How to say it when you have six minutes…or even six seconds.
It happens more often than we’d like to admit. The boss asks you to fill in for someone to give a presentation. You forgot you had a speech to give at Toastmasters, or a slot becomes available at the last moment. You have some time with someone you’d like to pitch an idea to. In any of these, you don’t have much, if any, time to prepare. How do you handle these situations when you have to “say it in six”?
“Hey, James isn’t in today and he was going to go over our sales goals for the next month, we need someone to fill in, and you’re the most qualified after him.”
“Sylvia couldn’t make it to the meeting tonight, and now we have a speaking slot free.”
“Hon, I want to talk about the vacation.”
Does it seem like most of your speaking challenges come at the last moment? In these instances we may only have six minutes to get ready — or maybe just six seconds. How do you handle them? Do you try to find the nearest exit, perhaps committing a CLM (career-limiting move) in the process? Do you delegate to someone else? Do you mumble through something, apologizing all the while for not being prepared? Or do you pull yourself together, adopt a “say it in six” mentality, and deliver something that’s good, if not great? True, impromptu speaking may not be as polished as prepared speaking, but we can use skills from the latter to improve the former. I’ll start with how to improve your attitude.
“Mentality?” you might ask.”I thought there’d just be some tips and tricks to helping me out here.” Sure, there will be tips and tricks in this article, but having a good attitudinal foundation is key, so I’ll go over that first.
First though, I want to tell you a little story. I like to exercise, and I’m okay at biking, swimming, and rowing. When it comes to running though – well, let’s just say I’m heavier than I look. It’s like my legs were injected with lead. Or cellulite. Or maybe lead cellulite. Anyway, I run roughly like a walrus trying to escape the La Brea tar pits. What I’m trying to get across here is that I don’t run too well, and I usually have to stop a lot to catch my breath. Which, of course, sounds like a walrus in the La Brea tar pits caterwauling.
Of course, those of you with the running bug know that once you get going, you get the equivalent of a nagging kid in your head asking “Hey, are we going running? I wanna go running! Please, can we go running!” until you finally tell yourself “FINE, BUT JUST THIS ONCE” – which you know is a lie.
By now at least some of you are wondering what all of this has to do with saying it in six – and I’ll tell you. A few weeks back I pushed myself to jog down to a neighborhood playground that’s about one-quarter mile away without having to stop or slow down as I’d always done (yes, not all that impressive I know, but difficult for me). I put on some kickin’ music on my portable player, and told myself that I could do it, and trusted myself. Now I jog merrily down to the playground with no problems at all.
Early in my Toastmasters career I received an evaluation that told me “Jeff, you have good material, now work on trusting yourself to present it.” Trusting yourself and having an attitude that you can do it is the first and most essential step to saying it in six. “That’s great Jeff, but how do I do that?” Keep these factors in mind:
First, discover your mission. Maybe you see yourself as a teacher as I do. Maybe you’re an actor-type. Maybe you have a huge interest in walruses or tar pits and want to tell the world about it. Find your reason for presenting if you haven’t already. Every time I speak, I’m so excited that I have the opportunity to inform and inspire others now that I barely have any mental bandwidth for fear. Find your motivation.
Experience counts. Get that stage time! Sorry, no shortcuts here. Get out to Toastmasters and do evaluations and table topics. As you get a little more comfortable, leave one point in your next speech up to you to ad lib. Know what point you want to make, but challenge yourself to explain it without scripting it on paper or screen. If one club isn’t enough, join another. You cannotbecome better just by hoping you’ll get better — you’ll get better by taking small steps.
Realize that fear usually arises out of some unresolved insecurity. Root out your blocks, impediments, and obstructions. Whenever you feel fear about a speech, figure out what it is. [ask for some common fears] Write them down, and ask yourself, “hey, is this really true?”
While you should know why you fear speaking, the goal isn’t to become ‘fearless’. As Darren LaCroix has suggested, you should “worry bigger” — instead of worrying about yourself, you need to worry about whether or not you’ll get your message across to and positively influence your audience, and then take the steps you need to fix them.
Learning to trust yourself on stage takes time and practice, but it’s essential to both prepared speaking and impromptu speaking. It’s especially essential to saying it in six, because you never know when someone might ask you to fill in for someone else, and there’s even more pressure and stress. However, if you trust yourself and know your mission, you can step up to these situations and handle them with aplomb. The “say it in six” mentality takes a while to develop, but it’s worth it. You’ll increase your courage and confidence, and be seen as a “can do” person.
As you learn the say it in six mentality, you’ll want some tools to help you along. Your first tool is one I’ve already used in this article, and a classic speaker maxim: “tell a story, make a point”. I told a personal story about how I trusted myself, and then related that to the necessity of trusting yourself when you speak. For prepared speakers, stories, especially personal (best) and historic (second best) stories, work to connect the speaker to the audience. For the purpose of impromptu speaking, it also helps in that telling stories usually takes dramatically less memorization work. Most of us will not remember even just a few abstract numbers after a presentation, but you could tell quite a few fairy tales without needing to resort to reading them.
“But Jeff, how do I tell stories in a sales meeting? They don’t seem to go well there.” Sure they do. If you’re involved, you can tell a story about how Marcy expanded sales by spending several late nights making calls, or how Jason picked up the slack from Dave when Dave was sick. They aren’t great literature perhaps, but if they’re true, they’ll work, and they’ve got a better chance of sticking — both in your head, and with those you’re communicating with.
“Okay, but what about facts and figures?” These are good — but only as reinforcement, not the main point. Numbers by themselves rarely stick. If you just say “Marcy increased sales by 15%” you have something vaguely positive, but it tells nothing of the work she had to do to get these sales, or how appreciated it is. You can’t see what had to happen. All you get is an abstract number, and people generally don’t want to be numbers (unless it’s number one, of course!). Combine both the figures and the word pictures though, and you’ll win.
“But Jeff, what will I talk about?” Most of the time, this isn’t an issue because you’ll be given a subject. If, however, you’re thinking of original material, you should check out my article on finding speech topics.
Putting in moments of audience interaction is a very useful way to say it in six. If, as in the above example, you were praising Marcy, you could tell your story, then open up the floor for others to give their input. If you’re pitching an idea, do a story and tell your point, then follow up with a question or two to see if the audience gets it. And so on. Not only does this practice (when done well) increase the transference of ideas and engage the audience, more importantly for the impromptu speaker, it fills time!
One of the things the Toastmasters program does that I don’t completely agree with is to encourage speakers to not use notes. While this is an admirable goal, this is usually done for the benefit of making the speaker look good, not helping the audience. Striving to not use notes is a worthy endeavor, but never do so if it compromises your ability to deliver value to the audience. Even those who’ve grasped the say it in six mindset can benefit from notes, if nothing else as a way to make sure they don’t get too excited and skip a point.
“What’s the best way to make notes on a short time frame?” Use lined index cards, preferably colored ones, and a black marker. Jot down keywords and phrases in large print. Figures you may forget are good note fodder too. Remember to take into account how you will hold your cards (you don’t want your fingers or thumb to block your view), and number the cards in case you drop them. Be sure you can look down and pick up your place in under 3 seconds with your notes.
Part of getting in the mood for prepared or unprepared speeches is the use of music, a “battle theme” if you will. Almost any cell phone nowadays has an MP3 player built in, so load up a couple songs that will pump you up and give them a listen right before you’re scheduled to go if you can.
Even if you have no time to physically rehearse, you can often do so a few times mentally, skipping over the parts you feel confident about. If you have any practice time, spend most of it on the opening — it’s often the most key part of the speech and the hardest to get through.
There you have it: some tools and techniques to help you say it in six. While the principles of good speaking still apply as outlined in my other articles, impromptu speaking presents its own challenges. Most of the challenges are in our attitude, which is where the say it in six mindset will help. Once you get through that obstacle, the other tips here will help you with the mechanics of it. With that said, trust yourself, ready your stories and points, and get set to say it in six!
