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Turn Your Script into a Roadmap of Ideas

Your script is more than just words on paper.  Whether you use a full script, notes, or bullets, the format of your script can add richness and meaning to your delivery. 

Here are some guidelines:

• One sentence per paragraph -- preferably a short, simple sentence.  This lets you look up at the audience and back to your script -- without losing your place. 
• Use a big font size.  Print out a few script pages in various font sizes and pick the one that works for you.
• Each script page should have a very narrow top margin -- with text ending no more than two-thirds down the page.  This keeps your head up and eyes out at the audience.
• Insert pauses right into the script -- each as a separate line.  (Pause)  Pause when you change subjects, highlight a point, or ask a rhetorical question.
• Highlight text in yellow for key ideas -- and emphasize them.
• Underline keywords in sentences for vocal oomph.
• New thought = new page.
• Big page numbers.  The speaker who is lost loses the audience.

Your script is much more than words on pages.  It's a roadmap of your ideas.  And it's a roadmap you can easily customize to suit your message and your style.

Alltop: A Great, New Resource for Public Speakers

Guy Kawasaki and his gang have developed a simple but powerful new Web resource for public speakers.  Check it out at http://speaking.alltop.com/.

Alltop aggregates public speaking blogs in a clever, intuitive website.  It hides its magic behind a super simple interface.  Think iPhone and the original Palm.

With Alltop, you can surf along the tops of the waves -- scrolling through pages full of individual blog sites along with their last five entries.  But as your cursor slides over the entries, a text window quickly opens -- showing you the first couple of paragraphs.  It's like looking below the water line with a scuba mask.

When you click on an individual blog title or an entry, you’re into full scuba mode -- swimming leisurely through the actual website and its contents.

One click of the back button takes you to Alltop and you're on your surfboard again -- zipping across the waves of the public speaking blogosphere.  Very cool.

Alltop is a great example of how to make it powerful, seductive, and audience friendly.  Not a bad model for your next speech or presentation.

 

Your Career = 1X. Your Career + Effective Public Speaking = 2X.

(As a senior executive, you can give your younger execs a boost by forwarding this to them.  Then step back and see who goes for it.)

Careerwise, whatever you've got going for you will likely double if you're an effective public speaker. 

Being effective, interesting, and authentic on your feet multiplies your value by a factor of at least two.

You'll be the natural choice to present that important project report to top management.

You'll be tapped to represent your department, company, and industry when the time to speak comes up.  And that time will come many times.

You'll be a familiar face to a lot of people in the company -- and to top management. Your superiors will have confidence in you.

Whatever you bring to your work will increase dramatically if you're an effective speaker.  Think what this could mean over a span of 30 or 40 years.

Given this kind of leverage, it's a mystery why public speaking isn't the hottest, most in-demand course in every undergraduate and graduate curriculum.

Seize this great, undervalued opportunity.  Join Toastmasters.  Volunteer to speak.  Stick with it and you'll get better and better -- and become more successful.

 

Opening Your Speech: Slow Versus Fast

There are two schools of thought on how to open a speech.

 

In the slow open, you warm up the audience, establish a connection, and ease into your content. 

 

In the fast open, you launch right into a compelling story -- one that will grab the audience's attention and establish you as the driver on this journey.

 

So which one do you choose -- open slow or open fast?  It depends on how well you know the audience -- and how well they know you.

 

Think of your speech as a conversation with just one other person.  That's the way your audience sees it.  To them, you're not speaking to a group.  You're speaking to each individual in the group. 

 

In a social conversation, if you're meeting someone for the first time, you use the slow open.  "Hi, my name is Pete.  My friend, Jeff, is the host.  We were roommates in college.  How do you know Jeff?" 

 

But with someone you know really well, you jump right into content.  You see a golfing buddy in the clubhouse and say, "That putter you suggested?  Unbelievable!  Bought it on the spot."

 

Here's a slow open for an audience you don't know and they don't know you.  "Thanks, Jim for that flattering and mostly-true introduction.  Good evening everybody.  I'm a big fan of the Churchill Club.  Years ago, when I lived in Silicon Valley, I was a member and attended just about every meeting.  Tonight I want to talk about something that Winston Churchill was very interested in -- the international balance of power.  These days we call it "globalization." 

 

Now here's a fast open for that annual ritual: your pump-up remarks to the sales force.  When you're introduced, you walk out, take an extended pause, and begin, "Last week I had a long talk with our biggest customer.  Guess what he said."

 

In your opening -- and all through your speech -- engage the audience on their terms and on their turf.

 

When You Speak, Plan to Be Spontaneous

Here's the problem.  Too many speeches are over planned, overloaded, and over scripted.  The results?  To audiences, the speakers come across as robotic and remote.  Big turn off.

 

Audiences don't want words and pictures.  They want you.  A real, flesh-and-blood person.  If the audience wanted just words and pictures, your speech would be an article in print or on the Web.

 

One thing you can depend on is that audiences love good stories.  Stories organize and illustrate big, complex ideas -- and make them memorable.  So plan to tell stories that wrap around your big ideas.

 

But don't script your stories!  Instead, just tell them -- as if you were having a conversation with your best friend.

 

Let's say your big idea is "becoming your customer's trusted advisor."  To show how this works, tell a story from your own experience.

 

Your script has a line like this, highlighted in yellow: (Tell the "customer-who-couldn't-decide" story).

 

Since this is your story, tell it in your own words.  The words don't have to be smooth, polished, and honed to perfection.  In fact, a little rough-around-the-edges is an energizing change of pace for the audience.

 

But when you come to the moral of the story -- your big idea -- have that line scripted.  "So, early in my career, I learned an important lesson from that customer who couldn't decide.  In the end, the customer is in the driver's seat.  My job, as his trusted advisor, is not to grab the wheel -- but to help navigate around the pitfalls and get us to the right destination."

 

Audiences like a story.  They like it even more when it's your story.  Tell it to them in your own words.  That's how your story becomes authentic and memorable.  And that's how audiences remember your big idea.

 

Audience? What Audience?

Sadly, some speakers behave as if, for all practical purposes, their audience doesn't exist. 

 

This alarmingly incorrect assumption shows up in a number of ways.  Such as when a speaker announces at the start of content development, "This is what I want to say."  Hello!  It's not just about you.  It's about you and what the audience wants and needs to hear.

 

I flashed on the "audience doesn't exist" phenomenon in a dramatic way early in my speechwriting career.    

 

Decades ago, I began working with a VP in a Fortune 50 company with a heavy speaking schedule.  The first speech I wrote for him dealt with the basic, underlying messages of his organization.  The audience was an industry group in Atlanta.  He liked the script and it went well. 

 

For the second speech, to a general business audience in Chicago, of course, I revisited some of the basic, underlying messages.  The speaker finished reading the first draft and said to me, "We've already said this."

 

I was stunned.  Two distinct audiences.  Two separate cities.  And he didn't know the difference.  It dawned on me that, for him, the audience really didn't exist.  As far as he was concerned, he was the audience. 

 

This was an extreme case -- but less dramatic variations of the "audience doesn't exist" phenomenon are not extreme.  They are unfortunately very common.

 

Not realizing what audiences want and need to hear is the root cause of thousands and thousands of poorly received speeches and presentations.

 

By and large, speakers don't fail because of problems with delivery.  Speakers fail because their content doesn't connect with the audience.  Most audiences want the speaker to succeed.  When the content connects with them -- and the speech is working -- they're pretty forgiving of shortcomings in delivery.

 

Right now, at this moment, a speaker is failing to connect with listeners because the speaker doesn’t have a fully realized sense of his or her audience.  This is a loss for the speaker -- and an even bigger loss for the audience.

 

 

Connect With Your Audience: Tell Them a Story

What's the best way to connect with your audience and deliver your message? Surround your important, big idea with a story the audience will remember.

Facts, statistics, charts, and quotations are important -- when they amplify and back up a memorable story. But without the story to anchor them, facts and statistics just float away.

Let's say you want to talk about leadership. Your message could be this: Leadership means looking for what people need to succeed -- and then helping them get what they need."

To make your point, you could use a statistic. Here's one from Grant Thornton, a global accounting and business consultant: "66% of business leaders say they are more aggressively educating employees on their role in delivering on the value proposition." Interesting, but will you remember it next week?

Now let's try a story to make the same point.

In 2003, the Portland Trail Blazers were in the playoffs. There were 20,000 people in the arena -- with a national TV audience watching. A local 13-year-old girl had been chosen to sing the national anthem, a cappella.

But halfway through the anthem, she forgot the words. Flustered, she stopped.

Trail Blazers head coach Maurice Cheeks quickly approached, put his hand on her shoulder, and began singing the anthem. She started singing again -- and thousands in the arena joined in. A difficult moment turned to triumph.

Check it out on YouTube: "Mo Cheeks national anthem." It's an inspiration.

To wrap it up, remind the audience of your big idea -- which is the moral of the story. Maurice Cheeks showed true leadership by asking, "What does this person need to succeed -- and how can I help them?"

Build your next speech around a memorable story. Stories resonate with our collective life experiences. Statistics, charts, and facts don't.

Turn Your Nervous Energy into Performance Energy

Whenever people talk about public speaking, a perennial subject is "how do you deal with nervousness?" As Jerry Seinfeld says, for most people it's easier to be in the coffin than to give the eulogy.

A lot of speakers try to conquer their nervousness by suppressing every kind of energy.

As an executive speech writer for 28 years, I've sat through my share of dress rehearsals for big meetings. One of the most common problems I've seen is speakers with too little energy. Emotionally, they're cruising through their remarks at 15 miles an hour with one foot on the brake.

Their emotions are set on "low." Psychologists call this detachment "lack of affect." Audiences naturally interpret a speaker's low energy as lack of interest in the topic, the audience, and the event. Not good.

Instead of suppressing your nervous energy, let it out. A good speech coach can help you practice turning nervous energy into performance energy.

Tom Peters and Robert McKee are two examples of very successful public speakers who have turned performance energy into an art form.

The first time I saw Tom Peters speak, I sat in the front row -- so I got the full effect. He rants. He bellows. He patrols the stage like an angry wrestler. You get the feeling that this is a man on a mission -- and if you're not buying it, he's coming after you.

Robert McKee has spoken to more than 50,000 people in his Story Seminar on screenwriting. McKee is really passionate. You know he's completely committed to his topic. He shouts. He warns interrupters to shut up. He's angry -- and he lets you know why.

McKee appears as a character, played by Brian Cox, in the movie Adaptation -- as McKee giving his Story Seminar. What's on the screen is the real McKee. He's bombastic, profane, and completely believable. I know; I've taken his course twice.

What's the lesson here?

Successful speakers communicate profound belief in their own messages. They do it with emotion. Don't pull back from your emotions. Move toward them. Use performance energy to win over your audiences.

Using New Media to Leverage Your Speeches and Presentations

Archimedes, the patron saint of leverage, said, "Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth."

When you give a speech, and do it right, you're able to connect with and move the people in that room.

Now, new media give you that huge lever the Archimedes was talking about. You can multiply your audience connection a hundred times, a thousand times, and more.

I've haven't been to TED, the annual, high-profile, technology, education, and design schmoozefest in Monterey. But I feel like I have.

TED has a great website (http://www.ted.com/index.php/) where you can listen to conference speakers. The production values are minimal -- but the content is great. I've listened to 20-minute presentations on creativity (Sir Ken Robinson,) permission marketing (Seth Godin,) and the incredible human brain (Jill Bolte Taylor.)

When I tune in, I am at TED. I'm having the same experience as the live audience.

Start videotaping your speeches. I'm not talking about heavy-duty production costs. You can do it with a couple of good-quality, prosumer camcorders, tripods, and a wireless mic.

When you give a good, solid speech that connects with the audience, you can leverage your speech on your own website, an industry website, or -- if you want to swing for the fences -- perhaps even YouTube.

Archimedes would be surprised to find out his famous lever turns out to be a mini-DV cassette the size of a matchbox.

Public Speaking -- Still the Golden Opportunity to Communicate

The media landscape is changing faster than you can say, "What's the new Facebook?" We're living in an age of incredible media overload -- and it's getting worse. When you dip into television, periodicals, and the Web every day to get information, trends, and breaking news, it's like drinking from a fire hose.

But here's a fact you need to remember. A speech is still about 20 minutes long. This length seems to have settled in as an established cultural norm. It's what audiences expect.

Compared to today's typical audience attention spans, 20 minutes is an eternity. Now, 30-second TV commercials seem long -- and there are more and more 10-second spots. Print advertisers and website owners measure their page views in seconds.

But when you sign on to give a speech, you've got your audience for a good 20 minutes. If you're an interesting and lively speaker, you've got them with no distractions or interruptions.

In addition, your audience usually arrives with a positive outlook. They're on your side. They're rooting for you to succeed -- because they've already made an investment in time and expectations to be there.

But too many executives think of their speeches and presentations as obligations or even burdens. Since when is it a burden to spend 20 minutes, face-to-face, with customers, employees, investors, thought leaders, and other key audiences who are there to listen -- and want you to succeed?

Remember this. Your next 20-minute speech has enormous potential. When you connect with your audience and deliver on their expectations, you own the most valuable real estate on the media map today.