The Truth About Public Speaking (and the Media) Blog

Assessing Feedback

What is the most often ignored of the Three Keys to Great Presentations? Without question, the answer is assessing feedback. It is mandatory to gauge your performance if you have any hopes of improving as a speaker. While assessing feedback is a complex endeavor, this handful of tips can get you moving in the right direction:

1. Solicit feedback on an evaluation form.
2. Make sure the questions on your form are open-ended; numerical rankings give you next to no useful information.
3. Station yourself or a colleague near the exit and ask for those forms as people leave.
4. Mingle with your audience after your remarks and listen for feedback.
5. Connect with the event organizer a couple of days later and ask for her guidance.

Find the feedback formula that works best for you. It may vary from presentation to presentation. The point is to have a plan beforehand that allows you to accurately assess your performance afterward.

Once You've Said It, You Can't Take It Back

The recent O.J. Simpson flap proves the need to vet your message before trotting it out to the public. At first blush, Simpson's publisher and Fox Network were hot to promote his "what if" account of the murder of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and friend Ronald Goldman. But once the public furor built, Fox finally figured out it had a clunker on its hands. As a result, Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch pulled the plug on the two-night TV special.

Lesson: Gauge in advance the public's likely reaction to your news. Invite a skeptic into the discussion to ensure you are considering all angles. Of course, in this case any adult with an ounce of common sense could have told the bright thinkers at Fox about the backlash that awaited them by giving Simpson a money-grabbing platform.

Once word gets out, it is impossible to pull it back. While your issue may not be quite so clear cut as the Fox/Simpson imbroglio, estimating public reaction is critical.

Don't Plant Words in My Mouth

One tried and true journalistic technique to elicit specific quotes is the attempt to put words in a spokesperson's mouth. This can range from the innocuous, like trying to help along an incompetent spokesperson, to the calculated, like trying to get a source to repeat loaded language.

You would think communications pros who have advanced along the power corridors of Capitol Hill would be alert to this tactic. You would be wrong as evidenced by Dana Milbank's Washington Sketch column in today's Washington Post, "Crowning Majority Leader, Democrats Are All Smiles and Bile."

The Post scribe chronicles the aftermath of the vote for House Majority Leader between Steny Hoyer and John Murtha. Shortly before the vote it came to light that Murtha had labeled a Democratic ethics proposal "total crap." His characterization garnered plenty of headlines, which leads me to believe Hill press people would be alert not to (pardon the expression) step in it if asked a question using that word. Well, looks like it's back to media training basics for at least a couple of press aides.

Example #1 from Milbank:
    "Was this a great moment for Democrats, or 'total crap'? 'The latter,' Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider had to admit as she surveyed the melee outside the caucus room.

Example #2:
    "'We've got the votes, and we are going to win it,' announced Andrew Koneschusky, a press guy Murtha borrowed for the occasion. Protesting that some outlets had reported that Murtha had conceded, he said, 'Any reports of concession are false.' Would he say the reports are total you-know-what?
    'These rumors are total crap,' Koneschusky affirmed."

Sure, we all get caught unprepared at times. But with a key reporter in the room, you need to be extra vigilant to ensure your words belong to you and you alone.

Another Take on PowerPoint

Jared Sandberg's "Cubicle Culture" column in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal focuses on the good, the bad, and the ugly (with the emphasis on the latter two) of corporate use of PowerPoint.

"Tips for PowerPoint: Go Easy on the Text -- Please Spare Us" (subscription required) offers no shockingly new insights, but does reinforce the controversy over PowerPoint that continues to rage in boardrooms and around conference tables.

My bottom line here remains, if it adds to your presentation, use it. If not, don't reach for it every time by default.

Reporter or Media Trainer?

While scanning the headlines from a top 50 market daily newspaper, I happened upon an article about the local Fox TV affiliate laying off its entire news staff and ceasing operations (I will avoid naming the city in order to protect the identity of the individual mentioned below).

The article gave readers a quick summary of where each former reporter had gone. One in particular caught my attention: An individual who planned to do freelance reporting and offer media training. I have written about this before, but it bears repeating.

Playing both sides of the fence is most unethical. How could her media training clients ever trust her to maintain confidentiality when she is also beholden to bosses at news operations?

I understand the need to put food on the table when layoffs strike. I also understand the paramount role ethics play in any occupation. Choose one or the other and good luck to you. But you cannot with a clear conscience sit on both sides of the aisle.

Your Telephone Voice

Lots of people obsess over preparations for a presentation. Rightly so, for a good talk demands solid homework. But there are all kinds of presentations.

Every time you speak to someone on the telephone, for example, you are delivering a mini-presentation. Which brings me a contact of mine. I truly enjoy working with her. She is bright, prepared, and highly capable of directing others. In person, she radiates expertise and confidence.

But her telephone voice -- ouch! She sounds like a little girl. Her voice becomes unnaturally high pitched, she ends her sentences as if they were questions, and sometimes she giggles. Sad as it is, the fact remains that women in today's business world must go the extra mile to succeed.

If you have any doubts about how you come across on the phone, record your voice and assess your performance. Call in a trusted colleague for some additional feedback. Your career is too important to be derailed because you sound like a teenager.

Takin' a Thumpin'

No matter how innocuous you try to make something when you deal with the press, the cold hard fact is if you utter a word, you take ownership of it. And the more vivid the word, the bigger play it gets.

Take, for example, President Bush's news conference this week. In one response, he said, "Look, this was a close election.  If you look at race by race, it was close.  The cumulative effect, however, was not too close. It was a thumping."

There you have your tailor made headline: "Bush Agrees GOP Took a 'Thumping.'" While he apparently wanted to focus on the closeness of the tally rather than the thumping, it was too late. What was the topic of the next question? Not the nuance, but the thumping. From the transcript:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You just described the election results as a "thumping."

THE PRESIDENT: I said the cumulative -- make sure -- who do you write for?

Q The New York Times, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes, that's right. (Laughter.) Let's make sure we get it -- the facts. I said that the elections were close; the cumulative effect --

Q Is a thumping.

THE PRESIDENT: -- thumping. (Laughter.)

Even the president of the United States cannot retract words once they are let loose. Most people will forevermore remember his characterization of the election as a thumping. History will not recall his first attempt to indicate that the vote was close.

Hijacking Someone Else's News Cycle

Much of the commentary surrounding the "resignation" of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense centered on the need for his departure as a sacrificial lamb. But there is another important point when it comes to the timing of his departure that other analysts missed.

Headlines on the web and in Thursday's newspapers would surely have continued to trumpet the news of Democrats sweeping into power in both the House and, as now appears likely, the Senate. Instead, the biggest headlines were devoted to the sacking of Rumsfeld.

This was a stroke of genius by the White House spin machine that was no doubt thinking of ways to soften the impact of the GOP's devastating losses in Congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative races. It was no accident that Rumsfeld's departure occurred when it did. Had the GOP waited a few days to announce the news, Democrats would have had more play in the headlines.

His leave taking was no accident of timing. It was coldly and shrewdly calculated to pre-empt the Democrats taking control of future news cycles.

The Wide Perspective on the Media

Given all the rancor and horse race quality of yesterday's elections, it is only a matter of time until the inevitable and usually misplaced criticism of media coverage takes center stage. Let us take a deep breath, step back, and ponder how invaluable press coverage is, using the words of Thomas Jefferson: "[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

The founding father’s words from 1787 ring every bit as true today. A free and feisty press is an essential element of our society.

Watching the Pundits

This is one of my favorite nights of the year -- election night! The punditocracy will be out in force on the cable news channels. There are two basic types of pundits.

The first group consists of the political seamheads led by the omnipresent Charlie Cook and Stu Rothenberg. They have been reading the tea leaves from polls and campaign ads, and tonight will turn their attention to counting actual votes to see what it all means. These analysts tend to be fairly non-partisan, interested in the "science" part of political science.

The second group is made up of rabidly partisan spokespeople -- campaign committee chairs, national party leaders, and the candidates themselves (okay, there is a third group of wizened ex-officeholders from both parties that offers analysis at a moderate decibel level, but you will rarely see them tonight unless you tune in to PBS's coverage from the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer) . The partisan hacks are the most fun to watch since they have a personal stake in the outcome.

To determine who is truly confident and who is blowing smoke, I monitor their nonverbal communication. If someone's speech patterns are full of ums and ers, that could be an indication of a lack of confidence, as might smiling at inappropriate moments. On the other hand, I try not to read too much into any individual behavior. It is the patterns that matter. If a spokesperson suddenly starts to blink rapidly, sit back in his chair, and itch his face, that makes me suspicious.

Have fun picking up on the signals they transmit. We'll see who is right and who is wrong when all the returns are tabulated.