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Test your presentation video by asking friends and colleagues what stood out the most.
- 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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