The first time you give a speech is exciting, unnerving, and inevitably filled with an awkward moment or two. In the speaker’s mind, disaster lurks around every turn of your pages of notes, or every click of your slides. Of course, the audience doesn’t know what it hasn’t seen before, so it won’t be anything like as aware of your gaffes as you are. The trick is not to show your fear, as the surgeon said to the nurse, lest you unnerve the patient.
I was in California this week giving a speech for the first time, and all my own words from Give Your Speech, Change the World, and Trust Me kept coming back to me. It was highly annoying. I had no excuses. I had to structure the speech properly, I had to rehearse, I had to focus on the audience – or I wouldn’t even be taking my own advice.
As it happened, inevitably some things did go wrong. The group was larger than I expected, so the interactive moments I’d planned were more difficult to pull off than I thought they would be. Chiefly, when I brought a couple of volunteers to the stage to demonstrate some ideas about body language, it took too long to give the volunteers their instructions, and the audience got a bit restive.
Note to self: Audience participation is high risk-high reward. Structure it carefully!
And then I succumbed to my biggest weakness – I love taking questions and having a spirited give-and-take with the audience. I lost track of the time and didn’t cover as much of my planned outline as I’d intended. I was able to finish on time, thanks to the big countdown clock thoughtfully provided by the conference organizer, but I eliminated the last couple of points I was going to cover and jumped to the end. Another time, I’d manage the questions better and cover more.
Note to self: you don’t have to answer every single question – your own agenda is important too.
The biggest difference between the new speech and others that I’ve given a number of times, however, is that I didn’t know how the audience was going to react. With a familiar speech, you know where the audience is at all times and you can adjust on the fly accordingly if necessary. With a new speech, you don’t know, and so it’s all one big adjustment on the fly. As a result, it’s much more hit-or-miss than familiar speeches. And as much as rehearsal helps, you still don’t have much of a sense of how an actual audience will react until you’re in front of one.
Note to self: know your speech cold, and preferably rehearse it in front of a (friendly) actual audience, even if you have to hire one.
How was your first time? Do you have any stories of memorably good or bad first time speeches?
Thanks for this, Nick. Great advice. I’ll make your “notes to self” notes to MYself.
When I first made the transition from acting and singing to public speaking, what scared me was speaking my own words, instead of a script created by someone else. I had been performing all my life, but had never spoken extemporaneously. Everything was memorized and carefully rehearsed. So I simply memorized my half-hour speech and delivered it AS IF it were extemporaneous. It was what I knew how to do.
Even though, as an experienced performer I could pull that off, and the speech was well received, it was emotionally unsatisfying for me. I discovered that speaking directly to an audience is very different from acting in a theatrical production. You are using the same performing skills, but the relationship with the audience is not the same at all. That first speech was performing AT my listeners, not communicating directly WITH them. I confess that it was a couple more speeches down the road before I could make the leap of faith to simply talking. Now, of course, I wouldn’t choose to speak any other way.
“…my own words from Give Your Speech, Change the World, and Trust Me kept coming back to me. It was highly annoying.”
Hilarious, Nick. I’ve often wondered about exactly that.
My first speech was before I’d read anything you wrote, and I’ll summarize it with two words: “Not recommended.”
Great post, Nick. I particularly like your second note to self: the speaker’s agenda is important.
Of course public speaking is, first and foremost, about the audience. The speaker enters into a social contract with his audience and must always keep the audience’s interest in mind. However, part of this commitment involves delivering the material that you came to deliver. This is especially important when there are several aspects to the overall presentation and each forms a key part of the whole. Cutting off questions is never enjoyable, but sometimes it just has to be done for the sake of the presentation (and the other members of the audience).
Cheers!
John Zimmer
http://mannerofspeaking.org
Thanks to Heather, Maureen and John for the great comments. It is quite different to speak someone else’s lines rather than your own. Although some of the same technical skills apply, nonetheless your own psyche is on the line when the words are your own, and that’s different in feeling. Maureen, I’m looking forward to hearing one of your speeches one of these days! And John, your point about the audience is essential. The audience always comes first.
Thanks, Nick, for modeling an effective way to critique your presentation. “Notes to Self” is a great way to highlight the things you should focus on in the future. I write my version of your “notes to self” on the back of the outline/notes/or whatever reminds me of the speech, and then I stick it in a binder. Periodically, I flip through the binder and notice the themes that keep coming up (oh, and YES, there are themes – the many instances when you could have…) or look at the the speech that is similar to the one I am preparing for. It is feedback to self – the gift that keeps giving!