Joyful Public Speaking (from fear to joy)

During the cruise my wife and I took in late April on the Disney Wonder I noticed there were framed selections from storyboards hung on the walls to the landings for some stairways. One set of eight from the 1942 eight-minute Goofy animated film How to Swim is shown above. A storyboard is an old but important planning tool for preparing animation – but it also can be used both for speechwriting and PowerPoint.   

Another dozen frames from the 1940 animated film Tugboat Mickey (Mickey Mouse Installment 107) are shown above.

At LinkedIn Pulse on February 6, 2024 there is an article by Jaimie Abbott titled Using storyboarding to plan your presentation. And way back on March 17, 2011 I had blogged about Use a storyboard to organize your presentation.

2x2 graphics are very useful for all sorts of planning. They are the next level beyond a one-dimensional description where typically ‘more is better.’ On July 3, 2020 I blogged about Is that 2x2 graphic a table, a chart, or a matrix? Should the axis go from left to right or right to left? And then on July 5, 2020 I blogged about Is that 2x2 graphic a chart, or a matrix? How many quadrants are there?

More recently, starting on November 13, 2023 I blogged about many different 2x2 graphics, as are shown above. If you want to learn much more, then look at a 348-page book from two decades ago (2004) by Alex Lowy and Phil Hood titled The Power of the 2x2 Matrix: Using 2x2 thinking to solve business problems and make better decisions.

How can you decide when you need a 2x2 chart? As shown above, there is a 2x2 chart for that from Jeremiah Owyang at flickr on November 12, 2009 titled Matrix: Do You Need a 2x2 Matrix. The Magic 8 Ball is discussed in a Wikipedia page. It contains a floating icosahedron that has 20 answers, ten affirmative, five negative, and five non-committal.

At a web site by Nils Davis for his book, The Secret Project Manager Handbook, there is an article titled The prioritization 2x2 that is the first in a series titled How to Prioritize: Top 6 Prioritization Techniques. He shows a cost vs. value 2x2 chart (low and high) with cost as the horizontal axis, and value as the vertical axis – as shown above. The two blue boxes (which I connected by an arrow) have the normal sequence (blue) where low cost goes with low value and high cost with high value. The upper left green box (low cost and high value) is an excellent surprise, but the lower right red box (high cost and low value) is something to avoid. 

At Savio there is another article by Kareem Mayan titled What is the Value vs Effort Matrix? Explanation, guide and how to avoid its pitfalls. As shown above, he plots value on the value horizontal axis and more generally effort (like cost) on the vertical axis. He discusses five weaknesses for this approach:

We’re not good at estimating value.

We tend to underestimate effort

Some features are important even if they won’t provide value.

Scores aren’t static.

Doesn’t directly tie scores to customer needs.

Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (acronym SWOT) is a tool for strategic planning and management using a 2x2 chart, as shown above. There is a succinct three-page pdf article about it at the American Academy of Nurse Anesthesiology, and a Wikipedia page.

Also, there is another  longer article by Joseph Ferriolo at WiseBusinessPlans on November 29, 2023 titled SWOT Analysis: What it is and how to do it correctly with examples. Finally, there is a 33-page e-book you can download for free as a pdf from West Virginia University titled SWOT Analysis – strategy skills.

Some ideas are so old they have gotten different names. For example, there is a Wikipedia article on the Five Ws (really Five Ws and one H) questions shown above which says they can be traced back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics:

“For in acts we must take note of who did it, by what aids or instruments he did it (with), what he did, where he did it, why he did it, how and when he did it.”

That also is known as the Kipling Method, based on his poem The Elephant’s Child from the 1902 book of Just So Stories which opens with:

“I keep six honest serving men: 

(they taught me all I knew).

Their names are What and Where

and When and How and Why and Who.

I send the over land and sea, I send them east and west;

but after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest.”

Those six questions are in an article by Carma Spence at PublicSpeakingSuperPowers on December 1, 2010 titled The 5 Ws and an H of Public Speaking. They also are in a second article at Speak2Impress on June 10, 2019 titled The “5 Ws and 1 H” of Public Speaking. And, they appear in a third article by Danish Khan Yousafzai at LinkedIn Pulse on February 22, 2023 titled Mastering Communication with the 5W1H Rule.

Wikipedia has another article on the Five Whys for problem solving, which came from Taiichi Ohno of Toyota Motor Corporation. There is yet another article by Jon Miller at THE MANUFACTURER on November 17, 2009 titled The Kipling Method vs the Ohno Method.

In my previous post on January 3, 2024 I described Using a Message Box for planning a presentation. When I was searching for articles, I ran across another Message Box, prefixed with the name Tully. As shown above, it is a 2x2 “Us versus Them” table. An article by Joe Fuld at The Campaign Workshop on  May 7, 2020 titled Tully Message Box: Use it for your political campaign discusses it. Paul Tully was a strategist for the Democratic Party. There is an obituary for him by Robin Toner at the New York Times on September 25, 1992 titled Paul Tully Is Dead at 48; Top Democratic Strategist.

The earliest reference I found about the Tully Message Box is on page 54 of a 2004 book by Bradford Fitch titled Media Relations Handbook: For Agencies, Associations, Nonprofits and Congress – The Big Blue Book. It also is discussed on page 51 of a 2008 book by Jeff Blodgett and Bill Lofy titled Winning Your Election the Wellstone Way, which can be downloaded for free.

There is a long article by Joanna P. Kimbell and Alison Berry on pages 311 to 336 in the Fall 2018 issue of the Southern Law Journal titled The Tully Message Box as a heuristic for modeling legal argumentation and detecting covert advocacy.

Retitled as the Perception Box and presented even more tersely, as shown above, it appears in yet another article by Ian Marovic at Beautiful Trouble titled Perception Box Methodology. You also can download his 2018 book The Path of Most Resistance, where it appears on page 51.

I also found the Tully Message Box discussed by Mike McCurry at The Washington Post on July 27, 2012 in an article titled Book review: ‘The Candidate’ by Samuel Popkin. He says:

“A good campaign begins, Popkin says, with the development of a message box, a big piece of paper divided into four quadrants. The upper left is for what the campaign/candidate will say about itself; to the right is what the campaign/candidate will say about its opponent. The bottom half is the reverse – what the opponent says about its own campaign/candidate and what it says about you. This box is familiar to every Democratic campaign operative, although we traditionally associate it with the late and legendary Paul Tully, who taught the technique to most of us.

Political director for the Democratic National Committee during the 1992 campaign cycle, Popkin is a veteran of most Democratic presidential campaigns going back to Robert Kennedy’s in 1968. Curiously, he does not credit Tully with making the box a standard feature of campaign strategy, but I suspect there is a longer story there. It could be that Popkin introduced the box to Tully, although the author makes no such immodest claim. That is worth some follow-up, given how ubiquitous the message box is in current campaign strategy, at least on the Democratic side. (I have heard that Republican campaigns have their own version of this, too).”  

The Republican version was discussed by Patrick “PC” Sweeney at LinkedIn Pulse on January 12, 2017 in still another article titled What can libraries learn from using a Message Box like Kellyanne Conway?

My previous post on January 2, 2024 titled Ten simple rules for engaging in clear communication mentioned a template for planning an effective message called a Message Box, an example of which is shown above. This tool comes from a 2010 book by Nancy Baron, Escape from the Ivory Tower: A Guide to Making Science Matter. The Message Box is discussed in an article from Compass Science Communication.

It also is described in another three-page .pdf article titled Explaining Your Research: Using the Message Box to Communicate Complex Ideas. I also have shown it via a color PowerPoint image. The message box consists of a central issue [rectangle] connected to four quadrants [trapezoids], each containing a question:

Issue [center rectangle]: In broad terms, what is the overarching issue or topic?

Problem: What is the specific problem or piece of the issue I am addressing?

So What?: Why does this matter to my audience?

Solutions: What are the potential solutions to the problem?

Benefits: What are the potential benefits of resolving this problem?

There also is a very detailed The Message Box Workbook from Compass, which can be downloaded as a 28-page pdf. file. A recent example of a message box appears in yet another article by Alex Griffith at the Federation of American Scientists on April 24, 2023 titled Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire: Using effective communication to bridge the gap between wildfire science and policy.

There is a very useful article by Brittney G. Borowiec at PLoS Computational Biology in July 2023 titled Ten simple rules for scientists engaging in science communication. But those more generally useful rules for planning are:

 1]  Define your goals

 2]  Figure out who and where your audience is

 3]  Pick an arena that suits your goals and plays to your strengths

 4]  Come up with a clear headline message 

 5]  Beware of jargon

 6]  Show your audience why they should care

 7]  Tell your audience how to react 

 8]  Get some feedback, evaluate, and improve

 9]  Consider equity, diversity, and inclusion

10] Remember that these rules are interdependent

She notes that:

"There are several excellent templates for crafting an effective science communication message (The COMPASS Message Box, Olson’s And/But/Therefore, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ basic science/newfinding/implications approach, etc.)"

The glossy ten was adapted from this image at Openclipart.

On New Year’s Day we reflect and may make resolutions. My post title borrows from Smokey Bear public service announcements (Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires), as I mentioned in my first post in this series back in 2015. It was followed by 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. I skipped 2023, since I’d run out of good images. Then I found this Puck cartoon from October 18, 1893 at the Library of Congress.

An article by Nick Morgan at Public Words on January 4, 2020 titled My public speaking New Year’s resolutions for 2020 gave his five:

I’ll focus on the positive.

I’ll increase my volunteer and pro bono work.

I’ll double down on the facts.

I’ll ration my social media.

I’m going to stay open to the world in spite of all the apocalyptic stuff going down.

And at PR Newswire on December 19, 2023 there is a press release titled Toastmasters 8 Tips for Keeping Your 2024 New Year’s Resolutions. They are:

Be realistic.

Be specific.

Plan ahead.

Make a list of resolutions and check on them.

Start small.

Hold yourself accountable.

Stay positive.

Celebrate your successes.

There also is an article at einPresswire on December 27, 2023 titled Unsolicited advice from author and guest speaker Matthew Cossolotto: Turn New Year’s Resolutions into promises.

Inspirational speeches (like commencement addresses) typically tell us how to be successful or happy. But on June 3, 1986 Charlie Munger, the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, instead gave a 2012 word speech titled How to Guarantee a Life of Misery. You can read a full transcript on James Clear’s web site. Assuming a speech rate of 125 words per minute, his speech would have a TED Talk length of 16 minutes.

There is an article by Polina Pompliano at The Profile on May 27, 2020 titled The Profile Dossier: Charlie Munger, the Master of Mental Models. It discusses his use of inversion – flipping things over. Also, there is another article by Christopher Dwyer at Psychology Today on July 27, 2023 titled Could inversion improve your decision-making?

On January 12, 2014 I published a blog post titled Don’t just get on the bandwagon! Find your own speech topic and approach. The third approach I listed was to Flip Things Over. As an example, I referred to a post on June 24, 2008 titled Don’t be a “Flip Chart Charlie” – where instead of a How-To, I described How-Not-To.

The miserable cartoon was adapted from here at Openclipart.  

Marcus Fila is an Associate Professor of Management at Hope College. In a speech delivered at their commencement on May 8, 2022 he said to avoid short-term thinking, and that:

“You have to be willing to give something up today in order to have something better tomorrow – and this is why so few people bother to play the long game. But if done well (and I’m a work in progress on this myself) there can be many immediate pleasures and rewards of playing the long game, in the knowledge that you are setting the foundations for long-term flourishing.”

His speech appeared in the August 2022 issue of Vital Speeches of the Day magazine on pages 186 and 187.

The pattern came from page 431 of The Grammar of Ornament.

There are many different ways to plan a presentation, including outlining, mind mapping, and storyboarding. In 2021 Dan Roam added another with his book The Pop-Up Pitch (The Two-Hour Creative Sprint to the Most Persuasive Presentation of Your Life). A description on his web page claims: 

“If you’re busy but you want to create a great presentation, I wrote this book for you.

This whole book is about how to spend two hours creating ten pages that will transform your audience in seven minutes, no matter what story you need to tell.

Your pop-up pitch combines clear words and simple pictures that evoke specific emotions, so that your story is enjoyable to hear, memorable to see, and inspires the action you need.

The next time you have an idea to pitch, try this story line. It works.”

Toastmasters typically give five-to-seven-minute speeches, so Dan’s approach may appeal to them.

In his book Dan describes two tools, which are THE VISUAL DECODER and THE 10-PAGE PITCH TEMPLATE. Templates for both can be downloaded at his web page. A redrawn version of the Visual Decoder is shown above. It fits on both sides of a single sheet of paper. You fill in each page by drawing a picture. Pages 55 to 63 illustrate how to do this with the example of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

The more detailed 10-page pitch template is as follows:

P1 TITLE: WHO & WHAT

Title Page:

Give your pitch a Who & What title.

(Emotion = CLARITY)

P2 OUR COMMON GROUND

Our Common Ground:

Establish an authentic connection to your audience and the issues that concern them Show them you know them, for real.

(Emotion = TRUST)

P3 THE COMING PROBLEM

The Coming Problem:

State the facts and numbers that might be so scary that no one really wants to look at them.

(Emotion = FEAR)

P4 AN EMOTIONAL WIN

An Emotional Win:

Paint a picture of what it might feel like to have already solved the problem.

(Emotion = Hope)

P5 THE FALSE HOPE

The False Hope:

Admit that the hoped-for simple solution won’t really work at all.

(Emotion = SOBERING REALITY)

P6 AN AUDACIOUS NEW REALITY

A Fairly Audacious Reality:

State the bold alternative; the slightly crazy yet potentially viable solution that just might, with courage and commitment, work.

(Emotion = GUSTO)

P7 WE CAN DO THIS FOR REAL

We Can Do This, For Real:

Walk through your bold alternative with a grounding sense of real possibility; get into a few key details to show there’s no real reason to fear them.

(Emotion = COURAGE)

P8 CALL TO ACTION

Our Call To Action:

List the five things that need to get done first to make it happen. Take personal responsibility for two. Request help with the other three.

(Emotion = COMMITMENT)

P9 EARLY BENEFITS

Early Benefits:

State at least two near-term measurable benefits that getting started now will trigger.

(Emotion = REWARD)

P10 THE LONG WIN

The Long Win:

Close with an unexpected giant win that could truly come to pass once the new solution becomes the new normal.

(Emotion = TRUE ASPIRATION)

The three core components are the Beginning (P2, P3, P4), the Middle (P5, P6, P7) and the End (P8, P9, P10).

There is a thirty-minute YouTube video by Kelly Kingman at Kingman Ink titled VBQ O1: Dan Roam Explains the 10-Page Pitch Template.

I haven’t tried his 10-Page Pitch Template yet.

There is a twelve-page article (a PSA whitepaper) by Michael Long at the Professional Speechwriters Association (PSA) titled One Step at a Time: A Practical Process for Writing Any Speech. It briefly describes and then discusses the following six steps:

Step 1: Assess the event and the speaker

Step 2: Create a spec sheet

Step 3: Identify the big ideas and put them in order

Step 4: Add evidence

Step 5: Write the open and the end

Step 6: Make it better [polish everything]

There is another ten-page article (also a PSA whitepaper) by David Murray titled Speechwriting, FAQ (and subtitled Honest answers to the ten toughest questions communicators {and their bosses} ask about creating compelling speeches and presentations).

There also is an 18-page pdf version of an article (another a PSA whitepaper) by Boe Workman titled Writers of the Lost Art: “Rhetorical Perspective,” and the Future of Speechwriting, which I had previously discussed in a post on January 23, 2023 titled What is the future of speechwriting? I found them all at the PSA Resources web page.

The cartoon image of a woman came from Wikimedia Commons.

There are lots of things which can go wrong during presentations. How you handle them, with a planned alternative, can avoid a potential disaster.

For example, as shown above, instead of displaying your PowerPoint slides on a screen or monitor there might be a black screen. You might try to fix the problem by yourself. But it is smarter to ask others for help. They may more quickly catch what you might have missed.

Consider a simple setup, where a laptop is connected directly to a projector. One possibility is that you didn’t connect the output from the laptop to the input for the projector. Back on February 18, 2011 I blogged about that in a post titled More on mistake-proofing: lock out what you don’t want to happen. My vintage projector has two VGA connectors for input and output. Once I didn’t hook the output from the laptop to the input for the projector. My laptop also has a function key (F6) for displaying either only via its LCD display, only via the HDMI output jack, or both. I have an HDMI to VGA adapter cable for connecting to the projector. If you instead wanted to connect an Apple Mac laptop to my projector, then you would need a different adapter cable. With a newer projector, you instead could try connecting via wifi. For a hybrid meeting, you might display slides by sharing your laptop PowerPoint screen with Zoom software.  

While you or they are fixing the problem, you could engage with the audience. An article by Simon Hall at Cambridge Network on April 23, 2023 titled Handling the ultimate public speaking horror suggested you ask:

“What do you hope to get from this talk? What are the key points you’d like to be addressed?”

Also, you can give your introduction without slides (perhaps using a flip chart). If you have a hard copy of your slides and have rehearsed this alternative, then it would go smoothly. On March 11, 2009 I blogged about having a slide projector bulb burn out during a presentation in a ballroom at CORROSION/82 in Houston in a post titled Plan for problems: a ‘bumpy road’ speaking experience. I had never rehearsed that alternative, so I had to wait silently in the dark for the projectionist to put in a new bulb.

What about a power failure in the building? On March 10, 2012 I blogged about How an engineer kept a power failure from derailing a keynote speech. In that case he was able to provide an alternative - using the battery and inverter on his pickup truck to supply power for the projector.

Even more serious was a power failure over an entire university campus. On December 3, 2009 I blogged about Into the dark – and back into the light. In that case the only solution was to reschedule the presentation an hour later, at another venue a half-mile away.

On November 6, 2019 I blogged about Excellent advice on how to deal with a distraction or an emergency during your speech, and referred to articles in both Toastmaster and Speaker magazines.

My cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

How you end a speech is important because of recency bias:

“Recency bias is a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones. Recency bias gives ‘greater importance to the most recent event’, such as the lawyer’s closing argument a jury hears before being dismissed to deliberate.”

There is a good article by Jennifer Herrity at Indeed [Career Guide] on March 16, 2023 titled How to conclude a presentation: Tips and examples. She lists ten tips:

1]  Summarize the key points

2]  Echo the core message

3]  Present a call to action

4]  Use a powerful quote

5]  Ask a rhetorical question

6]  Tell a story

7]  Give a visual image

8]  Acknowledge others

9]  Use a short, powerful sentence

10] Make them laugh

Toastmasters International has an item in their Better Speaker Series titled Concluding Your Speech [Item 271A, October 2016] that lists six techniques:

1) Use a quotation

2) Tell a short story or anecdote

3) Call for action

4) Ask a rhetorical question

5) Refer to the beginning of the speech

6) Summarize your main points

One difference from Ms. Herrity’s article in the inclusion of referring back to the beginning. I mentioned this in a blog post way back on March 22, 2011 titled Speech geometry: lines, circles, forks, and combs.