In Part One we looked at the opportunity available for people who want to improve their presentation, persuasion and speaking skills. We delved into why are we speaking at all and who are we speaking to, which will define the approach we will take. The planning part is an obvious, but usually overlooked, component of the presentations’ world
Ironically, we begin with designing the end of the speech. How close can we get to compressing the key point of the talk into a single sentence. This discipline really forces us to be clear and concise about what it is we are going to say. So we start by writing the two closes of the talk. The first close is for prior to the Q&A, assuming there is going to be Q&A. The second is for after the Q&A.
Many speakers just allow the Q&A session to define the whole presentation. The issue here though is that, as the speaker, you have no control over what people will want to ask you. It is always astonishing to me, to hear audience members ask questions which are well off topic and unrelated to the point of the presentation. Why they do that is a mystery, but regardless, as the presenter there is nothing you can do to shepherd the audience toward asking relevant and insightful questions, to further tease out the gold from your humble offering.
This means the final impression from your talk, can be left dangling, wrapped around a remote and unremarkable subject, light years from the point you were making. We must seize back control. After the end of the Q&A, we repeat the key points we want the audience to have ringing in their skulls, as they file from the venue.
If you get a hard time during the Q&A, ranging from pushback to outright hostility, deal with it the same way. Do not allow your mouth to advance ahead of your brain and storm forth with the first random answer that pops into your head. Repeat the question in a substantially watered down form, which will suck all the invective and life power emanating from this incoming verbal missile.
If they say, “This is outrageous, your argument has been completely disavowed by all of the top experts, and you have the gall to be repeating it here today. In front of us. It is an insult”. You sweetly paraphrase, “The question was about expert opinion on this subject”. That reply took four seconds. You continue to buy yourself some more thinking time, by making a bland filler statement, such as, “This issue has aroused a lot of interest in our industry”. Another four seconds. Having eight seconds to think first is a world of difference to opening up your mouth and letting “whatever” pour forth. With these eight seconds, you are now fully mentally prepared to form your well considered reply.
When you do so, hold the questioner’s gaze for the first six seconds and then blank them for the rest of the proceedings. You show you are not afraid of them and then you spread your answer to all the other people in the room, engaging them with your eye contact. When you ignore the hostile questioner thereafter, you quickly drain all their negative, invective power from them.
Back to the structure of the talk. Having boiled down the whole brilliant concoction to a single sentence, we now work on the construction of the presentation. We need around three key pieces of evidence to support our assertions. Three is a good number, because it tends to make it easier for the audience to follow and yet also allows us enough room to go into reasonable depth. We work out the logical flow of the argument, to get the three points into order and then we add in the sub points and evidence to prove what we are saying. We have now framed the main body of the talk and this means it is time to work on the blockbuster opening.
The start of the speech has some key goals. We want everyone to stop multitasking and being distracted by their phones. We must make them cease chit chatting with their neighbours and devote their entire attention to us. Sounds easy. Today though, we all seem to have the attention span of a gnat, unless we are binge watching some popular series on Netflix. During lockdown, everyone was binge watching their hearts out, so their expectations have now reached stratospheric heights and here you are, about to present.
Unfortunately, as presenters, we can’t compete with these multi-million dollar, big budget extravaganza shows. We are left to our own devices to keep people away from their hand held devices. As modern day speakers, we find ourselves marooned in this Age Of Distraction. Therefore our opening has to be really well planned, to cut through all the mental clutter.
Whatever you say, begin with a lot of energy and volume, to scythe through the white noise bubbling away in the back of the room. You will have been introduced before your talk, but modern audiences keep chatting away without compunction, so go hard at the start. Open with a vexing question, a pithy quote, a gripping episode from the front lines or a bald faced, semi controversial statement. These are all good attention grabbers.
In Part Three, we will deal with the finer points of the delivery. Many a great start faltered midstream and lost the attention of the audience. People today are merciless about reaching for their phones, to disappear to a better world than sitting there listening to you drone on and on. Find out how to avoid that disastrous fate in the next instalment.