24 Oct 2010
Ingredients of Transition: Standing up to speak
Context:
Feeling confident in speaking about Transition to audiences, or ensuring that as many people as possible in your initiatives can do it, will be key to your success. It will be a vital element your AWARENESS RAISING process and to ENGAGING THE COUNCIL. As interest in your initiative grows, having confident speakers will also be a key element of COMMUNICATING WITH THE MEDIA . If your initiative delivers TRANSITION TRAINING, good presentation skills will also be key to this.
(We are collecting and discussing these Transition ingredients on Transition Network’s website to keep all comments in one place. Please leave feedback and comments, suggestions for alternative pictures, anecdotes, stories and projects for this ingredient here).
The challenge:
Many of us have lost our voices. We are afraid to stand up and speak in public, indeed surveys shown that many people fear public speaking more than death! We fear humiliation, derision, and the mythical smart so-and-so who has spent 5 months honing the killer question that will humiliate you in public. He (or she) doesn’t exist, but for many people, public speaking is an utterly terrifying proposition.
The Core Text
It is said that the human brain is a fantastic thing. It is capable of incredible wonders, great poetry, mathematics and Sudoku, yet it stops when you stand up to speak in public. It need not be like that. Public speaking, like riding a bicycle, is a learnable skill. What follows is an attempt at a crash course in public speaking, although there is nothing like practice. Firstly, know your audience. You cannot expect to give exactly the same talk to wildly different audiences. Who are you speaking to? What makes them tick? What might engage and enthuse them, and what is guaranteed to turn them off? Secondly, dress the part. You don’t want to give a talk to a group of allotment growers in a suit, and turning up to present to the local Council in a t-shirt and shorts might not be the best approach either. Think carefully about who you are presenting to and how to get off to the best initial start.
Then, you need to know your material. This doesn’t mean you need to learn your whole speech by heart, but you need to know what you’re going to tell them, and have some kind of structure to what you are going to say. You need a beginning (what you’re going to talk about, how long you will take, whether or not there will be time for questions and so on), a middle (the main presentation) and an end (summarising your talk and an inspiring conclusion). There are a few ways you can be sure that you’ll get it right:
- Write the main points out onto cards you can glance as you give your talk
- Use Powerpoint slides to trigger you to talk on different subjects you feel comfortable with
- Write a talk, and then summarise it into points that you can refer to as you speak
Few things are duller than a talk read entirely from sheets of paper, interminable slide shows with endless incomprehensible graphs, a standard talk given with no reference to the audience. Make it lively, engaged, entertaining. Tell your own story, or stories of projects you have been involved with. Hearing someone talking honestly about their own experiences is worth a thousand slides, and really brings talks to life.
Don’t pace up and down, and make sure you engage as much of the audience as possible in eye contact. Use your hands but don’t flap them about excessively. Also, keep an eye on the clock. Saying you are going to talk for 20 minutes, and to still be there after 40 is very disrespectful of your audience. Most people have an attention span of 6-8 minutes: change the pace, change the medium, to sustain interest.
In relation to giving specifically Transition talks, remember that doom and gloom are not good tools for engaging people. You will lose people quickly. Also don’t give people too much in the way of graphs and stats, use them judiciously and then move on. What appeals to people, and what stays with them, is the emotion of what you are talking about. Why does Transition excite you? Tell your story, tell your initiative’s story. Use positive language. Is Transition about avoiding the most disastrous and nightmarish scenarios of peak oil and climate catastrophe, or is it about unleashing enterprise, creativity and community to seize the moment of this historic opportunity to rethink how our communities work? What you are trying to do is, with humour, compassion and kindness, to create, as George Marshall of COIN puts it, a new social norm, one in which Transition comes across as the most logical, and the most satisfying thing to do in these times.
Like riding a horse, public speaking needs practice. If your first one bombs, get back in the saddle and try again. Accept any invitation to speak, it is all good practice. In time, your confidence will grow, and when you take to the stage you will find that that space is yours, and that you are in command. And always be open to feedback, it may be uncomfortable, but it will help you to improve hugely.
The solution:
Like riding a bicycle or pruning apple trees, public speaking is a learnable skill. What matters is that you speak from what you are passionate about and have mastered a few basic skills. Make sure that from an early stage, training is offered in public speaking, mentoring is offered by other, more experienced public speakers, and that a diversity of people are sent to give talks for the group, thus enabling the group to build up a team of gifted speakers. Keep this training available as the initiative proceeds, and encourage people to be open with their constructive feedback about other peoples’ talks.
Connections to other patterns:
When giving talks for your group, try and be mindful of HOW OTHERS SEE US and of INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY. Avoid having one standard talk, but tailor your presentation to your audience. Including an element of ARTS AND CREATIVITY can bring life to a talk, as can STORYTELLING. You may find that overcoming your fear of public speaking can contribute to your PERSONAL RESILIENCE, with knock-on benefits elsewhere in your life. Your Transition group could use its AWARENESS RAISING programme, and in particular its UNLEASHING event to give fledgling public speakers some practice…
Please leave any comments here.
john thackara
24 Oct 5:22pm
SPEAKING: A FEW MORE HINTS
We give these hints to speakers coming to our own events:
PREPARING
Even if you never usually prepare a speech, we do recommend you prepare a good first sentence! It gets you, and us, off to a strong start.
Our trainer says: allow one hour of preparation for every minute we will be on stage.
And to aim at 90-160 words a minute.
Less is more. Cut most of it out.
You will always have more things to tell me than time to do so – so tell me less. Never try to cram everything you know into a limited time by speaking fast.
When preparing your opening, assume I know nothing. NOTHING!
The first two minutes of your presentation should answer the following questions that are rattling around in my addled mind:
• “Where am I, and why am I here?”
• “Who are these people?”
• “What’s in it for me?”
• “To what question is this story an answer?”
Always answer that last question!
State, explicitly, the insight, discovery or invention you have made, that you are giving me to take away.
Try very hard not to use buzzwords, technical jargon, or private language.
Forget that last sentence: *Never* use buzzwords, technical jargon, or private language.
Avoid using the words “I am very interested in….”
I don’t care what you are interested in. I care what *I* am interested in.
Only tell me about your process or methodology if the process or methodology is the valuable thing I am going to take away.
Otherwise stated: don’t tell me how you got there; tell me what you found when you got there.
Limit yourself to one sentence – even one word – per slide.
Get help. Many great writers became great thanks to dedicated editors behind the scenes.
Get an editor to structure and simplify your story.
If you can, pay a trainer to teach you how you to present. That practical expertise will last you a lifetime.
Have your haircut a week before you go on stage – not the day before.
STARTING YOUR TALK
Avoid saying things like: “hello…nice to be here…thanks for inviting me…” etc.
Walk purposefully to the podium. Once you get there, sort out your papers, computer, and water. In silence. Wait a moment or two for the audience to settle down, and focus on you.
And then start your story.
Do not speak fast! Even if you are an experienced speaker, you can probably afford to speak 25% more slowly.
Our audience is sometimes happy if you read out a text. Nowadays, most people talk to slides – so a formal set piece can be a nice change.
Silence can be very powerful. Don’t feel you have to fill up every second with the sound of your voice.
Be daring. Be silent for 30 seconds when you want us to think.
A successful story usually contains one or two key ideas – not more – that the speaker wants listeners to remember. Long lists of concepts, however brilliant they are, are hard to absorb – and easier to forget.
It often helps to include a real-life person in your story. Connect with the here-and-now – something that happened that day.
When using large or complex numbers, it helps to make comparisons: “it’s like…”
ENDING
Never, ever present for more time than you promise to in the programme. If that’s ten minutes do it in ten — not a second more.
Sometime s people end their presentation with a sentence like: “If I want to leave you with one question today, it is this: _________”.
Don’t thank the audience, the organisers, your family, your dog.
Just end.
Leave us thinking.
MOST IMPORTANT TIP OF ALL
Enjoy!
Treat these tips as suggestions, not instructions. Feel free to ignore all of the above.
Doors works best when you, the speaker, have fun.
Doors Team, Amsterdam, October 2004
Kathryn Blume
24 Oct 6:13pm
Public speaking happens to be one of my favorite all-time activities. #1 Rule: Humor. You can get away with almost anything if you’re making people laugh.
Horacio
24 Oct 7:38pm
Good points! My main question, and one of the most disturbing blind spots about the Transition ideas, is precisely this: How to transmit a positive view to people when the magnitude of the changes ahead unequivocally imply that there will be no resources for all? How to be optimistic if humanity as itself is determined to deny, clinch to a system that collapses and fight for it, instead of trying to rebuild local resilience?
Pedro (Chile)
24 Oct 7:44pm
Very Good Insights! – - I will see them more deeply later.
The Best Wishes for All.
+Pedro
Brad K.
24 Oct 11:33pm
But standing up – you take on the role of people you have been taught to respect, to honor. When you believe you belong in the audience, how then should you put on the raiment of authority and of wonder?
Is it any wonder that we fear to speak in public. New speakers may be told to pick one audience member, and present to that one person – making the presentation a practice a meeting, a one-on-one dialogue – that is, forget about the role you know, which is audience member to respected authority – and forget that you much now act as if you belong in that position up front, that role of respected authority.
The issue isn’t to become one with the audience, the issue is to redefine the role of speaker, of respected authority, to speaker as a voice of interest, a storyteller for a time. That the speaker might be a common person. Just like you or me.
Blessed be.
Simon
25 Oct 10:37pm
Hi – there’s a LOT of really smart ideas on this page, both in the OP and the comments… That’s the good news.
The bad news is this tip: “Use Powerpoint slides to trigger you to talk on different subjects you feel comfortable with”. No, no, and a thousand times ‘no’! If you’re dependent on your slides as a prompt you’re in big, big trouble. For the sake of credibility you need to be ahead of your slides, not reacting to them.
Quite apart from anything else, I’ve never trained anyone to do presentations (and I’ve trained LOTS, it’s my job – I’m a presentation skills trainer) who can avoid the temptation to rely TOO much on slides if they’re using them as a prompt. If you need the prompt, you’ve not rehearsed enough.
Sorry, but you’ll be mediocre at best if you use the slides in this way. Sure, it’s a safe bet and will stop your presentation sucking but that’s not good enough….. is it?
adrienne campbell
25 Oct 11:09pm
Before Transition the One Thing I would Never Do was public speaking. We have an inbuilt primeval aversion to this, as though animal eyes focusing on us might attack us. But when asked to talk about what we were doing in our group, and later at the unleashing, with 400 present, I managed to put aside my ego-fears and find a new power beyond that, to talk about what I am passionate about. This work gives us the opportunity to face our fears, to come into our true power, to live our wildest dreams, as Joanna Macy says, to respond to the call to adventure.