Transcript- Expert AMA: Speaking & Presenting Skills

Expert AMA: Speaking & Presenting Skills – Transcript

by Angela McConnell

(Edited for length and clarity)

Holly - So welcome, everybody, to our first Expert Ask Me Anything on Speaking and Presenting skills.

I'm very excited to have with me today both of our wonderful volunteer WIMDI speaker coaches, Brenda Benham and Jen Yee. I'm going to let each of them introduce themselves so you can know a little bit more about them.

Brenda, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about who you are and why the heck you're talking to them about public speaking.

Brenda - Sure. Thanks, Holly. I started out as a terrified and terrible presenter. That was about 30 years ago.

I joined Toastmasters. That got me over the terror and I'm still a member of Toastmasters. So, if you're terrified, Toastmasters is a great thing to do.

For about the next 15 or 20 years, I gave Toastmasters speeches and then work presentations that were very informative. And I wasn't really connecting with my audience.

About 15 years ago, I learned the brain science behind how people learn and remember. I was so excited because I didn't have to be boring anymore. That would be awesome.

I helped my colleagues where I was working for the last five years I was there, doing informative presentations that were memorable and engaging. And in 2018, I started my own business, Memorable Presenter Consulting.

In my business, I provide one-on-one presentation support for founders, so their pitches will be remembered, and they'll get the money they need for their business, and for people in tech so their technical presentations will be remembered, and they'll be seen as the experts they are.

I've been a WIMDI speaker coach since November of 2022.

H - Nice. Thanks, Brenda. Jen, tell us about you.

Jen - Hey, everyone! I'm Jen. I am a software engineer based in Vancouver. I met Holly through WIMDI pre-COVID back when Holly used to host events in-person and provide pizza among other things.

My background in speaking is because I used to play softball as my job. So as a faux public figure, they make you stand up in front of people and speak to children or speak to adults.

In doing so, I wanted to refine my skills per se. And I joined the Dale Carnegie course and subsequently, I am also a Toastmaster. I found Toastmasters and I'm still a member as of today.

I also used to find public speaking mortifying and very scary. But now it's like kind of fun in a sick way. So, if you are looking to gain some sick fun, then I highly encourage joining Toastmasters.

H - Amazing. Okay, friends, I'll tell you a little bit about me. Most of you probably already know who I am, but just in case somehow, you've attended this and missed that memo just entirely, I'm Holly Burton. I am WIMDI's founder.

I'm also a leadership coach for women in male-dominated industries. And one of the things that I do just a tonne for work, is public speaking. I do it at WIMDI events. I do it for companies all the time.

I play a really big role in curating every single person that ends up on the WIMDI stage. I've written 20 talks maybe for myself alone in the last seven years and countless more with our WIMDI speakers.

I have nothing but opinions on public speaking and really love to do it. Like Jen and Brenda, and I'm sure many of you in this room, I did not start out just like bam on stage, really excited.

For those of you who subscribe to our WIMDI newsletter, you would've gotten a story about how terribly my first public speaking talk went. It was awful. I was a pre-teen in every way about it.

Nobody thought it went well, me included. And didn't really do a lot of public speaking for many years after that because I was so scarred by that experience until I eventually had to for work.

I think, similar to Brenda and Jen, I just had to do it so often that I eventually got better at it and developed my skill.

These days, like them, it's not actually a scary thing. I don't get nervous before I speak. I just have a really great time up on stage talking to folks like you.

My hope is that today, we'll be able to give you some of the insights we've learned over the years in our public speaking journey, answer some questions that you've got, and maybe make the whole thing a little more inviting and less scary.

I'm going to facilitate a little conversation between Jen, Brenda, and me about sort of the commonly asked questions that we already know y'all have.

Then towards the end of the event, we're going to turn it over to you and the audience for some live Q&A for anybody here that has specific questions that they're dying to have answered that we haven't answered already.

How Much Detail Should I Include in Presentations?

One of the most common questions that we got was, how much detail should I be presenting in?

Especially, Brenda talked about working a lot with technical people. A lot of us in this room come from technical backgrounds, and we get way down into the weeds to solve the problems and come up with the final answer.

A lot of times, we're presenting the final answer and well how much detail do these people need? Do they need just the answer? Do they need some of the detail, all the detail, part of the detail? How much of the detail?

Brenda, what's your opinion on how much detail you should be presenting?

B - Well, I think, first, the amount of detail is, of course, going to depend on what you're presenting and how long you have.

If you've got three minutes, obviously, it'll be a lot less detail than if you have an hour and a half. So that's the first thing.

Brain science tells us that the people will remember more about the important information you have to share if you can divide that into three big buckets.

If you've got time, if it's longer presentation, then you can divide those three buckets into smaller sub-buckets. But having it in the three really helps.

Brain science also tells us that people remember the details when they can be tied to a story. So, I would recommend starting with a challenging story that's relevant to the purpose of your presentation and then trying to find a story that relates to those three big buckets that I mentioned.

H - Yeah, good place to start. Jen, what about you? What are your thoughts on how much detail folks should present?

J - My thought on detail when doing a speech or presenting is that my assumption is that most people will forget most of what I said.

My goal is to deliver the one thing that I want people to go home with and remember about what I said whether I'm speaking for five minutes or 45 minutes.

A good tip I heard recently actually at Toastmasters, was that there's a distinction between writing and speaking.

When you're a writer and you're writing like poetry or a book, you can create really like flowery language, lots of detail, and you're setting the scene and whatnot. But when you're speaking, you want to create smaller sentences and use simple language.

I think the best TED Talks are ones where the speaker is very direct, their language isn't hard to understand, and every word matters. Every sentence is along the theme that you're trying to have the audience take home with them.

You're not going on tangents as long as you're on this railroad track of the thing you want to deliver and every word matters, then I think you're on right track.

H - Jen, one of the things you and I have talked about from time to time and, folks, if you get into more and more public speaking, and you do some reading about it, you'll hear a lot of talk about a thing called a through line, which is sort of what Jen is alluding to here.

It's the central spine or idea around which your whole talk is organised. And just to mix a metaphor, if you think of that as sort of the tree trunk, Brenda's sort of saying you can divide things into three buckets, you can think of those as sort of like branches of the trees.

They'll have branches of the trees and then little leaves of additional detail. But at the end of the day, the leaves and the branches all have to connect back to the trunk. The trunk is still the central thing.

What we don't want to have is a pile of sticks in the corner. It's extraneous detail, but not clear what...Did it come from this tree? Is it from another tree? Are they just firewood?

We always want the audience to be able to track that. You should always be supporting that central idea. In addition, I think that there's this careful balance you have to do around detail.

Sometimes detail is what makes your presentation, or your story come alive right? I mean that in terms of evocative language or specificity, right?

It's one thing to say I stood up on stage and I was terrified. And it's another thing to say, I stood up on stage at age 11 in a T-shirt that was chosen specifically for a middle-aged teacher, but instead worn by me.

And I embarrassed myself by forgetting every single thing on my cue cards, right? The audience is more able to feel and have an experience with you when you add some detail, but it's all supporting detail for that central point of oh my God, it was scary, right?

So, a little bit of detail can be really helpful because it helps people engage. You want to make sure that when you're on stage, you're always directing the audience's attention to where you want it to go.

Much like you would when you're lighting up like a stage, if you were at a play, they put the spotlight on the character who's speaking, and they direct your attention there, not over to something else that's going on, or whoever's changing out the set dressing in the corner.

Really what you're doing with your words on stage is directing attention towards this central theme, towards this central idea that you're projecting, using that spotlight that way.

The right amount of detail is absolutely an art, but I think the big question is, does it support that central theme.

How to Tell a Story When Speaking, & What Role Should Humour Play?

Question two. How do you tell a story well when you're speaking? And specifically, how does humour play a role in storytelling? Should it play a big role, small role? How does that work?

J - As humans, we're wired to remember stories. If you tell a compelling story, then the audience is going to remember you more than if you're just nailing them with facts.

I think what makes a good story is what they call... I think it's called a five-second moment. The moment there's a realisation or a change in perspective at the end of the story, that climax, the, "Luke, I am your father," moment.

We're bringing it back to like presenting or pitching a thing. If you're selling the best hair dye, you want to set the stage and tell the story of why we're all thinking about hair dye the wrong way.

The moment of the change in perspective is the realisation that, "Oh, mine is the best," and you have this wonderful solution for the audience. So that's key is to help the audience navigate themselves towards that one moment of change in realisation or like change in perspective.

H - Gotcha. So, the storytelling is supporting them in getting to that change of perspective. Brenda, what about you? What do you have to tell us about storytelling and humour?

B - I agree completely with Jen that you want to have a climax to the story, you know that sort of that five seconds of, ah, that's why we need change or whatever. And Jen mentioned setting the stage.

If you set the stage, you need some details to do that. So, if I was talking about the really awful presentation that I did, I might start with something like,

“It was about 30 years ago. I was a young lawyer. I was standing at the foot of a raised classroom, looking up at a sea of securities industry professionals And I was terrified.”

Then I could go on. Ideally, in setting the story you want, where you were, when it was, and who was there. Those are the three things you want at the beginning before you get into sort of the details of the story.

In terms of humour, because you asked about that as well, Holly, I would say the first thing I'd say is be careful because what's funny to you may well be insulting to someone in your audience and you don't want to be insulting your audience.

Generally, self-deprecating humour is best. After I tell my terrifying story, I then say,

“and what was my audience doing? And I have a slide that shows people snoring. That's right. They were sleeping!”

That gets a laugh, but it's a laugh at my expense. It's self-deprecating. That's what I would say on the humour question.

H - Yeah, make sure you aim at yourself, not the audience. No faster way than to get people to get out the comically long hooks to pull you off the stage than to start making jokes about the audience, right?

I think humour is an interesting thing. I mean, I'm somebody who uses a lot of jokes when I speak publicly or otherwise. I'm just a jokey type person.

There can sometimes be this impression that humour is essential to being a public speaker, because humour can be a really effective lubricant on stage.

It gets the audience to connect with you. It calms your nerves because you know the audience isn't out to get you if they're laughing.

It can be really effective that way, but it's really not required. I've seen a lot of really, really powerful presentations that use humour and I've seen a lot that don't.

We had a speaker at WIMDI last year, Angela Lopez, who did a talk called "You're Here and It Sucks. Now What?" And Angela Lopez has this amazing energy about her.

She's super calming. She's super centred. She's not a jokes type person, but she is absolutely transfixing when you listen to her. And she speaks actually quite slowly.

Sometimes people speak really slowly and you're thinking, "Oh my God, when's it going to end?" When Angela Lopez speaks slowly, you're thinking, "What's coming next?"

So, you don't have to be funny to be magnetic. Those are two separate things. Humour is one way to get there. And so, I think go with the way that you are. If you're somebody who likes to make a lot of jokes and you do that and you generally get a good reaction, then do that on stage.

If you're not somebody who does that, don't start pulling out the knock-knock jokes at the beginning.

I will say one thing I've seen from time to time with WIMDI speakers where one of the hardest things, quite often, in a talk, for speakers, is the beginning when they have to say, "Hi, I'm so-and-so. Here's why I'm an amazing professional and you should listen to me."

People often struggle at the beginning of the talk because it's when their nerves are highest and they're still establishing that bond with the audience.

It's also hard to do that because you're talking about yourself. A lot of people struggle with “bragging” or what feels like bragging to them. I've seen a lot of speakers really stumble over that part.

What I'll often advise them to do is just acknowledge it. The audience knows, make a joke about it, go, "Wow, you can tell I'm really comfortable telling you how good I am," or something like that.

Like Brenda says, it's a self-deprecating joke and it will cut that tension with the audience. That's one place where even if you're not a general joke person, if you notice that's going on and you're looking for a someone to throw you like a ring buoy as you drown in the ocean of your talk, that's a good place to put a joke in, and you can get the audience to sympathise.

Just say, "Look, it's obvious I'm nervous. Let's keep going." And they'll go, "Yeah, we can tell, and we sympathise." Because pretty much everyone's nervous when public speaking, right?

What to Consider When Making Slides Decks or PPT Presentations

Let's turn to one of my favourite topics, which is how to make a compelling slide show, how to make a compelling actual presentation deck or PowerPoint. Brenda, what are your thoughts on what makes a PowerPoint good, terrible, ugly? What?

B - Also one of my favourite things because it's one of the two main things I help my clients with is slides. Going back to brain science, which everything I do is related to the brain science; help, learn and remember.

Brain science tells us that people remember more with image and speech, than with text and speech or even text, and image, and speech.

Basically, the sort of overarching thing out of that is keep your slides simple. Ideally, you want an image and a title.

And then if you need animating points, I recommend no more than three points if you need them at all. No more than three points of one to three words.

Your slides are not your speaking notes. You can have speaking notes if you want, but don't put them up on the screen. They're not even your handout. Handouts should be something different from your slides.

The purpose of the slides is to enhance your presentation, not distract from it.

J - I guess I'm in the minority. This is my least favourite question. I try to do all speeches in person so I can avoid making a slide deck. Maybe I'm just lazy.

I think my only tip here is I agree with everything that Brenda said, your slides should not be a distraction because there's nothing worse than seeing an audience trying to squint and read all the words on your slide. You can't read and listen at the same time.

If they're reading, they're not hearing what you're saying. So, they should be supporting or provide some sort of image to support the point that you're trying to say with your words.

H - I have lots of thoughts on compelling slide decks. At one point, way, way back in the early days of WIMDI before we ended up moving into speaker coaching, I had a 40-point document for our speakers about how you format a slideshow so our audience could understand it.

Because prior to that point, I know what really actually the final nail in the coffin for me making that doc, was we had somebody submit a slideshow where they had a white background with light cantaloupe-coloured text, in size two font and I thought, "Never again. Nope, we're not doing this anymore."

One thing that it goes without saying, but it actually does need to be said because sometimes folks forget is contrast and font size are things that really matter. We have guidelines for that at WIMDI here because of our accessibility standards.

We want to make sure there's a sufficient contrast for folks with vision issues to be able to see what we put up on our slides. So those things really matter to me.

I generally agree with what Brenda's saying, but I do have a bit of a counterpoint. I think sparse slides are generally better slides.

The worst thing is when the audience finishes reading your point, you still have another three minutes left to make it. The audience dies, you die, everyone hates it.

But I do think sometimes it can be good to have a lot of text on slide if what you're creating on the screen is like a snapshot moment for the audience. We quite often at WIMDI will do sort of step by steps or how-tos.

We'll write each step up on the slides, so that as we're describing it, it might say, forward, step one, talk to your boss; step two, blah blah blah.

While we're talking about step one, we'll have more to say, and we'll expand on that. But as we're talking, you can look back at step one and then listen to us and then look back and remember what it was.

Towards the end, when the list is all over, you can just take a little snapshot and go, "There's my six steps."

So, if you're trying to teach somebody a procedure or describe the reasoning behind numbers or something like that, they can be helpful to have up on the screen. But you want to always prune that down to just the essentials. You don't want to extraneous detail; you want to step them through it.

You'll notice something when we speak at WIMDI most often, if we have a six-item how-to, we'll show you just step one. And then we'll talk all about step one and everything else is hidden, and then we'll just display step two.

We'll build that list piece by piece so that the audience doesn't get too far ahead. I think it's really essential to pace the amount of information that you're allowing your audience to digest in a visual manner so that they still hear it when you're describing it.

Quite often, that part is more important than just what's on the screen, but the screen could be a really useful support. So, that's my two cents on the compelling slide deck. And if anyone wants my 40-point doc, we can talk about that later.

How To Project Confidence and Competence When You’re Speaking

Let's talk a little bit about what most people are worried about, which is how do I seem confident and competent when I'm up on stage?

How do I project that when inside my heart rate is going 300, I'm wondering if I'm needing medical attention and I'm about to faint? How do I not have any of that show up and instead have my audience think I'm wonderful?

J - How to seem confident when you're not? That's a million-dollar question, isn't it? I always think about this in terms of sports, there’s a pre-game routine that one can do. I think this helps people and everyone's different.

When you watch athletes before they're going to perform, some of them are very social and they like to like to get those jitters out by speaking to others and that kind of calms them down. But there are others who just want to sit in the corner.

Before your presentation, you're nailing down your intro before you step on stage and that might calm you down. Find what works for you and your pre-game routine that works.

In terms of the actual presentation itself, we kind of touched on this, but it's all about being authentic. People understand when you're faking it, but they're going to vibe with you if you admit that you're nervous or make some joke at the beginning.

You're going to connect with your audience more than if you just fake it till you make it the whole time. And for me personally, if I nail my intro, then the rest of it just kind of flows.

Once I get through the first three minutes, then I'm good. My last tip would be on voice. This is a very Canadian problem. We speak in inflexions.
“My name is Jen. I've been in software for seven years [inflects upwards].”

We inflect at the end of the sentence. It sounds more confident if you either stay on the same level with your voice or go down the stairs.

“My name is Jen. I've been in software for seven years [stays level].”

This is a fact. It is not a question. It sounds more legit, let's just say that, to stay on the same level or go down instead of up.

H - Brenda, thoughts, how to come off with confidence? -

B - Completely agree with what Jen said. Definitely, the going down, not, oh, I wonder if it's a question.

What I would say, I'd start by saying that having some nerves is normal and necessary. What you're trying to get to is the right level of nervous energy.

Holly, at one point said she didn't have any nerves, but I suspect you have nervous energy sort of going. -

That's what you're aiming for because if you have no nerves at all, you will be rather robotic. And you really don't want to do that. So nervous energy is a good thing.

I have a whole bunch of tools that I share with my clients to help get to the right level of nervous energy. Really, the tools I share are to give them options.

Like Jen said, some people might for one, some people might for other. It's not that you do all eight. You just pick one. And one I'm going to share now is a tool that I still use to this day, which is to say a mantra to myself before I present, as often as necessary.

Now, it's probably once. Back when I was terrified and I found this tool, it was probably 20 times to get to that right level. And for me, my mantra is "It's showtime!"

And that's a great mantra because, well for me, because it makes me giggle. Because it sounds like I'm on a Broadway stage in front of thousands and thousands of people with critics from the New York Times telling me I'm awful and whatever I'm doing, it's that. So I giggle.

I have a friend, her mantra is “Fly in formation”, talking about the butterflies in her stomach. And that causes her to giggle because butterflies never ever fly in formation.

And that little giggle really helps get to the right level of nervous energy. So that's one tool that you could use to get to that right level of mental state.

H - Nice. I love the idea of having a thing that you say to yourself before you jump up on stage to help you get re-centered. It reminds me a lot of talking about dispelling nerves before a presentation.

I mentioned earlier that I had a role where I had to do a lot of teaching. I taught people how to use software for a good four years in my career. I remember really well the first time I had to do it because I had maybe done three public speaking events at that point in my life, one of which was the aforementioned one I wrote my newsletter about.

This was maybe my third one. And I was really, really nervous. I just wasn't sure that I knew the material well enough. It was a software I had just learned. I had to teach everybody how to use it. I was teaching the foundations beginner class in it.

We had this woman at my company who did tech support and she had been there for a really long time. She's like the sage of the office, you know? And I was saying to her, "I'm really nervous about it."

And she's said, "Holly, don't worry about it. You're teaching a beginner class. They are literally there because they know less than you. If you know more than them, then you're fine.

And you definitely do because they're there for the beginner class. They don't even know how to turn it on yet. If you teach them that, they've already won.”

And I thought, "Okay, good." Because if I know just a little bit more than my audience, I'm okay. And that's true in general. You’ve come to this talk about speaking and presenting. Why do you come? Because you suspect you know less about it than we do.

And hopefully, we're proving that out today. But I always remember that I'm delivering my talk for the person in the audience that doesn't know this yet, not the person in the audience who knows more and is there to ask me the one tough question at the end.

There might be that person in the audience, and I'll do my best to serve them, but that's not going to be most of the audience. Most of the audience are the folks that I can serve very well because they've got a problem that I know how to solve, right?

I think that is the thing that rings in my ears most when I'm about to get up on stage is that piece.

I want to come back and touch on something Jen was talking about, which was about up-speak when we're on stage. I think there's a lot of conversation not incorrectly about the way that we use our vocal tone when we're up on stage to create focus or create credibility.

One thing that can happen with a lot of that discourse, and I'm not trying to accuse Jen of doing this at all by any chance, but it's kind of a villainization of the way that women tend to speak. Female-coded vocal patterns, like vocal fry, like up-speak, like using the word "like", for example, which I do all the time.

And I made it a decision really early on in my career to actively not choose to suppress a lot of those female-coded vocal patterns. There were times where I do choose to code switch in that way.

If I'm presenting to a team of executives that I really need to impress, then I will do a little bit less of that. But in general, in my public speaking, you'll see this here at WIMDI, I use a lot of female-coded vocal patterns.

I do that because I want people to be confronted with this idea that, "Oh my God, she's talking like a Kardashian, but she actually seems smart. How can it be? What's going on?" I want them to have to deal with that.

I'm trying to create some space for everybody else who speaks the way that I tend to speak and prefer to speak. I find it a delicious way to speak. I think it's interesting vocally. And I want other people to just get used to that.

So, what I will say is you can absolutely and should and do use some of those vocal patterns to create credibility. In moments where you don't need to, consider throwing them out. Consider being really truly who you are on stage and having the audience meet you where you are.

Quite often, you'll find that the audience will, and I think that that could be a big win for all of us if you're keen to play the talk like a Kardashian game on stage with me.

Keeping Your Audience from Derailing Your Talk + Q&A Problems

Let's move on to what I think is many people's nightmare or difficulty, which is audience interaction. So, we're talking about times when the audience interrupts you midway through your talk, times when you have a Q&A and you have to sit there hoping that you've got answers to every question that people might ask.

Brenda, what are your tips for handling interaction with the audience during a talk?

B - So I think my first thing I would say is, there should be a Q&A portion to the talk, one or more depending on how long the talk is and make it very clear at the beginning when that is.

So, if someone partway through says, "What about X?" You can say, "As I said at the beginning, we're going to be taking questions at the end of this section."

Have it set up so that you can succeed. That's the first thing. Secondly, I would say I would recommend not reading or memorising every single word. Rather you should be talking about something you know.

Even if you don't know it well, you know it more than they do as Holly just said. And try to get what you're going to say, know your outline. Jen used the image of a railway; I'm going to use the image of railway tracks.

I got this from another speaking coach I worked with, and she said that if you either have every word written out and you're reading it, that’s a sure way not to get audience engagement, even worse if you turn around and read your slides, that's really, really awful.

If you're reading generally, you are not connecting. But the railway, if you're reading or it's memorised, it's like you're on railway tracks. If you get a question, the train might derail, it might go off the tracks. It's really hard to get back on the tracks.

If you know what you're talking about, you know your main points, it's more like it's a path in the forest. And so, yes, they may pull you off the path, but you know where your path is, it's easy to get back on your path.

J - I agree with everything Brenda said. Set the stage Q&A after, AKA don't interrupt me.

If there is that question at the end of the talk and you just don't know, to say, "I don't know, that's a great question." And you can connect with that person afterwards and maybe you can learn together on what the answer is.

So, there's nothing wrong with saying you don't know. That's part of being authentic, I think. And I think we're all here to learn.

H - One of the great things that that same woman told me before, that same first teaching gig that I did was she said, "If you don't know the answer to a question, just tell them you don't know, but you'll get back to them by tomorrow and then send me a panicked email. They'll really respect you for admitting it and then also finding the answer."

I did that many times in my career. I still do that now. Also, a lot of the work that I do now that we see happen up on the WIMDI stage, people will ask, "How do I solve the patriarchy?" And I think, "I don't know. I don't have that answer. I wouldn't have a job if I had that answer. That's what I'm looking towards my whole life." You know what I mean?

Quite often, there will be folks who come in and they say, "Here's this this one thing I can't solve." And you don't actually have it solved.

I will see some speakers try to kind of maintain that sense of authority and “I know everything”. They'll come up with kind of what I'll call a bullshit answer to that.

And the whole audience can feel it. They know it's not really the answer. You lose the whole audience while you do it and the person who asks the question isn't really satisfied.

And you might ask, "Hey, does that answer your question?" They'll go, "Mm-hmm." And then they sit down and you're thinking, "Oh no, I have not nailed that."

I hate that so much worse than just empathising with that person. If you can say, "I really don't know how to solve that, but I think that's a great question and here's why it's tough to solve even," if you can just be with them and empathise even if you don't have the answer.

Or if it's an unsolvable thing that people ask, "What about string theory or something like that?" you're just thinking, "Ugh, science is going to be a couple more years on that." Give them some empathy.

Be with them and acknowledge that it's hard and acknowledge where it puts them because I think that if you can't give them a solution, at least give them that. I think it's a really nice thing to do.

But one thing I would say about audience interaction is when you are up on stage, sometimes it can feel like you're at the mercy of the audience, but you have the most powerful position in the room. You can control everything that happens.

If I said to you, "Okay, everybody, we're all going to stand up," and then I stand up and I wait as if that's what you're supposed to do, you’ll probably stand up. And if you don't, I'll sit there and go, "Come on, stand up. I told you to stand up, let's go." And then eventually, you'll all get up.

As the person in the front of the room, you set the rules. So, you can say to people, and I often do this when I'm presenting virtually, I only have one monitor and so I can’t monitor the chat while I present.

Unfortunately, I also have ADHD so it's super distracting for me to see the chat while I'm trying to present. I just say to people, "Chat away, I'd love for you to chat and know that I won't be looking at it. And I'll come around to the chat when we're done."

I just tell them what the deal is up front, and we'll have questions then because otherwise we'll interrupt the flow. Often, I'll answer your question halfway through.

Set the game plan. If people get off it, just tell them how it's going to be and just order people around, you know? I know that sounds weird, but you really do have the power to do it and the audience wants you to be in charge of the room.

They get nervous when you're not because it feels like anarchy is about to erupt at any moment and then everyone's nervous, right? So don't neglect that part of your responsibility. Just sort of go, "This is how it's going to go. We will handle this later," or "Great question I'll come back to that", is a good one.

If you're like me and you won't remember the question later, then you say, "Great question. I'd love to answer that later. Will you ask it again during the Q&A so we make sure I don't forget?"

B - I have a suggestion for answering the questions you do know the answer to, as opposed to the ones that you have to do, say, good question that really can't be solved or whatever.

For the ones you do, my recommendation is to think of the Q&A portion of your presentation like a card game. Think about what cards you have that might answer questions people would ask.

Maybe it's a case study that's been done, research that's been done, details about how some portion of the tech works, whatever, think of it as cards and then see what card the questioner plays and then figure out which of your cards help with that, respond to that question.

I shared that with someone who was in a pitch contest and didn't think she was answering the questions very well. She tried that tactic the next time and said that this method really helped her respond strategically to the judges' questions. Before, she sort of fumbled around and went off on tangents. It wasn't very good.

H - While someone's working up the courage to ask a question, I'll mention that this what's happening right now where you say, what are your questions?

And then you sit there nervously, feeling your heartbeat in your chest while nobody says a single thing and you think, "Are they not asking questions because they hate me or are they not asking questions because I answered everything they could possibly want to know and they have just got a fully-featured list of how to do it and they don't need anything else?"
This is so normal for somebody to take a really long time to ask a question.

Q&A Question #1

How Do You Make Someone’s Boring Delivery Better?

For anybody wanting to help anybody make a presentation better, the very first question you need to ask is, "Would you like some feedback on this?" Right?

Don't just jump in and start critiquing somebody without their permission. It's not nice.

Is the way that they're delivering it different than the way that they speak normally? If they're just somebody who's monotone and boring all the time, this is going to be more challenging.

But if there's somebody who is interesting to listen to, just in their daily life, and then on stage becomes terrible.

Something that I will use quite often is every time I get up on stage, I just think about having a conversation with friends. I'm just like, "Oh you guys are all nice and friendly. I'm here to have a nice conversation with you", and I talk to you as if I'm talking to a friend.

Sometimes for folks who sort of get an idea about how they're supposed to be on stage and it's very professional, it's very buttoned up. Well, just have this conversation like you were talking to family, or you and me one-on-one in our office, even if it still has to keep that really, really professional feel.

If you can give them a blueprint for a type of conversation they already know how to have in a non-weird way and then port it over here, sometimes that can be helpful.

J - Especially in like a Zoom context like this, I think it's hard to talk to a black wall. If at least there's one open Zoom box with a person's face, I find it easier to just talk to one person because at least you're getting reaction and you're able to feed off that.

It's hard to come up with that on your own straight up talking to nothing.

H - I film the odd YouTube video, by myself, and it makes me want to die. I don't get nervous talking in front of crowds of 600 people, but I get very nervous talking to my laptop screen by myself in this office. It's really hard to do.

B - The one thing that might help with that is putting like a picture of someone who's really friendly right behind the camera if you have a webcam or right at the top of the screen, if you've got a camera that's in the screen, and then talk to that person.

You're looking at that person, talking to them as if it's them that you're talking with. And that might help with the no one to talk to problem.

Q&A Question #2

How Do You Stop Going on a Tangent When Speaking?

J - I think if you're writing a speech, I find it helpful to have checkpoints or if you're able to take cards on stage, or it would be on my desk in this case. But it would be the checkpoints so that you know when you hit this point, I should be like on this track.

And in between, there is some flexibility so it keeps you from memorising a speech which would be too strict or if you're going way too off, you just know you’ve got to get to the next point.

Find your way back to the next point and don't take too much time to get there. As long as you hit your three checkpoints, then you're good.

B - Yeah, I agree completely with that, knowing what your three big things are. And then if you feel yourself, "Oh my heavens, I'm going down a rabbit hole", pause. Just stop yourself and pause.

You can pause for a fair while before it's noticeable. It'll be a way longer feeling for you than it will for the audience. Even if you have speaking notes, you could even write in pause. In square brackets. You don't say the word pause, but you can write in pause just to remind yourself to breathe.

Pausing is great for all number of reasons in addition to stopping perhaps that going down rabbit holes. But it's also good because it allows your audience to catch up with you and it can be used to highlight the most important points. You can use it in a number of different ways, but I think pauses might be a good tool for you.

H - Well, I think there's a lot I could say about this, but I'll give you sort of two exercises to try just in your sort of daily interactions.

One thing that I want you to try doing, practise this where you're most comfortable first and then moving into situations where you're less comfortable, but practise pausing.

Really, really pausing when somebody asks a question or it's your turn to speak and trying to put the sort of TL; DR or like "the point of this story is", put that up at the front, first.

That's step one. Just start with the main point I'm making is blank, then add all the detail. Later, you can start to go, how much of that detail do I need? And start to edit that back. But for now, just start by putting that detail up at the front.

If you can get good at doing that and bring some consciousness to that, that's sort of the building block you need to start whittling down and making that more concise going forward. So that's one thing I want you to try.

And then another thing I'd have you try... I've done this as a coaching exercise. So sometimes I'll have clients who are verbose and if I ask them a question, they'll talk for 20 minutes before I can get a word in edgewise.

It's helpful to their internal processing, but it's not always helpful to us achieving an outcome by the end of the call an hour later.

A trick that somebody gave me was to make a rule where you're only allowed to say three words at a time. You can pick a different number. It could be five or something like that. If you wanted, I would go higher than five, but three words at a time.

So at home, spend an evening talking in only three word sentences to try to get your point across. It's really hard to do, but you will be shocked at how much you can communicate and actually how much better your message sometimes gets across.

Q&A Question #3

How Do you Pace Your Speech Appropriately During Public Speaking?

H - I find that one of the most challenging things up on stage when my breathing and my voice get away from me. And I don't have a good tip for it other than in the moment, you just have to really slow down and give yourself the time to exhale.

Usually, that's going on because you're not actually exhaling enough. So that is key. And then preventing it from happening is all the things that we talked about earlier for kind of calming yourself ahead of time because, once you're in it, it's really hard to have it not be noticeable to the audience, I think. Do you have any hot ways to deal with it, Jen or Brenda?

J - I wondered if it was not exhaling or not inhaling because, if you're just like word vomiting, then there's no air coming back in.

So your period should be the point where you get to inhale, that's a stopping point. I can breathe, inhale and then say the rest of the stuff I want.

I just did it, that vocal fry, I'm out of air, I'm out of air and now my voice is doing that thing, that's just a signal that I know that, oh, shit, I have to breathe now.

B - Pause and breathe. Breathe when you pause.

H - What might be a helpful cue for her if she doesn't know she's doing it is actually for her to just speak incredibly slowly, [slows down speech dramatically] half as fast as she thinks she should talk, because it will feel like she's talking like this, but actually it'll come out like she's speaking normally.

B - Say that you notice something and would she like some ideas, not go straight in with the idea, so ask for permission first.

H - So sometimes people will give feedback, and the feedback is, "Have you tried being less terrible?" And you're thinking, "Yeah, leave me alone."

It's actually nice when somebody gives you feedback and then gives you a credible solution for it, which I think you probably have here. What is less nice is when people give you a credible solution that is more, what if you just change your personality, though? You're like, "Oh just that?"

Whereas this is like a literal technique that she can try. I think you have a high chance that this is perceived as a gift because it's something tangible as opposed to just a generic recommendation that she doesn't know how to implement. You know what I mean? It comes with an implementation piece, which I think is good.

Friends, a big round of applause. And thank you to our speaker coaches, Brenda and Jen. Yay! Thank you so much.

Get in Touch With Brenda

Brenda, you do this for a living. If folks want to get better at public speaking, how do they get ahold of you?

B - So the best thing to see if I would be a good fit for you is to book an Amp Up session. What that includes is a facilitated self-assessment of the memorability of your presenting.

You don't need to have a presentation ready to do it. You can simply book it whenever you would like to get some feedback. It will provide you with clarity on what you are already doing well and areas to focus on to get even better, whether with me, or someone else.

Become a WIMDI Speaker!

H - Perfect. Okay. So that's how you can get a hold of Brenda. And then if any of you want to come and do a talk at WIMDI, we are always looking for speakers, but we do talks on any kind of leadership or career-based topic.

You can find out more at wimdi.com/speak

We work with experienced speakers, but we also work with speakers who are new or are developing a new talk. Every speaker that works with WIMDI works with me and either Brenda or Jen or sometimes a mix of all of us.

So, if you want to build your skills, it's actually a great way to get some free speaker coaching out of us. You can find out more like I said, at wimdi.com/speak