# 161. How to Captivate an Audience  URL:: https://share.snipd.com/episode/add6c765-59ac-46f7-b0df-ca1b8f7efa41 Author:: People I (Mostly) Admire  ## AI-Generated Summary None ## Highlights > **Importance of Being Liked** > - Being liked is central to being hired, making people more receptive to listening to you. > - Within the first seven seconds, an audience decides if you are a friend or foe. > Transcript: > Steve Levitt > My students are shocked that being liked is central to being hired. > Bill McGowan > It's interesting because likability, and there's a chapter in the book about it, it definitely makes people more receptive to listening to you. In fact, in those first seven seconds, they're deciding, are you friend or foe? And ultimately, I tell people that we coach, you got to lead by example. You have to look as though you find this material that you're presenting that you think it's fascinating, that you think it's important, or you think that it's urgent. If you don't, your audience is not going to go along with you. ([Time 0:08:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9308eb8f-9834-4148-a500-8612b35b56de)) > **Communication Value** > - Good communication isn't just a nice skill; it's a business necessity. > - Clear and memorable communication improves team productivity and outcomes. > Transcript: > Bill McGowan > Effective communication increases team productivity by about 25%. So the point I'm really trying to stress in this book is, it's not just a nice quality to have to be a good communicator. It's a business imperative because you get better outcomes when people communicate in a clear and memorable way. ([Time 0:18:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e997b6fe-0431-4686-a9c7-ddb8a41a93c3)) > **Coppola's Storytelling Formula** > - Francis Ford Coppola structures movies by opening with the second best thing. > - Then finish with the best and put the third best thing in the middle. > Transcript: > Bill McGowan > There's a chapter in the book called The Coppola Storytelling Formula. It's based on this interview I saw with Francis Ford Coppola, where somebody asked him, do you have a formula for making a movie? And he said, well, I learned from the masters in Hollywood years ago that you should identify your three best things and you should take your best thing and finish the movie with it. You should take your second best thing and lead with it in the first scene and then find some logical thematic place in the middle for the third. ([Time 0:20:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/10275f4a-f2ab-4746-a071-8751f370227c)) > **Avoid Agenda Slides** > - Avoid starting presentations with an agenda slide; it disengages the audience. > - Instead, begin with a story that metaphorically connects to the presentation's theme. > Transcript: > Bill McGowan > The absolute enemy of engagement is the dreaded agenda slide where people do all this talking about what we're going to talk about. And that is not a great way to hook an audience. That's the place where a story can really work, as long as the story metaphorically is connected to the theme of what you're talking about. ([Time 0:21:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8df70cca-b0c9-4d16-b3dd-fcd7a2c266a8)) > **Presentation Chasm** > - Address the 'presentation chasm'--the gap between pleasantries and the core content. > - Spend the most time on stitching together the rungs of the ladder between saying good morning to people and the contents of slide one. > Transcript: > Bill McGowan > This is what I call in the book the presentation chasm. And there's this big gaping hole that exists in those first 40 seconds between the pleasantries. Hi, everybody. Great to be here today. It's wonderful to see so many of you and the presentation. There's about a 30-second gap there that has to be filled. And most people mistakenly leave that to just winging it, saying whatever the first thing that pops into their head is. And inevitably, that makes it necessary for them at some point to say, all right, so I guess let's get started. Those words should never come out of anybody's mouth. And in fact, when I do a presentation to a group of people, what I often spend the most time on is stitching together and figuring out what the rungs of the ladder are between saying good Morning to people and the contents of slide one. Because that's when the audience is making the keenest value judgments about you. And you don't want to mess that up. One thing in your book that was interesting is you should take advantage of every strategic opportunity you have to figure out how to make a speech of success. ([Time 0:25:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2f41a3fd-35fc-4830-afa7-2b8287979d60)) > **Familiarity Breeds Comfort** > - Learn the names of the AV people at an event ahead of time. > - This allows you to calmly ask for assistance by name if something goes wrong. > Transcript: > Steve Levitt > You said, if it's a big enough event to have someone who's managing the soundboard, you should just learn the name of the guy or the woman ahead of time. So if something goes wrong, you can call out and say, hey, Benjamin, this is going wrong. I need your help. Instead of staggering around. A lot of times people don't realize that there's room for strategy, not just in the words you're going to say, but in the circumstances surrounding the words you're going to say. > Bill McGowan > A lot of times I hear people observing other speakers and say, wow, she's so smooth and it doesn't seem like anything rattles her. And it's very gratifying to me to be able to say there are techniques and insights she has that allows her to be calm, cool, and collected. And it may be that ability to not sound panicked, as you just said, and instead call out the name of the AV person and say, hey, I think the clicker may need some new batteries. Can you throw me up a new one? Instead of, I got a problem here. > Steve Levitt > In your book, you talk about that and you use the tagline, familiarity breeds comfort, which I thought was awesome because it's very sticky, right? It's a play on familiarity breeds contempt. And then you say comfort. ([Time 0:27:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/518946b7-28b4-45c9-8546-669dfceec9a4)) > **Presentation Preparation** > - Prepare so well you don't need visuals, but can use them if desired. > - For a 15-minute talk, practice out loud for two hours to master content. > Transcript: > Steve Levitt > And the reason I bring this up is it's obvious that he had prepared in such a way that he didn't need any of his supporting documents. What I left that seminar with was the view that you should always prepare that way. And once you've prepared so well that you don't need the crutches of the visuals behind you, look, you can have them if you want or not have them, but you don't need them. And I think almost nobody takes that approach, but probably everybody should. > Bill McGowan > I recommend a ratio of eight to one. And what I mean by that is if you've got a 15-minute presentation to give, you should be practicing out loud after the content's already been set for two hours. That's how long it typically takes for you to really own the content. And people who are often considered among the greatest presenters and communicators of all time, they're not born with some great orator gene. They work it. ([Time 0:31:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3866c9b2-f390-4142-8769-c6c7de3f1a7f)) > **Embrace Imperfection** > - Strive for 'feigned spontaneity' instead of perfection, which can sound monotonous. > - Focus on showing the audience what you find interesting, take chances and put yourself out there. > Transcript: > Steve Levitt > I think the highest level of speaking is when you know things so well that you can make it completely credible that something that is absolutely rehearsed appears to be totally spontaneous. > Bill McGowan > Yeah. We call it feigned spontaneity. This is essential when you have your content either memorized or you're reading off a teleprompter or you're reading off a speech in front of you on a podium. Nobody wants to hear perfection. Perfection in delivery is boring. You should never define success as the absence of mistakes. That is the error so many people commit. I couldn't care less whether you had a little hiccup here, a little stumble there, because when you make the absence of mistakes, your definition of success, you will flatten out. And that usually winds up being a monotonous drone of you just trying to get through it technically clean. And that doesn't make for a very interesting speech or presentation. I'd much rather you take a few chances, really put yourself out there, really show to the audience what I find interesting about this. The word passion is a little overused, but that's what has to be on display. ([Time 0:32:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/afe325c4-509b-43f7-a9d8-3fcbb2a8924e)) > **Writing for the Ear** > - When preparing a speech, avoid writing it out like an essay, which is writing for the eye. > - Instead, create an outline, record yourself speaking naturally, and then transcribe and clean up the recording, preserving its conversational style. > Transcript: > Bill McGowan > Oh, absolutely. The other thing about preparation, Steve, that clients do all the time is they mistakenly sit down at a laptop and try to write their content for a speech or a presentation. And unless you've worked in television or radio, stylistically, you're likely writing for the eye. You're not writing for the ear. And they're very different styles. Writing for the eye tends to be long and prosy with introductory phrases and parenthetical clauses. And it's not easy to deliver that. Writing for the ear tends to be short, choppy, simple sentences, fragments of thoughts. So for those people who don't have the skill of writing for the ear, I tell them, just make yourself an outline of what it is you want to say. And then roll on the video record on your phone and get up and just say it as it would naturally come to you. Don't worry if it's full of starts and stops and mistakes. That doesn't matter. Just keep plowing through. And then take the transcription of that recording and clean it up, but stylistically don't change it. And I think what you're going to find is what you come away with is something much more casual, much more conversational. The tone of it will be better. It'll be easier to deliver. But more importantly, it will represent instinctively how you want to communicate these thoughts. ([Time 0:43:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/746424c8-7b94-4faa-b9c5-603021c78ea3))