by Beth Levine | Oct 25, 2018 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, quote
There is considerable debate about attention spans and about the effects of the digital world and handheld devices. Interestingly enough, just a few decades ago, the debate focused on the effect that television was having on attention spans. Digital devices like smartphones and tablets are just the latest and greatest scapegoats. Whether they have or haven’t contributed to diminishing attention spans, it is certainly mind-boggling to realize that, with Twitter, full-bodied messages can be delivered in 140 characters or less.
The change in attention spans is often discussed in negative terms, as a deterioration in our ability to focus. But I think we have to ask ourselves, is this really a bad thing? I prefer to look at the phenomenon as a market disruption or correction that is forcing communications to adopt the often-touted corporate principles of leanness and efficiency. As companies try to increase engagement and productivity, improving communication—by cutting out waste—could be quite effective. Being brief and to the point may require a little extra effort, but it can accomplish a lot and save precious time.
Many studies have now measured adult attention spans—where they are and how they’ve changed over the years. There are reports suggesting that in just the last decade, the average adult attention span has shrunk from highs of twelve to eighteen minutes and to lows of three to five minutes, depending on the study’s focus and the environments of the participants. Some studies look at how long people can concentrate on a task; others look at their attentiveness while listening. Yet how long people can pay attention to a speaker depends on tremendous variables that can make it hard to measure: the comfort and conduciveness of the environment, the speaker’s voice quality and modulation, the actual content, whether there are effective visuals or good stories, what the objective is for the audience, and whether they understand that objective. The ability to focus is, after all, crucial to the achievement of an objective, so audience motivation levels can vary as well.
Holding the attention of an adult audience requires a tremendous amount of multitasking and careful advance planning. In other words, brevity—or perhaps we should call it efficiency and expediency—in communication takes discipline and planning. As the speaker, it’s up to you to do the hard work of organizing your thoughts and packaging your content for your audience, because their attention spans are what they are and they’re not growing!
(Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World)
by seopros | Feb 29, 2016 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, quote
“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” – Mark Twain
Always a colorful character, Mark Twain got right at the heart of public speaking with wit and humor. He’s right, there is almost never such a thing as a good impromptu speech. Almost every speech you hear that you find enjoyable or compelling is the result of preparation.
But Mark Twain’s comment highlights more than the benefits of preparation, it highlights the fact that audiences are drawn in by a speech that feels impromptu. They prefer a speaker who is more conversational than mechanical, and yet there is a delicate balance being prepared and sounding scripted or mechanical.
However, true to nature, Mark Twain might have exaggerated a little bit. You don’t need to prepare for more than three weeks. The kind of preparation I’m suggesting can take as little time as a minute, but, of course, if you can give it longer, that’s even better!
Being prepared is just about the most audience-centric thing you can do. It confers a sense of importance and value on your listeners. It shows respect for their time and is arguably the least you can do in exchange for their attentiveness to you as a speaker. Plus, it ensures that what you deliver is actually received. Preparation shows—as does a lack of preparation.
All too often, though, people resist preparing for a talk. Clients have told me it feels egotistical or self-important to them, and they feel—or want to appear—more humble than that. In their minds, preparing a “speech”—whether that means welcoming remarks at an event, a thank-you for an award, or even an introduction for a speaker—feels bloated and unnecessary. Still, a speaker has a responsibility to deliver something of value to their audience, and the best way to do that is to be prepared.
When a speaker or presenter is prepared, the audience notices. The speaker is on point, and the message is clear and relevant to the audience. The prepared speaker doesn’t open with, “Well, I didn’t have time to prepare anything, so I hope you’ll bear with me.” Instead, the prepared speaker opens with an anecdote or an attention-grabbing factoid specific to that particular audience. Or the prepared speaker knows his or her goal for the talk and puts it out there right up front.
There are many who speak or present in front of groups often enough that they feel it’s okay—and in fact, for some it feels more comfortable—to just “wing it.” Wingers are gamblers. Sometimes they win, but other times they lose. Since the outcome can go either way, you have to ask yourself if you can afford a loss. Or can you afford even to risk it? If speech prep were short enough and simple enough, would you devote just a few seconds to being prepared? I think anyone would.
So here are a few simple preparation tips that not only reduce your risk but actually connect you more quickly and directly with your audience:
Develop mini stump speeches. If you know there are projects or issues that you typically need to address, take a few minutes and develop some ready message points. These should be short, crisp statements that convey value or importance, focusing on the “why” and not the “what.” If you have these in your back pocket and you’re called on to speak, you’re halfway there. Add a story or anecdote that illustrates your message, and you’re good to go.
Be selective with information. Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of thinking if you just do a lot of research, present a lot of data, or share a lot of detail, that you’re prepared to address an audience. Preparation requires you to think about the significance of your talk—the “why,” not the “what”—and to be prepared to convey that before you get to any supporting information.
Disrupt Chronology. If you have only a few seconds or minutes to prepare, think about what your summary or conclusion would be for your talk—and then deliver that as your whole talk. If you feel the need to elaborate a bit more, at the very least use your summary as your opening. Disrupting chronology means serving dessert – or the audience’s takeaway – first, while their attention spans and ability to retain are highest.
[Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Feb 15, 2016 | Just Mouthing Off, public speaking, quote, smartmouth talks!
In the introduction of my book Jock Talk last year, I noted that the business world was suffering from a bad (and performance-inhibiting) case of communication neglect. This year, SmartMouth is offering a cure that can help on the large-scale organizational level or the individual level, but before we dive into that, let’s harken back to my book:
“Tolerance of mediocrity in business communication is my pet peeve. It’s not only the mediocrity itself that bothers me, it’s also the acceptance of it and the lack of action taken to remedy it. There are simply too few people calling phooey, or if they are calling phooey, they don’t know how to change things for the better—how to raise the bar.
“I believe you can start with this: Make medal-worthy communication skills a core value. Then get to work on making them a core competency. Organizations hire me to work one-on-one with executives or to train executive teams. Often they come to me with a wish list like this: They’re so long-winded, can you make them more succinct? Can you add some polish and professionalism? They need to make a better impression. Is there any way you can make them sound more commanding? I can, and I usually do. Most of the time what they have been delivering, and how they have been delivering it, has been adequate—not particularly bad, not particularly good, simply adequate. It met the low standard that business audiences have come to expect.
“Well, what is standard in the business world may be adequate, but it’s not optimal and, let’s face it, it shouldn’t be acceptable. Think about how often you roll your eyes during meetings that are too long and, worse, pointless. Think about the boring presentations you’ve sat through—the ones in which you waited for the single valuable nugget, that one answer, that lone call to action that came at minute 52 out of an hour-long talk. Think about the speech by the CEO who was incredibly dry or who mouthed the same old-same old. A bar set at adequate or standard is far too low for organizations that expect excellent outcomes—or aim to be the best in the world.”
Under our traditional model, SmartMouth coached individuals and trained groups out of this rut – in person. But we realized that, as much as we were driven to be evangelists for change in conference rooms and boardrooms everywhere, we couldn’t reach everyone in person.
That’s why we developed SmartMouth OnDemand. Our online communication training lets us offer our insights, strategies and proprietary methodology to anyone who has an Internet connection and a device.
Presentations is our first – and our flagship – course. It is full of games and interactive segments that are only slightly modified from what we do in our in-person group sessions. Best of all, Presentations is loaded with our SpeechBuilder tool – a fill-in-the-blanks form that prompts you to outline your remarks for any occasion – and anyone who takes the course gets lifetime access to the tool. Pretty soon, we will be adding courses that dive in even deeper on topics like Visuals, Delivery and Storytelling.
Online communication training is the future of the industry. Its flexibility, low cost to the user, and effectiveness make it the obvious choice for organizations that want to enact large-scale change in how employees communicate and for individuals with busy schedules and tight budgets.
by Beth Levine | Aug 5, 2015 | Just Mouthing Off, public speaking, quote
When Pat Williams @OrlandoMagicPat – a long-time legend in the NBA, most recently as co-founder and SVP of the Orlando Magic – interviewed me about Jock Talk for his radio show on WORL in Orlando, “Inside the Game,” I didn’t know that he too had written a book on public speaking from the vantage point of sports figures.
He told me after the interview that he wanted to send me something. What he sent was his book. As I read through it, I came across a lot of values and concepts he and I held in common.
Because of my work with professional and world-class athletes – and most recently with a medal-winning Olympian – one passage in particular caught my attention:
“There are many retired athletes from various sports who have a lot to offer on the convention and corporate lecture circuit. They could command five-figure speaking fees, but what are they doing? They’re earning a fraction of that, signing autographs at sports memorabilia shows. Nothing wrong with that, but why not take their game to the next level? Why not share the real wisdom that they have to offer? Why not organize their stories and ideas into a presentation that would change lives – including their own?
It’s essentially a matter of organization, planning, and preparation. The only confident, influential speaker is a prepared speaker. Organization and preparation are vital to your success as a communicator.“
Pat has it right. Many retired athletes do miss a great opportunity to tell their story and offer concrete value to corporate audiences.
For any speaker, it can seem daunting to figure out what that value is, but, with a little organization, planning and preparation, it’s definitely doable. Even if you’re not a gold-medal Olympian – but you’re an engineer or a scientist or an entrepreneur – you will still benefit from taking the time and focus to identify your valuable lesson(s) before you speak.
To find your valuable lesson(s), it might help to imagine a Venn diagram: The first circle represents you, your knowledge and expertise, and the second represents your audience and their interests. You have to figure out what’s in the shaded area where the circles intersect. For you, it is an insight or lesson you can offer. For your audience, it is what they want or need. The third circle of the Venn diagram makes it more challenging – it represents what other experts or speakers have to offer.
If you really want to stand out as a speaker, you will spend some time fine-tuning the area of the diagram where you intersect with the audience but other speakers don’t. In other words, given your expertise, what can you talk about that is of interest to your audience that no one else can offer?
For retired athletes, this exercise should be a layup, so to speak. For the rest of us, admittedly it’s more challenging … but it’s well within reach and very worthwhile.
by Beth Levine | Jul 14, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, quote
“Students of public speaking continually ask, ‘How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?’
Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer’s wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by? How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines?
Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle and be ‘half scared to death.’ There are a great many ‘wetless’ bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.”
– Dale Carnegie, The Art of Public Speaking
by Beth Levine | Mar 4, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, quote
There is considerable debate about attention spans and about the effects of the digital world and handheld devices. Interestingly enough, just a few decades ago, the debate focused on the effect that television was having on attention spans. Digital devices like smartphones and tablets are just the latest and greatest scapegoats. Whether they have or haven’t contributed to diminishing attention spans, it is certainly mind-boggling to realize that, with Twitter, full-bodied messages can be delivered in 140 characters or less.
The change in attention spans is often discussed in negative terms, as a deterioration in our ability to focus. But I think we have to ask ourselves, is this really a bad thing? I prefer to look at the phenomenon as a market disruption or correction that is forcing communications to adopt the often-touted corporate principles of leanness and efficiency. As companies try to increase engagement and productivity, improving communication—by cutting out waste—could be quite effective. Being brief and to the point may require a little extra effort, but it can accomplish a lot and save precious time.
Many studies have now measured adult attention spans— where they are and how they’ve changed over the years. There are reports suggesting that in just the last decade, the average adult attention span has shrunk from highs of twelve to eighteen minutes and to lows of three to five minutes, depending on the study’s focus and the environments of the participants. Some studies look at how long people can concentrate on a task; others look at their attentiveness while listening. Yet how long people can pay attention to a speaker depends on tremendous variables that can make it hard to measure: the comfort and conduciveness of the environment, the speaker’s voice quality and modulation, the actual content, whether there are effective visuals or good stories, what the objective is for the audience, and whether they understand that objective. The ability to focus is, afte r all, crucial to the achievement of an objective, so audience motivation levels can vary as well.
In addition, there are two types of attention: “transient attention,” which refers to a short-term stimulus that attracts or distracts attention; and “focused attention,” which refers to the attention given to a task or a speaker. Transient attention comes out pretty consistently at eight seconds, and we’ll address this a little later in the chapter. Focused attention is where much of the debate lies and is the type for which experts claim that attention spans are as short as five minutes and as long as twenty.
[Excerpted from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, http://amzn.to/1vkcxjz]
