by R. L. Howser on August 29, 2010
“In theory, theory is the same as practice. In practice, it isn’t the same.“
-Yogi Berra, New York Yankees manager and catcher
I have read a lot of books on speeches and presentation, and other related areas, such as leadership, hypnosis, magic, acting technique and NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming). I keep tabs on dozens of blogs, watch famous speeches and TED talks on YouTube and go to a lot of presentations, and I learn a lot in the process.
I get ideas of how to structure speeches and presentations and on techniques for presenting different kinds of data. I observe the effects of different speaking styles. I see different kinds of openings and closings, some successful, and some not. I pay attention to what kinds of questions, jokes and antics serve to drive the message forward and which are pointless digressions.
And yet I generally learn more in ten minutes on stage than I do in a month of reading and research. Speaking is a skill and we don’t learn skills by reading about them or watching others perform them. We learn them by doing them.
Sure, just as a golfer can pick up useful tips from a golf magazine or instruction video and try them the next time he or she plays, we can get speaking ideas or learn presentation techniques. But knowing them isn’t the same as using them.
If you want to be a better golfer, you need to get out there and play. You need to go to the range and practice. You need to hit the ball again and again and again. You need to burn it into your brain and your muscles until it becomes as natural and intuitive as breathing.
If you want to be a better speaker, you need to stand up in front of a crowd and speak.
You need to play with your voice, learning its auditory and emotional range and how to use it to seize and hold the attention of your audience.
You need to feel how you stand, how your body moves and how you can most effectively create the image of calm, competence and authority that your audience craves in a speaker.
You need to train yourself to make and hold eye contact, to nurture that intimate rapport that a great speaker can forge with every single person in the audience. Those are things you can’t learn from a book or from watching other speakers.
In theory, you need to practice. In practice, if you want to get better, you absolutely need to practice.
by R. L. Howser on August 19, 2010
I’m back from the 2010 Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking in Palm Desert, California, and it turns out that I didn’t need that extra bag I took to carry home my trophy. I gave the best speech I have ever given, the culmination of months of thought, preparation, practice and sweat, and it wasn’t good enough. I didn’t even finish in the top three of my semi-final contest.
While I’ve had more than a few moments of depression and self-doubt since, on the whole it was a remarkably positive experience. I know I’m a far better speaker and writer than I was six months ago when I began this process.
The sheer volume of practice that I went through has made me more comfortable, confident and deliberate on stage. As former World Champion of Public Speaking, Darren LaCroix, always says, there’s no substitute for stage time.
The formal, and informal, feedback that I received has been invaluable in helping me to see myself, my strengths and my weaknesses more clearly. Dozens of people, some the unlikeliest sources, have given me clues to how I could express what I needed to say and mitigate my faults of style, logic and meaning.
The continuous process of tearing apart and rebuilding the same speech has also taught me more about structure, rhythm and pacing. A speech is a delicate thing. A single line can tie two ideas together in a seamless whole, or snap the audience out of their trance altogether. As with any other creative act, there is no right way to do it. There is only what is more or less effective in the circumstance at hand.
I learned an incredibly valuable lesson from my competitors. In my semi-final contest, the outcome was in doubt up until the last of the nine speakers, Ian Humphries, strode onto the stage.
Ian is a very soft-spoken, unassuming man, and not who I would have pegged as the favorite, but thirty seconds into his speech I knew, and I think the other competitors did too, that we were all fighting for second place. There was a quiet authenticity to his voice and message, about putting his life together after a stint in prison as a young man, which made the rest of us look like tap dancing monkeys. In fact, the speeches I heard last week that had the most impact were not the one that were technically the best. They were the ones that told simple, deep, honest truths.
That was something I had forgotten in my preparations. My speech was about a very bad day I had on the river when I was a whitewater rafting guide. It was an experience that taught me a lot about fear; how to overcome it and how to use it to focus under pressure and perform better. In trying to make the speech dynamic and powerful, I used every technique I could think of with my voice, body and gestures. I wrote and rewrote the speech to make the story intriguing, exciting and dramatic. And I think I was successful.
But somewhere in that process, I forgot to tell the simple truth of how that day had really affected me and my life. I tried to make it more than it was and lost the thread of authenticity that I began with. That’s what separated me from the top speakers. There was something deeply personal and honest in their words. Of course, that’s easy to say, but hard to do. Our deepest feelings are often the hardest to find and the most difficult to share. But they are what make an inspirational speech unforgettable and make a speaker a champion.
by R. L. Howser on August 7, 2010
I’m heading for California, in a day or two, to compete in the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking. The two speeches I’ve prepared are the best I have ever written (and rewritten and rewritten). Toastmasters District 76 (Japan) recently asked me to write a few words for their website about the matter, so this seems a perfect time to share those thoughts with you.
The process of writing a speech that accomplishes your goals is the same whether you are writing for a Toastmasters speech contest, a business presentation or any other situation. Beneath all of the entertainment and drama of humor, voice and stage presence, you need to clearly communicate something of value to your audience.
Clear speaking comes from clear writing and clear writing comes from clear thinking, so the first and most important thing you need to do is sit down and THINK about what you want your audience to hear, understand and remember.
Think of lessons you have learned in your life, successes or failures that have taught you something important, surprising or contrary ideas that you believe or events that have changed your perspective on the world. You don’t necessarily need to tell your audience what to do. That’s one approach, but I think it is often more powerful, if they draw their own conclusions about what your words mean to them.
Once you’ve found a simple, clear message that you think will benefit your audience, connect it to a story or stories that demonstrate that message in concrete, specific ways. Tie that universal message to real experiences that demonstrates the truth of what you are saying. Take your audience along on the journey of what life has taught you.
Those two elements, message and story, are the backbone, the core, of your speech. You must remember that. It’s so easy to wander off course into other somewhat related stories, or interesting side thoughts. You have to constantly cut and refocus.
Writers call this “killing your babies”, because it seems that your most interesting, funny and beautiful lines are always the ones you have to cut. It’s painful to do, but it’s vital to writing a tightly focused speech. If it’s not driving your message, cut it out.
So you write, cut, refocus and write again, expanding on your core message. Do it again and again, until you have a tight, lean script that leads your audience towards the idea you want them to remember.
Then you practice and practice until your speech becomes so much a part of you that it comes spilling out as naturally and smoothly as if you were telling the story to your best friend; until you don’t even have to think about what comes next. All you have to do, when you walk out on to the stage, is look into their eyes, smile and use your voice, your face and your gestures to tell them the story.
Then you can sit down and start thinking about where you are going to display your trophy.
by R. L. Howser on August 1, 2010
This famous cover of National Geographic Magazine featured a photo by Steve McCurry. It shows a young Afghan girl staring directly in to the camera lens. She is pretty, with remarkable gray eyes, but that’s not what makes the photo so extraordinarily powerful. Rather it is the guileless intensity of her gaze that has made it probably the best-remembered cover in the magazine’s history.
In fact, if you flip through the pages of almost any issue, that’s what makes so many of the magazine’s photos so good; direct eye contact. Most photographers are either unwilling or unable to engage their subjects so directly, but when they do, it makes a photo far more compelling.
Of course, it’s nothing new to say that a good speaker needs to make eye contact with his audience, but little thought seems to be given to the eye contact of others. If you have assistants helping you with your presentation, are they engaging the audience with their eyes? Do your presentation slides feature characters looking directly at the audience? Both will draw attention away from you, the speaker. Eyes are just too powerful to compete with, so don’t. Give your audience only one set of eyes to captivate them; yours.
by R. L. Howser on July 25, 2010
Dealing with photo editors is the bane of every photojournalist. Not the good editors, the ones who understand images, but every photojournalist has had to deal with editors who came from the editorial (writing) side of publishing. Many of them were very good writers and researchers and they had good journalistic instincts – that’s how they got promoted to editor – but they weren’t as literate visually as they were verbally. They didn’t understand that what sounds right doesn’t always look right.
I once worked with an editor who wanted to illustrate the idea of stupid tourists with an image of a tourist who has had a map wadded up and thrust back in his face by an irritated local. The concept, of course, being that one too many tourists had asked the locals for directions. It’s a bit heavy handed as a literary concept, but I’ve heard worse.
As a visual image though, it was impossible to shoot. Good images are like good jokes. They only work if you don’t have to explain them. Yet the only way to make the scenario clear would be to load the poor sap up with tourist clichés and write, “Map” in big letters on the paper. Even then, I doubt many would have gotten the joke.
In a presentation, the point of every image you project on the screen is to reinforce what you are saying, not to say it for you. It needs to get the concept across at a glance, without the need for explanation or extended study, so the audience can immediately turn its attention back to you. What sounds like a good visual illustration of a concept doesn’t always get the point across visually.
Step back and take a fresh look at your slides. Trust your eyes, not your mental descriptions, when you evaluate the meaning of your images.
by R. L. Howser on July 17, 2010
There is an insurance company that has for years assured its customers that they’re “in good hands.” Your audience wants no less from you. They want to know that you have everything under control. If something unexpected happens, they want to know that you can handle it.
Of course, they want more than that. They want to know that they can trust you, that your information is valid and useful and that you have their interests, at least partially, at heart. But before all that, they need to know that they can relax and give you their full attention. It’s somewhat like riding with a novice driver. It’s tough to relax and enjoy the passing scenery, if you are constantly fighting the urge to grab the wheel.
If the speaker is fretting with a balky presentation remote, struggling to find the right words or fighting to keep the crowd’s attention, we feel the natural urge either to jump in and help or to avert our eyes from the embarrassing spectacle. Neither is conducive to absorbing the speaker’s message. And that’s assuming that the speaker hasn’t completely lost the thread of his message during his troubles, as all too often happens.
Preparation and composure are the keys to maintaining that aura of control that your audience needs. Thorough preparation will prevent many of the surprises that come from not knowing your material, your equipment and your environment. But when the completely unanticipated events intrude, such as fire alarms or obnoxious drunks in the audience, it’s the composure to calmly weather the storm in good humor and to quickly get back on track that will carry you through.
Show them that they are in good hands, and they’ll sit back and enjoy the scenery you present.
by R. L. Howser on July 9, 2010
What makes great speakers so rare?
The world is full of intelligent, personable, articulate people with something of value to share, yet few of them have the ability to seize and hold the absolute attention and imagination of an audience.
Almost anyone can learn to be a good speaker. You can learn to create a sound presentation structure, deliver it in a clear and comfortable manner and present yourself with confidence and authority, but great speakers go beyond that. They bring a presence to the stage or the boardroom that makes them mesmerizing.
Naming it “Presence”, however, does us no good, any more than calling what Michael Jordan had, “Talent” or naming Einstein’s gift, “Genius”. Both are true, but that’s hardly illuminating or useful.
The seed of understanding, however, is in the word itself. To have presence is to be present, to be in the present, to be fully engaged in the moment.
When we speak, our minds are often so busy frantically multitasking to process past events, future fears and the six other things we need to get done today, that we fail to pay full attention to what we are doing right now.
This is especially true if we are working from a script or presentation slide bullet points. When we let the script or the slides drive the speech, it frees our minds for those other important tasks, such wallowing in our nervousness, searching for an escape route or speculating on lunch options. It can reduce us to a meat robots, spewing empty words at the audience. After all, the words are already set. There’s no need to think about them.
To be fully present when we speak is to be completely focused on the meaning of the words coming out of our mouths, on the implications and intentions behind the words and on the people before us and their reactions to our words. It is the literal presence of mind to engage interactively with our audience, while retaining complete control of our message and purpose. It is the purest distillation of the true communication of meaning between people.
In that moment, when your absolute focus draws their absolute attention, you can teach, motivate, inspire and influence at the deepest and most profound level. You too can achieve greatness as a speaker.
by R. L. Howser on July 4, 2010
“The most moving thing in a speech is always the logic”
-Peggy Noonan
They say that we don’t fall in love with another when we are together. But rather, it’s when we are apart, but can’t get the other out of our minds, that love grows. I suspect that persuasive speeches and presentations are much the same.
We can certainly make a splash that has a temporary impact. Most impulse sales pros, such as TV shopping announcers, entertainment touts or sidewalk barkers, know that they have to make the sale while the prospect is hot, because the impulse goes away quickly. Once the pitch fades from the ear, and the mind starts chewing over the logic of it, an emotional appeal loses its power.
Motivational speakers also sometimes rely on the heat of the moment to fire up their prospects, but enthusiasm and emotion tends to last about as long as the echo of the speaker’s call to action. The next morning, or a week later, the audience is left only with vague memories of having heard an exciting presentation, but to little or no lasting effect.
But the underlying value of your proposition and the benefit it offers to your listeners, if presented in a clear, compelling and memorable way, builds in the listeners’ minds as they think back over what they remember. That’s what presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan was referring to in the quote above from her book, On Speaking Well
.
While there is certainly a time and place to go for the white-hot, emotional appeal, we make the strongest and deepest impact on the thinking of others, when our words or ideas later spring back to mind unbidden; when the appeal of the logic can be mentally chewed over.
That’s when the audience takes the message to heart.
by R. L. Howser on June 29, 2010
If you asked the average business professional to take several hours, or even days, off from their job, during the middle of the work week, to prepare, rehearse and perform a musical revue of Broadway show tunes, they would think you were crazy.
They don’t have time for things like that. They are busy people. Their days are tightly scheduled, their calendars full and their lunch breaks, evenings and weekends booked weeks in advance. They are under constant pressure to produce results.
Yet these same business people seem to be willing to waste hours or days preparing, rehearsing and performing a presentation that accomplishes nothing, that is every bit as much of a waste of time, in business terms, as a Broadway musical revue.
It amazes me. Their professional colleagues or potential clients are voluntarily giving them a large chunk of their time and attention for the presentation, and they squander it.
If you call them on it, they will tell you that they are building the brand, getting their name out there, or informing potential customers about their products or services. It’s as if Research and Development said their goal was to make some cool stuff or Marketing said their plan was to tell people about the company.
In either case, management would demand that they come up with specific, concrete, actionable plans, or heads would roll. So why don’t they demand the same from the executives that represent the company, when they speak. The time and attention of others is a valuable resource, and vague, half-baked plans are no way to take maximum advantage of such a resource.
Take the time to figure out what, specifically, you want to happen as a result of this presentation or speech. Come up with a concrete, viable plan for how you are going to use the speaking opportunity to make that happen.
If there is no clear purpose behind the presentation, create one. If a major airline offered you free, first-class tickets to anywhere in the world, with the stipulation that they be used within the next month, would you turn them down because you had no plans to travel? Or would you quickly think of someplace you wanted to go?
Do the same with your speaking. Figure out a way to take full advantage of the opportunity you have been given.
If you can’t be bothered, then stick with the Broadway show tunes. At least that would be more entertaining.
by R. L. Howser on June 22, 2010
Just a few hours after I put up my last post, Fear is just a feeling, about how harnessing your fear can make you perform better, I was reading Jonah Lehrer’s fascinating book, How We Decide, and came across a story of United Airlines Flight 232.
The middle engine of the DC-10, mounted on the tail, had exploded and the shrapnel had cut all of the hydraulic lines. This was considered to be such a rare and unforeseeable event that there were no procedures for it in the pilot’s manual. There was no way to fly the plane without hydraulics, as they controlled all of the flight control surfaces on the plane. The flight, and everyone on it, was doomed.
With his plane out of control, and threatening to go into a death spiral, the pilot, Captain Al Haynes, didn’t panic. He knew that they were in an impossible situation, something his training had never prepared him for, but even under tremendous pressure, he had the presence of mind to review his limited options.
The only controls on the plane that were working were the thrust levers that adjusted the power to the two remaining engines. He quickly devised a plan to regain a measure of control over the plane just by manipulating the engine thrust. Over the course of the next forty minutes, he not only kept the plane in the air, he also devised completely novel procedures, on the fly, for steering the plane and adjusting its altitude. By doing so, he was able to direct the plane to a nearby airport and crash land it.
The plane broke apart on impact and 112 passengers died, but another 184 survived solely because of the pilot’s brilliant maneuvers.
The conditions he faced were later programmed into a flight simulator, and several very experienced pilots, the best the airline had to offer, tried to replicate Captain Haynes incredible flying, but in 57 attempts, none of them was even able to get the plane back to the airport and onto the runway. Captain Haynes is clearly an excellent pilot, but is he a genius? Well he answered that question himself.
“I’m no genius,” he said later in an interview, “but a crisis like that sure can sharpen the mind.”
I believe he made my point better than I can.