Youtube Notes: How to Speak
My Notes from the amazing Lecture by Patrick Winston on how to speak and present yourself.
If like me, you have struggled to share your thoughts with a wide audience in a clear succinct manner, this 1:03:42 long lecture should help you. The title is an understatement on how wonderfully succinct this lecture has been.
If you don’t have time, you can just read my notes below too :)
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The Heuristics of Speaking Well
Basic crimes conducted by people who use slides
How do we inspire people through our speaking or presenting?
Becoming Famous & getting remembered
How do you end a presentation?
The Heuristics of Speaking Well
1. Human beings only have one language processor. So when you speak, avoid having multiple digital or visible devices with words.
2. How do you start? You start with a promise. The promise that by the end of reading this post, you would have learned something.
3. Cycle the subject: This means you will talk and build on the same topic at least three times as attention can waver. Hence, cycle the subject at least three times so the listener can be cemented with the idea or subject you are sharing.
4. Build a Fence: Differentiate your ideas and quickly share why your ideas are different from others. This will help clearly differentiate your ideas from others and leave less space for confusion.
5. Verbal Punctuation: Provide numbers and an outline while you are speaking.
6. Ask questions to the audience and prompt them to voice out. But pause for seven seconds and not more to receive questions and answers.
7. The time and place of speaking are of utmost importance. If your context demands that everyone is active at 11 AM, you could choose that slot. Keep the area illuminated and bright so others can pay attention to what you are sharing. Dark places or dim lighting signal the brain to sleep or rest. Best to avoid that.
8. If the place is physical, choose a cased place as it might make it easy to contain people in one place.
9. The place should be reasonably populated so that other human beings feel that something interesting is happening.
10. Keep all boards, props, etc., in sight so there is enough information to inform and show.
11. If you are new to sharing something, use your hands to point so that you don’t fold or put your hands in your pockets out of nervousness.
12. By Empathic Mirroring, your audience will reciprocate and work through the examples and ideas you share with them.
Basic crimes conducted by people who use slides
1. Your slides should not be sliduments (slide+ documents)
2. Get rid of the words on your documents. You are there to talk about the slides; it does not have to be on the slides.
3. Get rid of unnecessary details, images, logos, etc.
4. Get rid of your bullet points and just use simple text to explain your ideas. Don’t detail them.
5. The type size should not be too small. You could use between 40 to 60 point size for our audience to grasp.
6. Using a pointer to try being specific? Avoid it as it breaks the eye contact between you and the audience. Use an arrow to be specific on the screen if need be.
7. Keep your slides simple with more whitespace; the better it is for the audience.
8. If you have a lot of complexity to show like a map or a diagram, try to show it just once to the user as it overwhelms them.
Do these basic crimes happen today? Yes, and virtually a lot more thanks to boring Zoom presentations.
How do we inspire people through our speaking or presenting?
People are inspired when they see a new way of solving the same problem. It also means and shows passion for the work they do.
When people ask you what it is you do, you can respond with “I help people break down insights to wireframes.” But when they ask you how you do that, it becomes a blank staring competition. Now this is a moment where you learn how to share your passion and build on the previous questions. Show off a bit with evidence and abundance.
Let’s talk about “Job Talks”
From the video, the speaker outlines how people select future candidates in a job:
1. They have to show that they have some kind of vision.
2. They have to show that they have done something.
3. They have to show and talk about both from above under 5 mins.
The difference between us and other animals is that we can ask questions and solve them. So, how do you present a case study?
Here is how:
1. What is the problem you are solving?
2. What is your hypothesis?
3. What is your actual data?
4. What is the solution and steps that arrived at it?
5. What did you contribute to it?
These outlines should help in laying down your case for a future employer.
Becoming Famous & getting remembered
Once you get the job, it’s time to become “famous” or be recognized for what you do.
First of all, why do you care about getting famous?
You never get used to being ignored. Your ideas are interesting to people.
So, how do you get remembered?
Using the Winston's STAR method:
1. Have a symbol associated with your work so it's memorable for others.
2. You need some kind of slogan or catchphrase.
3. You need a surprise.
4. You need one salient idea. Don’t have too many cluttered. Having one makes it easier and adds to your sticky POV.
5. Have a story.
How do you end a presentation ?
1. Don’t say “The END” in your slides. It is really the crime you cannot the commit.
2. Don’t be polite by saying “Thanking people for their time” as it makes them feel they stayed back forcefully. It sounds patronizing.
3. Conclusions Slide seem like you will be extending the session. So avoid that.
4. Links or websites are useless because nobody is writing those down. If possible give a QR code for reference.
5. Don’t say “questions?” on the slides. Then that screen will stay up for 20 mins with no references.
6. Don’t put your collaborators and contributors on the last slides; they belong on the first slide. Credit them properly.
7. End with a joke as people are now used to your voices and how it works. It always makes it easy for people to end with a chuckle.
8. Catholic Churches signal the ending of Mass with “Ite Missa Est - The mass is over, you can go home now.”
9. Also, end with a reiteration of the promise you started with. A clear call to action so they will carry themselves forward with the message you leave them with.
10. Ask people to come back again with thoughts and end the session well.
Where will you use this next? Lemme know!
- Madhuri