Please Be a Better Speaker

Delivering a Great Keynote Presentation

Part 1 - The Delivery

We have all suffered through our share of bad speakers.  But the most unfortunate experiences occur when a keynote speaker really lets us down.  In my profession, I get to hear hundreds of presentations annually and invariably there are those that make me wish for a Dr. Kevorkian for public speakers.

Last week, I attended an event where the keynote speaker was supposed to be some sort of distinguished, polished professional.  He should have handed out vials of Novocain to the attendees because his talk was peppered with sentences with such enthusiastic and emotionally captivating thoughts such as “the ontological and semantic underpinnings behind the RBAC² constructs in neo-dynamic enterprises…..”

This fellow’s talk was bad on many levels. He:

• wanted us to believe he was important because he max’d out the Fog Index
• stated an incredibly obvious fact (e.g., “IT projects need executive sponsorship”) and acted as if he had discovered the Holy Grail
• read to us a number of arcane data points from some histograms none of us could read anyway
• had no personality, no humanity and no warmth

I know a person’s a bad speaker when I can imagine my 14-year, with absolutely no advance preparation, could be way more entertaining with the same material.

So, let’s get some positive action going. Here are my tips for delivering a great presentation:

Part 1- The Delivery

A technically brilliant presentation is worthless if the delivery is flawed. If we can't hear you, then your presentation serves no purpose.  If you can't convince us that you truly believe in this material that you are presenting, then we won't believe it either.

An effective delivery is one where people can hear you speak.  A startling number of individuals cannot tell if they are "on microphone".  This takes some practice so that you know your voice is being picked up by a microphone and is being boomed out to every last chair in the venue.  It is far better for a speaker to ask the audience if they can hear him or her than to assume as much and be incorrect.  When you are on microphone you should be able to detect a bit of latency in your voice as it moves through the room.  If it sounds like you are merely speaking to yourself, then it's a sure bet you are.

But great delivery means that you think about how you come across to a crowd.  If you are not comfortable speaking before a large group, then go ahead and admit it.  Let the audience know that you are a fellow human being with your own particular set of concerns, strengths and fears.  Tell us that you're not a great public speaker but you really know love the subject matter and that you hope they will understand the spirit you have about this subject.

Honesty goes a long way with forming a connection between a speaker and the audience.  An audience is far more forgiving of a fellow human being than they will be with a supposed expert who lacks the humility and awareness to know that their delivery is bombing.

Many public speaking coaches will suggest that you open a talk with some sort of joke.  But let's face it, many of you are not comedians and joke telling is not your second career.  Don't use a keynote opportunity as a place to test drive some material you've been dying to use on an open microphone night at the local comedy club. Substitute a joke for a genuine if not heartfelt story involving yourself and the subject matter.  This will pull the audience into your perspective and your unique point of view about this material.

Nothing makes people pay attention more than a good story.  Human beings will listen for the longest time until they hear the conclusion, moral or punch line of a good story. Think about some of the great speakers you have heard.  They start their talk off by describing a problem, story or other event and then tell you how they will discuss this throughout the next 45 minutes.  They will likely use some sort of shorthand mnemonic or other gimmick to keep you guessing and waiting to hear the story through its completion.  These speakers use techniques like: the nine habits of effective….; the 10 steps to...; or, what the XYZ model stands for. People will pay attention to hear each and every one of those individual components.

Great keynoters also utilize props.  A funny thing happens when you bring a big box on stage.  Everybody in the audience wants to know, subconsciously, what's inside that box.  Throughout the presentation the audience wonders in anticipation what the next new strange item you will take out of the box.  But props hold another value beyond attention retention.  Props move the focus of the conversation between you and the audience away from a PowerPoint slide show.  The audience can now focus on a completely different area of the stage and they use a different part of their mind.  Props do not require the brain to think in textual or language terms.  Props appeal to different parts of the brain that deal with images and creativity.

Props can be humorous as well.  In a sales training session I gave, I changed clothes in front of 1,800 people on stage.  When I walked onstage I was attired in the worst possible polyester-based, mismatched used-car salesman attire known to mankind.  When I left the stage, I had filled a box with the worst professional clothes possible.  People laughed as I shed my seven pinkie rings, gold chains, etc. to fill a box full of these horrendous clothes. More than a decade later, people still bring up that stunt and still remember the points I made at that talk.

A great delivery also requires you to be self-deprecating and not self important.  No one in the audience is perfect and they all know that you aren't either.  Sure, you need to have an air of confidence in your material but you do not need to assert yourself as the most important person in this space.  Remember, if you weren't already deemed to be an expert in this space, you wouldn't have been given this keynote opportunity in the first place.  Do not spend a moment during the keynote re-credentialing yourself or reasserting your legitimacy to be on the stage.  No one really wants to hear it and secondly they will give you the respect you crave after you earn it from them.  The best way to earn it is to act like a colleague of theirs and not some sort of prima donna.

Lastly, make sure your delivery is aligned with the brand of your company.  If your firm is a hip, cool California operation, then why are you giving a dull, dry, academic, preachy and stiff talk?  The keynote presentation is an opportunity for you and your firm to make a lasting and favorable impression on hundreds or thousands of audience members.  If you come across as imperious or arrogant, then won't the audience assume as much for your firm?  Think about your delivery and think about what it says about you and your firm as you may want to seriously rethink how and what you present.

Next post: Part 2 - The Presentation Deck

Comments

[the doctor]

I made this plea last year:
http://blog.sourcinginnovation.com/2007/10/23/keynotes-the-good-the-bad-and-the-horrific.aspx
... I think it fell on deaf ears. :-(