The Nuts and Bolts of Giving a Good Speech

           
          In this helpful Harvard Business Review article, Chris Anderson offers advice on how to give an effective presentation. Drawing on his experience as curator of TED talks (which have been viewed more than one billion times over the last 30 years), he says that public speaking is eminently coachable. “In a matter of hours, a speaker’s content and delivery can be transformed from muddled to mesmerizing,” he says. Here’s how:

            • Frame a good story. “There’s no way you can give a good talk unless you have something worth talking about,” says Anderson. “Conceptualizing and framing what you want to say is the most vital part of preparation.” The most common problem he and his colleagues see in first drafts of TED talks is trying to cover too much ground. Less is more: deep versus broad, with vivid anecdotes and examples. Humans are wired to enjoy stories, and a good presentation takes listeners on a journey and helps them see the world differently. It’s important to know where the story begins, how much people already know about it, and why it means so much to you. The best talks are like a mystery novel – posing a problem, leading listeners toward the solution, and letting them do a lot of thinking for themselves.

            • Plan your delivery. The goal is to sound natural and conversational rather than scripted and awkward. Anderson says there are three ways people try to pull this off: read from a script or teleprompter, refer to bullet points, or memorize the whole thing. For TED talks, he recommends memorization, but acknowledges that this is too time-consuming for most presentations. Note cards with bullet points are a good second-best, with plenty of rehearsing to master the material and the transitions from one card to the next. Reading a speech is the worst option; it changes the whole dynamic, distancing the speaker from the audience and creating a formal aura that can be deadly.

            • Develop stage presence. The most common mistake is moving one’s body too much – shifting from one leg to the other or pacing around. “People do this naturally when they’re nervous,” says Anderson, “but it’s distracting and makes the speaker seem weak. Simply getting a person to keep his or her lower body motionless can dramatically improve stage presence.” It’s important to realize that being nervous is a natural reaction and can win an audience over as long as it comes across as genuine. The best way to control nervousness is to breathe deeply before walking in front of the audience. “It works,” says Anderson. During the talk, looking directly at listeners is essential – finding five friendly-looking people and speaking directly to them as if they were friends you haven’t seen in a year and you’re bringing them up to date on your latest ideas. “That eye contact is incredibly powerful,” he says, “and will do more than anything to make your talk land.”

            • Plan the multimedia. The do’s and do not’s for PowerPoint are well known by now, he says: keep it simple, don’t read what’s on the slides, don’t use a deck as notes, and make effective use of photos, illustrations and short videos. Some talks don’t need slides at all.

            • Get feedback – but not too much. Rehearsing in front of a live audience is important, but if you get conflicting advice on what to change, it can paralyze you. It’s important to practice with people who know you well and to have confidence in what you prepare.

            “Presentations rise and fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker,” Anderson concludes. “It’s about substance, not speaking style or multimedia pyrotechnics. It’s fairly easy to ‘coach out’ the problems of a talk, but there’s no way to ‘coach in’ the basic story – the presenter has to have the raw material. If you have something to say, you can build a great talk… The single most important thing to remember is that there is no one good way to do a talk. The most memorable talks offer something fresh, something no one has seen before.”

“How to Give a Killer Presentation: Lessons from TED” by Chris Anderson in Harvard Business Review, June 2013 (Vol. 91, #6, p. 121-125); the executive summary of this article is available at http://hbr.org/2013/06/how-to-give-a-killer-presentation/

From the Marshall Memo #487