Notes on How to Rock the Stage

Back at Microsoft, I went to a seminar (they call them "courses") on the topic of public speaking, taught by then distinguished engineer / tech evangelist James Whittaker. On that day, he spoke well and worked his audience (fresh hires and folks experiencing mid-life/career crises). While I was originally planning to transcribe notes from that seminar, I was instead enchanted by another talk on public speaking he gave a year earlier with Michelle Dickinson.

The actual talk manifests the ideas below and offers plenty of examples. James' speaking has a great quality of connecting so many disparate concepts -- sometimes whimsically -- in a way that infects my mind a bit every time. He also gets away with being an ass in a way where calling him out makes me more of an ass!

Notes from the talk:

• Why speak? To influence people. What better way to influence people than with effective stage presence?
• If you tell someone their own story, it will resonate. So, speak for your audience, not to them! James equates this to the old adage, "Show, don't tell." Saying "I", "me", and talking about your accomplishments is a great way to speak to the audience.
• A concept is an address^[1] -- the name of the place where details are filed away. Always give an address for the details. Forcing an emotional connection is a way to create an address. Some examples:
  • imprint with a sensory experience -- sound, visuals, taste, touch, smell.
  • a shocking / visceral experience
  • imprint with a common language / experience
  • imprint with a surprising connection
• You need to believe what you are saying to persuade. For whatever reason (subtle cues?), in an FMRI study, the speaker and listener's brains mirrored each others' activity (source?). This lends some credence to the idea that you need to be emotionally invested in the presentation in the way you want your audience to be invested.
• James has stories for important moments -- every project has a story. Train yourself to recognize stories. Be a collector, inventor, and hunter of them. They give you insight into the speaker's life.
• Don't bombard. Pick one message. Is it tweetable?
• Preparation is not optional. Preparation is personal. Some examples of personal habits:
  • practice with music to get a tempo
  • practice when you will breathe
  • practice by saying it out loud
  • record yourself
  • repeat the talk mentally over and over and over
  • repeat the talk in bed
  • practice the talk under increased pressure:
  • tell the talk while naked in front of the mirror
  • tell the talk to strangers
• Practice by giving talks.
• Nerves: they are like birthday candles -- savor them because they don't come that often.
• Start strong! A talk is not a movie and the opening sentence is an upper bound on who will pay attention. An audience that has opted in will overlook some mistakes.
• Never turn your back to the audience.
• PowerPoint should never be more than a prop. Don't rely on it; you should be able to give the talk without any props. Always command the props, not the other way around (otherwise you are superfluous). The exception is videos -- you prepared them to takeover the stage.
• Accentuate the key phrases. They really matter. You can't do that while reading from a prompt.
• Pauses are important. Use them thoughtfully.
• Simple but deliberate stage movement and body language keeps the focus on the message. Keep hands open. Hitler gave talks with fists. Pointing can be considered aggressive. Standing behind a podium is too little stimulation. Dancing on the stage is too much.
• Only look at notes in conjunction with another action (eg: turning). Think of using illusions and misdirection to hide the use of notes.
• Be genuine. Use your natural personality. It makes you more relatable. You will polarize, that's okay. Even a persona is the personification of your goals and desires.
• Finish strong (just like you started)! Memories of an event tend to be colored by the average of the most extreme and last moments.

[1] This idea meshes very well with the learning technique of chunking and attempting to retain ideas past the memory consolidation period by forming connections to known ideas. See also sleep spindles. More on this in another post.