David Brooks's Master Presentation

For the Toastmasters amongst us, David Brooks is no stranger's name: Being the 1990 Toastmaster International World Champion of public speaking. He was also the subsequent mentor for 6 others latter Toastmasters World Champions. Now here is someone I call truly call "Champions of Champions"



David Brooks is also a world wide name: When the Division newsletter announced that he'd be coming to Hong Kong 12th May. I was more than thrilled. Champions alike came once in a blue moon, my Singaporean Toastmasters friends were so jealous about the idea of his Hong Kong coming (bypassing Singapore) - No prize for guessing how fast I secured the seats for the workshop.


The essence of the 2-hours workshop can be summed up (for real) by the cue card here you see. To be hoenst, applying this 666 sequence alone would built a solid foundation to any presentations (not just public speaking).



[A special note to David Brooks: Yes, I know you look around Internet for quotes - If you're reading this blog, it'd be, of coures, my honour: Although we've the cue cards that sums it all up, I still prefer to listen to your workshop live - I guess 1 laughter constitute to a point remembered. P.S: I am still waiting for my Element of Eloquence DVD set :)]



Later on, I started reading David's book (co-author with Dr. Brad McRae) on "The Seven Strategies of Master Presenters". Now, this book is the real gem.

Throughout the weekend I only had the chance to read well Strategy 6 "Manage yourself, difficult participants, and difficult situations" as it is the most relevant to my current work. Below are some of my summaries of the chapter - for the benefit of myself:

Managing yourself

Monitoring/changing your self talk


- Self talk can be positive/negative, aim to have self-talk that are 1) Task-relevant, 2) Self-appreciating, 3)Task-appreciating.

- Solution: 1) Use the stop technique, 2) use a current negative event to keep things in perspective, 3) Use thought reversal.

- Exercise: Make a self-talk monitoring sheet and monitor self-talk for a week for both your daily self-talk and presentation specific self-talks.


Perfect Perfectionism


- Use cost/benefit analysis to identify when perfectionism becomes out of control.

- Dr McRae: "It is the audience's job to access the quality of his work - not his job to do it for them."

- "Perfection is not possible, mere excellence is good enough."

- 'If we hold on to a project until it is 'perfect', it'll never be done.'

- "Done is better than perfect, anytime."

- Master presenters don't waste time and effort striving for perfection, but they do strive for excellence.


Locus of control

- Master Presenters take an internal stance regarding to the development of their presentations.

- Five factors realted to your locus of control in regard to developing, rehearsing and delivering your presetations are:


1. Your level of commitment to finishing your presentation.

3 types of committment:

• Intellectual - You say you're committed, but your behavior doesn't match


• Irregular - You work on the presentation one day, but not the next. Time wasted trying to figure out what you are doing and where you are heading.


• True committment - Like what Stephen Covey said "Putting first things first." Your behavior reflect, A work schedule had been set up and you are sticking to it. You are taking advantage to work at prime time. You've also made sure that you will not be interrupted unless there is an emergency.

One way to increase your commitment:

• Plan a reward for when you have achieved a milestone in completing your presentation or even a section therein.

2.How you handle the roadblocks and obstacles that gets in you way.

• Instead of being problem-oriented, be solution oriented.
• Inquired within yourself whether there are lessons to be learn from roadblocks
• Do not criticize yourself when things doesn't go as planned.
• Used wasted time and effort for maximum contributions.
• You've enough to do in developing your presentation without wasting time and energy by being your own worst enemy.

3. The amount of persistence you bring into the task.

• Completing a presentatoin = Marathon
• 1) Putting the time: Whether you like it or not 2) It's up to you to structure your life in order to get the job done.
• Techniques: 1) Having set time and place to work, 2) Setting managable time-limited goal 3) Monitoring the use of your time, 4) Eliminating/Postponing other activities.
• Natural reward will make the work easier, and will set your persistence into a momentum.

4. The ability to forgive yourself and start over again when you make a mistake.

• Master Presenter v.s their counterpart: 1) limit the damage from the mistake 2) Learn from it so it doesn't happen again.
• "If you don't fail now and then, it means you are not reaching far enough, and you aren't growing." - John Paul Getty.
• "To forgive oneself is to give up all hopes of ever having a better past."
• Part of being human is also learning to improve
• Audience and societies can be very forgiving if we admits our mistake. Vice Versa applies.
• "Laying-the-egg" idea: eggs=mistake. Admire the egg, let it hatchs its wisdom, then move on.
• Acknowledge the mistake, apologize, then move on.

5. How you control excess anxiety.

• Normal v.s Excessive Anxiety - Anxieties are to be Control, not eliminated.

7 ways to control anxiety:

• Make a checklist - control adhoc matters from going wrong i.e: projector, venus
• Physical exercises - regularly & before presentation
• Deep breathing - count of 3 in and 3 out
• Use of lip gloss or lip balm - so that you don't feel the anxiety that much
• Talk to the audience before the presentation
• Know your opening and closing cold
• Look for audience with friendly eye-contact

Ask yourself:

1) "To gain more control over the development & delivery of my presentation, how should I behave differently?"

2) "How can I structure my personal environment/situation/life so that I can have more control?"

Exercises: Write down the steps you could take to increase your control over developing and completing your presentation in a reasonable amount of time.

Dealing with difficult participants

• Difficult participants comes in 2 kinds: Situationally v.s Chronically difficult
• The law of non-resistance: "Everyone who comes across our paths, comes across our path for a reason, to teach us something about our own skills and talents."
• Three choices when dealing with difficult participants: 1) Be a victim, 2) a survivor, 3) a thriver.
• Ask yourself: "What do the participants needs?" so to change your reaction to people's reaction to the material: Focus yourself as the behicle to their learning/development.
• "As a presenter you need to get over yourself!"
• According to Cabett Robert (Founding, National Speakers Assocation), there're 3 stages that a speaker goes thru: 1) Focus on thesmelves, 2) Focus on the content, 3) Focus on the Audience.

The necessity of an accurate diagnosis

• As a presenter, you'll have to determine whether you are dealing with difficult people.
• Sometimes, we're the one who are being difficult
• Few items that helps to set audience's expectation: 1) Tone/opening, 2) Clear agenda and guidelines.
• Change-first principle: "If you want others to change, first change yourself."
• Brief Solutio-Focused Therapy: "If it is working, do more of the same, if it isn't working, do something different."
• "Choice-point" awareness: A resolution occurs when we choose to do something different. If we stay the same, the situation will reach an impass or escalate into a conflict.
• Janet Lapp: "If you seek out difficult people, you'll find them, or you'll create them. Do your homework, align with your audience's needs, expectations, and aspirations, go to where they are without forcing yourself in."
• 4 Muscles in Presentations: 1) Talk to difficult participant in private, extract information 2) Solicit audience's opinion in terms of presentation's direction. 3) Call the difficult participant bluff by taking actionable steps. 4) Ask them to leave, or you will. (Note: It has not been used before by any of the book's author)
• It also helps to ask colleages help of dealing the difficult participants in private. (They'd usually have the way) Put clear boundaries on what the session is about and not about.
• (Ah, the standard way to deal with difficult participants - one of them.) "You've a good point and one that probably deserves furher discussion, but our schedule won't allow me to address it fully at this time. However, if you wish to stay after the program ends, I'll be glad to continue our discussion." This way, those individuals may offer either 1) Very insightful input or 2) They're only there to seek attention.

Dealing with difficult situation

• Again, use muscle levels when appropriate.

Minimizing the distraction you can't control

• Jim Comer: "Acknowledge the obvious. Whether it is a distraction or a disaster, don't pretend that it did not happen. Acknowledge it, address it, and if possible, use it."
• Have a few "saver" line when things goes wrong.
• Use appropriate humor to lighten the audience with regards to the difficult situation.
• Remember - it's important to not to get angry.

Hidden agendas, Always expect the unexpected, unforeseen circumstance.

• Tackle the hidden attention of the audience head-on.
• When unexpected happened - ride on it.
• Constantly ask for feedback
• Acknowledge group's emotion.
• Deal with the situation with as much sensitive and tact as possible.
• Ask for feedback

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Whao, I didn't knew that I've jotted down so much (it took me 3 hours to type this blog)

Well, I am much looking forward to all other wisdoms in David Brooks' book. I am very much considering buying a copy. :) I hope to learn from the best.