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 - play it, don't say it

This week I have a special guest at the Professional Speakers Chapter I run – John Cremer from Brighton.

John runs The Maydays, one of the UK’s leading improvisational comedy groups – I have performed with them quite a few times, and enjoyed (almost) every second!

I saw him speak in South Africa recently, and was struck with how good he is at translating what he’s saying into what he’s doing.

Of course, John has an acting background, but anyone, yes anyone, can put more performance and action into their presentations – and you should try it.

I call it "play it, don't say it". Look for passages in your presentation where you are describing a scene, or telling a story, and use movement, body language, facial expression to bring the piece alive.

Watch friends telling stories in the pub – they become animated, adding gestures, pulling faces, and acting out what actually happened. Try the same in your next presentation – bringing your talk alive will bring your audience alive too.

Seth Godin doesn't want you to rehearse. Seth Godin is wrong.

I subscribe to Seth Godin's blog. I love Seth Godin's blog. I find it inspiring, entertaining, educational, and enjoyable.

But not always. That's good, because if we agreed with everything we read it would be an awfully boring world.

A couple of weeks ago Seth wrote that "Rehearsing is for cowards".

He quoted Jackson Browne, who I suspect when he said rehearsing is for cowards was being controversial, confrontational, or both. Browne has sold more than 17 million albums, headlined live shows across the world, and written some of the most powerful songs of the last forty years.

And you don't get that good without rehearsing.

The next time you have a presentation to make, or a conference speech, or you're part of a pitch team, please don't fall into the trap of thinking you can wing it. Plan it, prepare it, and rehearse it.

I'm lucky enough to see a lot of great speakers in my job - indeed, I'm just back from the annual convention of the Professional Speaking Association, where I got to watch some of the best speakers in the world perform. I even got to do a keynote myself.

If great speakers look natural, confident, spontaneous and off-the-cuff, that's because they have put the work in to do so. I had a laugh at the convention with the brilliant after-dinner and conference speaker Graham Davies about rehearsing ad-libs. I was only partly joking.

Professional speakers plan and plan and plan. And then they start rehearsing.

Don't think that being under-rehearsed looks 'edgy', spontaneous or relaxed. It looks unprofessional, unprepared, and for the audience, it simply feels awkward.

Communication Tip - engage them with your opening.

I'm in Oxford as I write this, preparing to speak to an audience of Head Teachers tomorrow.

It's one of my favourite cities, and the location of a large part of one of my favourite novels - Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

It's a vast, sprawling story of the relationship between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, and Sebastian's family. It was made gloriously famous by a Granada Television dramatisation in the early 80's (and less so by a film version a couple of years ago).

Thinking of the novel as I walked around the Oxford Colleges today, one thing kept coming to mind with regard to my speech tomorrow. The opening line of Brideshead Revisited.

The opening line of Chapter One (although there is a prologue) is "I have been here before".

It is spoken by Charles Ryder, on realising that the army platoon he captains (in the Second World War) is to be camped at Brideshead, home of Sebastian's family. "I have been here before".

The line sets up the whole drama of the novel, setting Charles on a journey through his memory of the preceding twenty or thirty years, from his first days at Oxford, to meeting Lord Sebastian Flyte and friends, Sebastian's dissolution through drink, Charles' marriage and development as an artist, and his relationship with Sebastian's sister Julia.

But it all starts with that one line - "I have been here before".

With the opening line, Waugh sets the stage for his story - and with an opening line, every presentation you make, every email you send, every report you produce will set the stage for how your audience will take it and understand it.

Work hard on that opening line. Is it strong, engaging, involving? If it is, you'll be some way to achieving your objective. (And you do have an objective, don't you?).

If it is weak, unengaging, banal - then you are off to the worst of all possible starts. And don't expect that your audience will come with you on the rest of the journey.

I'll be working hard on my opening for tomorrow's speech. But then again, I have been here before.