The Room that Kills Speakers
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker,
Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change,
technology and the future. In addition to speaking at conferences
worldwide, he's also written monthly columns for Municipal World and
Computing Canada. His goal is always to question what we
think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities. If you'd like permission to reprint any
of Peter's articles, please contact him directly. You can contact him at Or sign the Guest
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pdejager@technobility.com
Here’s a Catch-22 that affects all of us, we learn best from failure, but the last thing we want to discuss are our failures. In the spirit of sharing, I’m going to discuss some personal professional ‘failures’.
Some background, not as any sort of self promotion (well not much), but in an effort to position the context of this article. I’m a keynote speaker. I’ve spoken for more than a quarter of a century and have a reputation sufficient to have taken me to 37 countries and have me invited to speak at the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In short, I know what I’m doing, I do it well, I’m a bonafide professional. (at least that’s what my Mom tells me.)
That doesn’t mean I haven’t failed to deliver from time to time. Not often. Three times to be exact in more than 25 years.
The first time it happened, about two decades ago, I wrote it off as ‘the fault of the audience’ … what can I say? It was early in my career and didn’t realize that it’s never the fault of the audience.
The second time... A decade later, It was a presentation I was giving for the first time… I wrote that failure off to not having the timing down, and suspected that the flow of my talk wasn’t perfect. Better than my first excuse, but as we shall see, not the real reason.
The third time? (never mind how long ago - I've disclosed enough for one
article) I knew it wasn’t the audience. I’d grown out of blaming others for the quality of my work. Nor was it a new talk, it was one I’d given hundreds of times, and I’d presented it as I always had, but despite my knowledge of the topic, my passion and delivery – the presentation fell flat, and I died on stage for the third time. If it wasn’t the audience, and if it wasn’t ‘me’ – then why did I fail? As a speaker – that’s an important question. The answer is an important one for any meeting planner.
Each time I failed, I had the same sense of never once connecting with the audience. With that as the only thing in common that I could easily remember - I sat down, took pen and paper and wrote down everything I could reconstruct from memory about those painful experiences. The result is this little bit of sharing.
Cavernous rooms – Exhibit halls are not the best rooms to speak in. The 50ft ceilings swallow all but the best sound systems. They place a great auditory distance between the speaker and the listeners.
Elevated podiums – When the podium is 3ft or more off the ground? Then you’re guaranteed to be far away from the audience, not only with respect to distance, but psychologically as well. Here’s a made up formulae to consider,
the difficulty of creating rapport with your audience, increases as the square of the distance between you and the listener. I’ve nothing but my
experiences to support this Rule of Rapport.
Open space in front of the tall podium – A tall podium usually causes the first row of seats to be 20-30 ft from the podium… They have to be that far back or they’ll get a crick in their neck looking up
at you! This adds even more space between the speaker and the audience. At
the more recent failure, there was literally enough space for a Scottish Pipe Band to play and march between myself and the audience. I remember them well as they tromped out of the room as I marched up to my guillotine.
A wide centre aisle – if the room is large, the temptation is for a wide central aisle – meaning that if the speaker stands in the centre of the podium, then he/she is speaking to blank space all the way to the back of the room!
Wide rooms vs. deep rooms – some rooms are wider than they’re deep. This means that listeners to the left and right of the speaker are further away than those all the way at the back of the room. For a speaker to make eye contact to those on the left, requires that we turn our back on those to the right. AND if we’re wearing a
lavaliere microphone? Then you MUST turn your shoulders in the direction you’re speaking OR the mike won’t pick up your voice.
Rounds vs. Rows – If a room is filled with round tables rather than rows of seats, then 300 people or more are scattered far and wide over a few acres… being spoken to by a tiny speaker far away in the distance. Eye contact? You’re lucky if they can see the speaker in the distance… sooo… the meeting planner solves this ‘problem’ by…
Cameras and large screens – and in doing so they deliver the final death blow to the valiant speaker. In order for the audience to see the speaker, they’re put on camera… which requires lighting… which ensures the speaker will never even see the audience through the glare of the lights.
Now, I’m well aware that large audiences forces some of the above onto the meeting format, but when they ALL converge at a single meeting in a perfect storm, then the risk of failure is high. As I thought back to each of my three failures? Each time, all of the above were in play, I was doomed from the start. Or was I?
As I’ve grown older, and spoken more, I’ve grown wiser. The week before I wrote this piece I was presented once again, with the room that eats speakers. But! I now recognized the
ravenous beast. I was able to make some changes…
What changes? Get people to move closer to the front of the room, reduce the space between tables, reduce the space in front of the podium. Keep the lights UP on the audience, even if the lights must be down on the stage.
TELL the camera crew to reduce the glare... explain why you need them to
do this. Get rid of the lectern. Stand as close to the edge of the stage as your balance will allow. Pump up the intensity of the presentation. Come out with guns blazing to take advantage of the all too important first 10-15 seconds. Narrow the centre aisle. KNOW, right from the start, that THIS room poses a ‘challenge’ – don’t assume that your regular over the top performance will suffice, blow out all the stops.
Take greater risks. Be more expressive. And pray to whatever God
favours you.
In case it isn’t obvious? You can’t do MUCH of the above if you walk into the room 5 minutes before you’re due to speak after lunch… you can ONLY do all of the above if you’re checking out your room at 6:00-7:00am in the morning.
I’m told the meeting was a roaring success. I’d beaten the monster. It didn’t eat me this time.
p.s. And there’s one more thing that should be obvious. Just as the audience is never the reason for a bad presentation –
the room is also blameless. If we’re aware of the challenges posed by such a room, if we make the effort to avoid them, then a great presentation is possible in any room.
© 2009, Peter de Jager – Peter is a keynote speaker, and he doesn’t believe that average performances are desirable goals – neither do his audiences.
You can contact him at
pdejager@technobility.com
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