A few months ago, I was browsing YouTube (no doubt heading for another 4 hour rabbit hole as usual) and was recommended a video published by MIT. The title of the video was “How To Speak” ...🤨 I had thought it was pretty obvious how to speak, we all do it every day of our lives so what is there to learn from this video? 60 minutes later, my mind was blown and I found myself furiously typing notes and rewinding the video to capture my thoughts. My thoughts and summarisations on what I found interesting are what makes up this blog post. The link to the original video can be found at the end of this article.
I hope that in the 10 minutes it takes you to read this, you will know things about speaking that you don't know now, and something among those things you know will make a difference in your life.
The Formula
‘S’ stands for your speaking skill, ‘K’ stands for your knowledge about how to speak, ‘P’ stands for how much you practice, and ‘T’ stands for how much inherent talent you’re born with.
Notice the different sizes of each part of the formula. It's a matter of how much knowledge you have, how much you practice with that knowledge, and your inherent talent (in that order), and notice that the T is very small. What really matters is what you know in how to speak.
"This point came to me suddenly a few decades ago when I was skiing at Sun Valley. I had heard that it was Celebrity Weekend, and one of the celebrities was Mary Lou Retton, the famous Olympic gymnast, perfect 10s in the vault. And I heard that she was a novice at skiing, so when the opportune moment arrived, I looked over on the novice slope and saw this young woman who, when she became unbalanced, was flailing about. And I said that's got to be her. That must be the gymnast.
But then, it occurred to me, I'm a much better skier than she is, and she's an Olympic athlete-- not only an ordinary Olympic athlete, an outstanding one. And I was a better skier because I had the K, and I had the P, and all she had was the T. So you can get a lot better than people who may have inherent talents if you have the right amount of knowledge." - Patrick Winston
How To Start Your Talk
Do not start with a joke. In the beginning of a talk, people are still settling down and getting adjusted to your speaking parameters (the way you talk), they do not know you so they're not ready for a joke - it doesn't work very well and will often fall flat.
Instead, start with an empowerment promise - you have to tell people what they're going to know at the end of the talk that they didn't know at the start of the talk. It's the reason for them being there after all. Nobody cares about your talk, they care about what useful things they can learn from your talk. So make this about the audience, look at this from their perspective, and start by telling them what useful thing they will get out of this talk. As we know, people care about two things in life; themselves, and correcting others.
4 Heuristic Samples
Cycles
Tell people what you want to tell them, tell them again, then tell them for a third time. At any given moment, 20% of people will have a fogged out know matter what the talk is about so to increase the probability that everybody gets it, you need to say it 3 times. Even if people got lost in your details the second time, they still end up feeling like they have understood the big picture at least.
Build A Fence
Tell people what your talk specifically is going to answer and just as importantly, what it is not going to answer. What is out of scope? What is this talk not about? Once you’ve established how your talk is unique and something they won’t hear anywhere else, you’ll have captured their intrigue.
Verbal Punctuation
There's nothing worse than having to listen to a monotonous speaker. Break up your speeches by varying your speech patterns, and letting pauses breathe. You need to think about breaking up your talk into parts to give the audience a sense of structure. [thing about Nixon vs. Kennedy]
Questions
Ask a question and wait for the answer. You can wait up to 7 seconds here which may feel like an eternity to you but that's the standard time to wait for an answer.
The question needs to be carefully chosen:
- Not too obvious because people will be too embarrassed to say the answer
- Not too hard because no one will have anything to say
Time & Place
11AM is the perfect time to hold a presentation as most people are awake by then and it's not right after a meal. The place needs to be well lit and not dim. We, as humans, associate dim conditions as a signal to go to sleep.
You should also case the place - check to make sure the setup works and that there's no surprises to you.
If possible, it should be reasonably populated. Too few and people who HAVE turned up will be wondering what else is going on that's so interesting that nobody is at your talk. Not packed, but at least half full.
The Tools
Writing Board
Writing boards are good for informing/educating, slides are good for exposing. The good thing with boards is that they allow you to be more flexible and fluid in connecting ideas through lines & graphics. Additionally, the act of you writing on a board is approximately the same speed that people absorb information and ideas. If you go flipping through a bunch of slides, nobody can go that fast.
Boards are also a target. They give you something to point at rather than stuffing your hands in your pockets (which offends people from certain parts of the world) or holding them behind your back (which offends people from certain other parts of the world). This originates from traditions of hiding danger/weapons from the person in front of you - showing your hands shows that you are not a threat.
Using props
People tend to remember props used in a talk more than any other part of the talk. It is a memorable focal point and allows people to experience the talk at a deeper level. This is a great example of using a prop to convey a message - Physics Works #WYLTKMT - YouTube
The fundamental idea is that we use the board for instructing the audience on something, and we use the slides for persuading the audience that we have done something right, or that they should also believe in something that we believe in.
The crime of the laser pointer
Laser pointers physically turn the presenter towards the slide and away from the audience. You cannot engage with your audience with your back turned to them - your audience could all leave the room and you wouldn't know.
Replace laser pointers with actually having an arrow in the slides
Mistakes In Slides
Too Heavy - Too many slides & too much text
Above all, almost every single presentation has far too many slides and far too many words:
If you're unsure of whether your presentation is too heavy, physically print it and lay it all out. This will immediately give you an overall impression of whether it is too text heavy and if the font is too small (you only use a smaller font to squeeze more text on it).
Too much text on a slide forces the audience to choose between either listening to you or reading the text on the slide as we only have one neural processor that can handle the processing of inbound information.
Here is an extreme example provided by Patrick that has too much going on:
This may or may not surprise you, but the point is that, if you’re going to give out all the information you want to talk about on your slides, you may as well just not show up to give the talk at all, and send your slides via email to your “audience”.
How do you fix this?
You can fix this by following a few simple steps:
- Get rid of the background pattern - it’s distracting and makes the text harder to read
- Get rid of the words (use simple 3 or 4 words per point)
- Get rid of the goofy clipart/logos - you really don't need them
- Get rid of the titles - ‘Rules For Slide Presentations’ turns into you saying "Now I want to talk to you about some rules for slide presentations". You're telling the title, it doesn't need to be up on the slide.
- Eliminate clutter (bullet points, symbols, etc)
How to wrap up your talk:
The Final Slide
- The worst possible way to end a talk is an "Any Questions?" slide - These can take upwards of 20 minutes and they suck time out of your presentation or make you overrun.
- Avoid "For more details, see: www.yoursite.com" - no-one ever bothers to look
- Avoid "The End" - just… don’t.
- Avoid "Thank You" - it's a weak finish. When you say thank you (or "thank you for listening"), it suggests that people have stayed out of politeness and that they had a desire to be somewhere else.
Well, think about it: You’re already nervous throughout giving your talk, and many among the audience who are still there after your talk are the ones who’ve got to be there no matter what (e.g. a job talk). And then, here comes your big “Thank You” — especially if you put it on a slide. That’s basically saying, “Well, thank goodness I’m finally done, thank you all for putting up with me, and you can all finally stop having to put up with me...” - Patrick Winston
- A good example of how to end would be a 'contributions' slide where you bullet the main contribution that the presentation offers. Think of this as answering the question. "Why do I care about this talk?" This also links back to the idea of cycling as seen in Heuristic examples near the beginning of this article.
The final words of the talk
- THIS is where you can put the joke. By now, the audience have grown accustomed to you. (note: This idea also connects to Chris Voss’ idea of "the last impression is the lasting impression").
"I always finish with a joke. That way, people think they've had fun the whole time" - Douglas Lenat
You could always salute to your audience...
In a political debate, Governor Chris Christie said, “God bless you. God bless the United States of America.” Bill Clinton, one time, contracted his lips as if he was about to say “Thank you” but didn’t, and he ended up giving a hand salute to the audience—a bit awkward. Some people also shake hands with people from the front row, if they feel like they can.
In Patrick’s case, he said, “It’d be pretty weird if I said ‘God bless you all. God bless Massachusetts Institute of Technology. . . ’, so I’m just gonna say: this is end of the story, I’ve delivered my promise that you’d learn about valuable speaking skills that’ll help you succeed in landing a job, and we’re done, you can all go home now."
A good alternative would be to convey your appreciation and how much you value your time - "it's been great fun being here"
Patrick finished this presentation by shaking the hands of a few people in the front row to prove his point, finish on a joke, and leave a lasting impression.
If you'd like to watch the original video, then please click here: https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY
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