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00:02 Welcome to Steal the Show with Michael Port. This is Michael. Today is a common and comical questions episode. And, if you want your questions answered just send them in to questions@michaelport.com, questions@michaelport.com Weâve been getting a lot of them, so Iâve been doing a few more than I might normally, because I think that your questions are fantastic.
00:26 By the way, little tip, if youâre doing Q&A, I suggest not telling individual audience members that their question is great. Often someone asks a question and we answer with, âAh, thatâs a great question! And then we proceed.â But if we do that, and we did not tell the previous questioner that their question was great, what does that suggest? Does it suggest that the other question wasnât great?
00:58 So, the alternative of telling everybody that their question is great, may seem like youâre pandering. And then, of course nobodyâs question seems like itâs actually great. So, I say letâs just stay from, âThatâs a great questionâ entirely. You can certainly say like âWell, thatâs an interesting way to ask that question,â or âNobodyâs ever asked me that question in quite that way.â But I donât think you need to. I think you could just answer the question and give a great answer to a great question.
01:29 Now, on to the question. Todayâs question is from Sam Grosse. Hi Sam, thanks for writing in. Sam says, âDo I have to have a personal narrative? Do I have to have a personal narrative?â So, often in speech youâll hear somebodyâs origin story and I think thatâs what Sam is referring to. The personal narrative, the origin story. When I was in graduate school at NYU there were times when I felt like my personal narrative wasnât as dramatic as some of my classmatesâ. And I wondered if, if I didnât have the right to be performing in the way that they did, because I hadnât gone through so much trauma. I wasnât as a kid living in a trailer, washing dishes out by the creek. I was very fortunate not to have, great loss early on in my life. And, I did have a pretty, nice childhood; Good parents, everybody treated me well.
02:47 And so there were times when I thought like, âDo I have enough trauma to go out there and, and say something meaningful.â And, I got over that eventually, but it did cross my mind from time to time. And I think that is a question that budding speakers often ask, because when you see speakers they often tell you their origin story. The speech often starts with a, âWhen I was a childâ and then, it proceeds from there. And I think it concerns people because they say, âWell, [a] I donât really have an origin story that I think is so incredibly important, or so monumental that I feel the need to share it.â Or, they do have an origin story that they just donât wanna share, they donât wanna make it public and thatâs perfectly fine. Or they feel that the kind of material they teach or speak on just doesnât need an origin story, doesnât require it, it doesnât warrant it in fact, and the audience might not be particularly interested in it. And I think those are, really good questions. Now see, I can say that now because Iâm not⊠Iâm not suggesting that somebody elseâs question isnât good. Those are really good questions to ask ourselves.
04:11 So I think, you donât have to have an origin story. I donât think you have to worry about that. Absolutely, we wanna find ways to connect our history with the present and the future. And often, stories about things that weâve experienced can be very powerful for an audience. So for example, thereâs a podcast episode out there, probably either right before or itâs coming up after this one, where I talk about a time that I bombed a speech. And I think that that may be helpful to people who are anxious about speaking. âCause if they⊠If they hear that it happens to all of us, happens to the best of us, then they might go, âYou know what, okay, I can⊠I think I could do this too.â So that kind of story may be helpful for folks.
05:09 But no, I donât think you have to open a speech with a big dramatic story. And sometimes I think that the stories, these origin stories that speakers use can actually be distracting. They are often introduced because the speaker wants a cathartic experience for themselves, they had a tough experience in life and they wanna share that experience âcause it makes them feel good to share that experience. But it doesnât necessarily have a great impact on the audience. So I just wanna make sure that if we are sharing our personal narrative or our origin story, that⊠That itâs not about us, itâs about them because itâs never about us, itâs always about the audience.
05:58 Weâre⊠Weâre there as a servant of that audience and what we share with them needs to be relevant to them. And some things that we share will be more relevant than others for a variety of reasons. Number one, different audience members have different needs. Number two, some things that you share may have a greater impact than what they need right now because of where that particular audience member is in their life right now. So with that said, Sam, no. You donât have to have a personal narrative in your speeches. âCan it be very powerful?â Yes. âIs it very effective when done well?â Yes. âCan it also be ineffective? Can it also be distracting to an audience?â Yes, if itâs masturbatory. Thatâs the term we often use, if itâs self-absorbed. If itâs about you and⊠Please excuse me, but if itâs about you getting off to your ideas, then, yeah, it can be a little bit distracting. So, no, donât have to have it. And if you want it, do it really well.
07:13 And remember thereâs no one way to give a presentation. Itâs art. Itâs a creative endeavor. So, when we teach public speaking, me, Amy, my coaches, etcetera, when we teach public speaking, we donât teach a formula for everybody to follow. We have very specific structure for organizing information and we have a number of different structures, so we have frameworks for organizing information, we have structures for sculpting content⊠Or sculpting stories rather, but the style that you employ as a speaker is your style. So youâll never be able to point⊠To look on stage and look at speakers and go, âOh, thatâs a Michael Port trained speaker.â Hopefully what youâre seeing is, âThatâs a great speaker who delivers on their promises, does exactly what they say theyâre gonna do when they show up and puts on a performance in service of that audienceâ. But thereâs no style that is specific to us. So I would never ask somebody to perform in my style. I have a very particular unique style that Iâve amplified to serve the different types of material that I speak on, just like you wanna amplify the best parts of your personality from a performance perspective in service of the audience when youâre giving a speech.
08:48 So itâs art and part of our job is to break the rules, not just to be rebellious, not to break⊠Not break the rules just to break the rules, but break the rules to try to produce something better than existed before, something better than youâve done before because sometimes rules are put into place inadvertently, accidentally. Thereâs a lot of things that youâll see in speaking that have become the norm simply because enough people copied enough people to make it the norm, but there was no governing body that sat down and said, âThis is the way that good speeches should be delivered.â In fact, there actually is an organization that sees themselves as a governing body and will often say, âThis is the right way to give a speech,â but it doesnât make it so, just like my advice is relevant for the people who see the world in the same way.
09:52 Of course, Iâm biased. I think itâs relevant to all people, but not all people will, at this point in their life, find it relevant. They may go out and try to give speeches and realize somethingâs missing and then come back and go, âOh, now I see what heâs talking about.â âCause maybe they didnât have a context, they didnât have experience that was different, so they go, âI donât get it. I donât know what the big deal is.â But other people coming in going, âOh, my God, Iâm so happy to be hearing this because what Iâve been hearing hasnât been working for me and now this makes perfect sense.â
10:32 So, there isnât one way to learn. There isnât one way to deliver any kind of information. There isnât one way to get somebody to say âYes.â There isnât one way to create your content. So weâre not copycats. Weâre not copycats. Weâre creative artists and sometimes thatâs scarier because what it means is that we need to think and we need to be original. Again, we donât need to be original just to be original, but we are original because we are fully self-expressed and there is nobody like you. So if you are fully self-expressed, then you are original because you are not a carbon copy of anyone.
11:25 So, when parents sing lullabies to their children, they often sing the same lullabies. There arenât that many lullabies. So the baby doesnât really care about the content of the lullaby. In fact, some of the lullabies that we sing are very strange. Like âAshes to Ashesâ is a very dark song. Now if a little kid understood that song, it might actually scare the heck out of him. So the baby doesnât care so much about the song itself, what the baby cares about is the sound of the motherâs voice. That voice is in service of that baby. And the way the mother sings to that child is what resonates with the child.
12:14 So thatâs why you can have hundreds of different actors play Hamlet then each one can make it original, if they bring themselves to the role, if they bring their way of seeing the world, their heart, their soul, their craft. And then, of course, everybody wants to compare, âWhoâs better?â I donât get into that argument. Iâm not interested in whoâs better. Iâm interested in all of us being as good as we can be. Simple as that. Each one unique in our own way. Each special in our own way. And, as a result, we can go out and have an impact.
13:07 So, Sam, you donât have to have a personal narrative if you donât want to. Make sure you subscribe, rate, and review. And if you havenât yet, pick up a copy of âSteal The Show.â You can do that anywhere books are sold. And I love you very much. I do. Not in a weird way. But I love you for being the big thinker that you are and for standing in the service of others as you stand in the service of your destiny, and for being willing to take risks, for being willing to choose early and often to say, âYes,â to think as if. Thatâs all for now. Bye-bye.
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