Life After PowerPoint!

(Warning: this post is more philosophical, less practical than most of my posts.)

Stories are the single most powerful element of most speeches. There are many ways to think about speeches and about their uses. Here are my ruminations about three types of stories.

Individual Stories

These are the typical stories we tell all the time. They’re narratives of a particular individual or group of people involved in a sequence of events resulting in a change of some sort.

Think for a moment of The Biggest Loser. It’s a TV series on NBC about a group of overweight contestants attempting to lose the most amount of weight to win the title “The Biggest Loser.”

Each contestant has his or her own individual story. The NBC website says as much in advertising the latest season:

Their individual stories are compelling, from a firefighter (Allen Smith) whose health and job are at risk because of his weight to a military wife and mother of four (Tracey Yukich) who has always put others first. Viewers will also meet a remarkable woman (Abby Rike) who endured the worst tragedy imaginable – losing her husband and two children in a deadly car crash – and who now gets a second chance to restart her life.

The individual stories that we tell in our speeches are like the stories told on The Biggest Loser. They are rich in specific detail and in emotional engagement.

Overarching Stories

Sometimes people talk about the story of a presentation or speech, and they’re clearly not talking about a specific story. (I most frequently hear technical presenters and sales representatives referring to “story” in this way. They talk about getting their story down or, if they’re giving a team presentation, about telling the same story.)

I think what they’re talking about in such cases is the overarching story, the recurring or dominant theme that informs the whole speech.

Back to The Biggest Loser. The overarching story of the series, now in its eighth season, is — as far as I can tell — transformation. By making changes in their diets and exercise routines and by coming to terms with their personal issues, contestants have the chance not just to lose weight but to transform themselves.

What the series promotes — in addition to commercial time and, now, a series of books, DVDs, appliances, fitness equipment, protein supplements, and countless other health and lifestyle based products — is hope. If these contestants can transform themselves, there’s hope that we can do it too.

The individual stories of contestants like Allen, the firefighter, are unique, but they all tell the same overarching story.

In a speech we tell individual stories. And our speeches, if they hold together at all, tell an overarching story. During his presidential campaign, for example, Obama’s overarching story was change.

Grand Stories

Grand stories, sometimes called metastories, are the underlying structures or the archetypes of both the individual and overarching stories we tell.

I would say that America’s predominant grand story is self-creation: through our hard work and individual effort, we make ourselves into the type of people we choose to be. We are defined — in our minds — less by our physical limitations, our histories, our socio-economic standing, our families and societies than by our own efforts.

The overarching stories of The Biggest Loser (transformation) and of Obama (change) are variations of America’s grand story (self-creation.)

Application

What does all this mean to speakers?

First, I can’t overstress the value of telling stories in your speeches. If you’re not already doing so, find a way to incorporate at least one individual story in every — or in almost every — speech you give.

Second, be attentive to the overarching story your speech is telling. If your speech doesn’t hold together, it may lack the unifying theme of an overarching story.

Third, tie your overarching story into a grand story in order to increase its evocative power. If your overarching story is in harmony with the audience’s grand story, your speech will resonate with them. It will ring true to them.

Olivia Mitchell, in her consistently excellent blog “Speaking about Presenting,” has a great piece about the fear of public speaking and what you can do about it. Here’s how it begins:

Fear of public speaking often feels like it hits you out of nowhere. But I’m going to suggest that there are three distinct causes of speech anxiety.

I’m using a common brain model to explain these different causes of speaking anxiety. The model classifies parts of the brain based on when they developed in evolutionary history, hence the Old Brain, the Mid Brain and the New Brain. The Old Brain developed first in evolutionary history it’s also called the Reptilian Brain cos they have it too. Then came the Mid Brain and finally the New Brain – which is most well-developed in human beings.

The three causes of public speaking fear and what you can do about them : Speaking about Presenting#comment-2947.

There is a type of fear of public speaking that isn’t often acknowledged. It’s a fear that can’t be dispelled. It’s the fear that comes from putting ourselves on the line.

When we say what we really mean and care about, we expose ourselves to public criticism, judgment, and rejection. That’s scary. We really only have two choices. 1) We can protect ourselves from that fear by playing it safe, by not saying anything deeply felt or controversial. 2) We can feel the fear and not let it stop us from speaking our truth.

Experience and good advice will eventually decrease the nervousness that we mostly associate with public speaking. But if you’re never scared about what you’re saying, it may be because you’re repeating what has worked for you in the past or mouthing other people’s conventional wisdom. I think a little bit of fear is a good thing. It’s a sign that you’re being honest and creative and daring.

Last week I wrote about the classic way of structuring a speech, using an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Today I’d like to take a different point of view and argue that some speeches are better off not following that rigid of a structure.

A good speech is like a story: It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. But it doesn’t always proceed through a discrete introduction, a three-part body, and a conclusion. Sometimes — frequently — a good speech seems simply to spill forth, like water pouring out of an upended bucket, following its own momentum.

The Gettysburg Address, for example, doesn’t follow the intro-body-conclusion structure. Lincoln did not preview his main points in an introduction, expound on those points in the body of his speech, and then reiterate them and give his audience reason to take action on them in his conclusion. He dove headlong into idea. He wound his way from the birth of the nation (“conceived in liberty”), through death (“these honored dead,” “that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion,” and “that these dead shall not have died in vain”), to rebirth (“a new birth of freedom”).

Most presidential speeches — think of Kennedy’s inaugural address or of Reagan’s address to the nation after the space shuttle Challenger disaster — don’t follow the intro-body-conclusion structure.

And most persuasive speeches don’t follow the intro-body-conclusion structure, even though they are often the most tightly structured type of speech. (When you’re trying to persuade an audience, you don’t want to give them a preview of your argument. Doing so will raise objections in their minds before you have a chance to address them in the way you want to.)

There’s good reason why so many speakers employ the intro-body-conclusion structure. It’s solid. It’s clear. It gives your audience a sense of comfort and security; they know, after all, where they are and where you’re taking them. But speeches built upon that structure can be a bit stodgy, predictable, pedantic. They can lack beauty, momentum, and grace. Depending on what you want to achieve, you may be better off not using that structure.

What do you think?

In a world that prizes form over content, style over substance, I believe that speeches stand or fall because of the ideas they propose and the words that are spoken to bring those ideas to life.

That’s why I titled a chapter from my book, “Content Is King.” (In it I examined three aspects of content: the idea of the speech, the structure of the speech, and the words.)

An idea, by the way, isn’t simply a dry, intellectual exercise. A good idea — a sticky idea, to borrow the term coined by the Heath brothers in Made to Stick – appeals to the whole person: to the mind, the imagination, and the emotions.

And that’s why I like a recent blog by Cynthia Starks, where she writes:

On the world stage, words can win votes, start wars, inspire a generation.

In the business world, they can increase customers, boost sales, guide and motivate employees, influence investors, mark individuals as thought-leaders and companies as pace-setters.

Words still matter

She goes on to write: “In all of the old and new ways in which business executives and organizational leaders are expected to communicate with their various constituencies today, one thing remains constant. Words matter. When the words are right, the message helps you meet your business and marketing goals. When the words are wrong, the message doesn’t matter.”

Check out the entire piece. And check out the rest of the blog while you’re at it. You’ll find it enriching.

Most presenters ask advice about how to start a speech.

I’ve blogged about ways to begin a speech here and Olivia Mitchell offers her insights here.

In no particular order, here are some ways to begin a speech or presentation:

• Tell a story.
• State a surprising statistic or unknown fact, as long as you can back it up with a reliable source.
• Ask a challenging question, not a self-serving or obvious one.
• Make a bold and contrarian assertion.
• Refer to a current event, as long as you keep in mind that current, these days, means really, really recent.
• Use a quote, if your audience hasn’t already heard it a gazillion times.

But there’s another question, one that rarely gets asked. And it’s this: where do you start a speech?

Anton Chekhov, the 19th century master of the short story and drama, was once asked by a nephew how he knew where to start a play. He replied: “Take your blue book and tear it in half. Begin there.”

I think most presenters could take their scripts, outlines, or slide sets, and delete much of the beginning. It’s probably an exaggeration to say they could eliminate half, but they could greatly improve their talks by cutting the first quarter or third.

I don’t just mean that you should ditch the opening pleasantries — “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 such statements ”opening banalities.”) You should ditch opening pleasantries.

I mean that you should also cut most of your introductory or background information.

If you’ve done your homework and if you’ve researched every possible aspect of your subject matter, your greatest temptation will be to share it all with your audience. Don’t do it. You’ll either overwhelm them with information or bore them. Or both.

And don’t build step by incremental step up to your dramatic moment or insight. Start there. Start with the drama or the insight. Then you can always fill the audience in on how you got there — if, and only if, they need to be filled in.

We may have set a new record, but not one we should be proud of: Three rude outbursts caught on national television in a single week.

First, there was Rep. Joe Wilson shouting at President Obama from the floor of Congress, “You lie.”

Then after a foot fault was called on Serena Williams at US Open tennis semi-finals, she unleashed a string of obscenities at the official. (This is the censored version.)

And Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMA’s for best female video to praise another singer’s video.

The problem with this type of outburst isn’t that they are rude–they are rude–but that they shut down public discourse.

When someone interrupts you while you’re giving a formal, televised speech and accuses you not just of being wrong but of lying, how can you respond?

When someone screams obscenities at you in a rage, what can you say in response?

When someone interrupts your acceptance speech and claims that another person deserves the award you’re receiving, what can you possibly say?

These outburts end dialogue and curtail the interchange of ideas.

What do you think?

There are many ways to mess up a speech or presentation. I’m tempted to paraphrase Leo Tolstoy and say “Every bad talk is bad in its own way.” But the bad presentations I’ve observed over the years–and there have been way too many of them–lead me to the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of bad talks are bad in a similar way: they lack a clear structure.

Whether you’re giving a speech or making a presentation (go here to read about the differences), the most important thing you need to do is structure it.

Yes, you need a good idea to begin with. You need supporting evidence and examples and illustrations and definitions and stories. And you need–if your primary intent is to convey information–visual aids and handouts. But most of all you need a structure that holds it all together.

What is the structure–your main idea–you’re building? What are its basic parts? How do they fit together?

(One of the problems with PowerPoint is that it doesn’t require you to develop a structure for your presentation. It lets you pull up a blank slide, fill it in with content, and repeat the process until you run out of things to say. It doesn’t require you to create a structure for your presentation, to build a logical argument, or to explain how the material on one slide is necessarily connected to the content on the next slide. It’s not, I’ll admit, PowerPoint’s fault if you don’t provide a structure; it’s your fault. But PowerPoint makes not creating a structure way too easy.)

The easiest and most fundamental way to structure any talk is to break it into three main sections:

1. Introduction
   To gain the audience’s attention and interest, to introduce your topic, and to provide an overview of what you’re going to talk about (your main idea)
2. Body
   To work through the 3 to 5 (preferably 3) main points of your talk that develop your main idea
3. Conclusion
   To sum up your main idea and to provide a reason or impetus for the audience to do something with it

People aren’t good listeners, so it’s your job to make it easy for them to follow you. Always keep them oriented. If you’ve got three points to make, tell them you have three points. And tell them which point you’re currently talking about (“My second point is…”). You may feel that you’re being repetitive–you are–but I promise you your audience won’t notice. They’ll just appreciate being able to follow you.

Using this fundamental introduction-body-conclusion structure is relatively easy. But I can’t believe how many seemingly experienced presenters fail to do so.

Where your creativity can come into play is in the body of the talk and how you structure it. That’s the subject of a future post.

Comments? Disagreements? Additions?

We often talk as if speeches and presentations are the same thing. So maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I believe there’s a huge difference.

(I think speeches and presentations are different in the same way that fiction and nonfiction are different. I’d almost be willing to say that a speech is to a presentation as fiction is to nonfiction, but I want to think about that comparison a bit more.)

Similarities

Both speeches and presentations use many of the same skills and techniques. Whether you’re speaking or presenting, you still have to prepare what you’re going to say, establish rapport with your audience, choose your words and use your voice carefully, follow a clear and easily understood outline, gear your remarks to the audience’s knowledge and needs. And many other things.

Differences

A presentation is primarily about information–about conveying or explaining information so that the audience can understand, remember, and use it.

A presentation tends to be informal. Presenters usually speak from notes, not a prepared script. (Inexperienced presenters usually use their PowerPoint slides as their notes, which is why they create more slides than are necessary and put too much information on them.) Presenters often put little thought into what they’re going to wear. They’re often content to show up in what they normally wear to work. (I think they’d be wiser to dress a bit more formally.)

A presentation tends to rely on PowerPoint. Handouts are common. (Printing up your PowerPoint slides using the “handout” format does not turn them into handouts. It’s a bad habit, one of the many bad habits PowerPoint has aided and abetted.)

A presentation has a tight focus. It is practical and down to earth, which doesn’t mean it can’t be exhilerating and eye opening at the same time.

A speech is primarily about a vision–about creating a vision in the audience’s imaginations of what is or of what can be.

A speech tends to be formal. Speakers usually have given a lot of thought and time to preparing a script, not just a general outline. They may read the script (or not), or memorize it word for word (not recommended), or memorize parts of it (as I recommend here.) Speakers often dress very nicely, often in formal business attire.

A speech relies on words and on the speaker’s voice, body, face, and gestures (not on PowerPoint) to create images and emotions in the hearts and minds of the audience. 

A speech is evocative, imaginative, and large in scope. It’s concerned more about the big picture than about details, more about the final destination than about each step along the way.

Sims Wyeth makes this distinction, which I agree with: “CEOs and thought leaders give speeches. Managers and technical experts give presentations.”

What do you think? Am I splitting hairs? Are there other distinctions you’d make?

My book, Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint: How to Speak So People Listen, is being released in the UK today!

It’s being published by Piatkus Books. And you can order it from Amazon.co.uk here.

There are so many wonderful books about speeches and presentations already published in the UK that it seems like I’m sending coals to Newcastle. I feel honored to have my book joining their ranks.

If you have a chance to read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts about it.

Photo courtesy of jtlondon at Flickr.

If the goal of any speech or presentation is to bring about some change in the audience, the question becomes what can you change in the relatively short time you have?

In a recent post I’ve suggested that you can and should change your audience’s feelings or emotions. But feelings being what they are–changeable and short-lived–you can’t count on changing your audience’s ongoing ways of feeling.

I’ve also suggested that you can change people’s actions–their immediate and specific actions. So you can, say, get them to award you the contract, approve your proposal, buy your product, agree to discuss the next step in a sales process. That sort of thing. What you probably can’t do is change their behavior, their patterns or habits of acting.

Now I’d like to make the case that you can change people’s ongoing feelings and behavior. But you have to do so by changing their way of thinking.

(Although I’m talking about changing your audience’s feelings, behaving, or thinking, I know you really can’t change other people. They can only change themselves. We can’t make people change, and we drive ourselves and them crazy by trying to do so. What I’m really talking about is doing something that gives people the opportunity to change themselves. That’s the best we can do.)

For people to change how they feel and act, not just for a moment but for a lifetime, they have to change how they think.

If people think their boss is a doofus, their coworkers are losers, and their job is a dead-end, they may feel bored or antagonistic and they may act passive-aggressively or haphazardly. In the hour or so that he’s speaking, a masterful motivational speaker may be able to get them to feel all warm and fuzzy and positive. (I wish him luck in doing so.) And he may even get them on their feet with everyone else chanting some life-affirming and self-empowering mantra. (I won’t name names, but I have seen a world-renown motivational speaker do just that with an arena full of people.) But if he hasn’t changed how they think about their boss, coworkers, and job, he hasn’t brought about any significant change. Because the moment they’re back at work, and the boss ignores their input or a coworker takes credit for something they did, they’ll revert to their customary ways of feeling and acting.

To make an ongoing change in how people feel and act, you have to change how they think.

Do you agree or disagree?

Photo courtesy of Flickr.