I got an email from an old friend, somebody who has seen me speak on a few occasions.  He’s thinking about getting into the public speaking business and wanted to know if I could recommend any good books.  It got me thinking about speaking and innovation.

I speak about innovation as a topic and when I think about “innovating” in the context of speaking I have to say that it’s not about re-inventing the format (although you could) it’s more about mastering the art first.  If you are truly self-expressed and understand what the role/job of a speaker is you are half way home towards your own personal speaking innovation.

It’s a good question about a speaking book.  The bad news is I don’t have a good answer.  I’ve never read a really good book about the art and/or business of public speaking (I have read a good book about improvisation, see Viola Spolin).  As a professional of some few years I have learned what I know through experience. I wonder if a book could help a person “get there faster.”  Maybe. Tell me if you’ve found one!

Since I had no book to suggest I wrote down the Nine Things that I think are absolutely key. I credit the old master Bill Gove, and his protege Steve Seibold for some of this.  I also credit myself and the years I spent doing stand-up, improv, and any business speaking gig I could get…you learn this art by doing it.  So, Nine Things about Speaking:

1. A keynote speech is a series of stories, each followed by a point.  Or, you can state the point first, then tell the story.  Don’t lecture, any college professor can do that.  Tell stories, that is what engages people and makes you memorable. People want inspiration first, content second.  They’ll never get your content message if you do not inspire.
2. Write out each story.  It’s hard to write like you speak, but you must do it to really get it right. Or, you can “do” a story 100 times in public and perfect it that way. But you need to be conscious of the experiment.
3. Do something in each story to keep the audience engaged…use voices, inventive language, surprises, humor, or some interactive element with the audience (i.e. a quiz, have them writing something down, etc.)  Be an actor, be an entertainer, be interesting.  If you go on for more than 3 minutes without waking the audience up, you are toast. Think variety.
4. Memorize your stories, and know how long it takes to tell each one.  Keep them on the short side.
5. Pause and look around before and after important points.  And, make a lot of eye contact around the room through the talk. Be with your audience, drink them in, experience them, respond to them.
6. The first 10 seconds are super important. Make a bold statement, surprise people in some way, get their attention right away.  The last 10 seconds, same thing, finish “crisply” and on point, don’t just fade away. These are the moments people remember, the start and the end.
7. Your best story you should save to the end or near the end. It’s the format of nearly every movie, book, or TV show in Western civilization.  You should have the “arc” in your talk that people subconsciously expect.
8. Don’t ever read slides, use more pictures than words. Be prepared to have no slides at all; professional speakers, any good speaker really, doesn’t need PowerPoint to communicate. And if you use pictures, do them yourself. Draw them yourself, take the photographs, this makes your visuals another expression of You, and not just off-the-shelf clip art.
9. Speak from the heart and don’t be afraid to reveal yourself, to be vulnerable.  Your personal story as it relates to your topic is your most precious story.

That’s really it from my perspective.