How to look effortlessly brilliant
Oct 17, 2016As I was walking Amelie and Leon to school this morning, we had a fascinating discussion about miracles and whether nothing was miraculous .. or whether everything was!
‘I don’t think there are such things as miracles like magic’ Amelie (the Harry Potter NUT) said, ‘but I do think some people are lucky.’
‘What role do you think luck plays in a successful life?’ I asked her.
‘I think you have to work really hard’ she said, ‘unless you win the lottery or something!’
Just as the discussion was getting juicy, we reached the school gates and they ran into school!
When I got home I thought about the influence I wanted to have on their young minds in this area. And what I really thought about being lucky and being successful and experiencing miracles.
A discussion I had with a politician I was working with in the week popped into my head.
‘I didn’t think for a minute that I was going to win’ he said, ‘so I had nothing prepared. After each round I was doing better and better, so I thought I better pull together a speech, just in case!’
He had given me a video of his acceptance speech, and it was great. I mean really good! ‘I thought you’d been practicing it for ages when I watched it’ I said.
‘Well that’s really testament to the process,’ he said, ‘I cobbled together a collection of different stories and other bits that I’d been working on already, and it all just came together perfectly.
‘In fact’ he said, ‘I overheard someone saying that it was obvious it was fixed because no one could have come up with a speech like that off the top of their head, he obviously knew he was going to win!’
Two of the world’s best speakers that I’ve worked very closely with and studied for many years are John Maxwell and Les Brown. Give either of them a microphone and ask them to say something brilliant, and that’s exactly what they do! They speak extemporaneously on almost whatever you ask them to.
But are they really just making it up out of the blue as they go along?
If you study them and their work over years, you can see that a lot of the ideas and stories and examples and analogies they use come up again and again, albeit in slightly different ways. So although they are creating something new in that moment, it is being crafted and shaped out of a foundation they’ve been working on for years and years.
Of course, if you don’t study them for years, you don’t see this, you just see their brilliance – and they are brilliant – but there’s a method to that brilliance that is easy to miss.
I’m sure you’ve heard various people say luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. But what does that mean for speaking?
Well, when the opportunity presents itself, it’s too late to prepare isn’t it? We have to plant the tree before we need the shade, because trees take a long time to grow! We need to dig the well before we’re thirsty, because wells take a long time to dig! And we need to work on the building blocks of a presentation before we get the opportunity to speak, because building blocks take a long time to get good!
If we do this though, then like our politician friend, the impression we create when it all comes together can be very impressive .. and can be very persuasive in all kinds of related and unrelated ways!
When we see someone who speaks very well, we think they are good at everything!
In our downstairs loo (bathroom) at home, I have a gift from my sister hanging on the wall; it’s a framed quote from Winston Churchill which says:
"I’m preparing my impromptu remarks"
And he was pretty effective with his speaking wasn’t he!!
So if it’s good enough for Winston Churchill .. and it’s good enough for Les Brown .. and it’s good enough for John Maxwell .. then my guess is, it’s a good approach for you and me too!
‘I don’t think there are such things as miracles like magic’ Amelie (the Harry Potter NUT) said, ‘but I do think some people are lucky.’
‘What role do you think luck plays in a successful life?’ I asked her.
‘I think you have to work really hard’ she said, ‘unless you win the lottery or something!’
Just as the discussion was getting juicy, we reached the school gates and they ran into school!
When I got home I thought about the influence I wanted to have on their young minds in this area. And what I really thought about being lucky and being successful and experiencing miracles.
A discussion I had with a politician I was working with in the week popped into my head.
‘I didn’t think for a minute that I was going to win’ he said, ‘so I had nothing prepared. After each round I was doing better and better, so I thought I better pull together a speech, just in case!’
He had given me a video of his acceptance speech, and it was great. I mean really good! ‘I thought you’d been practicing it for ages when I watched it’ I said.
‘Well that’s really testament to the process,’ he said, ‘I cobbled together a collection of different stories and other bits that I’d been working on already, and it all just came together perfectly.
‘In fact’ he said, ‘I overheard someone saying that it was obvious it was fixed because no one could have come up with a speech like that off the top of their head, he obviously knew he was going to win!’
Two of the world’s best speakers that I’ve worked very closely with and studied for many years are John Maxwell and Les Brown. Give either of them a microphone and ask them to say something brilliant, and that’s exactly what they do! They speak extemporaneously on almost whatever you ask them to.
But are they really just making it up out of the blue as they go along?
If you study them and their work over years, you can see that a lot of the ideas and stories and examples and analogies they use come up again and again, albeit in slightly different ways. So although they are creating something new in that moment, it is being crafted and shaped out of a foundation they’ve been working on for years and years.
Of course, if you don’t study them for years, you don’t see this, you just see their brilliance – and they are brilliant – but there’s a method to that brilliance that is easy to miss.
I’m sure you’ve heard various people say luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. But what does that mean for speaking?
Well, when the opportunity presents itself, it’s too late to prepare isn’t it? We have to plant the tree before we need the shade, because trees take a long time to grow! We need to dig the well before we’re thirsty, because wells take a long time to dig! And we need to work on the building blocks of a presentation before we get the opportunity to speak, because building blocks take a long time to get good!
If we do this though, then like our politician friend, the impression we create when it all comes together can be very impressive .. and can be very persuasive in all kinds of related and unrelated ways!
When we see someone who speaks very well, we think they are good at everything!
In our downstairs loo (bathroom) at home, I have a gift from my sister hanging on the wall; it’s a framed quote from Winston Churchill which says:
"I’m preparing my impromptu remarks"
And he was pretty effective with his speaking wasn’t he!!
So if it’s good enough for Winston Churchill .. and it’s good enough for Les Brown .. and it’s good enough for John Maxwell .. then my guess is, it’s a good approach for you and me too!
Until next time ..
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Communicating is not just about words. We need to think about our body language, tone, and pacing. How we feel impacts the way we speak. Struggling to find the right content makes us ineffective. Great speakers know that becoming an exceptional speaker isn't just an art - it's a process with many essential elements.
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