Make the chore of speaking easier.
Are you one of many people who find that they like to speak, but hate the homework involved in making speeches? Is the process of writing out a speech, editing it, and practicing it a serious drag for you? Do you find yourself entering table topics or evaluation contests just so you don’t have to make a more “formal” speech, but still get stage time? Do you hate excessive rhetorical questions? If you answered yes to any of these, this article is here to help. In it, you’ll find new tools, new techniques, and new ways of thinking for improving your speaking skills without working very hard, whether you are motivationally challenged or not!
“What’re you doing? Aren’t you supposed to be working on a speech? Due tomorrow? You’re playing…solitaire? Solitaire?! C’mon, if you’re going to waste time, at least play a game worth playing. Er, anyway. Why can’t you focus? What’s wrong with you!?”
Do you ever have that nagging voice bugging you when you have a presentation coming due? Some may call it your conscience; I call it your inner over-concerned mother. Unfortunately, many speakers get overwhelmed by this voice. They might manage to complete a project only after it gets loud enough to drown out a heavy metal concert and find themselves mentally exhausted afterward. The next project comes up, and the struggle gets harder. For Toastmasters, all too many people start putting off speech assignments until renewals come up. They then realize “hey, if I don’t renew, I don’t have to do speeches. If I don’t have to do speeches, nagging voice will leave me alone!” Then they drop out. It’s sad, and it’s very avoidable.
For many people, they don’t mind (or actually enjoy) making the presentation, but the work involved in putting together a speech and practicing it is too much effort or they don’t have the time to spend hours writing a speech out, practicing it, and re-editing it. These types are usually intermediate to advanced level speakers, or at least don’t have so much fear anymore when it comes to making presentations. Beginners will still find the process of writing out their speeches and practicing them useful to their growth, though some of the tactics and techniques here will be of use.
My hypothesis is that these types aren’t really so lazy as they may think; they simply have a weakness when it comes to (formal) writing. I don’t mean weakness in the traditional sense; I’m talking about a weakness as defined by Markus Buckingham and his works. You may have a lot of skill at writing, but find it drains you in a way. Sure, there’s the physical expenditure of effort, but the ‘drain’ here is more mental and emotional – the thought of writing, even though you may be very good at it technically, becomes its own obstacle. To further clarify things, most of us can do a decent job of scrubbing out a sink, but most of us don’t find it to be an invigorating use of our time.
For those my hypothesis doesn’t cover, there’s a few tactics you can try, such as setting a definite start time that you refuse to break. You can also try making yourself put in 10-15 minutes of writing, then deciding if you want to continue based on how you feel at the end of that time. Maybe you just need a killer techno soundtrack. Some of the tactics in this article may help the writing process for you as well.
I’ve broken down the speech-making process into four steps. You can remember them with the acronym EASY:
· The Existential Questions – What are you speaking about? Why are you speaking about it?
· Assess and Archive Your Material – Perform a data dump to empty your head.
· Setup & Streamline – Design your speech without writing all of it out.
· You Don’t Have to Practice So Much – Ways to cut down on practice time.
Let’s begin with the E in EASY: The existential questions. While it sounds like something deep and unfathomable, these are quite simple to answer. Outside of Toastmasters, your what (topic) and why (purpose) are given to you, so you don’t need to spend much time here. Inside of Toastmasters, they clap a lot. Er…you have to come up with your own. Many Toastmasters get hung up on what subject to speak about, but there are ways around this.
While I recommend reading my article “The Master Secret of Selecting a Speech Topic”, here’s some quick ideas: you can tour the library, picking out interesting subjects, go to a museum or two, see a movie, or give your opinion on something in the news. There’s plenty of subjects out there, but as Picasso has been quoted, “good artists borrow, great artists steal”. Be on the lookout for table topics you think deserve more than two minutes of attention, other people’s speech topics, and remember that it’s okay to plagiarize yourself. As Steven Colbert has noted (to an ear-poppin’, jaw-droppin’ beat, I might add), “remixing is okay” (unless you’re entering a speech contest, then it’s not, but that’s a special exception). You can also recycle formats if you don’t want to deliver the same speech. For example, if you like baseball, do a speech on a famous player for one project, then another famous player the next, but keep the same basic structure.
For those of you who like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and so on, ask other people there for ideas. Sure, you could ask your friends individually, but that takes effort, right?
The Very Important Principle (VIP) here is don’t be afraid to renew, reuse, and recycle. Don’t steal the speaker’s content verbatim, of course, but use the subject as a springboard to your own thoughts. If you’re redoing a speech of your own, take note of your evaluator’s commentary to patch it up where needed.
Purpose is handled much the same way. Generally you have a combination of the four general purposes: persuade, entertain, inform, or inspire. Pick one or two that fit what you’d like to do with the topic you’ve chosen.
Once you have a topic in mind, you’ll want to start Assessing and Archiving the material you plan to include, which is the A in EASY. Jerry Weissman calls this a “data dump” in his book Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story. The VIP here is a phrase popularized by David Allen: Get it all out of your head. This sounds like it takes a lot of boring writing and planning, but can be enormously freeing.
The object of the assessment is to get everything onto some other media than your memory cells. There are plenty of tools, many cheap, to do this. Whatever method you use, don’t feel like you have to write out full sentences or paragraphs – capture the idea. Consider these tools to help:
· Pen & Paper: Cheap, easy, portable, and very freeform. Colored pens, pencils, and markets are optional.
· Whiteboards: If you’re like me, you’re a little kid at heart, and writing on the wall is still a fun idea. Whiteboards make writing on the wall something you won’t get in trouble for, plus you can get a multitude of colors if you’re a creative type.
· Index cards: Like pen & paper, but smaller. Scribble one idea or fact per card. Combine with…
· Corkboards: Pin up your cards or notes in any sort of formation you like.
· Magnetic boards: Same idea as corkboards. There are also magnetic whiteboards available.
· Post-Its: Similar to index cards, but you don’t need pins to stick them on a board.
· P-Notes: This application, and many others like it, lets you have the electronic equivalent of Post-It notes. Microsoft Outlook has a Notes section. A portable version you can use on a USB flash disk is available at http://www.portableapps.com
· Tablet PC or Graphics Tablet: These cost more than the above options, but if you’re a geek-type, these may be for you.
· Word Processor: An old standby. If it’s your thing, go for it.
Notice that PowerPoint is not on this list. It’s not a good tool for data dumping into. Don’t do it. Not yet, anyway. The reason is that PowerPoint inherently tries to put order into things, which we don’t want yet. The important thing here is not to impose any particular order. As ideas come up (that fit within the umbrella of your existential questions) should be scribbled out. This will free up your “psychic RAM” (another Allen metaphor) and enable you to focus on creative endeavors.
In your data dump, don’t just capture main ideas and subtopics – capture any rhetorical or dramatic devices you’re thinking about using, what sort of organization methods you want to try, and so on. Do not, however, actually try to organize the points quite yet.
You may find that you make an initial writing, and then a day or week later find something occurs to you that wasn’t in the first run. This is usually a side-effect of freeing up that psychic RAM.
Once you have your assessment done, you should have the mental capacity to creatively arrange your presentation. That’s the goal of Setup & Streamlining. I find that organization, whether in other ideas or physical space, works best for me when I collect everything, then parcel it out to where it needs to go. We’ve just done the former in the last step, now we’ll put things where they need to go.
The first part of this is to trash whatever isn’t useful. Some things will invariably come out in your data dump that make you go “huh?” This is okay! Simply take it out for now, or save it for later. You’ll also have to consider time constraints at this point as well – some good things will simply not make the cut.
After you go through deletion (or archiving), you’ll be ready to sort the rest of the mess out. The tools you’ll use here are roughly the same. If you used Post-It notes, pinned index cards, or the like, good news: you can simply restick these into an order you like. You can number points on pen and paper, or cut and paste with electronic media.
A short checklist for items you want to concern yourself with during setup are your organization (flow structure for PtW fans), transitions (internal linkages for PtW fans), audience tailoring (external linkages for PtW fans), your opening and closing, visual aids, props, and tools, and anything else you may need. All of these give form and shape to your stories, facts, figures, and other data.
You may find that multiple re-organizations are necessary in your setup phase – this is okay. Some tools that may be helpful you will want to add include the mind map, and PowerPoint (especially the slide sorter mode). The Mind Map is an old exercise, but still valuable. Start with a bubble around your existential answer, then draw lines radiating out from it connecting to your supporting points, which then radiate out on their own to your sub points. Then, simply figure out the order you want, and number them appropriately. While this method works great with drawing methods, if you prefer technological solutions, try FreeMind, The Brain (free and commercial versions available), or the commercial program Visio.
If you’re planning on using PowerPoint, it can be an effective tool for organizing your presentation on the condition that you don’t offload your entire presentation to it. Make use of the slide sorter view and slide notes as well as the actual slide content.
The VIP for Setup & Streamlining is that a little organization goes a long way (to reducing practice time). It will also increase your audience’s retention of your message.
All of this seems like a great deal of work, but in practice, it often takes no more than half an hour to an hour maximum. You can likely do it while watching TV, even. It all leads into the big payoff: You Can Reduce Your Practice Time. (Yes, I couldn’t think of a good Y term)
The VIP with this point is that blocks of time to practice your speech are usually hard to come by, or at least they seem to be. Again, beginners will likely want to make that time, but some of these tips can help, regardless.
· Use the old “tell a story, make a point” format. Facts and figures are hard to recall. Stories are easy. They’ll stick with you and with your audience.
· Don’t be afraid to use notes. I prefer colored index cards and a large permanent marker. Don’t write out your entire speech on them, though.
· In that vein, use PowerPoint (but smartly).
· Reuse your speeches.
· Visualize giving your speech. Remember the old chestnut about basketball players being split up into groups of two, where one shot actual free throws and the others visualized them, and the result was they both performed the same? The idea is similar here.
· Use “boring time” to practice, such as when you’re working out (on a cardio machine, preferably), travelling in the car, and so on.
· Use the audience to take up time. Ask questions, have a Q&A, let others tell their experiences. This can be a little risky, but effective.
The VIP here is to stay extemporaneous. Too many speakers worry about getting their speech right word for word, when the point is to convey their essential message to their audience. If you get your existential answer across, and they remember it, you’ve succeeded. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter how much window dressing you’ve put on it. When you do trial runs, mix things up — put in a line or two here and there you didn’t plan to, or take one out.
Add all of this up, and you have the EASY method of preparing for a speech. Keep in mind the Very Important Principles of the method, and you should find you’ll enjoy preparing for a speech, even if it’s not in the traditional way of writing and re-editing. Make your next speech EASY by renewing, reusing, and recycling, getting it all out of your head, using a little organization to go a long way on saving you practice time, and staying extemporaneous. You don’t have to do the grunt work of writing and re-editing the old way if it doesn’t work for you, so send that nagging voice packing!
