Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to give a keynote presentation at Simon Fraser University’s Backpack to Briefcase (B2B) conference. I was riffing on career planning and development from the inside out: building self-awareness, using mindfulness to tap into your heart-center and quiet the monkey mind, figuring out what feels good and then identifying what things about a job–any job!—would foster those feelings.
It was good fun, and my own little heart-center was further filled up by the feedback I received from some of the participants afterward. And, of course, there were also things I learned from the event, which I want to share here to hopefully help you next time you find yourself at the microphone.
Tip #1
Ask the organizers if they have done a full demo. By this, I mean checking that everything is in reach and/or properly placed when there’s a live person at the podium. I was the first person to speak that day. I took video of my presentation, and through this discovered that the podium was a tad too close to the projector. Any time I stood more than six inches back from the microphone, I had projector light on my head, and a blob of my head in the corner of the screen. And if any of you refer to the sheer size of my head in the comments below, I will… I will… I will back you up on that observation.
Tip #2
Make big notes. PowerPoint is great for making slides, but it offers no options for how you can print those slides with your notes on the bottom. Hence, your notes might be too small. I found I spent too much time looking down, trying to find my place in my notes (and I didn’t even have that many!). Next time, I’ll create my speaking notes in an entirely separate document, and do like Benjamin Netanyahu with the big freaking font (photo here).
Tip #3
Consider the room configuration. When the room is wide, and people are panned out in front of you from one edge to the other, they have a better chance of seeing your facial expressions and picking up on your energy. If the room is long and narrow, you need to be extra animated because the people at the back can be pretty far away. Emote for them. Don’t worry about overdoing it for the people in the front. They’ll survive.
Tip #4
Keep your energy up through the slide transitions. It’s great to have all kinds of fun and energy during the main speaking points on the slide, but do you have a segue planned to carry you into the next slide? I noticed that I sometimes “petered out” at the end of a slide, letting my energy lag, and therefore, letting the energy in the room lag. My solution: don’t over-think it, just go!
Tip #5
Limit your repeat words and comfy-slipper-fallback phrases. Overuse creates a verbal pattern that starts to sound boring to the listener. I kept saying “so be aware of that.” The more I said it, the more it stuck out. Plus, its repetition took away from the impact of the words before it.
Tip #6
No matter the topic, work in some really personal stuff. I was talking about career development, and so used a lot of examples from my own career. That didn’t stop me from working in a brief story about my mum and two slides with my pug Yolanda on them. Interestingly, those are the times when I felt the MOST connective energy in the room. Personal stories foster an empathy and openness that will make your audience more receptive to the other things you have to say.
Do you have any tips or funny anecdotes to add from your own experience?
Jacquie Garton-Smith says
Fabulous tips Laura! Agree with every single one. I tend to bold or highlight key words in my notes to help me find my place if I need to refer to them.
Another that I have found helpful in practice is to plan my talk to be at least 20% shorter than the time I’ve been allocated. This forces me to be super-concise in planning what I will cover and on the day, gives me time to relax my speaking, field a question or two or even catch up if the program is running late. I figure no one minds if you finish a little early!
Laura Zera says
Thank you, Jacquie. I like the idea of bolding, or even making a word here and there in bigger font to demarcate a start of an important section or a transition.
Planning the length to be shorter makes sense, especially if you want Q&A. I must admit that I really had no idea how the timing aspect of my talk–which was 60 minutes–would play out. I asked the timekeeper to give me an indication of when I was at the halfway point, and then again at 10 minutes. As it turned out, I got through everything without rushing and ended right on time, but that might have been extra luck on my side!
Belinda Pollard says
Glad you got some pics of Yolanda in there, girl. 🙂 And what a good reminder that we need to be personal if we want people to engage. I’m a member of a Toastmasters club, and I notice again and again, when the speaker shares from inside themselves, be it funny, sad, angry or vulnerable, everyone in the audience locks on to them. I have to remember to do that.
Laura Zera says
“Locks on to them” — I love that. That’s exactly what it felt like, but in a good way.
Incidentally, the workshop that was right after my keynote was put on by a woman from Toastmasters. If I hadn’t already made a brunch date down the street, I would have stayed for it. Toastmasters is a great organization.
Jagoda says
Great tips, Laura. In addition to notes in an easy to read format, I also practice, practice, practice until I don’t need those notes. I bring them just in case as a safety net. 🙂
Personal stories are great for connecting. Polling the audience or some other form of quick engagement also helps.
Congratulations on being selected to keynote! I’d love to hear how your first Desire Map workshop went.
Laura Zera says
Totally agree, practice is important. At the same time, I had a hard time practicing because I wanted it to be more free flow than rehearsed. But there’s definitely a balance to be struck so that the presentation is both flowing and hits all the points you want to hit. It also helps when it’s a presentation you’ve given more than once.
Thank you for adding the “quick poll” idea — that’s a good one.
I’d love to catch up one day. Maybe coffee at Burien Press? Or a walk on the beach?
Chris James says
Really good tips, Laura, thanks. Number 5 made me smile. I think the repetition of certain comfort phrases is caused by an abhorrence of silence in the speaker (at least it is with me). No matter how calm or nervous the speaker is, there’s this odd feeling that silence is somehow really, really bad in public speaking, as though it denotes some kind of problem.
Now, whenever I do any presentation, I always start with a PP slide where I have to say: “Ladies and gentlemen, please take a minute to read these examples”, because this forces me to shut up and let silence into the room right from the beginning. It gives me more confidence when speaking to the room, and I can pause more naturally as though I were in conversation with an individual. In turn, this helps me vary pitch, tone and cadence to hopefully keep the audience awake for the whole hour or 90 minutes.
When I’m in the audience, the very worst thing is a speaker whose voice remains a flat monotone throughout their speaking – that really brings the eyelids down in no time 🙂
Anyhoo, just my two cents’ worth. Keep us up to date with your presentations please 🙂
Laura Zera says
I agree that silence is viewed as problematic, and yet, personally, as an audience member, I enjoy a moment of silence here and there; it gives my (slow) brain a chance to catch up. 😛
I like your idea of inviting them to read the slide. And a big yes to the variance in tone and whatnot, although I have the same issue as in Jo-Anne’s comment above — nervousness = squeaky voice, so I also purposely try to lower my voice. That might come off as a bit boring, I’m afraid.
Chris James says
I don’t think you could ever be boring, Laura! But that’s what I meant: when I’m in the audience, if the speaker is constantly going: “Ermmmm…. Er… Right, now we move on to, er….” it’s annoying. When I present I’m usually quite nervous (not very, but a fair bit), and I used to hear myself sounding like that. So now when I present the first thing I know I need to do is let some silence in as soon as possible; it calms me down and hopefully reassures the audience that it’s not going to be boring 🙂
Laura Zera says
It’s a good strategy. And why are we so uncomfortable with silence, hey? So uncomfortable with just looking at each other. Seeing each other. We’re a funny breed.
Chris James says
Oh, that’s our culture: because, when we “receive”, we’re always fed with whizz-bangs and lots going on, when we suddenly find ourselves having to “deliver”, we feel automatically under pressure to “entertain”, which makes us nervous and go “Erm.., Er…” a lot, in case we come across as boring. Silence, and knowing not to be afraid of it, is as big an aid to giving a satisfying presentation as the funniest joke, imo *hugs*
Laura Zera says
Agreed. Hugs back!
Jeri says
All good tips and teaching taught me a lot about speaking, though speaking before adults is always much more stressful for me than speaking before a group I can spend an entire school year building rapport with. PowerPoint notes really are the worst. When I had to record myself teaching, I quickly realized my fallback transition phrase was, “Okay… so.” But what it really sounded like I was saying was “queso.” Yum! Yep I just like to randomly utter my love of cheese dip. I became much more mindful of filler phrases after that.
Laura Zera says
That is awesome. 😀
Jo-Anne Teal says
These are great tips, Laura, and I appreciate the info shared in the comments too. Actually, there is something I say when I’m nervous and it actually annoys the heck out me though actually I’m not certain if the audience actually hears the word as much as I actually say it. Yep.
The only thing that I’ve learned myself is to lower the register of my voice. When I get a bit nervous (or a lot nervous), I tend to speak high in my throat. It makes me sound and feel out of breath and no one can be calm if they are out of breath. I deliberately lower my voice because if it comes from lower down, it sounds better and feels better.
Oh, actually (lol) do have one more point. I have an essential tremour in my hands. Because of that, I really need to have a podium or a table – something for my notes. I always make sure to ask if that will be available. Nothing makes an audience more uncomfortable than seeing a speaker’s hands shake.
Laura Zera says
Totally know what you mean, actually. And I also have to lower the register of my voice. I was saying to Chris below that it makes me sound a bit boring, I think. But if I let my energy run too rampant, I’m like a chipmunk. I like lower voices anyway, so nothing wrong with perfecting The Kathleen Turner.
Your tremor example makes a good point: remember to ask for what you need ahead of time (without going all J-lo contract rider, that is!).
Debbie Young says
Great tips, Laura, and very timely for me as I’ve got about half a dozen speaking engagements coming up very shortly. My top tip is to give a big smile at the start and look and sound genuinely pleased to be there with them. It helps you relax too – very useful because no matter comfortable the speaker is before the talk, once it begins, the adrenaline will surge and at least a little anxiety is inevitable.
It’s amazing what adrenaline will get you through, though. During the last talk I gave, at the University of Winchester in the south of England, there was apparently a local earthquake half way through – but I didn’t notice a thing, and only found out about it when I the news came on the radio next morning!
I must admit that English earthquakes are usually scarcely detectable, but it makes a good story! 😉
Laura Zera says
You made the earth move, Debbie!
Yes, big smile at the start. That’s important, especially because once you get rolling in the speech, it’s easy to forget to smile. And then some of us combat that infamous syndrome “bitchy resting face,” which doesn’t help, either.
Marie Ann Bailey says
These are really great tips, Laura. But I am glad that I no longer do public speaking. My last time was at a conference in 2011, and I thought about that experience while reading your post. My room was long and narrow, but I tend to be fairly animated when talking (to the point of almost knocking over the microphone). While I do use large font and print them out with the Notes layout from Powerpoint, I also rehearse my speech until I can practically do it in my sleep! The notes are my fallback and they keep me on track. I try to make eye contact, even if most people are reading my slides, but I know I will digress if I don’t have my notes to keep me focused. What unnerves me is when people ask questions. I wear hearing aids and even then I sometimes have difficulty understanding people. It gets embarrassing when I have to turn to one of my co-presenters for help in understanding a question. So, glad those days are behind me 🙂
Laura Zera says
The downside of Q&A is the difficulty of hearing the question, but made even more difficult with your situation so I can understand why it was unnerving. And then there’s always that chorus of people yelling out at the speaker, “Can you repeat the question?” when the person who asked the question didn’t have a mike.
I’m glad you also made the point about rehearsal. I think that’s really key, even if you plan to make it “free flow,” like I did. That way, you can maintain maximum eye contact with your audience and not be bothered with using notes. Thanks Marie Ann!
Josie says
Hi Laura,
These are very real and useable tips my friend! I especially like the one about not repeating over and over your comfortable phrases. I know I’ve been guilty of that — and those words can jump out and cause such a distraction to the listeners!
Thanks!
Josie
Laura Zera says
Hey Josie, glad you find them useful!
Kern Windwraith says
These are great tips, Laura, each and every one of them. The big notes are critical for me, even when I have the presentation down pat, because I do like to go off script. It’s nice to have that memory jog when I need to get back on track.
I agree that the personal examples help the audience connect with the speaker, and through that connection, help the speaker connect with the audience. Actually, that personal touch is powerful in all manner of communications, isn’t it, whether we’re speaking at conferences, in meetings with our colleagues, or conducting performance reviews. And let’s face it, who *wouldn’t* want to look at pictures of Yolanda??!!
Laura Zera says
Yes, that connection thing is very reciprocal, isnt’ it? The speaker can feed off the audience the same way the audience does the speaker. And you’re right, who wouldn’t want to look at that gorgeous little squished-up face? It’s kind of hard to be in a bad mood when her pug mug is bearing down on you!
Thanks for stopping by, Kern.
Julie says
I laughed when I read tip #5. We all have those phrases we tend to repeat without even being aware of it. This is one reason it’s so important to videotape everything, so you can spot those phrases. If you listen to people in TV interviews you sometimes hear them repeat the same words and phrases.
Laura Zera says
And then you have to get the courage up to watch the videotape.
Thank you for stopping by, Julie!
David says
Hey Laura 🙂
Wow the one tips that hit it home for me was “Keep your energy up through the slide transitions” many times I find myself changing my energy levels during a speech and I try to stop myself everytime 🙂
Laura Zera says
Hi David, thanks for your comment, and cool to see that model UNs are still going on. I attended one in Toronto when I was in university. I was “Bolivia.” 😉
David says
Hey Laura,
Very cool! Just like your year in as volunteer on a kibbutz shaped your world view so did MUN shape mine 😉
Now that I finished up my MA studies its times for me to contribute back to the MUN society.
I know you like to support the underdogs, so….. If you are open the idea I would like to work with you on a post about writing or public speaking.
PS I live in Tel-Aviv : )
-David
Laura Zera says
I totally get it. Not exactly sure what you mean about working on a post, though — a guest post? But if you want to run anything by me, drop me an email here: https://laurazera.com/about/contact/
Give my love to Tel Aviv! I’m hoping to get back over to Israel late 2017 or in 2018. My “kibbutz mom” hates talking on Skype and says I need to come.