Sam

This is Part 5 of a series that I’m writing this week to help you be a better speaker.

What I’ve learned about every talk I’ve given is there is something essential that I have to forget about in order for the talk to go well.

Unfortunately, it’s something that almost every presenter only thinks about.

But it’s very important to know that your audience doesn’t think about this, and therefore you shouldn’t either.

Are you ready for the secret sauce of every single great presentation?  Seriously, I am not fooling.  If you have no idea what makes a presentation great, this will take you from novice to Jedi.  Ironically, it’s not something you remember.

It’s something you forget.

Here goes:

Forget. Yourself.

Yes, that’s it.  I’m not trying to be spiritual or transcendental.  This is probably the most practical thing that I could share with you about public speaking.

If you can get to a place where the focus shifts completely from yourself, to the audience, you won.

The craziest thing is that most of us typically only think about ourselves when we are speaking.  We worry how we are going to come across, cover all the notes, make the right impression, illicit laughs with our jokes – all of that.

And at the end of the day, we only focus on ourselves when we get up to do that presentation (whether it be an informal meeting or a keynote).

The key to effective communication is connection.  When we spend our time during the presentation trying to connect only to ourselves, we have produced isolation and invited others to sit and watch us focus on ourselves.  That’s it.

And we are all alone.

I’ve been there more times than I care to admit, and when I find myself going there, I feel it after.  I know I didn’t make the connection, and I lost the point along the way.

Now, let me tell you another crazy aspect of this.  The audience doesn’t care about you.

Period.

I know, if you’re a pastor you’re gong to say they love you.  Sure they do.  And yes, they might pray for you.  But here is a cold fact:  When they walk through the doors of the  church, the board room, the auditorium, whatever,  they’re not wondering how your prep time went.  They aren’t contemplating on your physical health that day.  They aren’t focusing on whether or not you’re going to be satisfied with those bold new glasses you’re sporting.

They simply don’t care.

When I started to recognize that fact, I was completely and totally liberated.

I felt that if these people weren’t coming to hear me based on how I feel, then maybe I don’t have to feel perfect giving a talk.  Maybe, just maybe. . .I can forget myself all together and focus on. . .

Them.

Yep, just focus on them.

So from one presenter to another, you have to get out of your head.  If you stay up there, thinking of you, and worrying about you, you’ll never enter the place you’re speaking.  And when it comes to presentations, one is really the loneliest number.

So, of course, you ask, how do you do this.

I wish I knew.  I don’t know you.  I don’t know what motivates the people who are coming to hear you or meet with you.  But here are some quick guidelines.

1) Realize that every single person you’re speaking to has something going on in their lives that has nothing to do with what you’re doing – and it most likely is overshadowing and competing for their attention.  You either have to accept this, and learn how to utilize it, or you have to pretend that you are the center of the universe.

Think about them, and what they are about to experience.  Is there something you’re going to say that’s going to encourage them, motivate them, heaven forbid, IMPROVE them?  If not, maybe you’re thinking of yourself too much.

2) Understand that no mistake up there shatters the earth the way you think it does.  Let me get real personal.  I learned this the hard way.  In 2016, I spoke publicly over 120 times to hundreds of people.  Almost every single time I got up to speak, I had a massive panic attack (I will write about anxiety at some other point).  The first time it happened, it happened behind the scenes with some of my staff and key leaders.

For a year, I thought that most people who knew I struggled with this were constantly thinking about it.

Nope.  That wasn’t even close to true.

The majority of the people who witnessed the panic attack didn’t even think of it more that a couple times after the incident, and as for the other people who heard my talks, not one person recognized how tense I’d become during speaking.

Now, you can choose to frame this in a way that makes it feel as though nothing you do matters, but not me.  This made me feel absolutely liberated from the fear of speaking.  I realized that I was not everyone’s dinner conversation or a guinea pig standing on stage for scientific analysis.

I could be me.  And I could forget myself, and focus on them.

3) The energy you invest on thinking of yourself could be better spent trying to connect to the audience.  Thinking of yourself is draining.  It really is.  It requires effort.  But if you take that effort, and focus on being entirely present, and being entirely for the people you’re speaking to, they’ll notice.

I promise you.

Getting out of your head and into that crowd will be the most beautiful and difficult journey you make, but when you invest that travel time into the people you’re serving by giving a talk, they feel it.  And they’ll want more of you.

The most rewarding thing that happens when I give a talk, be it a sermon, or a presentation, is when someone comes to me and repeats something back that I said that connected with them.  I’ll laugh because I truly don’t remember saying it.  It’s at that point I realize it happened not because I’m senile and forget where I am and to wear pants sometimes.  It happened because my chief aim was connection over anything. And if you have something important to say, it’s selfish to not attempt to connect those listening to you with that content.

So, do us all a favor as a communicator: forget yourself.

This is Part 4 of a series that I’m writing this week to help you be a better speaker.

In the 90s, there was a male R&B group called Tony! Toni! Tone!  I don’t remember their hits, but I remember their name, because it was easy to recall.

However, it wasn’t until I went to the record store (can you imagine how difficult it was to have to go to a store to buy music, like a freaking caveman?) that I realized that each Tony was spelled differently.

But it sounded the same.

How clever AND confusing.

As a presenter, tone is so important that I’m giving it its own article.  There is so much danger in being Monotone.

Now, when you think of mono

 

tone, I know you think of Ben Stein (do you have dry eyes?).  However, monotone is a little more subtle than just being soft-spoken or without fluctuation.

Billy Mays, a former infomercial TV star who has passed away, had an incredibly explosive tone with every single infomercial.  KABOOM!

But here’s the problem.  It was all the same.  He was great at expression, but he slipped dangerously into the monotone category sometimes.  (RIP Billy Mays).

My point is this, louder is not key; dynamic is.

Let’s talk this out.

 

If you are consistently loud or consistently soft, the audience is going to get lost at one point or another.  This

is why we fall asleep in the back of airplane.  That loud engine that made your head want to explode eventually turns into background noise after consistently listening to it.

So, what do we do?

The key is to vary how you say what you say.  This is what makes a good presenter a great presenter.  They control their tone of voice, and captivate the audience along the way.

Here are some quick tips.

1.  Look for natural places to vary your tone.  If you’re describing something “small,” for instance, use a softer tone than in a different part of your talk that would be comparing it to something “big.”

If you are telling a story about someone whispering, then you should whisper.

If you are telling a story that switches scenes, switch your tone of voice to accommodate the change.  Your audience will stay on board with you.

As a presenter, you have to look for these natural opportunities to reengage.  They pay huge attention dividends in the end.

2.  Try speaking in a sliding scale.  Start really big in the beginning of a point, then gradually quiet down as you get to the end of it.  This technique forces your audience to lean in as you approach the climax of that segment of your talk.

Remember, being quiet isn’t bad, as long as it’s not constant.

3. Don’t be afraid of impressions.  Every now and again, I get the opportunity to do an impression when giving a talk.  I’ve found that even when I do a bad impression, it goes over better than doing no impression at all.  Why?  Well, because it breaks up monotony.  It also gives the audience an opportunity to laugh at your sucky impression (we’ll talk about humor in another post).

So, take it away Tony! Toni! Tone!  But just make sure it doesn’t sound the same.

This is Part 3 of a series that I’m writing this week to help you be a better speaker.

I was in a musical once – in high school.  I had a supporting role and a huge solo in the middle.  It was the first time I realized that I could feel comfortable standing in front of people.  It also made me realize that if I didn’t make it in the business world, I’d succeed bigly on Broadway.  I know this is true because tons of people told me.  Well, maybe not tons.  Okay, maybe it was only my mom.

Anyway, I learned much from being in the musical.  And there are still some things that come into my mind every time I give a presentation.  It’s important to examine them.

Think about it, you might not be giving a performance worth a Tony nomination, but all successful musical actors have one thing in common.

They captivate you.

You might not like them.  You might hate their character.  But you feel compelled to watch them.  That’s a huge thing.

So what are some things we can learn from musicals?

1) Don’t turn around.  Ace of Base had it right in the 90s when they coined this hit.  And if you’re presenting, when your audience sees your back, it disengages them.  Now, I don’t know every presentation you’re involved in, and something might require you to turn around, and that’s fine, but as a general rule – this is bad.

I typically see this one happening most when people turn to look on their slides.  (I am going to do a whole other article on presentation illustrations).  Just trust me, no one wants to see your back.  Unless it’s defined like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but even still, it’s probably not a good idea.

2) Whatever movement you make, make it big.  We talked yesterday about moving deliberately.  This would dovetail.  Use bigger hand motions than smaller.  This is going to feel very uncomfortable, but trust me, it won’t come across this way.

In Theater, when you speak a line or sing, it must be so overly exaggerated or emphasized that it almost feels odd in your mind.  However, it’s in that exaggeration that the audience gets you.  Make your gestures big, your facial expression strong, and the tone of your voice dynamic.

3) If you mess up, move on.  This is probably worth its own article, but it definitely fits.  In musical theater, when you mess a line up, it’s vital to grab the subtext of what you’re trying to say and move to the next line.  This is scary because it may feel like dominos, about to collapse the entire system with one wrong move.   But if you have others on stage with you acting, they’ll often catch what you drop.

Presentations are a little different, they require you, and typically only you, to bear the burden of the forgotten lines.  So here is a rule:

When I forget something, or skip something, or get lost (because this has happened to me, for sure), I just keep moving.

I don’t search.  I don’t scramble.  I definitely don’t say, “oh, I missed this thing I wanted to say back here.” I move to the next thing, and just find a different way to restate it if it was vital to the presentation.  9 times out of 10 it isn’t.

Here’s why:  Your audience doesn’t know or care what you skipped or what you messed up.  It’s not about how you feel giving the presentation, it’s about how the presentation is experienced by them.  Therefore, if you stop and say, “Hey, I skipped this and let’s pretend I didn’t say what I just said,” it’s going to cause a disjointed moment in your talk and you might lose them.  So make like a First Grader and skip.

That’s it.  Now, I shall go listen to the soundtrack from the musical I was in, and maybe work on my next presentation.

This is Part 2 of a series that I’m writing this week to help you be a better speaker.

Donald Trump is delivering the State of the Union as I type this.  You may not have voted for him.  You might not like him.  You might wonder why his tie is always so long, but when it comes to public speaking, there is something that he does that you could adopt immediately to become a better presenter.

It comes down to one command.

Move deliberately.

He moves when he speaks and it’s completely deliberate.

President Obama also did this.  And you’ll see it as a trait that is pretty much standard for the most effective communicators that you know.

Now, hear me closely on this.  Most speakers move.  You’ve seen it.  But there are only a handful that you have seen that move deliberately.

Let me explain.  Some people move as a default and as a nervous habit.  For instance:

• They sway back and forth and you get sea sick watching.

• They fiddle with their wardrobe, their fingernails, or their notes.

• They touch their face or fold their arms repeatedly.

These are movements, but they make the audience want to look away instead of pay attention.

However, I’m sure you’ve also seen people so stiff that birds actually begin to land on them when they’re speaking.  And like the birds that land, you want to fly away from their presentations.

The key is deliberate movements.  If you’re going to move, be mindful about it.

I have to speak every other weekend in front of four cameras and an audience that varies between 600 and 800.  When the system was first installed, I became aware of how my movements were distracting and automatic.  I had to think about each movement I made with regards to the camera director.

It taught me to be deliberate.

So here’s some starting points.

1.  Think of where you’re going not just of moving.  When I move, I pretend there is an imaginary “X” on the floor where I am moving to.  This way I’m not moving without a plan.

2.  Make your hand motions consistent with what you’re saying.   I talk with my hands a great deal.  It’s a great way to engage people.  However, make sure that you are using your hands to illustrate and not distract.  For instance, if you are talking about something that is HIGH ABOVE YOU, don’t make your hand motions low.

3.  Watch yourself and notice what things you do “automatically.”  We all have our default movements.  We have to distill those out and try to make the movement we have purposeful.  It’s going to feel a little like you are writing with the opposite hand that you are used to, but know that the payoff is more confident communication.

We pay attention to deliberate communicators.  You don’t have to be the president to communicate with purpose.  Don’t let the importance of what you have to say be overshadowed by messy movements.

This is Part 1 of a series that I’m writing this week to help you be a better speaker.

The Two Worst Words A Public Speaker Can Say

I had only been a minister at the church for two years, when it happened, and it hasn’t happened since.

The most devastating thing that can happen to a public speaker.

When someone was supposed to speak, and they don’t make it, and you’re forced to take their place.

That’s. The. Worst.

I have about twelve years more of speaking under my belt now than I did then, but giving an impromptu speech (or sermon) is similar to being thrown in the middle of a swimming pool during a swimming competition.  You keep thinking if you’re kicking a certain way you might fall in line, but at the end of the day you’re afraid of looking completely ridiculous and drowning (and peeing yourself and not knowing).

Here’s the scene: We had a world-famous missionary who wrote books, was interviewed on the 700 Club, and even had a documentary coming to speak.  It was such a big deal that people were bringing friends just to hear him.

But his plane was delayed.  And I got the call from the airport letting me know about it.  My wife and I had just ordered late lunch at Pizza Hut, and holy moly it was the worst pizza I ever tasted.

I had three hours to prepare a message.

I didn’t have any good sermons baking in the oven.  All I had was hope, and a stomach full of pepperoni.  I mean, come on, you didn’t want me to be rude to the people at Pizza Hut and not offer my patronage, did you?  That would be savage.

When I got to the pulpit, I used two words.  Two words that under most circumstances (I mean about 95% of all circumstances) you should never use when you are giving a speech.

Never.

I mean it.

I got up to a confused church and I made the best joke I ever made.  “I’m sorry, I know you expected filet mignon, but tonight you’re getting Cheerios.”

The joke was freaking amazing.  No one laughed because they were genuinely disappointed.  It was a 9.5 on my clever church joke rating scale.

But the two words were unforgivable.

“I’m sorry.”

Yep.  Don’t ever apologize for any reason during you’re talk.  Ever.

I replayed that sermon over and over in my head and I thought of why I used those two words to open the talk.  Here is the reason why I said, “I’m sorry” and the same reason why you do, too.

I was desperate to overcompensate for my lack of confidence and prepartation, so I pleaded for the sympathy of the audience.

There might be a smoother way to phrase that, but that’s the best I can do.  I wanted sympathy because I hoped I’d get some “awww’s” or “it’s okay’s” instead of just allowing my talk to speak for itself.  Quite frankly, I think it was one of the best sermons I ever preached.  The reasons for that belong in another discussion,  but the one thing I would change would be to start off by apologizing.

I’m going to share with you why starting off your talk apologetically is a total disaster.

1) You’re communicating in the first moments of your talk that it’s going to suck.  Yeah, that’s what you’re doing.  We say I’m sorry after bad things happen.  You, my friend, have just prophesied suckiness with the first two words.  And what are you apologizing for?  Because you’re speaking?  That’s garbage.

2) You are telling the audience that you’re only thinking of yourself.  This is a cardinal sin of communicating.  You’re not talking about what they’re going to experience, you’re letting them know what you’re thinking about speaking to them.  And you’re letting them know how bad it is.

A whole other subject of another post that I’m working on has to do with this very fact, but just accept this as gospel: your audience doesn’t care one iota how you feel about being up there.

3) You are degrading the content you’re about to share.  Similar to saying you’re talk is going to suck, you are basically offering up your content on the altar of pity.  You’re not letting the truth of what you have to say stand, you’re kicking the legs out from under it and hoping your audience sympathizes with its broken back and coddles you as it crashes.  (Too much metaphor?)

I know, this sounds harsh, but hear me out, it’s better I be frank with you about this than you get up and say, “I’m sorry.”

From a content standpoint, you’ve given the audience reason not to care about what you’re saying.  That’s hogwash.  There’s something good in there, but you are already telling them it’s not worth giving their full attention to it.

That’s enough.  I’m sorry there’s not more, but – well, no, no I’m not sorry.  This should be enough for you to never apologize about giving a talk again.

I’m not the best speaker, but I do it a lot.

I didn’t realize for a while that as a pastor, I speak more publicly in a year than most people speak publicly their whole lives.  That’s a sobering thought.  Because of this, I am always looking for ways to be better at public speaking.

I think the moment we feel that we’ve mastered something, that’s when we’re closest to become ineffective at it.

Here are some of the most recent things that I’ve learned, and if you have a presentation, this may help you.  We present more than we think.  You might not have 100 people in front of you, but maybe you just have three.  It’s your job to make them care about what you’re saying.

Here are some things:

1) Get right into it.  Yeah, this is new for me.  When I’ve opened my sermons before, I felt the need to welcome, talk about what we are going to talk about, then get into it.  I’ve found that 90% of what I said at the beginning is pretty useless.  I’m saying this for me, not you.

What’s useful is saying something that makes them want to know how it ends.  Or, something that makes them lean in.  That’s a good way to start.  They’ll wanna pick it up.  A joke.  A statement.  A statistic.  Something catching.

2) Smile more.  I have been watching myself on video for a while, and I noticed that my face sometimes is very unapproachable.   It’s always devastatingly handsome (sorry folks, can’t cage that beast), but it’s sometimes uninviting.

I want people to want to watch me and my facial expression, not feel judged or uncomfortable.  Therefore, operation friendly-face is underway.  I smile more, but I’m not trying to be weird or anything.

3) Use less notes.  When I first started speaking, I’d manuscript my talk (meaning, every single word was written out, even pauses), but over the years, I’ve used less and less notes.  Now, I’m down to one page, I’m trying to get it to a half page.  That’s my goal.  My ultimate goal is no notes at all.  But I’m going to climb up this mountain gradually.

I’ve found there is almost a mathematical correlation between my level of comfort delivering a talk and the amount of notes I have.  It’s not what you think.  The LESS notes I have, the MORE comfortable I feel.

4) Make eye contact.  I have typically looked towards people when speaking – like I’d stare at the window just behind them for focus on the back of the room, or look slightly up at the lights.  Recently, I’ve been looking at people in different parts fo the room.  Again, I’m not trying to be weird or anything.  I’m trying to engage them.

So if you catch me looking desperately into your eyes, know that it’s just my technique and applaud me without being offended or wigged out.

Those are four right now.  In time, I’d like to write more on this subject.  What are some of your best speaking tricks?

I grew up with a condition that renders my left eye almost completely useless.  It’s not noticeably lazy, but I can’t really read from it.  In fact, I only see shapes and colors if my right eye is covered.

Growing up, my parents offered me an eye patch.  In grade school in the 90s, that was a no-no. There weren’t many people emphasizing bullying then!  Ahhhh, perhaps I would have had a different life.

Anyway, I didn’t wear the patch.  I did sometimes after school, but not consistently.  This led to more and more blurriness and finally, pretty much a blind eye.

So when someone says to turn a blind eye to something, I can literally turn a blind eye.

This idea of focus haunts me.  I have thought of 2018 as a year of focus and definition.  And I sometimes wish I would have spent time strengthening my left eye, so that it would be useful.  But instead, I let the other eye do all the work.  Consequently, I have about 50% of the vision I could.

I think this is a chilling indictment of how many of us spend our lives. In fact, we don’t strengthen our focus or define our lives and values, and therefore, life happens to us instead of the other way around.

We react.

We don’t process things in a healthy way.

We don’t plan.

We don’t make goals.

We live day to day hoping to survive and not thrive.

Is that you?  Is that how you are?  Is that how your days are spent.

If it is, I’ll tell you what I have done and what I’d recommend. List some things that you’d like to define who you are.

Here are some things that define me.

1.  I want to be known and loved best by my wife and kids.  I think Mark Batterson said he wants to be most famous to the people that live within the four walls of his home.  What a great way to think of your life.

2. I want people to trust me and depend on me.  I want to work in any job with people feeling that they could trust me running their company.  This makes me feel professionally validated.

3. I want to be bold about what I want to do with my life.  I love making big plans and allowing those plans to force me to be more resourceful.

4. I want my faith to be the common thread of everything.  I hope that when people see me, they don’t think of as a pastor alone, but as a person who genuinely follows Christ who happens to work for a great church.

Have you ever thought of what you would like to define you?  Here’s something you could ask.  If you walked in on a conversation between two people that know you, what would you desire that they be saying?

Sam is trustworthy with his work.

My husband provides well and makes me feel secure.

My dad makes me feel important and loved.

Those are just some of my statements.

Think about your own. Because an undefined life is a dangerous life.  If you don’t define your life, others will for you.  Don’t spend your days with no vision.

Here I am, and I survived.

I looked at my first five scenes.  The first five scenes of my novel.  I started by reading it – just to read.  Here are some things that I noticed.

• Some of it is embarrassingly bad.
• Some of it is okay.
• All of it has opportunity.

Opportunity – that’s the operative word.  I am overwhelmed with opportunity.  And it feels great.

I looked at those first five scenes and I walked into the world that two months ago I created in the early pre-dawn mornings before doing my “real job” and I’ve come to the conclusion that that was the warm up.  Just from five scenes, I had explosions of ideas in my mind that weren’t coming when I cranked out those 2000 words for 30 days straight.

Here’s what I think you should do if you are just started to edit your book.  I’m open for suggestions, but this is what I’m doing.

1) I’m enjoying it.  Yeah, I am.  I love re-reading the plot of my story.  It’s been odd.  Part of me recalls some scenes with exquisite detail, and another part gets shocked about the plot.

2) I’m embracing opportunity.  I have been examining the characters of the story and there are so many different directions it could go.  That has been fueling me to really daydream about sub-plots and conflict.

3) I’m taking notes on every scene.  I know I’ve emphasized this in the past, but I really love the Scrivener APP and how you can take notes and keep a running tally of what needs done to fix the scenes.

All that being said, it feels otherworldly.  I have moments of happy surprise, and moments of horror!  But at the end of the day, I encourage myself with one truth:

I wrote a book.  It’s a book that I didn’t have a year ago, and nothing will change that.

Keep reading and writing!