An Unlikely Education

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and was inspired to get it done by Merlin Mann’s recent piece about improving his use of PowerPoint.

I do a lot of presentations. Each time I give a talk, I try to improve on something. I have a good base on which to build thanks to an unlikely education. Despite my career in technology, I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Theatre.

I learned a lot of good public speaking practices from theatre school. They come in two flavours–content and technique:

Content – What You Say

Respect the Narrative Arc. Every good story has a beginning, middle and end. The beginning promises the audience something, the middle threatens to take that promise away, and the end pays off on the promise (or, in the so-called ‘third act twist’, it doesn’t). Tell Stories. If you take one piece of advice from this article, it’s this. We make meaning by telling stories–to ourselves and each other. If you can construct your entire talk by embedding your points in a series of anecdotes and tall tales, do it. You’ll entertain your audience a lot more, and your message will be much stickier in your audience’s heads. Watch Seth Godin speak–he’s all about the clever anecdotes. Embrace Metaphors. Metaphors are another important means of how we make sense of the world. Use similes (“this site is eBay for seniors”). Dialogue Starts on the Page. I find my talks are much more cogent and compelling when I’ve written them as informal essays first. Then I try to commit as much of it as I can to memory, and write out the key points on index cards. Too many speakers seem to think they’ve prepared a talk by creating some slides. The slides should come last. Slides are Your Costumes, Lighting and Set, Not Your Speech. Your slides exist to reinforce the things you’re saying, not the other way around. Like your clothes, they provide context and framing for your message. As such, I almost always eschew bullet points for a single word or phrase per slide, accompanied by lots of photos. An overly complicated set will distract an audience, and so will overly busy slides. Your Set Design Needs Soul. Use lots of photos in your slides, but pick photos with soul. You’ll know them when you see them. Here’s a tip–there’s more soul on Flickr than iStockPhoto. And avoid obvious illustrations. You don’t need to show two generic hands shaking to imply a relationship. I recently gave a talk that included a brief summary of the history of communications–from few-to-few to few-to-many to many-to-many. These are the three photos I used:





The Play’s As Long As It Needs To Be (or Not To Be). People like to say “you shouldn’t have more than five (or 15 or 23) slides”. This implies that there’s a standard duration for each slide, and that you’re a simpleton. When you don’t use bullet points, this rule no longer applies. In one of my talks I run 60 slides–all photos–in about 3 minutes, and other slides sit up on screen for five minutes while I’m making a point. Surprise Your Audience. We’re delighted when the unexpected happens. Change gears midstream, take your theme in a new direction, or show a little video in the middle of your talk. It piques the interest of the audience and refreshes their attention. Everybody perks up when the ghost of Hamlet’s dad returns in Act 3. Begin In Media Res. It’s Latin for ‘in the middle of things’, and a lesson from Playwriting 101. Start in the middle of the action. Start with an anecdote out of left field, and let the audience catch up later. Don’t be afraid to use a flashback to fill in the background in the middle of your talk. Find the Funny. This is dangerous, because there’s nothing worse than a joke (or a joker) that bombs on-stage. If you’re not a naturally-gifted comic, find other ways. Embed humour in your slides, bring a prop or gently abuse the audience. I recently used a volunteer and a prop in a talk:





It’s hardly a stroke of comic genius, but it can change the tone for a few minutes, which never hurts.

Technique – How You Say It

Go to a speech coach. Why do British actors always sound smart? Because, usually, they’ve got superb vocal training and are exceptionally articulate. Discover all the muscles in your mouth, throat and chest dedicated to speaking, and learn how to exercise them. Warm up your voice. You stretch before playing pickup hockey–why don’t you warm up your voice before putting it through the paces? Your speech coach can help with this. As part of my pre-speaking ritual, I spend about ten minutes conducting an embarrassing vocal warm-up before speaking. I try to do it backstage, in an empty bathroom or in some other out of the way corner. Quit moving around. It’s a common bad habit of the young (and, in my case, really awful) actor. When you’re not rooted firmly in one place, you water down your message and distract the audience. Stand in one spot, and move only to emphasize a point. Talk slower. You’re almost certainly talking too fast. Even if you have a complete handle on your nerves, there’s a lot going on during a talk–slides, distracting audience members, and so forth–and people take longer to absorb information. Practice slowing down until people tell you that you’re talking too slowly. Consider Your Pacing. That said, you don’t always have to talk slowly. The speed at which you speak is just another tool–be sure to use it. Speak quickly for comic effect, or to emphasize the complexity of a process. Wield the Pause. Playwrights often write (Pause). I’ve used it as a lazy transition, and a way to notify the actor that a speech’s tone or subtext changes. You can use a pause in the same way–implying a shift from one section to the next. More importantly, the skillfully-wielded pause sharpens the audience’s attention, and builds anticipation of your next point. Costumes Matter. I keep saying this, but here it is again: clothes are costumes, and costumes are powerful symbols. Whether you’re speaking to six of your colleagues or 600 strangers, your clothes matter. They offer both context and subtext for what you’re speaking about. People are looking at you for a while–even if they don’t process your clothes consciously, they’ll do so in the background cycles of their brain. Guy Kawasaki spoke after me at Gnomedex, and he wore this cool, casual shirt and jeans. Maybe that’s a carefully crafted image, or maybe it’s just what he threw on that morning, but it says a lot about who he is as a speaker.

In short, make your presentations a little more like a play or a film. A little creativity and humour goes a long way, so don’t overdo it. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who described entertainment as “the jam that coats the pill of morality”. Your pill is probably more education or marketing than morality, but the lesson applies. Entertain your audience, and they’ll buy more of whatever it is you’re selling.