Great Speaking Coach

Coachable people are those who listen and change. If you want to keep doing what you’re doing you don’t need a coach. Trivers

Speaker Reaches Audience With Amazing First Words

Imagine you are standing on a small, level spot. Right in front of you is a large hill and you know that if you reach the top you’ll receive a valuable reward. Also imagine that very close to your feet is the edge of a deep pit. If you step just a bit carelessly, you’ll fall into the pit. You won’t get injured, but you will have to struggle to get out of the pit and on the path to the top of the hill.

Which would you rather do—go to the top from the level ground, or have to climb out of the pit and then climb to the top? Obviously, starting at the level ground is the easier way to the top and to your reward.

The opening of your speech is like that spot on level ground: with the right opening, you’ll go straight to the top. With a stumble or a weak opening, you’ll fall into the pit and have to climb out of it before you can go to the top. Your audiences may not stick around that long, and you may run out of opportunity before you get to the top.

When you understand the effect of your opening on the whole value of your speech, you see that making it great is not optional.

This image is an example of an analogy. I use it for my audiences of business speakers instead of a lecture or rules about the importance of an attention-getting opening. Once they have visualized the scene, they are eager to craft great openings.

Use analogies to get your audiences seeing a vision--then bring up some data or logic or other left-brain material.

What analogies do you find helpful? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Analogies Key to Unlocking Your Audience

You've got some deep ideas and specific business goals to accomplish with your speech or presentation. You can go the traditional (i.e. boring) route and lay them all out logically. If you do this, you will use facts and figures and reference leading authorities to support your position. You will use vocal inflections and body language to communicate how important these ideas are.

OR...You can use analogies and metaphors to bring your ideas into contexts that your audience can relate to. When they relate or connect on a personal, internal level, they will be able to integrate your ideas into their own minds and act accordingly.

Analogies from everyday life:

Sports provides plentiful analogies. Not the 'team' dogma, but what it takes to have a 80% free-throw average. Or a .350 batting average. Or a 2000 yard rushing season. How many times does a player practice? How does he or she learn to make tiny adjustments that inch by inch make a difference? These analogies help employees see the value in small steps taken daily.

Nature is another source for analogies. Perfect storms are a confluence of many elements coming together in just the right magnitude, at just the right time. Individuals and departments can think in terms of just the right confluence of elements that will make a perfect storm of failure or of accomplishment.

Travel experiences supply analogies that everyone can relate to. Is getting something approved just like navigating a horrendous traffic jam on your highways during rush hour. How can you make it easier? It seems like everyday the airlines and Department of Homeland Security change the rules for air travel? What in your company is like that and how could it be changed?

Share some of your favorites analogies through our comment link. I will give some examples from my own speeches in the next few posts.

Spirit of Van Gogh Inspires Speaker

Let your mind's eye visualize Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting Starry Night. See the multi-hued swirling sky, the twinkling stars, the town resting in sleep below and the crescent moon in the upper right corner.

When I look at this painting I am captivated by the tempestuous movement of the sky. On a clear night, when I see bright stars in a sky, I typically also see a smooth blue-black sky behind the stars. What vision Van Gogh had to see the riot of colors and the waves of movement across the expanse!

Studying the sky, you can see many shades of blue and a variety of brush strokes. And while there are many different colors in the painting, the palette is limited to mostly blues and yellows, with a few bare accents of other colors.

Van Gogh had a huge variety of colors in his paintbox, and many brushes. Yet he selected the blues and yellows and a few brushes out of many others, so the painting has variety and excitement within this color scheme.

When I visualize a speech I see a picture of the whole. Then I break it down into components and select the colors (content) and brushes (delivery style) that will come together to best achieve the vision. The selection of some components means that others are deliberately not selected. The delivery style is matched to the component, just as Van Gogh used his big brushes for the sky and small, fine ones for the sleeping town below.

If you need help figuring out what to include in your speech or presentation, let Van Gogh's Starry Night inspire you. He created an amazing painting by carefully selecting his colors and his brushes and then using them creatively and unexpectedly. You can do the same with your speeches and make a long- lasting impression on your audiences.

Speaker Astonishes Audience!

What would happen to your career if you astonished your audiences each and every time you speak? Would you get promoted, make more money, get media coverage, have a You Tube video go viral?

It takes a lot to astonish audiences these days. They are treated to amazing visuals in every media they consume. True stories that are outlandish and amazing crop up online and on TV nearly every day.

You certainly cannot astonish, or even please, your audiences with bullet-filled slides, predictable process flows, generalized assertions and boring delivery style. The rules of speaking have changed dramatically and you must be ahead of the curve or get left behind.

Why don't you grab a pencil or a blank screen right now and write down the first three rules about public speaking that you follow? Then write three rules that are the exact opposite of these.

Immediately start planning your next speech or presentation following your new rules. You will feel strange, even anxious--but my bet is that you'll also feel exhilarated! You're breaking free from the prison of "that's the way we do things" or "that's what the audience expects" or "I thought I had to..."

Here are three rules to avoid:

1) Telling the audience the learning objectives--they are adults who need to be stimulated, not bored by routine

2) Giving a speech just to deliver information--anyone can get any information they want at any time and it's nearly always free, so they don't need more information from you. They do need to know what to do with the information--how it will help them have a better life in some way. If you have expertise in that, you should be telling them how to use the information they already have.

3) Delivering a stream of facts and figures to make your points--numbers are hard to understand when they're delivered orally and the audience usually doesn't have a chance to review the numbers and get meaning from them. Put numbers into word pictures or connect the numbers to images of everyday life you describe with words.

How do you astonish your audiences? Share your best technique through our comment link.

Sales - Provide Solutions, Don't Fill Orders

A prospect asks you for your resume plus your hourly rate. Or they request a client list and your product's price. Maybe they want to know how much you charge for one service.

Do you provide these answers? If you do, you're just filling orders. You have turned your products or services into commodities that they will compare to others and if your price is higher, you're out of contention.

If you're thinking "that's the what my customers expect and if I don't give it to them I have no chance of getting the business" then you've allowed them to put you in the position of filling orders.

I'm not just telling you to do something I don't do myself. I'm writing about this because of my recent experience.

I was asked to provide a resume to prove that I have long experience as a full-service Orals consultant (Orals are presentations by government contractors to government selection boards). I was also asked to provide my hourly rate. I replied that I would invest my own time and effort to discuss their needs with them. I would then prepare a consulting and coaching plan that would get them to their objectives, and I would provide a project fee that would reflect what it takes to implement the plan. I emphasized that my contribution is not time; it is my years of experience, my expertise and my intellectual property.

Three times they came back asking me for an hourly rate so they could evaluate me against other potential consultant/coaches. And each time I reiterated my offer to meet with them, customize a plan and give them a project fee.

Finally, they agreed to use my proposed approach in their decision-making process. But they did not talk to me or ask me for the plan, which I offered to them in advance of an agreement.

So it seems that they would prefer to make a decision on the person they are going to entrust their future contract win to based on an hourly rate and a resume. If they decide to hire me, I will be delighted to have the contract and I know I will help them.

If they don't hire me, I am still happy that I offered them a solution rather than filling an order. Over time I will get better at this approach and I know I will start winning more work.

How do you sell solutions rather than filling orders? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Leaders-Speak, Refresh, Speak Again

How many times do you listen to a song? The first few times you listen to get the overall sense of it. Once you decide you like it, you listen to it repeatedly to get more of the words. As you listen to it even more, the details of the composition become clearer and clearer.

You're not surprised by the fact that it takes many listenings for you to really internalize the song. So why would you expect your executives, your employees, your industry partners and others you speak with to get any message you deliver from a one-time presentation of it?

I am not advocating boring repetition, or speaking simply to people like you might speak to a young child. I am advocating respect for your audiences and their capabilities. You do this and help them hear your complete message by speaking creatively.

Creative speaking means including a wide variety of interesting content in every speech and presentation. Appeal to both the right and left sides of the human brain. Illuminate your key points with several different presentations of it.

I've been calling this variety of content 'leading materials'. You can use survey results, visuals, props, participation, sound, statistics, song and movie titles, sports analogies and stories.

If you're talking about dealing with a major change in the organization, think about a well-known movie that was about upheaval and how people dealt with it. Remind the audience about those characters--the crisis, the obstacles and what they did to overcome them.

Next, show some visuals--photos in particular--of people overcoming big challenges. Share why you admire the people in the photo. Ask the audience to imagine themselves in a similar situation. What would they do and how would they feel?

You could also ask them to solve a puzzle that you've provided on a handout. There are few instructions and there's a prize for the first one correctly solved. These characteristics are similar to those found in a situation that demands change.

After these three different presentations of change situations, you get to your key point, which is urging the audience to be flexible, adaptable, creative and personally strong in the face of the challenges that lie ahead.

How will you speak, refresh and speak again in your next speech or presentation? If you need help, give me a call or send an email.

Above Average Leadership

"Above average"-- what does that mean to you? Does it mean you settle for 'good enough'? Does it mean you make decisions based on only on price? Does it mean that you opt out of hard things because 'you're too busy'?

You know as well as I do that above average people don't do any of these things.

Above average leaders say to me: "Susan, we win a lot of business, but I think we can do even better." Above average leaders say to me "I struggled to get where I am and now I want to help others so they can succeed too." Above average leaders say to me "I want to improve my skills in the same workshop as my top staff people so they know I take this seriously."

I listened to a teleseminar given by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen and I was struck by their frequent references to the days when they were broke and struggling. They also lavishly praised the people they continue to learn from. They can both say "our futures are paid for" yet they also say "there's more to learn, and to continue to deserve our leadership positions, we will always be learning."

Recently a CEO told me they "don't want any seminars. What we are doing is working just fine." They are stuck on a path of average, of good enough. Getting to be above average isn't about wanting, it's about recognizing what's needed and doing that.

What steps are you taking today to become above average?

Above Average Leadership

"Above average"-- what does that mean to you? Does it mean you settle for 'good enough'? Does it mean you make decisions based on only on price? Does it mean that you opt out of hard things because 'you're too busy'?

You know as well as I do that above average people don't do any of these things.

Above average leaders say to me: "Susan, we win a lot of business, but I think we can do even better." Above average leaders say to me "I struggled to get where I am and now I want to help others so they can succeed too." Above average leaders say to me "I want to improve my skills in the same workshop as my top staff people so they know I take this seriously."

I listened to a teleseminar given by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen and I was struck by their frequent references to the days when they were broke and struggling. They also lavishly praised the people they continue to learn from. They can both say "our futures are paid for" yet they also say "there's more to learn, and to continue to deserve our leadership positions, we will always be learning."

Recently a CEO told me they "don't want any seminars. What we are doing is working just fine." They are stuck on a path of average, of good enough. Getting to be above average isn't about wanting, it's about recognizing what's needed and doing that.

What steps are you taking today to become above average?

Leadership Confidence or Arrogance?

Alan Weiss defined the difference between confidence and arrogance in his November segment of "The Writing on the Wall." He says confidence is the honest-to-god belief that you can help others and arrogance is the honest-to-god belief that you have nothing left to learn yourself.

Have you ever said to a consultant or coach "I've been doing things this way for years and I do okay"? Some even say "we win/accomplish/grow the business a lot."That fits Alan's definition of arrogance to a 'T.' "Doing okay" by definition means that improvement is needed, yet you don't see it that way.

Doing okay is at best 50-50--would you support a professional sports team that is 50-50 year after year? Doing okay is never getting promoted, or being asked to assume bigger responsibilities or achieve higher goals. Okay is only routine, nothing special, same old, same old.

Leaders are in the optimal position to demonstrate confidence by realizing that they themselves can always be learning. Leaders who work with coaches in order to achieve continuous, small increments of improvements are admirable role-models. Leaders who encourage others to seek and pursue improvement themselves pass on the confidence that comes with always learning.

What do you think about confidence? Share your thoughts through our comment link.