“Say it to me.”
It’s my favorite line from one of my favorite movies, 2010’s award-winner for Best Picture, The King’s Speech. It also forms the chorus of today’s post, an unpacking of the concept I introduced yesterday that public speaking – regardless of the size of the group – is more about a conversation rather than a presentation.
You see, with a presentation mentality, your focus is primarily on you. You obsess about your content, slides, number of bullets on the slides, your handouts, gestures, tone of voice, note cards, and appearance.
With all the focus on you, what you’ve unfortunately done also is reduce the audience to an abstraction and obstacle and enemy, something to avoid and/or fear just long enough for you to do your business and get off the stage with your stomach and sanity intact.
A conversation mentality, however, is completely different because it’s about everybody BUT you.
The best conversations happen when you make the other person the focus. While you have some things to share, you really want to find out more about the other: what she wants, what he likes, what will make her sit up and take notice, what will help him change his behavior. You then craft a message that meets those needs. It’s about sounding real and not like a scripted robot. It’s less about crafting kick-butt (or eye-melting) slides behind you and instead all about connecting with the group in front of you.
With a conversation approach, you’re willing to:
- Ditch your notes and slides at a moment’s notice, be human, and just speak from your heart.
- Talk to individual members of the audience before your time up front and ask them, “why are you here today, and how can I help this time be valuable to you?”, then find their faces during your conversation and speak directly to them
- Help the audience feel something, because that is what they will remember long after your voice fades and your slides disappear (hat tip to Maya Angelou on that)
- See the audience as a friend who wants you to succeed, not an enemy waiting for you to fail.
- When possible, ask honest questions of the audience during your conversation with them and encourage them to do the same of you.
Back to The King’s Speech. Based on the real-life friendship of speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) and King George VI (Colin Firth), it is a moving account of Logue’s work to help the King overcome his stammer and find his voice. It has two magnificent examples of how our speaking skills can be transformed by focusing less on ourselves and more on the audience:
- Logue bets a shilling that the King (who was just the Duke of York at the time) can recite Hamlet’s “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy flawlessly while listening to “The Marriage of Figaro” on headphones. Logue gambles that, since the King won’t be able to hear and focus on his stammer during the recitations, it will disappear. It does.
- To ease the King’s anxiety before he delivers an important radio broadcast to the people of Britain, Logue positions himself directly across from his student and friend, and gently says the words that began this post. By focusing on Logue’s silent encouragement and guidance throughout the address, the King succeeds and is able to guide his realm to victory in World War II.
We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow on my blog with a model of crafting your conversation that’s been inspired by – of all things – your radio.
The president and founder of NO NET Solutions, Andy Janning is an 8-time state and national award winner for overall excellence in organizational development, a popular speaker at conferences and events across the country, writer, and voiceover artist. He delivers proven leadership consulting results through the “Leader Effectiveness Training” program and offers a wide variety of workshops and webinars to improve your parenting, speaking, serving, training, communication, and leadership skills.
To learn more, and to find out why he occasionally runs with scissors, visitAndyJanning.com and follow him on Twitter at @andyjanning.
