trying to contort your body upward) Think of yourself as actually growing another couple of inches, as you are walking up to speak (this will help your confidence too).
By holding yourself high, it is nearly impossible for your chest to cave inward in the manner that self-conscious people often do. If you are holding yourself as high as possible, your stomach muscles will be working to lengthen your body and you will benefit from a mild slimming effect. Also, if you are holding yourself as high and as tall as possible, it is also impossible to appear to be slouching, leaning or slumping in any sloppy fashion.
However, one word of caution, if you try to hold yourself high and you stop moving your neck, head, body or arms in a natural way, you will create an entirely counterproductive effect: you will seem like the Wizard of Oz’s “Tin Man” only dorkier.
So before and during your presentation, hold yourself high, but remain fluid and natural.
The “priority” buttons are very useful, especially when your slide contains many objects or layers. By priority, we mean these buttons will allow you to change the “order” of how your objects appear in relation to each other. You can move objects behind, or in front of, other objects.
This ordering is controlled by a set of four buttons. They are quite simply, “Bring to Front”, Send to Back”, Bring Forward” and Send Backward.” Although they appear as a sub-menu to the “Drawing” menu, it’s much more convenient to have them displayed on the toolbar for easy access.
The “Group/Ungroup” set of buttons are also very handy to have on the toolbar. These buttons allow you to quickly group or ungroup a selection of objects for moving, copying, or editing. The grouping feature helps to keep your slide “organized” for easy editing. Keep in mind, that any animation effects applied to a “group” will be lost when “ungrouped”, and any effects applied to individual objects before grouping will be lost when they are grouped. So it’s a good idea to make a duplicate of the slide before editing, just in case.
Yes, the technology for podcasting has never been easier. Microphones, editing equipment, mixers, the equipment keeps getting cheaper AND higher in quality. But the most important part of any podcast is the human quality. Namely, are the people talking saying anything interesting, and is their style tolerable?
More major corporations are starting to use podcasting technology to communicate with their most important customers and prospects around the globe. But once you start a podcast, there are a lot of tough questions to answer.
1. Do we try to write out an entire script for our executives to follow?
2. What is the best structure to use?
3. Do we have one person talking? Two? A group?
4. What is the best format?
5. Do we edit the show to make it sound more professional?
6. What is the best length of time for a podcast?
Here is how I advise my clients on these questions:
1.Never use a full-text script. Reading into a microphone is impossible to do well for the non-professional. If you give business execs a script to read they will be monotone and boring.
2.A simple one or ½ page piece of paper with an outline is the best thing for your executives to use as guidance through out the show.
3.It’s extremely difficult to have one person do a podcast effectively. Likewise, a group of people can be confusing and unwieldy. I recommend 2 people having a conversation.
4.The best format is to have two people talking together in a real conversation. Don’t have one person talk for five minutes going through a laundry list of topics and then switching to the other person talking for five minutes—that’s boring and sounds like a dry college lecture. Instead, have one person talk about one point for under a minute. Then, have the other person ask a follow up question on that subject. Then, the second person introduces his or her first point. The first person asks a follow up question and then the back and forth pattern can continue for the whole podcast, with no one person ever talking for more than a 40-50 second period without being interrupted by the other.
5.I don’t recommend editing the podcasts. If you let executives know the show will be edited, they will be less focused and prepared and will slip into bad habits. It will take less time for everyone if you record it live-to-tape (now digital).
The best length of time is whatever length it takes to cover your topics. It could be 90 seconds or it could be 25 minutes. Since you aren’t doing commercial radio with hard time breaks, your topics and content should dictate the length, not some artificial, pre-determined limit. Talk as long or short as you need to in order to communicate your messages.
Many people who have to present tend to “think” too much. They think about where they should stand, how they should move, where they should look, and so on. These are all important aspects of presenting, but if you concentrate too deeply on each individual aspect you’ll miss the chance to “put it all together” for the audience. You’ll appear stiff and unnatural.
Think of a musician playing a song with “feeling” instead of just playing individual notes. The audience can hear and “feel” the difference. It’s no different with a presentation. Your words and movements should come naturally, as if speaking with an old friend.
This can only be achieved with practice. But you must practice correctly. And that means concentrating on being yourself and developing your own style. Practicing this way will allow you to become a more confident, and natural presenter.
Continuing from last week’s tip, remember, there’s no substitute for practice. There’s no easy way to develop your delivery skills. It’s like any other skill – the more you do it – the better you become. And the most important goal of practicing is developing your own natural style. You don’t want to imitate someone else. You want to be the best presenter you can be.
Just as professional actors and comedians have their own styles, you need to have your own style too. For example, Robert DeNiro’s approach to acting is completely different from Dustin Hoffman’s, and Jay Leno has a different comic delivery style than David Letterman. You want to find what works for you. What gestures are you most comfortable using? What body position or stance feels most natural? What vocal tone should you use? These are some of the questions you have to ask yourself, and the only way to find the answers is to practice – and practice often. It’s really the only way to make it “perfect.”
By Tom Mucciolo, President, MediaNet, Inc.
1. Get glasses that aren’t heavy or thick unless you want people to focus on your glasses.
2. Bow ties make a certain statement. Make sure it is the statement you want to make.
3. A man’s shirt collar must fit perfectly.
4. Have your socks match your pants or footwear. Don’t apologize.
5. If you are a man with even an inch of fat on your waist or are wearing a suit that isn’t 100% perfectly tailored, then keep your jacket buttoned. This will keep your tie in place, your suit symmetrical, minimize your gut and show less of your light colored shirt.
One sure sign of a nervous speaker is frozen hands
“TJ, I don’t know what to do with my hands!” cries my trainee in front of the video camera.
The answer, of course, is that you should do with your hands what you normally do with them when you speak—move them fluidly and constantly. Unfortunately, when people become nervous, they forget to do things that they normally do without even thinking.
The problem with failing to move your hands is that you now appear to be a nervous potted plant. Plus, your voice is more likely to become monotone.
Some of my trainees try and try during practice sessions, yet they claim they still can’t move their hands while speaking. In these extreme cases, I ask them to do the following exercise while being videotaped. Loudly state your ABCs, or simply spout gibberish for two minutes. The point is that I want sound coming out of your mouth but I don’t want you to think about what you are saying. Instead, I want you to focus exclusively on moving your hands, on gesturing in a forceful manner. You are priming the pump. Next, watch the video of yourself. Then watch it again with the sound off. Make mental notes on what it took to get your hands moving. Then do the same when you are giving a “real” speech. It may feel phony or even look contrived the first few seconds, but once you get going, you can return to your normal way of gesturing without having to think about it.
Then and only then will you appear to be natural and comfortable when speaking in front of people.
Your voice is your most precious speaking instrument. You must preserve and protect it at every opportunity.
Here are several steps to follow to conserve the strength and quality of your voice before a major speech or presentation:
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Don’t sing in the car while listening to the radio. This strains your voice.
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Don’t talk on the telephone.
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Don’t talk at all, except when necessary.
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Don’t smoke.
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Don’t allow yourself to be around second-hand smoke (stay out of smoky bars in
your hotel).
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Don’t ever scream!
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If you are swimming, be careful not to exhale through your mouth (this will
strain your vocal chords. Instead, exhale through your nose.
The voice box can be a fragile instrument. If you are nice to it, your voice will serve you well. If you abuse your voice, it will abandon you when you need it most.
Many business executives have a huge disconnect in their communication styles.
When they are speaking one-on-one with colleagues and friends, these executives are lively, interesting, conversational, and persuasive. But put these same dynamic executives in front of 12 business colleagues for a so-called “formal presentation” and these presenting executives turn into mind-numbingly boring zombies who can do nothing more than read bullet points off of a PowerPoint screen in sleep-inducing manner.
They know they can do better. They know they should do better. And yet, they just can’t seem to shake the idea that a presentation absolutely, positively has to involve standing up and reading fact after fact as quickly as possible. They know they aren’t communicating. They know they don’t listen to anyone who does the same to them. Still, old habits do, in fact, die hard.
How do you break this defeatist mindset?
I get my clients to focus exclusively on two words: Re-live events. If you can simply re-tell an event you experienced that is relevant to the message you are communicating, you can communicate to a business audience. Re-live the event by re-telling what your colleagues said to you at the moment, what you were feeling, where you were, what your problem was and what the solution was. If you can simply focus on accomplishing this, you can transform yourself from being dishwater dull to a toastmaster extraordinaire overnight.
So if you don’t want to obsess over new slides or the perfect hand gestures or humorous stories, that’s OK. Simply focus on re-telling events you have experienced that are relevant to your audience and you will do fine.
How do you define a GREAT presentation? Is it the comfort level you feel when presenting, OR the positive response you get from your audience? What if I told you that it should be both…by that definition, are you a great presenter?
Let’s delve into the elements of a successful presentation and discuss eleven really useful techniques you can implement right away.
1) Define the reason you are presenting; what is the RESULT you want to achieve? Are you training others, looking for investors, trying to sell a product or service, trying to get your budget or plan approved?…The list can go on an on. It is important to be very specific about what you want before you prepare your presentation. Your result must resonate throughout your presentation so that by the time you get to the end, the message is clear.
- So take the time in the beginning of the process to write out the result you want to achieve, and be specific.
2) Build your presentation points yourself; the story needs to be yours. If you are given a pre-made presentation to present, modify it to your voice.
- Make sure you brush up on your PowerPoint skills so you have the ability to do this. It may be as simple as adding in transition slides, but you need to make it yours.
3) Make sure your presentation tells a story with a beginning, a middle and end.
- The beginning should resonate with the place your audience is currently at mentally (Obviously you must know your audience!). If, for example, your area of the business has not been doing well…start there. That is what they know, don’t hide it, get their attention by proving you understand them and their concerns.
- The middle of the presentation should be a philosophical journey taking them from point A (the beginning of the presentation), through to point F, to point N, to point T.
- The end of the presentation should be obvious by the time you get there. You will have taken your audience on a journey; their mindset should have transformed to where you want them to be. The end of your presentation should be your final points making sure there is a take away that everyone can clearly and collectively define. An actionable summary that includes follow-up dialog, approvals, timeframes, etc.…
4) Practice in front of a mirror, every page, over and over. Nobody gives a presentation with 3×5 cards, or at least they shouldn’t. Those days are over. You need to be able to give your presentation at least 10 different ways. By practicing in front of a mirror, you will force yourself to have eye contact, be aware of your appearance and be comfortable with the information you are presenting. The more you practice, the better able you will be to adlib the material, answer questions and modify your approach based on the response of your audience.
- Practice your presentation from start to finish and time yourself as if you were giving it to your audience. Don’t start over mid way through…you can’t do that when it is real, so why practice that way.
- Keep to your allotted time and modify your presentation accordingly.
5) Memorize the first two or three sentences of your presentation, and the last two or three sentences as well. DO NOT memorize anything in-between. You need to be able to adlib the majority of the presentation, but don’t leave yourself in an uncomfortable position in the begging or end. You must force yourself off to a good start and finish on a high note, no matter what happened in-between.
- Make your words meaningful, use some humor if you like but make sure it is actually funny. I recommend some powerful statements that ask a question like…why are we here?
There is one thing I find in common with many of my media and presentation training clients: they like to talk about how they are going to give a speech or talk about what they are going to say in a media interview, instead of actually rehearsing the real thing.
THIS IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.
The best way to prepare for a media interview or a speech is to actually rehearse it in an environment as close to the real thing as possible. My experience is that people can talk a good game about what they are going to say in a media interview, but when you stick a microphone in their face and ask them a question, something completely different comes out. Far better to spend some time—even if it’s only five minute—rehearsing a media interview and recording it. Then, when you play it back, the executive can see what was said. Bluster counts for nothing at this stage—the camera doesn’t like.
Similar is the situation with speaking. Executives are often great at talking about the interesting points they want to cover in a speech and insightful anecdotes they want to bring up. But then they get nervous in the actual speech and start reading bullet points of facts off of a wall.
It’s easy and relaxing to talk about what you are going to do at a later time.
It’s relatively hard to actual do it now. That’s why baseball players play real innings in practice; they don’t just run wind sprints.
There is a reason that Broadway actors don’t just talk about their characters and what they are going to say on opening night of the show. Actors do lots of full dress rehearsals. If you are giving a speech or media interview, you don’t have to memorize the way an actor does, but you do need to rehearse. It is the only way to get an accurate gage of your strengths, weaknesses, and what needs to be fine tuned before the real performance.
Rehearse, don’t just rehash.
Just as a great Jazz artist who performs nightly can go into a riff for extended sets, so too can great speakers “riff” for lengthy periods of time.
Warning! This is not for the faint-hearted.
In general, I advocate that all speakers have a well-thought out beginning, middle, and end, complete with a handful of major points and well-developed stories to go with each point. But there are times when you can go without.
Note: this is not the same as “winging it.”
I always speak from notes (albeit in a way that no one sees my notes) and I have a set structure for my presentations or training sessions. But one day I was hosting an event for the National Speakers Association New York Chapter and I was asked to be the substitute speaker WITH ONLY FIVE MINUTES ADVANCE NOTICE.
Normally, that would be no problem. I could simply go into my hour presentation on how to communicate with the media. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work, because I had just given that presentation to the group only a couple of months earlier.
But I also have an hour-long presentation I do on how to give an effective presentation. But this was inappropriate because my audience was made up of professional speakers.
So what did I talk about? I spent the next hour talking about business tips and strategies I had learned over the last few years from fellow members of the speaker association. I literally didn’t have time to write an outline or structure a plan. I simply got up and talked.
The results? Feedback was as positive as any I have received for any presentation in my career.
Is this because I am a natural born, silver-tongued speaker? Not at all. Thought I never stuttered, I was an extremely shy child of few words.
My speech went well because I give speeches at least three times a week and I now have good speaking habits that have been acquired through constant repetition.
Here are the things that I did during my riff that will also work for you if you ever have to speak with absolutely no time to prepare.
1. I was comfortable and confident. Why did I start the speech in this condition? Because I speak so often in that state, I wasn’t able to get into any other physical or emotional state.
2. I used a speech grammar. Even though I was thinking of new material that I was going to say as I said it, I still used my “old” manner of speaking. That is, I would make one point, give an example and then tell a story about it using conversations with real people to make the point more memorable.
3. I interacted with my audience constantly. If I forgot what to say next, or I just wanted to see if I was making sense, I would ask questions of specific audience members. I encourage all of my trainees to plan to do this anytime they are speaking in front of relatively small audiences. But the truth is it doesn’t require a lot of planning, as long as you do it.
4. I moved in a normal manner. I constantly walked around the room, stopped, started, got closer to some audience members, and then the others. This created great variety for the audience and created the aura of great confidence.
5. I didn’t think on my feet. That’s right, I didn’t think of entirely new ideas to share with my audience. In stead, I simply recalled what I considered to be interesting conversations I had already had in the past with various members of this association and then I recounted the ones that I thought would be useful, interesting and relevant to the whole group. (Remember—thinking creatively in the spotlight is hard, remembering interesting conversations from the past is easy)
6. I actively encouraged questions throughout the presentation. Granted, you can’t do this if you are speaking to more than 500 people, but in a small group this is an excellent way to keep people engaged and involved. Plus, the questions helped me pad out my material to an hour (since I had no planned material at the start).
7. I was fearless during question time. Is this because I am omnipotent? Hardly. It’s just that I subscribe to the theory that all questions are easy: either I know the answer in which case I give it, or I don’t know they answer and I tell my audience “I don’t know” and then give my best guess on where they can find the answer. Novice speakers and even very good ones become noticeably nervous and embarrassed when asked questions they don’t know the answer to. You can’t control what you don’t know, but you can control how you feel about what you don’t know.
8. I acted like I was having a good time and I never apologized. In truth, I could have done a better job if I had had a day or two to prepare my speech, but I didn’t waste my audience’s time by reminding them of that fact. I did not articulate in any manner that I was annoyed or felt put upon by not having received advance notice. (in truth, I was happy because I am always looking for opportunities to speak and hone my craft) I tried to follow a rule that I give all of my clients which is: never talk about your speech, never apologize, never call attention to any inadequacy—simply give great interesting content.
9. I beat the audience’s expectations. The president of the organization mentioned before and after my speech that I was doing this with literally no notice, so the audience had low expectations. But note, I relied on someone else to set the low expectations; I didn’t try to do it myself.
10. I spoke with passion. I purposely haven’t bored you with any of the details of my speech because unless you are a professional speaker, they wouldn’t interest you. But I specifically only made points and told stories that I really cared about deeply and that I thought were critically important to my audience.
Of course I made some mistakes in this speech that I wouldn’t ordinarily make (I didn’t have a strong finish—and I added more stuff after I had already sat down—both medium-sized blunders). However, my passion for my subject helped overwhelm the mistakes I made. Passion for your subject will always make you more interesting and likeable to your audience because most speakers seem bored and are consequently boring to their audiences.
So there you have the secrets on how to give a great spontaneous speech. Please note that I am not advocating that you go out of your way to fail to prepare for speeches. But if you are called upon with literally no notice, there isn’t any reason why you can’t do a great job. Every one of the skills I used above are just that, skills. They aren’t rare genetic talents; they are simply habits that can be acquired by anyone who chooses to do so.