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Telling personal stories or anecdotes is one of the easiest and most effective way of connecting with your audience. It is fool-proof. You can be the most boring speaker in the entire universe but when you tell a personal story, you will automatically be forgiven. Not only do your stories build rapport with your audience, they differentiate you from the rest of the speakers. In the eyes of your audience, you are unique!

However many speakers fail to take advantage of their wealth of stories that they have accumulated over the years. It is like a gold mine waiting to be tapped! And I urge you to START MINING FOR STORIES!!!

“But I don’t have great stories to tell!”

Not true. If you open your eyes and pay attention, you will find tons of stories to tell. As Jim Key, 2003 World Champion Speaker emphasized - “Things happen, pay attention!” They may not necessarily be of Hollywood quality but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good enough. In fact with all the hype over Hollywood flicks, we are dying to hear some everyday stories that can happen to any one of us. Think back to your last dinner with your friends. Didn’t everyone has some stories to bring to the table?

Just this morning, something funny happened at my house. And I paid attention!

Room-mate 1: (complaining) My life sucks!
Room-mate 2: (earnestly) Don’t worry. It would be over soon.
Room-mate 1: My life??!!

There you go. A piping hot story that I can share with my friends and audience. And I can use it to prove a point. Instead of telling the “Is the cup half full or half empty” story (which is extremely cliche!), I could replace it with the above anecdote. 100% original. Who would have thought of it? Things happen, pay attention!

So here’s what I would encourage all of you to do. Things happen all the time. If you open your eyes and pay attention, you will be overwhelmed with stories to tell. Always keep a pencil and paper in your pocket. Every time something interesting happens, write it down. It could be a conversation with your mum. It could be an incident that happened at a restaurant. If you find it interesting or funny, write it down. Transfer it to your computer and save all these stories into one folder. You may even want to categorize your stories in whichever way you want. This folder is going to be your treasure chest. The next time you speak, open up your treasure chest and pick a couple of stories that you think would relate to your message. Incoporate them into your speeches and see how you effortlessly wow your audience away! Trust me, it works ALL the time!

p.s: Interested to win a free ebook that teaches you to become an effective and charismatic speaker? All you got to do is share with us something interesting that happened to you this week. This would be an opportunity for you to apply what I have just shared with you - things happen, pay attention! You can post it via comments and remember to leave me your email address too. I look forward to reading your stories!

HAVE LOTS AND LOTS OF FUN!

Have you ever consider public speaking to be fun? An activity to indulge in for destressing purposes? Something that you can play around with and reap boundless of joy and happiness?

For most people… hardly! If you recall, public speaking has been ranked as the number one fear, surpassing the fear of death! Who would even associate public speaking with fun??!! However for those who do, they cannot help but be a master at their craft, all thanks to their “play” attitude.

Think about it. If you like a particular activity so much, doing it excessively will not be considered hard work at all right? In fact, you will find every single opportunity to get back to the activity; without any coercion, persuasion or effort! You will be so involved in what you are doing that nothing else around you matters at all. It is as if time went on a standstill…

Unless you enjoy what you are doing, you will never be able to fully maximize your potential. At best, you will just be a good speaker because of all the hard work that you have put in. Imagine if you add the element of fun in it, there is no limit to how good you can be!

So what has fun got to do with being successful in public speaking (or in anything for that matter)?

1. Fun is the best cure against your arch nemesis: Fear

It is like a shiny armour that deflects any worries, doubts and apprehension that you may have. It blesses you with courage to step out of your comfort zone and try new things. It grants you freedom to be creative. It bestows you with immunity against failure. It gives you permission to laugh at yourself. When fun is in the picture, nothing will be too daunting for you.

2. Fun sustains you

When you are having fun, you have essentially open up boundless of pure energy that pushes you towards success. There is no work involved when it comes to honing your public speaking skills. It is part of the fun! Any challenges you faced become part of the game. Instead of mulling over how tough it is, you find yourself inventing new ways to defeat these challenges. In fact the harder the better. Some people call that optimism. To you, it is all part of the game!

3. Fun brings out the best in you

Having fun also allows you to walk the path of least resistance. As such your energies are spent exploring new ground and discovering new things about yourself. You do not care if you succeed or fail. It releases you from the pressure of having to win. What you are more concerned about is that you are enjoying every part of it. As long as you are moving forward with each step that you take, nothing else matters.

Ironically, such attitude creates the most results. Take a look at Dr Richard Feynman. He won a nobel prize out of calculating the relationship between the wobble and the rotation of the plate for fun. His “play” attitude led him to stumble onto quantum electrodynamics! And then there was Einstein, Newton and all other famous scientists.

The same happens when you are on stage too! When you are having fun on stage, it creates instant connection with your audience. Fun is infectious and your audience cannot help but have fun too.

Here’s one way you can start having fun with public speaking - Treat it like a game!

Here’s what I want you to do for your next speech. Set up some winning criteria i.e. what do you need to do to “win the game”. It could come in the form of “My audience will give me a smiley face sticker at the end of my speech” or “I will try something new each time I speak”. Pull in a few friends to play the game with you. They could either compete with you or even play judges. And what’s a game without rewards? Make sure you plan some enticing rewards for yourself. Invite your friends to pool in some of the prizes too! Increase the stake. And then focus on winning the game! What’s there to lose?

Notice the adrenalin rush?
Notice the excitment building up?
Notice that you aren’t even concerned about youe fears?

That’s what I am talking about. Treat public speaking as a game. Be spontaneous. Be adventurous. Most importantly, have fun with it!

I would recommend that you read Scott’s entry on The Secret to Productivity where he shares with you even more practical tips to have fun with what you do!

So the next time you have to give a speech, let your hair out and have fun! Be wild and experiment new things. Even if it flops, you had fun trying it! I shall go against the usual advices that you hear from speech experts. Do NOT take your speech (or yourself) too seriously. Treat it as a game and play your heart out!

“Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.”
Heraclitus, Greek Philosopher (535 - 475 BCE)

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We are all experts at playing the role of the audience, thanks to the countless presentations that we have sit through. Quite frankly, we have seen it all! I thought it would be interesting to give you my list of ten things a presenter can do to piss me off. See if this tallies with yours!

Starting from the bottom…

10. Using clip art animation (at times, this makes me laugh… but not in the good way)
9. Starting weak: “I guess I should probably get started…. uh…ok here goes…”
8. Giving us zero eye contact
7. Reading off the slides
6. Having slides with heap full of words (and MORE words!)
5. Having NO message (Variation: Failing to make a point and leaving us confused)
4. Mumbling throughtout the entire speech
3. Apologizing to the audience right at the start:“I’m not exactly sure what I want to say but I will try…”
2. Ending late - it’s obvious you don’t respect our time!
.
.
.
And the number one thing you can do to piss me off the roof is this…

1. Be totally unprepared - it shows how much you value us!

Most of us don’t really have the luxury of creating speeches weeks in advance. And even if we do, we tend to leave it till the very last minute. I’m definitely guilty of that. This entry talks about how you can create a speech in less than 10 mins that is equally effective and to-the-point (without all the fluff!)

1. Start with the conclusion!

Echoing Steven Covey’s 2nd habit, it is critical to have the end in mind. In the case of your speech, ask yourself what’s your message? Are you convincing the board to say yes to the new IT project? Are you inspiring your committee to work as team? Are you persuading your customers to buy your product? No matter what speech you make, however long or short it is, you ALWAYS have a message!

Sidenote: If your speech is a relatively short one (say 5-10 mins), focus on just one message. In that way, your audience has a higher chance of remembering it.

2. Three points max

What are three reasons why this IT project is critical to the growth of your company?
What are three ways your team can follow their heart?
What are three problems that can be solved by using your product?

For every point you made, substantiate with an example or even tell a mini story to underscore your point.

3. Work on an attention grabber

The first 30 seconds of your speech is the most important as your audience will subconsciously decide if they should listen to you for the next 9 minutes and 30 seconds. So you should always aim to grab their attention right from the start. It can come in many forms. Here are a list of attention grabbers that you can try for size.

Startling fact
Expert Opinion
Quotation
Dramatic gesture
Rhetorical question
Videoclip
Joke
Anecdote
Reference to a current event
Live demostration

My personal favorite is rhetorical questions because it gets the audience thinking. There was once I gave a keynote speech that inspires the audience to live for the moment. I started my keynote with three questions.

When was the last time you sat down and saw the entire sunset?
When was the last time you have ever taste your food?
When was the last time you have called your mum and tell her how much you love her?

That immediately set the tone of my keynote. My guess is that most of them have not done the above three things for a long long time. Asking these rhetorical questions gets them interested to know what I have to say next.

Together with your attention grabber is an answer to the following question - “Why should the audience listen to you?” or “What’s in it for them?” This will create a stake for them and you will have them eating from your hands.

Lastly…

Practice makes Permanence! I cannot emphasize the importance of practice! Try out the techniques as often as you can. You will find yourself getting increasingly competent. With the extra time at hand, you can then focus on improving the quality of your speech or honing your delivery skills. In no time, you will be on your way to become a highly effective speaker!

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Imagine yourself hiking in the Amazon rainforest and you get lost, the most intuitive thing is to call a friend right? And that is assuming you do not have a WAP phone that can access Google Maps! And say you are extremely lucky and you got through. What will be the first thing your friend will ask you when you inform him that you are freaking lost!

In my case, “AGAIN???!!!”
And since you are not me, which makes you normal, you will most likely hear this from your friend:

“WHERE ARE YOU NOW?”

You see, there is no way you can get out of the rainforest unless you first know where you are! Even if you are very clear of where you want to go (in this case, to get out of the rainforest), you may only have one out of a thousand chances of succeeding. Most of us will be like this:

And then you wonder why you can never get to your goal. Worse, some people will hire the best trainers to help them be more effective, only to find themselves getting to the wrong destination FASTER!

Borrowing one of the principles of coaching, you got to first know where you are - your current state. In the case of the lost traveller, he needs to figure out where he is NOW. So what if he has the best compass or a 3D map of the forest? He will never be able to find his way out until he knows where he is on the map.

Similarly as a speaker, we have to first know where we are at, in terms of our speaking capabilities and experiences. There are many people out there who will spend lots of money buying public speaking books or hiring really expensive coaches to help them improve. Nothing wrong with that. But before you attempt the more expensive routes, I have a cheaper alternative that will help you to make a wiser investment.

Like the traveller, first examine your current position. Two questions to get you started.

1. What do you think are your speaking strengths and weaknesses?
2. How about your audience - how do they rate you?

Once you come up with a list of your strengths and weaknesses (both rated by you and your audience) i.e. your Point X, you can then determine which path to take to get to Point Y. And that’s the fun part coz’ you will have full control of determing how you want to get there.

Oh… but for all this to work (and get to Point Y), you gotta walk the path too! Always!

Here’s a quick and extremely easy-to-implement tip to forward your communication skills. (You can apply this anywhere too!)

Stop asking WHY. Try asking HOW.

Often at the end of our presentation, we will reflect on how well or bad we did. And it usually comes in the form of “why” questions.

Why did the audience look so bored?
Why didn’t I remember my script?
Why am I so sucky in public speaking?

True that these questions set you thinking, but not necessary move you forward! Here’s the problem. “Why” questions forces you to come up with 101 reasons WHY you did something or WHY something did not happen. They trick you to justify your own actions, which ironically lead you to inaction.

To be on the safe side, do this instead.

Ask “How”!

How can I make the audience less bored?
How can I remember my script the next time round?
How can be less sucky in my next speech?

Notice the change? Instead of finding reasons to explain the past, you begin to come up with constructive solutions to get better. Simple isn’t?

Asking questions isn’t enough anymore. You have to ask the right questions coz they sets you moving forward. Ask the wrong questions and they form your stumbling blocks. So the next time you reflect on your performance, ask HOW!

Let me repeat. If you want to be a successful speaker on stage, be extremely lazy! And I am not the only wacko that says so. Fred Gratzon, a successful entrepreneur who founded the Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company and a telecommunications company Telegroup that went public in 1997 proved that theory. He even wrote an e-book that convincingly argued how we can do nothing and accomplish everything!

You can download a sample of the book from here!

Central to Fred book is his personal axiom:

Success is inversely proportional to hard work. That means, as effort and hard work become less, success becomes more. As you move towards effortlessness, success moves towards infinity.

In my opinion, Fred’s wacky axiom makes a lot of sense. If you want to become a very successful speaker, you may want to think twice about trudging along the “hard work” path. Not that hard work is wrong, but perhaps there is a much easier path that requires less sweat and pain. Who won’t want that? Not unless you are a masochistic weirdo that takes pride in torturing yourself. If that’s the case, I say join the army.

Looking back at how I triumphed over my fear of public speaking and evolved into a gung-ho speaker in a short span of one and a half year, I believe I may have stumbled upon The Alternate Path, a path that Fred described to be of greater ease and effortlessness.

Here’s how you can walk that path. Just five words.

SET YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS!

That’s right. Very simple. Very DUH! Yet how many of us are doing it? Fearing public speaking is normal. Most people have it. And there is absolutely no doubt that this fear of ours is huuuuggggggeeeee, even astronomical and VERY real. But how do we handle it? We work really hard to fight it. We read tons of books, e-books and blogs on how to FIGHT our fear. We pay eye-popping, jaw-dropping and gut-wrenching sum of hard-earned money (pun intended!), attempting to ELIMINATE our fear. And sadly for most of us, it all amounts to nothing in the end.

Today I will like to propose that you take The Alternate Path. This path doesn’t even require you to fight the fear because it is too much of a hassle and hard work. Instead, take time to find the right angle to tackle the problem. With regards to public speaking, the right angle in my opinion, refers to ways you can be successful right from the beginning. Here are some ways that worked extremely well for me.

1. Find a group of audience that loves you from the start.
You can never go wrong by starting to speak in front of a group that wants you to succeed. And this group could be as small as just your little puppy or your beloved wife or even your buddies from the army! I would also strongly recommend you to join the Toastmasters! It is an organization that was set up with the sole goal of making you and me successful in public speaking. And from my experience, they have one of the best community of people you can ever be with.

2. Start by taking small steps
Yes. Stop trying to speak like Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill. You will never be as good as them. There is a reason why they are legendary. Instead pick someone your own caliber. Say your school lecturer or your CEO! If you can be half as boring as him or her at your first speech, consider that a big success. Go out and celebrate! Always give yourself a chance to win, no matter how small the win is. It is much easier to move forward that way. And in no time, you will find yourself joining the ranks of highly competent speakers!

3. Start by focusing on your strengths.
I have mentioned this one before in my earlier post. Every speaker is unique. Take time to discover your strengths. Focus on them. Say you are extremely energetic on stage. Explore how you can leverage that energy on stage. If your friends think you are funny and not lame (that’s a world of difference!), start studying how you can be funnier. It is painless if you focus on your strengths. You will also start noticing yourself improve much faster. And the praises you received from your friends will only accelerate your growth as a speaker.

As Fred indicated in this book:
The right angle … is always in the direction of greater ease and effortlessness. Note: you are NOT avoiding the job (becoming a successful speaker). You are merely avoiding the hard work of becoming one. So if you are sick and tired of working so hard with little results, take on The Alternate Path.

Be extremely lazy!

Humor is a double edge sword. Use it well and be marveled at. Use it badly and be disapproved of. Where exactly is the fine line between being a funny comedian and being an insensitive prick?

One of the common advices most of us have received was to avoid ALL political, racial and religion based jokes, no matter how tempting they may be. As long as we stay away from them, we have a shot at being funny without offending anyone. However recently two men with solid steel balls – a standup comedian and a well-respected chief constable – went ahead to break the norms. One did exceptionally well and became an overnight Internet sensation. The other – sadly – was ridiculed by the media.

Let’s first look at the man who hit it big with the audience – Stephen Colbert.

Stephen Colbert became the man ever since he delivered a 20-minute satirical speech on Bush administration at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner last month. Although some critics dismissed his speech as lacklustre, the entire blogsphere hailed him as “the man with the iron-steel balls”. There was even an entire site dedicated to Colbert’s single speech in Wikipedia, a speech that Time Magazine Online called “the political-cultural touchstone issue of 2006”.

Here are some of Colbert’s shocker-lines:

I stand by this man (referring to Bush). I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound — with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

My personal favorite:
And though I am a committed Christian, I believe everyone has the right to their own religion - be you Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim, I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.

You can view his speech here or here.

On the other hand, John Vine, a well-respected chief constable who was also the Past President of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, left his audience stunned and embarrassed with his one-liner joke on the Iraq bombers. It is worth noting that this joke was unplanned for (and even uncalled for). But out of our desperation to revive his bored audience, he made a decision to tell an off-color joke.

The joke went like this: Two Al-Qaeda fathers are ruminating about their suicide-bomber sons. “Ah, kids!” goes the punchline, “they blow up so quickly these days.” One lousy decision and this poor man ruined his hard-earned reputation. If only he has made an early decision to improve on his public speaking skills, say join a Toastmasters Club…

Click here to read more about Vine’s bombed speech.

So what can we learn from these two separate incidents?

1. ALWAYS test-run your jokes!

If Vine has tried this joke on his close friends during his rehearsal (I wonder if he even rehearse his speech?), his friends may have warned him against cracking that off-color joke. And probably the only sin he would have committed was being a boring speaker, which equates to a chance of redeeming himself. On the other hand, Colbert has been a standup comedian for a long time. He is seasoned. He has his own TV show. He knows what he is doing and I am pretty sure he has tested his jokes on some people.

What’s the takeaway for us then? Always test your jokes on your close friends before unleashing it on your unaware audience. If any of your friends feel ANY discomfort with a particular joke, consider removing it. No point risking being a little funnier for being an insensitive prick.

2. Self depreciating humor is still the safest

When I first competed in the International Humorous Contest last year, there was a portion of my speech where I joked about why Chinese were not the first humans on Earth. This joke was extremely effective and generated one of the biggest laughs in the entire speech. But I took it out after the first try. Though I was a Chinese myself (which makes it ok to crack jokes on Chinese people), I made references to the Bible. And that creates ambiguity. In the end, I focused my entire humorous speech on Singapore (where I came from) and its quirks. And guess what, the audience loved it!

This only goes to show how effective humor can be if you make fun of yourself. Not only is it safe, it ALWAYS makes the audience laugh. Try that on in your next speech!

3. Is your audience prepared for your humor?

What’s the purpose of humor in your speech? Do you want to warm the audience up? Or do you want to prove a point?
In Colbert’s speech, it was straightforward. He was the featured entertainer for the dinner. He was hired to roast President Bush and the audience knew it. As such, they expected his speech to be satirical and sarcastic. Vine, on the other hand, was invited to speak at a grand dinner attended by eminent lawyers and advocates, because of his reputation in the police anti-terror operations. What a world of difference! He was not even expected to be funny. And no one expected him to crack jokes, not to mention off-color jokes on Iraq bombers!

So the next time you want to use humor in your speech, be it a joke or an anecdote, question its purpose and effectiveness on the particular audience. Make sure your audience is prepared for your humor too, else don’t be shocked if your jokes bombed!

Check out Garr’s analysis of Colbert’s Report here.

(Blogger’s Note: I apologize for such a long delay. It has been quite a busy (and exciting) week for me. Continue watching the space!)

The Third A: APPLY!

Now for the final step! *Pause for dramatic effect* (Like one week of silence isn’t enough…)

APPLY APPLY APPLY! That’s right. It is a simple step. Experts have said it repeatedly. You find them in books, blogs and lately e-books too. As you may have realized, this is no secret. But here’s the thing. How many of us really put this into practice? Now this is what separates the real experts from the amateurs. Real experts practice non-stop. They find every occasion to hone their speaking skills. As we all may have heard it: Practice makes Permanence. If you want to keep your present skills, you gotta keep practicing else they will just be skills you USED TO HAVE.

Recall the two As I mentioned in the last two entries?

1. Awareness - Be aware of your strengths and shortcomings
2. Ask for feedback - Only then will you know what you are good and weak at

Now come the critical A - Apply. Without the third A, all that you have done earlier will be fruitless. Assuming you have followed my advice and gathered all the feedback from your audience, what should you do with them?

Here’s what I do. Have a list that describes all of your strengths. For example, “you have high energy”, “you always have a great message”, “you are able to connect with us very quickly”. With this list, think through what you did that caused your audience to list the above as your strengths. This allow you to repeat the good stuff in your future speeches. As time goes (with practice), you will find it effortless to be good in your audience’s eyes.

Also come up with a list of areas you can work on. For example, in my case, my audience always find it hard to catch up. I have a lot of energy but I speak too fast, which leaves them gasping for breath at the end of my speech. And I get this feedback a lot. Similarly, you will also find some “weaknesses” that your audience keep bringing up. This is where you want to start. But do not be ambitious! Work on one thing at a time. For example, in my case, I have to learn to slow down. And they are plenty of ways to do so. That’s when you can google for help or look up speaking resources.

Remember to concentrate on improving ONE area in every new speech you make. In that way, you can be focused and not be overwhelmed. And then repeat the 2nd step - ask for feedback. Check and see if your audience notices the improvements. In my case, can they catch up? And if you are satisfied, work on your next area. In no time, you will find your lists of strengths growing and your list of “weaknesses” reducing. Sounds good?

And this brings me to the end of the trilogy. Being a good speaker is really easy. Apply the 3As consistently and you will see dramatic improvements in your speaking capabilities. And believe me, this is just the beginning. Test this out and let me know if it works!