Life After PowerPoint!

A speech is — or should be — a direct person-to-person communication. Even when you’re speaking to hundreds of people at one time, you’ve got to be personal and particular.

A five-year old taught me this lesson decades ago.

When I was eighteen, I got a job as a day camp counselor. Pow Wow Village Indian Day Camp — I didn’t make up the name, I just worked there — ran ten one-week sessions each summer. And three of those sessions were reserved for five- to seven-year olds.

Each counselor was in charge of 10 kids. If you’ve ever been in a similar situation — looking after 10 five-, six-, and seven-year olds all day — you know what I learned that summer. Much of your time is spent herding kids to and from the bathroom.

Before beginning any activity, I always asked, “Does anyone have to go to the bathroom?” I even repeated myself. No one ever did. Then we’d get into wherever we were doing, and someone would inevitably say, “I gotta pee.” And you could tell from the way they were shifting from one foot to the other or cupping their hands that they meant business.

Once in exasperation I asked one boy — his name was Jaime — why he didn’t tell me he had to use the bathroom when I asked him.

“But you didn’t ask me,” he said.

“Yes, I did,” I said. “I asked, ‘Does anyone have to go to the bathroom?’”

“But you didn’t ask me,” he said again, insistent. And then he added the line that was a revelation to me, “I’m not anyone. I’m me.”

From then on, I looked each kid in the eye and asked, “Do you need to use the bathroom?” I’d like to say my new technique eliminated unscheduled bathroom runs. It didn’t. But it did cut down their number.

We may be grown up and mature looking, but scratch us and you’ll find the five-year old in each of us. When we hear people talking about anyone or everyone, we don’t think they’re talking about or to us.

So here’s my takeaway for speakers. Don’t speak to anyone and everyone. No such person exists. Speak to the specific, particular individuals in your audience. Look them in the eye, one at a time, and say “you.”

Photo courtesy of gavinandrewstewart at Flickr.

One of the most common mistakes technical people or smart people in general make when they plan a presentation is to assume that their goal is to teach people something — to change or to add to what their audiences know.

Ask these presenters, as I do, what they want their audiences to do as a result of listening to their presentations, and they’ll most frequently say, “I want them to know…”

But knowledge isn’t — or shouldn’t be — the goal of a presentation. Action is. That’s why I love what Chris Brogan recently wrote:

I came across a great quote by Thomas Kempis: The object of education isn’t knowledge; it’s action. How powerful is that? In thinking about communication, even if our efforts are intended to inform, what we really seek is to encourage action. Inside this statement come some new lights on old truths: education isn’t objective, ever. When one educates us, they indoctrinate us, and their goal?

That’s right. Action.

The Quest to Inspire Action | chrisbrogan.com.

Thomas a Kempis was a medieval monk and devotional writer. Whether he was aware of it or not, he was paraphrasing Demosthenes, the 5th century BCE father of Greek oratory. When asked what the three tests of a great speech are, Demosthenes answered, “Action. Action. Action.”

Even it you want or need to educate or inform people — to give a project update, say, or to conduct a training session — make it your goal to give people information they can use. Ask yourself, what do you want people to do with the information you’re giving them?

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Beard at Flickr.

Business leaders have to communicate bad news all the time — these days more than ever. They have to tell people that their projects have been cancelled or their budgets slashed. That they didn’t get the promotion or bonus they were expecting. That their services aren’t needed any more or that their positions have been eliminated.  

Speaking to people face to face, one on one or in groups, about bad news can be so messy. Wouldn’t it just be easier to send an email?

Of course it would.

That’s exactly what a study published in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences found. Communicating bad news through email has two advantages:

1. It ensures that the bad news is communicated accurately.
   People tend to soften the bad news or to fudge when they’re forced to speak to another human being.
2. It is less painful for the person delivering the bad news.
   There’s no need to see the look on the other person’s face or to respond to the person’s questions, recriminations, or unpredictable expression of emotions.

And, to quote Hamlet, there’s the rub. Communicating bad news by email is less painful for the messenger. The study, it seems, did not look at how the person receiving the message was affected.

Frankly, I don’t see how you can consider yourself a leader if your main concern is shielding yourself from pain regardless of how your actions affect other people. But, hey, that’s just me.

Photo courtesy of Bobbie at Flickr.

In my last post, when I examined Bill Gates’s presentation at TED, I explained why I thought his intro was a mess. Now I’d like to look at the body of his speech.

Once Gates gets into the body of his speech, he deals with two completely separate issues:

1. Malaria: what causes it (mosquitoes), how to prevent it (bed nets), and related concerns (the need to attack it globally, not just locally); and
2. Education: what’s wrong with it (plenty), how to improve it (improve teaching/teachers), and how to improve teaching/teachers (numerous suggestions). (Sir Ken Robinson gave a great presentation, also at TED, about education. Watch it here.)

I think Gates addressed each of the two issues rather well, although I’ll leave it up to the experts to weigh in on both his analysis and his solutions. He used a classic and clear structure in both sections — problem / solution. What’s the problem? Why is it a problem? What can be done about it? So in that regard I think he did a good job.

What didn’t work for me was his transition. He simply finished speaking about one issue and with a single sentence — “Now let me turn to a second question, a fairly different question, but I’d say equally important” – began talking about another. The first time I watched the clip, I must have been dozing. I missed that sentence. (It happens. Audiences don’t hang on to a speaker’s every word. That’s one reason to build your presentation on a clear structure and to repeat yourself.) So I got whiplash. How, I wondered, did we get from malaria to education, from mosquitoes to teachers?

Here’s the thing with speeches. If you do or say something that confuses your audience, they’ll stop listening to you while they try to make sense of it. Then – after understanding or failing to understand it — they may or may not tune back into what you’re currently saying. Problem is, they’ve missed out on what you were talking about while they were off in their minds thinking about something else.

I think it was Gates’s job as a speaker — not our job as an audience — to tie the two issues together. Are they related at all? If so, how? Just saying they’re “equally important” isn’t enough. Any number of issues meet that criterion: global warming, child abuse, terrorism, autism, clean water, etc.

But here’s my bigger concern. I don’t think the speech even tried to answer two fundamental questions every audience asks: 1) Why do I care? and 2) What can I do about it?

Why do I — “I” being representative of the audience — care? I’m a nice guy. You’re nice too, I’m sure. Of course we care. Who wouldn’t care about kids dying of malaria and schools failing our kids? But we also care about hundreds of other things– global warming, child abuse, terrorism, autism, clean water, etc. The speaker (in this case Gates) has to make us care deeply enough to want to listen and to do something.

And what can I — we — do to stop malaria and to improve education? Gates addresses “what can be done,” not “what you can do.” There’s a difference. Gates doesn’t make any demands on us. We can simply listen, agree (or disagree), and do nothing. Why is he talking to us, if he doesn’t want anything from us? Why are we listening to him, if we’re not going to change anything we do?

So here are my three takeaways. A speech should

1. Have a unified focus. (I think it should address one BIG IDEA Olivia Mitchell calls it a Simple and Concrete Clear Message.) Its structure should be so clear and tight that people who are only partially paying attention can still figure out how it all fits together.
2. Answer the WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) question that audiences ask: How does this affect me? Does is help me solve a problem, achieve a goal, or address a need that’s important to me?
3. Move the audience to action. Speeches aren’t about giving people more information. (We have enough already, thank you very much.) They’re about changing how we act.

What do you think? Am I being hard of Gates? What do you think of his speech?

Photo of mosquito courtesy of James Gathany at CDC and of teacher courtsey of peiqianlong at Flickr.

Bill Gates recently spoke at the TED conference. And while he had some great things to say, I think his speech was somewhat of a mess. (It’s worth watching, both because of the ideas he develops and because of what you can learn from analyzing what he does. Watch the first five minutes at least to see him set loose a jar full of mosquitoes.)

In today’s post I’m just going to look at the first minute of his speech – his introduction. In later posts I’ll look at the body of the speech and at the conclusion. I’ll also discuss those pesky mosquitoes.

I like when speakers get right to the point without a lot of useless fluff. (You know what I’m talking about: anything that sounds like “I’m happy to be here today.” “Thank you for inviting me.” “You’re such a great group.” “Blah, blah, blah…”)

But Gates starts off almost mid-thought:

I wrote a letter last week talking about the work of the foundation, sharing some of the problems. And Warren Buffet had recommended I do that — being honest about what was going well, what wasn’t, and making it kind of an annual thing. A goal I had there was to draw more people in to work on those problems, because I think there are some very important problems that don’t get worked on naturally. That is, the market does not drive the scientists, the communicators, the thinkers, the governments to do the right things. And only by paying attention to these things and having brilliant people who care and draw other people in can we make as much progress as we need to.  So this morning I’m going to share two of these problems and talk about where they stand.

I listened to his introduction three times and I read the text twice before getting a vague idea of what he was talking about. (My initial thought was that they had cut off the first few lines of his speech, but no, what you see is how he started.)

He mentions lots of things without explaining them — all of which send my mind off in different directions. What’s that letter he’s talking about? Who’s he writing it to? Does it have something to do with what he’s going to talk about? What are those problems he mentions four times without naming? Is he going to talk about the market and what it does or doesn’t do to help all these people do the right things? And what are the right things?

You have to sift through all that mess to realize that his intro comes down to this: “I’m going to talk to you about two problems.”

A speech’s introduction has to do three things. It has to focus the audience’s attention, establish a sense of rapport between the audience and the speaker, and give a foretaste or overview of what’s to come. I don’t think Gates did any of those things particularly well.

I think he should have taken more time at the beginning to warm up the audience and to pique their interest. It’s clear — or it becomes clear — that he wants to talk about two problems. The question is, why do we, the audience, want to listen?

He could have started with some of the statistics he cites later in his speech. He could have made a bold assertion. Or he could have told a story, which is what I would have urged him to do. And he should have outlined — in a single sentence — what he was going to talk about.

Am I being dense? Did I miss something? Or was his intro the mess I think it was?

Too many choices shut people down.

Have you checked out the cereal section in a grocery store lately? At my nearby Ralphs, there are 242 different cold cereals. (I counted them, which means I must not have enough to do and which also means there’s a margin of error of plus or minus 10%.)

Two hundred and forty-two cold cereals to choose from.

There are nine types of Cheerios. Count ‘em. Nine. And that doesn’t include “toasted o’s” or “oatie o’s” or any of the other lameola generic knock-offs.

And just about every aisle presents a similar variety of products.

To add a bit more detail, I was going to count how many types shampoos Ralphs stocks, but there were more than I expected and I thought that counting them all just too pathetic. So you’ll have to trust me on this: there were at least 75 different shampoos.

Whether we’re looking for a long-distance carrier, restaurant, accountant, or solution to a long-standing problem, the same thing applies — too many choices.

You might think that all these choices would be a good thing, but think again. Too many choices shut us down. People who study these things — there’s a great article in yesterday’s LA Times about it — site three problems with what’s called “decision fatigue.” When we’re given too many choices

1. We made bad decisions,
2. We avoid making decisions altogether, or
3. We regret the decisions we make.

Here’s my take-away for speakers and presenters. When you want people to make a decision, limit their options. Don’t give them ten choices. Give them two, maybe three. No more.

Photo courtesy of Rex Roof at Flickr.

In an earlier posting I wrote about the erroneous assumption that “the facts speak for themselves.” Many people — especially technical experts — operate out of a somewhat related erroneous assumption: “Knowledge is power.”

Knowledge is certainly superior to the alternatives — ignorance, prejudice, and error. But in and by itself, knowledge isn’t power, because power is all about action and the ability to accomplish something. (The New American Heritage Dictionary defines power as the “ability or capacity to perform or act effectively.”)

If you don’t do anything with what you know, what good is it?

Knowledge isn’t power. Using knowledge to do something worthwhile is.

And there’s even something more powerful than using knowledge: it’s communicating knowledge so that others can use it.

Here’s my hierarchy of the power of knowledge:

1. Knowing something without acting on it is like having a candle without lighting it.
2. Acting on what you know is like lighting the candle.
3. Communicating what you know so others can use it is like using your lit candle to light other people’s candles.

That’s why “presentation and communication” skills are so highly rated, even for technical experts. The better able you are to share what you know so that other people can understand and use it, the more valuable you are.

Photo courtesy of PeWu at Flickr.

You can only speak to one person at a time.

People — even gifted, successful, smart people — freak out when they speak to lots of people. They’re perfectly happy talking to one or two or three, or maybe even up to 10 people around a table or at a meeting. They may be okay speaking to 20 or 30 people. But stand them in front of 100, 200, or 1000 people, and their knees shake, their courage deserts them, and their minds turn to mush.

It’s more accurate to say that we freak ourselves out when we speak to lots of people. We think that speaking to 1000 people is quantitatively scarier than speaking to 10 people. And it’s that thought that freaks us out. The only practical difference between speaking to 10 people and speaking to 1000 is delivery: we have to speak louder (even when we’re micked) and bigger (even when we’re being videoed) while addressing larger audiences. That’s it. And there’s really no difference between speaking to 10 people and speaking to 1 person.

So here’s what to do. No matter how many people are listening to you, speak to just one person at a time.

Look one person in the eye. (You can’t look more than one person in the eye at the same time anyway.) Speak to that person. Just to that person. Don’t time yourself. (Speech coaches will tell you to hold eye contact for 5 to 7 seconds, give or take 2 seconds. Disregard them. You shouldn’t be counting to yourself as you’re talking.) Keep looking at that one person for as long as it takes to complete a sentence. That’s it. Then look at someone else. Just one other person somewhere else in the audience. And speak to that person.

Lee Glickstein, author of Be Heard Now! says it this way: “Speak every word to the eyes and heart of another human being.”

You’ll discover two things when you speak to just one other person at a time. First, you won’t freak yourself out. What’s so scary about speaking to one person? You do it all the time. And second, everyone in the audience will feel like you’re speaking directly to them. Trust me on this one. It’s true.

Yesterday, I wrote that people love talking about themselves so they (should) love giving speeches.

In response David Portney wrote:

Hi Chris, I enjoyed your article, and you’re right that people do love to talk about themselves. I do suggest that the audience will quickly bore of “all about me” unless my stories are particularly entertaining – I’d like to toss in that if speech makers can make the “about me” part about the audience too (”this is how my story is meaningful/helpful to you…”) then their speech will be better received.

And he’s absolutely right. There’s no faster way to turn off an audience than to make your presentation about “me, me, me.”  (I posted a piece titled “It’s All About Them” a couple of weeks ago about this very subject.)

I attended a speech by a well-known motivational speaker. He’s been on the speaking circuit for decades. He’s a big guru in the National Speakers Association. He’s published books. And he’s received numerous awards. And that’s what he spoke about — his accomplishments, the recognition he’s received, the audiences he wows, the lavish lifestyle he enjoys as a result of all the fine work he does. Gag me. The only motivation I felt at the end of his talk was the desire to get as far away from him as possible. The only award he didn’t mention receiving was “strutting peacock of the year” award.

He’s probably the most blatant egotist I’ve come across in a while, but he’s not alone in talking all about himself and only about himself. Many speakers in all fields talk about their interests, their research, their products, their services, their books, etc. They’re saying, in effect, “me, me, me.”

So here’s the crux of the matter: How do you talk about what interests you in a way that interests your audience?

You have to do both.

If you talk about something that doesn’t interest you, you’re going to be flat and perfunctory. Or you’re going to sound forced and fake. So begin by talking about issues or topics that interest — maybe even fascinate — you. Your excitement will make you more enthusiastic and lively. It will also overshadow your fear.

But you have to figure out how to make your fascination fascinating to the audience. And the best way to do that is to work out how your topic will help your particular audience 1) solve a problem, 2) achieve a goal, or 3) fulfill a dream of theirs.

What are your thoughts about connecting the two — your interests and the audience’s?

Photo courtesy of Jeff Turner at Flickr.

Why do you give speeches?

When people come to me for help with a particular speech or presentation, I sometimes ask them why they’re even doing it. What’s their motivation? Most of time it comes down to this: they have to. Or, at least, they feel that they have to. It’s part of their job. Or they’ve been told they have to by someone who has the authority to order them about. Or they feel it’s their duty to get the word out about something important.

And that’s okay. It’s okay to give a speech because you have to. But you’ll give a better speech and you’ll have a better time giving it if you want to.

I can hear the collective scream go up. “You’re nuts. No sane person wants to give a speech.”

Au contraire. I think everyone wants to give a speech. They just don’t know how. And they’re afraid they’ll bomb big time.

Eighty years ago Dale Carnegie (author of How to Win Friends and Influence People) taught people how to strike up a conversation with just about anyone. Here’s the trick: Get them talking about themselves. People will find you fascinating because — and here’s the point I’m trying to make — everyone likes talking about themselves, their interests, their opinions, their likes and dislikes.

I believe that because people enjoy talking about themselves — their experiences, thoughts, and feelings — in conversations, they should be able to enjoy doing so in front of an audience.

I know. I know. I know. There are lots of reasons to dread giving a speech. (Everyone, they say, is afraid of doing it.) But I think the fear of public speaking comes from not knowing how to do it.

If you knew how to give a speech and if you felt at ease doing it, I’ll bet there are lots of things you’d like to talk about.

(Even if you’re an introvert, there are ways to enjoy speaking to a bunch of people. Masterful speakers — introverts and extroverts alike — know the secret of speaking to only one person at a time, whether they’re addressing five people around a conference table or thousands of people in a convention center.)

I’m writing this blog in part because I want to help people learn how to give speeches in a way that benefits their audiences and — believe it or not — that they enjoy giving.

Case in point. A nonprofit agency had funded a research project, and they wanted the main researcher to talk to select groups about his findings. He didn’t want to. The agency hired me to work with him. When we first met, I thought he was a research wonk, a person who’s more at ease with facts and figures than with people. Then I asked him about his project and he came alive. He thought he had found something that could change people’s lives, and he wanted them to know about it. And that’s what we began with — his desire to tell people what he knew. (He’s now, two years later, a regular on the lecture circuit. And he loves it.)

Another case in point. Kids love to speak. Remember “show and tell” in kindergarten? Experience — bad experience — beats that love down. But it’s still there.

So, next time you’re slated to give a speech — even if you’re doing so because you’ve been told you have to — ask yourself what you want to say. What about your topic fires you up? Why does it matter to you? Find your desire.

Desire isn’t all there is to giving a speech, mind you. But it’s the start.

Photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks at Flickr.