Eric Feng, one of our Network Experts, together with his two Public Speaking Experts recently appeared on Prime Time Morning (Channel News Asia) to share more about Public Speaking experiences and tips.
Kelvin, Irene and Eric (authors of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking) were invited to share about the book. They ended up dishing tip after tip to the hosts and audience. One of the funnier discussions were about the myth that speakers should imagine their audience naked.
The main rationale behind this myth is to put down your audience so that you feel more powerful than them. There are some who believe that this makeshift power will give them the courage to speak in front of their “naked” audience. However, if you have tried it, you will know how hard it is to imagine your audience naked.
Firstly you will be more distracted. Secondly, it doesn’t serve you. When you intentionally position yourself in power at your audience expense, you are sending out signals to your audience that you disregard them and that doesn’t exactly make you very popular with your audience.
Here’s the short video clip and pay attention to the tips:
For those who want to get the hard copy of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking, you can buy it at any major bookstores in your vincinity like Popular, Kino, Borders, Harris, MPH and Page One.
For those of you who are not from Singapore, you can grab the electronic version of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking here. If you really love to have a hardcopy version, you can drop Eric an email: eric@ericfeng.com. Else, grab the ebook first!
Category: Communication Skills
In no particular order….. since all are equally bad…
Blooper #1: Not telling us why we should listen to you
Never assume that just because you have an audience, we are obliged to listen to you. We may love you (that’s why we came in the first place) but never take advantage of the trust we have for you. It is an extreme turn-off when the audience has to do the work i.e. figure out how your presentation is relevant to us. We are a bunch of selfish egomaniacs. We love ourselves so much! And we don’t care about your experiences unless it teaches us something that we can use for ourselves. So here’s a word of advice: If you want to share your experiences, please do. But always include a message, something that will benefit us, your beloved audience!
Blooper #2: Ignoring us throughout your speech
We get bored easily. Period. If you keep talking about you, you, you, you, you… we will switch off. We want to be part of your speech. We really do. Get us involved. It could be as simple as asking us a question. It gives us a chance to hear ourselves talk. It could be as simple as playing a mini game with us. It gets us up on our seat. Please entertain us! Make us love you. We really want to because if you keep ignoring our needs, we will do the same. Lucky for the speaker, he allowed us to ask questions at any point in his presentation and guess what, we did! In my opinion, that was his saving grace!
Blooper #3: Going overtime
No matter how good you are, never ever go over time!!! Unless we paid you thousands of dollars to teach us something and you are about to share with us the ultimate secret to earning another ten million. If you want your audience to love you, end earlier than expected! It tells us that you respect our time. It makes you special because most speakers don’t observe that. And guess what, the next time you give your presentation; we will be there to support you!
Blooper #4: Spelling errors on your slides
Imagine sitting in a formal business presentation with a presentation slide like this:
In the gamming industry…
Microfsoft
Upluft and Profit
Generated an annual revenue of $1.000000 dollars (huh???!!!)
Curent Maket size of 30 billion people
Ok, you get my point. When you have these glaring spelling mistakes in your slides, here’s the image you are portraying to your audience: sloppy and cannot be bothered. Unless that’s what you want the audience to think of you, I suggest you get someone to do a spell check.
Blooper #5: Bad pronunciation of words
It cracks me up when some presenters stumble upon the same word every single time, without any sign of remorse. There was one time I sat through a presentation where the team had to review a company’s product named Morange. And throughout the ten minutes presentation, they came up with oh so many ways to pronounce this word.
Moo-ronge
Ma-range
Ma-rangi
Mo-ran
Moo-rock
And I swear one time I heard Moron. They might as well labelled the product Moronic Morange. That would be… memorable. Some “credit” has to be given to the company who named their product mo-range.
Blooper #6: Reading off the script
Although my preference is to go without a script, sometimes there is a need for it. However more often than not, speakers are too reliant on their script. You see them referring to their script even if it is just reading their name and designation??!! Yes, this is very puzzling. I once came across a book that taught me how to read from a script. Here’s the golden rule. Never ever speak when your eyes are on your script. Instead, you should follow this three-step process: see, stop, say.
First, look down and take a snapshot of your script. Memorize a chunk of words. Bring your head up and then pause for a second. When you are ready, say what you have memorized in your own words. It’s a three-step process: see, stop and say. It is very important that you pause. Yes, it may be weird for you but in reality, the pause helps make your speech conversational. It also creates anticipation, which further deepen the impact.
Blooper #7: Starting your presentation weak
Maybe it is just me but I get really pissed off when a speaker starts off his presentation with “Urm.. I guess I should probably start… ah ok, here goes…”. Or even worse “I am not really prepared for this presentation because (give some lame excuse). But anyway, I will start…” Trust me, giving excuses of why you may not do a good job will hardly win the sympathy of your audience. Instead, you will make us feel that we are unworthy of your time. You will be better off not giving the presentation since no one will be listening anyway.
As the saying goes, you will not get a second chance to make a good first impression. So make full use of your first 30 seconds to impress your audience. Here are a couple of ways you can start a presentation powerfully. You can tell a personal story and relate it back to the message of your presentation. Starting your presentation with a visual stimulating or humorous video clip will also create impact. Or begin with a thought provoking quote or a shocking statistic, which will create the listening for your presentation. All these are far more superior to your usual good morning/afternoon/evening niceties or worse, apologies.
Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.
We are all experts at playing the role of the audience, thanks to the countless presentations that we have sit through. Quite frankly, we have seen it all! I thought it would be interesting to give you my list of ten things a presenter can do to piss me off. See if this tallies with yours!
Starting from the bottom…
10. Using clip art animation (at times, this makes me laugh… but not in the good way)
9. Starting weak: “I guess I should probably get started…. uh…ok here goes…”
8. Giving us zero eye contact
7. Reading off the slides
6. Having slides with heap full of words (and MORE words!)
5. Having NO message (Variation: Failing to make a point and leaving us confused)
4. Mumbling throughtout the entire speech
3. Apologizing to the audience right at the start:“I’m not exactly sure what I want to say but I will try…”
2. Ending late – it’s obvious you don’t respect our time!
And the number one thing you can do to piss me off the roof is this…
1. Be totally unprepared – it shows how much you value us!
Eric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.
Using humor in a speech or presentation can help to add an air of authority to your content because everyone loves to laugh! One of the ways to use humour in a speech is to incorporate a joke that is relevant to your content.
Now, in order for that joke to work you need to edit it down and interpret in your own way. Don’t feel that you’re not qualified to do this. You are don’t worry. As long as you can speak and paraphrase you’re going to be fine at editing a joke. I understand that it may be difficult to understand the process of editing a joke, but I’m going to do my best.
The point of this article is not to turn you into a comedian. It’s to help you spice up your content with humor so that you can connect with your audience and have them feel confident with your ability as a speaker or presenter.
Firstly, make sure you’re on your own. Like… sitting in front of your computer. Okay, take your joke and say it out loud. You will probably stumble over the words because jokes that you find in books or on the internet have extraneous words because they help with the reading of the jokes. But these words aren’t necessary for the actual spoken delivery of the line.
Most jokes have a small story element to them and so that’s what is included. For example they will contain words like: “One day…” or “…and says”. Those are structures that we are used to and that help us when we are reading the joke. But they are not at all helpful when you have to deliver that joke.
So read the joke out loud a few times to familiarize yourself with it. Then put it to one side and repeat it a few more times. Just give yourself a bit of “rehearsal” with it. What will begin to happen slowly is that you’ll forget bits of the joke and, as a result, paraphrase the joke into your own words.
You’ll naturally make shortcuts. Believe me, this is not a bad thing. This is exactly what you want to happen. As you do this try to cut out the storytelling elements. Try to get straight to the meat of the joke. For instance if the joke begins: “one day a CEO turns to one of his employees and says sternly…” You can edit the joke so that it reads: “A CEO turns to an employee and says…”
You cut the word sternly because you should say what the CEO says to the employee in a stern manner. You don’t need to tell your listeners how the CEO is speaking because you pretend to be the CEO. So that’s 6 words that have been cut and 1 word that has been added.
It’s also better to keep the joke in the present tense. Even if it’s happened in the past. You’ll say something like “last year…” then the tense will immediately change as if it’s happening right now. That street joke has got to unfold in front of your audience like it’s happening in the here and now. It makes it more immediate for the listener.
How do you know what will make the joke work? Well, the punchline is pretty damned important. The set-up is important as well, but that can usually do with a bit of trimming. The punchlines are the bit at the end that gets the laugh. Sorry if I’m stating the obvious for some of you, I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.
I’m going to refer to a joke that I’m sure we all know: “why did the chicken cross the road? to get to the other side”. The punchline in this case is “to get to the other side” so this is important to keep because that’s the line that will generate the laugh.
That said, the set up line is also very important because if you just said the line “to get to the other side” you will get a lot of blank stares. So you need: “why did the chicken cross the road?”. But what you have to be careful of is to make sure that all the important details are there. The chicken is important as is what the chicken is doing.
Remember that editing and delivering a joke are fused together at the hip. You need to practice the joke out loud again and again so you are familiar with it and it flows naturally.
You should also make sure that you personalize the joke if you can. Don’t make it any CEO if you can safely make it your CEO. But obviously you have to be careful that you don’t offend anybody and risk losing your job. The best thing to do is to make yourself the butt of your jokes. By laughing at yourself you are more likely to win the audience over to your side.
So to re-cap: Find a joke that is relevant to your theme or topic in a broad way. If you cannot find jokes specifically about the Human Resources Department, maybe there are jokes on a broader scale. Exactly what point are you making about H.R.? That they’re really organized? That they’re incompetent?
Then you need to say your joke over and over again out loud so that you become familiar with it. By doing this you will naturally edit bits of the joke out that don’t work for you because you will forget bits. Next go through the joke with a fine-toothed comb edit out any story elements. Finally, make the joke personal and in the present tense.
Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.
If you are able to use humor in a speech or presentation you will automatically be able to make your audience listen to you and assert your authority. Making people laugh is a definite attention-getter.
The thing to be aware of is using humor appropriately in your speech or presentation. There are two ways to use humor: the first is to react to material that you already have written using your own sense of humor. The second way is to add appropriate jokes, quotes and stories that relate to your speech topic.
Whichever method you use you need to run through the following checklist before you speak:
1) Is it funny?
If you find a line genuinely funny then it will make things a lot easier when you come to deliver the humor to your listeners. The thing to be aware of though is that not every line will make you fall down with laughter. If you have trouble in this area it might be worth researching a quip or humorous line from another speaker or comedian and quoting them in your speech. You cannot pass the line off as your own. If you have to give them credit! You could phrase it as follows: “…and as the comedian Jerry Seinfeld said…”
2) Can you say the line comfortably?
If you find a joke that fits in with the material rehearse the line out loud and edit it so that you’re comfortable saying the joke. Make elisions if necessary turning “you are” into “you’re” and so on. Make sure you don’t leave out the punchline though, that bit is crucial.
3) Will you offend anybody?
This following may sound stuffy, but the best thing to do is avoid the following areas because not everybody can appreciate humorous lines in these areas. Avoid jokes on: religion, sex, physical appearance, politics and disabilities. Granted someone who is Jewish can deliver Jewish jokes, but even then not everyone in the audience might be Jewish so you could come across as racist. The best thing to do is poke fun at yourself. If in doubt, leave it out!
4) Will you be understood?
If you’re speaking to a room full of unfamiliar faces then you have to make sure that jokes that are specific to your job or company might not go over. In that situation make sure that there are no in-jokes, or lines based in specifics of your job title.
If the humorous lines that you find are able to pass these four checks then you are well on your way to having an engaging and memorable speech!
Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.