Public squeaking – Guidelines 1

Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long he would spend in preparation for a 10-minute speech. “Two weeks,” he said. How long then, for an hour-long speech? “One week,” came the reply. And for a two-hour speech? “I am ready now.”

Good presentation, great presentation is simple, but not easy. Even if you have mastered Noël Coward’s basics (“stand up, speak out and don't bump into the furniture”) you are still a long way from being an effective presenter or speaker. What then, is effective presentation? The answer to that question is different for every presenter and can also vary from presentation to presentation. A CEO may need to inspire the troops and then move on to reassure the investment community – two very different presentations of the same material. At the other end of the spectrum, some teachers are happy to make it out of the classroom alive …

The majority of audience members, on the other hand, are well able to answer that question; and generally in negative terms. We can all think of the long hours wasted with poor teachers, boring lecturers, uninspiring trainers and dull, dull, dull presenters. Why?

I am very fond of Mark Knopfler and I love his early work. Sultans of Swing is a classic pop song and I know all the lyrics, but believe me when I tell you that you do not want to be witness to my vocal stylings in a Karaoke bar. Repeat after me: It is not enough to just know the lyrics.

Why are so many presenters so bad? It is rarely a qualification issue; if the person is up on the podium, they generally have the expertise to be there - they know the lyrics. So why don’t they inform, persuade or inspire us to any great effect? One word answer: SELFISHNESS.

• They are not thinking sufficiently about their audience. Poor presenters do not spend anywhere like enough time thinking about how their content relates to a specific audience. A good working definition of a bore? Someone who is more interested in himself than he is in me. As an audience member, that means listening to someone read their slides out to me, with no thought given as to whether either the content or the delivery is going to energise me.
  

• Poor presenters are not time conscious [does that make them dyspunctional?]. They don't leave enough time to cover the important stuff and end up rushing or, worse yet, running over time.

• Poor presenters try and go it alone. A world-class, Oscar-winning film director is nothing without the full team. Who is your director of photography? Who is your continuity person? Who is your researcher or fact-checker? Don’t do the speaking/presenting thing alone unless you have to. Draft people in. Got a nephew studying design? Grab him! A niece who's a YouTube addict? Get her to send you cool stuff on your topic. Your mother is a news junkie? Turn her into your clippings service or fact-checker.
  

• Death by bullet point. [Yes, I know this is a bulleted list!] Sometimes you need to pretend PowerPoint was never invented and simply tell a story … Technology is your servant, the second you feel like you are its slave, something has gone fundamentally wrong. Here's a question I ask a lot of clients and it tends to make them very uncomfortable: "What are you going to do if there is a power cut?"

• Distil. Poor presenters frequently present what a skilled presenter would regard as an early draft. Too wordy. Too ragged. No flow. Crappy images. Distil your slideware – hone it, tweak it, refine it. Take lots of time, find out lots about your audience and say, "So what?" to yourself a whole lot. If you can't answer the "So what?" while you are distilling your message, delete the word/image/slide/section.

• REHEARSE! I asked the amazing Dick Hardt how long he rehearses his presentations and his response was "I usually spend 3-4 hours to tune up the presentation each time I give it and run through it several times before I give it. The first couple times I spent quite a bit more time." Lawrence Lessig spends even longer.

So, my three key pieces of advice on speaking more effectively to an audience:

• My number one mantra on the subject of presenting well: DON’T! If there is any other way you can communicate with your intended audience use that instead and don’t make a presentation. Send carrier pigeons, use smoke signals, learn Morse code, but do not stand up with a bunch of PowerPoint slides on the screen behind you unless it is the absolute best way of communicating this information to this audience.

• Make real time to rehearse. Do not get up on stage with a presentation you are barely familiar with, a few half-formed ideas on what you want to say and a bunch of cue cards. A 30-minute presentation requires an average of 4,500 words. Shakespeare’s Romeo only speaks 5,031 words onstage. Would you get up in front of an audience to do, “Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say ‘good night’ till it be morrow” without the benefit of rehearsal? The most impressive people I have worked with, the ones who make it look so effortless and so off the cuff, are always the ones who have put in the hours.

• If you are using visual aids, make sure they are stupendous. Clear, stripped back; a mixture of words, images, sounds, silence and whatever else you need to use. No small fonts. No 300-word slides. No 30-word slides. No clipart. No blurry images enlarged from the web. Human beings are immensely visual animals, seduce your audience with your visuals.

Repeat after me: It is not enough to just know your stuff.