You’d think that, when you’re pitching your business, it would be about you — what you offer, how you operate, etc., etc.

Turns out that, as with most public speaking, a successful pitch isn’t about you at all.  It’s all about your audience: Their wants, their needs, their expectations.

In this clip from a workshop at In Good Company Workplaces, I discuss that principle with event and fine arts photographer Alice Garik.

In Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary about the great street fashion photographer, someone notes that Bill never took a mean photo in his life.

So with Bill in mind, I’m launching a hopefully not-too-mean blog category on Public Speaking Mistakes.  I’m doing this not to ridicule mistake makers (I’ve made some beauts myself!), but because sometimes it’s good to know “what good doesn’t look like.”

No.  No.  No.  No.  No.

I received this photo from a friend and colleague who was at the Macworld/iWorld 2012 conference in San Francisco last week.  Sadly, it didn’t even get her vote as “worst slide of the show,” because apparently things went downhill from here.  But it does illlustrate, pretty unforgettably, a few public speaking mistakes that are easy to avoid.

Where To Start!

In keeping with my beloved Rule of 3, the top 3 things to learn from this slide are:

1. Don’t fill a slide with words.  Seth Godin made this point five years ago.  It hasn’t changed.
   
2. Don’t write down what you’re going to say.  The name for a document that conveys its point by being read is “report.”  If your audience can read your thoughts, what do they need you for?
3. Don’t “digress.”  Yes, a witty aside or quirky tangent is always welcome.  But if you know in advance that something is an actual, full-throated digression, leave it out.  You want the logic of your presentation to pull your audience along, from beginning to end.  If it doesn’t, why bother?

Trust Your Audience — and Write that Second Draft!

There are two reasons why people create slides like this one.  (And by the way, techies are not the worst offenders; has anyone been to a corporate meeting lately?!)

• One is that they don’t trust the audience to understand what they’re saying, and don’t trust themselves to get the point across.
• The second reason is that they use PowerPoint to create a first draft of their speech, and then don’t take the next step, which is to take your prose out of the slides, put them into your speaking notes (more on that in a future post), and then create slides that will hold your audience’s visual attention while you talk.

The Big Pay-Off:  Great Public Speaking

When you do this — when you trust yourself and your audience, and put provocative images onscreen (rather than your speaker notes) — public speaking becomes actual fun!

You start just talking.  You sound like yourself.   You no longer feel like you’re crawling through a desert of words, thirsty for just one sip of meaning.

And best of all, neither does your audience!

Ah, the key message!

For public speakers, it’s like the holy grail:  A mythic object with magical powers.

When you have the right key message, you can easily:

• Adapt your speech for any audience
• Find three persuasive points to illustrate and support it
• Respond to questions (even tricky or negative ones)

So What is This Key Message, Anyway??

It’s the big point — the heart, soul, and center — of your speech.

It’s the one essential thing  you want your audience to remember; the thing that, if they don’t remember anything else, you’ll still have communicated what matters.

Here are some examples of key message.

• “Our political process has been totally hijacked by big money contributors.”
• “If you give it a chance, you’ll love our new accounting system.”
• “I believe we can succeed; what’s it going to take to get us there?”

Notice that a key message doesn’t always have the same function.  The first key message above introduces an argument.  The second one tries to motivate.  The third poses a question to be considered.

But even though these key messages lead to very different speeches, they’re united in being the one essential thing that each audience needs to know.

(They also pass a second test:  If the audience believes these key messages, the speaker if closer to getting what he wants; but that’s a post for another day.)

Your Key Message Should Be About Them

In the second example above (“If you give it a chance, you’ll love our new accounting system.), notice that the key message points out a benefit for your audience.  They will love the new system.  This is a good thing, right?

This is a much better approach than talking about yourself (“If you give the new accounting system a chance, my life will be much easier”) or even your organization (“It would really help our company if you’d give the new system a chance.”)

It’s not that hard to turn your key message around and focus it on your audience instead of yourself.  In this clip, from a workshop at New York’s In Good Company Workplaces (a learning, networking, and working space for women entrepreneurs), I show photographer Alice Garik how:

I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s resolutions.  So this year, I took a page from social media superstar Chris Brogan’s book, and picked three words to describe my hopes for 2012:

serenity — productivity — joy

Yes, it’s another example of The Rule of 3!  And when it comes to public speaking success, the three words that make all the difference are:

PREPARE — PRACTICE — PRESENT

Not Perfect, But Incredibly Helpful!

I used to call these “The 3 P’s of Perfect Presentations,” and while no presentation can ever be perfect, these steps will get you as close as possible!

PREPARE:   Good speeches don’t just happen.  They’re created when someone cares enough to put good content, relevant to their audience’s needs, into a smooth and logical flow.  It takes skill and hard work to create a powerful speech, but you can learn how.

PRACTICE:   A well-crafted speech deserves great delivery, and there’s only one way to get that:  With lots and lots (and lots!) of practice.   If you’ve trained as a performer, you may know the best ways to practice. If not, again, you can learn.

PRESENT :  Once you’ve prepared a well-thought-out speech, and practiced until it’s comfortable, present it to your audience as the gift that it is. Most of us feel awkward (or even fearful) when we speak in public; and while that’s a natural reaction, it’s much more fun to get out of your own head and just talk to your audience.

At every step of the way, you can learn to approach public speaking more effectively.  (And yes, I can help!)

A Gift that Keeps on Giving

Last month I talked about unwrapping your public speaking gifts, and communicating from an awareness of your strengths.

Every time you do that — every times you speak with authenticity, power, and ease — you’re giving your listeners a gift that’s all too rare in our sound-bite world:  The gift of your best thinking.

If you need help, please give me a call!  And have a serene, productive, and joyful 2012.

I’ve written about Daniel Kraft’s bar-setting TED speech, and about how my three (to date) TEDx speaking clients prepared in totally different ways.  But there’s something else happening at TEDx, the independently-produced TED spin-offs taking place around the world:

Kids are getting into the act.

Take this performance by then-12-year-old Adora Svitak, who’s been writing since she was 7.  Adora’s confidence, charm, and lack of pretense are as much fun as the ideas she puts forth.  (I would change the George Bush comment, but she got away with it.)

The Future, Brought to You by YouTube

It used to take people decades to garner Adora’s poise — or level of exposure.

Now there are more prodigies, more personalities, more young people ready for prime time than there have ever been before.

We’re also more ready to listen to them, as became clear when MoveOn.org posted this video of then-19-year-old Zach Wahls‘ speech about marriage equality (it’s now been viewed by more than 16 million people):

When I was growing up, the common wisdom was that elders set the standard for younger people.  My generation tried to overturn that rule, and may have done more harm than good.

But here comes a new generation to set a public speaking standard that us older folks would do well to emulate.

Adults, get your speaking hats on!  Let’s give the kids a run for their money.

Two of my heroes — Amy Abrams and Adelaide Lancaster, co-founders of In Good Company Workplaces — recently asked me for help with a common public speaking problem.

They’ve been speaking a lot about their great new book, The Big Enough Company,  and  wanted advice on what to do when you show up to give a particular speech and find out that it’s angled wrong for your audience.

Sometimes You Know Too Much

Ad and Amy’s core audience is women entrepreneurs.  But when you know that group as well as they do, you know that there are lots of sub-sets within it — groups whose interests and needs may differ.

Think about the differences in perspective among:

• Aspiring vs. new vs. established women entrepreneurs
• Older vs. younger vs. mid-career women entrepreneurs
• Solopreneurs vs. women with employees
• Consultants vs. or women in manufacturing, etc., etc.

Now, of course all these groups are women entrepreneurs — and a less informed speaker would have treated them all the same.

But since Ad and Amy know how much these groups differ, they were tempted to offer every group they spoke to a different speech about their book.

This is a noble intent, but it’ll kill you.  Even women who gracefully juggle being partners, mothers, friends, daughters, bosses, innovators, and plenty more occasionally need to get some sleep!

Enter the “Stump Speech”

Let’s say that you’re doing a book “tour” (as Ad and Amy were).

Or maybe your company has sent you out to tell many different groups about a new policy.

In these cases, as in similar ones, if you focus on how each of your audiences is different, you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed.

But if you focus on what’s the same, you’ll be able to adapt with ease — because what’s the same, is the thing that you know best:  The key message you’re delivering.

In Ad and Amy’s case, they quickly realized that their key message (not surprisingly, the same one as their book’s) is:

Entrepreneurship is an opportunity to create your life on your own terms.

Good one!  It’s quick, clean, and comprehensive — and look how easily it can be adapted to whatever audience they address:

• Aspiring entrepreneurs:  As you’ll discover when you start your own business, entrepreneurship is an opportunity to create your life on your own terms.
• Newbie entrepreneurs:  You’ve probably already discovered that entrepreneurship is an opportunity to create your life on your own terms.
• Experienced enterpreneurs:  As you know from your years in business, entrepreneurship is an opportunity to create your life on your own terms.

When you know your topic well, changes like these take almost no thought.

You’re Almost Done

The final step in customizing a speech that’s built around a key message is to pick the three specific topics you’ll address.

Again, when you’re familiar with an area, examples will come easily to mind — and you should have a handful of them worked out and ready to go for when you need them.  These stories, examples, or strategies will help you customize for particular groups, such as:

• Older women:  Here are three stories about how others have changed their business models as what they wanted from life evolved.
• Solopreneurs (who work alone):  Here are three strategies for bringing others into your work life.
• Women in non-traditional fields like manufacturing:  Here are three challenges that other women like you have overcome.  (You probably guessed The Rule of 3 was going into factor in this, right?)

There’s a lot more to say on this subject, but I think you get the point:

You don’t need a new speech for every occasion.

You only need one speech — or rather, one message — that gets to the heart of what you want to say.  Add some stories that reinforce your point, and you’re ready to go almost anywhere and speak!

I recently worked with three very different speakers to prepare three great TEDx presentations.

And while each one deserves, and will get, an in-depth analysis, there’s also lots to learn from the fact that each talk required a different preparation process.

Take the TEDx Match-Up Quiz

Each of my clients was faced with a unique challenge.   Can you match each of the three challenges below to the approaches my clients and I followed?

CHALLENGE #1:  Like Daniel Kraft, whose brilliant TED talk was her model, my client Erica Frenkel needed to condense a highly technical and nuanced discussion into less than six minutes.  Her topic was the Universal Anesthesia Machine — a breakthrough device for underdeveloped countries, that works without electricity or compressed gas.  She could not afford to misstate the tiniest point about this “appropriate technology.”

CHALLENGE #2:  Shannon Fitzgerald‘s speech hinged on her personal experience, and was meant to motivate the women she spoke with to aim as high in their lives as she has.  She was given about 10 minutes, and told to talk about whatever she wanted.

CHALLENGE #3:  Journalist Amy Cortese was given 18 minutes to talk about her new book, Locavesting.  Since Amy was ready, willing, and able to speak for hours about the value of local investing, her challenge was choosing what to say.

APPROACH A:  A big part of preparing this speech was trying to walk in the audience’s shoes.  What things would they find enticing?  What would be TMI (too much information)?

APPROACH B:  This type of speech has to be tightly crafted.  We focused on the simplest way to say things, and my client committed most of her talk to memory.

APPROACH C:  Structure was all with this speech.  Someone who’s a true expert on her topic needs a flexible framework, a few transitions, and she’s ready.

The Envelope, Please!

Here’s the Challenge-Approach match-up:

• Erica’s Universal Anesthesia Machine speech (Challenge #1) was memorized (Approach B).  With only four  minutes, and a topic that needs careful explanation, improvisation is largely out.
• Shannon’s hardest job (Challenge #2) was to choose stories and references that would strike a chord with her audience without intimidating them (Approach A).  Talking about our own lives can be the hardest challenge many people face.
• If you’re an expert writer like Amy (Challenge #3), the hard part is to stop composing sentences, and just talk.  A very loose outline (Approach C) is your best tool for transitioning from written to spoken words.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

As you can see, there are many different ways to approach creating a TEDx talk.  Each of my clients found the way that worked best for her — and, if you have a TEDx speech coming up (or if you’re speaking anywhere else!), we’ll find the approach that’s best for you.

‘Till then, enjoy public speaking the TEDx way.

You may have noticed that TEDx is exploding.

It started with TED (Technology, Education, and Design) — an elite and costly yearly conference that made provocative “ideas worth spreading” available to a select audience.

Now that format has been franchised into a series of global TEDx conferences that open this unique public speaking platform up to hundreds of presenters, and millions of viewers, each year.

Watch and Learn: Public Speaking that Is Both Masterful and Appears Effortless

Until recently, most people had only seen bad (droning, mundane) presentations, which is mostly what you get in business.  But TED and TEDx are changing that, by putting a vast array of successful, less successful, mundane, and inspired presentations online, before a global audience.

Here’s one great example, brought to me by a public speaking client who was preparing her own TEDx talk.  In just four minute and eleven seconds, Daniel Kraft explains a breakthrough medical technology, and what it means for all our lives.

How Daniel Kraft Does It

For all its seeming casualness, Kraft’s talk is masterful.  Here’s a short list of what he does right:

1. Great use of visual aids:  That bag of bone marrow is a real attention grabber.  (Does it need to be refrigerated?!)
2. Instead of describing bone marrow donation in the abstract, he creates “Bob, the volunteer donor,” and takes us right into Bob’s experience, and that of the operating room staff.
3. Another great visual:  The model of Bob’s pelvis, with swiss cheese punctures from the old (excruciatingly painful) collection device.
4. And here comes the alternative:  Kraft’s new Marrow Miner, explained through a video that’s elegant, clear, and mind-boggling.
5. Kraft then walks us through the research that was done on his device, and how the outcome surprised even him (again, we’re there with him in the moment).
6. He then poses the most important public speaking question — “So why should you care?” — and answers it by telling us the medical and social impacts of his invention.
7. Finally, Kraft paints an upbeat picture of the future (you may be able to bank your own bone marrow!), and ends with an image of the many people whose lives have already been saved by this device.

Are you sold?  I certainly was.

And that’s no surprise, because this presentation is a whirlwind tour of all the ways a speaker can engage his or her audience, delivered with low-key, seemingly “effortless” charm.

There’s No Such Thing as “Effortless”

The most important lesson from this and many other TED and TEDx videos, is this:  The more effortless you want to appear, the more you’ll need to work your butt off.

My friend, the music and audio critic Wes Phillips, is fond of saying, “Easy reading is mighty hard writing,”  and that’s just as true for public speaking.

Does anyone really think that Daniel Kraft spun this four minute gem off the top of his head?  You’re looking at dozens, perhaps hundreds, of hours of work — conceiving, crafting, practicing, then presenting some very sophisticated ideas in a simple, accessible, and delightful way.

And that’s ultimately what TEDx is giving us.  Beyond the many valuable ideas they presents, TED and TEDx conferences are doing more to promote the ideal of good public speaking than anything else that’s happened in our lifetimes.

And hey, eventually, even business might catch on!

There are two kinds of public speaking signposts.  Both of them keep your listeners informed about where you’re going — and where you want to take them.

Signposts Can Be Verbal

One of the most effective ways to sound more professional as a public speaker is to alert your audience whenever you transition to a new topic, reiterate a point, or change the direction of your argument.  That’s what’s going on when you hear speakers say things like,

• “So, we’ve talked about X; now let’s move on to Y.”
• “Why does that matter?  I’ll tell you why.  It’s because…”
• “I want to leave you with the following thought…”

Each of those phrases is an audio signpost.  They are formulaic because they have a “ceremonial” function:  They let your listener know that something important is coming, and remind you to slow down and emphasize what you’re about to say.

Signposts Can Be Visual

worth 1000 bullet points

The other kind of public speaking signpost grabs your audience by the eyes rather than by the ears.  In his classic  post on “Really Bad Powerpoint,” blogger Seth Godin famously argued that it’s better to show a photo of a dead bird than a list of bulleted points about air pollution.

Godin was right (though PowerPoint hating has since gone to silly lengths).  Pictures are signifiers that, like transitional phrases, help move your audience’s attention to wherever your speech is going next.

Signs Can Be Signposts

Which brings us to the picture, above, of Occupy Wall Street.  I wish I knew (a) who shot this image, and also (b) who created the row of signs it shows.  Like a dignified Greek chorus, those signs stand in for people who are suffering in our winner-take-all economy.  They testify to harsh realities, such as:

• I will never pay off my student loans
• I will never own a home in my life
• I will never get a job in this economy

These signs are also signposts.  Like transitions in a speech…   like Seth Godin’s startling bird image…  they focus our attention on where things are going next.  Only in this case, it’s not about showing us where a speech is headed.

These signposts point out where we’re headed as a country — and whether that’s really where we want to go.

We all forget things.

And even though I agree with NY Times’s Andrew Rosenthal, who wrote, “[Killing government agencies] is one of the older and more tedious plays in the G.O.P. book and you’d think any Republican who has the “small government” merit badge would have long ago memorized it,” it’s also true that you don’t have to be a senior to have a so-called senior moment.

What To Do If It Happens to You

The main thing to know about public speaking gaffes is that only your reaction matters.  If you discipline yourself to brush off your mistake as a normal and inevitable occurrence, you’ll save yourself a world of hurt later on.  Others may choose to drag out the episode — but you shouldn’t be the one to do it!

You can see the exact moment when Perry could have shrugged off his memory lapse and moved on to a new topic about 40 seconds into this CNN video feed:

Of course, this was a bad mistake — but if Perry had said, “I’ll get back to you on that third thing later, but for now, let me also say that [change of topic]” — it would have been a much smaller story.

Instead, Perry turned to Ron Paul as if asking for help (which Paul obligingly provided).  Then he fumbled for a long, painful moment instead of taking things in stride and re-directing his audience’s attention to something that he was prepared to talk about (if such a thing exists).

Three Tips for When Your  Mind Trips

So my advice for what will henceforth be known as a Rick Perry moment is to,

1. Admit you forgot, and smile it off without embarrassment (everyone makes mistakes, after all)
2. Do not try to recover your memory in full public view; it won’t work
3. Move forward to your next point or topic, and put what just happened out of your mind

And, oh yeah, one more thing:

Don’t go on Letterman to talk about it!