January 19, 2015: Making it look easy

I recently joined a local Toastmasters group.  After a few meetings, I understood how they were supposed to flow, and I signed up to give the first speech.  It's called "The Icebreaker", and it is a self-introduction.  It's a short speech, 4-6 minutes, and should be memorized.  But as with all things I've seen so far at Toastmasters, memorization is optional.

I did not dread the speech.  Audiences don't bother me as a rule, although I do tend to pick topics and examples that are close to my heart, and I tend to get emotional when I talk about such things.  This is a key problem of mine when writing a speech.

I'm pleased to report it went well.  Feedback was honestly positive, and I got some good pointers on future improvements.  You know how these things go - you are supposed to give lots of positive feedback and a couple small pointers of things "you might want to think about for next time".  The comments were very positive, and one of them that stuck with me was that the evaluator said it came naturally to me.  Few things are further from the truth.  This is how I prepare for a public speaking engagement, or any time when the words I say are important and getting them wrong has real consequences.

I signed up for the speech in December, knowing I couldn't deliver it until mid-January.  From the moment I signed up for it, I thought about it.  It was in my mind constantly.  This is the first step in preparation for me: know it has to be done; think about for a few minutes; let it stew for a few weeks.  Although it appears that I'm not working on it, I have assigned some space in my brain for it, and my subconscious churns through it while I'm not paying attention.  We all do this to some degree or another.  This is why we may suddenly think, "I know what I want to do with the bathroom!" when we last talked about it 6 months ago.  I use this technique consciously, and I've done it enough that I have a good idea of how the size of the task measures up against the amount of time I have to spend to prepare my mind to work on it.  10-20 minutes of working through possible approaches one evening in December was about right for a 5 minute speech in January.

I sat down last week to write it.  This is the next step.  Make time, sit down, and get your subconscious' results on paper.  While I liked the content, the speech was WAY too long.  And the next day, I wasn't impressed with the approach.  The stories were fine, but they weren't pointed in a direction I liked.  This is hard to describe.  But say you're telling a story about opening gifts at Christmas.  The focus of your story could be on the thoughts of the people who bought the gifts; or on the reaction of the people opening them; or the plight of the Chinese factory workers who made them; or grandma's hair; or the mess you had to clean up afterward.  It's the same story, but points in a different direction.

So I had a rough draft, serviceable, but not what I wanted.  And I stepped away again.  Sometimes you have the luxury of doing that: of making a rough draft and letting it sit some more.  Preparation allows that time.  Often in business environments, we don't have the luxury of waiting.  But we do have the option of thinking about what we might need to create in the next few months and letting our minds percolate on it.

I sat down this morning to write another draft.  I knew it could only be 3 pages double-spaced, max.  And I knew how long it would take me to write something of that length on a topic I knew as well as I knew myself.  An hour later, it was done.  I read it through.  5:58 vs a tie limit of 6:00.  Not good.  I crossed out a few lines, read through it again, and went off to do something else.  I came back to it later, and tried to give the speech, using my notes as little as possible.  Then I did it without notes.  There were some things I noticed on my previous reads that I thought might not translate for the audience.  So I fixed them in the memorized version.  It ran to 8:45 before I checked my time.

Oh no.  Panic time.  Ok, not panic, but "how do I systematically reduce this and still keep the weight of the subject matter in tact?"  My topic was a self introduction, but I themed it along the choices we make and how they define us.  My next attempt was shorter at 5:35.  By this point, after a month of percolating ideas and stories, 2 drafts, 3 runs reading it, and 3 runs memorized, I felt ready enough.  I drove to the meeting location early and did a run in the car.  5:30 or so.  I was ready.

For a topic I didn't know so well, memorizing would have been much more difficult.  For this one, it was easier.  I was not natural when I was practicing.  I stumbled over words, corrected myself, skipped key points and went back to them.  But practice makes better, and better is good.

I use these techniques often in the workplace.  Before every important presentation, I block time in a conference room alone to rehearse.  Before every single difficult performance evaluation I deliver, I take 15 minutes or so to remind myself of the key points of discussion and they way I want to frame my constructive criticism.  What objections will the person likely have?  How should I respond to them?  For any disciplinary action, I set aside a full hour, preferably the day before the action.

Why?  Why is it so important?  Because of this fact: you are the manager, and it is that important to the person you are talking to.  You owe them that much respect and that much time.  What you are doing and saying can change that person's entire career.  You had better take it seriously.

And that is how you make it look easy.  It's not easy.  And it is necessary.  And it is worth it.