Great Speaking Coach

How to Help Your Audiences Soak Up Your Message

Last year I was a stone. I was hard and dense, deadened to the point that I couldn't register incoming messages and so rigid that I could not deliver meaningful outgoing messages.

I am now a sponge. I'm soft and relaxed, with many open channels that help me feel and hear everything both coming in and going out. I listen and I communicate with ease. Communication is truly a two-way street. And I am loving this.

What state do you create in your audiences? Do you deaden your audiences so that everything you say washes over them without penetrating? You can do this very easily by overloading them with data,  restricting yourself to scripts or lengthy slide decks and filling your talk exclusively with business-speak.

My stone-sponge analogy is related to how I was being trained to ride my horse. Last year's trainer is a narrow-minded, humorless person who reminds me of the hundreds of business speakers who believe they must stick to the facts, provide slides and copious notes so that the audience has something to refer to later (as if they will!) and demands strict adherence to "the way we always do things."

My new trainer says "dare to try something new" and "communication between you and your horse must be a thoughtful and respectful two-way street." When I listen to him and pay attention to my own behavior, together we create the harmonious ride that we are striving towards.

You force your audiences to be stones when you define or equate 'speech' or 'presentation' to 'Power Point.' Nothing on any slide ever will be more powerful and potent than you can be when you speak from your inner knowledge and passion with authenticity.

When you grab their attention with a story or ask them to imagine a situation, you create sponges. You help them open their inner channels so that your ideas and their own thoughts mix to create new perspectives and visions. When they are sponges they visualize themselves responding to your call-to-action. When they are sponges they absorb your message so deeply that it sticks for a long time.

Speaking to any audience is a privilege. Be sure you help your audiences be sponges every time for every speech or presentation.

How to Win-What Did Obama Do?

President Obama's speaking style has been the subject of many articles, blog posts and media reports. He is assessed as being articulate, able to speak about complicated topics in a way that vast audiences can understand and he is effective at connecting with his audiences. He has a definite style and rhythm that sets him apart from most leaders.

What is missing from President Obama's speeches? There are no Power Point slides!

If Barack Obama could go from newcomer to president in just a few years, on the strength of his ability to communicate a message of something intangible like change--without a single slide--why shouldn't you be able to communicate your ideas without slide decks?

You have expertise, passion and experience built into you. You have creative ideas, your own unique take on "life" and lots of practice speaking in conversations to all kinds of people. These are the skills you need to be a business speaker. There is never going to be a slide that's better than you are.

I always urge business speakers to picture a speech or presentation as an experience they create for their audiences. The experience includes three components: the audience's needs, the speaker's ability expertise, and the time the audience and the speaker spend together.

Once this picture is in place, the speaker plans the speech or presentation. Only after the planning is complete--the call-to-action, the key points, the leading materials and the attention-getting opening--does the speaker think about how to deliver the speech. Slides MAY be a delivery method for some of the content.

This is very different from this equation: Speech = Power Point deck. When you live by this faulty equation you will miss great opportunities to actually transform people and your own reputation and success.

The next time you open Power Point to begin preparing for a speech or presentation ask yourself, "What would Obama do?" The answer is that he would know his audience, speak from his knowledge with passion and authenticity, and use language and his personality to get his message across.

That's what you must do too.

Speaking Powerfully without Power Point

Do you give Power Point presentations or do you present, using Power Point slides as an aid? There's a huge difference to the audience and ultimately to yourself as well.

A Power Point presentation reduces all the impact and meaning of your ideas to a one-dimensional piece of software. Since the slides are non-living, non-breathing and non-feeling, every time you equate 'presentation' with 'Power Point', you've just reduced everything you know and care about to this digital cypher.

When, instead, you deliberately use slide software as an aid to YOU in your presentation, you retain the power, the connection and the expertise. You are the source of the wisdom and yes, the emotion.

Can you imagine being the survivor of a wartime casualty; going to gathering with other families, seeking understanding and empathy; and being in the audience where a purportedly caring person delivers a Power Point presentation about improvised explosive devices and other horrors of war?

That's the news report from the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) gathering this Memorial Day weekend.

If the reporter could write that the speaker "went through a Power Point presentation about..." then you know very well that the speaker stood next to his slides and read bullets and described facts.

Where's compassion, where's empathy, where's human-ness? These families need a presentation that is powerful because the speaker makes it so, with stories and evocative language and emotion.

When you are asked to speak to an audience, even if someone calls it a Power Point presentation, please do not go to your software and begin filling in slides. Think about the audience and how you are going to reach them. Know the direction you're going and how you're going to get there. Fill in the path with your leading materials--a few facts, plus quotations, exercises, props, pop culture, stories and visuals. Then decide where a slide will serve as an aid to an idea and create only those slides.

Your presentation should be a personally powerful one with a few slides as opposed to a Power Point presentation lacking in personal power. You will affect your audience--and even heal them--in ways that slides will never, never do.

Tackling Audience Resistance the Easy Way

"No time" or "no money" or "things are fine the way they are"--many of you use these reasons in response to requests. Whether a service provider asks you to buy, or a colleague asks you to change, or an advisor strongly suggests that there's a better path to your goals, you use one of these reasons for not doing it.

As a speaker you also face these resistances, even if the audience keeps them in their heads. You ask them to pay attention, to learn, create or innovate, support the company and work together and they're sitting there thinking "noooo, I don't think so."

Business speakers face this fate so often because of their own resistances. I'd be a millionaire if I received a dollar for each time business speakers have used the "that's the way we always do it" reason for refusing to become better speakers. There are proven ways to influence and persuade people, and they require your willingness to forgo old rules--which are nothing more than comfortable habits.

Psychologists have proven that persuasion and influence result from specific methods. Here is one that is always a winner for you and your audience.

Commitment and Consistency

People will do what they commit to doing because of the human desire to be consistent. You can strengthen this desire to follow through on a commitment in the course of your business speech.

Forget building a brilliant logical argument. The audience will counter each point you make with a point of their own that makes sense in light of their particular resistance.

Ask the audience to imagine a future result or outcome. Push them to fill in many details as they picture this outcome: who, what, where, when and their sense of satisfaction or accomplishment when they've achieved the outcome. It's important for you to encourage a fully developed picture in their minds.

Ask them to write down the outcome--what it is and when it will happen. They should write this in the present tense. Example: "On 10/15/09--I have reached $50,000 in sales." Or "Tuesday, June 23, 2009-I have personal conversations with three people at a networking event." Or "during the next round of performance reviews I receive a rating of 'excellent' in interpersonal skills."

The next step is key, and is the point too many business speakers really resist ("no time" or "we never do that"). Give the audience time to verbally exchange their commitments with their neighbors. In a 5 minute segment, you give the audience time to state their outcomes with each other. This conversation will cement the commitment and the desire to be consistent.

Your call-to-action must also include very specific actions: "Take the paper/card/note you wrote on with you. Post it in your office where you will see it every day. Look at it every day."

If you want your audiences to take actions they are resistant to taking, you must overcome your own resistance first. Take the time to recognize your own resistances and then take steps to overcome them. People will always do what you do, not what you say.

How have you overcome persistent resistance? Share your experiences through our comment link.

3 Steps to Preparing Quickly for Your 30 Minute Presentation

Phone calls, emails, clients in your office--so many demands on your time and energy that are right in front of you. So the work you should do on your upcoming speech or presentation continues to get pushed to the bottom of the list. Finally at the very last minute you carve out a few hours to pull your thoughts together. Since you're stressed and exhausted, you cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Is this fair to yourself, or to your audience? You know it's not, yet you emphasize how busy you are and how you simply could not have done it any other way. As the advocate for the audience, I say to you: "sorry, but if you couldn't make time to prepare for us, why should we make time to listen to you?"

A great 30 minute presentation can come together in 3 hours if you make smart choices about the topic, the audience and the content.

When you accept (or volunteer for) a speaking appearance, you must take these three steps immediately:

1) Calendar one hour in the early morning (block all other demands) and in that hour design your speech or presentation. Design includes call-to-action closing, 2 key points, leading materials for the key points, and an attention-getting opening. When you make a list of these on paper in short notes to yourself, you've designed your speech or presentation. Included in this list should be any visuals you'll need, plus stories, quotations, props and handouts.

2) Add another hour to your calendar and spend it collecting the various items you've identified in your design phase. There is no slide or set of slides that will be more important than you, so keep the slides simple and to a minimum. Put all your items in order of appearance into one digital folder.

3) Schedule one hour for practice. This hour must be written in your calendar days before your appearance and must be sacrosanct. Nothing takes over this time. During this hour, you'll talk through your speech or presentation, standing up, moving about and speaking out loud.

Since you have all your content in order in a folder, you simply get it out, start talking and keep going. You will have time for one practice and one rehearsal of your 30 minute speech.

Give yourself a pat on the back, and know that you're well-prepared and ready. You'll probably find yourself running through your speech in your head as you do other things--this is good as it helps you gain confidence.

How much better is this approach than putting off your preparation and practice until everything squished into a few harried hours just moments before you appear? No one has ever failed at a speech that was prepared in advance, with a relaxed and open mind.

How do you make time to prepare for your presentations? Share your suggestions through our comment link.

Get New Business from New Twists on Your Ideas

Not everyone invents Google, Facebook or Amazon, which have generated amazing success from scratch. You can generate success from reinventing existing products and services. Reinvention is the act of creating new products and services for new customers out of your current expertise and knowledge.

Case in point: Joan Fletcher Winning Ways, Inc. has been known for years as an exceptional sales trainer. Her ten-week classes are full, people rave about how they have exceeded their sales goals under her guidance and she gets many new clients by way of current clients.

As Joan analyzed her work, she saw a pattern emerge. The success of the clients came directly from the coaching element of her approach. From Joan's clients' perspective, seeing progress week by week is what made the difference for them. And that weekly progress comes from Joan's special coaching touch.

Joan has applied her coaching touch to clients who want to achieve success as CEOs of large corporations, managers, business owners, and other situations. She has built upon the coaching approach she used for sales professionals to become the coach of choice for all businesses who want greater career and revenue growth. This is successful reinvention.

How are you reinventing your services or products? Share your ideas through our comment link.

3 Speaking Tips to Lift Your Company to the Top

Reinvention, positioning for the upturn, seeing silver linings in the economic clouds--these ideas are coming up frequently as business strategists, growth thinkers and leaders try to create a positive outlook during uncertainty.

I'm glad to hear this shift to forward thinking and to see people speaking of actions they can take. Speeches and presentations provide you a powerful opportunity to pull people out of the doldrums and onto your bandwagon. Please be sure to use these speaking appearances wisely. Here are 3 tips to help you make the most of your time in front of an audience:

1) Start your message by connecting to your audience's emotions. Economic worries hit people emotionally as well as financially. If you describe a scenario in evocative, emotional language, you grab them and get them thinking "yes, that's how I've been feeling." Then they will stay tuned to the rest of what you have to say.

2) Use a variety of ideas to lead up to your key points. Audiences will get it when you quote a movie or book title, refer to a well-known entertainer or public figure, or mention the challenges faced by a well-regarded sports figure. Life goes way beyond work, and the more you bring life into your business speeches, the better you connect with your audience. "Tiger Woods is still struggling to recover his top form following knee surgery. But he's out there, competing and taking risks. That's what we have to do in order to come out on top of our industry a few months from now."

3) Tell some stories. It's important to write your stories in an artful way. I call this "crafting" the story, rather than reporting the story. Use the details that are relevant to your message, pluck great language from the literary side of your brain, and allow yourself some vocal variety in the telling. Two great business story types are the "springboard story" (someone did it in the past, you can do it now) and the "who you are as an individual" story (your grit, determination, fears and actions to overcome them, your values). After a story like this, you ask the audience to think of a time when they demonstrated similar personal characteristics--that makes your story their story.

How are you seeking and using speaking appearances to lead your company as the economy improves? Share your ideas through our comment link.

If you're not seeking speaking appearances becuase you don't know what to say or how to find them, let me know. I have many resources to help you. 

Speakers - Break the Mold or Become Irrelevant

Experienced women executives ferociously debated the idea of "formal" versus "informal" speakers. The outcome was that only a "formal" speaker was appropriate for their organization.

Their definition of "formal and appropriate" is that the speaker writes a script, stands behind a lectern, delivers it carefully, and expects the audience to listen without participating in any way. They decided that executive women in an audience do not want to write things down on a handout, put their hands in the air to answer to any questions or deviate from the speaking model they see all around them.

It's too bad these women haven't paid any attention to what their audiences crave. With the findings of rigorous, peer-reviewed brain scientists proving that human beings (as in audiences) are hard-wired to respond to variety, stimulation and action, there is no longer a place for these strict speaking rules. Not one executive who insists upon speaking this way has ever been able to tell me why it works for the audience. Their only justification is "that's way it's always done." If that rationale made any sense, we would still be riding horses and living without electricity.

Certainly these women with 20-30 years of business experience didn't get to their executive positions by only doing what everyone else did. They had to be innovative, creative and groundbreaking in some ways, whether in their skills, their networking and marketing or their leadership skills. It astounds me that they don't see innovative and interactive speaking as part of that same path. Or are they so insecure about their success that they now cling to all traditional methods because it is safer?

I'd love to hear from executives and professionals about why you resist dynamic speaking that breaks out of the old mold and works with what we now know about how the human brain works. And how are you going to reach the younger generations who've adopted interactivity, speed and variety without hesitation?

Post your thoughts through our comment link.

Speaking Builds Your Brand If You Break the Rules

What words would you use to describe the companies you regularly do business with? Knowledgeable? Experts in their field? The best out there?

The most valuable brand in the world, Coca Cola, markets the joy of life across all localities, demographic groups and settings. It doesn't tell their audience facts and figures, using graphs and bullet points. If you could create brand value equal to one minuscule bit of Coca Cola's, wouldn't you do that? You can--grab your audience with images, sounds and action that appeal to their senses. Keep their attention with engaging action and get your message to stick by appealing to them as human beings.

You, as the leader of your company, can model this admirable behavior when you are speaking and presenting. There is not a different set of behavior rules for speaking than for interacting with your various stakeholders one-on-one. If a hallmark of your brand is leading edge authority, then demonstrate this in your speaking skills. If your brand promise includes qualities such as compassion and opportunity for all, your speeches should deliver that as well through stories, dramatic touches and some laughter.

How do you tell your brand story each time you speak? Share your successes through our comment link.

3 Ways to Jump-Start Your Speech

I was at a gala dinner last week for a great cause. Unfortunately every one of the speakers started the exact same way: "Thank you so much for that kind, generous, and complimentary introduction." Using good manners, the speakers turned their backs to the audience to deliver this thanks.

Precious opportunities were wasted with this tired and unnecessary start to a speech. As a speaker, you must remember that it is your audience who comes first. The audience is there to learn from you and be inspired by you.

What is important to know about jump-starting your speech?

1) Use introductions to get the audience excited about the upcoming speaker by posing a question or telling briefly about a challenge they faced. Think of the introduction as an appetizer. Resumes and bios do not do this.

2) Speakers should write their own introductions. You know your story better than anyone and you know your speech better than anyone. Write your own introduction and send it to the person who will be introducing you at least 2 days in advance. Ask them to read it just as you have written it.

3) Immediately dive into the audience's attention with a great question that has the word 'you' in it. Here are several examples:

"Imagine that you are (facing a dire situation/hoping to reach a goal/other)..."

"What would happen to your (revenue/profits/organization/health) if you..."

"Do you know what it takes to (achieve a goal/grow your business/change direction)..."

"Take a moment to think about how you (act/think/work/play/build relationships)..."

Each of these questions immediately draws the audience to you. You only have a few seconds to do that, so there is no time to waste.

While the people in the audience may look like they're listening, if you have lost them, it's very hard to get them back. Grab them and keep them with your first few words.

What opening have you found effective? Share your idea through our comment link.