Jane ni Dhulchaointigh: A Speech Deconstruction

About this presentation Inventor Jane ni Dhulchaointigh recounts the roller coaster journey from having a crazy idea about being able to hack everyday objects to the creation and launch of Sugru, an incredible self-setting rubber. Or, as Jane puts it: the six-year process of going from "hmm" to "yay" via "eureka" and "wow."

Jane ni Dhulchaointigh is not a professional speaker and that’s a big part of the reason I chose to launch this series of presentation deconstructions with her 99u talk. It’s easy for us to think that only polished presenters can have an impact. That only the very best, most experienced speakers can touch hearts, change minds and move people to their feet. Not so. And Jane is a perfect example to debunk the “perfection is power” speaking myth.

Her story on its own is inspiring: she created something of value from nothing and overcame countless obstacles to do so. But it’s her doubt-ridden confrontations with failure and her humility, ingenuity and sense of humour that make you cheer for her as a person and a speaker.

Here are three key aspects of her talk that might inspire you as they did me:

• Authenticity and Humility. One of the key strengths of Jane’s talk is how much of her whole self is on the stage. You get a strong sense that she’s being open, real, honest and vulnerable. Her humility is ever present as she tells of her repeated failures and quiet successes.

• Use of Humour. Her humour is grounded in her humility, both of which are infectious and draw you in.

• Storytelling. Jane’s entire talk is a story—the story of her journey to develop the material that would become Sugru and the story of building a business that would foster a passionate user community. She does a great job sharing the highs and lows, the turning points and what changed her trajectory along the way. She also does a brilliant job of telling the story of Sugru by sharing the stories of her customers and how they are using Sugru to improve their lives and the lives of the people they love.

You can watch her presentation here. You might want to watch her talk straight through first and then take a look at the deconstruction so you can appreciate the whole and then the bits that make it special. Or steal some glances at the commentary below as you watch the first time.

00:19	She’s wearing orange tights and pink sneakers. Definitely a stand-out even at a creative conference about making great ideas happen.
00:20	Jane starts her talk by admitting that she’d never heard of the 99u.com conference before she was invited to speak. Refreshing and honest.
00:43	Jane’s talk is full of unexpected admissions, insights and colourful language. Here she shares that “good design makes everything look easy. The truth is completely the opposite. Making stuff happen is “really f#@king difficult.” A great insight, authentically expressed that resonated with the creative audience.
2:39	In describing what Sugru is, Jane says, with humility and levity, “You can mend things with it. You can make things with it. And it has some really great physical properties: it’s dishwasher proof, waterproof, heat resistant, blahdey-blah [with a dismissive, humble hand wave]. That’s it.”
4:17	Jane talks about moving to London at 23 to study product design “with big high hopes of becoming a famous product designer...until I realized a few weeks in that I was actually a pretty sht product designer. Really sht.” Again, a refreshingly honest confession, delivered in a humourous way.
5:05	She uses her own handwriting to label the various highlights and lessons learned over the course of her discovery and development journey, making the process more personal.
6:06	Throughout her talk, Jane shares the “what if” questions that drove her process, an inspiring example of humility in creative problem solving and putting the customer at the centre of a design process, instead of the designer. (Pro tip: great presenters do the same.)
8:47	Jane talks about meeting a bunch of scientists who taught her about chemistry so she could perfect the silicone substance that would eventually become her product, Sugru. At 9:00, she talks about getting the white coat (like a scientist in a lab) and that helped her feel the part. As she shares this part of the story, she mimes putting on the white coat and does a little “joy wiggle” that is endearing and funny.
14:50	Jane shares a picture of herself, on the floor, in shock, after the online launch of Sugru exceeds all expectations and changed the business. The antithesis of the humble brag.
18:30	Jane is jumping up and down as she shares a customer letter. This spontaneous expression of pure joy is touching and hilarious and conveys the passion she has for her customers and what they’re doing with her product.
19:15	She shares a moving story of a dad who uses Sugru to fix his child’s feeding tube, a beautiful example of sharing a customer’s story to engage the audience and create emotional resonance.
20:39	Jane suggests that it’s not Sugru that’s awesome, it helps make [the customer] more awesome. Genuine humility at its best.
21:36	She recounts how a customer who wanted to participate in an epic canoe race in the Yukon was only able to do so because she modified her paddle with Sugru to accommodate the missing fingers on her left hand. Wonderful storytelling told with joy and authenticity.

Jane’s talk works because she speaks with humility, candour and colour. She has an infectious spirit that helps her form a quick bond with the audience so we’re celebrating her victories as our own.

The Importance of Speaking as a Signal Skill

In the inaugural episode of The Podium Project podcast, I talked about speaking as a "signal skill". The concept generated a lot of interest and feedback so I thought it would be helpful to expand on the idea a bit further here on the blog.

Here’s the rub when it comes to speaking: if you're a compelling and confident speaker, people assume you're good at other things too. If you're a great speaker, people think you're a great leader, a strategic thinker, a trustworthy advisor, a charismatic and a friendly person. The act of speaking confidently signals that you have competence in a variety of other areas, even if you have less experience than the people around you.

One of the best examples that illustrates speaking is signal skill is the ascendency of Barack Obama. When he ran for the Democratic nomination, he was a junior Senator from the state of Illinois with a couple of years experience under his belt. Everyone else vying for the nomination in 2008 had more experience than him. But his ability to share his ideas with clarity, conviction and an infectious sense of possibility shaped the way the electorate viewed him—someone fit to hold the world’s highest elected office.

But you don’t need to be a politician to benefit from speaking as a signal skill. It’s available to everyone, whether you're an management consultant, a lawyer, an investment advisor, a creative director or an entrepreneur. Improving your ability to speak takes hours (and not 10,000 of them) and it enhances people's perceptions of you in a way that might otherwise take years.

After coaching thousands of speakers over the past two decades, I can assure you that speaking is a learned skill. You don’t need to be born with Margaret Thatcher’s brain or Bill Clinton’s charm. A few small changes to how you prepare, frame and deliver your communication makes a big difference to how others perceive you and that shift in perception can help you quickly you achieve your bigger picture goals.

One of my clients made a few tweaks to her presentation and delivery before getting on the podium at a big off-site meeting. The next day, one of her colleagues approached her and said, “I’ve been watching you speak for 30 years and you have never spoken like that. You had the hair on the back of my neck standing up, the room was in the palm of your hand...". Those simple tweaks she made transformed how others viewed her as a leader and emboldened her belief (and theirs) in her broader capabilities. The best part? She didn’t need another degree or to get up an hour earlier every morning to get better. She just needed to spend a few minutes of focusing on the right things.

So, if your speaking skill set is sending a signal to the people around you, how strong is yours and what message is it conveying? What would shift for you professionally if you improved your speaking skills and took things to the next level? I'd love to hear about your experience in the comments below.

Eleven Proven Techniques to Help You Answer Your Audience's Toughest Questions.

Photo by marekuliasz/iStock / Getty Images

In the last blog post, I shared a variety of techniques designed to help you anticipate questions and design the answers right into your presentation.

And since even the most brilliant presentation isn’t going to anticipate and address all of your audience’s questions, this week I’m going to talk about how to answer the questions that do come up in your Q & A session.

Here are eleven techniques that will help you address your audience’s questions like a pro:

1. Listen carefully. This seems obvious, but when under pressure many speakers are so concerned about their answer they fail to listen carefully to the question being asked – and the one that isn’t being asked overtly. Listen for what isn’t being said. What is the subtext? What is at the emotional core of the question? Make sure you address the overt question and the underlying one in your answer.
    
2. Don’t answer a question you don’t understand. We’re often so nervous we start to babble the minute the questioner finishes asking his or her question. If you don’t understand, ask for clarity in a non-confrontational way: “I think I understand your question, would you mind asking it again to make sure?” or “Could you help me understand your question a bit better and why you’re asking it so I can provide the most helpful response possible?” You can also paraphrase the question back to them to ensure you understand what they want you to address. It’s much worse to answer a question that wasn’t asked than to ask for clarification.
    
3. Don’t be afraid to take the question offline. Keep the focus of the presentation and the Q & A session in mind. If someone asks a question that is off topic, suggest that they speak to you afterwards so you can keep the discussion focused on the topic at hand. And sometimes you might encounter people who are looking for free advice and they ask complex questions that require more time and information to address properly. Acknowledge some of the variables that would inform your advice, provide some general guidance with the appropriate caveats and suggest that you connect offline to discuss further.
    
4. Validate the question. Some people who ask questions just need to be heard and they won’t listen to your answer if they don’t think you’ve heard them. Show some empathy and reflect back what you're sensing: “That sounds frustrating.” Then pause for a moment and if you have it right, they will nod. Then provide your answer and show you know why it’s frustrating: “Trying to prepare quarter-end statements for a publicly traded company using Excel is like trying to build a house with cardboard. Here’s what you might want to do...”
    
5. Collect your thoughts. It is okay to pause and take a beat as long as you look physically comfortable while you collect your thoughts. Avoid physically recoiling, expressing nervous energy or saying things like “Okkkaaaaay….ummmmmm….wellllll….”. This does not engender confidence. It’s more powerful to pause and think than employ transparent tactics to buy time like repeating the question for the sake of buying time.  
    
6. Structure your answer. To help you organize your thoughts and ensure your audience is clear on what you’re saying, it helps to physically and orally enumerate your response: “A few things come to mind. First…". When you enumerate, you speak with a lot more clarity, conviction and authority and you will be more inclined to be concise. But it's important not to commit the number of points you are going to share in your response, lest you have less than you thought, or lose track of them while you're answering. In the infamous “Oops” moment in the last Republican primaries, if Governor Perry had said, “There are a few agencies of government that are gone when I get there. First, Commerce. Second Education. And that’s just to get us started”, we may have had a very different outcome in 2012. (He said there were three agencies he wanted to cut and then couldn't remember the third!  It was painful to watch. You can see the clip here.)
    
7. Leverage the audience. You don't have to have all the answers. When a speaker can share his or her thoughts in response to a question and invite input from colleagues or other audience members, it demonstrates confidence, professional courtesy and commitment to ensure the questioner gets the information and insight they need.
    
8. Answer with your eyes. Begin your response by making eye contact with the person who asked the question. This helps ensure that they feel heard and acknowledged. As you continue your response, include the rest of your audience in your eye contact and then finish your answer by looking at original questioner. This bookend approach is respectful, inclusive and commanding.
    
9. Respond with “it depends”. It’s often acceptable and useful to provide a “range response” to a question from two ends of a spectrum. It might sound something like this: “I don’t know the exact context for you, but here are some ideas that might help. On one end of the continuum, we have no data security back up measures. Here’s where you should start...[provide insight, ideas, advice]…and on the other end, we have so many safeguards that it denigrates the user experience in a material way …[insight, ideas, advice].  Does that give you a few ways to begin to approach the problem?”
    
10. Answer the question asked. Don’t be a politician and answer the question you wished they had asked. Don’t go looking for questions for your answers. It is incredibly hard to do this well. Few people can do it and you might not want to be a member of the club of those who can!
     
11. Be concise. Verbosity belies your command of your topic. At the very least, provide an initial concise response. Then pause. Elaborate only if you have something additional (and helpful) to say.

Q & A sessions can be stressful. And they can also be opportunities for you to showcase your expertise, confidence and comfort as a speaker. Anticipate and address as many questions as you can in your presentation content and then relax, listen, respond and invite others into the conversation.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How do you feel about Q & A sessions? What techniques do you use to answer questions on the fly? Do you have any Q & A stories of terror or triumph? Share your experience in the comments below.

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The Top Ten Things TED Has Done For Public Speaking

As a presentation skill consultant and coach, I spend a lot of time watching TED talks and sharing them with clients. It is fantastic to have such a diverse database of speaking performances to learn from and teach with.

But in a recent conversation, a client challenged me on the usefulness of TED Talks, suggesting that TED speakers have raised the bar to the point where mere mortals like him were expected to deliver TED-quality presentations every time they were asked to speak.

I love contrarian points of view like this because they push me to reflect on my own assumptions. What has TED done for public speaking? Has it changed or improved anything, contributed something positive? Or has it just made things more difficult for aspiring public speakers?

After much debate and discussion, I still come down on the side of TED. And so I give you the top ten very good things TED has done for public speaking:

1. It’s made public speaking aspirational again. For a long time, many of us felt that public speaking was something other people did—people like politicians, business leaders or celebrities. TED has challenged this paradigm and made getting up on a stage and sharing ideas publicly an incredibly exciting thing to do. Every year thousands of people clamour for a spot at one of the hundreds of TED events taking place around the world.

2. It has proved that we have a voracious appetite for great ideas, presented well. I often hear from clients that their time-pressed audiences “just want to get the information and hear our ideas without any fluff or fanfare.” Audiences definitely don’t want fluff or fanfare, but they do want information and ideas served up in inspiring and illustrative ways. When we share our ideas and use stories, examples and demonstrations to elevate their relevance and meaning, audiences connect with us, and the content we share, more deeply. Benjamin Zander’s TED Talk about classical music is  a wonderful example.

3. It has shown how public speaking builds profile. Before she gave her first TED talk, Brene Brown was a research professor at the University of Houston studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness and shame. After her 2010 TED talk about shame went viral, she became a recognized and sought-after speaker, a best-selling author and a friend of Oprah.

4. It's proven that you don’t have to be famous to make a difference. No longer is world stage reserved only for high-profile public figures. TED provides a platform for anyone with compelling ideas. Academics are emerging from scholarly obscurity, technologists are blasting out of their computer labs to share their brilliance on a global stage and unassuming social justice pioneers are compelling international audiences to give more and do more than ever before.

5. It’s demonstrated that there is no one, single way to be a great speaker. There are important fundamentals, but there is no cookie cutter approach. You only need to watch a few TED talks to realize are so many ways to be brilliant on the stage.  Dan Pallotta combines storytelling and statistics to make a compelling case for change in the charitable sector. And Susan Cain proves that soft-spoken introverts can be equally engaging and persuasive  in a gentle and thoughtful way.

6. It’s encouraged people to ditch public speaking conventions. TED has forced people to lose the lectern, give up their addiction to text-heavy PowerPoint slides and say goodbye to the notion that more—more information, more time—is more. And the results speak for themselves

7. It’s reinforced the importance of speaking fundamentals. For all its convention-busting, the TED format has also provided countless examples of what’s possible when you embrace the fundamentals of delivering a great presentation: (1) developing a talk with your audience in mind; (2) sharing ideas and illustrating them well through examples and story; and (3) preparation, preparation, preparation so you can deliver authentically and without notes.

8. It has celebrated authenticity and diversity. One of the most powerful things you can do as a speaker is bring yourself to the stage. It seems obvious but so many presenters forget to connect their personality, their history and who they are with the content they’re sharing. If you want to touch the hearts of an audience, you must let them see you. Perfection is not required. Authenticity is must. Jane Fonda’s talk is an honest, strikingly open perspective on aging that is Fonda at her authentic, activist best.

9. It has proven the tremendous power of storytelling—over and over again. Human beings are wired for story. It’s how we share our experience in the world and we use stories to make sense of what’s happening around us. Stories also connect us to one another in rich, important ways.

10. It’s raised the bar. Yes, TED has raised expectations and audiences everywhere are rejoicing. The world doesn’t need any more boring, badly delivered presentations. Our ideas deserve to be shared well. We can do better and TED presenters inspire us to do so. As John F. Kennedy once said, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How has TED affected your views about public speaking and your practice and experience as a public speaker? Share your experience in the comments below.

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Photo credit: elliot brown

Humour 101: How to Add Levity to Your Next Presentation

What is better than standing up in front of a group of people and getting a laugh?

Making people laugh is affirming, it lights up all of the pleasure centres in our brain and it makes us feel witty and clever. Why else would stand up comedians subject themselves to hecklers night after night? When your sense of humour connects with an audience, it’s amazing.

And because of that, many of my clients want to know how they can bring the funny. This can be tricky territory—how does one tell somebody that he’s not nearly as funny as he thinks he is? To help with this, I ask my clients three questions when they are deciding whether or not to incorporate humour into their next presentation:

1. Are you funny? You know if you’re funny. You do. And if you’re really not sure, try to be funny and see if you get (a) silence, (b) groans or (c) laughs. If the answer is (a) and/or (b), you’re not funny enough to try and be funny when you’re presenting.
2. Is your humour appropriate for the audience? The type of humour you use with your college buddies or even your close colleagues is hardly ever appropriate for a professional audience.
   
3. Is your humour appropriate for the topic? If you’re giving a presentation about child poverty rates in North America, the types of humour you can draw upon will be pretty limited. If you’re giving a talk about the various ways the education system is failing children, you might have more to work with. Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk is a brilliant example of how to inject humour into a serious subject with great effect. (You can watch it here: www.ted.com/sirkenrobinson)

If you can not confidently answer yes to all three of these questions, your attempt at humour will most likely bomb. And nothing kills credibility faster than humour gone wrong.

Instead of trying to yuck it up, make levity your goal. You want to create lightness and make a warm, human connection with your audience. You don’t need to get big laughs to do this. Here are five techniques you can use to create a sense of levity in your next presentation:

Observe. The very best humour comes from astute observation. Your levity efforts should start long before you set foot on the stage. Research the pain points and frustrations your audience deals with on a regular basis. Spend time observing them (or people like them) to get a better handle on the crazy aspects of their reality. This is all great fodder for empathy and lighthearted storytelling.

Acknowledge their reality. Nothing endears you to people more quickly than demonstrating that you get them. If you can playfully acknowledge their pain points or frustrations or the crazy aspects of their world, especially as it relates to your subject matter or expertise, you’ll have them smiling and nodding their heads. And this is what you’re going for—appreciative head nods, not giant guffaws.

Recount a conversation. If you have the opportunity to speak with members of the audience before your presentation, you can reference back to things they’ve told you in a fun and charming way. You will need to decide if it’s more appropriate to share these bits of conversation anonymously or to attribute them back to the person you spoke with.

Insert a conversational aside. Conversational asides are a great way to inject some levity into your presentations. I often use quotations in my training workshops and consulting work and will add a conversational aside to engage the audience further. For example, I might reference a quote by French philosopher Voltaire that helps illustrate a point I’m making and then say: “by the way, I’ve never read Voltaire lest you think I’m trying to pass myself off as an erudite philosopher. I’m not. I just love that quote!”

Share your shortcomings. I sometimes use this technique when I’m talking to clients about the importance of posture, presence and gestures. I muse in a self-deprecating way that I’m a short dude and I need to create as much presence as I can so I keep my hands out of my pockets, my shoulders rolled back and my gestures in front of me. The truth can get a laugh, generate empathy and make you approachable. It’s okay to be candid and honest about your shortcomings as long as it doesn’t undermine your credibility.

The bottom line on humour in presentations is this: don’t tell jokes. You are not a stand up comedian and that means your jokes are rarely delivered well or funny. When you tell a joke, it’s obvious you’re trying to be funny. And that’s awkward. In doing so, you’re creating uncomfortable and unnecessary tension between you and your audience.

So, aim for levity not big laughs; warmth not wisecracks. Connect your humour to your content and you’ll have them smiling and nodding and loving you in the aisles.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How and when have you used humour with great effect? How did you do it? Have you ever tried to inject some humour and failed fantastically? What tips and tricks do you use to ensure your attempts at levity and wit land every time? Share your experience in the comments below.

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