SmartMouth Talks!

Why do speakers go over their allotted time? If there was ever a presentation buzzkill, it’s the speaker who keeps on going … and going … and going.

You know you get aggravated with the long-winded speaker when you’re sitting in the audience, but what happens when it’s you standing at the podium? Are you aware of time? Do you know what 5 minutes of talking feels like? Do you know what 20 minutes feels like? You should. You need to learn to tell, or keep, time.

In the speech prep arena, I’m going to put it out there that minding your time trumps all your excessive fretting over content. Yup, I’m saying that content alone will not leave a good impression with your audience. You need more than that. Great content needs the added ingredients of audience connection (more on that another time!) and time sensitivity.

We talk about people who are “brief and to the point” with awe and admiration, so let’s work on being one of those … Practice delivering your material. Know how much time it takes. Know what 5 or 20 minutes of talking feels like. Prioritize in order to make any necessary cuts. And when you’re at the mic, don’t go off on a tangent just because you have the floor and you thought of something super cool to share. Keep to the time limit; your audience will be grateful, and you will have succeeded in leaving a good impression … with or without perfect content!

Tick tock, people, tick tock.

And I really mean 101, nothing fancy. No once upon a time stuff here, no professional storytelling tactics. Just some basic tips for telling a story – as in, sharing a case example or an anecdote – during a talk. So here goes …

First, there has to be a point. Stories or anecdotes or examples must illustrate a point. And, as mere illustrations of a point, they fall under the category of “information” (see http://smartmouthtalks.blogspot.com/2011/03/putting-engine-back-together.html). As with any information you share to support a point you’re making, you’ll want to pick out and prioritize the stories you tell and the detail you share based on your audience (their needs, interests, concerns, etc.).

Second, you can’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t matter how short you think it is, it’s probably not that short. You’re going to need to figure out how to be concise, so you can neatly support your point while holding onto your audience’s attention. So here’s a quick recipe:

1-3 sentences of problem/challenge

1-3 sentences of dramatic tension/suspense

1-3 sentences of solution/outcome

This recipe is doable. I have had people trim their 10-12 minute, multi-paragraph stories down to 1.5 minutes and fewer than 9 sentences by using this recipe. Stick to the recipe, stick to what’s relevant to the point (and the audience!), and you can do it in less than 9 sentences, I promise. It’s good discipline!

Third, you have to practice stories. Just like you practice the rest of your talk. Making a note to self – either on paper or in your head – that you want to include “the Uncle Joe story” is not enough. You need to map it out and practice it. Otherwise you’ll find yourself adding unnecessarily to the length of your talk and potentially losing your audience.

Try these tips, and hopefully you’ll speak happily ever after …

The term “audience-centric” is worth more consideration and discussion than I can accomplish in just one blog post (although there are certainly many posts in this blog that cover how to think about audiences!). In fact, the ability to be an audience-centric – versus ego-centric – speaker is everything, literally. Just think about what you like … you tend to favor the speakers who talk to and about you over those who talk to and about themselves, right?

So, how would this work if you were preparing a talk? I recently gave a bit of super simple advice to a client in California as she struggled with finding a shortcut that would help her be more succinct and very focused on her audience. Here’s what I told her: Instead of sitting down and thinking, “ok, what do I want to say?” – which is so very normal for a speaker – sit down and think, “ok, what do they need to know or hear?” Start with them, not you.

In a nutshell, if you shift your initial thoughts away from your topic, and put your head straight into the needs, interests and concerns of your audience as the first step in your prep, it just might be all you need to do!

On the one hand, you are a pro in your field, you know your stuff, you present in meetings all the time, you’re sure you can pull it off, and you just don’t have time to practice.

On the other hand, you have been asked to speak in front of a slightly larger audience than usual this time, using slightly different visuals than usual, and the opportunity is somewhat higher stakes than usual, but you just don’t have time to practice.

The realist in me says, no worries, the world won’t end, you’ll pull yourself together and pull it off, you’ll be just fine if you don’t have time to practice. Organize yourself, review the material, and you’ll do okay.

But the Coach in me says, while there may be no particular harm done if you don’t rehearse, there might also be no particular good done either. What if you could get up and nail it versus getting up and doing okay? If you have to think, and wonder or worry, about whether you should rehearse or not, then you probably already know the answer.

Last week, I worked with a client three days and then one day before a bigger than usual presentation. She’s a pro, knows her stuff, presents a lot, was asked to speak to a larger audience, with new visuals, and it was pretty high stakes. She was organized and had reviewed the material quite a bit. Three days before, we met and mostly went over content and visuals, fine-tuning transitions and making a few edits. One day before, we met, did some more fine-tuning and then had her run through the whole thing – choreographing the speaker with her content and visuals – about four times.

How’d she do in rehearsal? Not so great. She fumbled, forgot, changed things, got frustrated, wanted to stop. But she pushed through.

How’d she do the next day in the actual presentation? Amazing. She nailed it. She was polished, the presentation flowed, she hit the high notes beautifully, and she ended just under her time goal without ever rushing. It all came together smoothly; she was ready, and it showed.

The lesson here is that even crummy rehearsals are valuable. Practicing as if it’s the real deal forces a level of intimacy and familiarity between you and your presentation that can only benefit you – your brain and your mouth – when it’s showtime!

What do I mean by that? Isn’t your topic the focal point? Uh uh. Your Focal Point is actually the “so what?” or the “what next?” It helps to set the context for your talk, so that your audience knows what’s coming, why, and where to focus.

Let’s back up a sec. In March, I blogged about “putting the engine back together” and offered a very simple structure for putting together a speech or presentation. And I suggested that if you have a desired outcome for your talk – if there is something you want your audience to think, or know, or do by the time they leave the room – you need to spell it out for them. Literally, tell them what you want them to pay attention to and/or what you want them to take away. This is a Focal Point, and I recommended opening with it as well as wrapping up with it in the closing.

We all agree that attention spans are short and, in fact, getting shorter, which makes figuring out how to reach audiences pretty urgent business. We all have had the experience of sitting through a talk and wondering what we’re supposed to know or do next, which means we know firsthand what it’s like to be lost, not “get it,” or feel like we might have wasted time. And we all know that when we’re clearly directed to focus on something, we’re surprisingly compliant and we’re likely to focus on that certain something. As speakers, we simply have a better chance of achieving attention and retention with audiences if we spoonfeed them.

A Focal Point can be your entire opening, or it can be woven in as just a part of your opening, but it is the call-out that tells your audience what you want them to think or know or do next. For example, “I was asked to speak with you today about personal money management [topic], and what I’m going to ask of you today, as I’m covering my material, is that you open your minds and be thinking about how you might eliminate just one of your debts starting tomorrow [focal point].” Or “We’re here today to commemorate the grand opening of this new blood donation center [topic], but the larger task at hand is that I need each and every one of you to be an ambassador when you leave here today, to go out there and spread the word [focal point].” Or “We have quite a lengthy list of agenda items to cover today [topic], but I would like to zip through those and get to the last one, which is the most important and where I’d like us to spend the bulk of our time [focal point].”

The Focal Point is big, it’s important, it requires some thinking on your part. But it’s worth it, your audience will actually “get it”!

Didja hear the one about the guy who was invited to the microphone to give a brief thank you and a few words of inspiration at an annual sales meeting but instead prepared a full script of remarks that included a narration of the original mission of the organization and a full reporting of its growth and successes over the past 25 years … ? Just like the company’s founder did … ?

Or maybe you heard the one about the woman who was invited to be a speaker at a widely attended opening of an important community exhibit but she never asked how many other speakers there would be and so she spoke three times longer than each of the other six people … ?

I betcha heard the one about the techie guru guy who was asked to deliver a presentation to a group of funders looking at their first tech venture and the only “ask” he seemed to make at the end was ‘so do you understand now how this works?’ … ?

Okay, I know you’ve heard about the nonprofit exec who addressed the group of longtime volunteers assembled in the room and then told them why they should consider signing up to volunteer and the good it will do … ?

Whether it’s time allotment, your place on the agenda, how many others are speaking, your role versus others’, the composition of your audience, or the angle of your message, get some perspective. An invitation to the microphone does not, on its own, convey the full responsibility of the event or occasion on your shoulders, nor does it give you carte blanche to guess or wing it or go where you feel like going. An invitation to the microphone is only as good as its relevance to the occasion and the audience.

When you get invited to speak … Ask how much time you have. Ask what your role is. Ask how many other speakers there will be. Ask how big or how knowledgeable the audience will be. Ask why the audience will be there. Ask if your ideas for your remarks are on target or not. Ask. And then everyone wins.

With all the other speaker faux pas’s out there, it never ceases to amaze me how fixated people are on um’s, ahhh’s and ya know’s as the only issues they need to worry about. My view is that unless these “fillers” are used to a distracting degree, they’re pretty normal and typically go unnoticed if everything else is intact. However, if you feel you have a problem, and you or someone else has noticed that you have a bit of a filler dependency, then you can fix it … and to that end, here’s a quote for you to keep in mind:

“Awareness in itself is curative.” – Fritz Perls

And don’t forget that with awareness come the twin P’s … preparation and practice!

I recently sat with a very well-educated executive to help him prepare for an important presentation. It was our first time working together, and I began by saying, “Charlie (not his real name), we are about to go against everything you learned in school, from Kindergarten all the way through your MBA program!” This kind of statement, and I make it often, tends to cause consternation at first but eventually brings relief. Charlie was no different. Smart and motivated, he caught on pretty quickly and off we went.

After that meeting, I came across an interview with Guy Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist of Apple and co-founder of Alltop.com. Guy Kawasaki is one of the great thinkers and communicators to come out of Silicon Valley; he’s a widely respected author and speaker. Here’s an excerpt from a Q&A with him in The New York Times on March 21, 2010:

Q: What should business schools teach more of, or less of?

A: They should teach students how to communicate in five-sentence emails and with 10-slide PowerPoint presentations. If they just taught every student that, American business would be much better off

Q: Why?

A: No one wants to read “War and Peace” emails. Who has the time? Ditto 60 PowerPoint slides for a one-hour meeting. What you learn in school is the opposite of what happens in the real world. In school, you’re always worried about minimums. You have to reach 20 pages or have to have so many slides. Then you get out in the real world and think, “I have to have a minimum of 20 pages and 50 slides.”

I’m with Guy all the way. What works for learning may not work for persuading or informing or motivating in the workplace. But school can be a tough habit to kick!

This may sound harsh, but you’re not that special that when you get up to speak everyone is captivated the entire time, has the patience to sit through your lengthy deck of slides, and will be perfectly content to allow you to run over your allotted time. You know how hard it is to be 100% attentive, and you know you don’t like it when other speakers kill you with more slides than you could possibly remember and talk for longer than scheduled. It’s quite likely that you are more often the audience than you are the speaker, and so consider yourself an expert on what audiences like and don’t like.

The single best guideline for any speaker to use in preparing for a talk is The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Plan and choreograph your presentations accordingly …

If you don’t like or can’t pay attention to a screen with dense text slides in a darkened room for a prolonged period of time, then don’t do it to your audience;

If you can’t sit through a 50-minute talk that isn’t broken up with visuals or video or interaction, then your audience can’t either;

If you get lost during talks when speakers ramble and provide no guidance as to where they are going or what their point is, then your audience will be lost without your guidance;

If you like stories and anecdotes, then your audience will like them too;

If you like someone who is brief and succinct, then your audience will like that too; and

If you like speakers who stay more connected with their audience than with the lectern or screen, then your audience will appreciate that as well.

Your preferences are your own best litmus test for what your audience might like, so remember that!