Don't Suck on a Straw During Your Speech: And Other Observations from a Public Speaking Coach

By Mary Milla

In this humorous and practical guide to public speaking, Mary Milla offers tips for moving your presentations out of the PowerPoint weeds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hillcrest Media Group
• Release date: Mar 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781634139762

Book preview

Mary

What’s with the Title of this Book?

I was in the audience for a talk on how to make the most of LinkedIn, the dream networking site for introverts like me because we get to connect with people without having to actually talk to them. Anyway, the speaker looked like Santa Claus, and apparently staying hydrated was important to this guy, because he had one of those huge convenience store Big Gulps on his lectern. Throughout his talk, he would grab the Big Gulp with his enormous hand and take a loud, long slurp. In midsentence. While changing his slides. When listening to a question. The slurping became the soundtrack to his talk. It became so distracting and sad and silly that we got the giggles in the back row.

My friend Peg slipped me a piece of paper. The title of your book should be ‘Don't Suck on a Straw during Your Speech.’ And so it is.

I’ve been a public speaking coach for twenty years. My job involves telling speakers a lot of stuff that seems obvious, but isn’t, given the stress that naturally comes with writing and giving presentations.

So let’s get our first obvious tip out of the way: Don’t suck.

It’s All about You

Public speaking coaching is a lot like those makeover shows on TV. They’re rarely about the clothes or the hair or the makeup: they’re about the person on the inside. The before person says, I can’t wear that, that’s what Beautiful People wear, and I’m not beautiful. The wardrobe expert is all of a sudden talking about the client’s inner and outer beauty, trying to give the client the confidence and courage to show both to the world. I wonder if these wardrobe experts knew they’d be in their clients’ heads when they first went to fashion school.

When I fell into the job of public speaking coach, I thought I’d be talking with clients about words and PowerPoint slides. Instead, what I’ve found is that I end up inside my clients’ heads, talking with them about who they are, who they want to be, how they think they’re perceived, and how they want to be perceived, convincing them that yes, they can be great speakers too. Because it’s not about how pretty your slides are or how many words they contain or how many really tiny graphs you show—it’s about showing the audience the real you. And I get it: that’s a scary thing, just like it’s scary for that before person to become the after person with a change in wardrobe.

It’s rarely about the speech and the slides; it’s about the person delivering them. I’m surprised to hear so much about the personal lives of my clients, about how scarred they are from the bad public speaking experience they had in college, about how bored they are with their subject matter, or about how they don’t think senior leadership really cares what they have to say.

Like those makeover shows, where the after person goes on to live a more confident life out from behind his or her before clothes and self-image, I’ve had clients tell me that improving their public speaking skills has changed their lives by improving their career paths and even their personal lives.

And I thought this would just be about PowerPoint. (Oh, I’ll get to PowerPoint later.)

This book will teach you how to inject clarity and meaning and enthusiasm into your talks. You’ll learn a fast, practical way to write compelling presentations, and authentically deliver them. I’ve organized the book this way:

Excuses, Excuses: My collection of Speaker Excuses and how I dismiss them because Your Audience Doesn’t Care. Find your excuses here and then pledge to stop making them.

Writing Your Talk: Now that the excuses are out of the way, learn how to write your talk.

How to Rehearse: You can’t just write your talk, you have to rehearse it too. Learn how here.

Stupid Company Tricks: Things organizations and bad bosses do to sabotage speakers, with my tips on overcoming Corporate Stupidity.

Other Talks That Typically Suck: How to succeed at other types of talks you’ll likely have to give before you die.

I preach the value of storytelling, so you’ll read lots of client stories here with the hope that you’ll identify with someone else having had the same challenge you’re having.

For stories about speakers who made major transformations, you'll see a Makeover Moment icon.

Yes, all the names have been changed. Duh.

Everything’s a Presentation

For purposes of this book, when I refer to speeches, presentations, or talks, I mean all of the above. This book is for any kind of talk you have to give: the formal speech on a stage, the internal team meeting with ten people, or the one-on-one meeting you have with your boss every week. These tips can even help when leaving phone messages. All of these speaking occasions, and everything in between, are opportunities for you to enhance, maintain, or damage your reputation.

I was once assigned to work with a company’s only female executive, who happened to be their general counsel. I was told her presentations at executive committee meetings were dreadful. When I asked her to email me some examples of her presentations, she said she didn’t have any, because all her speaking was just internal. Aha! There’s the problem.

There is no such thing as a just internal presentation. Dismissing these talks means you’re hurting your chances to be noticed and taken seriously at work. It also makes any external presentations you have to do harder, because you’ve blown off all your internal opportunities to hone your public speaking skills.

And if you think I’m nuts, consider this: people like the female executive mentioned above are job security for people like me. I get