Last month I judged 22 speakers sharing a 10 minute speech for our first annual Speaker Games competition. Based on that experience I have noticed a lot of common mistakes people make, and a lot of common things they do right too. In today’s blog post I want to share those with you so you can learn from my experience also!
Let’s start with the mistakes first. The number 1 reason speakers didn’t make it into the finals was that they didn’t tell a personal story that taught us a lesson. They had good information, and some even had stories, but we felt like some didn’t fully grasp this very important concept:
Teach a lesson while connecting with your audience by telling a powerful personal story! I recommend to everyone that in order to understand the power of telling stories, they read the book “Storyworthy” by Matthew Dicks. Please get this book if you want to be a better speaker!
The vulnerability of sharing a painful, hard, or embarrassing story opens you up for deep connection with your audience. I understand that for some people it’s very difficult to expose their belly, so to speak, but it’s what makes the difference between a listening audience and an invested audience! You don’t just want your audience to listen passively to you - you want them to be fully invested in your story and most especially they want to hear about your happy ending after your horribly painful struggle!
Which leads me to the 2nd most common reason people were cut from the competition. They had no trouble sharing their horribly painful struggle, but that’s almost all they shared! Out of 10 minutes, we experienced 7 to 8 minutes spent in the pit! The pit is where you hit rock bottom and trust me, as a speaker, you don’t want to keep people down at rock bottom with you for very long. They could end up worse off than before they heard you speak if you wallow in that pit with them for more than 10% of your total time! That means if you have a 10 minute speech, you can’t share the negative part of your story for longer than 1 minute. And if you can keep it to 5%, or 30 seconds of a 10 minute talk, you will give an amazingly powerful speech!
For me the perfect speech structure goes like this, assuming it’s a 10 minute speech:
1 minute setting up your story
1 minute introducing the conflict/villain and taking us down to the pit but only really low for the 2nd half of that minute
1 minute jumping out of that pit and introducing your lifeline/guide/saving moment that transformed you from victim to victor
5 minutes sharing your transformation journey and the tools that really helped you the most - you can tell little mini stories within this part with mini pits and mini lifelines to keep the energy rising and falling like a roller coaster
1 minute pulling it all together and wrapping up the story with the beautiful lesson, including the ripple effects of your triumph over the conflict/villain with energy as high above normal as your pit was low under normal. In other words, take us just as high as you took us low!
Last minute is your call to action that gives us our next step after you are no longer leading us by the hand with your speech!
If you follow that outline, you will never get stuck in the pit too long!
The 3rd most common mistake I saw was speakers having a brain fart and pointing it out to us. Audiences often have no idea you forgot what you were going to say, but if you stop and get upset and point it out, swear about it, or apologize for it, everyone will know and then your whole flow will be hopelessly messed up!
You may be asking, yeah but what do I do when I forget what I was going to say? Easy. Stop, look down at your heart, and tune in to your emotions. Your brain was running the show but it got overheated and rebooted itself. It’s up to your heart now to pick up the thread and continue the pattern. Bonus, when you pause and look down at your heart, everyone in the room will feel emotion coming off of you in waves! They will think you are so into your story that you have to stop and regroup so you don’t lose control of your emotions. This pause to get back on track with your talk becomes a powerful moment of connection with your audience that you wouldn’t have had without it!
If you get through a really really long pause and still can’t figure out what to say next, go back to your story and add some more to it - usually this means more of the victory side of the story! Or describe how it affected someone you love. Stories are the best part of any speech, so when all else fails, tell another story! Just figure out a way to tie it into your call to action as you are telling it. Nobody will ever know that you forgot half of your speech!
Now that we have covered the top 3 mistakes I saw during the 22 speaking auditions for Speaker Games let’s move on to the things people did right!
By the way, tickets are available to just come watch the competition on July 13 so if you want to see these speakers firsthand, come join the fun! Speaker Games is held at INDUSTRY SLC in downtown Salt Lake City all day on July 13 and tickets are only $10 online or $20 at the door! Find the link in my show notes.
Ok back to the DO list! Things we saw the best speakers doing include telling really vulnerable stories that spent just the bare minimum of time in the pit. They didn’t wallow - they let us dip our toe in their deepest pain and then pulled us up immediately! Stories of unexpected lessons from perceived failures that turned out to be exactly what they needed were the best stories of all! Everyone loves an underdog and a cinderella story, so if you are hiding your pain and making yourself look stronger, smarter, and more together than you really were, you are disconnecting from the audience and are therefore unable to move them.
The second thing the best speakers did was to match their facial expressions and body language to their words. There is nothing weirder than watching someone grin from ear to ear while telling a horrific story of pain and suffering! Seeing a visual that contradicts the words you are hearing is an example of cognitive dissonance and people don’t like to feel cognitive dissonance! Match your face to your words and people will lose themselves in that moment you are describing!
The third thing the best speakers had in common was a strong lesson or call to action. We didn’t have to wonder what the point of their speech was. It was obvious and clear to all 4 judges. We understood the journey we had just been on with them, and we clearly saw the next step we could take if we wanted to continue on that journey for ourselves. Clear, simple calls to action make a powerful ending to a powerful talk.
To recap, the 3 biggest mistakes were: No personal story that taught us a lesson, Staying too long in the sad pit of their story, and letting a brainfart destroy their speech completely.
And the 3 best things the winning speakers did were: Telling vulnerable stories with minimal time in the sad pit, Matching their facial expressions and body language to their words, and a strong call to action at the end.
If you want to be a better speaker, or just watch some amazing speakers in action, please join us at the finals of the First Annual Speaker Games on July 13, 2024 in Salt Lake City.
Find the ticket link at https://www.speakupspeakers.com/speakergames - tickets are $10 online and $20 at the door.