Life After PowerPoint!

People often say — because there’s some truth in it — that a speech or presentation is like a conversation. It should be immediate, direct, and — whether formal or informal — unadorned. It has to be immediately understood, and it should create the sense of a give and take, an interchange of ideas and emotions.

Ronald Reagan told his speechwriters that he never wanted to say anything in a speech that he wouldn’t say in conversation with his barber in Santa Barbara. (His speeches, mind you, might have had more memorable passages, if he hadn’t imposed such a restraint on them.)

But every time you say something is like something else, you always have to acknowledge that the two things are also unalike.

Listen closely to a conversation or read the word-for-word transcription of one, and you’ll realize that most conversations don’t deserve to be emulated. Our day-to-day conversations are laced with ums and ers and you knows and it’s likes. Run-on or incomplete sentences are common. And changing subject mid-sentence is not uncommon. So in some ways you don’t want your speech or someone else’s speech to be exactly like a conversation.

(Max Atkinson has a great chapter in Lend Me Your Ears, titled “Speaking in Private and Speaking in Public,” that bears directly upon this topic.)

I think a speech or presentation should be like the conversation people have not in real life but in well-written books or movies.

Apply Mark Twain’s advice about creating dialogue for fictional characters to your speeches, and you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about:

When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the circumstances, and have a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevance, and remain in the neighborhood of the the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.

A college teacher wrote to tell me that she and her students were enjoying the “listening quiz” that’s posted on my website here.

In the intro to the quiz I stated, “80% (give or take 5%) of effective communication involves listening.” Because she’s an academic, she asked me where I got that statistic. What studies had I based that statement on? Sadly, I had to admit I made it up based on my experience.

I’m not going to die defending the 80% number, but I do firmly believe that effective communication depends much more on listening than on speaking.

And when it comes to promoting civil public discourse–as I’m trying to do in reaction all the very uncivil discourse out there–you can’t go wrong by listening. The various parties involved in what amounts to hate speech are always shouting at, talking over, or waving signs at other people. They never listen.

(You might want to check out the International Listening Association for its resources.)

Do you agree that listening is more important than speaking? What’s the percentage you’d assign to listening?

Image courtesy of Dave Fayram at Flickr.

Continuing my theme of promoting civil public discourse (as opposed to so much of the uncivil public discourse that’s out there), I’d like to promote a blog on honesty that Mark Sanborn has recently posted: Absolute Honesty: Avoiding Dishonesty Traps.

He lists five dishonesty traps. (Read them in their entirety here.)

1. Over-promising
2. Vagueness
3. Lies of omission
4. Lying to ourselves
5. Failing to take action

I would add the dishonesty of mislabeling something so it sounds more attractive than it actually is. (Politicians, their advisors, and representatives are masters at this.)

What would you add?

I came upon a great article, The Humble Flipchart – a Project Manager’s Best Friend by Tom Ferguson. It lists the benefits of using a flipchart to facilitate brainstorming:

1. Provides focus for the team.
2. Records and displays our thoughts so far
3. Communicates more than words and sometimes what words cannot
4. Invites participation and when participants see their ideas up there in print, this encourages even more and better participation
5. Leverages the diverse knowledge, skills and experiences in the team towards specific objectives
6. Captures the thoughts of all and not just your own
7. Provides a platform for all to refer to and work from
8. Verifies that all contributions have been accepted, understood and are of value
9. Allows fast forward and rewind back and forth to add to or reposition a particular point
10. Pages can be reordered easily with the help of tape or bluetack

I think that many types of presentations can reap the same benefits.

You wouldn’t want to use a flipchart if your presentation is predominantly a one-way transfer of knowledge, where your goal is to communicate content you know to people who don’t know it. And you wouldn’t want to use a flipchart in a large room where people would be unable to see it. But you might want to use a flipchart, when you’re trying to facilitate a sharing of information or a group process (like brainstorming).

Using a flipchart encourages audience participation and interaction more effectively than just about any other process or tool that’s available. Audience members aren’t just responding or adding to the content on a slide someone else (i.e. you) created and displayed. They aren’t simply asking questions, which keeps them in the learner mode. They’re actually creating content. They’re generating ideas. They’re taking ownership. They, in effect, are acting like adults, which is — to my way of thinking — to be encouraged.

Do you use flipcharts? If so, what suggestions or reservations do you have about doing so?

I haven’t written many posts lately. And I’ve wondered why. At first I blamed the fact — alas — that my home/office was flooded during a mid-December rainstorm. Then I blamed getting caught up in the holidays. But finally I realized that I was suffering — again! — from an overexposure to uncivil civil discourse.

I love public debate and the lively exchange of ideas. And I think that speeches, especially those given by leaders – politicians, executives, community leaders, religious authorities, and the like – should set forth big ideas, whether they’re popular or not. As a result, I’ve found this past year or so overwhelmingly painful.

The tone and tenor of our public discourse has too frequently become polarized and polarizing, shrill and strident, malicious, abusive, and offensive. Shouting has replaced listening. Courtesy is nonexistent. Name calling is common. Evidence, logic, and the common good are commonly ignored. People who expound ideas that others dislike are shouted down or maligned.

I let the negativity get to me. I needed to take a break from it all. Now I’m back.

In this blog I want to reflect on and host a discussion of speeches and presentations — the good, the bad, and the boring — in a civil manner. I don’t mind controversy. I kind of like it. But I won’t tolerate discourtesy.

Next up: a discussion of what civil discourse means. Any ideas you’d like to share?