Episode #577: Seven Points For Leaders When Giving Talks

Recently, my social media has been full of short videos of various politicians and supporters giving talks at the Democratic National Convention. It always begs the question for me about what are we doing as leaders in business? We have the same goals. We want our message to be heard and to be convincing. The difference is, I am sure, all of these speakers have been well coached and have been practicing hard for their moment in the spotlight, given a global audience of massive proportions. In business, we have our own team at our Town Hall or perhaps an audience at a business conference or maybe a small Chamber of Commerce gathering. Actually, it doesn’t matter about the venue, because skill is skill, image is image and credibility is credibility.

I was reminded of this when one of my son’s friends complained about the organisation’s leader, when he has just joined the firm after graduating from varsity. Being at the very bottom of the pile, young people are there to stay quiet and listen to their elders and betters. The issue though is, they are not stupid. In this case, the top person was a poor speaker and so the new entrants first thought is, “have I made a mistake?”. They worry that this company isn’t as good as they imagined it was. If the top dog, the “face” of the organisation is a dud, then maybe the whole artifice is a problem too.

As business leaders, it would be rare that there is a lot of effort put into the talk preparation beforehand. Smart, successful, assured people are confident about winging it. The problem is we can become excessively confident over time and neglect the basics. Here are seven points to reflect on when giving your next business talk to ensure you do a much better and more credible job.

1. Rehearse. This step is always the victim of tight schedules, but the downside of neglecting it serious because our personal and professional brands suffer. Even if it is a minimalist approach on the prep front, at least do a run through before you launch forth in front of your listeners. Remember they are judging you and your firm, on what they see you do.

2. Eyes. Make eye contact with your audience. I don’t mean the usual fake eye contact, where the speaker dramatically scans the crowd but in fact doesn’t look at any one person. I mean hard core, full on, six seconds of riveting eye contact, with as many people as possible, but delivered one by one, maintained over the entire course of the talk. Our listeners need to feel we are speaking directly to them and that we want their 100% attention. Six seconds is enough to engage them without pulverising the audience into submission and coming across as being too intrusive.

3. Face. We make the mistake of thinking that our slides are the most powerful visual tool in our armoury. Not true. Our face shines through much more brilliantly and powerfully. Our facial expressions are absolute commanders of nuance, meaning and impression. Many business speakers remind me of Noh masks, which are frozen in carved wood with only a single countenance. Don’t be like that. We need to use our face to amplify the emotions – belief, sincerity, empathy, care, humanity - behind our message.

4. Voice. I noticed that many speakers at the Convention were loud, loud, loud all the way through in their speech. They were trying to speak powerfully, to inspire, to motivate. That is all very well but modulation is a critical piece for really being heard. It allows us to amplify certain words and phrases, such that they stand above the other words placed around them. Dropping to a whisper, after bellowing away in your talk, is the ultra power play in messaging. That contrast pinpoints everyone’s attention to what we say next during the whisper and that is what we want to have happen for the key points in our talk.

5. Gestures. They are another amplifier. Fifteen seconds is the maximum length for holding any gesture, before it becomes stale, dull and lifeless. Eye power combined with voice power, combined with a powerful gesture is an unbeatable combo when speaking. I see so many CEOs speaking with a vice like grip on the podium and thereby denying themselves the opportunity to use gestures to strengthen their key points. It is a big mistake. When I have a podium, I purposely stand back from it, so that my hands are not tempted to touch it. Be careful with podiums, because there seems to be a magnetic facility drawing our hands to grab it and hold on to it, so it won’t escape.

6. Pause. We saw many good examples at the Convention of the better speakers employing pauses. These allow us to differentiate between what we have just said and what we are about to say. We create a small break, before we say the next thing. That small gap allows the words to be heard clearly and gives the audience enough time to digest the previous content. Pauses also create anticipation of what we are about to say, which is a great way of drawing the audience into us and our message.

7. Posture. Stand up straight, don’t slouch, don’t kick one hip out and don’t look casual. A tall, straight back emanates authority and credibility. It shows confidence and commitment to what we are saying. These are subtle physical signals. We are all finely tuned into these signals, because that is how we have learnt to survive dangers over the centuries. Our eyes spot some physical action in front of us, we then anticipate what comes next, as well as making a judgement about what we are seeing. Slouching signals “unprofessional”, “casual”, “not serious”, “lazy”. By going in the other direction and thinking to carefully control our posture, we can determine the signal the audience receives and make it a winner for us.

These seven elements are not difficult or beyond mastery. By the way, the bar for public speakers in Japan is super low. Just by mastering these simple elements, we can catapult ourselves into the top 5% of speakers.