Archive for 2009

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Never Give A Speech Without Having A Potato

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Every Speaker Must Respect The Power Of A Potato

Every Speaker Must Respect The Power Of A Potato

Bored audiences will get up and walk out of your speeches. How would you keep the attention of 400+ engineers who were attending an industry dinner event that they didn’t really want to be at on a weekday evening? I recently had the opportunity to be the master of ceremonies at such an event – great gig, tough crowd.

The banquet’s master of ceremonies (MC) last year had tried very hard, but had ended up not being able to hold the crowd’s attention and they had started to leave before the event was even half over. This year’s planning committee presented me with a challenge: find a way to keep the audience in their seats until the end of the event. It turns out that a single large baking potato was a key part of my solution to this problem…

Not A Speech, But Rather A 3-Act Play

Two weeks before the banquet was to be held, I had a meeting with the planning committee. The banquet is an annual event for all of the engineers involved in transportation in the Tampa, Florida area. I had been asked to be a co-MC for the event in order to help make it a success. The trouble was that I know next to nothing about the transportation industry.

The other MC knew a lot about the industry having worked in it for over 25 years. This was a perfect pairing – his smarts and my creativity held the key to our potential success.

The planning committee wanted to focus on the future of transportation in Florida. Since this was not a typical speech, there wasn’t a speech to prepare. Instead I was looking at creating a play with three acts: an opening, then a second act after the banquet’s first speaker, but before its second speaker. Finally, there would be a third act that would close out the evening.

The Initial Plan: Potatoes Everywhere

Never one to be at a loss for ideas, my initial plan to the team was to propose other forms of transportation that people may not have thought of: catapults, rocket launchers, etc.

I took my plan one step further and proposed that we get someone to come up from the audience, put an apron on them, and then have them try to carry as many potatoes as possible across the stage. They would end up dropping some and we could say that a better transportation system was called for.

I had other ideas that involved the same potatoes: have planning committee members stand on one side of the stage and try to throw them into a bucket held by another committee member. Lots of potatoes were going to get hurt doing all of this.

In the end, the planning committee flatly rejected my potato idea. The possibility of someone getting hurt was just too great and it was sending a negative message about the transportation solutions that are currently being planned for Tampa. Sadly, I think that they made the right decision.

The Next Plan: Jet Packs

The clock was ticking and we were starting to run out of time. We went back to the drawing board and my co-MC did a web search and found all sorts of images of future transportation systems from the 1940′s and 1950′s covers of Popular Mechanics and Popular Electronics magazines. A new idea started to emerge.

Instead of saying anything negative about Tampa’s current transportation plans, how about if we came up with our own vision of the future of transportation? Make it so outlandish so that everyone knows that it’s not a real plan, but incorporate all of that futuristic stuff that everyone has always believed is coming.

I thought that this was a great idea – with one addition. I wanted to have it all lead up to one thing: a proposal for a jetpack based transportation future. Hey, everyone loves jetpacks and engineers especially love ‘em. The planning committee agreed and one of the members even agreed to build a mock jetpack for us to use.

What This All Means For You

So how did it all turn out you ask? The evening was a smashing success. The audience was riveted to their seats – they had to know how this 3-act play was going to come out. Not a soul left before we told them that the show was over.

My co-MC did a great job of reaching out and drawing the audience in using his deep knowledge of the transportation industry. The three-act play did its job by hooking the audience’s attention in the first act, extending the story in the second act and building up to a big finish in the third act.

The crowning point of the evening was when my co-MC brought out the Jetpack model and put it on and announced that the event was over and he was leaving to go home. That was what the audience had been waiting for!

Oh, and the potato? I had brought one to the event as a backup just in case things didn’t go as planned. We ended up setting it on the podium and not talking about it, not moving it, not doing anything with it. It drove the audience mad with curiosity: why was the potato there? What were they going to do with it? Talk about holding an audience’s attention!

What have you done that has helped to hold your audience’s attention during one of your speeches?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Just like a cheesy pick-up line, the first words that come out of your mouth when you are giving a speech will determine if you are going to get lucky with this audience.  How are you going to score?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in attention | 6 Comments »

Act Up Or Sit Down!

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Photo CreditIf You Aren't Acting While You Are Speaking, Then Sit Down

If You Aren't Acting While You Are Speaking, Then Sit Down

When I come to hear you speak, no matter if it’s at a departmental project status report or at a local restaurant or even if it was at a convention, the worst thing that you can do is to waste my time. What are you going to do about this?

Why So Many Speakers Suck

Let’s be frank here – most speakers that you listen to really aren’t that good. In fact, the ones that we think are good may not really be all that good – they may just be better than the ones who are really bad! What’s going on here? It’s actually pretty simple, most speakers are boring. Who wants to listen to that?

All too often a speaker will focus exclusively on what they are going to be saying and spend little or no time thinking about how they are going to say it.

If you need an analogy to clear things up, this would be like a chef who worries about what ingredients go into a meal without spending any time thinking about how to actually cook the thing. Sure he’ll be able to make something, but it’s not going to taste very good.

Fixing The Problem Of Your Boring Speeches

You are in a rut. You’ve found a particular speaking style that you believe suits you (that means that it worked once and you’ve stuck with it ever since) and you have become what we all fear the most – a boring speaker. How are we going to fix this problem?

You are going to have to take action. You are going to have to start to experiment with the unknown. You are going to have to step into the world of theater.

Birgit Starmanns has spent time in both the world of speaking as well as the world of theater. She points out that actors spend their time working hard to allow the audience to feel what the actor is currently feeling. In order to make this happen they use six tools:

  • Quotes: quotes are a powerful way to invite someone else into your speech. All too often speakers just stick any old quote into their speech in order to give themselves credibility – don’t do that. Instead, make sure any person that you invite into your speech by using their quote helps to move your speech along and gives you more creditability with your audience.
  • Roles: It’s just you up there and that can get pretty boring for your audience. How about if you stop being you for a bit and turn into someone else? You need to make it very clear to your audience that you are doing this, otherwise they are going to think that you’ve all of a sudden lost it. I’ve used this during internal status reports in order to bring the voice of other departments (e.g. finance) into my presentation.
  • Props: This is one of the simplest things to use, and yet all too few speakers take the time to think about what props would help them get their point across. In the past during presentations to sales teams, I’ve used marketing brochures from their competitors that they instantly recognized in order to drive a point home.
  • Staging: I hate it when a presenter acts like a block of stone and stands in one place during an entire presentation. You’ve got the entire stage / front of the room / etc. – use it! In fact, as you move from section to section in your speech, move to a different spot to speak and your audience will understand that you’ve moved on in the speech.
  • Costumes: Ok, so you’ve got to be careful here depending on your audience, but you should at least consider it for every speech that you give. I’m not talking about a full on Hollywood costume, but rather wearing something that will enhance your message. I’ve used a chef’s hat during a presentation to show that we were “cooking up” some new products to sell – you get the point.
  • Audience Participation: Do you feel lucky? Well, do you? Bringing someone from your audience up on stage during a presentation is a huge risk. However, it’s a great way to capture everyone’s attention – they will all be breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t them that got picked. If you are ready to interact well with you victim, I mean volunteer, then your speech definitely won’t be boring.

Final Thoughts

Anyone can give a boring speech – don’t let it be you. You’ve got to realize that no matter the setting in which you’ll be presenting in, be it a boardroom or a convention hall, you are ultimately putting on a performance for your audience.

Not everybody is a born entertainer, but that’s ok. Where you’ll really tick me off is if you don’t at least try. Theater actors have to connect with their audience every time they put on a show. In order to do this they pull out all of the stops and use every device that they have available to them in order to make their performance unforgettable.

You need to learn from them, research their techniques, and then apply them to your next speech where appropriate. You may not turn into the next Robert De Niro or Glenn Close, but that doesn’t matter. You won’t be giving boring speeches anymore and that’s all that matters…!

What’s the one thing that you can do to make your next speech unforgettable?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Bored audiences will get up and walk out of your speeches. How would you keep the attention of 400+ engineers who were attending an industry dinner event that they didn’t really want to be at on a weekday evening? I recently had the opportunity to be the master of ceremonies at such an event – great gig, tough crowd.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in connecting with your audience | 4 Comments »

Speaker Alert: Make Me Laugh — Or Else

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Audiences Who Laugh Remember What You Say

Make Your Audiences Laugh And They'll Remember What You Say

Stop. How funny was the last speech that you gave? What – you were talking about how best to diversify a 401k basket of investments in order to incorporate more foreign exchange funds & there’s nothing funny about that? Wrong. You’re not trying hard enough. Stop being not funny.

Learn To Be Funny From A Politician

Every speech counts. Especially if you are trying to get elected. If there was any group of speakers who needed to find a way to get people to remember them & their message, it would be politicians. They have three goals every time they give a speech:

  • Promote their policies
  • Boost their accomplishments while minimizing their opponents
  • Impress people with their moral upstanding character & leadership skills

Politicians know that humor is a powerful speaking tool. They use it to both make a point as well as to illustrate that point for their (or your) audience.

In the end, it’s all about getting votes. You’re probably not running for anything right now, but why waste a speech?

Why Humor Is So Powerful When You Are Speaking

Every speech that you give is your next chance to change the world. Adding humor to your speaking style isn’t something that you can put off until “sometime”, you’ve got to do it right now.

The reason that humor works so well comes down to five basic “levers” that every audience has. Gene Perret who won several Emmys for his work in television has spent a lot of time researching what these levers do to an audience:

  • Humor Makes You More Likable: I don’t care how much of a jerk you are in real life, if you start to work more humor into your speeches your audiences will start to like you better than your family does. Perret points out that it’s really hard to laugh with a person if you don’t like them – make your audience laugh and they’ll love you forever.
  • Build Credibility Using Humor: Who are you to talk to anyone about anything? Somewhat amazingly, audiences associate the ability to be funny with wisdom. When you can joke with your audience about 401k plans, they’ll settle back and say to themselves “gosh, if he can joke about this stuff then he must know it really well”. Whether or not you really do know it really doesn’t matter any more after this.
  • Get Respect Using Humor: Some of the worst speeches that I’ve ever had to sit through were ones where the speaker was too full of himself / herself. I quickly tuned them out – I don’t have time for blowhards. When you kid around with your audience you’re telling them “I’m one of you”. When they understand that you “get” them, you will have hooked them and they’ll pay attention to you for the rest of your speech.
  • Make People Want To Listen Using Humor: When you say something funny, people laugh. If they’re not listening, then they miss out. Nobody likes to miss out on something that’s funny. When you work humor into your speeches and people start to laugh, then all of those other people who are busy reading email and sending text messages will start to look around and wonder what they are missing out on. Very quickly those iPhones and Blackberry’s will go away and you’ll have their attention.
  • Make People Remember What You Say Using Humor: Stay home if you are going to give a speech that nobody is going to remember. Why bother? What humor does is it creates the possibility that people will remember the joke, and if they do then there’s just a chance that they might remember what your point was that you made the joke about.

Final Thoughts

Stop wasting my time. If you want to get up there and give a dry, lifeless speech that has no humor in it then you may as well stay at home and just send me an email with your main points.

If, however, you want me to walk away thinking that you know what you are talking about and remembering what you said, then that’s another story. The only way that that’s going to happen is if you start to work some humor into your speech. No, you don’t have to turn into a stand-up comedian; however, you do need to make me crack a smile or at least chuckle. Get me to do that and you’ve spent your time well.

Do you think that there is any type of speech that can’t have humor added to it? (Hint: eulogies are great candidates for humor so don’t even bring that up)

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When I come to hear you speak, no matter if it’s at a departmental project status report or at a local restaurant or even if it was at a convention, the worst thing that you can do is to waste my time. What are you going to do about this?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in humor | 3 Comments »

How Boys Can Talk To Girls (And Visa Versa)

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Reaching An Audience Of The Opposite Sex Can Be Difficult (c) - 2008 by Steve Hopson

Reaching An Audience Of The Opposite Sex Can Be Difficult (c) - 2008 by Steve Hopson

Man, as though giving a speech wasn’t hard enough already, then you go ahead and throw that gender thing in there and all of a sudden it gets that much tougher! It can be a challenge when you are asked to talk to an audience made up of members of the opposite gender. How can you not screw-up this speech?

Boys Talking To Girls

Male presenters need to adapt their speeches when they are presenting to a primarily female audience. Neil Chethik has a great deal of experience presenting to female audience and he points out that even in the enlightened age in which we are living, there are still differences between the sexes and a skillful presenter has to know about these differences and find ways to steer around them.

  • R-e-s-p-e-c-t: A male presenter needs to treat his female audience with respect if he wants to have any chance of the speech going well. Women are generally willing to learn from a male presenter; however, they have to feel as though they are being respected.
  • Down To Earth: A man who starts off his presentation by telling his audience how wonderful he is will instantly lose the connection with his female audience. There’s no problem with you being an expert in your area, you just don’t want to come off as being a know-it-all. You can connect with your audience by telling a story that points out a personal failing or error and a female audience will connect with you.
  • Evidence Counts: One of the biggest errors that male presenters make when they are speaking to an all female audience is that they give an emotional presentation and leave out all of the facts. Yes, women do like stories; however, they won’t believe what you are saying unless you can back it up with hard evidence – facts & stats.
  • Humor: talk about a minefield! Many a good speech to a female audience has gone wrong when the male speaker tried to interject some humor. Your best best is to let the humor naturally flow from the stories that you are telling. Trying to work in one-liners can only lead to disaster.

Girls Talking To Boys

Yes, men have it rough when they try to address an all female audience. However, women have it at least as rough and perhaps even rougher when they are called on to present to an all male audience. Once again, there are several ways to make sure that this type of speech goes well:

  • Stand Up: One of the simplest issues for a woman to solve when she’s addressing a male audience is to make sure that they can see her. All too often,  a lectern can overwhelm a speaker and hid her from her audience. Stand on something if needed and adjust the mic so that it works correctly for your height.
  • No Expression Is Good: Often women speakers will become flustered because no matter what they say, the expressions on their male audience won’t change. It turns out that this is very normal – men don’t tend to display their emotions.
  • Be A Straight Shooter: Whereas women tend to enjoy hearing lots of stories, men tend to be more “to the point”. Clearly communicating your main points and making sure that any stories that you do tell quickly come to the point will help to hold their attention.
  • Be A Professional: Men do a good job of dealing with other men. They will struggle with any presenter who comes off as being too “girlish”. This impression can be caused by clothing, gesture, or even a vocal tone that takes away from what you have to say. Ask a male friend that you trust for help in order to make sure that this is not a problem.

Final Thoughts

Giving any presentation can be a challenge. When it is complicated by the additional challenge of having one gender present to the other gender, it can get even more tricky.

The key to making this type of speech a success is for the presenter to acknowledge the situation and adjust the presentation to match it. Men have to make sure that they show respect to their female audience and women need to not get flustered by their male audience’s lack of outward emotions.

Speakers who take the time to adjust what they are going to say and how they are going to say it when addressing the opposite gender will be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Stop. How funny was the last speech that you gave? What – you were talking about how best to diversify a 401k basket of investments in order to incorporate more foreign exchange funds & there’s nothing funny about that? Wrong. You’re not trying hard enough. Stop being not funny.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in connecting with your audience | 5 Comments »

Speaker: You Are What You Wear!

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

The Clothes That A Speaker Wears Are A Powerful Speaking Tool (c) - 2008

The Clothes That A Speaker Wears Are A Powerful Speaking Tool (c) - 2008

The purpose of giving any speech is to be able to reach out and connect with your audience. No matter whether you are trying to inform them, entertain them, or convince them to take some action, none of this can be done unless you are able to make a connection with them. What you say is an important part of doing this, but did you know that what you wear also plays a role?

What Your Clothes Say About You

I’m hoping that most of us already know enough to “dress up” when we go to give a speech. If you pick up any popular book on public speaking, you’ll find advice like “be the best dressed person in the room” and such.

What’s interesting is that it’s probably too much of a simplification to think of our clothes as being just that – clothes. Instead, Karen Hudson who retired from the movie business says that we should think about what we are wearing as being costumes that are “scenery on the move“.

Now I can already see some of you starting to roll your eyes – I mean really, costumes? Give me just a minute to explain. Your time with your audience is limited - 15, 30, 60 minutes, right? You need to grab their attention, hold it, and make a difference in their lives.

What tools do you have to do this with? Sure your words are important. Probably how you say the words (pitch, tone, etc.) also play a role. However, what else do you have? Not much! If you can start to think about what you are wearing as being yet another speaking tool, then all of a sudden you’ve got another “lever to pull” to get your audience to connect with you.

Different Speeches Require Different Types Of Clothes

Not all speeches are the same. In fact, you need to be aware of what type of speech you will be giving and then you need to dress appropriately in order to lend even more power to your speech.

Speaking To Inform

When you are speaking to inform your audience you will be presenting either lots of information or technical concepts in order to make your point. When doing this type of speaking, first impressions are quickly made by your audience when they are trying to determine if they are going to make the effort to listen to what you have to say.

For this type of speech your goal is going to be to establish your credibility in the field in which you are going to be talking about at first glance. You have two things that you want to quickly accomplish: you want your audience to understand that you are an expert in this field, and you want them to accept your credibility for speaking to them. What all this means is that your clothes have to convey a sense of strength, power, and leadership to your audience.

Speaking To Inspire

Things change when the purpose of your speech is to inspire your audience to take some action. What you are trying to do is to relate a story to your audience in a way that will provide them with a new point-of-view that will cause them to make a change.

For this type of speech, you are not trying to overpower your audience with your credibility. Instead, what you really want to do is to be able to inspire your audience. This means that you want your audience to reach out to you – to accept your ideas as theirs and to then grow because of these ideas.

This means that you want to come across as being three things all at once: credible, authoritative, and accessible. From a clothing point-of-view, this means that you are going to want to be less formal than you would be for a speech in which you were speaking to inform. Your clothing should present your audience with a softer, more conversational image of you.

Speaking To Entertain

Arguably you have the widest range of clothing choices when you are giving a speech that is designed to entertain your audience. Ultimately you are going to be telling your audience a story and you hope that by doing this you’ll be able to grab their attention and hold on to it throughout your entire presentation. In the end your goal is to allow them to fully enjoy what you have to tell them.

Your clothing can be a key part of how you go about doing this. Depending on the story that you are going to be sharing with your audience, your clothing can set the stage before you even open your mouth. You can go all out and dress up in a full costume, or you can simply add a particular accessory to what you would normally wear (e.g. an Abraham Lincoln top hat) in order to make your audience eager to hear your story from the moment they first lay eyes on you.

Final Thoughts

Hudson points out that when she was taking a screenwriting class, she learned that each character mist contribute to the outcome of the story. You can say the same thing about the clothes that you wear to give a speech: each item must contribute directly to the telling of the story and its final outcome.

This leads to the three key guidelines that control what we wear when we are speaking:

  1. The clothes should never take the focus off of you, the speaker.
  2. No matter what you wear, you will need to be able to perform comfortable and effectively in the costume and accessories.
  3. Time is of the essence – your costume should not tell more story that you have time to present.

Take the time to pick the clothes that you wear to match the speech that you will be giving and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Man, as though giving a speech wasn’t hard enough already, then you go ahead and throw that gender thing in there and all of a sudden it gets that much tougher! It can be a challenge when you are asked to talk to an audience made up of members of the opposite gender. How can you not screw-up this speech?

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in appearances | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »