World Champion Evaluator evaluating like a champion

You have a speech to deliver tomorrow.  You knew this day was coming.  Now you have to crank out a speech.  And Quick!

If you have been in this position, you will know that the results can be less than optimal.  If you are lucky enough to get feedback, it will likely be that the content was rough.

While I don’t advocate creating speeches at the last minute (unless the goal is to stretch yourself), what can you do to create a good speech quickly?

Copyblogger has the answer.  SPEED writing:

• S: Select a topic
• P: Prepare your facts
• E: Establish a structure
• E: Eliminate distractions
• D: Dash to the finish

There’s some excellent advice that relates just as much to speech writing as it does to creating blog posts.  Specifically, writing a speech about one idea, and avoiding editing while you are writing.

I have heard way too many speeches that try to cram everything into the alloted time with one of 2 results.  Either the speech goes way over time or the speech is cut short.  Picking a single focused idea is key to managing your time and also getting your message across.  If say 10 things, you say nothing. (From Made to Stick I believe).  Example topics:

1. Psychology
2. Cognitive Psychology
3. How Cognitive Psychology helped me to…

Number 3 would be an acceptable topic.  Not only is the topic more focused, it also looks like it would be story-based which is always a good idea.

Often times, the structure of your speech only reveals itself after you have written it.  So, why try to edit it while you are putting down your original thoughts?  Just dump everything onto the page, and edit the structure and composition later.

Read the Copyblogger article before you create your next speech, even if you have plenty of time.  Let me know how it goes.

Posted under Public Speaking

Lisa has an excellent example of the best pause ever.  Notice how in the description, you can totally picture how the scene transpires and how the pause totally adds drama and humor.

Posted under Public Speaking

So often we seem to forget that there’s more to public speaking than mechanics.  I agree that it is useful to remove um’s and ah’s, to use expressive gestures, and to use variety in your voice.  But, if you master the mechanics, will your speech be successful?

No.  Not purely because of mechanics.

Yet another insightful post from Seth Godin on what it takes to be successful.  Yet again it applies just as well to public speaking.  Here’s the hierarchy:

1. Attitude
2. Approach
3. Goals
4. Strategy
5. Tactics
6. Execution

When you create your next speech, start with 1,2, and 3.  Write down your goals, approach, and attitude.  Refer to your answers while practicing your speech.  Hand them to your evaluator and have them compare your speech with your goals.  Share your approach.  Exhude your attitude in your delivery.

No doubt execution, tactics, and strategy are important, but they do not make a speech.  They polish it.

Make your next speech successful!

Posted under Public Speaking

What do you use to write your speech?  My guess is that you don’t use a knife.  How could you use a knife to write a speech?

Well, you can’t really do that, but you can edit your speech with a knife.  Check out the excellent CopyBlogger article on How to Write with a Knife.

In summary:

• Write for yourself, edit for your readers
• Find the spine of your content and stick to it
• Cut the first paragraph
• Don’t over-spice your words
• Watch out for “creep-in” words
• Cut exaggerations
• Find a more precise word
• Reuse the leftovers

I think that finding the spine and sticking to it is one of the best pieces of advice here for speeches.  Many speakers will try to tell you everything about a subject when they would be best served telling one part.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Posted under Public Speaking

Excellent article on CopyBlogger asking Are Vampire Words are Sucking the Life Out of your Writing? The topic pertains very much to speeches too.

I would add the word “thing” to the list for speeches.  ”Thing” is such a non-descriptive word.  There’s always a better word than “thing” that describes the subject of your attention.

Posted under Public Speaking

Five coffees, 3 blisters, and 1 replaced light bulb later and you now have your presentation ready.  All night was a small price to pay for the impact your slides are going to have on your soon to be new client.  And then the unthinkable happens…

“Technical issues” – the projector doesn’t want to play ball, you forgot the power cord, your laptop died, the file is corrupted, a blue screen, the mouse, anything that can go wrong… did!

What are you to do?  Well, you can blabber on about how your slides would have shown this or that and blame technology for your shortsightedness… or you can take control of your destiny and use the “Talking Pad”

Seth Godin’s latest post tells you what the Talking Pad is.

thick pen or marker and a legal pad

This can be your backup when the unthinkable happens.  BTW, it really isn’t unthinkable so much as it is ignored with the hope that it never happens.

BUT WAIT!!!!

If you can present a compelling presentation with a Talking Pad, why not do this in the first place?  Why depend at all on slides?  There’s not much that can go wrong with a thick pen (with a backup) and a legal pad – both of which are likely available for next to nothing anywhere.

BUT WAIT ONE MORE TIME!!!

Did you just let out a sigh of relief?  Don’t get too excited.  You will need to spend just as much time (hopefully not the night before) on preparing your Talking Pad presentation as you would for your slides.  More possibly because this will not feel comfortable unless you practice it.

I suggest that the next time you give a speech to use the Talking Pad.  Get comfortable with when you give your next Toastmasters meeting so that when it really matters you will be ready.

When you use the Talking Pad next, please let me know how it went and share what you learned from the experience.

Update:

Seth just did a follow up post on a Modern Talking Pad.  Kinda like a Mad-Libs version where you fill in the blanks with your client.

Posted under Public Speaking

Just read an excellent article by Lisa Braithwaite on metaphor.  In the article about the use of metaphor in the Tour de France commentary, Lisa talks about Phil & Paul’s excellent use of color to make a potentially dull 3+ hours, exciting.  The commentary is there to add a story to a sporting event.  The story makes the event come alive rather than just be a copy of what you can already see.

When you think of it compared to a PowerPoint presentation, Paul and Phil and not merely reading their slides, they are capturing the essence and making it come alive.

Evaluate your speeches and presentations.  Have you made the topic as interesting as you could?

Posted under Public Speaking

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
 
- Rudyard Kipling – Excerpt from The Elephant’s Child

There’s more to these 6 questions than initially meet the eye. Three of them are open-ended and three of them are much less so. Why would that matter? Well, open-ended questions work better at the start of a conversation, while close-ended questions work better once you have a decision.

Open-ended:

• What?
• Why?
• How?

Close-ended:

• When?
• Where?
• Who?

Never end your presentation on a question.  You will be at the mercy of the answer.  This often happens in PowerPoint presentations.  You have spewed your brain forth onto the slide and you want to know what you missed.  Avoid this.  Ask for questions throughout your presentation to engage your audience in dialogue.  If you don’t want to do that, prepare a strong conclusion that comes after the Q&A.

Finally, when you end a presentation, you can ignore the advice above and ask an open-ended question such as:

How do you see yourself making use of the information I just presented?

When you do this, you will get a sense of how well your information came across. Still follow it up with a fantastic close that ties that response into your conclusion.

Posted under Public Speaking

In a post directed at unemployed college students, Seth Godin talks about a fantastic post-graduate year doing the following:

• Spend twenty hours a week running a project for a non-profit.
• Teach yourself Java, HTML, Flash, PHP and SQL. Not a little, but mastery.
• Volunteer to coach or assistant coach a kids sports team.
• Start, run and grow an online community.
• Give a speech a week to local organizations.
• Write a regular newsletter or blog about an industry you care about.
• Learn a foreign language fluently.
• Write three detailed business plans for projects in the industry you care about.
• Self-publish a book.
• Run a marathon.

“If you wake up every morning at 6, give up TV and treat this list like a job, you’ll have no trouble accomplishing everything on it. Everything! When you do, what happens to your job prospects?”

Seth makes a compelling point.  I suggest you join Toastmasters and you will learn even more about communication AND increase your network, both of which will prove invaluable.

BTW, other than the possibility of running a marathon, there’s no reason why everyone that is unemployed could be doing this.

Posted under Public Speaking, Toastmasters

Check out the Dear Speakers post by James Duncan Davidson.  The article started as a series of tweets.  Some great wisdom from the audience point of view.  There’s also some amazing pictures of speakers.

The pointers, which are expanded on in the article and in the comments (definitely worth reading), are:

• Please deliver your speech to the crowd, not the screen.
• Pick a spot and stay.
• Take off your name tag.
• Stop walking  backwards.
• Make eye contact with your audience.
• The corner of the stage is darker than rest of stage.
• If you are being videotaped, all of the above matters 10x more.
• Dress like you mean it.
• When on a panel, look at who’s talking.

Taking off your name tag was an interesting one for me.  Having a name tag in your photo doesn’t make you look so good.  You never know when you are going to have your picture taken, so it is good to get into the practice of taking the name tag off.

The comments shed a lot of light on moving around the stage.  A lot of people defending the practice.  James Duncan Davidson does not suggest that these are rules that MUST be obeyed.  They are pointers that most speakers could do better with.  Once you can do all of these naturally, then it is time to experiment by wearing shorts and a t-shirt, walking backwards towards the corner of the stage with your name tag on, all the time looking at your feet.

Posted under Public Speaking