The thought of speaking in front of an audience terrifies most people. Jerry Seinfeld once quipped that “to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”1 Indeed, a Gallup poll found that 40 percent of Americans claim a fear of public speaking—second only to a fear of snakes.2
But public speaking is an important skill for most professionals. They often need to make oral presentations to groups within their own organization and sometimes are asked to deliver speeches to public audiences. Because most professionals have not been trained in this area, they make predictable mistakes. Fortunately, you can become an effective public speaker with a little guidance and planning.
Start by recognizing the fundamental differences between speaking and writing. On the plus side, speakers can immediately sense the audience’s reactions to what they’re saying and quickly shift gears if needed. And unlike writers, speakers can use gestures, intonation, and other rhetorical devices to convey emotions.
On the other hand, speaking has two inherent disadvantages relative to writing. If you give a speech you don’t like, you can’t throw it away and start again, the way you can with a piece of writing. And you have to work much harder in a speech to convey a clear line of argument to your audience; you can’t place headings throughout the speech or divide it into paragraphs.
In this chapter, I will teach you how to become a more effective speaker in several chronological steps, before, during, and after a speech. Though I have written much of this chapter from my perspective as an executive who frequently gives speeches to external audiences, many of the tips will also help employees at any level give presentations at internal meetings.
The key to effective speaking is preparing well before the event. Preparatory activities can be divided into three main areas: knowing your audience, structuring your speech, and practicing your delivery.
Knowing Your Audience
When you prepare your speech, start by figuring out the three Ws of your audience—who they are, why they are attending, and what they care about. For an internal audience, you likely know a lot about the attendees. Are they your bosses, your peers, or your staff? For a public speech, you may not personally know your audience, but you can easily find out who they are. The convener of any meeting, internal or external, will have a preliminary list of attendees—and you’d better pay attention to it! By looking at such lists, I have avoided making jokes that would have offended particular people in the audience.
Similarly, you should think hard about why your audience will be attending your speech. Start by reviewing the agenda for the meeting or conference so that you clearly understand the main topics to be discussed. For an internal meeting, you should also determine whether your colleagues are attending out of their own free will or whether the event is mandatory—in which case you will have to do more work to hold their attention. For a public speech, ask the conveners about the attendees’ expectations. Do they want to learn something or be inspired? Is your speech intended to be an entertaining break between networking events at a beachside resort?
It is more difficult to predict what your audience will really care about. For internal meetings, make sure you clearly understand the priorities of your boss and your colleagues. Is your boss most concerned about minimizing cost, or does he or she have a more ambitious vision for the unit? For an external speech, think about the “bread-and-butter” issues that will affect the livelihood of your audience. For instance, if you are addressing a group of biotech executives, they will be very keen to learn about any developments related to drug approvals by the federal government.
Once you understand the three Ws of your audience, you can more effectively tailor your speech to their interests by modifying an assigned topic or choosing your own topic from scratch. In making this choice, you should obviously favor topics that you know a lot about. Within that range, however, the desires of the audience should trump your personal preferences. Although you may be the world’s expert on Russian-American relations, the audience may be more interested in Chinese-American relations. Or another speaker on the schedule may be slated to give a talk on Russian-American relations; you want your speech to be appropriate without directly overlapping the topic of another speaker.
Structuring Your Speech
Once you’ve settled on a topic, write an outline of your presentation. In doing so, make sure that your line of argument is crystal clear. As I’ve mentioned, a speech has no headings or subtitles to provide directions to the audience. That makes it crucial for you to divide your speech into its introduction, body, and conclusion.
An introduction to a speech should have four components. First, you should introduce yourself. If you’re speaking to a large external audience, provide one paragraph about yourself for someone else to read as an introduction. Résumés are too long and detailed; select the specific facts to be included in a one-paragraph introduction. If you’re speaking to an internal meeting, make sure that everyone knows who you are—your formal position as well as your role in whatever endeavor you will be discussing.
Second, you need an effective opening. That means thanking the group that invited you to speak and expressing appreciation if someone gives you a nice introduction. Next, you should tell a joke or story to loosen up the crowd and show your human side. For example, after expressing appreciation for an effusive introduction, I might say, “But you forgot my basketball career!” I would then briefly recount my teenage efforts to guard Calvin Murphy, who went on to be a high scorer at college and an All-Star player for the Houston Rockets. I was determined to guard Calvin closely—if he went to the water cooler during time-outs, I went, too. By guarding Calvin really closely for the whole game, I held him to 56 points—only 6 above his season’s average. At that point I decided to give up my basketball ambitions and concentrate on finance.
Humor works well even at internal meetings—as long as it’s short, clean, and generally related to the situation. Nevertheless, many audiences are uncertain about whether they are “allowed” to laugh; they may feel that the subject of the speech is too heavy or the speaker is too serious (this is especially true if a boss is presenting to his or her subordinates). So you may have to give your audience “permission” to laugh. I sometimes remark that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian when I was in college, so I would appreciate it if the audience would laugh at all my jokes. That remark usually elicits chuckles and relaxes the audience.
Third, after getting your audience into the proper mood, you should explain why the topic of the speech is relevant to them—why they should want to listen to you. This might mean tying the speech to a recent headline in the news or a current event in the organization or unit. Or it might mean relating the topic to a problem of special interest to the audience—for example, increases in the crime rate to community groups.
Fourth, you should lay out a road map for the rest of the speech: “I will begin by describing X, next I will argue Y, and finally I will propose Z.” This is not a time for subtlety; be direct and explicit. If you are going to use visuals to support your speech, you should spell out these three steps in an “agenda” slide. Such an explicit road map helps your audience see how the different components of your argument fit together in a logical fashion.
The body of your speech should have a clear structure with a logical progression. One possible structure is:
• Here’s the problem.
• Here’s my analysis.
• Here’s how we could solve this problem.
Another possible structure might be:
• Here’s an issue of current interest.
• Here’s my take on this issue.
• Here’s how we might rethink this issue in the future.
In putting together the body of a speech, remember that you are trying to persuade your audience to accept your viewpoint. Even if you’re just giving a status report, you’re trying to convince your colleagues that the project is going well—or maybe that it isn’t. In any case, it is easy enough to be applauded by people who already agree with you. It is more difficult to win over people who were previously neutral or against your position. How can you win them over?
Occasionally you can rely on the strength of your analysis and supporting information, especially if they are little known to your audience or run counter to the conventional wisdom. But speaking is more of an emotional than an intellectual experience, and I don’t recommend relying only on logic. If you want to persuade people, present examples or anecdotes as well as arguments. Your audience is more likely to be moved by vivid stories about a few individuals addicted to alcohol than a chart showing abstract statistics on alcohol abuse.3
Similarly, your audience will be more receptive to your ideas if they can tell that you really care about the subject. To convey emotion, use dramatic gestures and vary your tone of voice. Repeat the same phrase several times, add some strategic pauses to underscore key ideas, and put multiple ideas into a parallel structure to stress how they connect to each other.
If feasible, reach an emotional crescendo near the end of your speech. I know the typical advice to speakers goes like this: “Tell them what you’re going to say, then say it, and then conclude by telling them what you’ve just said.” I strongly disagree—it’s boring for an audience to hear again the points you’ve just told them. Instead, use your conclusion to leave your audience in a certain frame of mind—say, inspired to donate to your cause or curious to learn more about your company.
In your conclusion, offer your audience a few takeaways—key points you want them to remember. One takeaway could be a call to action, such as taking market share away from your main competitor. Another takeaway could be to adopt a different perspective on a subject: “The next time you see a critical article on U.S. foreign aid, I want you to think about how little the United States actually spends on aid relative to the entire budget.” Or a takeaway could be a plea to change the personal behavior of your audience, such as Steve Jobs’s appeal from his highly praised Stanford commencement address: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”4
Finally, you should close by thanking your host for giving you the opportunity to speak at their meeting or conference.
Rehearsing the Speech
After you’ve outlined your speech, rehearse it out loud, several times. Although this is hard work, there is no other way to get comfortable with your speech so you can appear confident and natural. At the same time, rehearsing will show you the weak spots in your speech. After rehearsing, I often change the order of presentation or replace an example with a better one.
A good way to rehearse is to present your speech to someone—a colleague or friend—who is willing to provide honest and constructive comments. If that is not feasible, rehearse your speech in front of a mirror. That will give you a feel for how you come across visually. In any event, don’t just read your speech silently to yourself. Speaking is a performance art, so you need to practice by talking out loud.
Some people insist on writing out the full text of their speeches before giving them. That’s a very dangerous habit. Once you have written out a full text, you will be inclined to read your speech word for word. Follow that approach, and you’ll lose your audience.
Soon after the financial crisis of 2008, I was the third speaker at a global conference on financial services in Europe, so I had a chance to observe the two speakers before me. Their styles couldn’t have been more different, and they had strikingly different effects on the audience. The first speaker, a distinguished expert on financial accounting, read a lengthy speech word for word. The audience members were bored and distant; they responded with polite applause. Next up was Bob Benmosche, the CEO leading the rehabilitation of the insurance firm AIG. A tall man with an imposing stage presence, Benmosche spoke enthusiastically without any text. Captivated by his candor and humor, the audience gave him a rousing ovation.
I like to speak from a one-page outline. The outline might include an actual sentence to get started and another sentence as a closer. But the rest would be a brief sketch of the main steps in the speech, with a few supporting points for each step. This helps me keep the line of argument foremost in my mind and convey it clearly to my audience. It also allows me to adapt my speech to the audience easily as I sense the mood in the room.
As a compromise, you could write out a longer outline of your speech in two or three pages if you feel you want more detailed notes. That would give you the comfort of more guidance without losing the spontaneity of talking informally from a series of points. In any event, do not read the full text of your speech; that is a surefire way to put your audience to sleep.
Now let’s see how much you’ve learned about preparing speeches. In appendix 2, I’ve included the full text of a speech that I gave in Boston, which was a big success with the audience. It was well organized from a technical perspective and passionate in a personal way. The speech begins by complimenting the audience and laying out a road map for the speech. It tells a vivid story, moving chronologically through the life of my older brother Michael, ending with his tragic death. Then it draws out a few implications of Michael’s struggle for needy children. And it ends with a strong call to action, with an emotional reference to “our children.”
I actually spoke from one page of notes and later wrote out the text to send to friends. I want you to proceed in the opposite direction: read this speech and then compose a short speaking outline based on the text. In the process, you should identify the key steps and rhetorical devices of this speech.
After you do that, try to start from scratch. Compose a one-page outline for a talk that you might be invited to give—either to your colleagues or to a public audience. Feel free to choose your own topic, but here are three ideas if you get stuck:
1. How did your organization manage through the financial crisis of 2008–2009?
2. How are recent changes in government policy affecting your organization?
3. Why is it important for your organization to expand its reach?
Write out one sentence to start and another sentence to conclude, with the rest in outline form. Is your line of argument clear? Could you actually speak from only this outline?
Now we come to the day you’re slated to speak. The day can be divided into three time periods: before, during, and immediately after the speech.
Getting Ready for the Speech
Here are some of the steps you should take in the hours before you speak:
• Review the agenda and list of attendees. This is to make sure you understand the composition of the audience and where your talk fits into the flow of the program.
• Practice your speech one last time by going over your outline. This should be done out loud—in the shower, at the office, or in a hotel room or taxi if necessary.
• Read the headlines in today’s newspapers, and search the Internet for any late-breaking news relevant to the audience or topic. You may want to revise your outline or be ready to respond to a question based on a very recent event.
When it is time to head over to your speaking venue, get there well in advance. If the speech is not taking place within your own building, plan on arriving thirty to sixty minutes early. This allows you to check out the room, the equipment, and the audience.
When checking out the room, remember that the organizers of meetings and conferences typically overestimate the number of attendees. Perhaps they want to promote the significance of the event, or maybe they neglect to consider the inevitable falloff at the last minute. Whatever the advance estimate of the audience, I assume that only 60 percent will actually attend. That assumption helps me avoid being disappointed when I arrive at an event to find an audience of thirty instead of fifty.
If you can choose your venue, select the smallest room possible that can seat 60 percent of the projected audience. If more actually show up, that’s great. People sitting in the aisles and standing in the back increase the buzz. If you discover that the room is much too big, you should ask for curtains or other dividers to make the room smaller. If that is not feasible, politely ask the audience to move to the front and center of the room.
I believe in the energy theory of public speaking: to be an effective speaker, you have to increase the energy in the room. One way to do this is to wander around the room instead of staying tied to the podium. The audience will be more engaged if you walk through the aisles to address remarks or direct questions to specific individuals sitting in the room. If you need a microphone, you should ask for a lavalier microphone that can be pinned on your suit jacket, shirt, or blouse. If you are using slides, you should have a clicker that will work away from the podium.
When you arrive early for your speech, make sure that you have all the necessary equipment and that it actually works. Check that your microphone is set to the right volume. If you are using visuals, make sure that you have the right file for your slides and double-check that they are in the correct order. I have encountered problems with the slides in about 20 percent of my speaking engagements.
Most important, arrive early to get a feel for your audience. If another speaker is at the podium, listen carefully to what he or she is saying. That will allow you to grasp the mood of the audience and possibly provide you with tie-ins to what has previously been covered.
If there is a break before you speak, use that opportunity to ask questions of attendees, both strangers and colleagues. What have they liked most about the conference or meeting so far? What areas are they looking for you to address? That way, you can start to build a rapport with audience members.
Furthermore, in light of their answers, you can revise your speaking outline. For example, if someone says that another speaker has talked in depth about recently passed legislation, reduce the time you spend talking about a new law. Conversely, if they are particularly interested in a new breakthrough from the research department, give a more detailed account of this development.
Arriving early allows you to match the tone of previous speakers. I once spoke between James Carville and lunch—a terrible speaking slot. James is a Democratic political consultant with a wicked set of jokes about growing up in Louisiana. After listening for forty-five minutes to his high-energy performance filled with hilarious anecdotes, the crowd was in a boisterous mood. So I introduced myself as “Billy Bob” Pozen, and the audience responded with enthusiastic laughter.
As one final step of preparation, go to the restroom so that you can check your appearance. Nothing is more embarrassing than spinach stuck in your teeth or a “wardrobe malfunction.” Once you make this last check, you are ready for prime time.
Dealing with Nerves
As you walk up to the podium, you are likely to feel jittery and nervous about your upcoming appearance. So does everyone else. As Mark Twain said, “There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.”5
Your feelings of anxiety are the result of a small dose of adrenaline that has been released into your bloodstream. Some of the effects of adrenaline, such as an elevated heart rate, are not helpful for giving a talk. But adrenaline also makes your senses a bit more acute and your mental processing a bit quicker. In other words, when you feel nervous, your body is giving you a little bit of extra energy and focus to help you perform your speech.
Nevertheless, you need to be able to manage your nerves. As a practical step, this means being well prepared and having a well-rehearsed speech. Early arrival can also help with nerves. It is hard to be relaxed when you arrive two minutes before your speaking time, unsure of your appearance or the audience’s mood.
For most speakers, fear peaks in the moment before the speech and declines once the speech gets going. Unfortunately, researchers estimate that roughly 25 percent of people get more nervous as the speech goes on. They tend to fixate on the signs of their own nervousness—their sweaty palms or quavering voice. As a result, they get more worried, and then have more issues to worry about.6
If you notice yourself becoming anxious about your own anxiety, take a step back and concentrate on what you need to say next. Deal with any symptoms as they occur—if your voice is trembling, take a deep breath; if your mouth is dry, take a sip of water. But whatever you do, don’t exacerbate the problem by focusing on your own nerves. In more extreme cases, consider seeing a psychotherapist or speech coach to help you work through your issues.
Giving the Speech
Your opening sets the tone for your whole speech. Put on a bright smile and start with a funny joke or an amusing story. Next, introduce your audience to your thesis and show how the speech will be organized, as I have discussed.
At that point, your challenge is to turn the audience into active listeners. We have all been passive listeners, barely hearing the words of the speaker as our minds stray to other people and other issues. By contrast, active listeners are focused on what the speaker is saying, evaluating his or her arguments and feeling his or her emotional intensity.
How can you transform your audience from passive attendees to active listeners? I sometimes ask the audience to vote on questions of relevance to your speech. For example, suppose you are giving a presentation on your division’s new streamlined procedures for project approvals. You could begin by asking: How many hours do you think you spend each month filling out paperwork? How could all this paperwork possibly be useful? By forcing the audience to consider their own personal stake in these issues, you will get them more interested in hearing your presentation.
Asking questions of the audience goes along with wandering around the room. If you walk down the aisle next to the seats of meeting participants, it becomes very difficult for them to remain passive—you are standing only two feet away from them! Similarly, try to make eye contact regularly with all parts of the audience, especially those sitting in the far right and left wings as well as the back rows. Otherwise, you may lose their attention quickly.
Though good visuals can stimulate active listening, bad visuals have the opposite effect. Here are my basic rules for using slides with speeches:
• Include an agenda slide near the beginning with a road map for the speech.
• End with a conclusion slide listing the key takeaways for the audience.
• Use the slides particularly for charts, diagrams, and data displays.
• Never, never read the bullet points in a textual slide; use them as takeoffs for your remarks.
• Limit the total number of slides—no more than fifteen slides for a thirty-minute speech.
The last bullet leads to a more general point: keep your speeches as short as feasible. Audiences generally stop paying attention after thirty minutes, so that is a good guideline for a keynote address to a conference. In other contexts, your talk should be even shorter. In a one-hour meeting, for instance, the opening presentation should be limited to ten to fifteen minutes. In any case, don’t go over your allotted time; that is a sure way to annoy participants and organizers.
After the Presentation
At the end of all presentations, you should plan on a question-and-answer (Q&A) session. In a speech to an external audience, you should expressly plan on your Q&A session taking the last fifteen minutes of a forty-five-minute speech. In an internal meeting, you should invite questions at any time, especially if your remarks are intended to lead into vigorous debate, as I advocated in chapter 6, “Efficient Meetings.” In whatever form, a Q&A session is critical to the audience: it gives the listeners a chance to find out more about their own concerns.
From the speaker’s perspective, however, a Q&A session is much more challenging than giving a speech. You never know what you will be asked, so it is impossible to formulate complete responses in advance. Moreover, the scope of the inquiries is likely to be broader than the subject of the speech.
Nevertheless, you should try to prepare for your Q&A session by thinking about probable questions and sketching out answers. One strategy is to ask your colleagues and friends to generate questions about the speech. In addition, you can “plant” questions from colleagues in the audience that you want to answer. Planted questions not only give you a few “softballs” to hit but also get the Q&A session going if nobody else is brave enough to ask the first question.
Once the Q&A session begins, you should abide by the following ground rules:
• When someone asks a question, make sure it is heard by everyone. Repeat the question if necessary.
• To encourage more questions from the audience, respond to initial volunteers by saying, “That is an excellent question.”
• Don’t let one person dominate the Q&A session; if no one else volunteers, call on one of your “planted” questioners.
• Don’t let anyone give a speech instead of posing a question; if someone starts down that road, ask him or her politely to get to a question.
• If you are asked an unexpectedly tough question, repeat the question to give yourself time to think of a good answer.
• Give a thoughtful answer to each question, but don’t go on too long. An in-depth answer might be of interest only to the person who asked.
When you see the number of hands decreasing, say that there is time for one last question. But don’t wait until there is only one hand left in the air. It’s very awkward to end when no one else wants to ask a question. Instead, prepare a closing sentence or two to end the Q&A session.
After a speech, try to get constructive feedback. That will help you improve your general public speaking skills and can also help you revise a particular presentation that you may give again. Although conferences usually ask participants to fill out evaluations, they tend not to be very useful. The people who actually fill out the forms are not usually a representative sample and the results are often expressed as numerical scores without any reference point (say, the median ranking for all speakers).
The best type of feedback is a video of your actual speech, or at least a video of a practice session. You don’t need a studio or fancy equipment; a colleague or a friend with a smartphone will do just fine. I guarantee that you will be shocked the first time you see yourself on video; we all have speaking faults that we do not recognize. Personally, seeing myself on video greatly improved my speaking. I previously had an image of myself as an engaging and poised speaker. But when I watched myself on video, there were so many awkward pauses, jerky movements, and mumbled phrases! Starting with my next speech, I was more cognizant of those faults and tried to correct them.
If the sponsor or convener is not willing to record your speech on film, you should ask a colleague or friend to sit in the audience. They can provide you with helpful information about how the audience reacted to what you said—if you encourage them to be brutally frank. You have to be receptive to constructive criticism if you want to improve as a public speaker.
1. After introducing yourself to your audience, tell a joke and let your audience know that it is okay to laugh. A more relaxed audience makes for a more effective speech.
2. Next, use your introduction to explain why your topic is relevant. Then provide an explicit road map so that the audience can easily follow your line of argument.
3. End your presentation with a few takeaways and, if possible, an emotional crescendo.
4. Don’t write out the full text of your speech; use a one-page outline instead. This makes your speech more vibrant and allows more improvisation.
5. Arrive early so that you can scope out the venue, the attendees, and any speakers slated before you. You want to gauge the mood of the crowd and the tone of the other speakers.
6. It’s normal to get nervous before speaking in front of others. But don’t fall into a downward spiral by worrying about your own anxiety.
7. Engage with your audience: wander around the room; ask questions of your audience and make them take a stand, or offer suggestions.
8. Keep your speech as short as feasible—thirty minutes is usually as long as you want to go.
9. Allow time at the end for a Q&A session. Be prepared for what types of questions may be asked.
10. Get feedback—a video recording is best, but a frank colleague can also be helpful.