Crushing the scariest talk of your life
This article was originally posted at ffolliet. com. With Sara Gray, David Carr & Chris Hicks.
Here’s the scenario:
You are a pretty good public speaker, and you’ve given some great local talks, but all of a sudden you get the invitation of a lifetime – to give the plenary at a prestigious international conference. You are thrilled by the invite, but also terrified. Can you take your game to the next level?
That was the three of us, when the invitation to speak at dasSMACC arrived at our doors. Three good speakers, looking to take it to the next level on an international stage, and desperately keen to not choke under pressure. But how?
It can be difficult to get constructive feedback from relevant stakeholders (aka people you respect who are good speakers). Most people just clap you on the shoulder and say “great talk”! We wanted to develop a mechanism to give serious feedback and coaching tips to each other. So, to ratchet it up for dasSMACC, we decided to engage in a focused and deliberate process of preparing, workshopping and practicing our presentations. In front of each other. And then giving each other feedback: Real, difficult, confrontational, useful feedback. No holds barred. In the spirit of trying to get from good to better.
This was novel for us, and felt scary – it is hard to make yourself that vulnerable – but we committed to the process because we were truly seeking to improve.
Our process
Although we were kind of making this up as we went along, the process wasn’t totally arbitrary. Much has been written about the need to set your goals a few percentage points beyond your comfort zone in order to really push for improvement and, ultimately, mastery; This is central to the concept of flow and mastery-learning. We chose to base our method on a peer coaching model that facilitated deliberate practice: delivery, feedback, revise, repeat. We were at once each other’s peers, coaches, and mentors — and it worked because we carried a healthy sense of respect (and maybe a bit of fear) for one another’s skill and experience, along with a very specific goal to work towards. Here’s what it looked like, in six easy steps.
1. Choose your coaches carefully
Choose at least two other people to prepare with, ideally they should be speakers who you admire. Choose people who are honest. Choose people who scare you a little. And if you are a rookie at this, choose friends for your first attempt.
Choosing reviewers whose strengths are different from yours and whose strengths are different from each other. We had unique talents to bring to each other, in terms of narrative development, slide design and presentation style.
2. Brainstorm ideas together
Work together to develop ideas, titles, narratives and general flow. This is the easiest part. Discuss the physical setting of the talk, the stage and the target audience. Keep it fun.
3. Present a draft talk to your coaches
This is a scary one. Delivering a (often half-done) talk to threatening people who are going to give you honest feedback is hard. Bourbon helps. And share the misery: it helps to present a stumble-through in front of colleagues who you know will have to do the same in front of you: it keeps everyone honest and respectful.
4. Keep it objective
We used an explicit feedback form (see below) to give each other honest direct comments. It was pretty eye-opening! But we all learned valuable tips that no one had ever told us before. This was the type of feedback that has traditionally never been given. And having a form that compelled you to look for and write down specific areas of improvement, things in the talk that needed to be axed, things you did really well really helped focus the conversation and provided the permission to be (respectfully) blunt.
5. Seek feedback in-situ
We all attended each other’s talks that spring (on various topics and at various venues), filled out the same feedback form, and gave each other honest advice after each one. Although we weren’t delivering the important talks, we were still prepping, beating out bad habits, noticing new ones and learning valuable presentation skills from each other. It’s a unique challenge to act as a reviewer and not an audience member: You have to really sense the whole crowd and reflect not just on your own opinions for feedback. Similarly, it adds a level of intensity to give a presentation knowing that someone is actively critiquing your work.
6. Present the (mostly) finished product
Yes, again with the feedback form. By this time, the process is less daunting, and the talk is getting better and better. The reviewers can suggest final tweaks, and this serves as an excellent practice session for ensuring the talk will be phenomenal. After this, all you need is practice practice practice until the big day. If you want to beat the stress out of you, over-learning to the point of automatic is a great way to do it. By the day of the big presentation, we’d all been off script and working from memory for a couple of weeks. Feeling anxious, but ready — exactly where we wanted to be.
Bottom Line
If you do a lot of speaking (or even if you don’t) you’re probably already a pretty good presenter. Like any skill though, it’s pretty easy to plateau at “good” in the absence of focused feedback and deliberate practice. You need a coach. You need guidance. You can only get so far in the process on your own. While we were initially sceptical about this (aka paralyzed by performance anxiety), the process was transformative. Undoubtedly, we are all better speakers for having coached one another towards a specific goal. In the future, we would not give an important talk without a similar preparation process. Choose your coaches wisely, find your courage, and give it a whirl – it will be worth it.