About a decade ago I saw someone give the exact same speech in two different venues, with dramatically different results.
The first time was in a packed Lincoln Center concert hall in New York, in front of a warmed-up, internet-savvy conference audience. Their response? A sustained standing ovation. They knew they had just learned something and would take the experience with them.
The second time was in a large conference room in Washington, DC, in front of people taking a break from their own work for an hour. Their response? Crickets. They didn’t understand — or want to admit — how the internet was changing the media landscape.
The exact same speech that elicited laughs, gasps, and applause in New York was greeted with silence in DC. The experience strengthened my resolve to have an internal yardstick for measuring the quality and impact of my work. I’ve often written, said, or done things that fell flat, but not because they weren’t correct or important. It was because they weren’t delivered in the right setting in front of the right people at the right time.
Have you had that experience? Tell me about it. Comments are open.
Featured image: TEDx – SF 2011 Alive – Standing Ovation, by Adrianne Koteen on Flickr.
Keynote on the importance of doctors eliciting patients preferences and priorities:
1) consumer audience – lots of applause
2) physician licensing organization ( where I used their own materials to prove how their licensing exam tries….but does not successfully test for this skill). This was the only time I felt sheer anger from an audience
Yikes! Did you need an escort out of the room?
But seriously, I bet there were physicians who changed their minds, either that day or later, when they were able to take in what you said.
Maybe the message resonated with a few, but the goal is to systematically test for these skills. Here’s why: medical school curriculum is designed around what’s tested. So, physician training won’t change until the testing changes. Unfortunately, last month, USMLE indefinitely suspended the Step 2 Clinical Skills portion of the exam https://www.usmle.org/announcements/
Unfortunately I can relate. I also often get a sense of déjà vu at many conferences, thinking back to presentations I did decade ago. Fundamentals like patient involvement in research design to collaborative models for improved outcomes. I guess I’m grateful that some things are getting traction at all, given the system dynamics that really haven’t changed that much and like to squash innovation. I’m still half full on change, but also a bit weary, truth be told.
Tom, I’m with you. Hopefully we can look at the progress that has been made, inch by inch, and remember the times when someone said, “Oh! I get it” and changed their minds (or, even better, their methods and practices).
You’ve probably heard this story before (it’s one of my favorites to tell):
When Tom Ferguson was quite ill — “bald as a cue ball” from chemo, as he put it — he came to DC for a visit. I don’t remember the details, but there had been some setback in the e-patient movement, some cutting remark by a prominent doubter, some news article that had got it all wrong.
I asked him how he was able to maintain his sunny optimism. He was smiling, even as he was a decade into cancer treatment and four decades into the fight for patient empowerment. I believe that some of his optimism might be genetic — a pioneer, entrepreneurial spirit — but his answer took no personal credit. He talked about his Zen practice, his focus on gratitude and to “be here now.” To be in the moment, at all times, is to exist in possibility.
My interpretation is that “be here now” contains the possibility that your reality — of finding a hospital that welcomes empowered patients, for example, as Tom did — is one that can animate the world.
Great question!!
I’ll have to think about this. I’ve seen both responses more than once.
But I want to point to something about the art of the speech: who says the same speech (same execution – same performance, really) SHOULD draw comparable responses from different audiences? (Thanks for astutely pointing out the differences between these audiences.)
This is why I’ve always obsessed with clients about who will be in the audience and what their concerns are. At the very beginning of my healthcare speaking career I got great mentoring from Kent Bottles MD, who was then president of ICSI (where I’d just spoken). He said he always asks clients, “What outcome would make you say ‘Kent, you really knocked it out of the park’?” From that moment forward one step of every speaking engagement has been what my assistant Kristin and I came to refer to as “the home run call.”
It drives me nuts when someone says “Just do your standard speech.” And honestly it drives me nuts when a speaker expects to have comparable impact for every audience.
p.s. Kent taught me something else that day. The energy in the room was terrific, with a climactic ending, but the audience just sat there. And applauded, and applauded, and applauded. He said “A professional audience like this doesn’t do a standing O. Their equivalent is to applaud for a long time.”
One other thought –
Is that “wrong,” though? Is it a failure if there’s not immediate, visible response?
You and I are in the business of shifting how people think, sometimes on big big foundational topics. Explosions are great and fun, but sometimes long-term impact comes from nudges that crack foundations.
Great point! This post is for people who experience “crickets” and decide it’s 100% their fault. No. I have seen too many people doubt themselves when in fact their work is excellent.
Thanks, Dave! I thought of you as I described the two rooms and two audiences because I’ve borrowed Kent’s fantastic question, too.
In the case described above, one audience was warmed up, feeling great, AND ready for the message. The other was cold as ice and not at all ready to hear what the speaker had to share. Sometimes even a wizard can’t make magic in that context.
Your last point reminds me of a tip I received about 10 seconds before walking into a conference-room talk a few years ago. My host turned to me and said, “You are about to walk into a room full of introverts.” Then she turned the handle and we entered. I gave my talk to near-total silence, but I forged on, leaving big gaps for people to absorb the ideas and ask questions. A week later, one of the people in the room that day came up to me and quietly said, “You’ve changed the way I think about health care.” You could have knocked me over with a feather.
EXACTLY. The best feedback I’ve ever received has been the times people said “You’ve changed how I think about my work” or “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I never thought about it that way.”
I hope event organizers can see that we need to know who we’re addressing, so we can bust our butts to be relevant and make a difference.
Great discussion for a Monday morning! Reiterating what Dave noted, taking approach I took in previous career producing film & TV, you need to know your audience. And more fundamental its understanding your audience. To the points already discussed, as I suspect we have all experienced, I had a presentation where I was asked to use one the client had previously seen (and where it was a success) and the results weren’t pretty. It could have been I was not on my game, but on the post mortem, the audience came in with different needs and different expectations.
To your specific request on this Susannah, for those who decide it was “100% their fault”, unless they get the same crickets 100% of the time, they should look at their audience and follow Dave’s great advice at asking the client what the big takeaway should be.
I can do hours on this, but I will end with an extreme but successful approach to this is presentations by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Granted he has a kit bag of ready presentations but he starts his with asking the audience which one they want to hear (he usually provides a choice of 3 or 4) and the audience participates in voting on the one he would use.
Thank you! Yes, I hoped that this post would be useful to people as we jump back into the workweek. Maybe the discussion will provide someone with the boost of confidence they need to revise that proposal one more time.
Innovators hit their heads against walls and ceilings so often. Let’s share how we maintain our balance when we get knocked down.
Thanks for pondering this, Susannah. I have too been left with wondering if my message resonated, was heard, or changed peoples’ minds. I have found harkening back to my training in nursing and the “5 rights of medication”: right patient, right medication, right dose, right route, right time is helpful. When I remember these “5 rights” in crafting and delivering a message, hopefully I avoid the crickets…but not always 🙂 Sometimes, I just hope that some seed was planted at some level — and not all seeds grow.
Pam, thank you! I love this rubric.
This is a really interesting observation and one that lays bare the reality that our messaging (to Dave’s point about a ‘standard speech’) has to be delivered in context. Your discussion about peer networks or communities a decade ago (or today, even) would need to be very different for a group of skeptical, socially naive doctors than to progressive patient advocates. Loved the punch of this post despite its brevity!
Thanks, Bryan! And yes, so much of the success of a presentation of a new idea is in the context – as Pam points out, the who, what, how (how much + how it’s delivered), and when makes all the difference.
As for brevity — it’s always tempting to write more, but the comments are filling in all the space I left more beautifully than anything I would have written.
To add another twist … I think something that contributes significantly to ovation vs crickets is how well the audience knows you (or rather their perception of you). This is as important as how well you know the audience. How you, the speaker, are introduced to the audience by the host (the person, the organization) makes a big difference, especially for those of us who present non-mainstream or challenging ideas.
I’ve felt the difference in my own speaking engagements. When the host has introduced me with their own, personal stories of our interactions and how my work has impacted their own work or thinking, the audience has been much more receptive. They’re primed to think that this person is going to be interesting.
On the other hand, when I’ve been introduced in a perfunctory way, like just reading a short bio, the audience response has been much more varied.
I’m arguing that hosts/emcees play a very important role in the speaker’s success, they have a responsibility to lend their stature and credibility to the speakers they present.
So true! A vibrant, warm intro makes a big difference.
Counterpoint:
One of my favorite posts about public speaking is by Kathy Sierra whose advice is to “Be the UI“:
“When I give a presentation, whether it’s a mega-event keynote or a small intimate meeting, I have one crucial rule: nobody is allowed to introduce me. If they insist, then it must be only my name (though I try to discourage that too). And I do not introduce myself. This has been my rule since my first conference, and not only does it send the message that I (the presenter) am not what matters, it’s also a powerful stage-fright reducer. It lets you step up to the podium as a UI rather than The Presenter. This matters.
Because if YOU are a UI, then what is a presenter’s introduction? That annoying splash screen.”
How interesting to hear the opposite perspective. Ironically, that had been my default perspective — focus on the message, not on me — but I’ve had to learn that doesn’t work.
In the very first CareMap workshop I led, I had only minimally introduced myself at the start. A person came up to me at the mid-point break, and told me that I *had* to tell the group about my background. That they would be far more receptive to the “novel” ideas (everyone is a caregiver and care receiver; that care is much more than medical tasks; etc.) and new tool (the Atlas CareMap) if they were aware of my experience. So, I very briefly mentioned my background in science and innovation (NASA, Apple, etc.), that the project was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that I was on the board of … and it seemed to make a huge difference. No longer was this just some novel idea brought to them by an unknown person, but something with great credibility.
Some years ago, at a mind-expanding workshop led by Humberto Maturana, I learned that what people hear (really hear) is greatly dependent on what they think of you *before* you say a word. Their mind is much more open and receptive if they think highly of you.
Susannah, the speech that comes to mind for me is to single people or committees rather than rooms. The fact in my life is that although my work is recognized by people I highly respect and like to think of as peers, I have failed, most days 100%, to bring it to the world. My spoken/written efforts to do so have far more often than not been met by the equivalent of a silent room. So for the most part I don’t get to the room. I tired of conference presentations (while enjoying the opportunity for reimbursed travel), even as I knew that I was also using them as test beds. As others have mentioned and I have long posted on my site, I (would) aim to craft each presentation to the audience (presumably) in front of me. I suspect, without enough empirical experience, that doing so is relatively simple…in my case, my work is my work; it’s totally unique and all I have to offer. The customization would be how I connect it to any audience’s own work and interests. In other words, the core presentation would be the same; how I link it to those listening would be in part the same and in part personalized.
Bart, thank you for this reminder that the reception we get from an audience should not be the measure of our impact. It’s hard to get people’s attention and even harder to change their minds. Thank you for doing the work you do!
I’m going to add something purely pragmatic, which I’ve seen time after time: crickets vs ovation can be vastly influenced by whether you “stick the landing”. And I mean really – imagine the ovation if Simone Biles ended a routine by winding down and quietly walking off the mat.
My very first speech happened, happily, to be a few months after I walked my daughter down the aisle. It wasn’t designed, but that uplifting ending led to a burst of audience happiness. When I did my TED, that had to go in the middle (8 minutes in!!!) so I built to the chant “Let patients help!”
It might sound like manipulation but it’s a matter of design: guiding the audience’s attention. To have genuine impact it needs to have authentic meaning, not be a scam.
IMO any good speech leaves people with a new way of looking at things – something they didn’t know when they woke up that day. If you can then cap that with a vision of how things might be, in light of this … that can leave them feeling transformed. At times I might – and you might – come right out and say: “So MY vision … my sense of how the world might be better … is this: ….”
Confession: I wrote that after much thinking that was sparked, as usual, by your discussion here … but I forgot that the post is about the same speech in different venues.
Thinking again, though, it may be that an ending designed for one audience still might produce crickets for another.
Very true. It’s essential to know your audience, what they may respond to (for example: straightforward data vs. tear-jerker story), and what context you find yourself in (a drop-the-mic dramatic flourish would not land well in a small business meeting).
There’s also what I call the Little Prince phenomenon, when you keep showing people your idea and they keep turning away, not getting it, and then Aha! Someone gets it! You’ve found a collaborator.
For those not familiar with The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the opening story is about how to tell if someone has any imagination. When presented with a certain drawing (sorry, it’s a visual), most adults say it’s a drawing of a hat. Children (and adults with imagination) can see that it’s a drawing of an elephant inside a snake.
Of course we all want to only encounter people who grok our ideas right away, but that’s not what happens. Instead we have to keep finding ways to help people see what we see.
Ohhh, I had no recollection of that (and I’ve never heard of the Little Prince problem). Here’s a photo of that page (apparently) on Pinterest.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/25614291601943192/
I love this – going looking for the rare individual(s) who can see what you see!