Public Speaking Lesson

OK a year and four months from my first post -- I said this is new to me. In that time it is funny how things have come full circle. I am currently preparing for the upcoming High Impact Presentations Workshop to be presented here at our office on March 22 and 29.

So, a little sheepishly here is the story of how I learned the hard way that you, the presenter, have to take responsibility for what you deliver and not become a victim of the situation.

“Dale Carnegie be Damned” was the welcome I got as I took the podium once to deliver a club talk. A drunken old dentist at one of the front tables apparently felt compelled to voice his opinion regarding human relations. The talk was titled “9 Ideas to Manage Your Office More Effectively”. It was downhill from there. This was one of my earliest talks, I gave for an association of dentists, and their staffs.

Sometimes I learn a huge amount from a single experience, this was one of those incidents.

Richard Bach, in his book Illusions has a quote that says “There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in it’s hands, you seek problems because you need their gifts”.

I’m here to tell you I got Santa’s bag full of gifts that night.

I arrived 30 minutes early to set up for my talk. The dentists and their associates were at the bar, getting happy. I went upstairs to the banquet room, I observed that the microphone was attached to the podium, I mean screwed down eternally (I figured maybe the previous speaker liberated the last one). The flip chart easel was about 10 feet away from the speaking area. The room was lit in a romantic style, with candles on the tables, nice ambiance if you were amorously inclined toward the person sitting next to you. Catastrophic lighting if you were expected to command the room as a presenter. The round tables seated 10 people, half of whom had their backs to the podium, given my novice experience at the time it may have been their blessing, but it was my curse.

With all of these elements in place, I put my visual aids where I wanted them, and sat down to eat dinner.

Just as we finished dinner, I asked one of the servers if they knew anyone who could turn the lights up. The response was less than enthusiastic, and the final answer was that the person who knew how to do it, had gone home. This was the setting we had for the night. After dinner was concluded, the meeting planner got up and read my introduction. Several people actually listened. Then, I was on.

No one moved. Not a single person repositioned their chairs to face the front of the space. As I began I had already lost 50% of the room. Then of course the goodwill ambassador at the front table made his remark, and I felt the butterflies go in every direction. So now, I got mad. Add an attitude problem to the mix of other circumstances, and you try to deliver a talk on effective human relation skills. I was doomed!

I opened with a quick story about a card playing friend of mine, which is a setup for a magic trick with cards that I use as an attention getter. The final tag line on this bit is that “you are going to learn a few ideas tonight, which will help you to stack the deck in your favor, when it comes to managing people”. The table I sat at applauded this.

Everyone else in the room turned to look at that table, wondering what they had just missed.

Moving into the body of my talk, I attempted to make the leap back and forth from the microphone to the flip chart to illustrate my points. I think I looked like the plate spinning guy on the Ed Sullivan Show. It didn’t matter much as the few people who were listening to me had gotten pulled into the conversations at their respective tables. I think the only audience I had at that point was the meeting planner and her husband.

I reached the point where I was done. My talk was not finished, but I was done. I made a remark or two alluding to the fact that I hoped they had benefited from my ideas, and turned it back over to the meeting planner. She got a halfhearted round of applause from a few people and we both sat down.

What an embarrassment. I had worked hard to prepare my talk. The content was strong, and it had worked terrifically a week earlier at a leadership function. The AT&T group had sent in a fantastic testimonial letter on this same presentation, after I presented it to their group. I couldn’t understand what had happened to sabotage my talk that night. Why did it crash and burn like that?

For several weeks I thought about why this had happened, and what I could do to keep a disaster like this from scarring my reputation in the future.

Several conclusions surfaced, and to this day these are the guidelines I use to ensure a success whenever I speak to a group of people:

1. Find out in advance what will be happening before and after you are speaking (is there a cocktail hour?) The state of mind of the audience is important.
2. Know your audience. Ask the meeting planner for demographics of the group such as; education, position in company, age range, ratio of men to women.
3. Give the meeting planner specific minimum requirements for the success of the presentation, things like; bright lighting in the room, detachable microphone with enough cord to move around, blank flip chart pads with fresh markers, and anything else you personally need to be an excellent speaker.
4. From the moment you arrive, take charge. It is your responsibility to give them a fantastic delivery of your talk, do what ever it takes to make that happen. Don’t be rude, be persistent, and firm. They are expecting you to do well.

5. Before you begin to speak, facilitate the room into a configuration that will allow everyone to see you. I have even asked people to move their chairs onto the dance floor, and set it up theatre style, when that made the most sense.

These 5 simple guidelines have made a world of difference in the success of my talks and the impact I have on an audience. Never be a victim to the circumstances, be proactive and you will be dynamic.