There’s a lot of good advice out there about public speaking. Much of it is geared toward aiding the speaker.  I want to throw some advice into the mix that’s helpful to the speaker and the audience: Keep your sentences short and crisp!
 
Speakers do best when they prepare a talk in bullet points rather than prose.
 
Preparing by writing a long beautiful document is problematic for a couple of reasons. For starters, speakers tend to get attached to the beautiful words, phrases and sentences they’ve composed. This is dangerous! It means the speaker is likely to feel compelled to read at the podium – which is bad for obvious reasons – or to memorize, which runs the risk of producing robotic delivery. Being conversational and staying connected with your audience, even if your delivery is imperfect, are still preferred.
 
On the other side of the podium, audiences need pace and rhythm and patter.
 
For audiences, long, fancy sentences become a maze for the ears, something to get lost in. Preparing by writing a long, lovely piece of prose produces something that readers, not listeners, would be willing and able to digest. Listeners need things to keep moving along at a clip. They need the speaker to start and finish a thought quickly in order to hang in there and actually get it.
 
Move from script to bullet points.
 
You can always begin your preparation for a presentation by writing out a full-text script. It can help you establish order, organization and some of your key phrases. But then you would be wise to use that script only as a practice tool. As soon as you can, switch over to bullet points and then rehearse your talk from those.
 
Finally, when it’s showtime, watch yourself … keep a lid on those long-winded run-on, multi-clause sentences. Set a standard and a pace for yourself that requires you to make your sentences short, crisp, distinct units.
 
Good luck, your audiences will thank you!

Hey everyone, I need to ask a favor!
 
If you are lucky enough to be offered training or a professional development opportunity by your organization, can you please 1) accept, and 2) go with the mindset that you want to move the needle and grow, rather than attend just to check the box and say you went?
 
Awesome, thanks!
 
Putting some of your own skin in the game – that is, committing to yourself that you will try and learn something new, try and take something away that you will employ – can make all the difference. And that would be all the difference to YOU! Your employer hopefully benefits too, but it’s really all about you. Your time is precious, so if you’re being asked to spend a chunk of it learning something, be sure to make it worth your while and mine the session for the valuable nuggets that will enhance your performance and up your game. That’s your responsibility to yourself.
 
Then there’s the session leader’s responsibility to you. Clearly, it’s one thing for you to sit and hear about new ideas or best practices, and it’s yet an entirely different thing to try and employ them. If you attend a training or work with a coach, it’s the trainer’s or coach’s job to ensure that you leave with some skill-building practice already under your belt, or at the very least some actionable tips and follow-on activities that will help reinforce the learning. It doesn’t always happen that way, but it should, so feel free to ask for it.
 
So why am I raising this issue? Well, this is the exact issue that keeps me up at night. It’s my mission as a trainer and coach to not just deliver the workshop or coaching session but to ensure that the recipients get something they feel confident they can and will try to use or do differently. The best sessions are constructed with multiple opportunities for participants to test-drive the learning and with follow-on activities that are designed to keep the concepts and best practices on participants’ radar screens for as long as possible. By definition, training and coaching are intended to encourage change (for the better), and in order to achieve change (arguably, one of the most difficult challenges out there!), there needs to be repetition, reminders, and reinforcement.
 
To that specific end, SmartMouth Communications will now be offering its SmartMouth OnDemand “Presentations” course to reinforce our presentation skills trainings.  While “Presentations” is also a great stand-alone training tool, it will no doubt serve as the ultimate reinforcement tool for anyone who attends a training of ours.
 
If you or your organization wants to be able to deliver more influential and impactful presentations, give us a shout! We’d love to bundle a live training with an e-learning experience to maximize the benefit for you!

How good are you at delivering the party line?
 
Most organizations create the party line in the form of talking points. Talking points might be about the organization generally or about a specific piece of news. They typically are handed down from the top for “messengers” to deliver. These messengers, whether they are managers communicating to an internal audience or spokespeople facing an external audience, are expected to deliver the party line. It’s an age-old practice – but with varying results.
 
The intention behind talking points is solid, which is to help an organization present a unified front, deliver a consistent message, and be sure that everyone is singing from the same song book, so to speak. However, talking points are more often than not other people’s words. And other people’s words can be problematic – hence, the varying results.
 
The problem with other people’s words is that it’s just not realistic to expect people to deliver them the way they were written. Some real-life challenges with talking points are as follows (see if any of these sound familiar!):

• They are often long, wordy documents – even when they’re broken up into bullet points or paragraphs – that are written more for a reader to read than for a speaker to speak. This makes them difficult for people to digest and actually use.
• Most spokespeople aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do with talking points – memorize or paraphrase? And there’s typically no guidance provided.
• Pre-scripted talking points often feel stilted or inauthentic to the person who is supposed to deliver them. They are other people’s words, and so the messengers read them and think, “but this doesn’t sound like me, I would never say this.”
• In the end, a lot of people who are supposed to be messengers or spokespeople simply avoid and then ignore talking points – which, of course, defeats the original purpose of trying to get everyone on the same page.

So, what can be done to help protect and promote the party line?
 
Well, if you’re responsible for creating and distributing talking points, here are some tips:

• Give guidance to your troops, let them know how closely to the script they need to stay and what they can and cannot paraphrase.
• Give them permission to use their own words – with the caveat that, if there are some critical words or phrases within the talking points, those are “must-air” words.
• Be realistic and keep the talking points document as brief and succinct as possible.

If you have to deliver talking points, here are some tips for you:

• Go through the document a few times and then put it away and practice making as many of the points as you can. Test yourself to see how well you at least covered the spirit of the talking points, if not the words.
• Highlight the words and phrases that mean the most to you and that you do not want to leave out, and then rehearse yourself through a version that hits on those.
• Ask, if it hasn’t been granted already, for permission to paraphrase, making the case that you will do a better – more authentic and credible – job of delivering the party line if you can hit the points you’re most passionate about in a way that works for you.

A little effort – and a little give – from both sides will be worth it, good luck!

We’ve all had the experience: You’re at the front of the room or at the podium talking and you look out at your audience – you actually look at them, you don’t just throw a token glance – and you instantly regret it, it bursts your bubble. The body language and faces are not what you were hoping they would be. There are no warm, welcoming smiles, nor are there any affirming nods of approval.
 
Ugh! Does that mean you’re tanking? Not connecting or getting through to your audience? Should you keep going with your presentation or is it time to switch gears? You can’t run out of the room, or fall through a hole in the floor, you have to make the best of it. But how?
 
Stay calm. Keep things in perspective. And, if you feel like it’s more than a few faces – and that they’re really not happy – then open up a dialogue (e.g. Q&A) and find out if you’re right or not.
 
Audience reactions come in all forms, shapes and sizes. We hope for the best-case scenario – to look out at the audience and see excited, expectant and engaged faces. But we don’t always get that. Very often, we get stone faces or we get that guy in the front row who looks angry, that woman in the middle row on the end who looks like she’s falling asleep, or the other woman in the back looking at her phone.
 
Whatever you see, don’t panic and don’t judge yourself – or them – too harshly. Keep things in perspective. Especially when the audience is full of strangers, bear in mind that you have no context for interpreting their facial expressions or behaviors. It’s important to remember that one man’s scowl is another man’s look of concentration. And that some people remember and retain better with their eyes closed. And that other people take notes on their phones or other devices.
 
They are distracting as all get-out, but one or two dissatisfied-looking people in an audience do not make for a failed presentation. There are always a few people in a group who don’t like something, are not quite as enthusiastic or just had the wrong expectation, no question. But there are others who just look unhappy or disinterested. Keep going, keep up your energy level and try to engage audience members as much as possible.
 
If, however, you are so distracted by the faces that you are beginning to believe that you are, in fact, tanking, then switch gears and open up your presentation for some discussion and dialogue. Ask your audience for their impressions, thoughts, and questions up to that point. That way, you’ll know for sure whether they’re satisfied or not, and engaged with you or not.
 
The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t let the demeanor and appearance of the crowd, especially one person in the front row, affect your performance. It’s sometimes hard to tell an angry glare from a focused stare.