Public Speaking

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2010-04-28T15:47:00.001+01:00

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Believe in yourself

2009-06-02T10:09:00.007+01:00

While this country was buzzing about Britain's Got Talent, a Spanish friend told me about a woman who appeared on a programme in Spain called Factor X. Silvia Padilla has no discernable singing talent and the song she wrote for herself, called Ponte el Cinturón or Put On Your Seatbelt, is not the greatest tune.

But Silvia became an overnight celebrity and made literally millions of euros from people downloading her song as a ringtone. The public loved Silvia perhaps not for the reasons she might have hoped but she was affectionately ridiculed all the way to the bank.

Ms Padilla is an excellent example of the point I've made several times: whatever happens, don't be embarrassed. Watch the video and compare how you feel during and after it with how you feel witnessing a performer suffering from nerves and embarrassment.

Ponte el Cinturón on YouTube

While I would generally advocate cultivating a level of self-awareness higher than that of Silvia Padilla, what we can learn from her is that, if you act confident and brazen it out, the worst that can happen is people will come away laughing rather than cringing. Look how into it the crowd is, singing along rather than trying to hide under the seats.

Confidence alone, then, can bring you national fame and wealth. If you've got good material as well, there will be no limit to what you can achieve.

An actor playing the part of a speaker

2009-05-28T12:47:00.003+01:00

The famous nineteenth-century magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, generally credited with being 'the father of modern magic', once said: A conjuror is not a juggler; he is an actor playing the part of a magician, an artist whose fingers have more need to move with deftness than with speed.

This way of thinking transformed magic from being simply a demonstration of skill to having elegance and a story. Instead of standing in marketplaces as they had used to, magicians moved into theatres and salons, and magic became a sophisticated entertainment.

It seems to me that public speakers can learn a lot from this too. When we're in front of an audience, we're not there just to speak, we're there to engage with the audience. And, contrary to popular opinion, we're certainly not there just to get through it as quickly as possible! Deftness rather than speed is what's required. When we're speaking in public, we have the freedom to speak much more slowly than we normally do, giving us more time to think.

Public speaking is a performance like any other (which is why it's so essential to practise). As at a theatre, the audience has come specifically to listen to the presenter and, either literally or metaphorically, we have to give them their money's worth.

If you think of yourself as an actor playing the part of a speaker, it may actually remove some of the fear of standing up in front of an audience. As I've suggested on the Delivering Your Speech page of the website, if it helps you, pretend to be someone else entirely. Before speaking in public, I've occasionally persuaded myself I was Madonna or some other confidence-oozing character but more often I just go into public Georgie mode, the version of me that's a bit larger than life. It works for me.

(If you're interested, you can read more about Robert-Houdin on my website Paris Magic.)

Learn from the pros

2009-05-03T13:20:00.005+01:00

Derren Brown is currently touring the UK with his phenomenal show Enigma and I saw it this week at The Lowry in Salford Quays. Apart from being amazed by what he did, I was struck by what a great example Derren is of how to interact with a crowd.

There was no warm-up. At 7.30, Derren bounced on to the stage and asked a man from the front row to choose some random words. Instantly, the audience was agog to see what happened next. Of course, it helps that Derren is famous and extremely popular, so people expect to be interested. However, even if we haven’t got that advantage, we should behave as if we have. To a great extent, people take us at our own valuation and conducting ourselves with confidence gives us the best chance of being well received.

At one point, Derren asked a spectator to come up on stage from the very top circle and it took her a good 3 or 4 minutes to do so. Derren was thus alone on stage, unable to go on until the lady joined him, and he did nothing, just waited. I would suggest for less experienced performers that it’s a good idea to have an anecdote or two up the sleeve for gaps like this but in Derren’s case it didn’t matter at all. We were all buzzing with everything we had already seen and in anticipation of what was going to happen next and a few moments of down time gave us an opportunity to talk about it. If Derren had felt awkward, it would have been completely different but, as I’ve said many times, the speaker creates the atmosphere and, as we waited for the volunteer from the top circle, we were excited.

You can learn a lot from watching performers you admire and Derren Brown is as good a model as you’ll find of a sensational showman.

Don't let visual aids get in the way of a good story

2009-04-17T12:51:00.004+01:00

On the page about delivering your speech or presentation, I've written about how a man turned potential disaster, in the shape of technological gremlins, into triumph when he abandoned his 'aids' and gave us a riveting talk.

I was reminded of that again recently, when a client came to me with a PowerPoint presentation that had been supplied by his company. The marketing department had created a set of slides that basically just had to be read. The sales team were then supposed to go out and present this 'in their own style'.

Robin, my client, was really struggling to make this work and he decided he was no good at public speaking. Actually, when I took his laptop away and asked him to tell me a bit about the product he was selling, he talked fluently, knowledgeably and persuasively. He evidently believed in the product and, had I been one of his prospects, I would certainly have bought it.

But when he went back to the marketing department's presentation, he lost his passion and delivered it as if he was reading the news.

I see two morals to this. The first is that it's essential to speak naturally. If you're trying to deliver other people's words, your audience will know you're not speaking from the heart. Top politicians and businesspeople may have speechwriters but these writers are writing specifically for them and know their style. If you take a speech off the shelf or deliver the same presentation as everyone else in your team, it's very hard to do this well.

Robin went back to his company and negotiated that he could say what they wanted him to say but in his own words, in the order that suited him and without using all the prescriptive slides. When they saw the results, they realised that giving him the freedom to do this made all the difference.

The second moral is that public speaking is about communication. It's not about just imparting facts; you can do that with a pamphlet. What makes a speech interesting is the human, emotional content. Just because you're speaking in public, rather than to a small group of friends, it does not mean you have to adopt a detached monotone. On the contrary, the key to successful public speaking is enthusiasm.

Make sure your audience gets the point

2009-03-26T09:34:00.008Z

A client asked me recently why she wasn't getting the results she wanted from putting her department's case at business meetings. Paula is an intelligent, knowledgeable, articulate and confident woman, very successful in her field, the sort you would expect to win through every time, and she couldn't understand why she was making so little impact at these meetings.

Fortunately, the answer turned out to be something she could quite easily change. Although she was powerful and persuasive when speaking to one or two people, when addressing larger groups, Paula unconsciously adopted a persona that was intended to be professional but was actually rather elusive. My impression, as I listened to her delivering what she was planning to say at the next meeting, was of someone who clearly knew what she was talking about. I agreed with what she said as she went along - and yet afterwards I couldn't remember anything specific she had told me. It was all somehow nebulous and I understood why she wasn't getting what she wanted: people weren't grasping what it was she was actually asking for.

To rectify this, I encouraged Paula to break down her speech into bite-sized chunks, to bring her voice down at the end of each one and to pause between them. I also suggested she speak a bit more slowly and use less jargon.

The results were satisfyingly positive. Paula's point of view became clear to her colleagues and many more of her requests began to be granted.

Public speaking is about communication. When you're preparing your speech or presentation, try to summarise your message in a sentence or two. Once you've identified the essence of what you want to say, you can expand on it but, if you don't identify the essence first, it may never become apparent to your audience what your core message is.

Avoid cliches, corn and verbal mannerisms

2009-03-18T17:47:00.006Z

The magic convention was excellent. Extremely talented and diverse magicians from all over the world congregated in South Shields for a few days to share secrets and to entertain one another. If you're interested, you can find out more about magic conventions on my website We Love Magic.

From the public speaking point of view, something that struck me was how often I heard the same lines. Particularly these days, when magicians watch - and listen to - one another on DVD all the time, cliches and corny gags are copied and repeated more and more. Practically every time somebody from the audience signs a card, for example, he or she is asked to put his or her credit card number underneath the signature. This may (or may not) have been marginally amusing the first time somebody said it but, if you've heard it before, it's just irritating.

A new one is, when giving instructions to an assistant from the audience, the frequent use of "Do me a favour". Personally, I feel this expression is out of place in the context but, anyway, it's the endless repetition that grates.

It's certainly not just magicians who behave like this. How often in everyday life do people use the expression "to be honest"? How many corny jokes do you hear in the average day?

When you're writing a speech or presentation, be careful to avoid cliches and corn. And, while you're rehearsing, listen out for your own verbal mannerisms. Do you, for instance, ask, "Do you know what I mean?" more often than is necessary? If so, make a conscious effort to cut down, or even cut it out altogether.

If you overuse cliches, you risk distracting people from the content of your speech. Find an original way to say it and people will be far more impressed. You might even start a new cliche. :-)

Welcome!

2009-03-12T10:46:00.006Z

Hello everybody and welcome to my new blog. I've got so much to say about public speaking that doesn't seem to fit neatly into a category on the website that I thought I'd start a blog and post my ideas as they occur to me.

I'm about to set off for South Shields, to a magic convention, so I can't write more now but I wanted to get the blog off the ground, as it were. Back soon!