There Is a Perfect Test for Your Speech Or Presentation

• 00:04 Public speaking, presentation skills, these are soft skills,
• 00:08 and sometimes you never really know what's going to work, you're on one day,
• 00:12 you're off the next, time out.
• 00:15 I'm sure you've heard that, I've heard those things, and
• 00:19 let me tell you, that is absolute garbage.
• 00:22 That is baloney, that is complete nonsense.
• 00:27 There's nothing soft about public speaking or presentation skills.
• 00:31 It is every bit as quantifiable as any aspect of physics, mathematics,
• 00:36 or chemistry.
• 00:38 You can in fact test these things.
• 00:40 If I'm an engineer and I design some bridge, I will want to test it before
• 00:44 human beings are going over in their cars and collapses to their death.
• 00:49 I can't just say, well, let me wing it that day, and
• 00:52 I had an off day building a bridge.
• 00:53 No, you test your bridge if you're an engineer.
• 00:58 Guess what?
• 00:59 You can test your presentations.
• 01:02 You can test your speeches.
• 01:04 Here's how to do it.
• 01:07 Take the video that you just made that you're now confident you look your best
• 01:11 and sound your best.
• 01:13 Email that video to two or three people who are similar in mindset to
• 01:18 the audience you're going to be speaking to.
• 01:21 Send it to them, and then call them up or text them.
• 01:25 Here's the thing, don't ask them what they think.
• 01:29 They're your friends, they're your colleagues,
• 01:31 they're going to say you are great, you are fine, good job, very professional,
• 01:35 completely worthless feedback.
• 01:37 That's not what we're after.
• 01:39 You want to ask them, what stands out, what do you remember?
• 01:43 How would you summarize this presentation to a colleague who didn't hear me?
• 01:47 And here's what you're listening for.
• 01:49 Did they tell you the five or fewer ideas,
• 01:53 the messages you really cared about, when you prepared this presentation?
• 01:59 Can they throw them back in your face?
• 02:00 Maybe a different order, that's fine.
• 02:03 Different wording, that's fine.
• 02:05 But can they in fact remember your messages, and talk about them,
• 02:10 and throw it back?
• 02:11 If they can't remember your messages, guess what, you failed.
• 02:16 If you're using slides, ask them what slides they remember?
• 02:19 If they say, well, the slides were really professional, guess what?
• 02:21 Means your slides were useless.
• 02:24 They can't remember your slides, throw them in the trash can.
• 02:27 You need to find out what stories they remember, what messages they remember,
• 02:32 what slides they remember.
• 02:35 And do they feel compelled to take the action you wanted them to take when you
• 02:39 started this whole process?
• 02:41 So test this now, sometimes you could be in an organization office,
• 02:46 you could test with three or four colleagues at lunchtime, or
• 02:50 in the morning while people are having coffee.
• 02:54 Test in front of live people, get feedback.
• 02:57 Again, we're not so much concerned about them saying, well,
• 03:02 you touched your pinky once or you said one.
• 03:05 People are going to give you a lot of advice.
• 03:07 I would disregard most of it, but
• 03:10 what you do really want to pay attention to is, what do they remember?
• 03:16 Just remember the biggest problem most people have when they're giving a speech
• 03:20 or presentation, it's not that they freeze, have flop sweat, and are so
• 03:24 scared, it's a disaster and they made a horrible impression.
• 03:27 The biggest problem most people have is they made no impression.
• 03:33 They stood up, dressed professionally,
• 03:35 they went through the presentation smoothly, professionally,
• 03:38 two minutes later no one remembers anything of what they said.
• 03:42 You don't want to do that.
• 03:43 So that's why it's critical to test in advance.
• 03:50 When TED picks great speakers quite often, the speakers spoke at TEDx first.
• 03:57 And tested out the material, showed there was demand,
• 04:01 showed people like it, showed the audience resonated.
• 04:05 Al Gore before he gave his famous TED talk on global warming,
• 04:11 gave that speech thousands of time for years before it
• 04:15 attracted a huge audience on TED and then turned into a movie.
• 04:21 So test your presentation on your audience,
• 04:26 a sampling or a subset of your audience in advance.
• 04:31 Because when you see that the speech you've prepared and delivered, two or
• 04:36 three people who didn't know what was in it in advance can understand it and
• 04:41 remember it.
• 04:42 Then when you're going in to give the real speech,
• 04:46 it's virtually impossible to be nervous.
• 04:49 You're going to have confidence, but confidence based on reality,
• 04:55 confidence based on legitimate proof.
• 04:59 That's what we're after.

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