Great Speaking Coach

From Zero to Speaking in One Day

"I really don't know what to say" the speaker said. He'd given many, many briefings to military audiences over his long career but now he had to be front and center for a prospective customer. He knew his old military style wasn't appropriate and felt stuck--and nervous.

To start helping him, I told him to think of the slides only as points on a map. Each slide represented a topic he needed to speak about. One or two key words would further define the topic. Then he needed to speak from his inner knowledge, with passion and authenticity. The audience would respond to him personally, not to the flat, fact-filled slides.

He began making notes at 8 AM. He stood up for his first practice an hour later. Not bad for a first start. I gave him a few ideas, he re-worked his notes and practiced again. Over the course of 6 hours, he repeated this sequence of practice-revise-practice several times. By the afternoon, he nailed it.

He then did a rehearsal for the rest of the team. First one was a little tentative, the second one was confident and compelling. We gave him a round of applause and we could see his sense of accomplishment in his eyes and posture.

When you are stuck--can't think what to say, nervous and self-conscious, generally uncomfortable--just begin someplace. You won't find relief from delay, more and more thinking, or falling back on writing a detailed script. You will find relief from standing up, speaking out loud and hearing yourself imporve through incremental changes over time. A huge amount of improvement will come from a day's worth of repeated effort. You can go from zero--the fright of a blank page--to speaking with confidence in one day.

How have you overcome "speaker's block?" Share your favorite tip in our comment box.

Polish Your Content Rather than Your Gestures

Get a good, solid image in your mind of a favorite speaker. Maybe it was at a business conference, an internal company gathering, or at a community/faith community or public event. You remember your feelings well, even months or years later.

What specifically sticks in your mind about your experience? Most people remember their feelings, especially feelings of hope, that the speaker touched an internal nerve, and that they felt rejuvenated afterwards. The stickiness of this speaker comes from content, not from gestures or movements. Audiences do not care about physical qualities unless the speech or presentation content is boring and the gestures and movement are highly irritating.

So why would you ask a speaking or presentation skills coach to deliver a workshop that focuses on gestures, movement and the perfect place to stand? Even worse is using video as part of presentations skills coaching. The video puts too much emphasis on these unimportant elements and makes people feel badly about themselves.

When you need confident and polished presenters to represent your company, devote your coaching or training to polishing the content. Encourage everyone to speak with passion from their inner knowledge. Have them completely understand what the audience cares about and make that the focus on their speech or presentation. If a speaker has any distracting gestures, they will usually fade away the more he or she gets deep into meaning. And when the audience is mesmerized by what the speaker is saying, they won't notice gestures good or bad.

Invest in your people and their content, not the shallow qualities of gestures, movement and standing. When the speaker touches deep inside the audience, that's memorable and sticky.

What else would you add to the list of unimportant speaker qualities? Post your ideas in our comment box.

Deadly Slides Aren't Worth the Time You Spend on Them

Three wonderfully articulate professionals spoke on a panel to an appreciative audience. The topic was mentoring--so powerful for both the mentor and the protege and valuable for their organizations. And personal. So why-oh-why did each of them have 5 or 6 very wordy slides?

I don't understand the thinking that underlies this practice. Why do you have to have slides every time you speak? Your audiences will listen and comprehend your points if you craft your speaking notes well and practice/rehearse your delivery. In fact, spending time writing slides takes time away from your practicing and rehearsing.

Practices will do more for you than wordy slides:

• You'll hear yourself speak
• You'll hear whether your ideas are understandable
• You'll hear how your words flow
• You'll feel in your gut whether you're going hook the audience with your attention-getting opening
• You'll feel the right sequence, the arc of the story and the impact of the finish

Putting abbreviated speaking notes on slides and projecting them diminishes the audience experience:

• They have to split their focus between you and the slides
• A part of their brains is devoted to evaluating where you are "on the slides"
• Their attention to either is diluted
• There's no room for any emotional response

Slides can add humor, images can evoke emotional or creative responses, and a well-done slide deck leaves the audience feeling good (not bored or tired). But wordy-slides provide no benefits and are not worth the time the speaker spends on them.

Speakers, please use slides wisely. There are times when your own powerful speaking is all that's needed to impact your audience. Know those times and forget the slides. Practice and rehearse instead. Your audience will thank you for it.

When have you skipped the slides and realized the audience was really enjoying your talk? Share your story through the comment box.

Audiences Seek Sensory Excitement

What happens when you read "Her voice was velvety soft." You feel velvet in your hands and you caress it. Even if this image is fleeting, you react as if you were actually touching velvet for a moment.

Compare that description to "her voice was pleasing." You don't experience any sensory response. While you understand the meaning of pleasing, it doesn't trigger a sensory response.

As a business speaker, you need to understand that the brain responds to written or spoken descriptions about the senses--taste, smell, touch/movement, hearing, and seeing--as if the listener were experiencing those senses at the moment.

"Company growth was strong" vs. "We surged ahead as if leading the pack of a marathon." The word 'surged' is extremely active and the word 'marathon' communicates highly excited crowds and competition. Putting them together invigorates the listener's senses of movement, hearing and seeing.

Is it worth your time to craft ideas in order to generate sensory responses in your audiences? When you want to be remembered and change people's behavior, yes it is. Your metaphors will stick, the senses you've tapped into will linger and the desire to feel that way again will lead to new behavior. Your presentation can be a catalyst for change.

What words or phrases do your senses respond to? Share your ideas about stimulating the senses of your audiences through our comment box.

The Real You Emerges Through Preparation

How well does speaking off-the-cuff reflect the real you? Extemporaneous remarks reflect your mood of the moment. Is that moment representative of the real you? Not usually. I believe the real you is a person who has developed over time, taking into account education, experience, failures and successes, thoughtful contemplation.

When you prepare your speaking content in advance you share the real, authentic you and your audience appreciates that you have invested in them. Off-the-cuff speaking reflects disdain for the audience. The message you send is "You're not important enough to me to have spent any time preparing." And once they believe they are unimportant to you, they do not listen.

Don't fool yourself into believing that preparation is somehow artificial and not the 'real you.' In fact, no preparation does reveal a side of you that you probably don't want to reveal--thoughtlessness and lack of appreciation for the audience. Preparation reveals caring and valuing the audience. There is nothing more authentic than that.

What would you add to the discussion about preparation?

Pictures Are Worth More than Many Words

We've got increasingly sophisticated digital tools that make creativity easy. So why do you and too many business speakers still overload slide decks with bullet points and complicated graphics?

Before you write your next slide deck, stop and picture the audience, the topic and how they relate to each other. Presumably you'll be speaking to an audience who knows a good deal about the topic and is eager to hear a fresh perspective or new thinking about that topic. You--your thinking, the connections you make, your call-to-action--are what will make them pay attention and appreciate the time they spent in your audience. Slides packed with bullets or dense graphics will make them wonder why you didn't just email them the deck to study at their convenience.

Make your presentations satisfying for your audiences:

• Use images wherever possible--and more are possible than you might think.
• Put your key word or topic phrase into a search tool and you'll get more images than you could ever use.
• Pick one--any one will do- and use the image to prompt you to start talking.

Spend more time practicing what you are going to say than you spend on your slides:

• If you use bullets to help you remember what you want to say, you're cheating!
• As the speaker, it is your obligation to know your oral content cold so you can be fully present for the audience.
• Make handwritten note cards if you need help remembering your train of thought.

What other tips do you have for using images rather than bullets in your presentations?

Business Speakers-Impact not Too Much Information

Business speakers, please pack your speeches and presentations with impact, not information. What's the difference?

1. Facts and figures are too much information.

• Instead set up 'contrast and compare' with your numbers. How do today's number compare to last year's or to expectations for the future?
• Put them in context-what does $1 trillion mean to the average person's pocket?

2. Quotes can convey your point succinctly

• Quote someone whose name the audience will recognize
• Interpret the quote to connect yourself to the idea expressed

3. Humor is memorable

• Not jokes
• If you can't speak humorously, use a cartoon or a funny photo to make the audience chuckle

What would you add to this list of ideas to make an impact as a business speaker? Share your ideas in our comment box.

Sometimes You Have to Dump What you Love

I'm talking here about content in your speech or presentation. Have you ever just loved an idea, torqued yourself into a pretzel to include it in your presentation and found out later than the audience did not get it or like it?

If you are really Putting the Audience First--you are, aren't you?--you must let the idea you love go. Why? Because when you confuse or alienate the audience it's nearly impossible to erase that feeling as they recount their experience afterwards. Do you want people to think "Wow, that was great, I'm so glad I was there" or "I didn't get that example. What was it doing there? I thought he/she was going to be so much better"?

This is a hard one for many of my clients and I understand. I have ideas that I love too, and that I've been loathe to eliminate from a particular speech or presentation. Yet when I've done it for the good of the audience, I've always been happy. When audience members thank you so much for your insight, your ideas and your call-to-action, you feel gratified.

The ideas you love are likely to be great; just not appropriate for a particular audience. Save the ideas you love and look for other opportunities to use them. The best speakers keep an idea file, adding to it and referring to it over the years. This helps them keep their speeches fresh and targeted to each audience. For example, if you have a metaphor that would work with an audience of IT professionals, but not so much for an audience of retailers, having it your file allows you to use at the right moment.

I'd love to hear some examples of when you dumped ideas you love and it made a difference for that audience. Share them through our comment box.

Wow, you are really stretching my brain here!

My client sent this note and concluded with "Don't stop!" Here's a professional, long-time practitioner in his field. He regularly provides training to others. He's excited by the challenges I'm giving him as he prepares his presentation for his industry's huge annual international conference.

What a difference he will make to his audience at this conference. Because he is stretching his brain, he will stretch the brains of the attendees. He'll be challenging their assumptions through his own presentation, and not just by telling them that they should behave differently. His own presentation will serve as a powerful role model for tackling the effort he'll be talking about.

Do you ask your audiences to take a close look at how they do what they do, and then to identify how they could modify their behavior and work towards a better outcome? You should be doing this, of course, because that's what people want from speakers. It's not enough to talk about your call-to-action, however. You must talk the talk through your speech or presentation. Credibility sells. If you are the same old boring, "that's the way everyone does it" speaker, your call-to-action will fall on deaf ears.

Take this speaker's advice -- stretch your brain and don't stop! You'll have the pleasure of appreciative audiences and reap the rewards of talking the talk.