West Wing's President Bartlet on words and public speaking

We had to turn it off. As this week’s TV entered the eighth circle of Hell with yet another "scripted reality" show (in other words, complete unreality), we had to turn it off. 

Or rather, turn to the Box Set of “The West Wing” which we are watching yet again. The scene featured President Bartlet complaining about the presentation style of a preacher whose service they had just attended.

Bartlet himself is a superb speaker, with his scripts written and perfected by Toby and Sam. (Yes, I understand they are TV characters. I still love them). In the scene we watched, he talks about the possibilities of public speaking – if we take care to craft the words we use.

“Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance, are music. They have rhythm, and pitch, and timbre, and volume. These are the properties of music, and music has the ability to find us and move us, and lift us up in ways that literal meanings can’t”.

When you are next preparing a presentation, think about the actual words you will use. Try to add figures of speech, metaphors, alliteration – all the devices you learned in English class. Rhetoric – the art of crafting how you say things in order to enhance your powers of persuasion – is the mark of a great speaker, or great presenter.

There are several online sites about rhetoric – take a look, and improve your presentations by employing rhetorical tricks, tropes, and triples. (Yup, that was one – an alliterative triple).

Incidentally, don’t overdo it. The response from Bartlet’s wife (played by the incomparable Stockard Channing, the real attraction in “Grease”) is “You are an oratorical snob!”

Presentation tip - put some humour in your presentations

Ask a professional speaker (like me) if you should use humour in a presentation and they’ll say “Only if you want to get paid”.

People whose income depends on speaking at conferences – and getting asked back – know the truth of the Victor Borge line “The shortest distance between two people is a smile”.

Humour engages an audience with what you are saying. It helps them relax, builds rapport and sets you apart from other presenters.

I don’t mean you should turn into Jimmy Carr, with a 20 minute set of one-liners. For most business presentations, actual jokes may be inappropriate.

But self-deprecating humour, taking an alternative view of the issue – or even sharing a funny moment that the team had while coming up with the solution – all help you build a relationship with the people listening to your presentation.

With this in mind, think about how you can improve your ‘take’ on humour.

I was doing some presentation coaching for a senior exec recently, and he asked me to help put more humour into his speeches. “What kind of humour do you enjoy?” I asked. “I don’t, really”, he said. "I tend to spend my time watching and reading more serious stuff".

I suggested he might spend more time reading PG Wodehouse and Christopher Brookmyre and less on Chekhov and Tolstoy.