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.
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