by Beth Levine | Nov 14, 2017 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
If I had a dollar for every time I told a client, “well, that’s really not what this event calls for, attendees are coming for a celebratory occasion not a lecture” or “it’s not really your place to be talking about the speaker’s topic, you’re simply introducing them” or “what you’re describing you want to talk about is more appropriate for an external audience rather than an internal one,” I could retire!
Speakers and presenters veer out of their lanes all the time. It’s as though an invitation to make a few remarks confers responsibility for the entire event on them. Or they feel as though, given the opportunity, they need to be as comprehensive as possible. Not so.
Here are 3 tips to help you stay in your lane:
1. Know your job. For every occasion when you need to speak, you have a “job.” By job, I mean a communication task: you might need to motivate, persuade, reassure, inform, update, or even introduce. There’s always a verb that describes your job, you might even have a primary and a secondary job. Knowing your job helps you paint the boundary lines of your lane. As you prepare your remarks, all you need to do is test what you’re planning to say against your job and stay inside those boundary lines.
2. Be #audience-centric, have perspective. Have you ever been to a fundraising gala, basically a party, where everyone is dressed up, having fun, socializing at tables with friends, and then the buzzkill comes – long narratives from the microphone about the organization’s serious work (and let’s be honest here, no one’s paying attention)? Yes, the work is important and yes, there’s a captive audience; but no, now’s not the time for the laundry list of “what we do.”
Or, have you ever gone to hear a special speaker and the person who introduces them not only delivers a nice intro, but then offers their own spin or summary on the speaker’s topic? To be polite, this is not only unnecessarily repetitive but it’s also not what the audience came to hear. To be less polite, this is inappropriate, often making audience members impatient and annoyed.
Perspective is key to staying in your lane. Perspective requires you to be audience-centric – to put the audience’s needs and experience ahead of your own. Without it, you risk alienating the audience.
3. Err on the side of #brevity. When in doubt, be brief – no one has ever annoyed or alienated an audience by being brief. If you’re not sure of your job or your lane, put your energy and efforts into being short and sweet. Sometimes speakers swerve out of their lanes because they’re not clear on who is supposed to say what and they want to make sure they cover everything. I hear you, I get it. Still, either coordinate with the other presenters ahead of time and/or let your audience ask you if they need more.
At the end of the day, it’s all about them – your audience. Stay in your lane so you don’t hit them!
by Beth Levine | Oct 30, 2017 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
I want to share a personal story that’s not entirely flattering. In fact, the episode was a little bit jolting at the time, but soon thereafter it reaffirmed two important aspects of my coaching and training philosophy:
When it comes to audiences, always connect with them and always learn from them.
So, here’s the story …
A few years back, I was invited to be the guest speaker at an open house for a Toastmasters chapter. It wasn’t a regular Toastmasters meeting, it was a membership cultivation event. I was asked to speak on the importance of having a big idea and how to identify and articulate one.
I’m a fan of Toastmasters and, in fact, recommend it to clients who need lots of practice speaking, usually to desensitize them to the fear of public speaking. The event was quite interesting, it drew a very diverse crowd of people, and the Toastmasters members and leaders were very welcoming. I gave my talk, which I had prepared ahead of time (I always prepare ahead!), I kept it brief (I always try to be brief!), and there was a robust Q&A.
When I was done, I got great feedback and lots of thank you’s from the audience. However, on my way out the door at the end of the event, one of the chapter leaders approached me with his clipboard. Apparently, he had been scoring me while I was speaking, and it turns out I didn’t do so well by Toastmasters’s standards. He had counted um’s and ah’s (thankfully there weren’t too many), and he had timed, measured, and scrutinized me for public speaking metrics that weren’t on my radar screen.
Admittedly, I went in unfamiliar with the methodology of Toastmasters. Still, my initial reaction to the sudden appearance of the clipboard felt like a breach of hospitality – that without any forewarning, an invited guest would be scored and critiqued? I was taken aback, and my ego was bruised. I recovered quickly, though, and my reflection on the experience reaffirmed two things for me:
First, with all due respect to Toastmasters, being an effective speaker is less about precision and more about being real and connecting with people. In my practical experience, being real and accessible goes a lot farther than pitch perfect delivery. Audiences are pretty forgiving and they’re also hungry to be let in, to feel like they know and can identify with the speaker – warts and all.
Second, that we can always learn from our audiences and, in reality, we always do. Every interaction with a client and every speaking engagement informs and sharpens my approach. I always say that my clients are my greatest teachers. The trick is to look for those lessons, be open to them and consciously make a note-to-self about what you plan to do differently or better next time.
To this day, I encourage clients to try Toastmasters – for nerves, um’s and ah’s, and just for muscle practice. It’s all good. Nonetheless, there’s a good case for authenticity over accuracy, and there’s also a good case for letting others teach you, even when it’s unexpected or uncomfortable.
by Beth Levine | Oct 2, 2017 | preparing for a presentation, procrastination, public speaking
Last week, I lost my voice. Literally, I couldn’t talk. Laryngitis.
Naturally, I joked about it: The ironies of a communication coach not being able to speak – what good am I in this condition? What a pleasure and relief for my family – finally, a break and some much-wished-for silence! My own vocal chords were on strike – was it something I said?
I also wondered. When will it come back – a day, a week, longer? Who am I without my voice? Am I relegated to communicating digitally only? What did people with laryngitis do before texting and emailing?
I will admit, sudden onset of laryngitis prompted some panic and an existential crisis: Whoa, where did this come from, what did I do to bring this on? What would I do if I had to deliver a speech or presentation in this condition? Cancel, reschedule, or create a killer PowerPoint or video? How could I turn this seemingly negative event into a positive? (Maybe blog about it?) My livelihood depends on my voice, what would I do if this persisted?
Turns out, I was still me; I had the same thoughts, ideas, and feelings. I just couldn’t share them – vocally, that is. It also turns out, the people around me were at a little bit of a loss without the all-too-familiar sound that drove through my larynx – my news, my bad jokes, my unsolicited opinions and everything else I rattle off in the course of a day. It was quite interesting to observe how people reacted to my inability to speak, including the pharmacist who, perhaps in an attempt to empathetically mirror my limitations, gradually dropped his own voice to a raspy whisper to answer my barely audible questions.
The experience made me think about voice and the fact that it’s not my voice that I lost, it was only my ability to talk. I couldn’t talk. But I had a voice and could give voice without being able to make much sound. I could communicate. So as with any other change that occurs in life – for the better or the worse – I decided that, if this stayed with me, I would adapt. I would still communicate and spread my ideas (like the gospel of #audience-centricity!) through writing. Maybe I would work on another book and share my thoughts that way instead of through speaking engagements? Maybe I would become a speechwriter, creating the actual words for speakers instead of coaching them to formulate and deliver their own? Either way, not being able to talk was not going to be the end of me.
Talking, I have realized, is overrated and overused (ergo, the gospel of #brevity!). Communication is the constant, it has evolved in infinite ways over the years, and adaptation is a constant too. Think about how we have communicated news for example. News was once shared via petroglyphs etched into rock and then eventually via newsprint on paper and currently via electronic transmission on a screen. And there are other examples as well, most notably the arts – visual arts, music, dance – all of which give voice and communicate but not necessarily through talking. Voice, which can and should be carefully cultivated and deployed, is something we all have no matter what. The various methods of communication at our disposal is how we share our precious voices.
P.S. About two days later, my voice returned – albeit not in fighting condition and still on the mend. Nevertheless, existential crisis averted and lesson learned: I never lost my voice and I never will.
by Beth Levine | Sep 20, 2017 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
What does it take to go from being a pretty darn good speaker – well organized, prepared, on point – to being a great speaker? To being someone who is compelling, thought-provoking, thoroughly engaging, and memorable?
It takes getting naked. Yep, baring it all. Opening up. Sharing. Being vulnerable. Being real.
Audiences crave earthy, gritty, revealing, personal. They want to be drawn in, they want to see and know. Let’s face it, it’s what we’ve become accustomed to in our digitally oriented lives [think: social media]. All that openness and sharing – even the cringy oversharing – has created an expectation and an appetite for not just the what, where and how, but also for the how does it feel.
It’s perfectly acceptable and more than adequate to speak and be organized, prepared and totally on point. In fact, it’s way more than adequate (since too few speakers are!). It makes you good, really really good.
But to be great? That requires you to open up. Connect with your audiences, let them see and know you. Share your failures as well as your successes, share your fears as well as your hopes, share your vulnerabilities as well as your strengths and passions.
Share what makes you doubt yourself and what makes you tick, what scares you and what excites you. Share what you regret as well as what you are proud of. Share what gets you motivated in the morning as well as what you dread. Be relatable.
There’s a lot to be gained – and nothing to be lost – by connecting with your audiences on a deeper level. Make a note of the reactions and comments you get from people after you bare it all. I’m willing to bet it will result in more robust feedback and far greater buy-in and engagement. And that’s the difference between good and great speaking.
by Beth Levine | Sep 6, 2017 | preparing for a presentation, procrastination, public speaking
Last week, I was delivering a workshop on Executive Presence and Communication to a group of high-potential executive women at a large financial services firm. As always, I encouraged the group to share relevant stories and anecdotes at any time during our half-day together.
During the segment in which we addressed the special challenges of being commanding and confident on conference calls and in videoconferences, one of the women spoke up to ask a question:
She started by sharing a story from the day before about a presentation she had made that became an extremely frustrating and disappointing experience. Her presentation was a demo; half of the audience was in the room and half on the phone, with everyone looking at the same screen. She had prepared for a week. As she described it, she began the presentation and, not a few minutes into it, a male colleague who was on the phone jumped in and took over most of the rest of the talking.
Her question for me and the group was, “what should I or could I have done to stop him?” She noted that he had a company-wide reputation for talking over others and out of turn and she characterized it as a bad case of mansplaining.
Was this a case of mansplaining? Maybe, but it’s hard to say since both genders are guilty of this sort of thing. But for sure it was a case of what I call hijacking. So let’s talk about a few ways to stop hijackers in meetings and presentations:
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Set agreements and be clear about roles and responsibilities in the meeting or presentation with colleagues in advance. If it needs to be a co-presenting situation, then be specific about that in the meeting invite so everyone knows, and also be deliberate in how the preparation work is divided (i.e. make sure everyone who is presenting carries a proportionate load of the prep work). If the presentation is solely yours, make that known too by letting attendees know there will only be one speaker, how long you plan to speak for, how long Q&A will be, and that there will be others on the team present to help fill in during Q&A.
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Use a Focal Point that helps establish what’s going to happen during the meeting and what the desired outcome is. For example, in a presentation like the one above, in which there’s a demo to introduce new software, and other team members are in on the call, the Opening/Focal Point might sound something like this: “I will be walking you through the demo, which should take about 15 minutes. After that, we will have another 15 minutes to answer your questions and fortunately several team members [names] are also here and can help answer your questions. By the end, I am hoping you’ll feel like you have a solid introduction to the new software, which should make it considerably easier for you once we go live.”
The Focal Point sets clear expectations and gives you a “home base” to return to in the event of a hijacking. In other words, you can always break in on your hijacking colleague’s stolen air time and say, “Rob, I know you’re as eager as I am to make sure everyone appreciates all the advantages of this new software but let me get through these initial screens so that everyone gets the same solid introduction and then you can add to what I’ve gone over once we break for Q&A.”
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If you’ve done the best you can do by employing the above suggestions and you still get hijacked, then I would revert to directness wrapped in good manners, which is a nice way of saying, go ahead and interrupt the hijacker! Wait for the person to pause or take a breath and then interrupt directly and politely. For example, “Rob, thanks for sharing your input, you’ve been a great contributor to the team that’s put this together. Now, if we look at the screen where I left off, you’ll notice the navigation … “
At the end of the day, hijackers are usually known quantities in an organization and when they do it repeatedly and predictably, it’s a poor reflection on them, not you. Nonetheless, especially if you’re anticipating the possibility of being hijacked, then you would be wise to plan ahead with the suggestions I shared above. Good luck out there!
by Beth Levine | Aug 16, 2017 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, smartmouth talks!
Stories – or anecdotes, examples, case studies – are the absolute best way to illustrate a point, even in a business presentation.
When crafted well, they illustrate and support your messages better than anything else. Stories make an emotional connection to your audience that sticks with them long after you finish talking.
Here are 3 rules of thumb that apply to using stories in your communications:
1. STORIES NEED TO DIRECTLY SUPPORT A POINT. In other words, you may have a favorite story that you love to tell, and that’s great, but it must be constructed in a such a way that it works its way to a “punch line” that reinforces the message point you are trying to support. You can’t assume the audience will make that connection on their own, you have to spell it out and tie it together for them.
2. PREPARATION IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Rather than simply reminding yourself to tell a certain story during your presentation, you need to map out the story to avoid getting lost in the details while telling it (every story has more details than you have time to share!). I have watched too many speakers derail a perfectly good 15-minute presentation by telling a story that went on and on until – before they knew it – an additional 10 minutes of air time had been consumed.
3. SIMPLE IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN COMPLICATED. This is true of most communications but certainly true of stories – despite the temptation to “spin a yarn” for your audience. Unless you’re a comedian or a professional storyteller, you’ll want to keep your stories simple.
Keeping them simple means paring down and prioritizing the detail. Think about composing your stories in this 3-3-3 format:
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3 sentences describing the situation;
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3 sentences revealing the dramatic tension (e.g. something unexpected, complications, competing factors); and
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3 sentences outlining the resolution, which should help you tie back – in that punch line kind of a way – to the point you were illustrating.
And finally, be sure to cue your audience when you’re beginning and ending a story. For those in the audience who might not be paying close attention, you have the opportunity to reignite interest with your own appropriate versions of “Once upon a time” and “The end” – those timeless story cues that signal the open and close of something special.
