Most of us probably can’t rely on the luxury of a professional speech writer to craft our presentations but that doesn’t mean we can’t pick up some great speech writing tips from the pros.

In this post I want to share with you how  you can use the same strategy to write speeches that Walt Disney used to create his cartoon masterpieces.

Disney used a three stage strategy which has been modeled by NLP expert Robert Dilts.    Dilts labelled these three stages Dreamer, Realist and Critic.

Dreamer:
The dreamer phase is where you let your imagination run wild and create as many possible ideas relating to your topic as possible.   You don’t criticize and you don’t judge, you just allow your imagination free reign to come up with a theme, structure or argument for your speech.   Here are a couple of ways in which I use the dreamer phase.

Example 1:   I know I have to give a presentation or speech on a particular subject in a few weeks.   So I turn the creative element of it over to my subconscious mind and ask it to “give me a nudge” when it has a solution to the problem of what I am going to say.    I then forget about the speech for a week or so and usually an idea or approach will pop into my head in plenty of time to turn it into a  good presentation.

Example 2:  I will go for a walk and mull over possible ideas or I will sit back, look up at the ceiling and allow myself to imagine the ideal speech on my particular topic.   Then and only then will I sit down in front of my computer and write out a first draft of my presentation without editing or judging.  Its a stream of consciousness type of writing.  I just let the words flow onto the paper.    I know that this isn’t the finished article and so I can let go of criticism and perfectionism.

Realist:
This phase is all about turning the initial ideas that came in the dreamer stage into a workable draft.  Its still not perfect but it is 80% of the way there.     My objective is to develop a plan to realize the dream.   In this phase I will develop the original idea and add details, stories, examples and find a flow that allows me to take my audience on a  journey from where they are when I start my speech to where I need them to be at the end so that they will be motivated to do what I want them to do.

Critic Phase:
It’s important to understand that in the phase you are not criticizing the basic idea.  You are evaluating the way you have transformed that idea into a story and are checking  that it has impact and that flows.    You are the editor, looking to tighten up the language, clarify the messages and ensure that the words sound good when spoken. You are also checking on the length of the presentation to ensure that you don’t go over time.

Typically I do this phase walking about my office, reading out sections of the speech, listening to how they sound and how they flow as I speak them. When I hit a section that doesn’t sound right, I mark it with pencil and then edit it on the computer once I have done a full read through.   I use the stopwatch on my iPhone to check the timings and if I am over time I use this phase to edit out non essential content.

I’d love to know how this speech writing tip compares with your own approach so let me know via the comments link below.   I plan to write more speech writing tips in the coming weeks so if you have any specific issues you want me to cover just send me a comment.

The most asked question I get is “how can I overcome my fear of public speaking”. In this post I want to share my top tips for managing your anxiety and encourage you to add yours.

1) Breathe!
I know this one sounds like a no brainer, but when we are nervous, our breathing gets shallow and rapid and we deprive ourselves of vital oxygen. Deliberately talking two or three slow deep breaths is a great way to relax. With each in breath imagine breathing in pure, cleansing light. With each out breath, imagine breathing out any negativity, self doubt and tension.

2) Consciously visualise success:
When we are nervous or anxious our minds have a tendency to dwell on past failures or imagine how things could go wrong in the future. In effect we mentally rehearse failure. This isn’t an effective strategy for preparing ourselves to give a great speech.

Excellent presenters do the opposite. They deliberately either remember past times when they have been on top of their game or they imagine their forthcoming presentation going well. The more they can imagine seeing, hearing and feeling success in their minds eye, the more effective a speaker they tend to be in reality

3) Stand as if you feel confident:
The previous tip focused on taking control of our thinking. This one focuses on our physiology. If you want to feel confident project that confidence to others you have to “act as if” you were confident.

Standing upright with your feet hip width apart and your toes pointed very slightly out creates a posture where your head is naturally up and your shoulders are relaxed and back. If you deliberately adopt this type of posture even though you are feeling nervous inside, your audience will believe you to be confident and you will start to feel more confident yourself.

4) Focus on your audience:
This one may sound a little counter intuitive but trust me, it really works. Aim to make and hold good eye contact with your audience.  Not only will this make them feel more engaged but it will also provide you with valuable feedback on how well your presentation strategy is working. Since your brain can only really focus on one thing at a time, concentrating on our audience will stop you focusing on your nerves and your anxiety will automatically diminish.

5) Remember a past success:
When first asked to give a presentation or speech you may doubt your own abilities or that you have anything worthwhile to say. In order to get yourself into a better “state” take a few minutes to go back through your memories and recall times in your life where you have been successful and confident. The more vividly you can make these recollections the more confident you will feel.

It may have been last week or a few years ago. It may have been at work or on holiday or playing sport. Just allow a memory pop up and then go back into it and remember how it felt to be successfully and confident. What were you doing. What sounds were you hearing then? Who was with you? What were you saying to yourself. By accessing a memory of a positive achievement from your past you can bring those resources back to you right now in the present.

6) Prepare:
There is an old saying that goes “failing to plan is planning to fail”. The more important your presentation is the more sensible it is to plan well in advance. Don’t try and do it all in one go, and don’t try and do it all at the last minute. If you feel nervous about our presentations you may find yourself procrastinating over the preparation and this is a sure fire way to increase your stress levels,

Make the time to do it a little bit at a time. Plan in 30minutes a day for a couple of weeks to develop your content and structure and then to write and rehearse it. If you don’t put it in your diary it will never happen so a little bit of self discipline is needed.

7) Rehearse rehearse, rehearse:
Writing a speech and delivering it are two very different things.   Allow some time to read your speech out loud.

I tend to print my first draft then pace around my office, reading it out loud to an imaginary audience. Inevitably I will change the wording during this process as I notice that some phrases just don’t flow naturally or sound right when I spoken.

Once I have the script nailed down I will then practice giving the speech without referring to my script. I am not trying to memorise it word for word, but I am trying to groove in the flow of ideas and key messages so that I can focus on my audience rather than on my notes. The more I rehearse, the more confident I become.

Step “into” a role model:
If you are an inexperienced or nervous speaker you may like to try this tactic on for size. Start by thinking about someone whom you believe to be a confident and effective presenter.

They could be a teacher, colleague, parent, friend or even a movie star.
Now imagine that you could step into their body and “be them” as they give the speech you have prepared. Look out at the audience through their eyes, feeling the confidence that say seem to naturally posses. Hear yourself delivering your words as confidently and as fluently as they would.

9) Join your local Toastmasters club:
There is no substitute for practice but finding a safe and supportive place to do this can be a real challenge. That’s where Toastmasters clubs come in.

Despite the name, Toastmasters International is nothing to do with red coats and weddings. It is a worldwide network of public speaking clubs providing a safe place to practice and gain feedback. I am a member of Solent Speakers based in in the UK and Despite being an experienced speaker, I learn something new every time I go.

Google “Toastmasters clubs” in your local area and visit. In my experience you’ll be hard pressed to find a friendlier and more supportive learning environment anywhere on the planet.

So what do you think? – what techniques have you found to help you or your colleagues. Share your comments with the thousands of people who read this blog and help them learn from your experiences.

Learn how adding one word to your self talk can help you become a better presenter.

Recently, at a networking event, I had the pleasure of speaking to lovely man called Peter Moore who runs a small domestic electricians business along with his son Russell.

We were talking about public speaking and he was telling me how he started out as a nervous and reluctant presenter and that that how, after forcing himself to practice, he now feels much more confident.   He then went on to share a little about his future aspirations as a speaker and I noticed that he used a particularly simple but powerful language pattern in his self talk.

He said that he wanted to be able to improvise and speak more spontaneously but he hadn’t quite got to that stage “yet“.

Our self talk is hugely important and the way we verbalise our goals and dreams plays a big part in whether we will achieve them or not. By using the word “yet” Peter was acknowledging the reality of his current situation and, at the same time, indicating that he would  achieve his goal in the future.   The word “yet”  contained the presupposition that the further improvement in his speaking ability was possible and would happen.

Contrast that with the self talk phrase “I’d love to be a more spontaneous speaker but I can’t do it.” The word “can’t” presupposes a lack of ability and offers no hope of future change. Take the same sentence and add “yet” to the end of it and the meaning is transformed.  Better still, remove the word can’t completely and transform the sentence into” I’d love to be a more spontaneous speaker but I haven’t mastered it yet.”

What are your favourite positive linguistic patterns and how do you harness the power of your self talk?

Gavin Meikle
The Presentation Doctor

“How can I overcome my fear of public speaking”.

In this post I want to share my top tips for managing your anxiety and encourage you to add yours

1) Breathe!
I know this one sounds obvious but when we are nervous, our breathing gets shallow and rapid and we deprive ourselves of vital oxygen. Deliberately talking two or three slow deep breathes is a great way to relax. With each in breath imaging breathing in pure White, cleansing light. With each out breath, imaging breathing out any negativity, self doubt and tension.

2) Consciously visualize success:
When we are nervous or anxious our brains have a tendency to recall past examples of failure or to imagine how things could go wrong in the future. This isn’t a great strategy for preparing ourselves to give a great speech. Excellent presenters do the opposite.

They deliberately direct their thinking and either remember past times when they have been on top of their game or they imagine their forthcoming presentation going well. The more they can imagine seeing, hearing and feeling success in their minds eye, the more effective a speaker they become in reality.

3) Stand as if you feel confident
The last tip focuses on taking control of our thinking. This one focuses on our physiology. If you want to feel confident and to project that confidence to others you have to “act as if” you were confident.

Standing upright with your feet hip width apart and your toes pointed very slightly out creates a posture where your head is naturally up and your shoulders area roasts and back. If you deliberately adopt this type of posture even though you are feeling nervous inside, your audience will believe you to be confident and you will start to feel more confident yourself.

4) Focus on your audience:
This one may sound a little counter intuitive but trust me, it really works. Aim to make and hold good eye contact with your audience. Not only will this make them feel more engaged but it will also provide you with valuable feedback on how well your presentation strategy is working. Since your brain can only really focus on one thing at a time, if you focus on our audience you are not automatically not focusing on fear of public speaking.

5) Remember a past success
When first asked to give a presentation or speech you may doubt either your own abilities or that you have anything worthwhile to say. In order to get yourself into a better “state” take a few minutes to go back through your memories and recall times in your life where you have been successful and confident.

It may have been last week or a few years ago. It may have been at work or on holiday or playing sport. Just allow a memory pop up and then go back into it and remember how it felt to be successful and confident. What were you doing?   What sounds were you hearing then? Who was with you? What were you saying to yourself?

By deliberately accessing a memory of a positive achievement from your past you can bring those resources back to you right now in the present.

6) Prepare
There is an old saying that says “failing to plan is planning to fail”. The more important your presentation the more sensible it is to plan well in advance. Don’t try and do it all in one go, and don’t try and do it all at the last minute. If you feel nervous about our presentations we may find yourself procrastinating over the preparation and this is a sure fire way to increase your stress levels and increase your fear of public speaking.

Make the time to do it a little bit at a time. Plan in 30mins a day for a couple of weeks to develop your content and structure and then to write and rehearse it. If you don’t put it in your diary it will never happen so a little bit itself discipline is needed.

7) Rehearse rehearse, rehearse
Writing a speech and delivering it are two very different things. Allow some time to read your speech out loud. I tend to print off my first draft then pace around my office, reading it out loud to an imaginary audience. Inevitably I will change the wording during this process as I notice that some phrases just don’t work or flow naturally when I am speaking.

Once I have the script nailed down I will then practice giving the speech without referring to my script. I am not trying to memorise it word for word, but I am trying to groove in the flow of ideas and key messages so that I can focus on my audience rather than on my notes. The more I rehearse, the more confident I become.

Step “into” a role model
If you are an inexperienced or nervous speaker you may like to try this tactic on for size.   Start by thinking about someone whom you believe to be a confident and effective presenter.  They could be a teacher, colleague, parent, friend or even a movie star.

Now imagine that you could step into their body and “be them” as they give the speech you have prepared. Look out at the audience through their eyes, feeling the confidence that say seem to naturally posses. Hear yourself delivering your words as confidently and as fluently as they would.  Notice how yur fear of public speaking dissolves as you imagine being them.

9) Join your local Toastmasters club.
There is no substitute for practice but finding a safe and uplifting place to do this can be a real challenges. That’s where Toastmasters clubs come in.

Despite the name Toastmasters international is nothing to do with red coats and weddings. It is a worldwide network of public speaking clubs providing a safe place to practice and gain feedback. I am a member of Solent speakers based in Fareham and I learn something new every time I go.

Google “Toastmasters clubs” in your local area and visit. In my experience you’ll be hard pressed to find a friendlier oand more supportive learning environment anywhere on the planet.

So what do you think? – what techniques have you found to help you or your colleagues  overcome the fear of public speaking?    Post your comments below.

Gavin Meikle

The Presentation Doctor, helping you beat the fear of public speaking

RESEARCH YOUR AUDIENCE BEFORE WRITING YOUR PRESENTATION

In a previous post I encouraged all presenters to start by asking the question”What do I want my audience to do as a result of this presentation?”

The second golden rule is to tailor your presentation content to suit your

audience.

A “one size fits all” approach may be appealing when we are pressed for time but it seldom produces the kind of results you want.

Recently I was listening to a presentation about Linkedin.  The audience were a group of small business owners and sole traders.    I suspected that the  presenter had previously given the talk before to a completely different audience and had not bothered to tailor it to this particular group.   My fears proved true  when, half way through, he started to talk about how he was very selective about who he connected with and was only looking for senior executives in serious large corporations.

He suddenly realized that he was effectively putting down everyone in his audience and so he tried to retract his statement.  This rather clumsy approach only served to further alienate most of the people in the room.

When preparing your presentation make sure you do your homework. Find out the answers to these questions:

• Who are your audience?
• What is their experience in relation to your presentation topic?
• What is their background?
• What are they looking for?
• What is there starting attitude?

There are lots of different ways to find out this vital information out and the simplest  is to contact a few of the audience and ask them!  They will be flattered that you sought their opinion and will be delighted to help.

If you can’t ask them directly, you can always try asking other people who know the likely audience members well or even research them on the internet.

The more important the presentation the more valuable your  research is likely to be.

Having done your research you can then adapt your material to suit.  Here are three examples of the sort of things you might consider doing to tailor your presentation.

• Use case studies or examples that relate as closely as possible to your audience makeup
• Avoid jargon and abbreviations that are unfamiliar to your audience or at least explain them clearly the first time that they are used
• Build rapport by demonstrating empathy with them for where they are in relation to your topic before offering an alternative viewpoint

Make the most of your presentation,

Gavin Meikle, The Presentation Doctor

Weaving humour into a speech can be a real challenge.

In a previous post I recommended that that speakers  avoid using  jokes in favour of self deprecating stories. Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Jan Jack of PerfectVerse who used to be a corporate secretary but is now a professional swriter, speaker and comedian.

Jan  specialises in writing humorous poems for special events and corporate speeches. During our conversation she told be how she had been commissioned by the CEO of a multinational company to help him make his conference speech more entertaining and amusing as he was by nature a serious chap and not known for his sense of humour.

Jan asked him to send her the draft of the speech and then she re-worked it to bring in some humour whilst
maintaining the core messages and intention.  The original was by all accounts pretty dull, as are so many corporate presentations, and so wasn’t very easy on the ear. “I re-wrote it from the listeners point of view” said Jan and proceeded to give me some before and after examples.

With her permission I have reprinted one of her examples here:

With regard to the speech we discussed, I put in analagies; when the gentleman was talking about a company I compared it to a marriage. Not hugely funny but it made the speech more down to earth for those listening.  One example of this:

1.   The original speech said.  “I would now like to give some facts about a stressful incident that has happened in my working life”

I changed it to this  “”Let me now move to my third point, I want to share with you an exceptionally stressful incident that happened at xxxxx.  Can I say here I am a man who is used to stress.  My wife. (pause )  She has a credit card (pause and look away, then look back.)  In my name.”

By all accounts the speech went down well and the perception of the new MD was significantly enhanced.

We don’t all have the budget to hire a professional speech writer when we want to be funny but we can learn from Jans example and write our speeches to be easy on the listeners ear.

And as an extra bonus here is an example of humour from one of Jan’s bespoke business poems.

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Do all your days seem far too busy?
Does your Things to To list reach the floor, and make you feel dizzy?
Do you need an extra pair of hands for all your personal tasks?
Out of Office can help you, and you only have to ask.

I can choose and write your Christmas cards; I’ll act as your PA,
Help with travel, collect dry cleaning, even order that bouquet,
I can source a special venue; I can shop for you online,
I can even sort out personal gifts, if you don’t have the time.

I’m trustworthy, discreet; a real bonus in your life,
You’ll find you can rely on me; your perfect office wife,
But although I’ll give you perfect days; be there to make things right,
Remember – I’m your OFFICE wife; I won’t be there at night!

©Jan Jack’s Perfect Verse 2010

Hows that for a bit of humour!

The most engaging presenters are those who are both knowledgeable and passionate about their content. We can tell that they are passionate because of things like their animation, energy, vocal variety, eye contact and enthusiasm.

But what about when you have to present information that you are not passionate about?    Well in an ideal world I would be tempted to say don’t present it at all.   Of course this may be  unrealistic, especially the presentation is part of your job.

The secret in these situations is to become passionate about the content. I know it may sound like an impossibility but it isn’t.

Start by asking yourself  ”Why you are presenting this information? and “What do you want people to do as a result of hearing it?”

The next step is to familiarise yourself with the material and ask yourself some more questions like:

• What’s important about this information?
• What is it telling us?
• What is it really telling us?
• How can understanding this information help us?
• What would happen if my audience really bought into the messages I am going  to present?

The third step is visualise someone who was really passionate about this material.  How would they present it?

• How would they stand?
• How would they sound?
• How would they move?

And finally the last step is to imagine that you could step into their body and deliver the material in the same way as them.

Start by  seeing  yourself giving the presentation, sounding and looking enthusiastic, passionate and engaged.   Then imagine being in your body as you give the presentation, hearing your own voice, feeling the confidence and energy and enthusiasm coursing through your veins.

Imagine the impact that you could have if you could learn to control your energy and deliver with passion whenever you wanted to.  What would that ability do for your career?   How much more influential would you be?  How much more fulfilled could you be?

Gavin Meikle

The Presentation Doctor

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