Episode #145: What Pro Public Speakers Do

When you see someone do a very good presentation, your faith in public speaking humanity is restored. There are so many poor examples of people killing their personal and professional brands with poor public speaking skills, it is refreshing to see talks done well. It is not that hard really, if you know what you are doing and if you rehearse and practice. This is where the majority of lousy, boring and uninspiring speakers trip up. They don’t rehearse or practice. Instead, they just unload on their poor unsuspecting audience. Here is a pro hint. Never practice on your audience!

The global CEO of a major pharma company jetted into town recently and spoke at a chamber of commerce event. The presentation was well structured and flowed in a way that was easy to follow. The slides were professional and clear. He spoke fluently, wasn’t reading from any script and instead was talking about the key points up on screen. When we got to Q&A, he repeated the question, so that everyone could hear it and then answered it. He did that while addressing the entire audience, rather than just speaking to the inquirer. When he did not have the information referred to in a question, he admitted it straight up, without trying to fudge it. This is not an admission of weakness, rather it builds trust and credibility.

I doubt he did any rehearsal for that audience, because it was a stump speech he has given so many times he was entirely comfortable with the content. Could he have done better? Yes, he could have added more stories into the presentation. A few vignettes from the exciting world of white lab coats, where they were developing new medicines to save humanity, would have been good. He could have delivered it with a bit more passion. It was professional, but it came across as a stump speech. He was supremely comfortable delivering it and that is one issue we have to be alert to. When we are too comfortable, we can sometimes slip ourselves into cruise control mode. We should keep upping the ante each occasion, to try and see how much further we can push ourselves as presenters.

Another function I attended was an industry awards event and the main VIP guest made some remarks before announcing the winners. Humour is very, very hard to get right. For every professional comedian we see on television, there are thousands waiting tables and trying to break into the industry. When you see humour done well by a public speaker, you are impressed.

You need to have material that is funny for a start. Then you have to be able to deliver it so that people laugh. This sounds easy, but as professional comedians know, the timing of the delivery is key. So are the pauses and the weighting of certain key words. It has to be delivered fluently, so no ums and ahs, no hesitations, no mangling of words. Getting the facial expressions to match what is being said is also tricky.

Our humorous VIP was delivering some lines that he had used a number of times before, so he knew his material worked. It is always good when big shots are self depreciating. We can more easily identify with them, when they don’t come across as taking themselves too seriously. “I am good and I know it”, doesn't work so well with the rest of us. How do you become humorous as a speaker?

Where do we acquire our humorous material?

We steal it. Our speaker had probably heard those jokes somewhere else and just topped and tailed them for this event.

Very cleverly, he made them sound personal, as if these incidents had really happened to him.

This is important in order to build a connection with the punters in the audience.

So when you attend an event and you hear someone make a good joke or tell a humorous story, don't just laugh and reach for another Chardonnay, quickly write it down and later start using it yourself.

The secret though is to practice that humorous telling on small audiences to test you have the delivery just right.

The cadence is important and that takes practice.

I would guess our speaker had told those jokes many times before.

It is fresh for us, but for him, it was well within his range of capability.

This is what comedians do. They introduce new material in small venues, filter out what doesn't work, and then they bring it to the big audience on the big stage with the best gags.

We should do the same.

Another place where we can find humor is in what we say that makes an audience laugh. When I was returning to Japan in nineteen ninety two as a diplomat and as a trade commissioner, I was called upon to do a lot of public speaking in Japanese. I began with constructing jokes in Japanese that I thought were humorous. This was a pretty bold step, because I had no track record in being funny in English, let alone in Japanese. These jokes of my own crafting all bombed completely. However, I would say something not meaning to be funny and the Japanese audience would laugh.

I took note of that reaction and I realized that was a joke. I would incorporate that into my other talks. Over a long period of time and a lot of speeches, I built up a stock of these humorous sprinklings of pixie dust that worked with Japanese audiences.

It was refreshing to see two competent speakers in action recently and it is certainly a skill that all of us can improve in. There are some simple basics of speaking we need to concentrate on - prepare, rehearse, learn, repeat. If we don't, we could be damaging our personal reputation.