A Speaker’s Must-Have: Focal Point

What do I mean by that? Isn’t your topic the focal point? Uh uh. Your Focal Point is actually the “so what?” or the “what next?” It helps to set the context for your talk, so that your audience knows what’s coming, why, and where to focus.

Let’s back up a sec. In March, I blogged about “putting the engine back together” and offered a very simple structure for putting together a speech or presentation. And I suggested that if you have a desired outcome for your talk – if there is something you want your audience to think, or know, or do by the time they leave the room – you need to spell it out for them. Literally, tell them what you want them to pay attention to and/or what you want them to take away. This is a Focal Point, and I recommended opening with it as well as wrapping up with it in the closing.

We all agree that attention spans are short and, in fact, getting shorter, which makes figuring out how to reach audiences pretty urgent business. We all have had the experience of sitting through a talk and wondering what we’re supposed to know or do next, which means we know firsthand what it’s like to be lost, not “get it,” or feel like we might have wasted time. And we all know that when we’re clearly directed to focus on something, we’re surprisingly compliant and we’re likely to focus on that certain something. As speakers, we simply have a better chance of achieving attention and retention with audiences if we spoonfeed them.

A Focal Point can be your entire opening, or it can be woven in as just a part of your opening, but it is the call-out that tells your audience what you want them to think or know or do next. For example, “I was asked to speak with you today about personal money management [topic], and what I’m going to ask of you today, as I’m covering my material, is that you open your minds and be thinking about how you might eliminate just one of your debts starting tomorrow [focal point]." Or “We’re here today to commemorate the grand opening of this new blood donation center [topic], but the larger task at hand is that I need each and every one of you to be an ambassador when you leave here today, to go out there and spread the word [focal point].” Or “We have quite a lengthy list of agenda items to cover today [topic], but I would like to zip through those and get to the last one, which is the most important and where I’d like us to spend the bulk of our time [focal point].”

The Focal Point is big, it’s important, it requires some thinking on your part. But it’s worth it, your audience will actually “get it”!

Perspective, People, Perspective …

Didja hear the one about the guy who was invited to the microphone to give a brief thank you and a few words of inspiration at an annual sales meeting but instead prepared a full script of remarks that included a narration of the original mission of the organization and a full reporting of its growth and successes over the past 25 years … ? Just like the company's founder did ... ?

Or maybe you heard the one about the woman who was invited to be a speaker at a widely attended opening of an important community exhibit but she never asked how many other speakers there would be and so she spoke three times longer than each of the other six people … ?

I betcha heard the one about the techie guru guy who was asked to deliver a presentation to a group of funders looking at their first tech venture and the only “ask” he seemed to make at the end was ‘so do you understand now how this works?’ … ?

Okay, I know you’ve heard about the nonprofit exec who addressed the group of longtime volunteers assembled in the room and then told them why they should consider signing up to volunteer and the good it will do … ?

Whether it’s time allotment, your place on the agenda, how many others are speaking, your role versus others’, the composition of your audience, or the angle of your message, get some perspective. An invitation to the microphone does not, on its own, convey the full responsibility of the event or occasion on your shoulders, nor does it give you carte blanche to guess or wing it or go where you feel like going. An invitation to the microphone is only as good as its relevance to the occasion and the audience.

When you get invited to speak … Ask how much time you have. Ask what your role is. Ask how many other speakers there will be. Ask how big or how knowledgeable the audience will be. Ask why the audience will be there. Ask if your ideas for your remarks are on target or not. Ask. And then everyone wins.

Um, Ahhh, Ya Know …

With all the other speaker faux pas’s out there, it never ceases to amaze me how fixated people are on um’s, ahhh’s and ya know’s as the only issues they need to worry about. My view is that unless these “fillers” are used to a distracting degree, they’re pretty normal and typically go unnoticed if everything else is intact. However, if you feel you have a problem, and you or someone else has noticed that you have a bit of a filler dependency, then you can fix it … and to that end, here’s a quote for you to keep in mind:

“Awareness in itself is curative.” - Fritz Perls

And don't forget that with awareness come the twin P's ... preparation and practice!

All That Great Education, Oh Well ...

I recently sat with a very well-educated executive to help him prepare for an important presentation. It was our first time working together, and I began by saying, “Charlie (not his real name), we are about to go against everything you learned in school, from Kindergarten all the way through your MBA program!” This kind of statement, and I make it often, tends to cause consternation at first but eventually brings relief. Charlie was no different. Smart and motivated, he caught on pretty quickly and off we went.

After that meeting, I came across an interview with Guy Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist of Apple and co-founder of Alltop.com. Guy Kawasaki is one of the great thinkers and communicators to come out of Silicon Valley; he’s a widely respected author and speaker. Here’s an excerpt from a Q&A with him in The New York Times on March 21, 2010:

Q: What should business schools teach more of, or less of?

A: They should teach students how to communicate in five-sentence emails and with 10-slide PowerPoint presentations. If they just taught every student that, American business would be much better off

Q: Why?

A: No one wants to read “War and Peace” emails. Who has the time? Ditto 60 PowerPoint slides for a one-hour meeting. What you learn in school is the opposite of what happens in the real world. In school, you’re always worried about minimums. You have to reach 20 pages or have to have so many slides. Then you get out in the real world and think, “I have to have a minimum of 20 pages and 50 slides.”

I’m with Guy all the way. What works for learning may not work for persuading or informing or motivating in the workplace. But school can be a tough habit to kick!

Me Too!

I sometimes marvel at the extraordinary docility with which Americans submit to speeches.

- Adlai E. Stevenson

SmartMouth Note: Me too, Adlai, I marvel at the very same thing. Perhaps if there were a little more civil unrest, we'd be more entertained, better informed, inspired, and even highly motivated! Alas, we Americans are amazingly passive and polite audience members. Hmmmm, interesting food for thought.

The Golden Rule: Do Unto Others

This may sound harsh, but you’re not that special that when you get up to speak everyone is captivated the entire time, has the patience to sit through your lengthy deck of slides, and will be perfectly content to allow you to run over your allotted time. You know how hard it is to be 100% attentive, and you know you don’t like it when other speakers kill you with more slides than you could possibly remember and talk for longer than scheduled. It’s quite likely that you are more often the audience than you are the speaker, and so consider yourself an expert on what audiences like and don’t like.

The single best guideline for any speaker to use in preparing for a talk is The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Plan and choreograph your presentations accordingly …

If you don’t like or can’t pay attention to a screen with dense text slides in a darkened room for a prolonged period of time, then don’t do it to your audience;

If you can’t sit through a 50-minute talk that isn’t broken up with visuals or video or interaction, then your audience can’t either;

If you get lost during talks when speakers ramble and provide no guidance as to where they are going or what their point is, then your audience will be lost without your guidance;

If you like stories and anecdotes, then your audience will like them too;

If you like someone who is brief and succinct, then your audience will like that too; and

If you like speakers who stay more connected with their audience than with the lectern or screen, then your audience will appreciate that as well.

Your preferences are your own best litmus test for what your audience might like, so remember that!

It’s All the Rage

Leadership development programs are all the rage these days. Helping people and organizations grow into what they need to be is happening through seminars, training programs, executive coaching, executive education, you name it. All good.

But if I may, I’d like to offer up one shortcut for “leaders” to think about … stay out of the weeds! Leaders shape and then maintain their leadership positions largely through communications. Yes, they review plans and budgets, set strategy and make decisions, but really it’s how they interact with their various constituencies – both internal and external, and up and down the ladder – that defines and predicts their success. The weeds are the detail, the information, and frankly that’s usually someone else’s responsibility. The leader is responsible for context, direction, the bigger picture, which is communicated through messages, not information.

It’s actually imperative for a leader to be able to identify and deliver messages … statements that convey value, benefit, or significance. Of course, there are occasions and audiences that require the communication of more in-depth information, but an effective leader should always be able to wrap that info inside the packaging of a darn good message.

Think about it … communicating a whole lot of detailed information can be done by anyone. Wrapping that information in a package that conveys something meaningful can and should be done by the leader.