An authority or expert has instant credibility on the podium. But many experts giving technical presentations fall into the trap of overwhelming the audience with too much content. They fill in every moment of the talk with data and facts. The charts and statistics become a security blanket. Being an effective communicator requires that you understand the listener’s ability to absorb information. These 10 simple rules will help you give a talk that connects with an audience, moves them to action and leaves a positive impression.

1. Do your research. Talk to other experts, especially inside your own organization. Ignoring them might bruise the egos of co-workers who have a stake in the topic. Know what the audience expects. Research their existing level of knowledge about your topic. Make sure your content is relevant to the audience.
2. Choose one ‘big idea’ or main thesis for your talk or presentation. Don’t try to put too many ideas into your speech. Research shows that people remember very little from speeches, so just give them one big idea to hang onto. What is the one idea you want the audience to hear, remember, and act on?
3. Choose a ‘destination point’ for the talk. When people leave the room what will they do or feel differently than they did before you started presenting? Before you know where you want to take the audience, you need to be honest about your own hidden assumptions and the audience’s current situation.
4. Aim to make three main points in the talk. Use three related words or phrases to grab attention, encapsulate, summarize. The number three is interesting – we easily remember three things. Beyond this it becomes progressively more difficult to remember. Three items act as a powerful unifying format. Examples:
   • Three key themes that together cover a wide area.
   • Three items that act in sequence to get to a desired goal.
   • Two problems and a solution that resolves the problem.
   • Two actions or objectives and a solution that will result from achieving these.
5. Create the speech Abstract first. Focus your content in your own mind. If you cannot (or choose not to) do this, the chances are that your thinking isn’t clear enough for the audience to understand your purpose.
6. Construct a logical argument. There is no reason to give a speech unless you have an argument to make. A speech should never be confused with normal conversation such as “Nice day, huh?’ The speech argument is an explanation of why one believes something to be true.
   • State the Big Idea that forms the content of your argument.
   • Ask the question: Why is my interpretation of the evidence true?
   • List, in order of importance, all the reasons why you find the interpretation persuasive.
7. Start with an outline. Once you have a clear outline, writing the details is relatively straight forward, almost like filling in the blanks. Within each section of the speech:
   • State the question you are answering
   • Support the premise with examples, stories, statistics.
   • Tie-in each of the section premise to the speech thesis.
   • Transition to the next question.
8. Avoid burying the audience in raw data. Subject experts can overwhelm an audience with too much data. Less is more. Give each statistic a context that makes it relevant to the audience. Numbers alone are often meaningless and difficult to grasp by themselves.
9. Include a human element. No matter how ‘dry’ your topic, look for ways to humanize it. Including stories and case studies enables you to engage the audience and raise levels of motivation, acceptance, and approval.
10. Conclude with a call to action. State what the audience has to do, change or think after your talk. Many speeches avoid a call to action. Even in an educational presentation you want to ensure the audience knows what you want them to do. It can be something as simple as ‘read the new accounting regulations’.

Following these rules will minimize the chance that the audience will mentally check-out during your talk. They will still respect your expertise, and remember more of your speech the next day.

According to US News and World Report, ghostwriting is one of the 30 Best Careers for 2009 – along with audiologist, clergy and hairstylists. This mix clearly caters to busy people who need a benediction said while their hearing is checked in the hair salon as their autobiography is written.

Marty Nemko dishes the dirt on what it takes to become a ghostwriter – the ability to write powerfully and fast in another person’s voice with the interviewing skills to unearth interesting information from clients. Apart from emailing random celebrities and offering to ghostwrite their autobiographies, Nemko suggests other ways to break into the field.

Another source of celebrity ghostwriting work: writing speeches and articles for politicians or business leaders. You can also ghostwrite for just plain folks: websites, family histories, or Grandpa’s memoir.

The financial reward: A median salary (with eight years in the field): $56,900. Which sounds suspiciously low – are ghostwriters spiriting away their earnings from the eyes of IRS?

On the eve of President-elect Barack Obama’s eagerly anticipated Inaugural speech, newspaper headlines are reporting on past Inaugural speeches and millions of Americans plan to engage in the unnatural act of listening to a speech from beginning to end.

Obama, more than any living US President, consciously embraces oratory and the art of rhetoric. A superb assessment of Obama’s speech-making skills appeared in the Weekend Financial Times. Author Sam Leith shows how Obama deploys the terms and tools of formal rhetoric — first described by Aristotle four centuries before the birth of Christ. “They still work the same way on the human ear and the human heart as they did in Aristotle’s day.” His article covers a lot of ground. The main points I took from it are:

Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle

The rhetorical triangle sets out the ground rules for the art of persuasion. It describes how a speaker uses ‘ethos’ to establish their bona fides, ‘logos’ to make the argument logically and ‘pathos’ to manipulate emotion.

Tricolon

The ‘rule of three’ applied in a sentence with three clearly defined parts (cola) of equal length, usually independent clauses and of increasing power. Caesar’s “I came; I saw; I conquered.” Lincoln’s second inaugural with its line “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right … “. Obama at the Berlin Victory Column in front of 100,000 European’s last July: “As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice-caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.” As Leith notes, this is rhetorical power in pure form:

A double (“Boston” and “Beijing”), leading to a tricolon whose third term is itself doubled up, the whole mixture thick with alliteration. This is very far from informal or direct or off-the-cuff speech. It is marvelously and intentionally musical.

Syntheton

The balanced double words used in “Boston and Beijing” or by speakers who say “young and old” or “black and white”.

Anaphora

The repetition of a phrase at the beginning of successive lines. Consider Churchill:

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

Now Obama at the Iowa caucus victory speech on January 3rd:

“I’ll be a president who finally makes healthcare affordable … I’ll be a president who ends the tax breaks … I’ll be a president who harnesses the ingenuity … I’ll be a president who ends this war in Iraq … ” Then: “This was the moment when … this was the moment when … this was the moment when … ” And, as his speech built to its climax, “Hope is what I saw … Hope is what I heard … Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire.”

Leith’s article includes an inventory of the debt Obama owes to the rhetorical power of his absent father; to the framers of the Declaration of Independence; to his schooling at Columbia and Harvard; to past President’s; to the Civil Rights movement and the Bible:

Obama sets out to position himself, and his rhetoric positions him, as the inheritor of the oratorical and political traditions of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ.

Leith concludes by remarking the scorn republican’s poured on Obama as “a person of words” and “an elitist who works with words” – while championing the inarticulate leaders they admire (Bush, Palin and the rest). Let’s not forget, as I blogged in February, Hilary Clinton also criticized him as someone who just “gives speeches”.

It’ll be interesting to see the effect a US President with such a command of rhetoric will have on the general level of discourse in the political and commercial arenas. For too long in this country our politician’s and CEO’s have avoided eloquence as something unworthy, untrustworthy, vaguely “European”. They were proud of being plain spoken. Of being a man or woman of the people. That refusal to heed Aristotle’s simple techniques might have worked until now.

The bar has been raised.

Think for a moment of corporate America in terms of Medieval England.

This is of course quite ridiculous. We’ve come a such a long way since the 14th Century. Back in the Dark Ages literacy was at all-time low. A minority of the population held a passport and had traveled overseas. The rabble was distracted by jousting, feasting and Mystery Plays. And the King gave speeches no-one listened to.

I can’t possibly imagine what this era of history has in common with our own.

But what if? What if we did imagine?

What roles would we all play? What do the characters in the Canterbury Tales, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail tell us about life today?

Obviously the CEO is the King (or, in rare cases, the Queen). An enlightened monarch or raging despot ruling over the organization. The EVPs and SVPs are the Barons at Court, consumed by intrigue and power plays. Sales managers are the Knights, conquering new territory. The staff are serfs and peasants, laboring in cubicle farms.

What about the speechwriter? What roles best suit the speechwriter in this Medieval analogy?

Actually, there’s quite a number which fit the job description.

For starters, how about the speechwriter as the Motley Fool?

The Motley Fool

The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.
– The Beatles: Fool on the Hill

The Fool in the Medieval Court stands behind King’s throne. While Barons and Knights give measured advice the Fool whispers in the King’s ear “That’s boring. Rubbish! Claptrap! The people won’t buy it. You’ll have to spice it up to keep their attention at the Guild Hall Luncheon tomorrow. Make ’em laugh my liege. Tell ’em a story.”

The Fool adds Laughter! Humor! Interest! He has King’s ear, for the moment. The King tolerates him (just) and values his fresh point of view.

The role of the Motley Fool is politically cool. You get to hang out with the powerful and mighty in the land. You might even spend time with the King on the Corporate Jet. But never forget that you’re the only person in the room without 5,000 serfs reporting to you and a quarterly number to make.

Screw up and it’s “Off with his head!”

As Robert Schlesinger said about his role in JFK’s White House, speechwriters counter the “diplomatic blandness” the State Department bureaucracy produced.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Fools

• Step outside the corporate bureaucracy.
• Look at issues and topics with fresh eyes.
• Inject humor, levity, tell stories – audiences love it.
• Have the courage to speak frankly to the powerful.
• Don’t show fear when the King growls.

Enough with the Jester. What other role characterizes the job of an Executive Communications Manager (aka Speechwriter) in today’s corporation? How about …

The Ploughman

Businessmen they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
– Dylan: All Along The Watchtower

A world away from the gilded Court, Ploughmen till the fields. Tedious but necessary work plays a large part in speechwriting. Doing research. Fact-checking. Ploughing through the background papers which spew from Subject Matter Experts like weeds sprouting on a April morning after a few sweet showers.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Ploughmen

• It’s boring work, but learn to live with it. With any luck you’ll have the fields tilled by nightfall and the King will invite you to the feast that evening.
• Have systems in place to take care of the boring stuff. Tracking forms; checklists; everything to speed the plough.
• Divide up tasks. It’s less overwhelming to focus on today’s furrow than worry about the rest of the forty-acre field.
• Take breaks, quaff ale, be strong behind the plough.

The Fisherman

Fish supplemented the Medieval diet. Carp was delicacy plucked from the castle moat by Fishermen. It’s always fun to throw a few lines in the water and see what slippery items of information you can catch. Today’s fisherman uses email and voice mail to leave requests for information with subject experts across the kingdom. Bait your hook with the name of the CEO. (“I’m doing some research for a speech Mark is giving next month and wanted your views…”). Always use the King’s first name. When the fish bite, reel them in.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Fisherman

• Plan ahead. The fish might not be biting today. You need to get your lines in the water early on in the process.
• Have patience. But if you don’t get an answer after a few days, fish in another part of the corporate millpond.
• Don’t forget to bait your email requests with the first name of the executive you are writing for.

The Miller

The Miller is an important member of every Medieval community. Without him, there would be no flour and no loaves of bread. Bread and circus’s are what keep the serfs fed and happy. Every Miller is dusty from grinding wheat into flour; separating wheat from chaff.

Subject Matter Experts (SME’s – rhymes with please) will bring sacks and sacks and sacks and sacks of data to your mill. Each direct report likes to provide at least 45 minutes of content for a 15 executive minute speech. If the executive has 10 reports that means you’ll have to sieve through eight hours of content.

It’s the speechwriters job to grind it down, then bake fresh loaves to feed the audience.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Millers

• This is your biggest single value-add. No-one else wants to stand there while the mill-wheels are a-turning.
• Edit ruthlessly – throw out 90% of the data the engineers and SME’s send you.
• Say ‘No’ to requests for more data and facts from Knight’s and Baron’s who pile on the grain as a CYA strategy.
• Keep the mill-wheels turning. Don’t send un-milled sacks of data to the court. They are paying you to sift and select.

The Alchemist

The Alchemist turns base metal into Gold. Like Rumpelstiltskin’s daughter you’ll take their words and sit in your room all night spinning them into gold. And next morning no-one will know how you did it.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Alchemists

• Study the book of spells – text-books on speechwriting such as those listed at the end of this parchment.
• Safeguard the Mystery. Don’t reveal your secrets to the other members of the Court.
• Practice makes perfect. Alchemy is an art, not a science. Cultivate your Craft.
• Understand that what you do is magikal to ordinary mortals.

The Monk

Scriptorium: a place for writing – commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the copying of manuscripts by monastic scribes.
– Wikipedia

Monks spent hours, days, weeks, months, years in the Scriptorium illustrating manuscripts like the Book of Kells. Everyone admires their artistry but wonders why they spent so much time coloring basic information and making it, actually, harder to comprehend.

That was then. This is now.

The speechwriter today spends hours, weeks, months, years in front of the computer illustrating presentations in PowerPoint. Future archeologists will gaze in wonder at the endless decks of slides. Beautiful, mindless illustrations of…what? Will anyone be able to comprehend these charts in the future? Can members of the audience comprehend them today?

Who cares. Monks may have had a diet of thin gruel, but illustrated manuscripts occupied them on winter evenings.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Monks

• Learn cutting-edge PowerPoint skills. Take time to study and learn techniques.
• Develop a good relationship with your graphics team who support you in this.
• Read two of the Bibles of the modern era: Nancy Duarte’s slide:ology and Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen

The Wandering Minstrel

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.
– Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man

OK. I saved the best for last. All of the previous roles are aspects of life at Court, inside the hierarchical corporate world, bound by proscribed roles and strict protocols.

The Wandering Minstrel travels the land a free man composing sonnets and madrigals for clients.

Today the speechwriter as consultant wanders freely, far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. If this sounds like the life for you, there’s important lessons you need to learn.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Minstrel

• Aim for niche markets. Become an expert in a specific industry. You’ll make good money if your expertize is an inch wide and a mile deep.
• Work fast, bill clients a flat fee, clean up and move on (just like Joe the Plumber).
• Stay at the top of your game. You have to be good, darned good.
• Work by referrals. People love to hire a Minstrel who has performed for the crowned heads of Europe.

That’s the end of my tour of the Middle Ages. If you’d like to hear how this sounded when I delivered it as a talk to a District 57 Toastmasters meeting in Oakland, California, on November 15th 2008, click on the podcast icon below. (Since this is 35 minute presentation, you might prefer to choose the Download option to save it to your computer.)

Book of Spells

Here’s some reference books I keep close by:

• Writing Effective Speeches, by Henry Ehrlich Practical advice from a master of the craft.
• Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln, by James C . Humes Notes from Nixon’s ‘Rose Garden speechwriter’ with an anglophile twist.
• Say It Like Shakespeare, by Thomas Leech Speechwriting illustrated by the dramaturgy of the Bard.
• Powerwriting, by Suzan St Maur UK-based St Maur offers advice on business writing in general.
• Writing Great Speeches, by Alan M. Perlman Experienced corporate speechwriter shares his secrets.
• Speeches That Changed the World: The Stories and Transcripts of the Moments That Made History Study the text of great speeches.

As useful as reading books is, you should also spend time listening to speeches. Here’s a list of 100 great ones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:06 — 7.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

NSA/NC Meeting Report: Saturday November 1, 2008

Over 75 members and guests of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association attended Saturday’s meeting at the Burlingame Hyatt. The meeting theme was ‘Telling it like it is – selling it like it is’.

Selling it like it is

National President Sam Silverstein, CSP brought his No More Excuses approach to an interactive session.

Sam’s marketing and sales expertise focused a wide-ranging discussion on:

• How to get the most value out of NSA?
• How to pick a niche market?
• How to best invest time and resources in our speaking business?
• What’s the effect of changes in the economy and technology?

Sam used a powerful conceptual framework illustrated with a Venn diagram of three equilateral triangles to show how we can position ourselves for success:

• What are you GOOD at? Avoid the common mistake of not valuing this.
• What do you LOVE?
• How do you make MONEY?

The point where these three overlap is your ‘Power Core’. It’s bounded by knowing WHAT you deliver of value to customers; WHO you deliver to and HOW you deliver products and services.

For NSA members, the #1 thing you deliver is a speech. Simply record this to make an audio file and deliver a CD, then transcribe it and deliver an article or booklet. Multiple streams of income follow.

Sam recommended we read The E-myth Revisted

Telling it like it is

NSA/NC member Linda Vanderwold, CSP delivered two presentations which showed how to develop content that tells it like it is.

As a professional speechwriter, I found her material incredibly useful.

Her first session detailed the value of mind map diagrams. Many people use free-form mind-mapping on a blank sheet of paper. Others invest in high-tech mind-mapping software.

Linda has structured a mid-tech solution. She’s developed a series of templates to use either in hard-copy or an a PowerPoint file. These VanWrite Maps allow us to write less and say more.

This example enables us to set priorities – choose a menu for each day of the week; plan a vacation or list items to pack

There’s a series of maps available for free download.

I’ll make use of Linda’s mind-maps to plan my next writing assignment and FAX the outline in map form to the client for instant verification that the project is on the right track.

As good as Linda’s morning session was, the afternoon session blew me away altogether. It also made it a challenge to write this blog entry! (Checked with the trial version of the Sentence Aerobics software.)

Linda took us through her unique Sentence Aerobics system which is the core of her VanWrite method. This is based on actual business documents, not academic theory. Linda conducted primary research to define “strong” and “weak” business writing. Then she “bottled” her observations in objective, measurable fashion, and formulated a very easy-to-take cure for the business communicator’s headache.

Her presentation, full of humor and sparkling wit, kept those who stayed wanting more.

Oops, I meant to write:

Her humorous and witty presentation kept those who stayed wanting more.

Thanks Linda!

Light relief from the inane world of corporate PowerPoint in this delightful European satire on graphics gone wild:

The video is inspired by Jessica Hagy’s wonderful Indexed blog.

Media trainer and speaker, TJ Walker, warns against cramming too many points into a speech. “The bigger a corporation or organization you are in, the harder the pull will be on you to add more and more points to your presentation. There won’t be anyone advocating for you to have fewer message points. Everyone will be making a forceful and compelling case to add more messages. There is only one little flaw with this strategy—it doesn’t work on audience members.”

Walker advocates no more than 5 points in a speech, which means the writer has to learn how to decline the request from the marketing director for 15 points, the sales director asking for 10 points and legal wanting some other clauses or conditionals added. Adding points to a speech is the easy option. No tough decisions to make. Pleases everyone in manamgement, but puts the audience to sleep.

TJ outlines the way a professional should approach this:

“Instead of setting yourself up for failure, you need to list all of your message points in a numbered fashion and then go though them all and put them in priority. Isolate your top five ideas. Those are the ideas you should speak about. All of the other ideas you can give in a handout, email people in a slide format, give them a t-shirt with the bullet points on it—whatever! Just don’t talk about more than five in your actual spoke presentation.”

Sound advice. Read the full article.

My blog has featured dozens of podcasts, from informal 3-5 minute interviews to recordings of full-length presentations. I’ve podcast from the convention floor, the corner store and the podium.

I’m amazed that more professional speakers, trainers, workshop leaders and people with a message don’t podcast. It’s fun. It’s easy. It’s happening now.

And it’s time I shared with people just what is involved in creating a podcast.

So I’ve scheduled three podcasting workshops between September and February.

Podcasting 101 for Small Business Owners

Thursday September 18 from 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
SBA Entrepreneur Center, 455 Market St., San Francisco.

As part of the Gizmology series being offered by the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association and the San Francisco Small Business Association I’ll be teaching a FREE evening workshop in podcasting.

We’ll start the evening with a discussion about the advantages of podcasting. Do you want your voice heard around the world? To have people tune in and hear you without any extra travel? Podcasting does this. Simply by putting an audio recording on a Web site and then letting people subscribe to a “feed,” you’ll have a powerful way to build a worldwide listening audience. The highlight of the class with be a hands-on demonstration. I’ll record some of the discussion and show everyone, step-by-step, how to make this into a podcast which we’ll access from iTunes. It should be a lot of fun.

Although the event is offered for free, you do need to register.

BizTechDay – Technology Day for Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

Saturday, October 25, 2008 from 08:00 AM – 06:00 PM
Hilton Hotel, 333 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco.

This all-day workshop includes the same class I will teach on September 18, and more. BiztechDay is a packed with educational seminars, workshops and panel discussions by top technology and business experts (like me!) all focused on how to grow your business using the power of the Internet & Web 2.0 technologies. Check out more details.

Registration before Sept 15 is $149 / After Sept 15 is $249 – so what are you waiting for?

Click here to register.

The 2009 Ragan Speechwriters Conference

Thursday, February 11, 2009 from 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
The Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC

Yes, in the very hotel that ex-NY Governor Elliott Spitzer chose for the tryst which ended his career and just a few blocks from the White House where President Richard Nixon recorded every conversation in the Oval Office (although I’m not sure he planned to use them as podcasts!) I’ll be giving a workshop titled Get more mileage for your work: Repurposing a speech for new media as part of the annual Speechwriters Conference.

This stellar event features keynotes by legendary JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen and Robert Schlesinger, author of the excellent history of Presidental speechwriters White House Ghosts.

The conference runs Feb 11-13 and my talk is part of the Advanced Speechwriting track.

An excellent website to add to your bookmarks is the archives of all the Pulitzer Prize winning journalists going back to 1917. Full texts, photographs and cartoons are available for Journalism winners from 1995 – 2006 only.

This is a fantastic resource for the best reporting on a wide variety of topics which can add relevance to your next speech.

One of the gems in Andrew’s list of public speaking blogs was Jessica Hagy’s wonderfully witty blog Indexed.

Jessica creates inspiring sketches on Index Cards. These simple outlines of ideas are a great model for your next PowerPoint slide deck. Here’s a couple of examples.

What concepts or ideas in your next speech could you reduce to a simple visual?