Illuminations on the path to Zigging like Zig Ziglar

(Or how to write a romba fine, tumba chennagide speech)

If you want to improve your speaking mojo, here are 3 invaluable rules of engagement...

Rule Number 1:

If a romba beautiful picture is in the eye of the beholder, a romba wonderful speech is in the eye of the listener. 

But the listener is not whom you think.

Audience illa.

Are you going Yenaka theriyaad? Enakku puriyala! 

I will explain...

The listener is whoever has requested you to speak.

Your Boss.

The HR Employee Development Coordinator.

The President of the Club.

The Organizer of the Seminar.

The friend who is getting married.

This is the person your speech must aim to please – the same one you will have to profusely apologize to, or make some wild excuses to, if you make any boners.

So the first rule of engagement is to understand the person who has requested the speech. 

Find out what it is they are expecting, and if they have a list of do’s and don’t’s for you. 

Maybe, even run your speech idea (possibly your entire speech) by them.

If they tell you to solpa adjust madi your speech, solpa adjust madi your speech. 

If they stare at you as if you are an alien from another planet, best to throw everything out and start over.

Treat the person who has commissioned you to speak as your touchstone. You won’t regret it.

How Bonita Kraspoler helped me zig like Zig Ziglar

Let me tell you about the time I gave a Money Workshop to the 4^th,5^th and 6^th grade GATE students of Taylor Elementary School.

Unsure about how to present to such young minds, I decided to ask the GATE program coordinator, Bonita Kraspoler, if I could run the presentations by her so she could evaluate them.

She graciously agreed and I went over to her house at the appointed time.

What happened next was not what I predicted.

I thought she would hear my entire speech out and then say something like “fabulous - just shorten the part about taxes”.  In other words, suggest some minor tinkering.

Instead, she suggested a full engine rebore. 

My material was too dry, too academic, too long, and too lacking in interactivity for her liking.

The first presentation was on Earning Money and she kept stopping me mid-sentence and saying “turn that into a question. Let the kids provide the answer. Ask, don’t tell”.

Thanks to her input, I completely overhauled my material and transformed it from a "dry-as-dust lecture" to a “true workshop” -packed with audience participation devices such as quizzes, exhibits and games.

My 3-unit Money Workshop - Earning Money, Spending Money and Saving Money became more palatable and better suited to a young fidgety audience.

Here are some examples of the devices I incorporated:

Example of Show vs. Tell

•  I passed around different forms of money, including notes, coins, a debit card and a credit card and asked the students what each one was.

Example of Do vs. Hear

• We created blank play checks and had each student fill out an individual check so they learned how to do check-writing

• We divided the students into groups, gave them Lucky, Safeway and Nob Hill Weekly Flyers and asked them to select things for a party and add up the dollar amounts of the items selected (the idea was to see who came up with the most economical party)

Example of Ask vs. Tell           

• I told them that at In N Out Burger, they could read on a place mat that In N Out started making burgers in 1948 and a burger cost only 20 cents at that time and today though their burgers cost $1.99, they still make it the same way.  I explained this meant the price of an In N Out Burger had gone up 10 times since 1948. I asked them what percentage of an In N Out burger 20 cents would buy them today.  Several of them quickly worked out the calculation in their heads and shouted 10%. This is how I taught them about inflation.

You can see how useful Bonita’s input was to me.

Warming to the idea of getting your speech requester involved?

Let's move on to Rule No. 2:

Seri...

Focus on your audience, then your topic, so you don’t miss the boat (or the autorickshaw)

Your second rule of engagement should be to focus on your audience first, topic next. Those with an advertising background know this well.

Your speech-requester can be your friend once again.

She/he is likely to have a good handle on the audience you are speaking to.

So you should try to find out as much as you can.

Knowing where your audience is coming from - their background, professional affiliation, reason why they are in the audience that day, can help you tailor both the content and style of your speech to suit them.

Even knowing how tired or energetic they may be when you are scheduled to speak is useful - if you are going on at the end of what has been a grueling day for your audience, it signals to you that you should go easy on the heavy stuff, or yawns, snores and glances at the clock will be your unavoidable fate.

If there is any opportunity to chat and mingle with the audience prior to the speech, seize it.

It will enable you to find out things about your audience, so you can be even more empathetic with them.

An Example of Empathy

-           

• If you find out lunch was served half an hour late, you can commiserate with them about that.

Consider a Dress Rehearsal

If possible, test your speech on someone representative of your audience.

Again, I did this with my Money Workshop.

I sat my daughter Tanita and one of her classmates down a few days before the workshop and did a dress rehearsal with them.

Their reactions and feedback indicated that my first presentation on Earning Money was romba fine, but the Spending Money and Saving Money presentations were less lively and needed more oomph.

Know your audience before you speak to them and you are more likely to communicate effectively with them.

Seri...moving on to Rule No 3:

Of course, most audiences love a joke, but about whom?

While jokes are a great ice-breaker and can really take the edge of a dry topic, you have to be careful your jokes don’t fall flat.

Or worse still, offend.

The best advice is to steer clear of making jokes about any group of people, and especially the group of people you are talking to.  (spouting negative jokes about lawyers to a group of lawyers – noooo, nooooo)

So here’s who you can safely make jokes about -

Yourself.

Your own personal flaws and experiences can provide you with safe material to joke about.

And self-deprecation might even disarm your audience – humanizing you and making you less intimidating to them – especially if they are not listening to your speech out of choice.

Here’s a link with a video explaining how you can use personal experiences (in this case dad and teenager jokes) to liven up a speech.

So there you have it...

3 tips to help you to give a Romba Nalla, Romba Fine, Tumba Chennagide Professional Speech...

And here’s the book in which you will find all these 3 tips and a lot more...

It's called Present Like a Pro. 

Happy Speaking!

P.S.  I had a terrible fear of public speaking.  Then I signed up for Toastmasters at Adlibmasters in San Jose and completed my CTM. It was a big help.  If you have a fear of public speaking, or need to take your speaking to a new level, kavalai padaathey, (don’t worry) Toastmasters can help you. Toastmasters is a worldwide organization and you are sure to find a Toastmasters club close to you. I encourage you to join.  It’s practically free and well worth the time and effort.

P.S. 2: Also, if you need help crafting a speech or brainstorming ideas, I would love to help.

P.S. 3: Finally, I would be happy to reprise my Money Workshop for any school kids that could benefit from it. It would just be a question of dusting off my material and sprucing it up.

P.S. 4:  As always thanks for reading and Intha Nal Iniyia Nal aga irukadum.  I am giving myself a badge of courage for using a few Tamil and Kannada words in this post since I know all of two and a half words in these languages (Shame on you, Minoo).  If the usage is wrong, please feel free to correct me so I make less of a fool of myself in the future.  Nandri.