>> Amy Draves: My name is Amy Draves, and I’m pleased to welcome Bill McGowan to the Microsoft
Research visiting speakers series. Bill’s here to discuss his book, Pitch Perfect: How to Say It Right the
First Time and Every Time, and I have to say I’m more nervous than usual in giving this introduction,
given the title of the book, [laughter] but ... whew … wer’e gonna work through it. [laughs] So he is an
Emmy-winning correspondent; he has conducted hundreds of interviews and coached several
individuals. Using this experience, he has learned and will share how to craft and deliver the right
message and the best way to get a point across effectively. Please join me in giving him a very warm
welcome. [applause]
>> Bill McGowan: Thank you very much. Amy, you did great. You were just … you were pitch perfect if I
must say so. I want to thank everybody for foregoing this brilliant sunshine to hear the talk today. I
promise you I’ll do everything I can to make it absolutely worth your while. I don’t know how many of
you have noticed, but every year, some magazine does a survey of the things in life that scare us to
death. And every year, the results are pretty consistent: our sense of our own mortality, often, is at the
top of the list, and getting on an airplane winds up being number three, and I probably don’t have to tell
you what—year in and year out—occupies the number two slot. And it’s that churn in our stomach we
feel an hour before we’ve got to get up and present; it’s the sleepless night the night before; it’s the
asking yourself, “Why did I agree to do this? It … I’m always a wreck before I have to do it.” Today I’d
like to give you some ticks … tips and techniques on how to get over that, because I find if you’re able to
move out of this left side of the spectrum, where a lot of people find themselves, and you can get to a
stage of being okay with it, then you can move on and actually get to the point where you feel a little bit
of buzz and enjoyment from standing up and being able to communicate and being persuasive to an
audience. This is one of these things that feeds on itself; the more you enjoy it, the more you’ll
volunteer to do it; the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. It’s one of those things that you just
need reps over and over again to develop certain skills to really perfect how you’re coming across.
The one thing that I really want to have you steer clear of, more than anything—and this is a theme
throughout the book—is this notion of winging it, this sense that “well, I know this subject backwards
and forwards; nobody can stump me with a question; I know everything there is under the sun.” That’s
actually a liability in many respects. You should never go into something hoping that magic fairy dust
sprinkles down on you in the moment, and you’re going to be articulate and eloquent and
knowledgeable—you have to go in with a game plan. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s … you’re
moderating a panel—an industry panel—whether you are a participant on a panel, whether you’re just
going to a meeting to address people on your team, if you can communicate concisely and get to the
point, and illustrate your point effectively, chances are that forty-five minute scheduled meeting can get
done in thirty, thirty-five minutes. And there’s no greater gift that you can give somebody these days
than time back in their day. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get out of that meeting ten minutes early
just because everybody was efficient in communicating? Some of the things I want to talk about today
definitely fall under that category.
The better you get at this, the more likely you are to shortchange the prep—it just inevitable—and I
want to warn you not to do that. I’ve have clients come to us for one-on-one training: they’re effective
executives, they’ve done it a million times, and we’re doing a little role play, and I’ll tell ‘em—you
know—“I think you’ve got to bump up your enthusiasm level,” and ultimately, they’ll say—you know—
“don’t worry, when it comes time to doing it for real, I’ll turn it on; it’ll all be fine.” And I’ve never really
had a good argument against that until the first presidential debate in the last election. And the
president obliged me with giving the ultimate evidence that you cannot shortchange the prep. His camp
set up a practice campus in Las Vegas, and next thing you know, he’s running off to Hoover Dam to do a
photo op and shake hands; he’s not watching the video tapes of Mitt Romney’s primary debates; he’s
not putting in any of the legwork; and David Axelrod, his senior advisor, pulled him aside and said, “you
know, Mr. President, we’re a little concerned you don’t seem engaged, you don’t seem like you’re
putting your back into this;” and his line to Axelrod was—you know—“don’t worry, I got this.” And so,
my message to you is: if that guy can’t turn it on instantly and flip the switch and be great, there’s no
hope for the rest of us. [laughter]
So preparation is one of the keys to overcoming nerves. How many of you—I’ve spoken to a bunch of
you before we got started—how many of you feel like nerves are actually impediment to doing well in
this situation? Okay. Pretty typical. The more you know your content, the less anxiety you’re going to
feel—it’s a solid ratio. You’ll probably be most nervous in the first two minutes of whatever you have to
do—whether it’s get up at a meeting, get up in front of a room—if you know those first two minutes
cold, backwards and forwards, you’ll get out of the gate cleanly, you’ll build your confidence through the
rest of the presentation. If you stumble out of the gate, it’s really hard to recover. So after two or three
minutes, I think we all feel that sense of getting into a groove and a rhythm, and your nerves settle
down, and everything winds up being easier after that.
But what also happens is when we get nervous, we start taking short, shallow breaths [breathes rapidly]
almost like mini-hyperventilating, and that’s what happens when our pulse runs away with us. And
what it’s doing is: it’s depleting your lungs of air you need to be able to get up and speak. So if you find
that’s the case, and you suffer from that little tremble, that little quiver in your voice when you’re
nervous—and it happens to a lot of people—that’s a lack of wind. What I want you to do is—five
minutes before you get up to speak—good, deep yoga breaths; long inhale through your nose; hold it;
long, slow, steady exhale through your mouth. It’s gonna slow your pulse; it’s going to replenish your
lungs with air; and it’s gonna bring stability to … back to your voice. You don’t want that shaky voice
being a dead giveaway that you’re nervous.
Even if you’re not nervous, though, we get a shot of adrenaline from the fact that we are now in the
spotlight, and everbody’s watching us. And that does a few things to us. It makes us speak faster than
we normally would, so in those first two, three minutes, come out with a nice, controlled pace. People
who speak fast ultimately don’t seem confident. You also will probably not land on anybody in the
audience, the more nervous you are. So right now, it’s just natural for me to make good, sustained eyecontact with different people in the audience, but when you’re nervous, you’re probably going to do
what I’m doing right now, and that’s just sort of scanning the room, not really landing on anybody, just
sort of drifting over the top of people’s heads. That may be helpful to you, because you’re looking into
abstraction, and it’s giving you the privacy to think, but it’s not a good technique to connect with your
audience. See if you can look in somebody’s direction, land on them at least for part of a thought, and
then move off to somebody else. It’s a lot about finding friendly faces in the audience. You want to see
those people who smile, who give you that nod of encouragement, and remind you: yes, I am not
bombing up here, it’s going okay, this is not a complete and utter meltdown. And I bet you can find one
person in each quadrant of the room who gives you that. So if you have trouble speaking to large
groups, just have a conversation with four people—one, two, three, four. Okay? No one’s gonna know
you’re playing to the same four people. You don’t want to catch the person who reaches in their pocket
and starts, like, checking their e-mail. That’s a confidence killer.
The other thing that adrenaline does: it makes it very hard for us to stand still. In fact, I call this the
stationary march. I’m actually not moving anywhere, but I’m also not standing still: I’m rocking; I’m
swaying; I’m moving around, but it’s not a movement with purpose. I’m gonna show you a clip right
now of what I mean by that. “[intro music] Two quick, good stories and one bad story. Lots of people
have been telling me about ‘Breaking Bad’—the Netflix algorithms have been recommending ‘Breaking
Bad’ to me, but you know, there’s a lot of recommendations that algorithms do, and I’ve just never
gotten around to watching ‘Breaking Bad.’” I think in those thirty seconds Reed Hastings’s feet actually
never stopped moving, right? So … but the fact of the matter is: we have this built-up physical energy in
our bodies from the adrenaline, and we’d like to get rid of it. And typically, it likes to get out through
our feet. So to avoid that rocking and swaying and—sort of— lion-in-the-zoo-cage back-and-forth
pacing, what I’d like you to do is stand with your weight a little bit forward on the balls of your feet.
You’ll feel a little bit of pressure in your toes. That’s going to keep you from being back on your heels
where this kind of weight shift, sway, and fidgetiness comes from.
All the nagging we got as children was probably some of the best communication coaching on the
planet. I would strongly advise that you don’t stay up till three o’clock in the morning working on a
power point that you have to present at nine AM. It’d be better to go to bed at nine, get up at four,
finish the thing. You don’t want to be groggy, and you don’t want to have an empty stomach. It’s been
medically proven that the synapses in your brain do not fire efficiently if you don’t have food in your
stomach. Do not skip breakfast. We just talked a little about standing up straight, getting your core into
it. Eye-contact: if you find it’s difficult for you to concentrate, looking at somebody else looking at you—
you know—you could look at the stem of my glasses, or you could look at a woman’s earring if you’re
addressing them in a meeting. It’s better than looking at the ceiling, looking down at the floor, looking
somewhere else. You’re going to have a lot more conviction behind the point you’re trying to make if
you’re making good, sustained, meaningful eye-contact.
And I was talking before to somebody before we got started on this whole notion of: you’ve got to fake
it till you make it. And you may be in that dread part of the spectrum, but it’s really important to relax
your audience, to make it seem like you’re having a good time being up there and speaking. The only
time an audience gets uptight for you is if you seem tense. So in the beginning, until you can actually
get to a point of tolerating and liking it, see if you can just bring a brightness to your expression. Look
like there’s no place I’d rather be, even if you can’t wait to get off the stage. [laughter]
Okay. And a few things your mother did not tell you: no yoghurt, no milk the morning of a
presentation—it actually creates a frog in your throat, and you will have to clear your throat, maybe
repeatedly, which you don’t want to be doing. Get inside a room like this, walk around, get a sense of
how deep it is, how much you’re going to have to project to reach the back row. You don’t want to
stand at a podium or at a stage for the first time when you’re doing it for real—you don’t want anything
feeling strange or unusual. Make sure that, if you bring your laptop, that a power point works on that. I
have a pair of cufflinks that my assistant gave me—they’re the greatest thing in the world—they’re
actually a USB drive. It’s a big, square cufflink, and it comes apart, and I always put my presentation on
my cufflink in case it gets, like, corrupted somehow—you know—at the location. And I’ve actually had
to pull that thing out a couple of times. And I learned this one the hard way. I was presenting at a client
one time. It was the second time I was there. So of course, the first time I went, I got on their wireless
network, and without me knowing it, it just connected me the second time. And I’m merrily clicking
through my slides, I figure I’m on the third or fourth slide, and suddenly all my e-mail notifications from
the night before start bonging up in the corner of the screen. And it took every ounce of self-control not
to lunge at the computer and pull the cord out. Make sure everything is turned off.
So before everyone filed in … I don’t do this as a strategic way; I like meeting people, but there’s a
benefit to saying hello to people before you have to get up and speak. And one of them is: they may tell
you something, in this little conversation before you get up to speak, that’s helpful to you. Maybe
they’ve told you what they ultimately want to come to hear, and you can just do a little bit of tweak or
incorporate a story somebody tells you into your presentation to give it a feeling of spontaneity, and to
pull the room up with you. Be a good listener in these little conversations you have before you get
started. It also helps you understand: is this a tough crowd? Is it an easy crowd? How hard am I gonna
have to work? How convincing am I gonna have to be? And also, again, like, if you and I have had a talk
before we get started, I guarantee you you probably won’t pull your phone out on me. You know,
you’re going to feel more invested in being that attentive listener. So it’s a great way to create that
energy in the audience. And warm up—athletes do it; musicians do it—in your kitchen that morning,
making coffee, say the first two to three minutes of your presentation out loud. Hear how it sounds
rolling off your tongue. It’s a totally different dynamic than silently imagining what you’re going to say
in your head—that doesn’t do … that doesn’t accomplish the same goal.
So how do you begin? Well, I probably coach about ten people a week on presentations, and I will tell
you that eight or nine of them all start out exactly the same. And that’s not what we’re really going for.
One thing people do is they presume that the audience isn’t going to be interested in what they’re going
to say. So I could have gotten up here, and I could have said, “so listen, I know you all probably want to
be outside today, ‘cause it’s a beautiful day, but I’m just going to very quickly walk you through a few
things.” That, absolutely not. Never, ever project in the mind of your audience that somehow you’re
not gonna be scintillating. Okay. I’ve heard apology for every single speaking timeslot in the day: nine
o’clock, you’re apologizing ‘cause everybody’s tired and they just got up; at eleven o’clock, you’re
apologizing that everybody’s hungry and can’t wait to get to lunch; at two o’clock you’re apologizing
because everyone’s groggy from lunch; and at five thirty, you’re the only thing standing between them
and the cocktail hour. I heard an apology for every single speaking slot in an agenda. So no apology.
And I know that this … the prevalent idea of “tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, and tell ‘em
what you told ‘em” is well-embraced, and has been for years—I think it’s a dated, dusty approach that
everybody does. And because everybody’s doing it, you shouldn’t be doing it. You should be doing
something much more original, and figuring out how the first thing coming out of my mouth is going to
hook you, not the agenda-setting start, which is: “Hi, I’m Bill McGowan. I’m the CEO of Clarity Media
Group. I want to talk … take a little time today to talk about public speaking, and then I want to give you
some examples of some people I think do it well and some people who don’t do it well, but before we
do that, let me just hit rewind for a minute and take a few steps back and quickly walk you through …”
Does that sound familiar? Just about everybody does the table-of-contents open. Absolutely not. I’ll
show you an example of what I think is the perfect, perfect beginning. The agenda-setting start has a
very fitting acronym, by the way. [laughter] “[applause in video] I’m a little nervous, ‘cause my wife
Yvonne, she said to me … she said, ‘Jeff, you watch the Ted talks.’ I said, ‘Yes, honey. I love Ted talks.’
She say, ‘You know they’re like really smart, talented …’ [laughter] I say, ‘I know, I know.’ She says,
‘They don’t want, like, the angry black man.’ [laughter and applause] So I said, ‘No, I’m gonna be good.
I’m gonna be good, honey, I am … but I am angry, [laughter] and the last time I looked, I’m …’ [applause]
So this is why I’m excited, but I’m angry. This year, there gonna be millions of our children that we’re
gonna needlessly lose.”
So the reason I think this is the perfect open is because he’s not telling a joke … don’t start with a joke,
ever—if the joke bombs, you will be thrown and rattled, and you’ll never recover, and you’re expecting
that laugh and you don’t get it; it really is debilitating. What he does is: he starts with a story that has
funny elements to it—right—but it’s not a story that’s just a funny story for funny-story-telling’s sake.
The punchline of the story—the fact that he’s angry—is the core theme of what he’s there to talk about;
there’s connective tissue between the story and the point of his talk, and that, ultimately, is what makes
it work. And also, you feel like you have a little access to him. You’re overhearing; you’re a fly on the
wall in this conversation he’s had with his wife. It’s—in my mind—like, the perfect start, and I realize it’s
a Ted talk; you’re not gonna go in a conference room and necessarily do that, but think: how, from my
declarative, concise statement in this meeting, can I get people’s attention and make them kind of want
to know how I’m going to go on to explain this. Try to not start like everybody else does. That comfort
zone that you think you’re in is a conformity zone, and it’s really not a great way to grab people’s
attention.
And then how we articulate ourselves really matters. Just about every brilliant person throughout
history has subscribed to this notion of simplicity—don’t use a twenty-five-cent word when a five-cent
word is perfectly functional and suffices. But I … this is something I hear in just about every company I
work for: these words like “planful,” and “choiceful,” and I don’t know where these words come from.
[laughter] They’re not in the dictionary, they—you know—if they … they’re on your computer, and
you’ve written them, and there’s a red line underneath it, that means it’s not a word. [laughter] That
means you shouldn’t be … this word should not be crossing your lips, and I hear them all the time, and
ironically, a woman I’ve known a long time, who’s read the book, and I asked her to come to this
function in New York—we were talking about Gwyneth Paltrow and the misstep she had last week—and
she said, “Yeah, she didn’t sound very planful in what she was doing there.” I was thinking: have you
read the book? Have you? [laughter]
And just be careful of jargon when you are speaking outside the company. I realize that jargon is a
verbal shortcut for us, when we’re speaking with each other in a meeting, but it’s very important to
realize that when you’re speaking to an external audience, it’s really good to stay away from these
verbal shortcuts. And everybody falls victim to them, or just malaprops in general. “[audio playing]
Sometimes you misunderestimated me. [laughter] They could refudiate what it is this group is saying …”
This is the jargon one I love: “[music] ‘What are you guys doing?’ ‘We’re ideating.’ ‘Ide what?’
‘Ideating.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Coming up with new ideas.’ ‘Why don’t you just call it that?’ ‘This is
different. We need to rethink the way we do things: structure, process. We need to innovate.’ ‘How?’
‘We haven’t ideated that yet’ [laughter] ‘Good luck.’ ‘Thanks.’” That was an IBM spot from about …
literally, twelve years ago, and the reason it’s so funny is it’s … ‘cause it’s so close to the truth—it’s
barely an exaggeration. So really watch the jargon if you can.
So the reason I did this book was because I found that a lot of the principles that I was working with
people on on how to be better communicators—more efficient, more effective, more persuasive—
didn’t apply to just being on panels and giving speeches and giving media interviews. I found that they
really pervade all high-stakes communication situations in our lives—whether we are coaching our
nephew for the big job interview, or whether we are faced with having that difficult conversation with
an aging parent that they shouldn’t be driving anymore. You know, there are all these things that
happen day-to-day, where the way we frame something and the words we use to put our point forward
really matter—they often determine the difference between success and failure.
And so there are these various principles in the book. One of them that I think is really important speaks
to the notion of brevity. And I call it the pasta sauce principle, because if any of you are avid cooks, you
know that if you put a pot of sauce on the stove and you cook it down for an hour, two hours on a
Sunday, that reduction is going to have a lot more flavor, and just a dynamic quality to it, than if you
keep pouring more water into that thing. The verbal equivalent is figuring out a way to say it concisely
and directly. Being verbose, and buying into this notion that more is more is like putting water in the
sauce. See if you can avoid circular logic, redundancy—it’s not helping—you want to make it as lean and
mean as you possibly can. And I find that the majority of people—if you think about this as, like, your
thought; you have a beginning, a middle, and an end to this thought that you’re trying to convey—I find
a lot of people are pretty good getting out of the gate, and maybe getting to the crux of what it is they
want to say, but then, wrapping it up tends to be a real challenge. There’s a lot of ad-libbing; there’s a
lot of excess that’s not helping us. And so to avoid that, what I’d like you to think about is: let me do
enough preparation and reflection ahead of time to know what my content is, and let me develop the
discipline that, by the time I open my mouth to start talking to convey this thought, I have a general idea
where I’m ending up—what the finish line looks like. Not in a scripted, verbatim way—I don’t want you
to be … feel like you’re rigidly controlled, but I do want you to know: okay, what’s the point I’m trying to
make here? And how can I back up that point? Do I have a story I can tell? Do I have an example I can
give? Do I have a data point that helps illustrate the main point? Those are, basically, the two
components of what makes persuasive discussion and conversation: a point and a way to bring it to life.
And if you can’t conceptually see what the full arc of your answer contains when you open your mouth
to start, you’re talking too long. That’s a good barometer. It’s not about talking for thirty-five seconds
or forty-five seconds; it’s about: how much control do I have over what I know is going to come out of
my mouth over the next twenty seconds? Again, if you can remove as much winging it and saying the
first thing that pops into your head, that is never a good strategy, and in fact—you know—the news,
every week, is filled with people who say the first thing that pops into their head, and then they spend a
week apologizing for it or restating it or explaining it—it’s usually not good.
One of the other key principles in the book asks you to think about your brain and your mouth as two
cars on the road, mmkay? And your brain is always the lead car; it’s always about a millisecond ahead of
your mouth, and it is basically figuring out what conversational road you’re gonna go down and what
words you’re going to use to express that thought. And we’d like to think that, when your brain gets to
that intersection, it makes the decisions very efficiently, and that’s not always the case. Sometimes we
come up to a juncture, and we’re just not sure about what it is we’re supposed to be saying or how we
should be saying it. If you buy into this notion that you need to have a steady stream of sound coming
out of your mouth, that’s the equivalent of your mouth tailgating your brain. And if your brain isn’t
making that decision efficiently, your mouth has to do something while it’s waiting for instructions, and
typically, that’s where um’s, ah’s, you know’s, sort of’s, like’s come in—the garbage filler that strips us of
our conviction and also our executive presence. So two things to try to get rid of filler—which I have
clients, every week, say, “I just would love to rid myself of this”—one is being aware of it; two is
adopting this discipline of: the less certain I am about the next thing coming out of my mouth, the
slower I should be talking, the more pausing I should be building in. That’s going to keep you from
having a lot of filler and sound coming out of your mouth instead of crisp content.
So I like to … this is usually … people love this part, for some reason—I don’t know why—maybe … it’s
the question I get asked the most. ‘Kay, who wants to take a crack at one of the six?
>>: Pockets.
>> Bill McGowan: Pardon?
>>: Pockets.
>> Bill McGowan: Pockets, very good. That’s one.
>>: Space. [laughter]
>> Bill McGowan: Very good. That, actually, is going to be the seventh one. If your hands rise above
shoulder-level, nothing good is happening. [laughter] You know, you’re either tugging at your ears,
scratching your nose, playing with your hair—all fidgety personal grooming stuff that is out. No, no, no,
no. Okay? So good … I … thank you for giving me number seven. So we have pockets. Folded across
the chest: never here, okay? This is … this reeks of: I don’t really deserve your attention, but I’m going
to be up here talking anyway. It’s too apologetic and too passive, okay? So we have folded across the
chest, behind the back, in the pockets. Who else?
>>: Fig leaf.
>> Bill McGowan: Fig leaf, very good. Um … this is also not a position, [laughter] and also praying. This
is too high. [laughter] Okay? So folded across the check … on your hips is another one. Anybody else?
Any other positions?
>>: Holding the lectern.
>> Bill McGowan: Yes. Very good. We haven’t talked about that, but this is what I call podium push-ups
[laughter]—you know—which you actually will see people doing occasionally. This I understand
provides a lot of security—to hang onto this thing for dear life [laughter]—not a good idea, and in fact, I
don’t even like to be—you know—like to be … if I had my druthers, actually, I would be sort of walking
down the aisle a little bit, but I don’t want to be doing the bird thing, right? I don’t want to be in the
light of the projector, and I also don’t want to mess up the cameras, but this is a barrier between you
and the audience. It’d be better to get out from in front of it … from behind it. And if you have to stand
behind it because the mic is there, and you’re not wirelessly mic’ed—you know—stand physically
independent of the podium. ‘Kay?
Alright, so the last few are: draped by your side. So I’ve never seen anybody look comfortable standing
in front of a room like this. So what I’d like you to do is: from this position, I want you to create a right
angle between your upper arm and your forearm, and I want your hands to come together right around
your belt buckle. If you’ve got a clicker, it’s easy, ‘cause you can sort of hold the clicker with both hands
right around your belt buckle, and it gives you something to hold on to. But suppose you don’t have a
clicker. Now, this is a little bit more difficult, but it … and it may feel a little strange in the beginning, but
it looks right. And the reason I like it is because I want to talk with my hands, but I don’t want them to
have to travel a long distance to be able to gesticulate, and down here, they do. And now I’m done with
them, and they got a long way to fall to get into a resting position. Here, it’s easy-in and easy-out; you
know, I can talk with them periodically and not have to over-think it. The palms of your hands are
basically facing in; the backs of your hands are basically facing out. They are not rigidly clenched to
show any tension, and they’re not shaped, so that anybody in the audience is thinking, “what’s he doing
with his hands over there?” [laughter] You know, you want it to just be like you’re holding something
very delicate between your fingers. Okay?
And I would say that the piece of advice that rises above all else is: see if you can generate genuine
enthusiasm for the value of information you’re sharing with your audience. Do not go into this thinking
that your definition of success is to get through it technically clean, without any hiccups, or stumbles, or
stutters—that’s not what it’s about. It’s about conveying to everybody in the audience that this is
important to know; this could be very helpful in what we’re doing, and I think you should know this, and
I’m looking forward to being able to communicate it to you. Enthusiasm for the value of the information
you’re sharing: most important thing. And until you can actually do that in a genuine, organic way, see if
you can just bring a little of that flavor to your delivery—until you feel it for real.
I’d be happy to take any questions you have. A little tip: if you do open up an event you have to Q and
A, come with your own first question, and so … and what I mean by that is: typically, nobody likes to go
first in Q and A, so the most awkward part of a presentation is where: “Okay, [claps] so any questions?
Beep, beep, beep.” And you’re thinking, “Oh my God, nobody has any questions.” That’s where you
want to step in and say—you know—typically, when I give talks like this, what I find people are most
curious about is x, y and z. You know, jump-start your own Q and A with something that you feel is a
typical question, because that is an awkward moment, and you don’t want to have that sort of
referendum that: yeah, you weren’t really interesting enough to ask any questions, so … [claps]
everybody … yes?
>>: So one of the things that I find most discombobulating is if I’m, especially, on a large stage, if I have
bright lights shining in my face, I can’t see the audience at all.
>> Bill McGowan: Yeah.
>>: And I’m wondering if you have any ideas on what to do in that situation.
>> Bill McGowan: I think you have to pick zones. So let’s say, [claps] bright lights [claps] … got one
[claps] right here. You know, think: near right, far right, far left, near left—break the room into those
quadrants. You’re not gonna find that good listener, but think about speaking to that zone. The other
thing that’s important is if you’re on a stage and there are confidence monitors or a teleprompter—I
don’t know if you have that—realize that if they’re on the floor, where they usually are, the closer you
are to the foot of the stage, the more disparity in the eye-line between the monitor and the audience—
it’s gonna look more like you’re reading the prompter, whereas if you back up mid-stage, this gets
mitigated. Okay? And how many of you have to be in an event where you’re reading a prompter or
there’s some kind of … so the only other thing you want to avoid there is—sometimes they have one on
this side of the stage, and that side of the stage—try never to read the one you’re walking away from,
which I see a lot. You know, people sort of sneaking a peak over their shoulder—that immediately looks
like you’re reading. ‘Kay. Yeah?
>>: Any special advice on presenting charts, numbers, things like that on …
>> Bill McGowan: If the slide is really dense, I think what can be effective is saying, “Okay, so we have
ten years of performance here; here’s what I really want to bring your attention to.” Like, don’t go
through every single thing on the chart. There’s probably one thing on each slide you want the person
in the audience, or in the room, focusing on, and you have to actually dictate what it is that they’re
gonna zone in on with their eyes. When you throw up a slide, and there’s a lot of information in that—a
lot of bars, a lot of numbers, a lot of words—you are relinquishing control. Their eyes can go anywhere
they want, and what you’re saying is almost insignificant. So you almost have to dictate where their
eyes should go on the slide. Okay. “So the blue line is what I really want to point out here, and here’s
what it shows.” Okay? Yeah?
>>: In the previous slide, you were talking about where not to put your hands, and I assume that that
was reflecting when people are standing. I can’t quite visualize how you’re gonna reach your hips when
you’re standing.
>> Bill McGowan: How you’re gonna what?
>>: Reach all the way down to your hips.
>> Bill McGowan: You mean like this?
>>: Oh. Okay.
>> Bill McGowan: Just—you know—means hand … like—you know—your hands on your hips walking …
it’s a little bit of a … kind of a cocky—you know—stance. If you’re seated, you want to avoid … if you’re
sitting in a conference room or at a table, try not to have hands below the table, back all the way against
the back of the chair—I sort of call this the electric chair pose—you know, feet flat on the floor. I find
what really works to develop an engaged, attentive kind of physical presence is: think about sitting on at
least the front half of the cushion—so my back now is completely separated from the back of the chair—
cross your legs at the ankle and tuck it underneath the chair, forearms on the conference table or
whatever it is, and feel an arch in the small of your back. I am sitting up straight, right now, from the
base of my spine. If I let go of that, this is how I look—which is a very different kind of vibe you’re giving
off. So I want you to think about sitting forward, but sitting up, and there’s something about your feet
in this position that almost kind of lifts you off your chair a little bit. This is what’s going to … it’s those
nonverbal communicating little items that make it seem like you have more conviction in what you’re
saying, as opposed to: “Yeah, I think we should do this.” You know, you’re not really putting your back
into that. Yeah?
>>: Is there any way you, in authenticity—I mean …
>> Bill McGowan: Is there any what? I’m sorry.
>>: In authenticity. Y’know, be authentic, who you really are. I mean, if you’re a natural in expressing
with your hands …
>> Bill McGowan: Mmhmm?
>>: … and then when you’re on the stage, then you don’t move your hands, and you talk completely
differently …
>> Bill McGowan: Yes.
>>: … aren’t you perceived a little bit artificial, and then you lose the connection …
>> Bill McGowan: I think you should take what makes you feel comfortable in your own skin, and just
round off those edges that wind up being techniques that distract from what you’re saying. So let’s
say—let’s take hands, for instance—y’know, let’s say you’re very expressive, and now, my hands tend to
move constantly, and I mean, they never actually rest, right? That can be a little manic and distracting.
So if the person came to me and said, “I just love to talk with my hands.” I’d say, “Fine, but realize to
have them in constant motion doesn’t help.” You want to think that: I want to move my hands when I
really want to punctuate something, but then, when I’m on information that’s of secondary importance,
I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t want to be seeming like I’m trying to artificially pump everything
up, and that’s one of the points about presenting: don’t try to dial it up to eleven on everything, ‘cause
then nothing stands out. Pick your spots to really put emphasis and conviction behind it. You can slow
down your speaking pace over your big points; you can use your hands; and in that way, you create this
sort of vocal bolding and underlining. Yeah?
>>: What about getting off-book or being mostly off-book?
>> Bill McGowan: Off …?
>>: The hot piece of paper or …
>> Bill McGowan: Oh. So I was joking around with Amy, before she got up, that this woman went to
introduce me at an event a few months back, and she had a piece of paper very much like this, [paper
crinkling] and she was nervous. And not only could you see the paper shaking, but you could hear it. So
… and I really felt bad for her. So what I typically like are these big index cards—I think they’re five-byeights—and if you’re a guy and you happen to be wearing a jacket, they fit inside your inner breast
pocket. And sometimes, I’ll just keep those as a back-up in case, technically, everything fails, and I could
just sort of—you know—pull them out of my pocket, and use them as a guide. And you want to avoid
having a sheet of paper like this—like you’re gonna be reading it. Think about: these cards actually
anchor your hands—they give you something to do with your hands—but I’m sort of holding them
against my torso right now, and now, when I need them, I can just look down at it, and then just return
them to their spot. You don’t want to create the impression that I need this thing at the ready ‘cause I
have no idea where I’m going. Yeah?
>>: What is the right balance between—as a speaker—speaking to a set of slides, versus being able to
speak … so I’ve seen speakers who are very engaging and just have one visual on the screen, and they
actually have you riveted wherever they’re on the stage.
>> Bill McGowan: Mmhmm?
>>: And then I’ve seen people who go by death-by-power-point vision …
>> Bill McGowan: Yeah.
>>: … where they keep talking, and the slide is so busy, and, like, you just can’t keep your eyes open.
So, as a speaker, what is the sort of in-between, and what is the preferable way to be more effective in
communicating what you’re saying, and what is the right balance between visual and audio?
>> Bill McGowan: Think of you and the power point like you’re a broadcast team for a sporting event.
The power point is the play-by-play guy, you’re the color commentator. So that means: don’t read your
slides; don’t be the verbal equivalent of what’s on the slide—you want to give context and color, and so
see if you can find an alternate way of saying what’s on the slide. Also, if you have a presentation you
need to give that’s really dense in information, see if you can build that deck out, and if you need to
distribute it ahead of time or at the meeting, that’s what you give, but then take that one and then scale
it way back, and make it as visually sparse as possible, and that’s the one you show. The thing you’re
trying to avoid is battling with yourself and giving them a gazillion things to look at and try to listen to
you at the same time. So … but I realize that a really scaled-back power point is a problem, because
then the people in the audience say, “Well listen, I need this information. You’re leaving all this stuff
out.” Make that a deck that you provide to them in some way. Yeah? In the back.
>>: How do you make adjustments to your presentation if you have a very international audience,
they’re—English may not be their first language, most of them—y’know, without being condescending
in any way?
>> Bill McGowan: Yeah. Maybe opt for making it more visually-driven in terms of the content on the
slides. See if you can opt for images, which, by the way, are six thousand times more memorable than
words, so you’re doing yourself a huge favor by trying to be as much of a visual storyteller as possible.
And—you know—I agree with you: I think that your vocal pace can have a big impact on something like
this. If you feel like you are about to say a term or a word that may not be immediately recognizable to
the audience, maybe just go a little bit slower over that word. You don’t want to be condescending,
where you’re saying it really loud and slow the way some people do—you obviously want to stay away
from doing that—but careful of idiomatic expressions, which often people from another culture will not
be familiar with, or any kind of terminology which may not be in the grasp of somebody who has an
okay understanding of the language. Yeah?
>>: So I came to this talk to … not for presentation skills, but well, I’m in a team, we have a bunch of
other teams that rely on what we do, and we need to communicate those ideas clearly and concisely.
And the tendency at Microsoft is to write a long e-mail, and you feel if you’ve read … written a long email, that describes everything, then you’re done. And I also see the same thing happen with verbal
communication, where people are essentially writing the e-mail when they’re talking to someone …
>> Bill McGowan: Mmhmm.
>>: … but it’s not this communication where you’re assessing whether the first thing you’ve said was
actually understood, and then moving on to your second point and illustration. And a lot of times, we
fall into point, point, point, point, point …
>> Bill McGowan: Yeah.
>>: … and the person is still trying to process the first one. So I don’t know if you have anything to say
about that dynamic and …
>> Bill McGowan: Sometimes communicating is like feeding a little child, you know, you have to: here’s
a spoonful; okay, chew and swallow; okay, you ready for the next one? You know, you want to get a
sense for: is your audience ready to move on? Have they digested what I’ve just told them? I’m not …
this is where empathy comes into play in communication. It’s not just about you touching bases A, B, C,
and D and getting out of the conference room as early as possible, it’s about: do I get the sense that this
… the people around the table have gotten this? And do I need to illustrate these points through real or
hypothetical examples to really drive it home? And it’s also—I think—fine to say, “Is it—you know—is
that clear? Should we … is everybody okay to move on?” You know, I think there’s a little bit of a
reluctance to gauge the audience in a meeting, even.
>>: The other thing is that I … you don’t have to say everything at once.
>> Bill McGowan: That’s right.
>>: Like, they can … even though we have this half hour now, it doesn’t mean we have to tell you
absolutely everything in that half hour.
>> Bill McGowan: Right.
>>: We could have another one after you …
>> Bill McGowan: Yeah. There’s this idea of leaving people wanting more, right? Or—you know—
thinking: alright well, we’re closing this meeting; what do I want everybody from this meeting doing in
the aftermath of this meeting? So maybe you button the meeting not with: “Alright, so let’s review
everything we covered”—you know, that’s not necessarily what I’m suggesting—but what if you were to
give the presentation, say, “Okay, so if nothing else happens out of this meeting, here’s what I’d like
everybody to ponder” or “Here’s what I would like everybody to come up with a solution for.” You
know, this idea of call to action or … not marching orders, but it’s almost like inspiring them to do
something out of the meeting. You know … yes?
>>: In interactive sessions where you have a mixed group, and you’re presenting either idea, concept, or
product, how do you—sort of—keep the nay-sayers and the un … the nonbelievers in check? And
keeping them from derailing your … either your thought process or getting them on board?
>> Bill McGowan: I think there’s a certain value in acknowledging and validating what the skepticism in
the room is and just getting it out there by saying, “Now, I know full well this idea has its limitations, and
some people in the audience, they see it as this, that, and the other thing. Let me explain to you why we
believe there’s bigger upside to this, regardless of where you come down on that.” You know, I think
sometimes the nay-sayers just want you to verbalize and acknowledge the doubts they have, and to not
just [thumping the microphone] come at it from a combative [continues thumping the microphone] “I’m
gonna cut you off” and “I’m right; you’re wrong”—you know, to be able to acknowledge and validate
has importance. Yes, I’m sorry.
>>: With limited amount of time, how do you prioritize planning? How do you recommend that your
clients …
>> Bill McGowan: I give them something that I call a message grid, and that is: you’re going into a
meeting, or you’re going to be peppered with questions; try to figure out what the topics of
conversation are going to be in this meeting. So they’re going to ask you: what are the potential pitfalls
of this plan? What kind of revenue is going to be deriven from it? What are competitors doing? You
know, there’s certain predictable topics that can come up, and on this grid, in these columns, I want you
to think: what’s my basic point here? And what’s my point of illustration? Do I have a data point? Do I
have an example I can give? How do I bolster my main point? And just putting bullet-point reminders to
yourself, it’s like a road map: here’s topic D that’s gonna come up in the meeting; this is my point; this is
my illustration. I know it; I’m not scripting it out verbatim, but I am creating a navigational guide as to
what I’m gonna talk about when these different topics in the meeting come up. Yeah?
>>: So what about elevator pitch? Let’s say you bump into the executive in the break room, and then
they say, “How is project xyz?” And you have about thirty seconds to make a good impression.
>> Bill McGowan: Mmhmm. See if you can stay away from the empty platitudes, which are: “Oh, I think
it’s going great. You know, everybody seems really engaged and you know.” See if you can stay away
from the empty stuff; see if you can give them something concrete and say, “You know, I wasn’t sure
until yesterday, and then we had this meeting yesterday in which—you know—three quarters of the
team had great input into how to finalize the plan, and I’m feeling really confident about it.” See if you
can … that … even that little bit of storytelling to give it authenticity, rather than just sort of saying what
he or she thinks you want them to hear—you know—stay away from the generalities. See if you can …
and to that end, I would heartily recommend that you all get one of these. You … probably a lot of you
have it. There are things that happen day-to-day, week-to-week that represent great anecdotal
material: something somebody says to you in a meeting, or you’re out having a conference with a client,
and they say something—they tell you how some challenge they’re having you’ve helped them
overcome with some innovation you’ve provided them. Jot that stuff down. Put it in a book
somewhere, because these stories are the life-blood of your participation on panels, your speeches,
your presentations. It’s really hard the night before a presentation to suddenly think, “Okay, I need to
come up with some stories”—you know—start archiving them; it’s … it’ll be a great thing to be able to
draw on. Yeah, it’ll be good to … yeah?
>>: I have a problem, just in real life, of speaking way too quickly, and that’s just a thousand times
worse when I’m on stage.
>> Bill McGowan: Yeah.
>>: So everybody always says, “Slow down”—I’ve been told to slow down my entire life—and I can do it
for about twenty seconds, and then it just … back on the interstate.
>> Bill McGowan: Mmhmm.
>>: So do you have any recommendations for ways to just force yourself …
>>: Breathe. [laughter]
>>: … to slow down over a long period of time?
>>: Breathe.
>> Bill McGowan: I—breathed, right—I would … have you ever seen yourself on video? ‘Kay. So why
not do this? Why not grab your phone and prop it up and video tape yourself practicing—right—your
next speech or whatever it is? And then, when you’re done, check the clock. So let’s say you do the first
two pages, and it’s a minute forty-three, right? Now, try to do it in more than two minutes. Okay, see if
you can … see what it takes for you to stretch that thing by seventeen seconds. And deliberately force
yourself to try to chew up more time, but for you, I think what would be really critical is: don’t try to
uniformly slow yourself down; take the really key take-away ideas—your big points—and think, “Alright.
These are going to be the selected moments where I downshift, and I slow down, and I draw it out a
little bit more emphatically.” I think that’s gonna work better for you than feeling like: I’ve got to take
everything down a certain speed. Think about what your punch lines are, what your big ideas are; slow
down over those. ‘Cause it is the variation of your speaking pace that makes your voice interesting to
listen to: somebody who’s uniformly brisk and talking a mile a minute all the time—it’s very easy to lose
the engagement of your audience, as is somebody who’s very slow and plodding and never steps on the
gas. You want both brisk and slow. Yes?
>>: So we have a lot of virtual meetings, so we don’t get to see the audience; we don’t get to see where
they … what their reactions are to how you’re speaking. So any advice or tips to figure out how to best
in …
>> Bill McGowan: Is this a VC meeting? Or a phone? Like a conference call?
>>: Yeah, [indiscernible] conference call, maybe a presentation shown on-screen.
>> Bill McGowan: Right. You’re probably sitting at a conference table, right? So I would definitely
adopt that kind of [claps] forearms on the table, okay, let’s get right to it—you know—I think … see if
you can take charge with conviction, and—you know—the thing that makes those calls so difficult is
everybody’s stepping over each other, ‘cause there’s a little delay. If you start talking, and you hear
somebody starting to chime in two seconds later, don’t stop. Keep going. The worst thing that can
happen on those calls is where everybody starts being really poli … “No, no, no, no, you go,” “No, you
started.” That makes a twenty-minute call a forty-minute call. But see if you can … you know, the other
thing that works for phone calls is not sitting down, is having some notes, and maybe you’ve have a
headset; walk around the room. I find that I’m a lot more animated in how I deliver information—and I
have a lot more conviction in my voice—if I’m moving. The last place you want to do one of these is
sitting behind your desk. ‘Cause when this meeting starts to get sluggish and you start to get bored,
you’ll check your inbox—you will—or you’ll see something on your desk, saying, “Ah, man, I was
supposed to do that yesterday. Shoot.” You know, million and one distractions behind your desk, worst
place to do a call. Yeah?
>>: You mentioned the over-practicing of the opening to get into the flow. Would you apply the same
to the closing? Or would you rather have it in a natural flow and kind of trickle?
>> Bill McGowan: Absolutely. I think you should know: what’s my crisp close to this? Absolutely. It
should get every bit as much planning and attention as your open. Yes?
>>: Similar question: you talked about preparation for the main content. I believe you can do some
preparation for Q and A, but how do you handle—you know—things that you have to think through,
or—you know—are difficult?
>> Bill McGowan: You mean questions that are difficult, that you might not be able to handle. I think
there’s nothing wrong with saying to somebody in an audience, “You know, I would love to doublecheck that piece of information before I give you an exact number, so maybe you could follow up with
me after the meeting, and I’ll … we can do it one-on-one.” You know, it’s not the end of the world to
say, “I don’t know,” but there are ways to do that where you don’t make it seem like you’re not
knowledgeable. If you’re asked something very narrow and focused in Q and A in the audience, and you
don’t know that specific thing, see if you can broaden the scope of the question so you can speak more
generally to the topic they’ve raised. You know, in a Q and A, nobody’s going to fire a follow-up, pinyou-down type of question to it.
>> Amy Draves: We’ll take one more question.
>> Bill McGowan: Yes?
>>: Any particular pointers for giving presentations to your management team [indiscernible]
executives?
>> Bill McGowan: Prayer? No. [laughter] Yeah. I’ve known people to become fixated on the most
powerful person in the room, to the exclusion of, maybe, other semi-powerful people in the room,
right? And as a result, some people can feel a little dissed. So I would be diligent about spreading my
attention around to the various people on the other side of the table so that—you know—nobody feels
slighted, but maybe on the really big points—the stuff that really, really matters—that’s when you zone
in on the number one decision maker. Okay? ‘Cause you know, I’ve seen situations where even
somebody’s executive assistant is sitting next to the CEO in a meeting, and the people pitching them
have completely ignored that person—right—and then what happens? They leave the meeting, and the
CEO turns to his or her executive assistant and says, “what’d you think of those guys?” And the assistant
feels completely dissed; she goes, “I don’t know. I thought they were kind of jerks.” [laughter] You
know, you cannot afford to slight anybody on the other side of the table, regardless of what their title is.
‘Kay? So thank you very much for coming today. I hope that was helpful in whatever you wind up
having to do. [applause]