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Let's say you're doing an interview for a job.
You've thought about why you want the role, and why you wanna join the company,
but then you get into the interview room and the interviewer says,
Alexis, why should we hire you over everyone else that we're considering?
That's a pretty open-ended question and it's pretty tough to answer in the moment.
Or let's say you're, working at an internship over the summer,
and you're meeting with your team to discuss either an investment,
opportunity that you have, or some other decision that your team needs to make.
And you walk into this meeting thinking you're gonna discuss the pros and the cons
of the, decision that you're gonna make, but instead your manager turns to you and
says, Brian should we make this investment opportunity?
Do you think it's a good idea?
Or let's say that you're, you know, this summer you're going to
an engagement party, and you're, friends who are getting married ask you
to say a few words a little unexpectedly, and you weren't expecting that.
So what would you do in that case?
If you're starting to feel a little bit stressed out, that's because you should.
These questions are hard, especially if you haven't had a chance to
prepare what you're gonna say because speaking on impromptu is hard.
And while they represent a wide range of scenarios, from interviews to
business meetings to social settings, they have a lot in common.
They all involve, unexpected questions, they involve
high stakes situations, and they involve an audience whose opinion matters to you.
And as a result you wanna sound both confident and
knowledgeable when you're speaking, even if you haven't had a chance to prepare.
so, we've had, we've through this class and through the coaching by JD,
Stephanie and Bert, we've all had a chance to
become blossoming presenters of prepared material.
But what happens when you can't prepare?
We're here because we wanna help you
sound polished even when what you're really feeling like is this.
We're gonna walk you through three scenarios,
the three scenarios I just mentioned.
Interviews, business meetings, which could also apply for
class participation at the GSB, and social settings.
And show you a framework for each of those,
that'll help you sound polished even if you haven't had a chance to prepare.
So, Sydney's gonna walk through what you can do in an interview setting.
Ailee's gonna walk through what you can do in a business setting.
And finally, Matt is gonna show you how to adapt those two frameworks to
something that's of a more personal or social nature.
>> As Aditi mentioned, we are first going to talk about interviews,
impromptu speaking in the context of interviews.
Before coming to the GSB, I was at a company where I did a lot of interviews.
And by the end of it, I often felt like this.
The person I was talking to had been rambling, I couldn't get to the point,
I couldn't understand what was it that they had really added to that situation.
So, I wanna offer a format for
you when you're in an interview that you can use to help structure your answers and
help your interviewer understand why you are so awesome and perfect for the job.
And that format is STAR, which stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.
So, I'll give you a little demonstration, starting with situation.
And they key with the situation, is that you don't wanna give too much detail.
The tendency is for people to get into a lot of detail, and
the interviewer kind of gets lost in the situation itself.
You wanna just offer enough information so
that they understand the context and the stakes.
So if I were given the question,
tell me about a time when you were up against a really tight deadline.
I might say, okay, I had six weeks to get our company compliant with
various consumer protections regulations to meet an investor requirement,
and what was at stake was tens of millions of dollars.
Very brief and to the point.
Next, the task.
The task can also be brief.
My task was to make sure that we met that deadline that had been set by investors,
so we got the money that we needed.
End of story.
And then action.
This is where you wanna spend most of your time.
You really wanna help the interviewer understand what is your thought process,
what did you do and why did you do it.
So in this case I started with a project plan and
I talked to various people across the company to try to understand how were they
going to be impacted by these regulations and what did we need to change.
I came up with the project plan and
after getting buy in, I followed up really frequently to make sure we
were actually on track because we are up against such a tight deadline.
And finally, the result.
Again, the result can be very short and sweet.
So the result of this situation was that we met the deadline, because of my work,
you wanna make sure that you again give the interviewer a reason to,
to believe that you were the one that made this all happen,
and we got the money that we needed.
So hopefully that is a helpful example of how you can master interviewer,
interviews, and help your interviewer see why you are so great for the job.
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>> The other professional setting where you might be asked to speak impromptu is
in meetings.
In meetings, your boss might approach you and say,
Anna, our sales this quarter has decreased by 10%, what you think we could do?
Or David, do you think we should invest in this new investment opportunity?
In both of these scenarios,
a good structure that could help you out of anxiety is PREP.
PREP stands for Point, Reason, Example, and Point.
You could start your speech with a really strong point of argument and
then support it with a specific reason.
You can then move on to a concrete example showing why
your point is the one to follow and agree on.
And to make sure your audience doesn't forget what your point is after so
much content in, in-between, you can close your speech again, as stating the point.
You might wanna ask, why is PREP, a specific good structure to follow?
The major reason is that,
it can draw in audiences of a di, of different backgrounds.
Research have shown that, reasons appeals to our logical left head,
while examples and stories appeals to our emotional right half.
So, say you were in the high-stakes meeting, or cross-functional meeting,
where you have people, who both tend to think, where, where you both have
people who tend to think more logically, to people from the technology side.
At the same time, you also have audience who are easy to resonate emotionally, for
example, the people from the sales side.
PREP is such good structure that could make sure that your speech stays
balanced and you don't unfortunately lose half of your audience by either
focusing too much on the logical reasons or purely on examples or stories.
Now, let's look at an example of how we could use PREP effectively.
Say, you work in a traditional brick and
mortar retailer and you want to suggest strengthening your online sale effort.
So in a meeting you might wanna, you, you might wanna use PREP, and start like this.
We should gradually move our offline sales focus and capital to online sales.
The major reason is that during the past years we've seen
offline sales decreasing while online sales going uphills.
In fact, our major competitor Best Buy, closed over a thousand of
its stores earlier this year and turned them into distribution centers for
online sales which has increased online sales of 30% for the company.
Therefore, I strongly suggest a shift from offline sales to online sales.
See, PREP is actually very easy to use and
can make sure that your impromptu speech stays balanced and structured.
So the next time when your boss approaches you in the meeting and
asks you what to do to start the sales sli, sale slides, or
whether the company should invest in a new investment opportunity.
Don't panic.
Think of the point, reason, example.
Talk about the in a constant instructor way, and
end your speech with the point again.
In fact, if you looked at what we, went through just now, you can easily find that
actually used PREP to structure my own speech to introduce PREP to you all.
We first talked about the point that PREP is a good structure to
use in impromptu speaking in meetings.
And the major reason think that it can draw in audiences of
different backgrounds.
We then move on to example of online sales,
offline sales, and I closed my speech again by stating the point, and
then encouraging you to use PREP in your next meetings.
So, if you feel good about using PREP,
why don't start start using it in your next GSB meetings with our fellows.
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>> Next we're gonna talk about impromptu speaking in social or personal settings.
Now we all know this can be particularly intimidating.
I know when I was asked to give a toast at my dad's wedding reception without
knowing I was gonna have to do it, I was absolutely terrified.
But thankfully, just like we saw with the frameworks they'd show for interviews and
meetings, there are simple structures that you can have in mind beforehand that will
make the experience much more comfortable and
easy for you to give an impromptu speech in a social setting.
So, before I introduce those structures, I wanna ask, by show of hands,
who's been to talk?
Right. Now,
if you've been to talk you guys probably know that people often start their
talk by telling a story.
Do you remember back to Sydney's talk,
she gave us the story about how she started playing the bassoon,
then she went on to talk about what that illustrated about her and her personality.
And as you might guess there's a reason that people start their talk by
telling a story.
For those same reasons you should use them when you have to give an impromptu speech
in a social or personal setting.
First of all, telling a story engages the audience.
When you're in a social setting, people can be talking to each other instead of
listening to you and it's a lot more engaging to listen to a story, better it
is to listen to a set of facts or figures that you're, you're regurgitating.
And second, it's impromptu and it's a lot easier for you to try to recount the story
that you know well than it is to try to memorize things right beforehand and
rattle off a list of facts that you might not have a good handle on.
Thankfully, the second part of this structure is also pretty simple.
Just explicitly make the point that the story illustrated.
It might be as simple as describing what the story made you think or
how it made you feel.
If you're giving a wedding toast it might be describing how the story illustrated to
you how good of a match the bride and groom are.
Or if it's a birthday toast,
it might be how the story illustrated just how good of a friend that person is.
Again, the value in this structure is that it's something that's familiar and
known to you, and it'll be easier for you to recount convincingly to your audience.
And lastly, just finish strong in whatever manner's appropriate for
the setting you're in.
It might be as simple as raising a glass and asking everyone to celebrate with you.
But don't apologize and don't be afraid to reiterate your point.
It will just help to drive home your message, and
it will make you enjoy the speech that much more.
So we've all learned in this class to stand and appreciate our applause,
if you use this structure, you'll have an easier, more enjoyable time giving your
next personal impromptu speech, and you'll be able to enjoy it more.
>> Great. So we've just heard three techniques for
how you can be better at impromptu speaking, and
sound prepared, even, even if, or sound polished, even if you haven't prepared.
Now we wanna invite you to use this the next time that you're in one of
these scenarios.
All of you are gonna be interviewing for jobs in summer and the fall or
gonna be doing internships and many of us are gonna be attending weddings or
other celebrations over the summer.
So there's a lot of opportunities in your immediate future to take a step back and
reach for one of these three techniques,
whichever one speaks the most to your personal style and use them.
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