What's Your Message Read online

  “Great book. Thank you for your fresh approach Cam.”

  - Janine Allis, founder and CEO, Boost Juice

  “I knew what I wanted to say. Cam refocused me on how to say it in a way that cut straight to the heart. That made all the difference. This man knows what he’s doing.”

  - Andrew Denton, Journalist and Media Personality

  “This is an outstanding book. The core premise certainly worked for me, and I believe you have nailed it for people making major presentations.”

  - Paul Thompson, founder of both Austereo and DMG (now Nova Entertainment).

  “Cam gives you a philosophy that frees you to be yourself and simple tools to structure your ideas so you engage your audience.”

  - Verne Harnish, CEO of Gazelles and author of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0).

  “Cam has helped us enormously in getting our ideas across.”

  - Alastair Clarkson, 4-time Premiership Coach, Hawthorn Football Club

  “The Vivid Method has helped me to bring order to the world of information chaos - in the media, at the lectern and the board table. The secret to confident and powerful delivery skills is clarity. Read the book!”

  - Mark Evans, AFL Football Operations Manager.

  “3 years ago I had a mortal fear of public speaking that was holding me back in my career. Now I actually enjoy it! Since working with Cam I have been the keynote speaker at several conferences around the world.”

  - Sam Cavanagh, National Executive Producer – Southern Cross Austereo and keynote Speaker at RadioDays Europe 2013 / 2014 / 2015.

  “Cam has simplified public speaking. A great book to leapfrog anxiety, and hone your leadership skills at the same time… a must have read for all managers, CEOs and entrepreneurs.”

  - Nicola Mills, Group Managing Director, Pacific Retail.

  “The mere thought of public speaking used to fill me with untold anxiety. Then I learned the Vivid Method. Now public speaking is just another part of what I do – and have come to love!”

  - Regina Lane, author, Saving St Brigid’s.

  “Read this book and you’ll learn more than a powerful method to become a better public speaker, you’ll be inspired to become a better leader.”

  - Michael Anderson, Director, Fairfax Media and Chairman, Ooh Media.

  What’s your

  message?

  Public speaking with twice the impact,

  using half the effort

  Cam Barber

  First published in 2015

  By Vivid Learning Pty Ltd

  PO Box 6468, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia

  www.vividmethod.com

  Email: [email protected]

  What’s Your Message? Public Speaking with twice the impact, using half the effort © Cam Barber 2015

  ISBN 978-0-9925055-0-9 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-9925055-1-6 (EPUB)

  ISBN 978-0-9925055-2-3 (Mobipocket)

  ISBN 978-0-9925055-3-0 (PDF ebook)

  The right of Cam Barber to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Cam Barber.

  Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this publication, no guarantee can be given that all errors and omissions have been excluded. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Cam Barber.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Barber, Cam, author.

  Title: What’s your message : public speaking with twice the impact, using half the effort / Cam Barber.

  Subjects: Public speaking--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

  Oral communication--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

  Oratory--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

  Dewey Number: 808.51

  Contents

  Just before we get started…

  The Power of Messaging

  A statistical anomaly

  One presentation can define a career

  Messaging case study: Professional Football Clubs

  External messages

  Internal messages (to players and staff)

  The ‘glue’ that holds the team plan together

  Game-day motivational messages

  The power of messaging in 4 areas of life…

  Messaging makes great leaders

  Gandhi - Spreading a new idea

  Nelson Mandela - His life in messages

  Steve Jobs - Chief Messaging Officer

  David Morrison, Army Chief - Changing the culture

  CEO - The reason for the new plan

  Messaging gets your ideas heard

  Anita Roddick - Media exposure for free

  Allan Carr - The EasyWay to stop smoking

  Steve Waugh - Leadership for a new audience

  Politician - How much water to grow an orange?

  Doctor - Convincing people to support a new idea

  Messaging builds your personal brand

  Jules Lund - Finding the message changed everything, effortlessly

  Janine Allis - Messaging allows natural style

  Senior Manager - Leveraging his knowledge

  Messaging promotes your organisation

  Richard Branson - Nervous, but doesn’t mind

  The ‘Hot Tub Ski Lodge’ marketing message

  CSIRO - Securing science funding

  The Pope Francis effect

  Bad messaging…

  The cake that cost a Federal election

  IBM didn’t ‘Think’

  Confusing Bushfire Warning - ‘stay or go’

  Format Wars: BluRay versus HD-DVD - can you put it in a sentence?!

  The Vivid Method for Public Speaking

  Public speaking myths…

  Body language: everything you know is wrong

  Vivid Method Part One: The Clarity First Principles

  Principle 1: All anxiety is caused by uncertainty

  Principle 2: Message transfer is your measure of success

  Principle 3: We all have the Closeness Problem

  Principle 4: Your natural style is the right style

  Principle 5: You can control anxiety by understanding it

  Vivid Method Part Two: Create a Speech Outline

  What is a speech outline?

  Typical procrastination schedule

  Why does it work so well? The speech outline as checklist

  The difference between a traditional outline and a Vivid Speech Outline

  Crafting your message, step-by-step

  The magic of chunking

  Structuring your ideas, step-by-step

  Start with Message Statement and Title

  Define your chunk headings

  Find the key point for each chunk

  Fill the chunks with examples, stories, evidence

  Structure helps you deliver a speech more powerfully

  How to rehearse in half the time

  Vivid Method Part Three: Give Great Explanations

  Effortless delivery skills

  How to start a speech

  How to end a speech

  Optional techniques to engage your listeners

  How to PROVOKE the mind of your listener

  How to CONNECT with your listener

  How to ACTIVATE your listener’s mind

  Visual explanations - leveraging slides and visual support

  Public Sp
eaking Recap

  So, to wrap up… bring your ideas to life!

  JUST BEFORE WE GET STARTED…

  My friend Michael is sitting across the table from me. He’s the CEO of a major entertainment company. We have just finished the outline for his presentation. He sits back in his chair looking satisfied.

  Then his energy changes and concern takes over his face.

  He says, ‘The planning feels complete, Cam. My message is clear and the structure looks good, but that’s not my biggest challenge. It’s the START! The real problem is that awkward feeling just before I speak. My throat is tight and I wonder if I’ll stumble on my words. And, at the start of any talk, there’s that echoing silence and all those expressionless faces wondering where you’re going to take them. It takes a while to build a good rhythm.”

  The start can be a challenge for all of us. The beginning of a speech is a point-in-time that’s full of uncertainty (and uncertainty is the root cause of anxiety, but we’ll get to that later). We walk on stage and there’s this energy vacuum and the audience looking at us to fill it. It can be difficult to think clearly with all those expectant eyes on us, and the way we manage those moments can determine how the rest of the presentation goes.

  Then Michael said, “Cam, tell me how I can eliminate the start of a speech!”

  And that was the day we did it. We devised a way to eliminate the awkward start of any speech.

  He was half-joking of course. But we brainstormed it that afternoon, and we did it. Not possible you say? Surely every speech needs a start… Well, we vanquished it - and you can too. We found a way to not only eliminate the awkward start of a speech, but achieve 4 crucial goals:

  1. Reduce anxiety.

  2. Convert the cold mood of any room, hall or stadium into a warm conversational energy.

  3. Take the spotlight off your performance so you can relax.

  4. Create an environment to engage your audience.

  It’s an incredibly powerful technique that works with any audience or any subject. It puts you instantly in control of the room, while taking most of the traditional public speaking pressures off you. It works if you are a quiet, thoughtful, softly spoken introvert-style speaker - or a loud, fast, dynamic extrovert-style -or anything in between. It works no matter how much sleep you had the night before.

  This powerful technique is called ‘Just before we get started…’

  In a nutshell, the first words you say are,

  ‘Just before we get started…’

  …followed by a few words on something you have prepared to chat about. Like the background to your talk; or your role; or the beginning of the relationship that led to your talk; or housekeeping issues (like how long you’ll speak for, how to manage questions, if there is a handout), or anything you like.

  The point is, by using the words ‘before we get started…’ you release the pressure of the start. The energy vacuum is filled and you’ve done it with a conversational tone.

  Of course, technically you have started, but after your relaxed intro, you simply continue on with your talk as planned. This avoids the drama of a traditional start. The ‘just-before-we-get-started’ technique works like magic. Amazing, but true. Try it for yourself. I’ll explain exactly how this works later as it’s one of the techniques covered in the ‘Give Great Explanations’ section at the end of the book.

  First, let’s look at how this book is structured.

  …Oh, and if you’re still reading, it looks like the ‘just-before-we-get-started’ technique works to open a book as well. :)

  How this book is structured

  This book has 2 parts…

  The first part is called ‘The Power of Messaging’. It shares examples that demonstrate that a compelling message is the lynchpin to great public speaking. These examples are from great leaders, sporting professionals, CEOs of business and non-profit organisations, scientists, book authors, salespeople, project managers, radio stars, TV show hosts, and a range of other roles. Some examples are from people who inspire me, while others are my clients. They illustrate the incredible benefits of being able to deliver a transferable message.

  The second part shows you a 3-part method to prepare and deliver great speeches and presentations. It’s called ‘The Vivid Method for Public Speaking’ and we’ve taught it to over 15,000 people. The 3 parts follow a specific sequence and help you think clearly, prepare in less time, dissolve nerves effortlessly, engage your audience from start to finish and leave them with a memorable message. The 3 parts of the Vivid Method are:

  1. The 5 principles that help you think clearly and control nerves.

  2. The Speech Outline process that helps you clarify and structure ideas.

  3. A range of options to give great explanations.

  Why another book on public speaking?

  I’ve been reading and collecting books on public speaking and presentation skills for 20 years, and wondered if the world needed another. It does. Why? Because most of the books and, ultimately, most of the training in public speaking, is based on a bad idea.

  The idea is that there’s an optimum way to ‘be’ when speaking in public. That we should adjust our body language, control our gestures, restrict (or exaggerate) our facial expressions and basically fit into a cookie-cutter, mechanical style to achieve this ‘optimum’.

  It’s a dumb idea and it doesn’t work. It implies you have to change who you are, which wastes a tremendous amount of energy and actually creates an environment for anxiety. In this stressful situation, speakers use far more effort than if they were just able to speak as themselves.

  I learnt this the hard way. I was told that my style was wrong and I needed to change it if I was going to be an effective speaker (this story is explained in ‘Principle 4: Natural Style’). After banging my head against a wall trying to follow the advice I was given, I finally developed a new approach based on message recall and natural style. It frees people from the shackles and misdirection of the traditional ‘performance’ approach.

  There appears to be a desperate need for this new method for 3 reasons. Firstly, speakers regularly fail to deliver a clear message, so they waste their opportunity in front of an audience. Secondly, people who have great ideas don’t share them because they get lost in information overload (inability to easily sort their ideas) or a fear of public speaking. Finally, more than half the trainers teaching public speaking to businesspeople today are actors, so this ‘performance’ approach continues to spread like a virus.

  So, I offer you a method for public speaking that is simple, reduces preparation time, requires less practice and gives you twice the impact with half the effort. My hope is that it will help you bring your ideas to life.

  I’ve taught this method at conferences, coaching sessions and in longer training courses, and one of life’s pleasures is when people come up and explain how it has completely changed their perspective - that it transforms a difficult problem into a simple step-by-step process.

  In fact, people who ask questions with a furrowed brow at the start of a session, often give feedback at the end of a session like, ‘Huh, you know, it’s just common sense really, isn’t it?’

  This is a wonderful compliment.

  You might think it would be nicer to hear something like, ‘Wow, you must be so clever’, or ‘you have so many good ideas’ or ‘those dramatic techniques are amazing’. But when people come to the conclusion that the method is just common sense, we have achieved something much more powerful. It means they find it so easy to apply that they use it without making dramatic changes to their life, and without having to spend years developing their skills.

  This method can make you a great speaker, today. (If you start reading in the early morning, that is. Otherwise, I guess we are talking about tomorrow or maybe the weekend…)

  THE POWER

  OF

  MESSAGING

  A STATISTICAL ANOMALY

  The sequence of events that led to
this book started with a presentation course I attended 20 years ago. It was terrible. It told me I had to have acting skills and fit into a cookie-cutter mould.

  This training, which I had hoped would improve my public speaking skills, actually made me more nervous and much more self-conscious in front of an audience. For example, if ‘6 gestures per minute’ was optimum, as we were told, then my natural style was 10 times wrong, because the facilitator showed a video of me to the group doing 60 gestures a minute. My extroverted style didn’t fit the ‘optimum’ (more on this in the ‘Myths’ section).

  The year of living frustrated

  But I didn’t know any better so I tried to change my style and follow the rules I was taught, banging my head against the wall for almost a year. It was frustrating. I was a sales manager who made business presentations on a daily basis. I constantly felt inadequate. The harder I tried to fit the mould they offered as the ‘right way’, the worse I became.

  During that year of frustration, I started to observe great speakers. The best speaker I knew personally was Paul Thompson, my CEO at the time. Paul Thompson is a legend in Australian Broadcasting. He founded both the Austereo and the Nova radio networks from scratch. He’s been described as a visionary leader and most people who’ve worked with him would say he’s a great operator and a motivational force.

  First, break all the rules

  What was striking about Paul Thompson’s public speaking is that he broke all the rules that we were taught in the course. He had few-to-no gestures. He was an introvert-style who had a slight ‘tick’ when he spoke (did you know that both Winston Churchill and Jack Welch had to deal with a stutter they both had since childhood?). Paul’s ‘tick’ was a half-cough, half throat-clear every 20 seconds or so. And he bounced on his toes in an awkward way!

  However, none of this mattered. He was able to capture the room, engage us from start to finish and deliver a compelling message that motivated the entire organisation. So I asked myself, what was the main thing I could learn from Paul Thompson’s public speaking style? The answer was, a clear and memorable message.