Today at the EY Global Mobility Conference there were two keynote speakers: Me – and a robot.

When I came into the conference ballroom and saw the very robotic looking robot standing there I said to the client, just half jokingly, “Today there is pressure for me to perform; if I get beaten by a robot in the evaluations I might consider quitting this job on the spot…”

The robot was there to highlight the rapid changes in the industries of AI, robotics and machine learning and the hosts of the conference used it to perform a “dialogue” between themselves and some (pre-prepared) answers from the robot.

Based on the robots “performance” I will reflect on what makes a “live”, as in “real, human, emotional” speaker great.

– Move.
This particular robot did not have the ability to walk and seeing “him” stand still in the corner of the stage through out the speech made “it” look very much like a machine. I am a big believer in walking around on stage. It should not be done “according to a plan” and it should not be “deliberate”, but a speaker should let himself (or herself) be “drawn” to different sides of the stage as the energy of the room dictates.

– Do not move too much.
This robot moved his arms around a lot while speaking. It was very distracting. Body language should support your “speaking-language” but not take over. Too much body language is like when the drummer (or bass player) of a band think they are too important and start to take over. All you are left with is a blunt message drowning out everything else. Same with hand gestures and facial expressions (and props for that matter) – use it for support, not as your main act.

– Do not give canned answers.
As it would have it the person who controlled the robot happened to press the wrong button making the robot look silly when it to the question: “What else can you help us with?”, replied “Thank you for inviting me to this conference. I wish you a great day.”.

Some speakers seems to go into a similar “canned reply” almost regardless of what the audience has asked. That makes them look like robots.
The magic in audience interaction is the fact that we do NOT know what is going to happen. Assuming that you do will just risk making you look silly. (This is important to remember since many, many times we CAN predict what the questions are going to be, making it extra important to pay attention (just like how it’s easy to have a car accident on a road you have driven many times, because you get fooled into thinking you “know” what is going to happen because you know the road so well.

– Interact with the audience.

The more experienced I become as a speaker the more sure I am about the fact that the one thing that makes a speaker great is how he or she interacts with the audience. The robot did not do that at all. And many speakers do not do it at all either. And speakers who do not interact at all might as well be robots – or videos.

Should there be a point of having a person live in the room speaking then make sure you make sure you use the most powerful rhetorical weapon we have as speakers: our ability to interact with other humans.

Those where some of the thoughts I got after going up on stage after a robot for the first time today.

ps. Will robots take over also the job of a professional speaker in the future?

They might very well, but we are not there yet.

Having said that after I and the robot had delivered our speeches about 4 people came up wanting to take a picture with me, and about 20 people went up to have their pictures taken with the robot… Seeing the audience line up to have their pictures taken with the robot really did get me to want to up-my-game as a speaker – having said that I do think I still got more future business from the conference than the robot. Human speakers are, at least for a while more, in demand. 😉

It is my experience that when a client books me for a keynote they already know why they want me to speak. Usually someone at the client have heard me speak before and wants me to give the same message (or similar) to what they heard to this new group that they are booking me for.

And since I speak globally I can almost never meet up with the client beforehand to be briefed, so the brief happens on the phone, usually in a conference call that is shorter than one hour.

But even if the brief is short, that doesn’t mean you can not do your fair share of research to find out more about the group you are speaking to.

Let me exemplify with the group I spoke for today: The global management conference of Grant Thornton: 140 CEO’s of the different member companies of Grant Thornton from 100+ different countries.

I had a briefing call with the client on the phone. (to get the gist of what they wanted to get out of my speech and to learn more about the group.)

I then asked to get (and got) all the material that the delegates to the conference would receive. (so that I could put my speech in context with the rest of the conference.)

I also asked for (and got) their strategy documents, and any other documents that would be relevant for this conference. (To learn where the company is now and where they are heading.)

I, of course, googled the clients name to read up on the latest news about the company and went to their website etc to get a feel for how they communicate with the external world (So to be able to use references to relevant things that was going on in their company or industry.)

I asked for (and got) the slides of the speaker who would speak before me. (So that I could get a feeling of what the audience would have heard just before I got up on stage.)

I got a second briefing meeting with the global CEO on Sunday when he had arrived in Singapore.  (To get his view on what he wanted me to achieve with my talk.)

I then arrived early today to listen to the CEO practice his speech to the audience that he would deliver AFTER my speech (So that I could align my speech with the speech he would be doing later, and also to get a feeling of the room from the perspective of the audience.)

I also grabbed a few attendees before my session to hear their view of the company. (To make sure the brief from HQ was in line with what the delegates thought about the company.)

In the coffee brake before my speech I got a hold of the speaker who had spoken before me (on branding) to test the message that I was going to deliver. (So that I could be sure that the audience would feel that our two messages where in line with each other.)

I had a short chat with one of the members of the board to make sure I got the boards view on the direction of the company to make sure my speech fitted well with that.

And so on.

All of these “brief extra briefings” make my overall understanding of my assignment much deeper.

Lesson: Doing research for a keynote is not necessarily about spending hours and hours in briefing meetings, or on the Internet – it’s about doing many different kinds of connections with the client to learn as many different things as possible about the company, the industry, the audience, and the room.

 

(Picture of me outside convention centre with the purple theme of the conference, wearing a purple shirt, since one person in one of the briefings before the convention had used the phrase “the purple people” about the employees of Grant Thornton and because I had seen a few of the delegates on Sunday wearing purple clothes even before the convention started. So thought I should “live the brand.”)

Everyone has bad days at work, including speakers.

And even if no-one will risk dying if we have a bad day (unlike if you are a surgeon or a pilot) speakers should really do everything we can do avoid having “bad days”. Our clients have not paid us to be “average” or “bad” – but to be “brilliant”. That might sound like an unfair thing to ask for time and time again, but that is the truth. (And that is why speakers are paid so well – we are expected to be great.)

Yet, still it happens. As a speaker we deliver a speech that we know was not the best we could deliver.

After doing more than 2000 speeches over the last 20+ years I have come to notice that there is a common denominator for when I do speeches which I think are “below average”.

And it is usually because I am tired, hungry or thirsty – in other words, my “machine” was not fully charged.

You might think that it would be easy to say “Well, just sleep, eat and drink more water then.” – but when you fly a lot it can be easy to skip food, drink or sleep.

So the purpose of this post is to remind me – and other speakers – of the importance of eating, sleeping – and more than anything else drinking enough before a speech.

Drinking WATER, that is. Not coffee or alcohol!

In an article I found online on Dehydration and Performance (Source:) you could read:
“For any athlete, minimizing your fluid loss to not more than 2% of your body weight is a good rule. At that 2% body loss, you’ll start to see increased fatigue, reduced endurance, the beginnings of heat illness and declining motivation. The good news is that rehydrating will reverse all these problems.

And it is really true.

As speakers we are performing, and the difference in energy, focus and motivation that comes from being properly hydrated can be startling.

I now “over-drink” on water before I speak. One to two hours before I am supposed to speak I will drink at least 1 liter and sometimes even more. (I do it a few hours before I am to be on stage so that the “excess” water can go “through the system”  in time. (i.e. I need to be able to go to the toilet and pee…)

And I have noticed that this simple little “trick” has been the number one “insurance” against having a bad day at work.

Maybe the trick of drinking a lot of water is more relevant to speakers who, like me, travel a lot, but I really think it is something that all speakers can benefit from being reminded of.

Lesson: So the lesson of today is “Drink & Talk”. 😉