Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours.
Before we jump into today’s topic, I thought that I would briefly highlight what is in the pipeline for Strategy in Praxis.
Firstly, and most importantly, the newsletter. Today, we will take a momentary hiatus from strategy as we discuss, after another reader request, public speaking. Once back into the swing of things, we will head straight into our next big theme: the ‘other’ three P’s.
Yes, that is correct. Over the next few weeks and months, we will be focusing on marketing that is not communications. In a shocking turn of events, it turns out that it is indeed still a thing. Among the topics coming up are:
· Internal (organizational) and external (market and competitive) analyses
· Pricing
· Distribution
· Budgeting
· Product-market fit
As promised, there will also be virtual talks and workshops with leading experts coming up later this year. These will be heavily discounted for paying subscribers, so if you are not already signed up, now is as good a time as any to do it (plus, it is always very much appreciated and genuinely makes a difference for yours truly).
Lastly, the book club is just about finished with The Management Myth and we will soon start scheduling the final Zoom sessions to discuss our thoughts on it. Once finished, we will move on to the next book – Life after New Media by Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska. Many of you have reached out and want to join for that, so we will undoubtedly have a great group of readers getting together once again.
Now then. Onto le sujet du jour.
Among the many things that people fear, either rationally or irrationally, public speaking often sits at or near the very top. Yet most of us cannot avoid it. Sooner or later in our lives, whether we like it or not, a situation will inevitably arise in which presenting is required.
It is here that we find our subscriber request. The person who asked me to provide comment had been tasked with presenting on her company’s behalf at an industry conference. Although the technicalities of speaking are not matters which I discuss particularly often, I am obviously happy to help anyone in our community to the best of my limited abilities.
It may be worth providing a bit of background for those wondering why someone would ask me for advice. As it happens, keynote speaking is something that I have done for most of my career. And although I can still often feel uncomfortable in small groups of friends (one of my admittedly many flaws), I rather enjoy presenting to large crowds of strangers.
Over the years, I have had the extraordinary privilege to do so all over the world – from Stockholm to Reykjavik, London to Dublin, Mumbai to Dubai and New York to Prague – though Covid obviously put that to a pause. Along the way, I have seen both renowned seniors crumble under pressure and witnessed unheralded juniors rise to the occasion, but also picked up a few tricks that might help someone avoid the former and join the latter.
They might be entirely banal for all I know, but I thought I would share them nonetheless.
So, let us get into it.
Audience first, organizer second, presenter last
It is often said that pride goes before the fall. This, to me, has always had the problematic implication that without fall there would be no pride; spend but a few moments in an executive boardroom of a successful company and you will quickly realize the silliness of the suggestion.
However, when it comes to speaking, humility goes before the rise.
The single best starting point for any speaker, from my experience, is to be brutally humble about the task at hand. Many make the mistake of believing that the event, or at least their part of it, is about them. It is not. The event exists to provide value to the audience. That is it. Nothing more. The job of the speaker is to provide said value and thereby make the event organizer look good. Far too often, this most basic of consultancy truths – make the client the hero – is forgotten the moment the context changes from the office to the conference stage, and the results are invariably disastrous.
For example, some treat their slot as an opportunity to pitch their business to any and all potential prospects in attendance. In so doing, they put their own interests over those of practically everyone else. Unsurprisingly, it reduces both the audience’s interest and any chances of being offered to speak again to zero at the drop of a mic. Just as people generally do not pay to have advertising put into their favorite shows but for it to be taken out, conference attendees who have been charged for the pleasure tend to frown upon obvious sales efforts.
A humble starting point also means that you come to the event prepared. This might appear yet another a truism, but there are unfortunately plenty of self-proclaimed thought-leaders who would advise you to do the opposite. They blatantly ignore my first point. Do not listen to them.
There may, of course, be a case for making the talk come across as if it is relaxedly casual. Standup comedians in particular excel at this. But be careful not to imitate the effect without understanding what caused it; every seemingly spontaneous joke will have been carefully written, rehearsed and polished. Just as how an understanding of exceptions requires an intimate prior knowledge of the rules, it is only by first mastering the material that one is able to later improvise (or appear that one is) and, as importantly, know whether one has time to.
The process of writing a speech is hardly universal, but most professional speakers that I know go about it in roughly similar ways, continuously writing, rehearsing, adjusting and improving. Repetition is key.
And yes, this means that going through one’s notes once or twice on the airplane on the way to the conference is neither sufficient nor acceptable. No matter who you are, you will not be taken for a professional if you appear as an amateur.
At the event
Ideal preparation also involves, if possible, arriving early to study the layout of the conference room in which you are intended to perform. For one, the dynamics of rows of seats vary greatly from those of round tables, and both have an impact on audience behavior. Depending on the time of your presentation slot, people may be more or less inclined to visit the bathroom – a potential problem for row seating, less so for table seating. Similarly, a person who has had to turn around all day to see the stage will be less inclined to do so as the event draws to a close, so you may need to put some extra energy into your delivery if you are the last person out.
Having the chance to visit the venue before the action starts also provides you with a perfect opportunity to meet and greet those closest to the proverbial ground (such as the tech team), the importance of which I feel can scantly be exaggerated. Ultimately, their efforts can make or break a talk; getting on their wrong side practically ensures you are fucked if something goes wrong.
To illustrate, a couple of years before the pandemic, I gave a keynote presentation at a high-profile event with approximately 1,500 guests in attendance. As is customary for prestigious conferences, a number of the other speakers were internationally recognized executives from large companies - and it quickly became clear that one of them considered himself very important indeed. Rolling his eyes, tutting and sighing, he could not give less of a shit about anything other than his own talk, which he in entirely rude terms insisted on presenting via his own laptop.
Once it inevitably stopped working, nobody came to his aid. After about five minutes of failing to reboot it, he was booed off stage.
Do not be that person. Be nice. To everyone.
If you can, also befriend the photographer and ask them how you can make their job easier. If you move around on stage (more on that later), let them know how. This will ensure better pictures, a happier organizer and, more often than not, that you can get copies via email long before anyone else.
Lastly, spending time at the event before you go on stage means you get the chance to listen to the other speakers, a treat you should not carelessly toss aside. Watching others is a great way to learn; from the material to the delivery and the audience reaction. It also enables you to reference their talks in yours which, in turn, makes it feel organic. I do this for almost every presentation I give and have yet to meet an organizer who did not specifically emphasize how much they appreciated it.
The extra mile
All of that which I have detailed above will undoubtedly help you perform better and stand out as a speaker. But there are few additional things that one can do to take the performance to another level yet.
Starting with the deck, the simple truth is that the better it looks, the better will you. People will make up all kinds of conclusions about you based on the clothes that you wear on stage and the same applies to the slides that you show.
That is not to say that each and every one of them needs to resemble a screen cap from a perfume commercial – a deck is means to an end, not the end itself – but it also cannot be, as is so common, a wall of text. Audiences will stop paying attention to what you are saying the moment anything is shown on screen. If there is text, they will read it and, to make matters worse, chances are that you will turn away from them to read it too. This is a cardinal sin in public speaking. Never turn your back to the audience.
Obviously, key information, insights and summary takeaways are great. But a long-form, word-by-word repetition of what you just said is anything but.
If you struggle with making the deck pretty, take inspiration from other speakers whose presentations you like (remember the previous point about arriving early), or simply reach out for help. It is perfectly fine not to be good at everything. I sure as hell am not. Regardless of how much effort I put in, my decks were never as good-looking as I wanted them to be until I asked a much more creatively talented friend of mine, Nick Ellis of Halo agency fame, to come to the rescue. The difference was night and day.
Anyone looking to hone their speaking craft is also going to want to consider their movement on stage. Many presenters make the mistake of either remaining in the same spot or wandering incessantly from one end of the stage to the other. Neither is ideal. By standing still for the entirety of the talk, the audience members can look down on their phones knowing that when they look up again, you will still be there. Bounce around the stage as if you were a tennis ball in the midst of a Wimbledon final and there is a palpable risk that people will get seasick.
A good measure of motion is whether it enhances what is being said and how it is perceived. Movement that comes to a stop can be used to emphasize a point; movement that begins can change the focus from one point to the next. Acting masterclasses in particular will help you understand how it all ties together.
Finally, I should probably address the commonly argued viewpoint that all presentations need a narrative arch. This, as far as I learned over the decades, is incorrect. While I would agree that grand stories undoubtedly can help audiences engage with and, through metaphor and simile, memorize material, there are plenty of highly successful speakers who make little use of them. If you have one that you feel would enhance your presentation, definitely include it. If you do not, do not force one in.
What tends to matter more is theme. As long as there is a consistency of direction, many stories may fit into it. A presentation on the financial realities of investment in low-innovation markets given to a room full of CFOs, for example, does not need a human interest angle to connect. But it does need a theme to be memorable.
And there we have it. I hope that some of it made sense. If not, well, things will be going back to normal next week.
Until then, have the loveliest of weekends.
Onwards and upwards,
JP