However mesmerising your speech or presentation may be, it’s never a good idea to go over time. You may be driven by the best of intentions to give your audience more than they bargained for but, actually, it’s unprofessional and it can result in your talk tailing off as the audience gets restless. Depending on the context, they may have homes to go to, trains to catch, other appointments to attend. Or they may be tired from so much concentrating and need some fresh air.

When preparing and practising your talk, aim to come in just under the time allocated to you. This will give you a bit of leeway in case things take longer than expected on the day and, from the audience’s point of view, it will make a welcome change.

Anything you can say well in 10 minutes, you can say well in 9 minutes 30 seconds. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ll say it better in the shorter time because you’ve focused and sharpened what you want to say that bit more.

A more subtle variation on this theme of including your whole audience is to remember that everyone is different. If two or three men in a sea of women – or vice versa – can be missed by a nervous or inexperienced speaker, what about the differences that don’t show?

At a magic convention a few years ago, a magician was explaining how this trick was a sure-fire winner because “everyone has a mom and everyone’s happy to celebrate her”.  This is just not true, even in America.

In the same way, not everyone has a partner, children, a mortgage.

From the public speaking point of view, there are two aspects to be wary of.  The first is that, especially in the realm of things our listeners might wish they had, or might feel they ‘ought’ to have, we have to be careful not to trigger any negative responses in them.  Of the two magicians I was sitting with in the lecture just mentioned, one’s mother had recently died and the other had such a difficult relationship with his that ‘celebrating’ her was out of the question.

By rephrasing slightly – for example, by saying perhaps “a lot of people” or “most of my clients” instead of “everyone” – we can avoid giving the impression of ignoring anyone who doesn’t fall into the category we’re talking about.  Anything to show it’s OK to be different.

The other aspect to this is, we need to make what we’re saying as relevant as possible to the whole audience.  Assuming everyone watches Downton Abbey, for instance, probably will not actually offend people who don’t – or even those who haven’t got a television – but by making a reference to something in that programme, you risk non viewers missing your point.

In everyday chat, it’s easy to make all sorts of mistakes like this.  One of the joys of public speaking is that we get to plan what we’re going to say and reap the benefit of thinking before we speak.

In my public speaking ebook, I’ve mentioned my sister’s experience of training for ordination at a college where some of the lecturers chose to ignore the fact that women as well as men were now becoming vicars.  The women in the class felt unimportant and most of their male colleagues uncomfortable – which is hardly conducive to learning.

As one of two or three female members of my local magic society, I am sick and tired of being collectively addressed as “gentlemen”.

Conversely, at a talk about depression, I was disappointed in the female speaker, who talked as if the three men in her audience of thirty or so didn’t exist – for example, exorting sufferers to seek “support from girlfriends”, which has a somewhat different connotation to a man.

This sort of behaviour is rude to the minority and it can also be distracting to the majority.  As public speakers, we should be speaking to everyone who has come to listen to us, including and valuing every member of the audience.

A client was saying the other day that he’d read it was a good idea to confess to nervousness up front, that it’s endearing and helps get the audience on your side.  I can see why someone would think this but I disagree.

First of all, there’s a good chance your nervousness is not an elephant at all but a gorilla.  To you, it’s glaringly obvious you feel sick with nerves, but the audience honestly may not notice.  Drawing attention to it will not only make sure everyone is aware of how insecure you’re feeling but will also make it even more real for you.  The aim is to convince everyone – yourself included – that you’re taking this speech or presentation in your stride.  Enjoying it, in fact.

Nervousness in a speaker is the biggest distraction of all.  Far from drawing attention to your discomfort, you owe it to your audience – and to yourself – to keep those nerves hidden.  In order to protect yourself and to allow the audience to relax and concentrate on what you’re telling them, put on your public-speaking face and never let the mask slip until you’re well away from the whole situation.

In essence, the changing of the year is just a number.  We can choose to start making changes at any time.  If, like me, you’re suddenly finding it’s 19th January already and you haven’t got down to your resolutions, it’s not too late to start now.  I’m lucky that my birthday is at the end of January, so I have a clear second shot at a ‘new year’ but you can create a starting point any day that suits you.  Especially with New Year following so hard on the heels of Christmas, there is usually a lot going on and it can be difficult to focus on creating the new you.  So choose yourself a nice date such as 1st February and run your resolutions from then.  And don’t be too harsh on yourself if you slip up now and again; it’s the end result that matters, not being perfect along the way.

If your resolution is to improve your public speaking skills, I can help you with that.  (See the Public Speaking Coaching page of my website.)

Stop worrying about it, send me an email and let’s get on with solving your problem for you.

If you’re facing a difficult festive season, remember that so much of life (including public speaking and challenging Christmases) is influenced by your attitude to it.  This means not only that we can usually make things go better by approaching them in a positive way, but also that the same reality can seem better if we just look at it differently.

Two people make the same speech and get the same reaction.  One is pleased with how it went, the other dissatisfied: glass half full / glass half empty.  I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t keep pushing yourself to do better but I am saying that constantly putting yourself down can chip away at your confidence.  And it can be self-fulfilling.  If you step up to the podium convinced you’re going to be hopeless, you’re much more likely to be.  This truism applies to Christmas too – if you believe it’s all going to be stressful and upsetting, it probably will be.  Positive thinking can reverse this.

Peace, fulfilment, love…  I hope you get what you want for Christmas.

The point I’m trying to make here is this: when something is distracting the attention of the vast majority of your audience away from you and what you’re saying, I recommend you make some reference to it.  Once the elephant in the room has been acknowledged by the speaker, the audience generally finds it easier to settle and to bring their concentration back to the speech or presentation.  However, as illustrated by the video in the last post, not every potential distraction is actually noticed by the audience.  Before you interrupt your flow to diffuse the power of an elephant to divert your listeners’ attention, you need to be sure what you’re dealing with is an elephant and not a gorilla.

If you suddenly stop talking about your department’s monthly results, or why your village’s main road needs a speed limit, to comment on how stuffy it is in here or the fact that it’s started snowing, your momentum and impact will be lost.  People may well not have noticed these things before you pointed them out and you’ve created a distraction where none existed.  It will almost certainly be harder for you to carry on with your talk too, both because attention has been dissipated and because the subliminal message is: if you, the speaker, are that easily distracted, what you’re saying must be quite dull.  Even if you really do find your content uninspiring, it’s your job to make it interesting for the audience – and interrupting yourself for no good reason does nothing to help.

For an elephant to be truly an elephant, it needs to be obviously drawing the attention of most of your audience.  If a couple of people are sharing a private joke, if one person out of a large crowd discreetly leaves the room, you really don’t need to acknowledge this.  Apart from the danger of embarrassing someone, you risk making it into a bigger deal than it is.

And remember, the idea of commenting on the distraction is to diffuse it, not to focus people on it.  If there’s a chance they might not have noticed, don’t draw attention to it.  Particularly if you’re nervous, it can be easy to assume the audience is thinking about anything and everything else except you, but crying elephant only makes this worry self-fulfilling.

What it involves is watching this little video, created by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, and following the simple instructions thereon.  It’s basically a counting game.

We’ll discuss the result in the next post.  Enjoy!

My last speech day at school, a bird got into the hall and was desperately flapping around, trying to find a way out.  This was somewhat distracting for the audience, as you can imagine, but it wouldn’t have been so bad if the speakers had made some small comment – or even (too much to ask) a joke – to show they knew what was going on.

The elephant in the room doesn’t have to be an actual creature, of course.  It can be noise, an intermittent electricity supply, a continuous strong smell (either good or bad) wafting in.  Whatever it is, if it’s taking attention away from you, it’s almost certainly a good idea to remark on it.

A brief detour from your prepared speech may seem a risk but it will pay dividends, if only by showing you have noticed the elephant too, that you are a human being and not an automaton.

As I’ve said on the website (see Delivering Your Speech or Presentation):

When there’s an external distraction, many people feel you should ignore it and soldier on regardless. My own view is, it’s better to be natural.  If it’s something that can be dealt with quickly, I always stop for a second and ask someone to sort it out.  For example, if a loud conversation starts up outside your meeting room, someone can ask the culprits to be quiet.  If it’s something bigger, such as a pneumatic drill outside the window, I always mention it, to diffuse it, and then carry on (more loudly).  Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away and I find acknowledging a distraction can help the audience forget about it.

However, as we shall see in the next post, not every potential distraction is an elephant.  Before you go drawing attention to everything else your audience might be thinking about but you, take a second to consider…

When is an elephant not an elephant?

A client was talking to me the other day about the BBC journalist Robert Peston, who turns out to be a surprisingly controversial character.  A quick trawl of the internet reveals an astonishing (to me) amount of vitriol for the man who broke the news of Northern Rock’s collapse and foresaw the global financial crisis that followed.

I think we can learn two important lessons from Mr Peston (or Pesto as he is apparently affectionately known).  The first is that, despite the plethora of nasty comments from all sorts of people, he believes in himself and keeps going.  And, let’s face it, his career is not going badly!  The breathtaking rudeness and unkindness of some of the barbs thrown at him, especially from unpleasant internet types hiding behind anonymous user names, would be enough to silence a lot of people (including me) and I admire Pesto for staying out there in the firing line and continuing to provide the nation with the benefit of his journalistic insights, analysis and explanations.

The reason Robert Peston is interesting to those of us involved in public speaking is that, although he has improved significantly over the years, his delivery is extraordinarily bad.  This is the second lesson we can learn from him: however earth-shattering your content may be, if you deliver it badly the audience will find it difficult to take in what you’re saying and your impact will be lost.

Pesto is famous for having a bizarre, disjointed delivery – so much so that the Radio 4 spoof programme Listen Against ran a series of sketches called What’s Distracting Peston?  The cause of his apparent distractedness, I gathered from an interview with him on another Radio 4 programme, Feedback, is that his mind is so busy he can’t decide which idea to express first.  He’s got so much to tell us, he just can’t get it out quickly (ie, coherently) enough.

An article in The Daily Telegraph (click here to read it in full) includes this quotation: ”Unless you have edited your thoughts,” says one broadcaster, “you can’t get them out.  With Peston, you can almost hear the washing machine going round.”

The same article reports Pesto’s own view that he could have done with some coaching early on but also quotes him as saying: “I am not going to endeavour to become somebody hugely smooth and polished and completely phoney.”  The first part is manifestly sensible: get yourself some coaching before you develop a reputation for being practically impossible to understand.  And I have to take issue with the second part.  ‘Smooth and polished’ and ‘completely phoney’ are TOTALLY different concepts.  Of course some people are both, just as some people are dishonest and blond, but the two are in no way related.  Having a smooth, polished delivery means your audience can understand and appreciate what you’re telling them – rather than wondering what’s distracting you.

If your delivery doesn’t do justice to your content, don’t struggle on and hope for the best.  A couple of sessions of public speaking coaching can make all the difference.