Life After PowerPoint!

The goal of any speech or presentation is change.

Last week I wrote about changing your audience’s feelings. I concluded, in brief, that you can and should change people’s feelings during your presentation. But I also cautioned that changing their feelings is a short-lived phenomenon. By their very nature, feelings come and go, rise and fall, intensify and dissipate. What people feel during and shortly after your speech, they won’t be feeling tomorrow or the next day.

So what else can you change in the relatively brief time you’re speaking?

You may be able to change your audience’s actions.

The question I most frequently ask my clients when they’re strategizing their talks is, “What action do you want your audience to take as a result of listening to your talk?”

Do you want them to approve your budget? Give your project the green light? Use your procedure? Buy your product? Make an appointment to speak with you about your services? Give you their input? Join your organization? Volunteer their time? Go to your website for more information?

The more specific and immediate the action, the better. Why? Because you increase the odds that people will do what you want them to if they know exactly what it is you want them to do and if they can do it while it’s still on their minds.

(Andrew Lightheart, in a post titled Focusing on your Outcome without Manipulating People, raises some good questions about taking this approach. He rightly points out that it makes it sound easy to people’s actions, when doing so is actually quite difficult. And he’s also concerned about manipulating people, which I agree, would be an issue if you’re going about it in a covert or sneaky way. But I suggest you be upfront and honest about your intentions. Say, in effect, “Here’s what I want you to do and here’s why.” People always have the choice–you’re not coercing them–to do or not to do what you want them to.)

Although I believe you can and should change your audience’s actions, I’m more skeptical about your chances of changing their behavior.

An action is a one-time thing. “Do this [approve my budget, buy my product, call me to set up an appointment] now.” And that’s often a good thing. (If the selection board, for example, awards your company a multi-million dollar contract as a result of your oral proposal, pat yourself on the back.)

But behavior is an ongoing pattern of acting. It’s a habit. And people rarely, rarely, rarely change habits in response to a one-time event, such as a speech.

You might think, from last week’s post and today’s post, that I have a limited opinion of what a speech or presentation can change. But I wouldn’t be a speaker or a speech coach, if I thought that were true. 

I actually think you can accomplish a lot–even in a single speech. But I think you do so by changing how people think, because if you change how they think you also change how they feel and act. Not just for a moment, but for years to come. Maybe for a lifetime. How you do that is the subject of a future post.

What do you think?

Photo courtesy of HeyPaul at Flickr.

I got a message on my voicemail yesterday that reminded me of many presentations I’ve endured and of the mistakes many presenters make.

The woman leaving the message had obviously called the wrong number. She also didn’t pay attention to my message, or she would have realized her mistake.

Lesson #1: Know your audience.
She didn’t know her audience or, at least, she wasn’t speaking to the audience she thought she was. She wasn’t unlike many presenters I hear. They seem to have no idea whom they’re speaking to. They presume their audience knows and cares about their subject.

She then left a lengthy message which boiled down to this. My loan needs to be approved immediately. I need you to call me back so I can move ahead with it. “It’s an emergency!” Please call.

Lesson #2: Keep it brief.
The longer you speak, the less impact your words have. Don’t leave long voicemail messages and don’t give long presentations. Never go over your assigned time. Never go over the time your audience is willing to listen.

Lesson #3: Tell your audience WHAT you want them to do.
My unknown caller did this well. What was I supposed to do? Call her. Don’t leave your audience guessing. Every presentation should have this goal: to move the audience to action. So tell them what you want them to do. Be specific.

Lesson #4: Show your audience WHY they would want to do it.
My caller told me why she wanted me to do call her back — so she could get the loan — but not why I would want to. This is the most common mistake presenters make. They presume that what’s important to them is important to the audience. Not so. It’s your job to figure out why they would want to do what you want them to. What’s in it for them? How will they benefit from taking action?

After talking longer than necessary, she finally gave me the number she wanted me to call. Ten numbers in quick succession. It was a bad connection. I played the message once again, and I couldn’t even make out the area code. I wanted to return her call and let her know she better try her call again, because that’s the kind of guy I am. But I couldn’t.

Lesson #5: Show your audience HOW to do what you want them to.
By rushing through her phone number in a mumble and not repeating it, she kept me from doing what she wanted and, apparently, needed me to do. Presenters do this all the time. They presume that their listeners know how to do what they’re asking them to do. Or they explain it in such a cursory way that people don’t get it. If your audience can’t do what you want them to, you’ve wasted your time. And you’ve wasted their time. Break it down. Walk them through it. Keep explaining it and answering their questions about it until you know they’ve got it.

I hope my unnamed caller gets her loan. I hope you can use these lessons to get what you want from your presentations.

Photo courtesy of Michael (mx5tx) at Flickr.

The goal of any speech or presentation is to bring about a change in your audience. To change how they think or feel or act, if only in a small way.

So when you’re planning a talk, the question is what is the change you want to bring about? Which raises another question. In the limited time you have available what can you change?

Here’s what you may be able to change in your allotted time on stage: your audience’s feelings, actions, behavior, knowledge, thinking.

For today I’ll just focus on the first — feelings.

Can you change people’s feelings?

Yes, of course you can. Good motivational, inspirational, and after-dinner speakers do it all the time. So do good preachers. Coaches do it during pre-game or half-time talks.

I know, I know — technically, you can’t make people feel anything. People are responsible for their own feelings. You can only create the conditions that allow or encourage people to change their feelings.

Should you change people’s feelings?

Yes, yes, yes. People — even the most button-downed, just-the-facts-ma’am types — aren’t emotionless automatons. If you fail to engage your audience’s feelings — rousing their interest or curiosity, if nothing else — you’re not doing your job as a speaker.

Even the most highly technical presentations need to engage people’s feelings.

What feelings can you evoke?

Your options are almost limitless, depending on your personality and values, your audience’s makeup, your topic, your goal, the event itself. Here are some possibilities. (The definitions are courtesy of dictionary.com. The questions are ones you might want the audience to ask themselves.)

• Curiosity: “The desire to learn or know about anything”
  What is this? How does it work? Why are things as they are? What would it be like if they were different?
• Frustration: “A feeling of dissatisfaction, resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems”
  What’s wrong with the current situation or way of doing things? What doesn’t work? What’s the cost of its not working? Why are things so difficult? Isn’t there a better way?
• Loyalty: “A feeling or attitude of devoted attachment and affection”
  What are this group’s shared values? How can I become a part of this group? What can I do to contribute to its success?
• Anger: “A strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong”
  What is wrong with the current situation? What can or should be done about it? Why is it intolerable? Whom does it hurt?
• Hope: “The feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best”
  What would it be like if we were to achieve our goals? Who will benefit and how will they benefit from this change?
• Love: “Affectionate concern for the well-being of others”
  Who needs our support? How can we help? What is the “greater good” and how can we contribute to it?
• Pride: “Pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself”
  What can we do? What challenge can we take on? What are we capable of achieving? How can we excel?

What are the problems of dealing with people’s feelings?

First, you have to be somewhat sophisticated and psychologically savvy when you’re addressing people’s feelings. (Which isn’t to say you need a counseling degree.) It’s relatively easy to stir people up. (Talk show hosts do it all the time.) It’s more difficult to know what to do with them once they’re stirred up. And to bring about some positive or constructive change as a consequence.

Second, feelings are fickle and short-lived.

If people leave your talk on a high, for example, feeling positive and positively euphoric about their ability to create a whole new reality, they will not feel the same way tomorrow morning. I guarantee it. The best you can hope your speech will do — and it’s often a good thing — is change people’s feelings during your speech and immediately afterwards.

What do you think? Agree or disagree? Additional insights? What other feelings do you think a speaker can or should rouse?

Photo courtesy of chefranden at Flickr.

In yesterday’s post I wrote “Motivational speeches are about rousing people’s emotions in a way that moves them to take immediate action in order to achieve a specific goal.” And I questioned the long-term effectiveness of most motivational speeches.

The reason I gave was that “rousing people’s emotions” is a transitory thing. Emotions don’t last. Not for very long. So actions — your own or anyone else’s — that are prompted by emotions won’t last long either.

Sometimes that’s good enough. Sometimes that’s all you want to do – affect people’s immediate actions. If you’re a coach, for example, and you’re sending your team back into the second half of the game, all you care about is how they play for the next 45 minutes to an hour. If so, giving them a motivational speech — a pep talk — is the thing to do. Whip up their emotions, give them very specific directives, stand back, and watch them do it.

Motivational speeches affect people’s short-term actions (what they do in the next several minutes and hours). But motivational speeches don’t — can’t — change people’s ongoing behavior (how they consistently or habitually act).

And most of the time, if you’re interested in bringing about long-term change, you need to address people’s behavior: what they do and how they do it day after day after day. Even the best motivational speech isn’t going to do that. Not — as Steve Roesler points out in his response to yesterday’s post– without follow up. Not without consistent reinforcement.

Agree? Disagree?

I’m of two minds about motivational speeches. I enjoy them. I really do. But I think they’re of limited usefulness.

What’s not to like about motivational speeches? Done well, they can be great fun. They’re usually emotional (with a heavy emphasis on “positive” and uplifting feelings) and hopeful. You can almost always count on hearing a good story. (You know the type: “I was down/poor/sick/failing but now I’m up/rich/healthy/successful and you can be too.”) There’s often a simple, easy-to-remember message that isn’t complicated with a lot of information or evidence. And the entire audience gets into things, laughing and clapping and, sometimes, wiping a tear from their faces at just the right moments.

Motivaitonal speeches are a great way to end a meeting or convention, sending the audience out on a high.

That said, I’m not sure what they accomplish in the long term.

Here’s my take on it: Motivational speeches are about rousing people’s emotions in a way that moves them to take immediate action in order to achieve a specific goal. 

A coach’s pep talk during halftime is a motivational speech. She wants her team to charge back into the game with renewed energy and focus, even though they are tired and disheartened. Their goal? Victory. A commander’s talk to his troop before battle is a similar thing.

The problem is, emotions don’t last long. Not long at all. So if you’re counting on emotions to fuel people’s actions, you have to make sure that you don’t need their actions to last very long. (That’s why coaches have to give pep talks over and over again.)

What do you think? Do you have a different idea of what motivational speeches are about? DO you think they have any lasting impact?

Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions, gave this advice about writing:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. 

His advice applies most directly, of course, to writing fiction or to telling stories. But I think audiences of all sorts would be a lot happier if speakers took his advice to heart.

Here’s my way of tweaking his rules for speakers:

1. Don’t waste your audience’s time.
Their time is their most preciously guarded resource. Make good use of it. Never feel the need to fill the time you’re assigned. It’s never okay to go over your allotted time. (Doing so is rude to the meeting planner, to your audience, and to any other speaker who is on after you.) But it’s always okay to go under your allotted time. Say what you need to say and, having said it, sit down.

2. Give the audience at least one idea they can root for.
Build each speech about one — and only one — idea. And treat it with the same respect that a novelist treats his or her characters. Define your idea. Describe it. Show how it works. Tell a story about it — either about how you discovered or developed it or about how it has affected other people. Make people like your idea, not just agree with it.

3. Every audience members should want something.
If you can’t make them want something from your speech — an insight or a practical tip or maybe just a good time — you’re wasting their time. Which is a violation of Rule #1. Show them how your idea will benefit them in some way.

4. Every sentence (and phrase) must do one of two things — educate or entertain.
Educate = tell people something they don’t already know or give them a new way of understanding what they do know. Entertain = keep them interested, since bored people stop listening and stop caring.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.
This rule doesn’t even need to be revised. Cut out the introductory sentences and sentiments. “I’m so happy to be with you today…” “What an honor it is for me to be addressing you…” “You’re such a great group of people…” Churchill called opening pleasantries “opening banalities.” Dive right into your best material.

6. Be tough on your idea.
Test your idea against logic, against other ideas, against your own self-interest. If you’re soft on your idea, your audience will tear into it themselves. If you’re afraid of the Q&A session, it’s usually because there’s a killer question you don’t want to be asked. So ask it yourself. (And be sure you have a good answer.)

7. Speak to please just one person: Yourself.
(I addressed this rule here.)

8. Give your audience all the information they need — but no more — as soon as possible.
Explain the background. Define your terms. I’m okay with keeping your audience in suspense. Just don’t keep them in ignorance. It you confuse them or make them feel out of it, they’ll tune you out.

How would you apply these rules?

You can plan, create, and deliver a great speech, and still bomb. I’ve done it. I’ve seen other professional speakers do it. And it’s not pretty.

Here’s how I went wrong: I put too much energy into creating a great speech, and not enough into making the event a success.

If you’re not careful the event itself — the schedule, physical setting, technical logistics, and room layout — can sabotage the best planned speech.

A couple of war stories from my past, which taught me this painful lesson:

1. I was brought on at 9:45 PM (not at 7:30 PM, as I had been told) to address a group of physicians. They were exhausted from already having attended three days of a conference. Their day had begun with a 7 AM breakfast meeting. And they were inebriated, having just enjoyed a free happy hour and a 5-course dinner with wine pairings.
2. I spoke at the Anaheim Convention Center in a hall the size of three airplane hangers. There were 15 other break-out presentations, separated only by curtains, going on at the same time. All the presenters spoke louder and louder, trying to make themselves heard. I’ve been in lumber mills that were quieter.
3. I was introduced to give the keynote address after the audience had already endured almost two hours of (a) announcements, (b) the recognition of honored guests who felt compelled to “say a few words,” and (c) awards to people who promised (but failed) to keep their remarks brief.

I could — sadly — tell more war stories.

I finally stopped complaining about the crazy set-ups and scheduling glitches I’ve had to endure. And I started anticipating and addressing them. These days I want to know as much as possible about the event. And I want to have some say in its scheduling and staging.

I used to be scrupulous about analyzing the audience. Now I’m equally fanatical about analyzing and shaping the event.

In tomorrow’s post I’ll look at some of the issues that need to be addressed.

How about you? Have your best efforts been stymied by the event? Care to share any of your war stories?