How Leaders Speak. Jim Gray
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French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, knew the potency of brevity. “I have made this letter longer than usual,” he wrote, “because I lack the time to make it short.”
Hundreds of years ago, Pascal nailed it.
Less is invariably more in communication. You’ve been asked to speak for thirty minutes at “Industry 2020”; you should prepare your remarks for twenty-five. Why? Presentations have a way of expanding in delivery, what with introductions, technical glitches, and extemporaneous remarks.
By finishing slightly under time, you’ll look — and sound — like a leader. Go over by even a minute and your credibility begins to suffer.
I love a presenter who, shortly after being introduced, will say, “I’m going to speak for twenty minutes, and then I’ll be happy to take any questions. I can guarantee you that we’ll be done by 11:45 so we’ll have plenty of time to head out of here and get down the hall to enjoy the delicious lunch that’s being prepared for us.”
With that, the speaker tells the audience members that they’re in good hands, so everyone tends to relax, free of concerns about time, and listens.
Rehearse, and be ready to chop — or fill
How long you end up speaking at “Industry 2020” shouldn’t come as a surprise, to you or your audience. You need to rehearse often, for a number of reasons.
First, the better you know your story, the freer you’ll be to be yourself. Second, you’ll come to know how long the different sections of your narrative run, which will be essential if you have to add or jettison material.
Why would you possibly have to add material? After all, isn’t overspeaking a crime right up there with bad grammar and pastel leisure suits?
Yes, indeed.
However, you have to be prepared for anything in the presentation business, including the possibility that another speaker eats some bad salmon, takes ill, and bows out. Meanwhile, you’re feeling fine; you had the chicken. But the conference organizers want you to lengthen your remarks.
Think about what information you can add, while maintaining the structural integrity of your talk and, more importantly, keeping the audience interested.
Say the previous speaker goes over his time, and in order for the proceedings to stay on track you have to chop eight minutes out of your presentation?
What would you take out? You need to know, ahead of time.
Almost always, the material that can be excised takes the form of supporting information in the body. You’d be hard-pressed to remove stuff from any other location.
Think about it. You’ll need your entire introduction to compel your listeners, introduce your theme, and let them know what’s in your remarks for them.
The conclusion is where you provide resolution and issue your call to action. You’ll need all of that.
The content to go would have to come from the body. In rehearsal, shorten and lengthen the midsection to deliver different length versions of your presentation; try a version at twenty minutes, even forty-five. Have some fun with it.
It’s far better to anticipate time-related challenges and prepare for them now, than half an hour before you take the lectern at “Industry 2020.”
Join in the fight
It’s straightforward. Your obligation as a speaker is to relate an absorbing story that serves the informational needs of your listeners within the time prescribed, and then sit down.
But you have another duty as well, and that’s to help eliminate the scourge of overspeaking. To be eradicated for all time, it’s got to be rendered socially unacceptable, like smoking in public buildings or watching reality TV.
I have a friend who, when taking the lectern to follow a speaker who’s gone over his time, will say, “I was going to speak for twenty minutes, but unfortunately Ed went on too long so I have only fifteen minutes to address you.”
My friend doesn’t smile when he says this. Neither does Ed.
For people like Ed, a presentation means never having to say you’re finished. However, the days of those who partake in the self-indulgent practice of overspeaking are numbered.
The revolution has begun.
THE PERILS OF POWERPOINT
Will you use PowerPoint at “Industry 2020”?
Think carefully about your decision. There’s a lot on the line.
I once described PowerPoint as the most misused technological innovation since the handgun. Why? It kills a lot of presentations.
In “PowerPoint Is Evil,” a now-famous article in the September 2003 issue of Wired magazine, Edward Tufte compared slideware (computer programs like PowerPoint) to an “expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication.”
With those words, Edward Tufte became my personal hero.
When used responsibly, PowerPoint can be a useful tool, bringing clarity and organization to the parts of speeches, presentations, and briefings that need it. Far more often than not, though, it’s atrociously deployed.
Great speeches help build great careers, so I find it incomprehensible that so many presenters undercut the incredible personal power that comes from connecting deeply with an audience to throw up a collection of pedestrian slides and read aloud desultory, static information that listeners can whip through much faster.
Your PowerPoint slides should serve as a guide, not a script.
Hiding behind slides
I suspect the penchant for poorly delivered PowerPoint has to do with the fact that great numbers of presenters, even among the executive and professional sets, are unnerved by the preparation and discipline it takes to speak well in public.
When PowerPoint came along many of them figured, “This is terrific. Now I don’t have to go through the hassle of writing and editing a script, which takes forever. After all, I’ve got a life going on here. I’ll just organize a deck of slides covering the main points and address them one by one. It’s all good!”
The advent of the now-ubiquitous technology served a deeper psychological need as well, seemingly protecting the fearful from the perceived oppressive scrutiny of audiences by diverting at least some attention away from a jittery speaker to visual aids.
But just as you can feel lonelier at a crowded party than in the solitude of your own bedroom, PowerPoint, badly utilized, can isolate and diminish you.
The purpose of PowerPoint
Folks, slideware was meant to support your presentations, not become them. The best speakers in the world rarely use it. They don’t have to. They tell their stories the old-fashioned way, with an uplifting combination of words and passion.
It’s no surprise that the higher you go up the corporate food chain, the less often tools like PowerPoint are used. There’s a reason for that. The language of leaders typically doesn’t translate to an inanimate screen.
As a presentation skills coach, I spend a good deal of time working with clients and their PowerPoint decks. I emphasize a simple ideology, and it’s this: We humans get to run the technology. It doesn’t get to run us.
That belief underpins my ten rules for using PowerPoint.
Determine if you really need it
If some of your content — such as complex technical or financial data — requires slideware, so be it. But keep in mind that effective speakers give as much of themselves to their listeners as possible.
Perhaps your thirty-minute presentation