Public Speaking: How to create influence through engagement

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In public speaking, engagement is the level of attention, interest and interaction you gain from the audience.

It determines how interested the audience are in your message and how deeply they are thinking about what you are saying.

The stronger the engagement with an audience you have, the higher level of influence you will have.

And the more influence you have, the more likely people will reposed to your message the way that you want them to.

Having influence when you are speaking means that you can have an effect on the audiences beliefs, behaviours, attitudes and/or actions.

Influence and engagement are valuable public speaking skills to have if you have a strong message you want to deliver, are speaking to create action or if you are trying to motivate people.

However; you won’t get influence without engagement.

Add some humour.

In my conversation with comedian Stuart Mitchell, he detailed his approach to integrating humour into the speeches and presentations of CEOs and organisational leaders.

He believes that humour serves as the most effective method to establish rapport and captivate an audience

“You need to be engaging, need to address the room, you need an opening line to bring these people on board”

He goes on to state that there is a fine line between bring a joker and adding a few light hearted lines into a speech or presentation to lighten it up a bit.

Using humour creates an emotional response.

When people laugh, they want to laugh more, and if you’ve made them laugh at the very beginning then they’ll be much more engaged throughout the rest of the speech or presentation.

Stuart believes that displaying small elements of self-deprecation or addressing something everyone else is thinking about builds a connection with the audience.

The audience will feel a connection if the speaker lets them in by laughing at themselves a bit or if the speaker has the same thoughts as they have on a particular subject.

When there’s connection, there’s trust.

Where is the relevance?

How relevant is the message you are speaking about to your audience?

If people can’t relate your speech to themselves or their environment, then they’ll switch off.

Being aware of the audience and tailoring your speech and message to them so that it is relevant will generate more engagement.

You can create engagement by using specific language and references that the audience are familiar with.

Referencing recent changes the audience will be familiar with.

Acknowledging the perspectives and feelings that some individuals hold about a particular topic or event demonstrates your awareness and comprehension of the audience’s feelings.

Mind your language

Language plays a huge role in creating engagement.

Too much jargon, abbreviations and technical language can isolate people.

If they don’t understand what you are talking about, they’re going to switch off.

However, don’t patronise your audience either, there’s a fine line between using too much technical talk and then over simplifying it and insulting people’s intelligence.

Understand the power of pronouns.

If I say “we” when talking to an audience, I am making myself part of the group I am speaking to.

If I refer to the audience as “you” then I am separating myself from them.

During my conversation with Dr. Kieran File, a professor specialising in Acquired Linguistics at Warwick University, he emphasised the significance of the pronouns used by sports coaches and managers in their media interviews.

Employing terms such as “you” engages your audience more personally, giving the impression of a direct conversation.

In instances where there may be some resistance from the audience, fostering a sense of unity and inclusivity can be achieved by using collective pronouns like “us” and “we,” thereby enhancing the feeling of solidarity among everyone present.

Ask questions?

Naturally, if people know there’s a chance that they’re going to be asked questions then they’ll be more likely to stay engaged.

So it’s a good idea to set the tone early to make people aware that there is a chance they’ll be asked questions throughout.

There’s nothing worse than asking someone a question and then realising that they’ve completely zoned out and don’t know how to answer.

Not every question has to be directed towards a particular person, and not every question needs an answer.

Letting a question hang in the air to get the audience to ponder and think about something can be enough.

Using questions to get the audience nodding along in agreement shaking their heads in disagreement collectively is another way to create engagement through questions.

Here’s an example of an open question that most people being asked can relate to: “Don’t you just hate when you step into a puddle and feel the water seeping through your socks?”

Create uncertainty.

For most people wanting to build influence, it might seem counterintuitive to deliberately create uncertainty within the audience.

But creating uncertainty can trigger curiosity.

If the audience become curious, they’ll want to find out more.

They’ll lean forward, narrow their eyes, maybe tilt their head to the side and frown slightly.

These are classic signs that someone is engaged in what you’re saying but uncertain, but curious to find out the answer or where this speech is going.

By creating uncertainty in your speech or presentation, you create an interest from the audience to find out more information.

Just make sure that you create uncertainty and then deliver the answers during your speech, you don’t want your audience leaving feeling more uncertain and asking more questions.

Without engagement, your message will be lost on the audience and you won’t have much or any influence on them.

If you want an audience to take action, follow what you say and motivate them to change their minds, attitudes or behaviours you need to be engaged with them.

Create curiosity, ask questions, mind your language and don’t be scared to add a bit of humour.

Public Speaking Skills

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Here’s my full guide and breakdown of what I believe are the key public speaking skills that can have a huge impact on how you communicate.

Public speaking can be defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as:

“The activity of speaking on a subject to a group of people.”

A lot of the time, we picture public speaking as standing on a stage or platform and speaking out into a vast audience. Or maybe we have an image of standing in a spotlight holding a microphone.

We all have our own perception of what public speaking looks like.

But when we break it down to its simplest form, the reality is that to speak publicly, it is merely speaking to a group of people about a particular subject.

There’s loads of questions that tend to follow that definition:

  • How many people?
  • What am I speaking about?
  • Where am I speaking?
  • How long am I speaking for?
  • When am I speaking?
  • How are the people I’m speaking to going to react?

All of these above questions can vary and for some people, the variables like; who, what, where, when and why can often change for every speaking occasion.

But when it comes to the skill and ability to speak publicly, it’s important to remember that regardless of if you’re speaking to 3 people or 3 million people, it’s often not about what you are saying, it’s about how you say it.

This public speaking guide is designed to provide insights and public speaking tips to help you navigate the complexities and nuances of how to get better at public speaking, ensuring your message is not only heard but also resonates with your audience.

Basics of Effective Communication

For me, when it comes to communicating effectively, the first aspect that is number one is awareness.

  • Awareness of self
  • Awareness of audience
  • Awareness of environment

1. Awareness of Self

Who are you?

Are you the funny one, the serious one, the quiet one or the noisy one?

If you don’t fully know who you are, then how are you supposed to pass on a message and build trust with an audience?

Throughout all of the interviews that I have conducted on the How You Say It podcast, the one key fundamental that shines through is “always be yourself” and the importance of honesty.

And for a lot of people, being yourself can be difficult if you’re not aware of who you really are.

If you don’t normally use big and fancy words, then don’t try and use them.

Frances Frei and Anne Morriss believe that trust has three drivers: Authenticity, Logic and Empathy.

They use these three drivers as points in what they call “The Triangle of Trust”.

Authenticity is all about being the ‘real you’ and making an audience trust who you are.

If the audience trusts you, they’ll trust your message, and if they trust your message, they’ll likely do what you want them to do.

What Are You Doing?

We all have tendencies to do strange things with our bodies when we are speaking publicly.

  • Hide our thumbs in our pockets
  • Clasp our hands
  • Stroke ourselves
  • Hug ourselves
  • Touch our faces

There are loads of signs that our bodies give away when we are nervous or under stress.

And we need to be aware of them.

If you’re aware that you fidget with the paper you’re holding, you need to know what to do to stop it.

You might pace too much, you might fidget with keys in your pocket, your hands might shake.

These are all perfectly common and very normal, the difference between the people who do these cues and the people who don’t is awareness.

Once you become aware that you are of these cues, you can work on strategies on how to catch yourself and stop doing them.

What Are You Saying?

Be aware of what you’re saying.

Sometimes we say things without meaning them.

Sometimes we say things and we didn’t even realise we’d said them.

A slip of the tongue or a lapse in concentration can be fatal when speaking.

Repeatedly using the same word, often unconsciously, can lead us to begin each sentence with fillers such as ‘so’ or ‘obviously’.

“So this is my blog article on public speaking. So the reason behind it is to help people get better at speaking. So when I first started writing this I didn’t realise how silly this looks when it’s written down. So that’s my example.”

Awareness is key to identifying this habit. Once you’re conscious of it, you can take steps to address it.

2. Awareness of Audience

Who are your audience?

Audiences vary with each presentation, making it crucial to understand who you’re speaking to. Recognising this can mean the difference between a resounding success and a complete failure.

Being knowledgeable about your audience’s demographics, such as age, gender, and cultural backgrounds, informs the language, tone, and even the duration of your speech.

Would a room full of hungry kids want to listen to someone speak for more than 2 mins?

Understanding your audience is crucial to customise both your message and delivery style for maximum effect.

If people are at a stand-up comedy gig, they want to laugh, they’re expecting to laugh. So using humour is a fundamental requirement.

However, when people are at a funeral, humour has to be used only if necessary and completely appropriate.

Being aware of your audience helps you prepare and craft a speech that lands.

A lack of awareness can feel like a lack of respect for your audience.

3. Awareness of Environment

William Henry Harrison was the 9th President of the United States.

He holds two presidential records; the longest inaugural address which took nearly 2 hours and, the shortest running presidency in U.S. history.

Harrison died just 31 days after his epic inaugural address, which he did outside on the 4th of March on a cold and wet day without an overcoat or hat.

It is largely believed that his death was related to the cold and ‘flu-like symptoms that he suffered from in the days and weeks after his cold and wet speech.

Pay attention to your surroundings.

Stuart Mitchell, a comedian, emphasised how crucial the setting is for comedy’s success.

He pointed out that factors like inadequate lighting, the vast distance between the audience and the stage, or the absence of a stage altogether can significantly impact the outcome of a performance.

Is the venue overly spacious or uncomfortably cramped? What about the temperature conditions?

Often, these details become apparent only upon arrival at the venue.

Stuart went on to say that on some occasions, he’ll address the environment in his act to try and engage with the audience.

But if it’s a cold and wet day and you’re outdoors, learn from poor old William Henry Harrison and have the awareness to cut your speech short, or make sure you’re wrapped up warm.

Preparation and Delivery

Practice and Preparation

“You can’t practice public speaking, you can only prepare for how you’ll feel when you’re speaking” – DK, The Public Speaking Lesson you Never Had

A lot of people mistaken practice for preparation.

Practice involves repeatedly performing an action, with the aim of enhancing and refining your skills over time

A common error many make is assuming that being able to speak means they don’t need further practice or improvement in their speaking skills.

We can always get better and learn new ways to enhance how we speak.

By practicing, you get yourself used to going through a process.

You can hone your message, you can enhance the language you want to use and you can practice building suspense.

Comedians practice ‘new material’ on audiences to test and refine all the time.

But what’s the difference between practicing and preparing?

If you practice a speech, you’ll begin to learn it word for word.

However, simply memorising your speech word for word doesn’t necessarily prepare you for the emotions you’ll experience during delivery.

Are you ready for the audience’s response to your words?

Have you considered how to handle potential disruptions, such as a lapse in memory or a momentary loss of focus?

We might avoid contemplating such situations, viewing them as the worst-case outcomes, yet being prepared for these eventualities can instil confidence and readiness to tackle them effectively.

For me, it’s about doing the preparation first.

Thorough preparation demonstrates to your audience that you have considered their perspective, adding depth and significance to your message.

Incorporating references to particular individuals or events familiar to the audience can help establish a connection between you and them.

Prepare for how people might react to what you are saying.

Before you begin writing or practicing, you need to think about how you want people to feel during your speech.

That begins the process of how to craft the message and the objective of the speech.

When it comes to preparing a speech, I focus on the process of Facts – Feeling – Actions.

  • Facts – What do I know and what do I want my audience to know by the end of my speech?
  • Feelings – How do I want to make my audience feel? What emotions do I want to trigger?
  • Action – What action do I want the audience to take after my speech?

For me, visualisation is key, I begin to picture how my speech will flow.

I contemplate the delivery of specific segments, identifying which parts should carry the greatest impact and strategising on how to achieve that effect.

I prepare for people’s responses.

What if someone disagrees or challenges me?

What If people don’t find the punchline funny enough?

And this is when I begin to move into the practice part of my preparation.

I practice how I want to say the speech. I practice telling the story I want to use to deliver the key message.

I say it out loud, I think about it, I think about how it could sound with a different tone or different language and I say it again.

And I repeat the process over and over and over again.

I’m always nervous before I begin any speaking engagement, but those nerves are more excitement than anxiety.

Anxiety and stress come down to a lack of control.

However, with adequate preparation, consistent practice, and adherence to your methodology, you’ll maintain control, effectively reducing stress and anxiety.

Choosing Your Topic

The easiest thing in the world to talk about is yourself.

We all have a story to tell, the only thing that makes it interesting or not is how we tell it to people.

The first speech I ever did was an ‘About Yourself’ speech.

It wasn’t a life story from birth to the current moment I was in, but it was a speech explaining to the audience who I was and why I was speaking to them.

Know Your Topic

The point of that speech was that nobody knows you as well as you know yourself.

And when it comes to speaking publicly about a particular topic, you need to know what you’re talking about.

If the audience gets the smallest of hints that you don’t know what you are talking about, they’ll lose trust and begin to feel uneasy.

That uneasiness will begin to spread and if you become aware of it, you’ll become uneasy.

There’s a huge difference between being vulnerable (which is often a good thing) and being out of your depth.

Vulnerability can build trust, but faking it in front of people who know the topic better than you do, can kill trust completely.

Know what you’re talking about.

Knowledge is powerful, but be careful not to be too knowledgeable.

Stay away from using jargon and complex language which can highlight how knowledgeable you are on the topic, but isolate people in the audience who don’t know what you mean.

It becomes a fine balance in knowing how to tread this line, but that’s why preparation and awareness become so important.

It’s not what you say, it’s How You Say It

The execution of each speech holds significant weight.

If the delivery isn’t right, the focus, message, and entire purpose of the speech risk being overlooked by the audience.

Once you know who the audience is, the intention of the speech, and the message you want to hit home, you need to know how you’re going to deliver it.

The two main parts of the brain that we use during communication are the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system.

The prefrontal cortex functions largely on logic and rational thought, while the limbic system is mainly governed by emotions.

These two parts of the brain can operate as opposites which is often why we find ourselves feeling conflicted between logic and emotion, often referred to as ‘head vs heart’.

The limbic system is the part of the brain that processes what we see, hear and feel instantly, it i is linked to our instinctual ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ reactions.

This is the part of our brain that picks up on body language, facial expression and tone of voice.

If someone is speaking in an aggressive tone, raising their voice, has an angry look on their face and are clenching their fists, our brain will recognise this as a threat and respond with a ‘fight, flight or freeze’ reaction.

Whereas, if someone has a smile on their face, raised eyebrows, uses softer tones and has their arms open towards us, we will process this as open and welcoming and not threatening.

In these scenarios, the focus isn’t on the spoken words themselves but rather on the speaker’s actions and the manner in which they communicate.

Non-verbal communication conveys messages without the need for spoken words.

Body language plays a crucial role in communication, revealing a great deal through our physical actions, whether we’re speaking or silent.

And this is a hugely powerful tool that can be used to emphasise the intention and message we want to deliver when we speak.

Speaking quickly can emphasise urgency, speaking quietly can build suspense, using a strict and direct tone can ensure people understand that you are serious.

Raising your eyebrows, opening your body with your palms up and smiling is a welcoming gesture and will make your audience feel comfortable and not threatened.

By learning about body language, you can use them as tools to manipulate how we want our audience to feel before we’ve even said a word.

However, if what your body language contradicts what you are saying, then this will cause confusion with the audience.

Confusion can foster doubt, potentially undermining the audience’s trust in you and your message.

Even with an exceptionally inspiring and motivational speech prepared, its impact and intention will be diminished if presented with uncertain body language and a monotone delivery.

It’s important to know about non-verbal communication and how much impact we can create through how we use our voice and body language.

“Communication is the transfer of emotions” – Seth Godin

Overloading speeches and presentations with information, stats and facts won’t generate emotional responses and we don’t know how much of that information will be remembered.

They’ll remember how they felt.

Stats, facts and information are processed by the prefrontal cortex which has rational and logic but no emotion.

If we want to create an emotional response, we need to communicate to the limbic system.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use stats, facts and figures in your speeches. Often these are important elements and it might even be the reason for speaking publicly in the first place, e.g. presenting sales figures to investors.

However, listing them and presenting them in a PowerPoint might look good and will get the necessary information in front of everyone who needs to see it.

But will it have the desired impact and generate an emotional response?

Tell the Story

It is thought that the ancient hieroglyphics were religious stories being passed through generation to generation.

We learn important messages throughout our childhood from stories being told or read to us.

We can use stories to emphasise the intention and message we want to deliver when we speak.

Why dull the audience with an overload of numbers, data, and pie charts in a sales presentation when you can captivate them with a story woven through the figures?

  1. Set the scene by providing context.
  2. Introduce characters.
  3. Identify the conflict or challenge to overcome.
  4. Describe the journey – what did you do to overcome the challenges?
  5. Highlight key moments – talk about the ups and the downs.
  6. Finish with the lesson/message/call to action.

Plot development is the way in which a story unfolds. The most simple form of telling a story is having a beginning, middle and ending.

But within all good stories, there is character development, twists and turns and an ending with meaning or purpose or a call to a action.

The teller knows where the story is going, the audience is on a journey with the speaker, but they don’t know where they will be taken.

Telling a good story involves knowing how to create intrigue through pace, tone, language and following a plot that develops right up to the end.

If you master how to tell a story, you’ll be able to get your point across, share knowledge and create influence with your audience.

Stories are the best way to communicate with emotion and meaning. People remember them, they remember how they felt when hearing the story and they’ll learn from the moral and the message of the story.

If you master how to tell a story, you’ll be able to get your point across, share knowledge and create influence with your audience.

Stories are the best way to communicate with emotion and meaning. People remember them, they remember how they felt when hearing the story and they’ll learn from the moral and the message of the story.

Stuart Mitchell – Comedy Consultancy and Creating Engagement through Humour

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In this week’s episode of the How You Say It Podcast, I caught up with Scottish Comedian, Writer and Event Host Stuart Mitchell.

For me, Stuart epitomises the hard work and effort that goes into something that so many of us take for granted.

In this episode, we talk about the importance of preparation, discipline, mental strength and just how important humour is in every day life.

“It’s hard until you train that comedy muscle and then it gets easier like everything else”

I love the fact that Stuart refers to the “comedy muscle” in the context of practice, preparation and putting in the hard work.

Comedians and great speakers have the knack of making what they do look completely effortless.

But what we don’t see when they perform is the hours and hours of hard work that has got them to where they are.

Stuart talks about his comedy co-host and previous guest of the podcast Raymond Mearns as being one of the complete exceptions to the rules.

Raymond is a man who is naturally funny and doesn’t need to to change who he is and how he speaks when he’s in front of an audience.

We can’t all be like Raymond though, and Stuart describes the amount of work that he’s put into his writing and performing.

It involves three hours of work before most of us are even out of beds with a 5am starting time which is when he feels is his most creative space in the day.

He continues to record every performance and, especially in the beginning, would review these recordings, revisit his notes, and meticulously refine his content to maximise its impact.

He invested in comedy mentorship and coaching in the United States, dedicating invaluable time to collaborate with comedy writers who have contributed to ‘The Late Show’.

And his work and investment has paid off.

He holds the title of the longest-standing panelist on BBC Scotland’s panel show ‘Breaking the News’ and is set to debut a new series on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday, February 25, 2024.

To describe how he likes to work, Stuart talks about an interview he once heard with wrestler Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart.

He explains that Bret Hart would wrestle with Ric Flair and that Ric would use the same moves every night at the various shows they were at while on tour.

However, Bret had a different approach and would be constantly testing new moves whilst on tour which would have varying degrees of success (crucially not as much as Roc Flair).

But when it came to the main events, Bret Hart would bring his tested moves together to create the best show he could put on.

This is the perfect example that Stuart could have given about the process he uses to work on new material, practicing and preparing.

And it’s this process that Stuart used for his new BBC Radio 4 Show – ‘Stuart Mitchell Cost of Living’ – during the Edinburgh Festival in 2023.

After writing the show in just two weeks, he went on to ‘road test’ the material over 26 nights at the Edinburgh Festival.

He openly admits that it was though, and that some of his material didn’t work.

But having that process of recording himself, watching it back and making changes to hone the material meant that by the end of the 26 night slog, he had a robust show that he was confident in and knew worked.

Comedy Consultancy

“It’s all about the left turn, the element of surprise. That’s all comedy is, it’s taking someone down a path and taking a left or a right turn that they’re not suspecting.”

As well as hosting, performing and writing, Stuart works with CEO’s and other people within the corporate world to help them add humour to their speeches or presentations.

It’s important to note that his assistance doesn’t extend to writing or preparing speeches or presentations; his focus is solely on integrating humour.

He emphasises the significance of incorporating humour, noting its ability to captivate an audience and foster a sense of unity.

Whether it’s through a touch of self-deprecation or a witty remark about the food or venue, these subtle humorous elements can significantly enhance presentations and speeches within a corporate setting.

The importance of showing your audience that you’re human by having a laugh at yourself can really let them in and see you in a different light.

Creating engagement with the audience is essential.

And if you know you have a 25-45 minute presentation to a room full of people, using subtle lines of humour can raise their interest and engagement in what you are saying.

This circles back to Stuart’s diligent efforts to customise the houmer specifically for the audience, setting, and occasion at hand.

It’s not merely about inserting generic one-liners into speeches; he delves deeply into understanding the organisation, its people, and the environment to craft the comedy.

Learning about the menu beforehand enables him to craft a joke or line about the evening’s food, giving the presenter an opportunity to deliver it as if spontaneously conceived.

This perceived quick wit endears the speaker to the audience, enhancing their appeal through humour.

Having spent time working with comedians and writers in America, Stuart explains that Comedy Consultancy is big business over in The States.

And once people use him and begin to incorporate humour into their speaking and presenting, they see the value and will often come back to Stuart for more.

Challenging Environments

“You need to be engaging, need to address the room, need an opening line to bring these people together.”

Speaking in public gives so many of us anxiety based on all the things that could go totally wrong.

For comedians, this has to be something to get to grips with as early in your career as possible.

Stuart explained that just three weeks before our recording, he had a corporate gig that was “one of his worst deaths”.

After reflection, he was confident enough that his material was fine, but the circumstances in the room were key factors to the gig not being a success.

Learning to deal with that can be a very tough process for people getting into stand up comedy, and Stuart stresses the importance of mental strength and resilience.

Very few people (if any) will have meteoric rises through the world of comedy without suffering from jokes and material not landing.

It’s part of the process and goes back to the hard work and preparation comedians like Stuart put in that the audience never sees.

However, comedians can identify certain indicators that suggest whether a performance is likely to be successful or challenging.

Stuart explains that he will know how a gig is going to go within the first 30 seconds of walking on stage.

Factors like; poor lighting, no stage, bad microphone and a gap between the performer and the audience are all factors that can cause issues for a comedian.

To counter these issues, Stuart highlights the importance of having constant awareness when he’s performing and hosting.

Whether it’s addressing the issues, altering his material or interacting with noisy members of the audience, he has to do all of this in a split second while he’s standing in front of his audience.

“I think we overthink it too much, all we’re looking for is a laugh. We’re looking for a left turn.”

Throughout this interview, the key messages that shine through are creating engagement and connection with the audience through humour.

What’s perfectly clear is that whilst people like Stuart can make this look totally effortless and easy, the hard work, tailoring of material and discipline that goes into this is what makes a complete performance.

Listen to the full episode – https://tr.ee/OS2C8FmpzF

My Public Speaking Process – How I prepare

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I’ve been doing a lot more public speaking recently, and I’m absolutely loving it. There’s something about being in front of a group of people and speaking that just makes me happy.

People often view ‘public speaking’ as delivering keynote speeches to rooms, lecture theatres, or stages with hundreds or thousands of people watching and listening.

But actually, speaking in public can be as simple as presenting or speaking to a room of 3-5 people. Public speaking is mainly defined as ‘speaking in front of a live audience.‘ And for many people, this can be a terrifying thought.

I never knew and still don’t fully know if speaking can be a profession. But what I do know is that it’s something I love doing, and I want to explore as many different avenues of it as possible.

Putting my training hat on, I decided to jot down some of the key points that I follow when it comes to preparing and delivering a presentation or speaking in public.

If anyone would like to find out more information on this and would like to be a guinea pig for a speaking and communication coaching session, then please drop me a message.

Disclaimer: This is my own process and what I do. There will be other people who use completely different or similar processes, but this is what I do.

  1. Know the message: Before I go out to deliver training sessions, presentations, or speak to people, I always have a message that is to be delivered. Basically, what is the one thing that I want everyone to take away from what I have said? This keeps me on track, and I know this will be the ‘through line’ of the whole speech or presentation.
  2. Focus points: Have points to focus on. Less is more in this sense. I don’t want to bombard people with too much information, and I don’t want to try and squeeze too much in. Keep it simple and use these focus points to emphasise the message being delivered.
  3. Tell a story: People love stories, and we communicate best through telling stories. I like to relate all my presentations or speeches to a story or anecdote that I can connect to the main message or use to deliver on the focus points.
  4. Simple structure – Beginning – Middle – End: There’s nothing fancy or scientific about this. Keep it simple and know where you are in the structure at all times. A strong opening to grab people’s attention, bring in the relatable focus points in the middle, and then deliver and emphasise the message and/or call to action at the end.
  5. Power of emotion: We all communicate through emotion. Humour, body language, and using variety in my voice help me emphasise the emotion I want to get across at certain parts. Am I being serious, am I being funny, or am I trying to leave an impact? The only way the audience will know this is how I use my own emotions with them.
  6. Engage with the audience: Make them feel part of it. You really have to know the audience for this to know exactly what level of engagement you want or need. But, make them feel part of it, ask questions and encourage actions. Interactive presentations keep people tuned in and focused on what you are saying.
  7. Know your audience: This is one of the biggies for me. Understand and know who you are speaking to. How are they feeling? How can I empathises with them so that they know that I know them and their needs? I try to find out as much about who will be in the room as I can. Then I can gauge how I’ll deliver the message and how I can make my presentation/speech as relatable as possible.
  8. Visualise: I’m a big lover of visualisation. In the build-up to every presentation, training course, or speaking engagement I visualise constantly right up to the point I begin. In my mind, I’m picturing how people will react to certain points, what I will do in certain moments, how I will emphasise what I want to get across, and what to do if something doesn’t go to plan. Usually, I visualise being carried out on top of a cheering crowd chanting my name, but that’s still not happened yet…
  9. Practice – Analyse – Practice: My wife will tell anyone that I rarely shut up. And she’ll clarify from overhearing me that I constantly talk to myself in the toilet and the shower. I have an inner and outer dialogue, and it’s always on. If I have a topic in my mind, I’m practicing it in my head and out loud. Then when I think it’s ready, I’ll practice it on a group or in a speech. I’ll analyse how it went and what needs tweaking, practice it again and again and again, and keep doing it.
  10. Keep it flexible: I don’t like to have restrictive boundaries. Time can be the main one. I have a ‘web’ in my mind of topics, anecdotes, stories, and jokes (some funnier than others) that I can pick out and use in an instant. When I’m practicing, I’ll use these together or in different orders. I try not to use notes, but if I do, I use them as prompts so I don’t need to read and talk at the same time. If it’s flexible, I can cut bits out or add bits in as I’m going, and that way I can make it as long or as short as I need it to be and also make it personal to the audience.
  11. Enjoy the silence: In many cases when speaking publicly, silence is golden. This wasn’t the case when I did the quietest 5 minutes of comedy material at The Stand in Edinburgh. But silence can be your friend. Use it to pace yourself and use it to emphasise points. Just don’t fill silence with ‘umms’ or ‘ehs’.

I’ve tried to put my own points down to explain my own process when it comes to delivering presentations and speaking in public. I’ve read plenty of blogs and listened to loads of podcasts on this, and some of these points will be consistent with what other people do too.

It was actually quite hard to put these down in a list as it’s become something that is almost second nature to me now.

find out more about public speaking with my full guide and breakdown of Public Speaking Skills.

If you find any of this helpful and/or insightful, please let me know. And if you would like to try a free communication coaching session, then let me know.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood – How to build effective interpersonal communication to build influence

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In his book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey dedicates a chapter to Habit No.5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. 

We are all guilty of being too keen to help someone with a problem they have. We jump in and explain what we think they should do or what we think they need to hear. And it will often come from a good place; “You should try doing this…” or “what you need is…”. But really, all we’re doing in these circumstances is passing on our thoughts based on what we think.

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes…

How can we really tell someone what we think they need, or need to do without fully understanding their needs? Stephen Covey uses an example of using someone else’s glasses to fix their eyesight. Just because the glasses might benefit the person who is wearing them, doesn’t mean they’ll be any good to anyone else who has eyesight issues.

We can’t fully ‘fix’ someone’s issues, if we don’t fully understand what the problem is. And what works for us, won’t always work for someone else.

I see this a lot in the mental health awareness and ambassador/first aider training that I deliver. Our instinct is to tell a person suffering from poor mental health what we think they should do to get ‘better’. We forget to seek to understand and jump straight to wanting them to understand what we think the problem is and what they should do.

More often than not, the majority of us don’t actually want to hear someone giving us their solutions to our problems, we just want them to listen and understand.

And there lies the problem… Listening.

When did we learn to listen?

Covey describes the 4 basic types of communication:

Reading

Writing 

Speaking 

Listening

But what ones do we use the most every day?

For the vast majority of us, speaking is the main form of communication that we use. Writing and reading would come next and listening often comes last. From our earliest years, we are first taught how to speak, then read and write. But can anyone actually remember being taught to listen?

Julian Treasure’s TEDTalk – How to speak so that people want to listen – is one of the most popular TEDTalks of all time. It sits in the top 10 talks comfortably and has well over 50 million views on YouTube. However, in his interview on the Diary of a CEO Podcast, Julian explains that he has done 5 TEDTalks, and the talk he did on listening has just a 5th of the viewers as his talk on speaking.

“We’re much keener to be heard than we are to listen to others” – Julian Treasure 

Why do we want to be heard so much, but struggle to hear others?

Everyone likes to feel heard. We want to be validated and feel valued. We want to give our value to others and help them when they need it. But we often fall into the trap of doing it on our terms instead of the other person’s. We forget to seek the understanding. Asking questions instead of imparting our knowledge. Truly finding out exactly what the issues, problems or needs are.

We look at things through our own perspectives and hold our own judgments. But as Stephen Covey explains in his book – “The key to good judgement is understanding.” 

A mistake often made in sales is trying to sell a product rather than selling the solution. Finding out exactly what the needs are of the buyer or the market is how some of the most innovative inventions and technology has been created.

Communication is a 2 way process. When we speak, we want to be heard. Julian Treasure can explain exactly how to do that in his TEDTalk. If we really want to be heard and really want our message to have an impact on the people we are talking to, then we need to know and understand them first. Then and only then can we have the impact that we want our own words to have.

How do we listen?

Stephen Covey believes that Empathetic Listening is key to creating an understanding. Trust plays a huge role in being able to get someone to open up and confide in the listener. If anyone starts to feel judged or unsafe, they we won’t be as open as they would if they were comfortable with the listener. We can’t build an understanding if the person we communicate with doesn’t feel comfortable enough to speak to us.

Listen with the intent to understand rather than listening with the intent to reply. Sometimes, silence is golden. We might think that we’ve had a similar experience, but this is their space to share not ours. Respect their space.

Empathise, don’t sympathise. Sympathy is a form of judgmental listening. Sympathy can create dependancy, and Covey explains that people can often feed off sympathy.

It’s not about agreeing or disagreeing, it’s about understanding. We all see the world differently and can have varying perspectives. Enjoy finding out how to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Be aware!

Empathetic listening is just one way to improve communication. It’s not a technique, and it’s certainly not something that needs to be used all of the time. If someone feels like a technique is being used on them, then they won’t trust you. It takes practice but more importantly, it takes awareness.

Be aware of when to use it and when you don’t need to use it. And be especially aware of when you find yourself creeping back into bad habits of judgmental listening, telling rather than asking and/or diagnosing before prescribing.

 

Visualise – Catastrophise – Energise | Prof Damien Hughes TEDx Talk on Finding your Courage

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Professor Damien Hughes has written and spoken about high performance in business and sport. He has written books and is co-host with Jame Humphry on one of the top podcasts in the UK – The High Performance Podcast. 

In his recent TEDx Talk in Manchester – How Peak Performers Find the Path to Courage – he talks about the challenges we face when it comes to making change. This can be as individuals but also applied to organisations and teams.

There are loads of examples of people who have gone against the grain and challenged the perception of how something can be done differently. And all of them will have gone through Arthur Schopenhauer’s ‘Three Stages of a Known Truth’: 

  1. Ridicule 
  2. Violently opposed 
  3. Accepted as self-evident

In his talk, Hughes uses a real life ‘hare and the tortoise story’ from the first ever ultra marathon in Australia. When the 61 year old Cliff Young turned up to enter the 875km race in his farming overalls and boots no one believed he would genuinely attempt to start the race. When the race started and the athletes all ran past him, it was clear that Cliff had his own unique shuffle style of running.

Needless to say, from his appearance, age and running style; Cliff Young was ridiculed by everyone involved in the event. But when Cliff decided not to take a break and carry on shuffling through the night while the other athletes were resting, he gradually built up a lead on them and went on to win the first ever Australian Ultra Marathon.

This was when Cliff Young’s approach was violently opposed and questioned. ‘He must have cheated’ they all thought. It was standard practice for ultra marathon athletes to stop for a 6 hour rest. But Cliff hadn’t bothered. As it turns out, there was nothing in the rules about rest times for the runners. It had just become a standard practice that everyone conformed to.

So it was no surprise 12 months later at the same race, when the majority of the race entrants had adopted the same Cliff Young shuffle running style. It had finally become accepted as self-evident.

The moral of this story isn’t the same as the ‘Hare and the Tortoise’ tale. It isn’t about chipping away at something slowly and steadily like the tortoise did. It isn’t about being humble which was the lesson for the hare. It’s about courage and having the bravery to stand out from the crowd to challenge the perceptions of others and keep going with it, even when you’re being ridiculed and opposed.

“Dead fish go with the flow”

We all like to think we can stand out from the crowd and walk our own paths. But how easy is it to do that? How strong do you have to be when faced with the challenges of doing something a different way?

For all the people who had the courage to do something differently and challenge the perceptions of the others around them, how many people didn’t? And how many ideas have been lost to the buckling of peer pressure or the fear of what others might think?

“It’s presence doesn’t always guarantee success, but it’s absence almost makes success impossible”  – Courage

Allodoxaphobia – the fear of other people’s opinions – is the second highest phobia in the UK. It’s safe to say we all suffer from this at different points in our lives. Social anxiety and a fear of being judged can seriously damage our confidence and prevent us from standing out from the crowd.

We need that feeling of belonging and we don’t want to be rejected. This is why social conformity is often the easiest option. But do we want to just be ‘dead fish’ going with the flow? Or do we want to stand out and follow the path that we believe in, even if it goes against the grain?

To help with overcoming these fears and anxieties, Damien Hughes discusses processes that are used with professional athletes and high performers to keep them on the right track.

Visualise

Visualisation helps us all literally paint a picture in our minds. There is more and more scientific evidence that suggests visualising specific activities or scenarios can activate the same neural pathways in the brain as actually performing those activities or experiencing those scenarios.

Catastrophise

We often stay away from the ‘what if’ questions. No one likes being brought down to reality when someone starts trying to pick holes in our plans. But we need to be prepared for all eventualities. What if the plan doesn’t work out like we thought? How will we react if something does go wrong?

Creating these pre-mortems and asking ourselves what could or can go wrong, will ultimately help prepare us for hurdles we might have to face. By adding catastrophising with the visualisation, our courage can increase by up to 32%. It builds resilience for if/when something does go wrong.

Damien Hughes talks about writing a ‘Zander Letter’ which is a letter to yourself written as if it is 12 months in the future. In this letter you write about how you have achieved what you set out to achieve and how you overcame the obstacles that were in your way. This encourages you to really think in detail what could get in the way and how you will deal with it for when that happens.

Energise

Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter came up with what is now known as ‘Kanter’s Law’ when it comes to change: In the middle, everything looks like a failure.

How do we keep ourselves energised to keep going when we’re stuck in the middle and it’s too far to go back and the finish line looks a million miles away?

Having the courage to keep going is the hardest part. Reminding ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. We are full of energy at the start of a project and we love the feeling when we’ve finished. But when we find ourselves in the messy middle and things start to feel overwhelming, we need to find a way to keep the energy to keep going in the times that she lost her confidence.

Hughes ends his talk with examples of reminders that athletes use to re-centre their minds in moments of doubt. He also quotes the ‘Paradoxical Commandments’ by Kent Keith which Mother Teresa often used to keep her own levels of courage high so she could keep doing what she was doing.

Courage doesn’t always come naturally. It takes work and practice like everything else. Visualising, catastrophising and keeping ourselves energised can help us all have the courage to make the changes we need to make and get to the finish line.

 

 

 

 

James Smith – Confidence Predicts Success

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James Smith is one of the main reason that I started this blog. In January 2023, I took some time to listen back to my favourite Diary of a CEO podcast episodes and write about my top 5.

It was though but fun ranking all the episodes that I’d enjoyed and then trying to pick the 5 I enjoyed the most.

James Smith wasn’t someone on my radar. I knew of him but I had never really explored who he was. My perception was that he was another one of these ‘shock jock’ fitness influencers that likes to go against the grain and say things for the shock factor.

Steven Bartlett does describe him in the show notes as having a ‘no holds barred approach to fitness advice’. But after listening to this episode and paying a bit more attention to James and what he is doing, my original perception has since changed.

He’s a confident guy. And he wants to use his confidence to breed confidence in other people through what he does. And if I hadn’t listened back to this episode, I probably wouldn’t have got my shit together and started this blog.

As a fitness coach at heart, James has spent a large part of his working life around people who are wanting to change; either get fitter, stronger, faster or lose the weight they’re not happy carrying around. But rather than just help people shift the few extra pounds or finally get the 6 pack they’ve always wanted, he cuts through to the REAL reason(s) why they want what they want.

And a lot of it comes down to confidence and how they feel. It could be that they no longer feel ‘sexy’ for their partners or don’t feel comfortable when they take their top off in public. He called these ‘pain points’ for his clients. And when he works with a client, he has to get to the core of the issue and find the real pain points so that they can work together on how to start the change process. This is more often than not a case of building confidence. 

Before he began working as a fitness instructor, he worked as a door to door salesman. This is where he believes a lot of his confidence was built and developed.  He explains that he became aware that confidence is a relationship with failure. Doors being slammed in his face, phones being hung up when he was trying to sell were demoralising. But if he got 1 sale from 100 sales calls, then he had the evidence to back himself.

Building resilience is key. We all get knock backs throughout our careers and lives. Having the resilience and strength to find a way to deal with it and bounce back is so important. So when people like James Smith share their story of how they dealt and managed failure, we can take these examples and apply them to ourselves.

“Anxiety predicts failure and confidence predicts success”

We all have anxiety. And for some of us it can vary on how severe it is and when we feel it. Managing anxiety is hard. Especially if we find ourselves in a situation where it becomes amplified. Standing in front of strangers with a mic in your hand or even just trying to hit ‘record’ on your phone camera to shoot a short video. It’s a natural feeling and completely normal to have these pangs of anxiety. But it’s our relationship with anxiety which predicts how much we let it control us.

Fear of failure naturally crosses our mind when we are anxious. ‘What if i forget what I’m supposed to say…’ or ‘What if they don’t like me and I don’t get the job…’ and ‘What if no one likes me and this flops..’. Unfortunately, shit happens sometimes.

There will be times that you don’t get the job that you wanted, or times when you do say something all jumbled up during a presentation. And for James Smith, he uses the memory of doors being slammed in his face on his door to door sales calls. But what he also uses is the knowledge that after so many doors being shut in his face, if he kept going, he’d get that one sale he needed. So using the confidence that he CAN sell the product because he had the evidence, he was able to keep going.

This rings true when he found himself on the other side of the world in Australia and his original plan wasn’t working. He wasn’t getting the same success as a PT in Australia as he’d had in the UK. His confidence was low and he was anxious about what he was going to do. So he decided to record a few videos on his phone and start putting them out on Facebook and the rest is history.

One of the main takeaways I took from this episode was the power of audacity. We can often associate audacity with negative connotations. We can look at someone like James and think that he’s over confident and has the audacity to say the things he says on his social media. We need confidence and audacity to achieve the things we want to. 

But having the audacity to ask difficult questions and not be worried about how other people think is huge when it comes to building confidence. He references a great experiment he heard on The Tim Ferris Podcast about asking for a 10% discount when buying a coffee. And goes on to quote Mark Manson with a quote I really like – “People wouldn’t care what other people thought of them so much if they realised how seldom they do.” 

We worry about what other people will think about us. And this builds anxiety in our heads. The anxiety relates to the reason we often don’t start the blog or podcast we have always wanted to. Or getting our message across the way we want to get it over.

We live in a polarised world where everything we say and put out on social media is open for others to judge us on. If you are less anxious and a bit more audacious with a positive outlook on your expectations, then with small steps you can achieve a lot more than you can by sitting wondering about it.

For me it was toss up between James Smith or Sir Richard Branson to add to my top 5 episodes. Sorry Dicky, James pipped you to the post on this one.

Check the full episode on YouTube –  HERE 

Listen to the episode HERE 

 

 

How You Say It – Lessons from Sir Alex Ferguson on Leading

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For me, Sir Alex Ferguson is the godfather of ‘man management’. It’s not just the longevity of managing at the highest level in world football, it’s the consistent success he had throughout his career as a leader.

Tactics, ability to sign great players and being able to watch a football match unfold and know what changes need to be made. These are all some of the attributes that make good football managers. However, communication is what separates the good managers from the great managers.

One of the books I dip in and out of very often is Leading which is co-written by Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Michael Moritz. The book is structured around the key skills that Ferguson values highest. It is aimed at giving the reader lessons in leadership that anyone can apply to their own situation.

The one chapter that I’ve dipped into the most, and used in plenty of my training courses is Chapter 8 -Owning The Message. This is the chapter that is dedicated to speaking, writing and answering questions.

Alex Ferguson had to communicate with a lot of people on a day to day basis as the manager of one of the biggest sporting organisations in the world. Players, coaching staff, owners/directors, media, supporters and the global audience. How was he so successful at communicating?

Despite how hard I’ve looked at this and analysed how complex or profound the answer could be,  it’s actually a little bit anticlimactic in some ways.

Keep it simple.

That’s it. Nothing fancy. Just keep the message that you want to deliver simple and clear to understand.

It’s not rocket science, but as easy as that looks and sounds; keeping it simple takes a hell of a lot of work.

Know your audience

“I got into the habit of imagining that I was in the shoes of the listener. I knew from my own experience as a player what it was like to listen to a manager drone on, especially if it was the day before a game, and you were just raring to get onto the training field and blow off some steam.”

He also explains the importance of keeping his team talks ‘short and punchy’ but still getting his point over. To do this, he had to know exactly what message he wanted to convey and how he would deliver it.

As football became more global, he was dealing with international players from all over the world. Language was a barrier. And if his team talks were being translated then it was essential that messages and meaning weren’t being lost in translation.

Next time you’re  needing to explain something to someone, imagine how you would say it to a translator for them to explain your words to another person.

Despite playing at the top level of competition in the world with some of the best players on the planet. Sometimes the simple messages were the most effective and easiest to understand:

“The instructions i gave most frequently were very short. They were nothing more complicated than ‘Keep the ball’ or ‘Do not let them score’”.

Know what you want to say

“You need to know what you want to say; you have to contemplate how you are going to deliver the message; and you have to maintain control of the audience.”

Preparation is so important when planning on delivering a message. Ferguson was always aware of not wanting to deliver a ‘sermon’ that the players had possibly heard him say in the past. He would find new ways to get a message across to emphasise his point.

He explains how he used the Canadian Geese in their flying formation as an example of team work. On one occasion he told a story of his recent trip to his first live performance of a classical music concert. He described to the players how the conductor wanted the same things from the musicians as Ferguson wanted from them: control, harmony, tempo, timing and rhythm.

He planned this conversation and took the time to work out how he would deliver his message using the metaphor.

Alex Ferguson calls this ‘maintaining control of the audience’. For me this is creating engagement. Making sure that he was never repeating himself to agonise over the same old points with players and always thinking of new ways to get his message over.

“Whether the audience is one person or 75,000, you need to assemble your thoughts, know what you want to emphasise and just say it.”

How you say it

“One message that seemed to strike home (at least judging by the number of players who appear to have remembered it) were the words i used at the half-time during the 1999 Champions League final when we were trailing Bayern Munich 1-0. I said’ ‘When that cup is going to be presented, just remember that you can’t even touch it if you’re the losers – you’ll be walking past it with your losers’ medals, knowing someone walking behind you is going to lift the Cup.’”

Alex Ferguson had a reputation for being a feisty character. The phrase ‘the hairdryer treatment’ had been coined by pundits to describe what it felt like to face the angry side of the feisty Scotsman. But this persona was often over-played by the media. No one would have lasted the length of time in leadership at the top level if they had only communicated using anger and raised voices.

He knew exactly at what point to deliver his message to his players and how he should do it. In the book, he mentions the power of giving a player positive reinforcement to make them feel better about themselves rather than using negative feedback. He would never tell a player if they were looking tired, even if he could see it. Instead he built them up to feel stronger.

He knew which players would respond positively and which ones wouldn’t to different ways of saying something. He knew when would be the best time to make his remarks more punchy and when saying less got more.

Using the power of silence can be just as powerful.

“Sometimes, after we had a bad result, I would finish what i had to say to the players and then sit down on the bench and say nothing. The subsequent quietness was probably more effective than anything i said.”

Sir Alex Ferguson knew how to get the best out of people. And although he had great players, coaches and a wealth of experience in the game. One of the main reasons for his success is how communicated. He delivered a message of success to players in a rapidly changing environment consistently. This takes huge skills to keep your message relevant over such a long period of time.

But the beauty of what he did is that he kept it simple. Regardless of whether it was a 1 to 1 conversation with an individual or addressing a stadium full of 75,000 people. He never overcomplicated it and always got his message across.

I would strongly recommend buying this book. If you’re like me and don’t have the attention to sit and read a book cover to cover, this book is ideal to dip in and out of for small reminders.