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Meet
the MasterMinds: Nick Morgan on the Secrets of Powerful
Speaking
 Nick
Morgan is the founder Public
Words, a communications coaching company, and the
author of Working
the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered
Speaking, published by Harvard Business
School Press in May, 2003. He coaches executives and
organizations on communications issues, and leads seminars
on communications skills for corporations, professional
groups and universities.
MCNews talked to Morgan about Working the Room
to find out why Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister
of Canada, said, "This book is a must for any serious
communicator."
MCNews: What led you to write Working the Room?
Morgan: Two things: first of all, in seventeen
years of coaching people, I've seen the same issues
come up repeatedly and I wanted to put some of the stories
down on record. And, I wanted to express the ideas I
developed working with clients.
MCNews: What are some of those issues you've seen
over and over again?
Morgan: Many speeches, especially in the business
world, are important for the speaker but end up boring
the audience. So one issue is how does the speaker
break through that mediocrity of connection and take
full advantage of a speaking opportunity?
Another issue, of course, is just fear. Everybody has
nervousness associated with public speaking. Traditional
speech coaching involves tricks like physical relaxation
and visual imaging, and there's nothing wrong with those
techniques. If you have powerful abilities to visualize,
that's one of the best ways to get over the fear.
But what I have found is that when you have great content,
a lot of the nervousness goes away. What we tend to
think of as a performance question really has more to
do with the preparation you do beforehand.
MCNews: Part of that preparation is to figure out
what audiences really want when they listen to a speech.
So what do audiences want?
Morgan: Well, the wonderful thing about audiences
is that they want to be enthralled and moved. They come
in with a positive attitude in spite of the fact that
they have been disappointed so many times. Audiences
want you to succeed.
That support is yours to squander. If you fail
to connect, midway through your speech the audience
will no longer be on your side--they will be looking
for the exits.
Keep in mind that audiences vote with their feet when
they come to listen to you. They give you provisional
authority over them for an hour or ninety minutes, and
they want you to do something for them.
MCNews: How do you know when you have made that
connection to the audience?
Morgan: A successful speech takes your audience
on a journey from why to how. Audiences come in asking
why--Why am I here? Why is this important to me? They
want the answer to be that this is going to be good
for them in some way. If you succeed, by the end of
your speech they will be asking how--How do I do what
you are talking about? How do I get to work on this?
That's when you know you have gotten your message across.
MCNews: So how do you go about preparing a speech
that accomplishes that?
Morgan: It always begins with the audience.
You need to sit down and think, not about yourself and
the information you want to convey, but about the audience.
Who are they? What do they care about? What do they
fear? What is going to move that audience? Then there
are the practical questions--What time of the day is
the speech going to be? How many people will be in the
room? After you have thought through all that, then
you can start to think about how the information you
have will connect with the audience.
I can always tell watching a speech the difference
between somebody who has thought about the audience
and somebody who hasn't. And it's more than just saying,
"Anybody here from Dubuque?"
A lot of professional speakers are adept at putting
in little touches that give the appearance of connecting
with audiences. But there is a difference between that
and truly understanding what makes an audience tick
and why you are the right person at the right moment
for that audience.
MCNews: For many business speakers, stories are a
lead-in or an afterthought. Do you think stories have
a legitimate part to play in a good speech?
Morgan: Stories are essential for the simple
reason that the mind works in stories. Neurological
research has shown that is how we construct the world
from the time we are babies. Take this scenario: a baby
in a highchair spills a glass of milk. A parent comes
running, cleans it up and makes all kinds of noises.
That's pretty exciting.
What you have there is an agent, the baby, an action,
pushing over the milk, and an object or result, the
milk goes on the floor--a little story. At the simplest
level that's what stories are: agents, actions and objects.
That's how our minds work and how we absorb information.
Too many speeches just dump facts on the audience.
We don't retain things that way. Stories help us retain
information because they respect the way the mind works
MCNews: Do you connect the information you want
to impart to the imagery of the story?
Morgan: Yes, and there are two levels of stories
where you need to do that. You have the little anecdote
that begins a speech, or a story that you tell midway
through to illustrate a point. Those stories are helpful
in getting the audience's attention or making a point
memorable by underlining something you want the audience
to remember.
On the second level, I think your whole speech should
mirror one of the great stories of our culture.
The quest, or journey, is the primary story mode and
then there are four others--stranger in a strange land,
revenge, rags to riches and boy meets girl. You should
try to frame your information in one of those story
types.
It's not easy to do but if you can deliver your speech
overall as a quest story, for example, then you will
connect powerfully with stories that audiences have
deep in their psyches. We all relate to such stories
instantly.
MCNews: Is there a risk that your speech might fall
flat if you end up the hero of a quest or journey story?
Morgan: Yes, that has to be handled carefully.
But people do love underdog stories. For example, the
classic tale of the person who came from the school
of hard knocks, had to overcome many obstacles and is
now a success. That genre of story can be powerful for
an audience if it is told with genuine humility and
honest attention to the mistakes made along the way.
The audience members have to see enough of themselves
in the story that they think they could do that too.
The humanity of the speaker has to come across for
that kind of story to work. It leaves you cold is when
it's all about glorifying the speaker. Then it's repellant
because the speaker leaves the audience out of the circle
of glory.
MCNews: Let's talk about rehearsal. What are your
thoughts on how much and what to rehearse?
Morgan: The quick answer is that the vast
majority of business speakers under rehearse woefully.
Typically, they don't rehearse at all. CEO's and
senior level people will rehearse a big speech once
the night before, or read over the notes and think they
can wing it. How many times do you see people creating
PowerPoint slides on the plane or train on the way to
a meeting?
That is a disaster. I say that as someone who in a
former career was an actor. A stage actor doesn't think
about getting on stage in front of an audience until
he/she has rehearsed for six weeks beforehand, going
over and over again every move, every gesture.
You can tell when the typical business speech with
its PowerPoint slide deck has not been rehearsed.
Usually the person is capable of reading the slides,
but the transitions between the slides are awkward--the
connections are missing. A speaker will say, "okay
this slide is saying X," and will proceed to talk
about that slide. Then he/she will switch to the next
slide and, after a slight pause, will say, "okay
this slide says Y."
The speaker who does that is not telling us a story
and hasn't had the courtesy to think through the whole
speech. That person has created a speech outline and
just walks us through the outline. That rhythm of slide
followed by slide is what they used to call in the scriptwriting
business "one damn thing after another." It
gets monotonous because it has no art to it. A story
has a beginning, middle and end; it's not just one damn
thing after another.
MCNews: Do you think you can over-rehearse a speech
or presentation?
Morgan: As society gets busier and busier and
moves faster and faster, too much rehearsal is so infrequently
the case that it's not my major concern. Of course,
you don't want to be over-rehearsed. Some people try
to memorize speeches and they get sing-song. Most people
are not great actors, so saying memorized lines can
sound like rote and that isn't good. You want to have
some spontaneity and life in the moment. But for
the vast majority of business speeches, too much rehearsal
is not the problem.
MCNews: You mentioned visual aids a minute ago.
What is the most effective way to use them?
Morgan: I'm glad you asked that question because
their misuse is a real pet peeve of mine. Visual aids
are supposed to be just that, and they can be used effectively.
For example, if you have a set of numbers and you want
to show a trend, you can use a bar chart or a graph
that clearly shows the trend. That's a good use of a
visual because it's more effective than just reading
the numbers.
In most speeches, there are only going to be three
or four moments like that, and you should turn off your
projector between those moments. You should use slides
for the occasional illustration of a point that can
be made much better visually.
But business speeches that are put together with
PowerPoint or some other slide program are often just
a set of speaker notes. The usual excuses are that
a picture says a thousand words, or people are visual
learners or it makes it more memorable. People cite
a study funded by Microsoft that found people retained
more with the use of PowerPoint.
What really happens is that the speaker and the audience
suffer through this long outline which takes all of
the spontaneity out of the speech and distracts the
audience from the speaker making a connection with them.
In the audience, when you see a slide with ten bullet
points on it, there is no surprise what's going to happen.
The speaker will read one bullet and then the next.
The result is deadening and monotonous.
You also get what I call the PowerPoint choreography
of death. Let's say a speaker has a computer set
up in the front of the room with a projector and a screen
facing the audience. The speaker, the computer and the
screen form a triangle and as the speaker starts to
circulate either physically with his feet or by head
motions, the audience realizes this is not about the
speaker connecting with them; it's about him connecting
with his slide on the screen. That distances the audience
from the speech and the speaker.
MCNews: Many slide presentations do include bullet
points. Is there a good way to use bullets?
Morgan: There is absolutely nothing visual about
bullets, and they don't help retention. If you must
use bullets, there are some rules. Sometimes there
are short lists that can be useful takeaways for the
audience. But don't use more than about four bullets,
four lines. If you use more, the type will be too small
for the typical audience member to read. Bullets should
be brief lists of words, not complete sentences. It's
a sign that your bullets are too long if they word-wrap;
that's not a bullet--it's a paragraph. That shows you
are lazy and have not thought enough about what's really
important to the audience.
MCNews: When you start to work with someone to put
a speech together what do you see as the most common
area of improvement?
Morgan: The classic mistake people make is to
dump a ton of information on the audience. So the
most common improvement is to simplify the message.
Figure out what the single, unique message is that you
want to get across to the audience, hang the information
on that simple point and eliminate everything that doesn't
reinforce it.
MCNews: Who are your favorite speakers?
Morgan: Good speakers do two things well: they
let their own personality come through, and they have
a wide range of emotional expressiveness.
That's what charisma is--emotional expressiveness,
the ability to show a range of genuine emotions. But
I don't mean weeping or losing your temper. Rather,
you need to let an audience know how you feel about
what is important to you, when you are excited about
something and when you are displeased with something.
Jesse
Jackson is a good example. Some people hate
him, some people love him, but they watch him because
he is so expressive. People in the business world think
it's embarrassing or weak to show emotion. Instead,
they want to make it all about the intellect, but that's
not what moves people to action.
Gary Hamel
is a very effective business speaker. He leads
the audience on a real journey and it's an emotional
one. He strikes fear into the hearts of audiences
and then leads them out of the valley of despair.
I love watching him.
MCNews: I'd like to go through four short questions
on issues that come up often about speaking.
First, should you write out the complete text of
a speech beforehand, or just outline it?
Morgan: That depends on how experienced a speaker
you are and how comfortable you are with the subject.
For instance, I give talks about public speaking often
and I know the topic well. I outline the main points
I want to cover and give the speech from that.
If you are speaking on a topic for the first time or
you are not an experienced speaker, it's a very good
idea to write out the complete text of the speech. Now,
you shouldn't give the speech using that complete text,
but you should think through what you are going to say
moment to moment and figure out the transitions and
connections that I talked about earlier. Then cut that
text back to outline form so if you suddenly go blank
up there, you can look down and find your place.
MCNews: Is it better to distribute handouts before
a speech or afterwards?
Morgan: No question on this one--you should give
them out afterwards. If you give them out beforehand,
the type-A people in the audience will think, okay I
don't have to listen to this and they will either leave
or they will pay more attention to the notes than to
you.
There are always nervous people in the audience who
ask if you have notes. Tell the audience at the beginning
that notes will be available at the end of the talk
so they can relax and enjoy the ride.
MCNews: Should a speaker take questions during a
speech, ask people to hold questions until the end or
some combination of both?
Morgan: I prefer speakers that take questions throughout
their presentations, but you have to know your material
very well to do that. Otherwise, you can get derailed
or side-tracked by a question. If you are confident
enough in your material, you know how to take a question,
answer it quickly and get back on topic, I prefer speakers
to do that. It's more interesting for the audience because
they can actively participate in the speech. But if
you are afraid questions will get you off track, ask
audiences to hold their questions until the end.
MCNews: Should you end a speech with questions and
answers, or take questions and then do a closing or
summary wrap up?
Morgan: I advocate having a closing statement after
Q&A. The last thing you do with an audience
is the most important and what they will remember the
best. Q&A is open-ended and not in your control.
A great speech can be undermined by a hostile or stupid
question at the end. So save the last three minutes
for a knock-them-dead wrap up that sends the audience
on its way with jaws agape.
MCNews: Thanks for some great tips.
Visit www.publicwords.com
to find out more about Nick Morgan, his book and
services.
Was this interview useful? Send me a quick email
with your thoughts.
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Sharpen
Your Communication Skills
Here are two useful articles on communication
to go along with this month's interview.
In the first, "Loosen
Up Your Communication Style," Theodore Kinni
says if leaders want to connect with all of their staff
members, they need to combine three styles of effective
communication: emotional, factual and symbolic. He tells
you how to leverage all three styles.
Beverly Ballaro, associate director of
the Harvard Medical School alumni magazine, provides
the key to effective presentations in "Audience
Grabbers: Start With a Bang." Her article covers
six ways to get off to a strong start.
Was this useful? Send a quick email
with your thoughts.
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