Ten days ago, I won first place in the National Speakers Association Northwest Last Story Standing contest in Seattle. This chapter competition is the first level of a three-tiered contest. At the next level, I compete in a regional contest, and if I win there, I'll be one of three competitors to present to more than 1,000 people at Influence, the national NSA conference this summer.
The rules are simple: Tell a story in five minutes or less. You can't use props or slides, or notes of any kind. If you go one second too long, you'll be disqualified.
My story goes back to the time, just before I got married, when I went for a hike by myself and got lost in the woods. It's about an important lesson I learned from Bill, my husband-to-be that day. I remembered that lesson last May, when I lost him very suddenly to a heart attack.
Before then, I'd been an increasingly busy public speaker, bringing messages about productivity and career happiness to real and virtual audiences as large as 3,000. But when I lost Bill a year ago, I had to put speaking on pause. Entering this contest was my way of testing whether I was ready to be a speaker again. Winning tells me that, yes, I am.
Along the way, I learned some lessons that could benefit any speaker. If you aspire to be a speaker, or if you give presentations as part of your job, they can benefit you, too.
1. It's never about you.
This is a tricky one for many speakers. Most people fear public speaking. Those of us who are drawn to it usually love being the center of attention. But when people pay us to speak and--just as important--give us their time and attention, it's not because they find us as fascinating as we find ourselves. It's because of what they want to gain from listening to us. That could be new knowledge, new techniques, or a new way of looking at things. Whatever it is, that's what we have to deliver.
Bruce Scheer, a fellow competitor, made this point with a hilarious story about how he delivered an impromptu lecture on Grand Canyon geology to a stranger who turned out to be a Grand Canyon park ranger. Scheer is an expert on sales, but it applies just as well to public speaking. If your audience doesn't come away with new knowledge or a new attitude, or ideally both, you haven't done your job.
2. Honest is better than polished.
Heading into the contest, I thought I had little chance of winning. In fact, I considered dropping out. I feared it might be too soon to tell a story about Bill, but I also couldn't imagine telling one that wasn't about him. Dangerously close to contest day, I still wasn't quite sure what I was going to say. My story had gone through many iterations, and none of them seemed quite right. I didn't have the time or brain space to memorize careful blocking for my speech, or to figure out how many seconds each section should take for me to stay within the five-minute time limit. I had my speech memorized, but I knew with more practice, I could have made it better.
The story was a deeply emotional one, about the moment when I realized that I could depend on Bill in ways I hadn't imagined, and then the moment 25 years later when I lost him forever. The first time I delivered it, I cried all the way through. By the day of the contest, I was no longer crying, but the raw emotion was still there. It carried me through, and it carried to the audience as well.
3. It's always smart to ask for help.
Most of us don't do it enough. The importance of asking for help, and of letting others help you, is the central message of my speech. Ironically, it applied to the speech itself. We were lucky enough to have a storytelling coach help all us contestants craft and refine our stories. In keeping with my story's message, I also asked for help from my fellow participants. We were competitors, but mainly we were all colleagues in the Washington NSA chapter and we all wanted to support one another. I asked a few of them to join me for informal online practice sessions where we gave each other feedback. Other contestants got together and practiced in person.
Getting that coaching, and that feedback from my peers, made my story a lot stronger than it would have been. Coaching helped me find and articulate the underlying themes that carried the message of the story. And then in practice with my peers, I learned which phrases sounded odd to an audience, where I needed to provide more detail, and where I could gain time by providing less.
If you're an entrepreneur or solopreneur, you may be accustomed to doing everything for yourself. I know I have. But although it may feel like we have to do everything alone, that's almost never really true. Looking back, I know that getting all this help gave me a much better speech than I would have had without it. I'm certain it made the difference between winning and losing.
Could asking for help make your own presentations or anything else you do stronger too?