Choosing Your Speaking Topic

This is the first in a seven-part ‘Over-the-shoulder’ series, in which I will be going through a scenario of being asked to speak and documenting how I would approach it.

So you have been asked to speak but are not 100% sure what you should talk about…

Of course, you know what your core topic is, but what aspect of it should you be covering? Where do you start? Where are you taking your audience?

For many people, these initial questions and concerns are a big enough barrier that they decide not to take advantage of the speaking opportunity. I have seen many speakers turn down TEDx speaking opportunities several times before finally jumping in, sometimes with life-changing results.

Michelle Dickinson - Nanogirl - is a prime example. When I interviewed her on stage at a social media event in Auckland many years ago she shared how she turned down the TEDxAuckland speaking opportunity several times. But when she decided to speak, she went all in.

I was in the audience for her first talk. It was different, interesting and unique. It was not polished. But it was enough to start the ball rolling in a way that changed her life. I am not saying that this one talk was the only thing. Still, Michelle herself said in our interview that it was a big factor that led her to be invited to meet Richard Branson on his island, cruise with one of the Google founders on their yacht in the Caribbean and meet with then Prince Charles in the UK to talk on the topic of educating girls in STEM subjects.

The key for Michelle is that she connected her expertise with her passion.

Her expertise was in the sciences, and her passion was education, particularly for young girls. When she knew she wanted to excite young people about science, she built her talk around that. It isn’t surprising that I wasn’t ‘wowed’ by her talk. -I was not the audience it was targeted to. It definitely hit the mark for her intended audience.

So, let’s get back to you. If I were you, looking at a speaking opportunity, I would start with some questions:

1. What do I know I can confidently speak about?

2. If I could have any impact I could imagine, who would I impact?

3. How would I want to impact them?

This is the foundation of what I call your Pitching Pyramid. Getting clarity around these questions is the most important thing you can do, but surprisingly few people do it. For every person like Michelle, who turned down speaking opportunities until she answered these questions, there are at least 5 who took on the opportunity with little or no clarity.

Most of these people simply gave a talk on what the organiser wanted them to talk about. To the people the organiser wanted them to talk to.

There is nothing wrong with doing this, but it will not be a life-changing experience. If you are going to put in the work required to give a great talk, then you should at least make it a talk that will fire you up and which has the potential to move your life in the direction you want to go.

You will get a burst of energy when you have answered these three questions. An energetic excitement. The common response is to jump straight to working out the hook to capture the attention of these people to get them on board to pay attention to your message.

This is a mistake.

The next step in the process is to look at your two audiences. And we will do that in the next instalment in this series.

In fact, the most common action taken by people looking at a speaking opportunity is to jump straight to their hook, their call to action and their performance. These are all important things, but they must be done in the correct order to be truly effective.

This series will walk through the steps in the correct order.

Snippets is a section where I take some interesting text I have come across in the previous week and comment on it.

The Dangers of a Trojan Horse.

This is something that has been running around in my head but is not a fit as the main post of this newsletter, but I need to get it out of my system…

We are all familiar with the story of the Trojan Horse, the wooden sculpture of a horse left on the beach outside the city of Troy after the defeated invaders packed up and departed. The people of Troy celebrated, bringing the sculpture through the impenetrable gates. Only to find out after it was too late that the horse was full of Greek invaders who snuck out at night and opened the gates for their army, who returned in the darkness.

This story is so common that we even use the term when naming computer viruses that enter your system with supposedly benign intent, only to wreak havoc once they have passed your defences. The dangers of a Trojan horse are obvious for those who are being targeted by it. But today, I want to talk about the dangers of a Trojan horse to those who build and deploy it.

Specifically, I am interested in deceptions practiced when speaking, selling or making offers. Also known as a bait-and-switch. This is the practice of offering something but slipping in something else to achieve some other aim.

Recently, a colleague was invited to attend a leadership conference. She admitted later that she should have investigated more closely, as there appeared to be an alternative focus that she wasn’t aware of. In this case, that focus was religious.

Religious or commercial intentions veiled within an offer for something are rarely welcomed. -I want to say never welcome, but there are no absolutes. I have never heard someone exclaiming, “Oh, this is Amway! I am glad you invited me to this event under other pretences!”

Because of these experiences or stories of others’ experiences, we are quite sensitive to being misled and taken advantage of. It leaves a bitter taste to have been deceived this way and can irreparably damage your brand.

Now, there are times when you will get the best results for your audience when you sneak in something that they need along with what you promised. The old “Sell them what they want and give them what they need”.

Business coaches often include some mindset teaching along with their tactical business coaching. Which their clients need but would be unlikely to purchase on its own.And fitness instructors will include some diet tips along with the workouts the client paid for.

I include some clarity & strategic work along with my performance and speech writing coaching. My clients want performance and better wording, but they also need clarity and strategy. They just aren’t always aware of the importance of these things.

In each of these cases, it is unlikely the client would have paid for the additional thing had you tried to sell them that. But knowing the importance of these things to the outcome, the expert includes it to help get results. And if it does help get results, then your clients will remain happy.

What you want to avoid is something that is much more tangential to what you are initially offering. In terms of a talk, you want to be sure that your talk title is not misleading. Some speakers may argue that there is no cost to their talk, so nobody will get upset. But the reality is that the most valuable thing in the world is time. And if you take someone’s time fraudulently by leading them to believe they will get one thing but then give them something else, you will damage your brand.

Avoid the temptation.

Be clear about what you are talking about and what it is that you are offering.

PS. Getting ready to post this, I re-read it and realised I missed something. For the devoutly religious, it is likely that they authentically believe that leadership is what you want, but religion is what you need.
The difference is that adding diet to a fitness regime, adding mindset exercises to business success, or adding strategy & clarity to the writing of the talk are all things that directly add to the result the audience is looking for.
I would suggest that a new religion does not directly contribute to the result of being a better leader.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

Santayana was a Spanish-American philosopher who lived a hundred years ago. His most famous quote is probably: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

But I think this quote about the struggle of getting experience out of ideas is equally profound.

In fact, I think the whole point of education is to turn ideas into experiences.

Ideas can be intoxicating, give you a buzz, lift your spirits, and put a spring in your step. But that will never last. For true change to occur, we must translate those ideas into experiences.

When we are speaking to an audience we can shortcut this translation by taking an idea and connecting it with an experience of the audience. This more firmly entrenches the idea into the place where our experiences reside.

But the true goal is to motivate that audience to take action on that idea so that they are directly experiencing the result of that action, the real result of the idea. Ultimately, this is experimentation because no two experiences or results will be identical, even from the same idea.

What does this mean to the speaker?

You must first present an idea and then motivate and direct your audience to take action on that idea. They will need to know why they should take action and what action they need to take. When you accomplish this as a speaker and get some of your audience to take action on an idea you shared, you are expanding their world experience.

The action does not need to be huge. It may be simply to write down some goals, to write a note of thanks for a recent kindness, to pick up some litter next time you see it on the beach.

The idea is interesting. But the action has a ripple effect that truly changes the world, even if barely perceptible. Therefore, your ultimate aim as a speaker or an educator is to get your audience to take action. Do that, and you will impact the world.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I am doing a free Hook Creation Workshop for a few people this Saturday morning (NZT). This is beta testing, a workshop I expect to charge for in the future. If you are interested in attending, please message me on LinkedIn.

Recreationally:

I have agreed to co-produce a local short film and have made my role with Misty Flicks Film Festival official.

What I am reading:

Actually, I recently bought a new book, and I am finding myself putting off reading it. The book is “Swipe for Mr.Right” by Dr. Renee Gordon, which is a book about romantic relationships. I bought it to support the author I have met several times. -But also because I probably need to read it, as any of my friends might attest.