My Take on Confessions of a Public Speaker

From time to time we all have to share our thoughts, ideas, work or assignments in a presentation or talk to a group of people we know more or less well. The less fortunate, judging by the frustration that goes with it, even have to make a living at it. I’ve given countless presentations as part of my job and a few talks at conferences and professional meetups. Some companies even paid me to give a talk on a particular subject. A few times I presented in English instead of my native language, or more accurately in Czech-accented English. And I’ll freely admit that sometimes I screwed it up pretty badly. I came across Scott Berkun’s Confessions of a Public Speaker, which opened my eyes in a lot of ways. Here’s what stood out in light of my own experience.

Fear

We all have it. We’re afraid we’ll embarrass ourselves if we speak up, that the audience knows more than we do, that we’ll get something wrong or that we’ll trip over our words. Here are a few good observations from the book on getting past those fears.

Forget about being perfect. You’ll make mistakes and there’s nothing you can do about that. Dwell on them too much and you’ll get nowhere, with no chance to improve.
In speech, there’s a mistake roughly every ten words. You speak two to three words a second, so it’s hardly worth worrying about.
What feels like an embarrassing blunder to you may go completely unnoticed by your audience. What you experience and what they experience are very different.
If you’re shy, the author suggests a fairly unorthodox trick that supposedly works: imagine your audience naked. Given the usual gender mix of my audiences, I’m glad I’m not shy.

The most important and obvious technique for overcoming fear is practice. You know the saying: hard training makes for an easy battle. Practice, practice, practice. I’ll close the subject of fearing mistakes with a quote I highlighted: “Confidence, not perfection, is the goal.”

Audience

A few tips about the audience.

The atmosphere is the biggest factor in what the audience experiences.
Density matters more than size. If the room is large and only a few people come, persuade them to sit together. They’ll feel better knowing they aren’t the only losers who showed up.
Use a remote to advance the slides so you can find the best place for the audience to see you.
If there’s a problem such as bad sound or a room that’s too hot or cold, ask the organizers over the microphone if they can do something about it. You’ll get the audience on your side.

Whatever kind of presentation you’re giving, it pays to understand why the audience is there.

They want to learn something.
They want to be inspired.
They hope to be entertained.
They have a need they hope will be met.
They want to meet people interested in the same subject.
They’re looking for a positive experience they can share with somebody else.
Someone made them come, such as a professor, a boss or their parents.

Engaging the audience matters just as much. Never ask, “Any questions about what I just said?” Almost nobody will dare to ask. It’s much better to draw the audience directly into what’s happening. Ask relevant questions that let people answer. They’ll feel part of the presentation instead of listening passively. My favorite example that comes to mind is a talk about parallelism and locks. The speaker pulled a few people out of the audience and had them make tally marks on the board with a limited number of pieces of chalk.

Expect people in the audience to have different levels of knowledge and experience. A good talk is balanced so everybody takes something from it. Try to address all these motivations and your audience will leave happy.

The presentation

Forget about relying on your slides to guide you. Most presentations consist of the speaker reading the bullet points on slides. Imagine the power goes out for some reason and you have to speak without the slides you worked so hard on. You can picture how that would go. What separates good talks from bad ones is the time you spend thinking about what you want to say. Thinking is boring and tiresome, but it’s the groundwork for having something to say in the first place. The best way to convey something is through a story. The best presenters are good storytellers, which is why they can usually do without slides, bullet points or even PowerPoint.

Good preparation has four parts.

Take a strong position in the title. The title is often the only thing people use to decide whether to come.
Think about the audience you’re presenting to.
Make every point perfectly clear. If even one point takes ten minutes to explain, something’s wrong. Each should have a single sentence that explains it.
Try to learn all the counterarguments.

Length

Always rehearse for less time than the organizer promised. There are two good reasons. First, let people leave early and they’ll thank you. At work, plenty of people have other meetings lined up and this lets them leave on time. Second, if your talk is part of a larger program such as a conference or off-site, delays can pile up and the organizer may cut your slot. If you have 45 minutes, practice for 30 and fill the rest with audience questions.

The opening

People pay the most attention in the first ten minutes. After that it drops. Holding attention for 60 minutes is nearly impossible. Divide the time into roughly ten-minute stretches and frame each one with a story. Put the most effort into the first minute. It should be a trailer for what comes next. Never waste time on irrelevant information such as how you got there. I’m always taken aback when someone opens with “This is my first presentation,” or I wince at “I didn’t have much time.” Nobody cares, and you’re wasting time.

Attention

Holding attention is a real skill. Never do anything that distracts people, such as using pictures for their own sake. What matters is the rhythm of your talk. I wrote down “tension and release.” A story with an opening, a problem and a resolution does that nicely. It doesn’t have to be Little Red Riding Hood. It can simply describe a situation.

Feedback

Try to get feedback, but never ask the inexperienced lover’s question, “How was I?” You’ll get a polite answer of no value. A few basic questions:

What change would improve the talk the most?
Was there a question that went unanswered?
How would you compare my talk with the others?

General points

Sometimes the audience knows almost as much as you do. That’s fine. The value you add is putting familiar things in a new context.
If you like thinking, speaking and writing are natural consequences.
Putting ideas into words is often the only way to understand them fully and see their full scope.
If somebody asks something you can’t answer, feel free to say “I don’t know.” There’s no written or unwritten rule that you have to know the answer to everything people might ask. Ask the audience if anyone knows, or get the person’s contact details and answer later.

Conclusion

I’d recommend the book to anyone who occasionally has to open their mouth in public. There’s also plenty that will help if you write a blog, for example. It’s quite readable and has rhythm. I got the impression the author followed his own advice in writing it, which gives the book a pace that holds your attention.