Finding Your Formula - Kristen Conner Hill

Public speaking is tough, but finding your formula can help you master your own style and elevate your performance. Want to help your audience follow along with you, keep yourself from tripping up, or own your prep? Read on for 3 ways to find your formula for a successful speech.

We’ve all been there: you prepared the best you could, but you walk up to the mic and draw a big old blank when the lights are all on you and it’s “go” time. You try to look at your notes, but suddenly you realize how difficult they are to read. You try a joke you didn’t plan, but it falls flat. Suddenly, you’re standing in a spotlight and all you want to do is start over.

It doesn’t have to be this way! It takes practice to master a speech, whether it’s 5 or 50 minutes long. Your process can win the day, if you find what formula works for you.

Bring notes you can use in a pinch

Notes aren’t usually for you to read for the whole speech! They are just there to guide you and keep you on time and in flow. You should find a style of notes that helps you find your place easily, remember key phrases and move on without distracting the audience from your message.

For some executives I work with, finding their formula means using a notecard-style page with large font and a few phrases. I print them an outline on card stock and cut it to size so it can fit directly into their jacket pockets. The typed print is easier to read than handwriting, and the small size allows them to keep the card in their palm until they need it. It’s not terribly obvious that they have notes, and the format of the outline keeps them on track.

For others, it’s full-word sentences set to bullet points. Those can be tricky, even for the most seasoned speakers, because it promotes reading rather than speaking from the heart. It can also be easy to lose your place. I find that adding bold face type to key phrases within those bullet points, as well as breaking up the sections With Easy to Read Headings works well here.

As a reporter, I joined other news professionals with the one-page of keywords approach. I took a thin reporter’s notebook and, after a press conference, broke my story into a few key sections (usually who-what-where-why-how up top with what we know, what we need to know, and what’s next to follow.) Then, instead of a sentence or two I would just put a few key words. (Ex: Suspect, w/m with blue jacket; Still at large; no risk to public.) It helped me give people need-to-know details up top and then flow in and out of the live shot cohesively. Plus, if I needed to jog my memory I could keep talking as I looked down and easily found what I needed to say next. It took years to refine this but it worked every time.

The point is, if you find your own formula to what notes you need on the stage, you can eliminate lots of distracting awkwardness, reliance on filler words like “um”, and long silences.

Help your audience follow along

One way you can increase audience participation and retention of your message is to keep them engaged. But you have to make it easy for them!

Some speakers, like pastors, have fill-in-the-blank style notes pages on the back of handouts like the church bulletin. That way, the congregation can fill in the missing words as the sermon goes along. That always helped me keep track of the main message I needed to hear that Sunday.

Another way is to improve your speech flow. Everyone has heard some variation of this one: tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and then close with a reminder of what you said. It’s tried-and-true, and often your best sound bites from from the closing because it’s like putting a bow on a present and ties the whole thing together.

I am a huge fan of the “sandwich” approach: start with a metaphor or scenario at the top of the remarks, work through it in the body, and at the close come back to it.

If I were explaining how difficult it is to get to Mars instead of to the International Space Station, I would say, “It’s like a remote camping trip.” Then, I’d explain in the body of the speech how when you’re driving to a friend’s house, you know you can get your mom or your friend to bring you what you need if you forgot something or come get you if you want to go home. But on a remote camping trip, you’ve gone so far and you’re so isolated that you can’t go back and get something you didn’t bring with you. You have to either make what you need, use what you have or do without. Finally, at the closing of the speech I would explain how taking astronauts to Mars is like that remote camping trip.

Those techniques help an audience see the full picture and even remember it, so they can tell their friends about it later.

You can even do it with a quote. “As Wernher von Braun said, ‘I have learned to use the word ‘impossible’ with the greatest caution.” I once used this quote in the beginning of a speech, referenced it a few times in the middle as I explained what impossible things NASA was working to make possible, and closed with it to note how the speaker, through her time at NASA, had also learned to use that word carefully.

I love finality. That’s your chance to drive it home. I think these formulas can deliver an impact that closes beautifully, alert the audience that the speaker is wrapping, and give that speech a sense of purpose.

Use your medium to your advantage

Are you speaking to a live audience? On a teleconference? On video chat? Know the medium and use it to help you find the right formula for success.

Sometimes I imagine that a telecon is the greatest gift to a speaker because you can use your notes way more and nobody will be the wiser! It allows you so much more ability to focus on what you’re saying, because you don’t have to worry about how you look. Your notes for a telecon may look way different than your notes for a live event. Let that work for you! Practice staying on message AND on time without the pressure of an audience staring at you!

A video conference can allow you some “cheats” too! Your notes can stay on your screen, so it looks like you’re looking toward the camera when actually you are staring at your message. There is no need to be seen looking down: you can engage like never before this way. Use this medium to find your formula for engagement. Use facial expressions, gestures, and other body language to allow yourself to practice being natural.

We are getting a lot of this practice right now during a time of coronavirus. Use these to get even better so that once we are able to attend events and live, on-stage speaking engagements you’ll be better than ever!