In the master’s secret mirror, even at the moment of highest renown and accomplishment, there is an image of the newest student in class, eager for knowledge, willing to play the fool.
— GEORGE LEONARD,
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
Just before he died, the great artist Auguste Renoir completed his final painting. Although he suffered from paralyzing arthritis and had to have the brush taped to his hand in order to work, he persevered. In his final days he reflected, “I think I’m beginning to understand something about painting.” Renoir possessed the essential quality characteristic of all true masters — a lifelong commitment to learning.
The more knowledge and experience you have in a given area, the easier it becomes to learn more. At the same time, as your knowledge and experience increase, so does your awareness of the vast amount that remains to be learned. This is why the wise are always humble.
Whatever your current level as a public speaker, there is always room to improve. Every presentation you deliver, and each one that you witness, offers an opportunity for learning. Practice every chance you get. Tell stories and jokes to friends. Give informal talks to anyone who will listen. Join your local Toastmasters or other speaker or storytelling club, or take an evening class in public speaking.
Here is an amazing technique for accelerating your progress.
Consider how a baby learns. They absorb all the data they can with enthusiasm and wonder, instantly translating mistakes into learning experiences and thus learning at remarkable speed without losing self-confidence. Cultivate this same high-performance learning attitude while seeking feedback on your presentations.
What kind of impact do you have on an audience? If appropriate, hand out evaluation forms, ask questions of audience members, or invite trusted friends or colleagues to attend your presentations for the purpose of giving you detailed feedback. An accurate critique is the greatest gift you can receive. Ideally, find a trusted friend or colleague who shares your commitment to continual improvement. Arrange to attend each other’s presentations, or if that’s not possible, watch videos of them. Plan a time to meet and exchange feedback, and use the following procedure.
Ask your partner to begin by focusing only on those aspects of your presentation that, in his opinion, could be improved. The feedback should be specific, actionable, direct, and honest. When receiving your critique, be receptive — take notes and don’t explain or defend yourself. Ask questions only to gain further clarity. This form of listening allows you to get unusually pure feedback. Once the focus on your areas for improvement has been completed, your partner will then give you feedback, this time focusing on your strengths. Again, listen without responding so you can gain a full appreciation and understanding of what you did well. After completing the feedback on areas for improvement and areas of strength, enjoy an open, exploratory creative conversation about what you may do differently next time.
This exercise is tremendously powerful, and if you practice it faithfully, with a perceptive and sensitive partner, it will lead you to insights about your presentations that otherwise would be elusive. As you develop skill in critiquing your partner’s presentation, you become more discerning and attuned to what works and what doesn’t in public speaking.
I was able to elevate my skills dramatically as a result of the feedback I received and gave practicing this protocol with Tony Buzan. We taught together for years and gave each other feedback after every class or keynote speech.
You can also apply this high-performance approach with a team. When I lead presentation skills seminars, each of the participants gets videotaped as they present so they can see the before and after. In a recent class we had twelve people, and we followed a simple but powerful protocol that I invite you to try with your team. We asked each person to set the scene and explain the context in which they would be presenting. We all aimed to watch and then later give feedback from the perspective of the audience that would actually be receiving the talk.
In this most recent class, held for a construction management firm in New York, half the people were practicing sales presentations, and the other half were supervisors and foremen practicing speaking to workers on job sites about the company’s new safety initiative. Each person presented in turn, with a time limit of five minutes, and we went through all the presentations. After a break, we watched the videos and shared feedback on each presentation.
First, we asked the person giving the presentation to critique themselves and if necessary, and it often is, we coached them on giving themselves critical but supportive feedback. Although many people were quite harsh in their self-assessments, they were also reasonably accurate in their analysis of what they might improve. After the self-critique, the rest of the class was invited to give feedback to the presenter. Again, they received coaching on how to give the most useful feedback. This usually involves helping people translate from generalities into specifics and from evaluations into observations.
Specifics and observations are usually more constructive than generalities and evaluations. To tell someone, “You sounded indecisive and unsure of yourself” or “You are a slob” is not as useful or constructive as “You said ‘like’ and ‘you know’ eleven times” or “Your shirttail was hanging out, and your shoes weren’t shined.”
The person receiving the feedback just listened and took notes without commentary. After all the feedback on areas of improvement was given, we asked the presenter to analyze the strengths of their presentation. Although most people are able to critique themselves, they’re surprisingly inept when it comes to realizing and acknowledging their strengths. So we asked the group to share what they perceived as the strengths of the presenter and to articulate what they appreciated about each person. We encouraged the presenter to be receptive and to take notes on this appreciative feedback and to limit the response to just saying, “Thank you.” This exchange is often quite moving since many folks, especially those in field-operations positions, have never received this kind of public appreciation.
It is useful to learn your specific areas for improvement, but if you’re like most people, you’ll find that the greatest benefit of the feedback process is to discover your strong points.
As the class proceeded the participants began to recognize that they were creating an environment, rare in many workplaces, where they can give and receive feedback in a manner designed to bring out their best, in a framework of unconditional support for their self-expression. After each person received feedback, we had a creative dialogue about how they might integrate the feedback and rework the presentation, and then after some time for Mind Mapping and rehearsal, each person was videotaped for the second time. The transformation based on this process is often remarkable.
A construction site supervisor named Vinnie offers a powerful example. In Vinnie’s first presentation on safety he tried his best to explain the benefits of the program based on the talking points provided by the external firm that did the company’s safety training. He said “um” and “ah” between almost every phrase, and despite being an imposing figure at six foot two and 290 pounds, his rocking movements and fidgeting compromised his stature and his presence. Yet, despite all that, the group could feel that Vinnie actually cared about safety and the well-being of his workers. The feedback he received was essentially, “Please don’t try so hard to give a presentation and instead just tell your story.”
In his second attempt, Vinnie began by pausing and making deep eye contact with everyone in the room before beginning his story. The group was immediately engaged by his presence. Vinnie went on to tell us about his father, who was his hero. Vinnie’s dad was a site supervisor, and as a result of someone’s carelessness on the job, he was hit with a wrecking ball and suffered devastating injuries that forced him to go on disability for years. Holding back tears, Vinnie shared the impact this had on his family and how it shaped his own passion for safety. Everyone in the room was completely transfixed, and Vinnie’s story went straight to the gut in a way that generated passion, rather than just compliance, for the new safety initiative.
My wish for you is that this book will fire your passion for public speaking while giving you the practical knowledge and methods you need to translate that passion into mastery. Before I began my career as a public speaker, while still training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, I read a book entitled Zen in the Art of Archery, written by a German philosophy professor who studied the Japanese discipline of Kyudo, “The Way of the Bow.” It captured my imagination with notions of perfecting the “artless art” and the suggestion that the marksman “aim at himself.” That sounded so cool, but what does it mean? I wasn’t really interested in Japanese archery beyond its value as a metaphor, so how to transfer the meaning into life? Another passage from the book has stayed with me for all these years. “You can learn from an ordinary bamboo leaf what ought to happen. It bends lower and lower under the weight of snow. Suddenly the snow slips to the ground without the leaf having stirred.”
The author is describing what Csíkszentmihályi calls flow. The arrow “must fall from the archer like snow from a bamboo leaf, before he even thinks it.” That’s what it feels like in the Flow State when you are presenting to a group. The “weight of snow” is the pressure of the moment, and your words will fall effortlessly into the hearts and minds of your audience if you prepare properly.
“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times,” Csíkszentmihályi explains. “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” If you apply the eight secrets we’ve explored, you’ll discover that some of the best moments of your life will be in front of a meeting room or up on the stage.