Today I had the joy and privilege to go and attend a performance at my son’s Kindergarten. (I love that I, as a speaker, have job with such freedom that I can decide to take some time off in the middle of the day to go see my son perform.)

The class was performing a play about nature that they had written themselves. (Summary of the message: We need to be nice to animals and we need to stop cutting down trees…)

My son had gotten the role of the tiger, but also one of the roles of reading the story line to the audience of about 100 people.

As a father I was proud as a rooster.

As a speaker I was impressed with the quality of their performance.

Watching my son on stage became a lesson in the simple, basic rules of communicating a message.

Sometimes when someone is getting all tied up in complicated phrases trying to explain something it can help to stop them and say: “Tell it to me as if you are explaining it to a six year old.”

And sometimes I think we might over-complicate the business of delivering a speech. So todays post is about what a 6-year old can teach us about speaking.

This is what my son taught me today.

1) Speak clearly.

Many adult speakers seem to think that to get your message across you need to speak loudly, as if speaking loudly makes people hear you better.
That is not true. If anything a speaker speaking to loudly makes the audience stop listening to you – and makes the sound guy frustrated over having to constantly adjust the volume of your mic.

What my son showed me today was that it’s not about being loud – but about being clear. As he read the words from his script he pronounced them with such crispness and sharpness that he had the attention of every, single person in the room.

 

2) It’s not about you.

Hearing my son read the text about how the “hunters were killing all the animals” I could sense that there was not a single thought in his head about any inner voice going: “Is my fly open?”, “Are they listening to me?”, “I wonder what they are thinking of this?” etc. He was there to deliver his lines.

And you are there to deliver yours.

 

3) Be short and concise.

The full dialogue of the section where my son was acting out his message about the trees was him and his friend walking up to the middle of the stage, looking out at the audience and saying:

“Stop cutting down the trees!”

Then they walked back to the side of the stage and sat down.

Message delivered…

Speakers are often given one hour for a speech almost like it’s a habit. Like it’s a law that a speech has to be an hour. Most speeches do not. I wish more organisers of conferences realised that a 45 minute speech is often as effective as a 1 hour speech, and a 45 minute speech can often be delivered in 20 minutes. If anything that is what TED.com has shown us.

So the next time you are asked to give a speech, ask yourself: “How quickly could I deliver this message with maximum effect?” and then ask for a speaking slot that long. Or should I say “that short”.

 

4) Have fun

It’s just a speech.
Or in their case: it’s just a play.

A few seconds after performing they were happily celebrating a classmates birthday. A few minutes before the play they were goofing around.

Giving a speech, or a performance, is something fun. Enjoy it. Embrace it. Have fun doing it.

 

5) It’s not about being perfect – it’s about being authentic

They say practise makes perfect, and they do have a point. But practice, too much practice, also risk suffocating the spur of the moment, real life, authenticity that comes from just being in the moment.

Those kids today were not perfect in their delivery – but they were being in the moment – and there is nothing more perfect than that.

6) There is nothing to be nervous about.

Many adults would be terrified to go up infront of 100 strangers to speak, not to mention to go up and perform a play that they had written themselves, dressed as a tiger …

My son was totally oblivious to the idea of being nervous. I was biting my tongue after the performance as my adult brain wanted to ask him: “So, were you nervous?!” but luckily my fathering brain stopped those words from coming out of my mouth. There is no need to start putting the idea of being nervous into his clean and innocent mind.

The sad thing is that many adults will get stressed out with angry butterflies in their stomachs for delivering a speech. Stage fright is real and many people suffer from it, but we should all be inspired by those kids on the stage and realise that there really isn’t anything to be nervous about. Go up there and deliver your speech.

Those were some of the lessons my son thought me today.

I must also add that I just love that he goes to a school – International School of Singapore – where they encourage kids as young as six to go up and present and perform at such a young age. These kids are already getting exposure to and experience of the nobel art of delivering a message – one of the most important life skills there are.

Watching the kids perform I was reminded of how, when I was six years old, my father, who was teacher and a part-time musician would bring me and my brother up on stage at his band’s concerts and have us sing a song or two with the band. The ladies in the audience loved the cute kids singing – and we liked how they would bring us small presents like a soft drink or some candy as “tips”. And I understand now that those childhood mini-concerts instilled in me a sense of confidence and a feeling of being comfortable communicating to big groups of people.

Forty and some years later that skill is now taking me around the world to speak. And that is a joy and a privilege – but still that means nothing compared to the joy and privilege of taking the day off to go and see my son perform.

I write this as I just found out that Hans Rosling has died. The news hit me like a punch in the stomach.

I have shared the stage with many great speakers, but for many reasons Hans Rosling is probably the one speaker I respect the most. Seeing him present in his very unique and personal style thought me so much about speaking. His approach to life, work and his mission to help people better understand the world thought me a lot about being a human.

In this post I want to honour this great man and great speaker by writing down some of the ways I respected him – and learnt from him – as a speaker. I wish more people working on other important issues would study and learn from Dr Rosling when it comes to the skill of getting a message across.

Because get his message a cross he did. His TED-talk has more than 11 000 000 views (!) and is one of the most watched TED-talks ever. He spoke so that world leaders and the common man on the street all listened.

Here are some things we can all learn from how he spoke:

1) He was on a mission.

Watching Hans Rosliing speak you can tell that he was passionate about he was speaking about and that he was on a mission to educate the world about the issues he cared about.

Passion + Mission is a very potent combination and the audience can always feel which speaker is passionate about his or her topic and which are not.

If you are not passionately on a mission around the theme you are speaking on, then stop speaking or start speaking on a topic that is in line with your mission.
2) He was genuine.

With his Swenglish English and his big stick that he carried around you could tell that Hans Rosling could not care less about what other people thought about him as a presenter. For him it was not about him: it was about people listening to what he wanted them to understand

He did not go up on stage trying to be someone else or to try to play the “guru” or the “keynote speaker”. He went up and was his genuine and authentic self – and the audience rewarded him with their love.

The audience will always prefer a speaker who is who he – or she – is over a person trying to be someone else.
3) He did not try to impress anyone – he just wanted to make an impression.

At the end of his life Hans Rosling was as close to a rockstar as a professor can be, at least in Sweden. But Hans never let the fame get to him. He was humble, curious and always willing to learn. He understood that to get a message across you can not focus on yourself – you have to focus on the message. And he also understood the power of presentation skills in order to make a message stand out and get across.

 

4) He had fun.

Watch any of his speeches and you can tell that he enjoys the stage, enjoys the art of speaking – and of getting people to learn.

Many people hate the act of speaking, and if you hate something you will not enjoy it. But the reverse might also be true: if you enjoy what you do you will start to like it.

Whenever you are asked to speak, try to look at it as something positive – as an opportunity to get your message across and then try to have as much fun as you can while doing it. I can almost promise you that that approach to speaking will make you a better speaker.

 

5) He liked to teach.

In many ways Dr Rosling was the perfect example of the “professor we all wished we had in University”. The teacher who still loved to teach.
And all speakers are teachers – we have a message we want to get a cross and we are teaching our audiences this message.

The question we have to ask ourselves as speakers is: are we teaching it in a style that will make people think about our session as one of their favourite sessions?
6) He was funny.

Ha made fun of world leaders and his students and many others in his speeches but always in a way where you always felt that he would – in an instant – also make fun of himself

Humour – and especially self deprecating humour – is one of the strongest weapons a speaker has in the speaker toolbox.

He was also an extreme optimist with a very positive outlook on life and the world – and this attitude was contagious. People are much more open to a message when it is presented in a hopeful and positive way.

 

7) He did not take himself so seriously – but took the things he spoke about very seriously.

Hans Rosling showed that you can talk about something very serious or complex (world health statistics) and still do it in a engaging and inspiring way. That is a very powerful message there that I wish more speakers would spend more time understanding.

Hans Rosling might be dead, and the world is sadly a more ignorant place. But his hopeful message will continue to spread. And hopefully many speakers will be inspired by him to improve the way they communicate their own messages to the world. I know he inspired me.

Heaven is now a more positive and less ignorant place.

ps. Hans Rosling died at the age of 68. The life expectancy of the world population today is 70. He wanted you to know that.

In one of his most famous speechs Ronald Reagan stood infront of the Berlin Wall on June 12 1987 and said: “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”.

I do not specifically remember him holding that speech (it’s apparently did not have such a huge impact at the time, but has later been seen, by some, as a speech that helped, in part, push the Berlin Wall to fall.)

I am mentioning this line from Reagan’s speech because today a man came up to me after my speech and said: “Thank you so much for your speech, it was the best one I have ever heard. You were able to break up the barrier between the speaker and the stage!”

Turns out that the man who came up to me was the sound guy …

A man who, in his job, has listened to hundreds, and hundreds of speakers.

I thanked him for his kinds words and asked him what he meant with that part of “breaking the barrier”.

He sighed, and complained about how so many speakers arn’t able to reach out to the audience they are speaking to.

He explained that it was not about the sound (his job was to make sure that they were heard, after all).

But no matter how well the mic is transmitting your words, it will not help unless you, as a speaker is not breaking through to the audience.

I asked him what he thought was the best ways of breaking the barrier between the audience and the stage. He had after all heard so many speakers in his career.

He said:

1) Energy.

So many speakers go up on stage and just say the words that they had planned to say, but without the energy needed to get the audience to feel that they should  really pay attention and listen

2) Lack of purpose.

So many speakers do not seem to know why they are up on the stage to begin with.

3) Drifting away

So many speakers go up on stage, start their speech, but then drift away in directions that they had not planned to go, leading to confusing, non-logical, or scattered messages.

I also asked him what it was in my speech that had made him like it so much, and how I had been able to remove that invisible barrier of distance between speaker and audience.

He replied:

1) Humor

Makes sense, laughter is the great barrier killer after all.

2) Audience participation

Taking cues from things that someone in the audience is saying and play with that for a while is a great way to create a feeling of “togetherness” between the speaker and the audience

3) Making the message simple to understand.

By making the message clear and simple the audience can easily understand it, and spend time on thinking about what your message has been, instead of spending time on thinking about what the message it about.

Lesson: Take it from the sound guy: if you are not able to reach out to the audience you might as well not have a mic at all.