How Great Coaches Speak #25 (Part 2)
What Michael Boyle can teach you about being a better speaker
If you missed Part 1, read it HERE first.
Coach Boyle is one of my favorite presenters. He’s easy to listen to, easy to understand, and always shares memorable stories and examples.
In today’s post, I have five presentation lessons for you.
Each lesson will be complemented by a clip from Coach Boyle’s 2019 keynote presentation at the Perform Better Summit.
Let’s go!
Lesson 1: Start at the end
(Watch from 5:08 - 6:12)
Within the first few minutes of his presentation, Coach Boyle shares his “3 Big Takeaways.”
He’s leading with his conclusion.
Here’s why you should do this during your next presentation:
It establishes relevance and value early, increasing the likelihood that your audience will stay engaged throughout your message.
It gives your audience the context/framing they need to better understand the details of your message.
It builds credibility. It tells your audience that your message is focused, and you’re not going to dump a bunch of random information on them.
Here’s what other communication and presentation skills experts have to say about it:
Write down the precise outcome you want and three to five points you MUST make to support it. - Jim VandeHei (Smart Brevity)
Unfortunately, most presenters prepare their talks only by gathering information and facts; they never frame the purpose of their talks in terms of impacting a change in their audience. - Garr Reynolds (The Naked Presenter)
Ask yourself what I call the “objective question”: “If they interviewed people after my talk and asked them, ‘What did you get from this speech and what are you going to do differently as a result?’ what would I want them to say?” - Brian Tracy (Speak to Win)
Tell me where you’re taking me, and I’ll understand the path more clearly. - Jay Sullivan (Simply Said)
I recommend you define your big takeaways before you develop the details of your presentation. These should help guide you in deciding what to include and what to leave out.
Lesson 2: Tell your audience what’s motivating your message and how you’ll measure success
(Watch from 6:12 - 7:39)
Presentation objectives are the specific goals or outcomes you hope to achieve by the end of your message.
They should tell your audience what change you hope they experience either in their thinking, doing, and/or feeling as a result of your message:
“I want to try and clear up some of the disagreements.” - Thinking
“I want to give you actionable information for Monday. If I do a good job today, […] hopefully you’re going to go back and do some things differently on Monday. Hopefully you’re going to go back and you’re going to teach your clients some different exercises, or you might teach the same exercises differently.” - Doing
Here’s why you should do this during your next presentation:
It gives you a measure of success. If someone emails Coach Boyle a few weeks after this presentation and says, “You’re presentation really got me thinking. I stopped doing X with my clients, and have started doing X,” he’ll know his message was successful.
It encourages your audience to be active listeners. Knowing your objectives makes it easier for them to identify important details and connections.
It helps keep post-presentation Q&A on track. When your audience knows your objectives, their questions are more likely to be relevant and focused on the key areas of your presentation.
Lesson 3: Use other people’s words to help you make your point
(Watch from 12:18 - 14:41)
Coach Boyle’s presentations always include quotes from industry colleagues, books, business leaders, etc.
Quotes aren’t uncommon in presentations, but I think we leave a lot of impact on the table by how we deliver and elaborate on them.
How can you create more impact with quotes:
Always read them verbatim to your audience. As you’re reading the quote, your audience will be following along silently. I’ve seen presenters put up a quote and immediately elaborate on it without ever reading it aloud. The problem with this is that while they’re elaborating on the quote, their audience is busy reading it. Don’t get in your own way.
After reading the quote, make a clear and direct connection between the quote and the key points/objectives of your presentation — “I chose this quote because…” or “Here’s what this has to do with today’s presentation…”
If the person or resource you’re quoting isn’t known to your audience, enlighten them. Quotes are more impactful when your audience respects who/where the quote came from.
Lesson 4: Tell stories to make your point memorable
(Watch from 15:34 - 18:20)
The backbone of Coach Boyle’s presentations are stories, and I think this approach is the main reason why so many people enjoy listening to him speak. As soon as he’s done, I always find myself wishing he would continue sharing.
We’ve evolved to learn through stories.
If I gave you a choice to learn via story or learn via charts and graphs, most of you would choose story.
We remember more information when it’s presented to us in a story format.
So, why aren’t more of us telling stories in our presentations?
The two reasons I hear most often are:
“I don’t have any interesting stories.”
“I’m not a good storyteller.”
I call bullshit.
If you don’t have any interesting stories, read a few books, talk to more of your peers, and listen to podcasts. Use (and credit) other people’s stories.
If you’re not good at telling stories, practice telling stories.
This isn’t an innate talent, but it takes will and skill. You have to want to leverage the power of stories and then work on delivering them in a way that’s interesting and relevant to your specific audience.
I encourage many of my clients to try Matthew Dicks Homework for Life:
Here’s what other communication and presentation skills experts have to say about stories:
Remember, we tend to forget lists and bullet points, but stories come naturally to us. Stories are how we’ve always attempted to understand and remember the bits and pieces of our experiences. - Garr Reynolds (The Naked Presenter)
When you want to inspire people to move forward, stories should drive your message. Few people are persuaded by data. We need to know our data so we can back up the claims in our stories, but it’s the stories that engage people. - Jay Sullivan (Simply Said)
When telling a story to an audience, we play a game with them: we pretend that we are speaking completely off the cuff. Extemporaneous storytelling, unprepared and unrehearsed. This is not usually true. While most storytellers don’t memorize their stories (and I strongly advise against it), they are prepared to tell them. They have memorized specific beats in a story. They know their beginning and ending lines. They have memorized certain laugh lines. They have a plan in place before they begin speaking. — Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy)
Stories aren’t just for fun. No matter how dry you think your information is, using stories will make it understandable, interesting, and memorable. — Susan Weinschenk (100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People)
Lesson 5: Say more than what’s on your slide
(Watch from 19:42 - 21:22)
In this clip, Coach Boyle shows a picture of the diaphragm without any words on the slide. He then proceeds to talk about the diaphragm for almost two minutes.
This is a skill more of us need to develop. We should be able to give our audience a visual with minimal text and speak on it at length (if asked to).
The people we judge as interesting and intelligent presenters are usually the ones who say a lot more than what’s shown on their slides.
This isn’t the case for most of us.
Most of us are so afraid we’ll forget what we want to say that we load up our slides with full sentences and overly detailed charts and graphs.
If you can’t make your point without having it written out in detail on your slide, I’d argue that you don’t really understand your point.
Maybe you know it, but you don’t truly understand it.
How do you get better at this? You do more talking and writing.
If you think you really know something, find someone to share it with. It won’t take long for you to realize whether or not you truly understand it.
What’s your biggest takeaway from this post? Share it with me in the comment section.
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If you’re interested in working together or bringing communication training to your team, let’s talk.
Thanks for reading!
Jenny