So far this series hasn’t looked at specific speaking methods, but it will. This short entry touches on that, and one other point.
The other point is that my approach is not the only way to get there. Anything that works for you is fine with me.
Among patient speakers, the most conspicuous example of not-Dave is the amazing Regina Holliday, who among other things is giving a master class in September at the Stanford Medicine X conference.
Speaking skills count
Regina’s method’s different from mine, but she brought an essential skill: she’s an accomplished storyteller (which shows up in her blog posts) and had extensive speaking experience in high school. Reviewing a draft of this post, she wrote:
My senior year in high school I qualified for regional competition in Lincoln Douglas debate, domestic extemp, foreign extemp, original oratory, poetry, humorous interp, dramatic interp, monologue, humorous duet and dramatic duet.
Two takeaways:
- Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t be who you are. If something works for you, good!
- If you haven’t had training or mentoring, see if you can get some, to develop yourself.
- As I said yesterday, I had to attend forty events before I got paid a cent – let’s see if we can shorten that! The point is that no matter how “right” your message is, you’re responsible for delivering it effectively.
Other successful speakers: were you trained or mentored? By whom? Or did it just come naturally to you?
Next in the series: #9: Your website, with video
Dave – I’m loving this series. Great posts!
Regarding your first take away, I had a similar thought this week while giving a workshop.
Not only should we focus on what works for us, in terms of style, but it doesn’t seem to work well when people try and borrow someone else’s style.
Or put another way – develop your own style, don’t take someone else’s, it probably won’t fit well.
Great to hear from you, Nick.
I’d love to hear from other experienced presenters on this – including people with various performing backgrounds. Trevor Torres, mentioned earlier in the series, has acting experience; however each of us starts, we have to start somewhere, and if we don’t know WHERE to start, then it can be useful to start with acting like someone else. But it’s gotta work.
I use methods all the time that I picked up from others.
Perhaps most important is that you have the courage of your convictions. If you know what you have to say is important to you, then style can follow. Heaven knows – when I started speaking, I had no idea what people would think. All I could do was speak from the heart.
I’ve used The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs : how to be insanely great in front of any audience / Carmine Gallo. as a template for my talks with at least 3 slides for humor.
Thanks for the tip, Dean!
In my thin-but-consistent-experience any stage or speaking experience helps at least to begin convincing oneself that one can stand before a group and talk. I used to drum professionally, altho in this context that’s been of very limited value since a large drumkit is a huge wall between oneself and an audience. If you’ve conducted any sort of class (I did software training labs for some years) you’ve got a leg up—I still recall my legs literally shaking at the start of of my first class! For those wanting to begin, most communities are chock full of unpaid speaking opportunities—service clubs (Rotary, etc), and Toastmasters clubs may be a good learning venue for some. Also look for opportunities to make statements to legislative bodies on legislation germane to your work. And if that body is a rare committee reporting after a year’s work the audience will fill a statehouse chamber. But seeking paid speaking gigs really does require that one’s spoken enough to feel secure, not just confident, in one’s ability to provide clarity and value.
Great advice on ways to get started, Bart! Thanks.
> used to drum professionally, altho in this context that’s been of very limited value
> since a large drumkit is a huge wall between oneself and an audience.
LOL!
Any thoughts from your drumming experience on Nick’s point about picking up another person’s style?
Hah! Well in music it’s all about taking a snippet here and there stylistically. (here’s the kit, now long-since traded away for a bevy of home theatre gear: http://on.fb.me/1803fcT . Now imagine seeing the 19 year old me pulling the blue sparkle off under some Tallahassee woods to reveal that gorgeous birdseye. Lotta work!). I dunno; I am (perhaps everyone is) idiosyncratic; I’m just me and try to express my thoughts and myself as best and earnestly as I can. i guess, should you find something stylistically to adopt from another speaker, it’s gotta be deeply wrapped within your own expression of it.
I actually have more thoughts about style based on my experience as a self-taught professional graphic designer. I’ve read the Jobs presentation secrets book and am glad that its author decoded Jobs’ visuals. I had thought when reading it that if I ever were to prep a TED-style talk that I’d dig it out and refer to it. Turns out that when that opportunity arose I did not. I just had to find and wend my own way through the visuals (50+ screens). I’d say though that if you think your slide deck sucks it probably does and that investing money to hire a decent graphic designer with slide deck experience would be something to seriously consider. “Decent” includes both artistry and the ability to spec design by getting you to clearly articulate design *goals* that become articulatable, hence measurable ,when viewing the proposed design solution.
I love this comment by Regina – “My senior year in high school I qualified for regional competition in Lincoln Douglas debate, domestic extemp, foreign extemp, original oratory, poetry, humorous interp, dramatic interp, monologue, humorous duet and dramatic duet.”
If people don’t realize this already, both Dave and Regina have the ability move a room. It is really powerful to experience.
I would say I came by my ‘presence’ in a different method. I was actually quite outgoing as a child but did not like to be on stage (all of my siblings did theater growing up). I did the lights, and continued with a technical path to undergrad and grad school.
I have always enjoyed interacting with people, so getting over my anxiety was easy when I became dorm council member, then ASME Chair at NCState, then Grad Leadership Council (where I even got regularly introduce then-Provost Condi Rice). Dave has said it – it takes preparation. It takes anticipating what the audience can hear, wants to hear, needs to hear. They all may be different, so while the final talk may be exciting to give, it’s the thinking before hand that is really potent. Thanks Dave for all of these great posts – and the interaction is fabulous!
I have another angle on this and I may induce some shock with it. I think stories are overvalued. Yes, I understand that they are connective tissue between people. In my case (dunno about anyone else’s), dealing with end of life reform, I feel that articulating the story of my parents’ (that’s both of them) 3-week terminal hospitalizations, the events that got me going in this realm, to the point that an audience would fully ingest the gravity of what we all face, would take so long as to leave too little time for anything else. “Anything else” is, in my area of interest, *everything else of value*. “Value” is ACTIONABLE information, that is not one but several to many takeaways that people can actually use that have the real potential to materially help them when they need that help. My story alone cannot do that. I constantly struggle with balancing both the time used for conveying my backstory and the parts of it I include versus what I want to offer an audience — which grows and grows as my body of work grows. I like to think that this irritation may result in a story pearl but I really don’t know if it will.
So if an audience were to want to hear my lay-person-to-patient-activist story, I can do that. But I am, and I offer, much much more. I sometimes wonder what it’d be like to dispense with the backstory entirely. If I knew that, for instance, a keynote or plenary would be followed with a moderated personal or panel QA I might consider doing that and handling the backstory then. At this writing that idea is just an abstraction.
Can’t help but make another suggestion: if you’re going to introduce something truly bizarre and risky (a certain rap comes to mind) then do it in a venue that carries little overall risk like a service club chapter meeting. Or an Ignite evening, which at least around my parts are pretty damn rowdy. In fact, Ignite talks are *great* experiments that I should have mentioned above. Look ’em up: 5 minute pressure-cookers with 20 slides (you make ’em) AUTO-ADVANCING every 15 seconds. Part of the fun for Ignite audiences is the potential for a speaker to crash and burn, so to speak. So you can be brave, field-test some craziness, and gain experience before a sizable crowd with distilling your core brilliance into what they term a “spark”. Don’t dream of attempting a TEDx talk without first doing an Ignite or two. Also, Ignites get posted online so you end up with one or both, a self-informative video or a nifty unique speaker reel.
My background as a classically trained actor helps me a great deal. Without this training I could not be working towards any goals with a public speaking element. I gave an oral presentation in university where I froze and ran out the room!! Gracefully accepting the 0% from my prof!!
As I writer I also like to draft the talk like an essay first. I never use the words verbatim but creating and relying on the structure I create helps a lot.
In preparation of a talk I rehearse the speech for length. Ideally I like to record my speeches to hear them or video-tape with my phone to actually see myself give them. Seeing myself is particularly helpful. (This is a method I picked up preparing for big auditions when I was still acting) . On video I can look at body language, posture, weird mannerisms, funny faces and try to correct myself. Luckily I was drilled on my nervous mannerisms in theatre school – so I am already conscious of those “ticks”.
I am a person who could probably be accused of being over-prepared but I find that pre-work eases my nerves and gives me the confidence to wing it when it’s time to “knock it out of the park”.