Off The Cuff Doesn't Mean Off The Top Of Your Head
Quick View: A summary of key points
The majority of time we spend speaking at work is not in planned, prepared speeches
You need to be able to take the conversation where it needs to go
It is possible to prepare and practice for spontaneous speaking
When it comes to preparing and practicing to speak at work, most people focus on the big presentation. Pitching their idea to a room full of executives and peers across business lines. There are multiple rounds of slide decks, dry runs, and adjustments that lead to the end result. When was the last time you prepared and practiced for spontaneous speaking at work? The majority of the time we spend speaking at work is not in formal presentations. It’s staff meetings, initiative status calls, one-on-ones, and ad hoc discussions. These speaking opportunities are much more influential to creating buy-in for your idea than your fancy slide deck and polished pitch. Part of successfully navigating the internal spheres of influence in an organization is to always be prepared for spontaneous speech.
Off the cuff doesn’t mean off the top of your head.
Prepare for meetings
Before the meeting, prepare for the discussion. Look at who will be there. Think about the purpose of the meeting and the outcome that you are looking for. Look at who will be there and consider what their perspectives might be and what outcomes they will want. Can you see alignment? or are you expecting push back? What questions will they ask? Write them down. Then think through how you will respond and practice the phrasing you will use. Out loud.
Know your stuff
There is no way to anticipate every question and tangent that a meeting could take and you need to be able to take the conversation wherever it needs to go. The way to prepare for that is to know your stuff.
An area that I’ve always struggled with but continuously work to improve is the ability to recall numbers. My mind works in narratives and stories. If you ask me for a specific number, even the ones that are critical to the success of my product, I can rarely pull it from my mind. The solution that prepares me is a document that I call my “Know My S#*T” doc. This document has the key metrics of my business dumped into excel in a format and organization that only makes sense to me. I manually update it as reporting comes in because working with numbers helps me to retain them. I keep it open in the background all day every day so that I’m prepared if someone asks me for a number.
In 2017-18 I led the end-to-end product development and delivery of a new credit card for one of the largest banks in the United States. As the product manager I was expected to know all of the detail about all of the things related to this multi-year initiative. Again I created a document for personal use that served as my lifeline. This time a PowerPoint, it memorialized every key decision including who was involved and what factors were used to make the decision. It was my first glimpse into the value of having a decision journal. The same questions were coming up from different people who weren’t exposed to the full details. When the question came in the meeting, I would cite information from the doc and then follow the meeting by peeling off the one-pager and emailing it to the stakeholder. It worked amazingly well.
Practice for the Curve Ball
You can’t know everything. Things come out of left field all the time. That doesn’t mean that you can’t practice for that too. Here are some options for when a colleague asks something that you didn’t anticipate.
When you only need a few moments to organize your thoughts and respond, rephrase their question as the first part of your response.
When you need more time, ask a clarifying question. Speaker control goes back to the questioner and gives you more time to think and prepare your response. This is has the dual benefit of ensuring that you fully understand what is being asked.
When you really don’t know, say so. When the question is asking for a fact, phrasing could be “I don’t have that information in this moment, but will get it and follow up with you after the meeting.” When the question is asking for input, try “I hadn’t thought about it that way. I don’t feel like I have enough information to respond. These are my questions:”
Thinking and Speaking
Jay Leno, on this Armchair Expert podcast episode, described how he handled hecklers when doing stand up. He said that he knew his stand up material so well that he could deliver it completely on beat while also drafting jokes in his mind in response to the heckler. We all have the ability to speak and think at the same time, the problem is that most of us are using that extra brain capacity for a spiral of negative self-talk. Things like “am I doing ok?” “do I sound stupid?” “can people see that my face is turning red?”.
Here is an exercise you can do to strengthen your thinking while you speak muscle. Find an easy piece of text. My go to is a children’s book, I do this when reading to my daughter. But you can use anything that is not technical and has only simple words (like this blogpost). Read it out loud. While you are reading, think of a question and answer that you may need to respond to at work. Come up with the phrasing that you will use. If you want to take this a step further, when you finish reading out loud, go right into saying your question response out loud.
Conclusion
You can and should prepare and practice for spontaneous speaking. This can be done in a variety of ways including writing down questions that others may ask, practicing the phrases you might use, having a document to refer to, and practicing speaking and thinking at the same time. When you apply these strategies “off the cuff” will no longer mean off the top of your head.
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