“According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
- Jerry Seinfeld
Have you ever given a presentation and wished you could crawl into a casket?
You can be a champion presenter. Every time you are called on to speak, you can know without a doubt that you will master the moment.
Courses on speaking are great; coaching on speaking is even more helpful (we offer such coaching through CIO Mastermind).
But mastering speaking doesn’t start with the way we have been taught.
- It’s not in how you hold your head or modulate your voice
- It’s not in the old advice to “Tell them what you are going to tell them and then tell them and then tell them what you told them.”
- It’s not in the slides or videos or illustrations that you use.
- It’s not in your appearance or clever opening or emotional close.
To master speaking, remember: what you say still matters more than the way you say it.
When it comes to words, the what outweighs the way.
Your words are meant to accomplish something. Presentation isn’t so much about how you get your message across, but that you get it across.
For your words to matter, what you say has a flow to it. Stick to the flow, and the rest of speaking mastery can be developed over time. Without the flow, the greatest eloquence falls flat.
I have borrowed and modified an acronym from Curt Maly of Black Box Social Media to help represent the flow. He taught me his BELT method of marketing. Marketing moves people from being unaware to problem aware to solution aware to product aware to brand aware. So do speeches.
Bridge
When you present, there is a chasm between you and your hearers. It doesn’t matter if they know you well or not; it doesn’t matter if you already have credibility or need to establish it.
The chasm is what you know in a way that they don’t.
When you are given an opportunity to present, what you know that they don’t must be formed into one main idea. That is the bridge you are asking your hearers to cross.
The main idea of this article is that in mastering speaking the what outweighs the way. What has a flow to it, way has a show to it. I don’t mind a good show, but the effectiveness depends on the flow.
The topic you are given doesn’t matter; the idea within the topic does. I was once given the topic of speaking on autonomy. The idea I developed within it was “Autonomy without community is mutiny.”
I could have gone any number of directions with the topic, but I had to narrow it down to a main idea that people could easily bridge.
Let’s say you are invited to speak to the board on emotional health and remote work. This is an opportunity for you, because you can tie in a budget increase you need for the solution you propose.
You would miss this opportunity if you simply presented the facts and information associated with the topic. This is the approach most failed presentations take. Instead, within the topic is an idea you can build upon, and that idea is the bridge you must first build.
Here is a big idea: “Remote is our ally; isolation is our enemy.”
One idea. Remote isn’t the cause of emotional health issues in our workforce; isolation is. You ask your hearers to bridge the gap of isolation.
Two ideas must be true of the bridge you build: it must be clear, and it must be sticky. If an attendee can tell another what you talked about, then you succeeded. You didn’t talk about emotional health, you talked about the problem of isolation.
The idea must also be sticky: Will it be remembered when the time for a decision needs to be made? That’s the test.
One time my dad asked me how long it took me to drive to work. I told him. He then asked how long it would take me if I got pulled over for speeding. He was a genius. He could have told me not to speed, but that isn’t very sticky (is it)? But he asked a question I have never forgotten and still plays into my driving decisions.
One more example of sticky. During the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, his attorney refuted the evidence of a blood-stained glove. After demonstrating that it was too small for his defendant’s hand, he declared, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” The prosecution could never overcome that moment. The jury made a decision with those words still ringing in their ears.
Engage
Engagement is all about attention. You must accomplish two results: grab their attention and hold their attention.
Too many failed presentations occur because people think that they only need to grab someone’s attention. We have all seen the emotion-moving video or witnessed the shocking intro or heard the provocative statement. I like them. But they are not enough.
To master speaking, what you say needs to hold attention. To hold attention you need tension. And the tension is in the question.
Attention = Tension with Question
You speak to a people whose brain has capacity for only one of two dynamics: fear or love. The two do not coexist. When you are speaking, pick one to address. Fear and the pain people are trying to avoid; love and the promise people are trying to realize.
In mastering speaking the what outweighs the way. What has a flow to it, way has a show to it. I don’t mind a good show, but the effectiveness depends on the flow.
For this article, I chose love and longing: You can be a champion and here is how (okay, I teased your fear with a little bit of casket imagery, but I didn’t make it my focus and talk about the seven errors every failed presenter makes, etc.).
In my presentation on autonomy, the question was “How do we grant autonomy but avoid mutiny?
In our presentation on emotional health, the fear approach might be, “How do we end the high-turnover associated with isolation in remote work?” The love approach might be, “How do we increase retention by ending isolation?”
Engagement lives in the introduction of your presentation. Don’t waste your introduction with thank-you’s and talking about yourself. You just killed the moment if you do. Thank-you and personal introduction comes in the next section.
Here is a great introduction a professional golfer gave:
“I was on the final hole of the tournament. A 10-foot putt was the only thing separating me from a championship and a million dollars. I have made thousands of ten-foot putts, but never with so much on the line and so many people watching. How do you handle the pressure when one action determines so much?”
Did he grab your attention? Did he hold it? Notice how he didn’t tell us the result of the putt. That would have given relief, even if he followed up with the question and the lesson. Instead, he built the tension and held it with a question. By the way, he made the putt.
Lead
Whereas engage is about attention, lead is about awareness. Awareness has three key components:
- Identify with the problem or promise. This is where you talk about you. Example: “I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here because this issue is important to me. In my years, I have led three successful companies, and in the first two I suffered the backfire of autonomy. Rather than fall back into command and control behavior, I dug deeper into how to avoid mutiny. Here is what I discovered.”
- Provide only the information necessary to make the point. Information overload keeps me from keeping up. Usually, ineffective speakers use too much information in order to validate themselves. Validation isn’t in the information, it’s in the insight that comes with it.
- Pair information with insight. Knowledge belongs to the masses; wisdom is the possession of the few. Insight is the “so what” of your information. Reduce the body of your information into a few key insights directly related to the pain you are trying to alleviate or the promise you are trying to fulfill. People will ask “So what?” Beat them to the question.
Information and insight is directed at helping your hearers be problem aware and solution aware. Ineffective speakers stop at highlighting the problem. It’s easy to talk about the problem. People want to hear the answer. That’s the insight that you bring.
Turn
Let’s summarize where we are: You can be a champion speaker if you will remember that what you say outweighs the way you say it. Focus on the flow not the show.
The bridge is the simple message you are trying to get across; it is the one idea you want your members to cross over on.
Engagement is about getting and holding their attention. Attention is held by tension and question.
Lead is the insight you bring to the information you have. It is helping them be aware of the problem and the solution.
Turn is the call to action. You want them to act on your particular proposal.
For example: We discovered that feelings of isolation are responsible for an increase in discouragement and deadline delays. We thought that more regular check-ins and more iteration of work would solve it. It didn’t. What we did find was that successful companies have employed more company-sponsored social interaction. A simple solution with one remaining problem: We need a more robust platform.
The turn gives your hearers what they need to:
- Think as you think
- Feel as you feel
- Do as you want them to do
I believe in you. You matter, and so your words matter. Likewise, words matter, which means that you matter when you speak them. You have power to affirm, to challenge, to encourage, to warn, to confuse or to clarify. You can start a war or end a war with your words.
I hope in time that you will be the most polished and professional speaker out there. But we can’t wait for that. You have too much to offer. Why waste it on show when what really matters is the flow. I want to cross the bridge you choose to build. I just need you to help me get there.
