the kings speech « The One Minute Presenter

: King David from Crestock Images

Tips to improve your next presentation

Is the fear of public speaking really such a big fear? The uncomfortable moments in the Oscar winning The King’s Speech, probably felt painfully familiar to many who have been under pressure while presenting. It certainly did for me and as someone who went to a speech therapist for elocution lessons as a child it made me think what we can take away from watching a movie about a man learning to manage his stammer. This article will cover some of the good tips and dispel the bizarre.

The King’s Tip: Always stand up to deliver a speech of importance.

An engaging speaking voice is very relevant today, as many business presentations are given through teleconferences. The lack of visual cues makes it harder for listeners to catch the message and tougher for speakers to read the audience. Standing up places you in an assertive posture and allows deeper breathing from your diaphragm which aids better vocal quality projection. Opera singers could deliver with such a wide range while sitting. Strengthening your abdominal muscles enables you to better fill your lungs with air. So you now have another reason to get to the gym. It’s optional whether you would want to have your wife sitting on your stomach.

The King’s Tip: Gradually expand your ability to project your voice.

Adding strength and authority starts with becoming comfortable with the sound of your own voice. Before I became a professional speaker, I was incredibly shy and self-conscious when speaking to groups. Partly this is because I am a natural introvert like many professionals in finance, IT and engineering. This can’t be changed overnight but like any skill can be developed. Practise your presentation out aloud, ideally in a meeting room, and project your voice so that someone at the back of the room would hear. While you don’t need to sing out your windows, find fun excuses to raise your voice, like playing sports or refereeing a football match at your children’s school.

Aside from voice improvements, the movie also highlights the importance of preparation and rehearsal.

The King’s Tip: Great speakers are made, not born.

No infant starts to speak with a stammer and no one starts with a fear of public speaking. Conversely, no one is born a natural public speaker. Circumstances, experiences and environment all play a key part in how people develop. I had a bad experience in a school drama class that put me off public speaking for decades. The good news is that these fears can be overcome. Hard work and determination to improve are the greatest success factors in becoming an effective public speaker. How many presenters could match the King’s dedication when he visited his speech therapist 82 times before a six month world tour? Many presenters do not allocate any time to rehearse their speech. If you have three weeks to prepare a totally new 20 minute presentation allow between 30 minutes and 1 hour a day for preparation and time-block it in your calendar. You wouldn’t expect to become a better swimmer if you never went to the pool, so find the time to practice your speaking skills.

The King’s Tip: Learn to self-evaluate

You don’t learn by doing, you learn by re-doing. Accelerate your learning by listening to your presentation on a video or audio recorder. This highly effective way makes you more aware of the areas you need to focus on – if you can get over the embarrassment of looking or listening to yourself! After watching a recording, take a piece of paper and divide it into two halves. Write down all your strengths on one side and areas that you would like to improve on the other. You will be surprised after this exercise, sometimes you sound better than you imagined. Most audiences don’t judge us as harshly as we critique ourselves.

Tips to avoid

Tips to avoid include relaxing your throat by smoking deeply into your lungs! Voice care is important so drink plenty of water and add lemon or honey. You can also lightly massage your vocal chords before you start presenting. Another piece of bad advice is “always start with a joke”. While humour can connect with your audience, it’s such a high risk approach. You might offend, not deliver it with the best timing or just not tell a funny joke. Not the best way to start your presentation.

In addition to the above tips, The King’s Speech highlights two key lessons. Firstly, only you can change you. If you don’t want to improve or if you don’t think it’s that important then your progress will reflect that. Secondly, being consistent and realistic about changing an engrained behaviour is essential. Put some time aside to rehearse and the improvements will follow.

About the Author

Warwick J Fahy

“I work with high-potential senior executives who need to be more confident and influential with their key stakeholders. I help the executive quickly and powerfully express their opinions into message based presentations – even when under pressure.” Learn more about who I help here.

Warwick is the author of “The One Minute Presenter: 8 steps to successful business presentations in a short attention span world”. Buy or download the book here.

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If you have ever sat through a presentation and felt like this picture, then give us a call. We help executives learn how to get to the point and create memorable and persuasive presentations. Call us on +86 21 6101 0486

: “Ever feel like the presenter is making too many points?”

Photo credit: Piotr Bizior

: Architecture from Yuri Arcurs Website

The highly acclaimed King’s Speech has been attracting a lot of attention recently. It was an entertaining film, especially for some of the bizarre treatments used to treat stutterers in the 1930s. It reminded me of the elocution lessons I took when I was about five years old to fix a slight problem I had in speaking certain words. Luckily I didn’t need to fill my mouth with marbles.

I was thinking whether this was a good film for my profession or not. Certainly, by showing a sometimes moving story of a person who worked incredibly hard at improving his skills for the new era of radio and public speeches, it is certainly a good role model for how we should all learn. On the flip side, the eccentric nature of the practitioners (speech therapists) in the film gave me mixed feelings. From their bizarre suggestions that smoking is good for your lungs to the amateur dramatics actors lurking beneath the surface, they seemed to fall into the usual clichés of how public speakers are regarded.

In today’s busy, distracted and short attention span world, I think we do need to be not only great speakers, but also engaging storytellers.

Being an effective presenter is less about the mechanics of public speaking and more about the engagement skills you need to connect with your audiences. So while breathing and measuring the distance to the microphone are nice touches, they are the cherries on the cake. They are useful only after a solid foundation has been put in place. Business professionals need to engage in so many different ways that most of their presentations are of the informal nature. Conference calls, one-on-one meetings, quick pep talks with their team, business events with regulators. Often they need to be just as persuasive without taking the stage.

So should we all have a speech coach? While I don’t think we need a speech therapist as depicted in the film, there is certainly a need for upgrading of business presentation skills across the board. Visit any company and speak with executives and you will pick up the frustration of long, dull meetings with long, dull data-heavy presentation slides. Or how long it takes to persuade a team that change is needed. Or inability to connect with younger colleagues. Or senior executives from a different country.

Most presentations are forgettable, do not have a clear message, are not delivered with passion, avoid all techniques that might make a message memorable (like story-telling and metaphor creation). Added to this most executives underestimate the amount of preparation that is needed for presenting a message.

A recent coaching engagement brought this out. A senior finance executive was frustrating his direct managers: the country CEO and also a global CFO based overseas. They had frequently asked the executive to be briefer and more concise in their one-on-one meetings which often over-ran by 30 or 60 minutes on a regular basis. Only after two or three coaching sessions where we worked on how to form a concise message, how to use structure to arrange ideas and how to think through the material by using scanning and drilling questions did the executive realise that “ this takes a long time to prepare” . At first, like any new skill, it will take longer. But with practice, various techniques can be learned that dramatically reduce the time taken by the executive to prepare and deliver his points. When you think about how much it costs your organisation to have three or four senior level people in a meeting, this added productivity is a cost saver. In addition, the improvement in the relations between the executives helps enormously get things done in future projects.

So if you haven’t seen The King’s Speech yet, it is an entertaining view and if it does inspire you to think about improving your public speaking or presentation skills, then please do contact us. We specialise in executive communication and have specific coaching packages to help senior executives become more productive through their communication and also for particular events like conference speaking.

How engaging is your presenting?
Here are a few questions to check before you deliver:

Do you have an overall message for your speech which you could express in under 10 words?
Do you have a good metaphor for your presentation? (A quest, a battle, an exploration)
Could you create a single visual image that would express your main idea?
Will anyone remember your presentation? On a scale from 1 to 10, how memorable do you think your presentation will be? Will anyone remember it in a month’s time? Three months?
Have you drawn your key points into catchy sound-bites, questions, powerful statements or eye-catching visuals that will help the audience engage with your main message?

If you can answer “yes!” to all five questions then you are well on your way to creating a great presentation. Make sure you then spend as much time as you can in rehearsal. For a 20 minute presentation, you should be spending 2 -3 hours in stand-up, speak-out-aloud rehearsal.

List of famous stutterers here.

So what now?

If you are ready to take a step up in your career, and want to learn how to be a more powerful communicator, then visit our web site below and download a free chapter on how The One Minute Presenter system works to help you develop more executive presence.

Warwick John Fahy works with high-potential senior finance executives who struggle to get their point across and influence their key stakeholders. Warwick helps the executive gain respect by quickly and powerfully expressing their opinions. Clients hire Warwick for his highly practical approach. For free executive speaking tips http://www.oneminutepresenter.com/blog

To arrange presentation skills coaching visit http://www.warwickjohnfahy.com. For a media interview call +86 1391 786 7502.

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