No Need to be a King to Work On Your Speech!

by Warwick John Fahy

The highly acclaimed The King's Speech has been attracting a lot of attention recently. It was an entertaining film, especially for some of the bizarre treatments used to treat stutterers in the 1930s. It reminded me of the elocution lessons I took when I was about five years old to fix a slight problem I had in speaking certain words. Luckily I didn't need to fill my mouth with marbles.

I was thinking whether this was a good film for my profession or not. Certainly, by showing a sometimes moving story of a person who worked incredibly hard at improving his skills for the new era of radio and public speeches, it is certainly a good role model for how we should all learn.

On the flip side, the eccentric nature of the practitioners (speech therapists) in the film gave me mixed feelings. From their bizarre suggestions that smoking is good for your lungs to the amateur dramatics actors lurking beneath the surface, they seemed to fall into the usual clichés of how public speakers are regarded.

In today's busy, distracted and short attention span world, I think we do need to be not only great speakers, but also engaging storytellers.

Being an effective presenter is less about the mechanics of public speaking and more about the engagement skills you need to connect with your audiences. So while breathing and measuring the distance to the microphone are nice touches, they are the cherries on the cake. They are useful only after a solid foundation has been put in place.

Business professionals need to engage in so many different ways that most of their presentations are of the informal nature. Conference calls, one-on-one meetings, quick pep talks with their team, business events with regulators. Often they need to be just as persuasive without taking the stage.

While breathing and measuring the distance to the microphone are nice touches, they are the cherries on the cake

So should we all have a speech coach?

While I don't think we need a speech therapist as depicted in the film, there is certainly a need for upgrading of business presentation skills across the board. Visit any company and speak with executives and you will pick up the frustration of long, dull meetings with long, dull data-heavy presentation slides. Or how long it takes to persuade a team that change is needed. Or inability to connect with younger colleagues. Or senior executives from a different country.

Most presentations are forgettable, do not have a clear message, are not delivered with passion, avoid all techniques that might make a message memorable (like story-telling and metaphor creation). Added to this most executives underestimate the amount of preparation that is needed for presenting a message.

A recent coaching engagement brought this out. A senior finance executive was frustrating his direct managers: the country CEO and also a global CFO based overseas. They had frequently asked the executive to be briefer and more concise in their one-on-one meetings which often over-ran by 30 or 60 minutes on a regular basis. Only after two or three coaching sessions where we worked on how to form a concise message, how to use structure to arrange ideas and how to think through the material by using scanning and drilling questions did the executive realise that "this takes a long time to prepare".

At first, like any new skill, it will take longer. But with practice, various techniques can be learned that dramatically reduce the time taken by the executive to prepare and deliver his points. When you think about how much it costs your organisation to have three or four senior level people in a meeting, this added productivity is a cost saver. In addition, the improvement in the relations between the executives helps enormously get things done in future projects.

So if you haven't seen The King's Speech yet, it is an entertaining view and if it does inspire you to think about improving your public speaking or presentation skills, then please do look at some of the great resources on this web site.

How engaging is your presenting?

Here are a few questions to check before you deliver:

1. Do you have an overall message for your speech which you could express in under 10 words?
2. Do you have a good metaphor for your presentation? (A quest, a battle, an exploration)
3. Could you create a single visual image that would express your main idea?
4. Will anyone remember your presentation? On a scale from 1 to 10, how memorable do you think your presentation will be? Will anyone remember it in a month's time? Three months?
5. Have you drawn your key points into catchy sound-bites, questions, powerful statements or eye-catching visuals that will help the audience engage with your main message?

If you can answer “yes!” to all five questions then you are well on your way to creating a great presentation. Make sure you then spend as much time as you can in rehearsal. For a 20 minute presentation, you should be spending 2 -3 hours in stand-up, speak-outaloud rehearsal.

Copyright 2011 Warwick John Fahy. All rights reserved.

Warwick is the author of The One Minute Presenter and works with high-potential senior executives who need to be more confident and influential with their key stakeholders. He helps the executive quickly and powerfully express their opinions into message based presentations - even when under pressure. Learn more at WarwickJohnFahy.com

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