After 3 years of working with entrepreneurs and executives on their business presentations and being on the receiving end of nearly 10,000 speeches and presentations, it doesn’t really take a genius to spot the bad habits of speakers. However, I recently discover that if you spend time just working on overcoming your bad habits, you can get on the fast track and become an exceptional speaker in a very short period of time.

For the past one month, I experimented this theory on all my clients. In our first session, I got them to be present to all their bad habits. And over the next three sessions, we worked intensively on overcoming every bad habit they have, without going over any speech mechanics (like how to organize your speech, how to connect with your audience, how to persuade and inspire).

The results were incredible. Not only did my clients reported marked improvements in their speaking as commented by their bosses, clients or colleagues, a few of them even doubled their sales figures. One of them, who is rather reserved and shy, told me proudly that he wanted to represent his college for the national speech contest!

Now that’s the pareto principle at work here. Investing 80% of your time, working on the most important 20% i.e. getting rid of your bad habits once and for all.

So what are your bad habits and what have you done to overcome them?

Bad Habit #1 - Reading From The Script
This is also one of the top five mistakes that CEOs around the world commit. The main culprit is comfort. A script gives the speaker a false sense of security. They think that with a script, they won’t have to memorize anything. And even better, they won’t have to engage their audience since they are busy listening to him read.

Unfortunately, we all know that that’s not the case. When you read from a script, you are forced to sound monotone. You will scare the audience with your bobbing head and worse, you give people the feeling that you are reading someone else words.

So what’s the solution?
Stop reading your script! But that doesn’t mean you should not have a script. In fact, I strongly recommend you to have one but it should be written like you are speaking. So instead of formal writing like “Scientists from the Harvard University have discovered that when a speaker incorporates emotive words into their speeches, they have a 90% chance of influencing the audience to their way of thinking”, you can make it more conversational like “I was just reading this scientific article and I learnt that if you use emotive words to communicate, you will have a higher chance of influencing your audience to your way of thinking… how cool is that!”

But I don’t have a very good memory, how will I be able to remember everything? Well, you don’t have to. With a clear structure, there isn’t really a need to memorize word for word. All you need to do is to remember your key points and how to flow from one point to another. This will give you room to improvise and engage the audience as well.

And if you really have to read from the script, here’s how you should do it to ensure you still engage your audience.

It’s call the See, Stop, Say approach recommended by James C Hume. author of Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln.

Here’s the rule of thumb - never ever speak when your eyes are on your script.

First, look down and take a snapshot of your script. Memorize a chunk of words. Bring your head up and then pause for a second. When you are ready, say what you have memorized in your own words. It’s a three-step process: see, stop and say. It is very important that you pause. Yes, it may be weird for you but in reality, the pause helps make your speech conversational. It also creates anticipation, which further deepen the impact.

Bad Habit #2 - Winging It
How many of you have heard of these infamous excuses - “You should just wing it so that you sound natural on stage” or “If you prepare too much, you will get a nervous breakdown.” Personally I think they are all bullsh*t. My theory is this, the reason why some speakers sound so natural is because they are well prepared. They know exactly what they need to say and how to say it, that’s why they look confident and sound natural. They are so well prepared that they can focus on interacting with the audience. However when you try to wing a speech, you will set yourself up for failure.

I know this because I was like this once upon a time. I thought that if I wing it (say whatever that comes into my mind), I will look professional and confident. But as it turned out, I was terribly wrong. The outcome was horrendous. I did not know what I was saying half the time, my audience ended up getting confused and I felt lousy after my speech. So please don’t try to justify your laziness. Hard work counts.

So what’s the solution?
Prepare, prepare, prepare! Stage time is important as well. Find opportunities for you to test out your material. The more certainty you have on your speech material, the more confident you will be . There is a reason why the pros are confident - they know that what they are going to say and do work, and that’s after testing their material with all over 17 different audiences. Remember, the best speeches are never written, they are re-written!

For those of you who have bought The FAQ Book on Public Speaking, refer to Chapter 5 to find out how to prepare a speech in such a way that you won’t have to worry that you forget.

Bad Habit #3 - Beating Around The Bush
There is a well known formula that most veteran speakers adopt to deliver their speech. (1) Tell them what you are going to tell them. (2) Tell them. (3) Tell them what you have told them. However, many speakers out there do this instead. They tell you what they are going to tell you and then they tell you. And they tell you again. And again. And again. And again. And… again. By the time they tell you what they have told you, you have already concussed.

Beating around the bush is a function of the speaker not being clear of what they want to say. As a result, they do a word diarhoea and it stinks!

Another reason why a speaker beats around the bush is because he is not well prepared. As a result, he try to stretch a ten minute point to thirty minutes, so that he can fill up time. And it will come to a point of time where the audience will just shut down because they have heard it already.

So what’s the solution?
Firstly, the speaker has to be clear on his speech objectives. What’s his message? What is it that he wants the audience to remember? What are the three points he want his audience to apply into their business. Once he is clear on his speech objectives, he can then search for stories, examples and analogies to help support his points.

Writing out your speech will prove useful here. From the number of words, you can have a blueprint of where you are focusing on. Are you spending too much time on point one? Are you rushing through point 3. By running through your script, you can also clearly check if you are repeating yourself?

I like what Doug Stevenson shared - you must K.I.S.S your audience! In other words, keep it simple, stupid! Go to the crux of the issue and focus on the important points. Believe me, your audience will appreciate it.

Bad Habit #4 - Failing To Do Your Research
I have seen speakers who will revel on a topic that makes absolutely no connection with the audience. Try sharing with a bunch of 20 year olds the importance of retirement planning or teaching a roomful of women how to dismantle a car, and you will know what I mean. For the 20 years old, you are not addressing a current problem that they feel challenged by. For the women, they are not exactly car lovers. So as a speaker, it is very important not to assume what your audience want. Instead, you should go old fashion style and research on your audience! It pays literally.

I know of a professional speaker who gets paid $50K for one three hour gig. When I asked him for his secret, he send me his 10 page pre-event questionaire. Two months before his gig, he will get the meeting planner to fill up the pre-event questionaire. In his pre-event questionaire, he will find out about the company’s recent success stories. He will find out who their competitors are and what the employees talk about at their water coolers. He will walk the extra mile by calling up employees to verify the information and extract more. The number of people he interviews is directly proportional to the amount of money he is paid.

Why does he do that? Because that way, he will know exactly what his audience need and want. And in his three hours gig, he gives them exactly what they want. Doesn’t sound like rocket science, does it?

So what’s the solution?
You got to know your audience inside-out. And here’s another secret shared by another champion speaker, you must learnhow to make your audience the heroes. Go figure!

Bad Habit #5 - Too Many Uhh and Urms
Do you know that the number of ums and ers in your speech is inversely proportional to how confident your audience perceive you to be? In other words, if you have a lot of these pause fillers in your speech, no matter how confident or well prepared you are, your audience is going to think that you are an amateur. If you are delivering a sales presentation to your client, their level of trust for you is going to go down by a few notches. If you are pitching to a panel of investors, you are going to lose points compared to another entrepreneur who has more rigor in their speaking.

That’s why it is crucial for speakers to be conscious about their speaking and make an effort to exterminate these word pests.

So what’s the solution?
It all starts with awareness. When you start to pay attention to your delivery, you will be able to catch yourself unleashing these word pests. And the more you practice catching yourself, the less inclined you will be in adding urms and ahs in your speech. It helps to have a friend or two to point out and count your pause fillers each time you speak, so that you can start tracking your progress. In Toastmasters, they even have a fine system to help deter you from polluting your speech with the pause fillers.

Here’s another solution. Get used to the silence. One of the reasons why speakers litter their speech with the ums and ahs is because they are uncomfortable with the silence. So when they transit from one point to another and they are thinking of what to say, the silence causes them to say something. However, if you begin to use silence as a tool to underscore a point, you will notice that there is a lesser need for you to use pause fillers in your speech.

Lastly, start practicing not using pause fillers in your everyday conversation. Make it a habit NOT to use pause fillers. Try it in your phone conversation with your friend. Try it in your dinner conversation. Try it in your short meetings. The more you are used to not using pause fillers, the easier it will be for you to speak fluently in your major presentations.

For more details on how to remove your pause fillers, click here.

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There you go, five bad habits that prevent you from becoming an exceptional speaker. Are there any other bad habits that you notice other speakers commit? Do you have other innovative solutions to overcome these bad habits? If yes, please share under the comments section, so that we can all learn and grow.

Cheers,
Eric Feng
Your Public Speaking Coach

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