Leadership Magazine: Keep them interested from start to finish

Here's my latest Leadership Magazine contribution:

At a recent conference, I sat in a session where I was (unpleasantly) surprised by a key speaker who read to us; I had looked forward to the session and really wanted to hear what the person had to share, alas my attention and interest levels dwindled when the monotonous tone of her reading droned on.

For the love of all things that matter, when you are asked to speak at a conference, please don’t address the audience by reading your speech or presentation to them.

When you are a speaker, you would have been asked to address the audience because you are an expert and / or leader in a certain field. I totally appreciate that public speaking is not everybody’s cup of tea. In that case, if you are in a leadership position, or get asked to speak to a group of people on a regular basis, invest in an expert’s help to overcome your fear of public speaking; the investment is well worth it. My recommendation is to consider investing your time and money in an organisation such as Toastmasters. It’s a great way to practice speaking in front of a crowd and to build confidence, helping you realise that the earth won’t swallow you up when you open your mouth. They will also teach you all the different public speaking protocols and etiquette nuances that you need to make a lasting impression with your speech.

If, however, you’ve just been asked to deliver a presentation and you need a few immediate tricks, these are my eight favourite tips to get you through your speech:

1.     Write it, don’t read it: By all means, write out your speech if this will help you to structure it and to see where best to bring in your key points and messages.  However, please don’t be inclined to take all the folios of paper with you to the podium. This will pose an unnecessary temptation for you to read it. If you’re not quite ready to address the audience without your ‘paper crutch’, then consider writing down keywords onto cue cards that you can use as prompts throughout.

2.    Text is boring: You can use PowerPoint very effectively as a prompt as well. Don’t be tempted to present slides and slides of text to your audience. Being presented with a lot of text is boring and you will lose your audience’s attention. People are generally visual beings. Instead of a slide with a lot of text on it, consider using an interesting image or cartoon with a couple of keywords and then speak around each image. People are there to listen to you, not to read your slides.

3.    Tell a story: you’ll have a more engaged audience if you share a story or something personal with them. Not only will your audience be keen to hear more, they are a lot more likely to listen to you and remember what you said.

4.     Don’t forget the eyes: When you read your presentation, your eyes are cast down and you immediately cut off your connection with the audience. Make eye contact with different members of the crowd throughout your speech in order to make them feel involved. Be warned, this could be a bit difficult if everyone has their faces buried in their phones (hopefully) tweeting away about your amazing talk. Cast your eyes, then, to the non-tweeters.

5.     Don’t worry if you forget: the audience are there to listen to you and your insights; they don’t know what you were or were not going to say. You are the expert, so if you’ve forgotten something during the talk, don’t worry about it. You can always swing back to a point if you remember it later on.

6.     Practice practice practice, the more familiar you are with the content and what you want to say, the easier it will be and the less you will be tempted to look at your notes! There is an old adage, ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’. We are often quite surprised as to what our voices sound like, so practise out loud; don’t just practise your speech in your head. Record yourself in order to pick up any unnecessary repetition or any ‘crutch words’ which you may tend to rely on, as these could potentially detract from what you are saying. Practising in front of the mirror will also help make you aware of any gestures that could distract the audience.

Earlier this year I had to present at a conference. There was a technology glitch with the system, which basically meant that I had to start presenting while they pressed buttons to try and get my presentation onto the screen. If I had not known my presentation backwards and had practised it many many times, it could have been absolutely disastrous. As murphy would have it, the presentation worked the minute I finished answering the last question.

7.     Mic up: personally, I don’t like microphones; however, you really do want the person at the back of the room to hear you too. If there isn’t a microphone, practice projecting your voice, you’ll lose your audience if you are too quiet. Also, practise using pauses throughout (note them in your cue cards if need be), it can make quite an impact to get a point across… if used correctly.

8.   Time yourself: Ensure that you know how long you are talking for and that there is enough time for questions. Regardless of how interesting your talk is, keep to the time allocation, in this way you are respecting the time of your audience.

Make sure that your speech is remembered for all the right reasons.

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