“I think I’ll just get up there and wing it - it’s only a seven-minute presentation.” Now there’s an idea that ranks right up there with turning off your car headlights at night to save electricity. Speakers who “wing it” are not spontaneous. They are merely slothful and stirring up a recipe for disaster.
By carefully crafting your seven-gifted minutes, you can detail the sweat and achievement of your project or product, and provide a lesson this important audience can use. You make your department look valuable and prove yourself a cogent communicator to those who can launch your career. In short, every hour spent preparing for these seven minutes repays at least as much as those spent slaving over your project’s creation.
In her previous article, “Stand and Deliver - Part I: The Speaker’s Mindset,” Eileen Sinett, Biz4NJ’s Expert on Individual Communications, guided readers through the psychological minefields of making a business presentation. Now in Part II, Sinett takes us from pen to podium, or what she calls “the doing part of speechmaking.”
* Mapping the Message. From CEO’s to surgeons, clients come into Sinett’s Comprehensive Communication Services’ studios asking in wonderment what should they say. Invariably she asks back, “What is that one main message you want this audience to be mulling over when they walk out.” This should take some moments to develop.
Winston Churchill was fond of saying that if you cannot state what you do in one sentence, you probably do not know it very well. Guaranteed, your audience will judge you the same way. The speaker who hides behind “my message is too technical to understand,” insults his audience, and has probably never defined his goals for himself.
On the other hand, maybe the real gist of your message lies not the results of your labor, but some applicable tool discovered during the process. Tell managers about the newly enacted team evaluation method. Relate that innovative quality control technique to the sales force. You are giving them a tool they can use themselves, and allowing them to infer the value of your product and its creators.
Following the Shakespearian adage of “Speak less than thou knowest,” Sinett strongly urges using only three supporting pillars for one’s main argument. “The average adult listener retains three to five ideas, plus or minus two, in a single speech. So present them three strong supporting sections, and for heaven’s sakes avoid giving a travelogue of events,” she says.
* Terms of Engagement. Talk to people in the quiet of their offices and they abound with passion and animation about their creations. Get them onstage and the passion dies. They stand looking down at their notes and read, “How do you do? I am Bill Jones, director of marketing...” They follow slavishly all the poor speaking role models who have gone before them.
“If you have to read your name, you shouldn’t be making a speech,” says Sinett. “Your first words are that special time to personally engage with your audience...to reach out with some connection between yourself and them.” View this first lead as the frosting which lures a passersby into the bakery. Seldom should the lead be the primary message, rather use it to grab audience attention.
Starting medias res with some relevant story often catches common ground. The speaker follows his introduction with, “So, I am wincing in my chair, grinding my teeth over the latest depressing figures from our CFO John, over there. And then Irv sticks his head in to tell me that our project results are starting to crash, but it’s not irreparable, he thinks. And right around now, that emergency pack of cigarettes I keep in my bottom left drawer are looking very good to me...” You have given your audience a worst day scenario - something they all have experienced. You’ve shown your human side in dealing with temptation. You’ve shared something of yourself, and you’ve connected with something relatable.
The old standby of starting with a joke can backfire, Sinett notes. Even if it does get the attention, it can muddle the message. Good start-off jokes inherently lead into the prime topic. “If you are an out-of-towner who has just come into speak, you can tell an airport joke, but the situation had better be real,” she says. Also, it had better segway easily and obviously into your talk, e.g. “I sometimes feel our production line moves about like that darn luggage carousel.” So if the joke is solid and applicable, go ahead. “Just remember,” Sinett warns, “ comedy is deceptively hard. If the joke dies, that may be all listeners take home from the speech. It’s risky.”
* Pretrials and Tweaks. Rehearsing usually proves a speech’s best editor. Give the talk a few tries before the bedroom mirror, then, when ready, take it out into the living room. Don’t pre-describe it to your family, just present, and seek comments. What did they think the message was? Was any part unclear? What parts are real keepers? Listen to this trial audience and adjust.
“Unless you are a professional speaker, I do not recommend following a word-by-word, scripted speech,” says Sinett. Trying to memorize it is laced with pitfalls, and reading it tolls the death knell of spontaneity. Better to work with a list in order of several phrases, one-line topics, and segways. A couple of sheets of notes are acceptable, but if you value your job, do not, ever, use file cards. Audiences count, watch them flip, and hope for the end.
* Taking Center Stage. Audiences are sympathetic. If they see you standing listing to the left or with one ankle rolled to the side, they feel your pain, and they grow restless. Ideally, one’s stance should look comfortable and non-distracting. Sinett recommends at the outset to stand simply, feet shoulder-width apart, with hands at one’s sides. There is a natural tendency for people to touch themselves for reassurance. But hands clasped, clutching elbows, or shoved in pockets only advertise the speaker’s discomfort and make that the main message.
“Standing with the hip cocked may seem nonchalant, but guaranteed, within a minute you’ll be shifting to the other hip and back again,” says Sinett. This works wonders for rock singers, but markedly less so for divisional sales chiefs.
From this base position moves and gestures can naturally flow. Are you pacing because you’re nervous, or because it adds controlled excitement to the story? Somewhere between absolute choreography and thoughtlessly roaming, lies a happy medium, where movements are genuine, and seem to spring from the situation.
* Speak then Look. You have the time. Take it. Presenters are never praised for their words per minute. “Speakers are conducting a tacit dialogue with their listeners,” says Sinett. “They put forth an idea - pause while the audience digests it - then lead out another idea.” Thus, good speakers cultivate a natural speech cadence. They intersperse long and short sentences; they end lists with a strong, single-syllable noun. They broaden their speech at the end of an idea. And most importantly, they pause.
During these white spaces, the speaker re-connects. While speaking, his eyes sweep the audience, then, at the pause, they rest on one individual or a section of the hall. “Does that make sense? Am I saying something of value to you?” the eyes ask. This provides a vital opportunity for feedback. If listeners look confused, slow down or perhaps reiterate. The goal is not to talk for seven minutes, but to imbue these folks with the message.
If it is done right, that carefully crafted, edited, and rehearsed speech will sound as if you just got up there and spontaneously winged it. Like a well tailored suit, you don’t want to show them the laborious fine stitching, just let them enjoy how it all comes together, and be impressed. B4
Eileen Sinett has been coaching corporate leaders to speak long before the business community saw it as a necessity. The eldest of seven children, Sinett grew up the daughter of an ever-inventive and successful entrepreneur. “Trucks were always in the driveway from his trucking firm, or canteens and camping gear in the garage from his Army surplus business. My father always had some new business starting up,” Sinett recalls.
Leaving this stimulating home environment, Sinett attended Emerson College, earning a bachelor’s in speech pathology and audiology, followed by masters in speech correction from Kean College. This clinical background led her to work first at Roosevelt hospital, then the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. She soon became UMDNJ’s director of communication services, training a staff of pathology students.
In 1979, Sinett left to found Comprehensive Communication Services. “Originally, my first clients were those with speech disabilities, and parochial school parents, interested in their children’s elocution. But somewhere in the early 1980’s, business people began coming in,” she says. At first they wanted to loose accents or just speak grammatically. Then it was as if the whole business world awoke to the advantage of effective communication. Today, Sinett mentors executives and teams from such clients as Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Company, Novo Nordisk, Mathematica Policy Research, as well as several politicians and professionals.
