•Match your attire to your goal. What image are you hoping to present to the audience? Do you want to project confidence, style, or power? Do you want to come across as down-to-earth and quirky? Choose your clothes according to your goal.
•Think of the venue. If you are speaking on a panel, you’ll most likely be seated on a chair on a raised podium, with people’s eye level falling somewhere below your waist. If you’re wearing pants, make sure they are comfortable to sit in. If you’re wearing a skirt or dress, make sure the hemline is long enough so that your audience can’t look up your skirt.
•When in doubt, ask someone. Ask a colleague who has spoken at a similar event, or ask the organizer about the dress code. Personally, I like to err on the safe side, which harkens back to my mother’s advice when I was in middle school: Allison, you set the dress code.
TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY
Speaking in public is like playing a sport. It is a physical and mental activity that requires training and preparation. Here are some tips for keeping your body in shape and ready to speak.
•Get enough sleep the night before the speech or presentation. Personally, I need seven to eight hours of sleep before a speech. I can speak with six hours of sleep, but I’m not at my best and I can’t do it repeatedly. Protect your time and get enough rest. You might be staying at a hotel the night before the speech, so recognize what you need to sleep at a hotel. For me, it’s a white-noise app on my smartphone and noise-cancelling headphones.
•Get some sort of exercise. Your body is a physical instrument that responds to physical stimulus. Go for a brisk walk, get to the gym, or do some sort of workout in your room the day of the speech—for me, it’s push-ups, sit-ups, running in place, and stretching.
•Meditate. I find that spending time in meditation the day of the speech (and every day) helps me calm down. I sit in a chair for fifteen minutes and focus on my breathing, using the techniques I’ve taught you in Chapter 7. There are numerous methods of meditation; use what works for you.
•Drink lots of water. Water hydrates your vocal cords, so drink water leading up to the speech and feel free to have a bottle or glass nearby on the lectern or table.
•Protect your voice. If you have a cold on the day of your speech, use cough drops to soothe your throat and stick to herbal tea with honey instead of caffeinated beverages. If you’ve lost your voice, try gargling with warm saltwater to get it back. And try vocal rest—no talking at all—in the twenty-four hours leading up to your speech.
What to Avoid Before You Speak
As an opera singer, I learned early on what to avoid before going onstage. Certain foods and beverages would reduce the quality of my singing voice. They have the same effect when speaking.
•Avoid loud venues. Networking at the bar the night before your speech might be fun, but it fatigues your voice when you have to yell to be heard. Try to network in quieter spaces with fewer people, or get there early and leave early.
•Avoid alcohol. Singing karaoke taught me that while drinking alcohol might improve how I sounded to myself, it did not improve how I sounded to my audience. In a speech or presentation, you’re putting yourself in a dangerous position by going onstage in a diminished mental capacity. If you’re nervous, use the natural methods I’ve talked about in this book instead of relying on alcohol.
•Reduce caffeine. Notice I didn’t say “avoid caffeine,” because I can’t do that myself. Recognize that caffeine dries out your vocal cords (as does alcohol), so drink herbal tea with honey right before you speak.
MY PRE-SPEECH RITUAL
I remember coaching a group of college students ten years ago, on the day they presented their leadership projects to donors, parents, and professors. They clustered around me in the hallway outside the conference room, clamoring for help to calm down. They were so nervous, they couldn’t eat dinner. We went through the following exercise, which I now use with each and every client, from young professionals to senior executives. It only takes five minutes, but it completely changes your mind-set about speaking. You can watch a video guiding you through this exercise at www.speakwithimpactbook.com. Whether you use mine or develop a new one, find a pre-speech ritual that works for you.
Step 1: Find a quiet place where you can be alone. It might be your office, your hotel room, or even a public restroom at the venue where you are speaking.
Step 2: Get rid of nervous energy. Start by shaking out your arms and legs, one at a time. Stretch out your face to lightly loosen your jaw. Do vocalized lip trills to warm up your voice. Find the right posture for speaking: raise your arms up while you take a gentle breath in, then slowly exhale while you lower your arms, keeping your rib cage where it is. See Chapter 7 for more breathing tips.
Step 3: Center yourself. Take gentle breaths in through your nose, feeling the energy fill your body. As you exhale, center yourself and be present in the moment. Don’t think about anything other than your breath. Take a breath in on a count of three and slowly exhale on a count of four.
Step 4: Remind yourself, Why you? Answer that question out loud. Read your Core Value Statement (from Chapter 7) out loud. This exercise prevents your mind from going blank because it connects you with your sense of purpose; you stop focusing on your nerves and instead focus on your message and its impact on your audience.
Step 5: Run through your opening and closing. The only parts I recommend you memorize in your speech are the opening and closing so that when you walk out onstage, you are prepared to start and end with power and purpose.
It takes five minutes to go through this exercise, but it can change your entire outlook on your upcoming speech. Give it a try!
DEALING WITH BEING ONSTAGE
You’ve warmed up, centered yourself, and prepared a great speech or presentation. You’ve walked out onstage or to the front of the conference room and are looking at a sea of expectant faces all turned toward you. Hopefully, some of them are smiling. Hopefully, not too many are on their digital devices. What now?
Don’t overthink things. Don’t feel like you need to ease into it with a So, yeah intro. Pause and breathe, smile, turn to one person, and say your opening sentence. Then look at someone else and say the next sentence. Suddenly, you’re thinking about the message instead of about your nerves. The audience is smiling and nodding, a few people are taking notes, and you’re getting the hang of it. As you speak, your sense of purpose increases and you focus on the power of your message. You make eye contact to ensure that everyone is with you, and you use body language to reinforce your words. Your voice is strong and purposeful. Your words have impact. You’re doing this!
There will be things that go wrong. There is no perfect speech, ever—but it’s not about what goes wrong with your speech, it’s about your confidence in handling those situations.
What if your mind goes blank while you are speaking? That’s why you have your bullet points in front of you with the main messages. Simply pause and breathe, nod thoughtfully, glance down at your notes, and move on to your next point.
What if the AV doesn’t work? Even if you’ve arrived early and triple-checked the AV, something can still go wrong. You have a few options here: you can keep calm and try to fix it yourself, you can take a quick break, or you can continue without using AV by saying, Let’s keep going and we’ll come back to this.
What if your audience seems distracted? You can ask the audience questions or have them answer a question in groups of two to reinvigorate their attention. Refer to the sidebar about reading the room.
What if I pass out from nerves? You won’t. Pause and breathe to calm yourself down and focus on your message.
READING THE ROOM
Communication is a two-way street: while you’re giving the speech, the audience is responding in different ways. Here are some positive and negative signs to look for. Keep in mind that audience reactions vary widely depending on culture, so take the time to understand the culture(s) of your audience in advance.<
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Positive Reactions
When the audience reacts positively to your speech, you can feel it. There’s an energy or electricity in the room; sometimes you’ll even forget about time. Here are some signs:
•Making eye contact
•Nodding heads
•Laughing/smiling in the right places
•Asking questions/making comments
•Taking notes
Usually, these positive reactions happen when you’ve taken the time to frame your message in a way that is relevant and urgent for your audience. They also happen when you care about your message and deliver it with energy, conviction, and confidence.
Negative Reactions
I always caution people not to get carried away when the audience seems disengaged. Sometimes it could be because of your presentation. Sometimes it’s due to outside circumstances. Here are some signs:
•Looking at their phone or digital device
•Defensive body language (arms crossed, frowning expression)
•Head resting in their hands
•Not making eye contact with you
•Falling asleep
When do these negative reactions happen? Sometimes your speech or presentation is at the end of a long day. Sometimes the audience has heard endless lectures with no audience engagement. Maybe the room is cold. It also happens when you don’t take the time to present material in a way that’s relevant to them, or you yourself are bored.
When I see the above reactions from a number of people during my speech (not just one person), I will include one of the following techniques:
•Open it up for questions. “Let me stop here for a moment. What questions do you have?”
•Ask the audience a question. “Who else has dealt with this topic? What did you learn?”
•Groups of two. Ask the audience to pair up and talk through the pros and cons of something you’ve discussed in the speech.
•Summarize your main points. Summarize what you’ve said so far, to make sure the audience is with you.
•Tell a story. Insert a relevant story that lets the audience sit back and listen.
•Table discussion. Throw out a challenge and have people discuss the solution at their tables, then report back by table.
If you know the context of your speech in advance—room setup, the timing in the day, the composition of the audience—then you can pre-plan those energizers throughout the speech.
Use the above indicators to read the room while you are speaking, and be flexible enough to change your outline in response to your audience’s reaction. The result will be a more engaging speech and a more engaged audience.
FOLLOWING THE SPEECH
Congratulations! You’ve given the speech or presentation! You can go home and collapse now, right? Wrong. You can give the same speech a hundred times and never improve. How you debrief the speech is a critical part of your development as a speaker. Within ten minutes of concluding your speech or presentation, debrief the experience by asking yourself these three questions.
1.What went well? Be specific.
2.What didn’t go well? Be honest.
3.What are you going to do differently next time? Be strategic.
I’ve created a Speaker’s Logbook so our clients can keep track of their feedback from one speech or presentation to the next. You can find one at www.speakwithimpactbook.com. We also have speech feedback forms you can download and give to a friend or colleague in the audience before you speak. Make time to speak with that person immediately following the speech so you can receive valuable feedback while it’s fresh. Add that feedback to your Logbook.
If there was a video of your speech, watch the video. I hate doing it, too, but I learn from it every time, and it’s a critical part of my leadership communication workshops. You notice things like your voice trailing off at the end of a sentence or your energy not being big enough for the room. Athletes watch playbacks of their performance, and musicians do the same. If you’re serious about making progress, you must see how you’re actually doing, as opposed to relying on how you felt. Enlist a friend or colleague to give you feedback as well. Oftentimes, they will have observations that you can’t (or won’t) see.
When you watch the video of your speech, you may be pleasantly surprised with how it went! In that case, how about sharing it on social media or posting it online, if your organization will allow it? If you’re interested in more speaking opportunities, then posting a quality video online is a great way to broadcast your speaking skills to interested meeting planners.
Based on your self-assessment of how the speech went and the feedback you receive from others and from the video, it’s time to make a plan to continue making progress. Should you join Toastmasters where you can practice your skills in a safe environment? Will you take a formal course at a local college? Will you look for online programs where you can brush up on your skills? Will you find a practice buddy to help you through the process? Or will you get an executive coach to help you? All of these are valid options.
Public speaking is a skill; if you give one speech and never speak again, you won’t develop the skill. Hopefully, you have a renewed sense of purpose and passion for speaking that will push you to find new opportunities to speak, both at work and elsewhere. Many times, going through communication training at work will provide skills that you can use in your community as well, when you have to confront a neighborhood development project or speak up for a special program in your child’s school. There are opportunities all around you to use your voice to make an impact.
This first half of the book provided a step-by-step approach to writing, practicing, and delivering a speech or presentation. In the second half, we’ll look at specific speaking situations—from presenting with slides, to speaking off the cuff, to moderating a panel. Use this second half as a reference manual; find the sections that apply to the kind of speaking situations you face so that you can command the room and influence others on any occasion.
CHAPTER 9
Illustrate the Speech
How to Use Visual Aids and Technology
UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF VISUAL AIDS
I don’t use many visual aids when speaking. My goal is to teach people how to connect on a personal level with an audience, and I find that props too often become a barrier. To quote Tamara Elliott Rogers, who served as Harvard University’s Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development for over a decade, “I like to power my own points!”
Having said that, there are ways you can use visual aids to effectively reinforce your message. Here are some ways:
•Capture your audience’s attention. Used effectively, a visual aid can capture (or regain) your audience’s attention by showing something unique and unexpected. If their minds have been wandering, then a physical prop or unusual slide will bring their attention back by saying, “Listen up, something new and interesting is happening.” It’s an effective way to break up the monotony of a presentation.
•Paint a picture for your audience. Presentation slides let you go beyond words to paint a picture in your audience’s mind. Why spend five minutes describing a scenario when you can instantly show a picture?
•Take your audience on an emotional journey. A brief, inspirational film clip can tug at your audience’s heartstrings and create empathy with your subject. If you lead a nonprofit, you can show a clip of your work in the field.
•Reinforce a point. You can reinforce an important point through a slide or image. If one of your points is that turnover at your company has reached unprecedented levels, show a graph that compares the trend to previous years and creates a sense of urgency.
•Address different ways of learning. We learn through both listening and reading, so provide both options to maximize learning. If your audience members have different levels of language fluency, it can be helpful to hear and see the message simultaneously.
•Converse with your audience. With technology, props c
an make a presentation much more interactive. You can use digital tools to poll your audience, solicit and answer questions, send handouts, and enable social media.
•Remember your notes or read your script. In larger conference rooms, you will find monitors at the foot of the stage, turned toward the presenter, that display the time remaining or bullet points of your notes. You can use a teleprompter to display your script.
•Broaden your audience. You can use streaming technology to broadcast your message around the world. Companies will use this for remote workers participating in training. Or you can use Facebook Live to broadcast your message online for a much wider audience.
Let’s look at the types of visual aids available to see what’s the best fit. Regardless of which ones you choose, make sure you understand the room, the venue’s capabilities, and the size of your audience.
USING PHYSICAL AIDS
The beauty of using physical aids is that they work without electricity. Prepare them in advance, and you can rely on them without worrying about Internet access or having the right adapters. Just remember to bring them with you or ship them to the venue in advance.
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