A short spoken presentation by TJ Walker arguing that the key to great speaking is having fun while presenting. He contrasts tedious, data-dump preparation with energetic, story-driven delivery, advises practicing (ideally on video), using stories and occasional genuine smiles, and reframing preparation to make presenting enjoyable for both speaker and audience.
Chapters
So you want to be a great speaker. You may be thinking, I should work harder and harder and harder, roll up my sleeves, spend more time writing and rewriting. Well, some of that might help. But there's an extra secret ingredient you need. And here it is. Fun. You need to have fun when you speak, when you present, when you talk to people. All great presenters exude the sense that they're having fun right now, talking to people. This isn't some drudgery. This isn't some big chore. Well, I gotta go through all these PowerPoints. This is boring for me. It's gonna be boring for you. No great communicators, they might not be joking, they might not be a comedian, but when you see them speak, they're exuding the sense that there's no place else they'd rather be than right here in front of you talking about this subject. It doesn't matter if it's a new widget they're selling. It doesn't matter if they are a physics professor and they're talking to you about physics. It could be an accountant who's excited about the fact that they're saving you money. You can figure out something to be excited about in any topic you present on, and you can figure out a way of making it fun. I don't mean a ha, ha, ha, fun or silly or trivial, but just the sense that you're excited about talking about this subject. You can do this. Now, what robs so many presentations of their fun is, is the preparation. It's preparing the wrong way. It's thinking. A presentation is about getting a giant wheelbarrow and filling it up with as many facts and bullet points and numbers and slides, cramming it all up, coming into the room, and then quickly dumping the entire wheelbarrow full of data and facts and numbers in front of people. That's boring. That's tedious. That's literally the opposite of fun. If you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe subscribe button right now. It's hard work. So you gotta ask yourself when you're preparing your speech, when you're practicing it, and I do hope you're practicing your presentation on video. Does this seem like work? Does this seem tedious? Does this seem like drudgery? Well, if so, you have a problem. Because if it seems like tough work for you, it's also tough for someone else, your audience. You need to make this whole experience fun. Now, you may be dealing with very serious topics complicated issues, major policy issues of substance doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. I don't mean being silly or trivial, but show people why you're excited about this idea and you can have fun primarily by giving interesting examples and telling stories. Tell stories about problems you saw, problems you encountered, problems where you made mistakes before and now you learned how to overcome it. You should have a smile come across your face occasionally when you speak again. Not a big phony plastic smile on your face the whole time, but something occasionally that sends out a little signal that, hey, we're in this together. I'm having fun. You're going to have fun together. As we go through this experience for the next five or 10 or 15 or 20 minutes in this presentation, we're all going to learn something and have fun too. So yeah, being a great speaker can involve some hard work, but part of the work is figuring out how to make your presentation fun.
