Great Speaking Coach

Don't Just Speak About Change. Show It.

You're planning physical changes, such as a new office or plant layout or an entirely new building;

You know you need to speak about these changes and your first instinct is to explain them. "Here's where we are, here's where we're going, here are the architect’s drawings and a scale model that shows how it will look." Simple, fact-based, logical, no fuss or muss. People will show up at the new place on the right day and keep working.

I don't believe the conventional wisdom that people hate change. Most people know they adapt to changes all the time. I believe they hate not knowing how they'll FEEL about the change. Human beings feel first, think later. So when you've got to speak about physical change, talk first about
their feelings. And use detailed, hands-on three-dimensional models to help them feel it first.

An example of how this worked to create results beyond expectations comes from Sur-Seal, based in Cincinnati. When the company believed that a redesign of the factory floor would help them achieve their strategic goals, they built a model of it with Legos. Included in the model were all the people who work there. As Mick Wilz, director of enterprise excellence, moved pieces around to show the planned changes, employees began to make suggestions for even better improvements. By the time the factory was remodeled, everyone had participated and felt excited about their future in the
new space.

For the many of you who have offices not factory floors, take a moment to imagine about how this approach could lead to better communication, use of space, meetings with clients and customers, and internal gatherings.

Don’t just speak about physical change, involve the stakeholders and show it.

 

 

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Are Your Speeches Insanely Different?

Learning from Mick Wilz

Respect-You Want It but Do You Give It?

I've coached business speakers to share their values by telling stories that illuminate how they live their personal and organizational values. Nothing proves your commitment to values like relating how you've acted on that commitment. Actions speak far louder than words.

Right now the value of respect is drawing my attention in my conversations and interactions with others.

Respect must be a two-way street or it doesn't exist. That means that you're as completely committed to giving it as you are to desiring it.

Want others to respect your beliefs? You must respect theirs. This doesn't mean you have to agree, or change your own, it means that you listen to what they say and then thank them warmly for sharing. That's respect.

Want others to respect your efforts? You must respect theirs. While you may not value the outcome, it is incumbent on you to appreciate and value their effort. When someone tells you how hard they worked, give them validation.

Want others to respect your needs? You must respect their needs too. At one end of the spectrum of respecting other's needs is taking action. However, you can acknowledge their needs even if you don't take action.This is accomplished by simply saying that you have heard what they need and you regret that you can't meet those needs.

Notice that the common theme here is responsiveness. Saying something, nicely, is resepct. Ignoring the other person because you're uncomfortable responding is a total lack of respect. "No thanks" is far better than silence.

How have you given respect in uncomfortable situations? Share your stories in our comment box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Increase Persuasion by Understanding the Rules of Human Brains

Playing cards? Football? Board games? Whatever games you play, you increase your chances of winning when you know and play by the rules. Add strategic thinking to the rules and you're a powerhouse.

Human brains work by certain rules as well. Dr. John Medina wrote a great book, Brain Rules, that explains in laymen's terms the rules by which the human brain works and plays. And several of them will serve you well as you think strategically about your persuasive speeches.

The ATTENTION rule: we don't pay attention to boring things. How often do you plot your logical argument by listing facts that seem to you to add up to a certain point of view. You think this is persuasion. The brains in your audience, however, will think this is boring, and won't pay attention. So forget your facts and logic.

The SENSORY INTEGRATION rule: Stimulate more of the senses. Hearing and vision are the obvious two senses that are stimulated by a speaker. The audience watches the speaker and hears their words. When the speaker taps into the other senses--touch, smell and taste--the human brains in the audience are engaged even more. When you speak, give the audience something to touch. Ask them to write a few words on a paper about their own future actions, for example. The touch of the pen and paper combine with the sight and hearing to increase the impact of your message.

Smell and taste can be employed in smaller setttings. The aroma and food or snacks must be congruent with the persuasive goal. If you're persuading people to take leadership roles perhaps you evoke leadership memories with the aroma of french fries and hot dogs (typical of sports venues). If possible, have these as the lunch or snack and let people talk about their experiences as leaders or on the team while eating. Then move on to your call-to-action about leadership.

The EXPLORATION rule: We are powerful and natural explorers. Humans developed from lives in surroundings that puzzled them. There was no science to explain physical phenomena or behavior. While we've got lots of explanations now, we still thrive in environments that pose many questions and challenges. When you lay your arguments out with facts and logic, you cut off all opportunities for exploration. Instead, use stories that include the characters' exploration for meaning, understanding and solutions to stimulate your audience's natural exploratory instincts. When they find their own answers, they'll be persuaded to take action.

Persuasion results from elevating powerful emotions which are then rationalized or justified by facts. Emotions always must come first. Not being boring, stimulating the senses and tapping into the natural desire to explore all are means of elevating audiences emotions. If you need a ratio to help you collect and organize your content, think 2 emotional taps for each fact.

How have you been a successful persuasive speaker? Share your tips in our comment box.

 

Persuade through Emotion Not Information

Persuasion seems like the holy grail: if you do it well, your audiences will jump out of their seats and take the action you want them to. Be successful! Work harder! Buy more! Change their behavior!

All of these outcomes are possible with wonderful persuasive speeches. What makes a wonderful persuasive speech?

First rule: persuasion does NOT come from logical, step-by-step, fact-based constructs. People don't act because some one adds it all up for them.

Most importantly, please understand what persuasion is. Someone is persuaded because it's in their own self-interest to behave differently. And you must know what interests reside in your specific audience. Not everyone has the same self-interests.

I've found that understanding the psychology of persuasion helped me and my clients reach the goal of persuasion.

Robert Cialdini, PhD writes about the psychology of persuasion as "as a short-cut to a decision." People are persuaded when others they see as like themselves choose certain actions. So you prepare for your persuasive speech by collecting stories about when you and people like the audience have faced similar options and made certain choices. You tell about the obstacles they faced, the steps they took to overcome those obstacles and the satisfying results. The audience then feels reassured that they can take similar action. This is called 'social proof'.

Cialdini adds to this concept of social proof a couple of other steps that you can incorporate into your persuasive speech: commitment and consistency. Once you've told the story, you ask each audience member to decide on an action and commit to themselves that they'll take that action. You increase the strength of that commitment by pausing your speech and giving them the time to write it down.

You further increase your persuasive impact by inviting each person to tell someone else what they committed to doing. People like to be known as consistent--someone who keeps their word. When they tell another person what they've committed to do, this increases the likelihood they will do it.

When you do this, though, you must remember the essence of persuasion--acting in their own self-interest. So be sure that what you ask them to commit to is in fact in their own self-interest.

What stories and steps to create commitment and consistency have you found effective in your persuasive speeches? Share your examples in our comment box.

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Color Yourself an Engaging Speaker

Are Your Speeches Insanely Different?

No Longer a Need for Informative Speech or Presentation

Color Yourself an Engaging Speaker

"You can't have too much color in your speeches, but you sure can have too much black and white. Facts and steps are b & w; stories are color." Susan Trivers

"I'm a business speaker," you think.  "People expect black and white." I agree that audiences have those expectations and I also say that you don't have to meet them. Expectations are simply habits born of repetition. Change the way you speak and your audiences will change their expectations.

How do you color yourself an engaging speaker?

1) Start writing/crafting your speech or presentation by listing all your stories that are connected in any way to your call-to-action. This list gets you focused on the most powerful source of color--stories about how people were confronted by a crisis and what they did to overcome the obstacles and achieve their goal. There's Action! Suspense! Dialogue! Emotions! All of these constitute color.

2) Make a smaller list of facts, steps and other black and white content. Research, trends, policies, forecasts, sale figures. These are all black and white content. Keep it short, including only the essentials.

3) Line up your colorful content in a way that leads to your call-to-action. (See my Write a Speech Now model for guidance.) For every 2 colorful content pieces insert one black and white piece. Keep this ratio of 2 color to 1 black and white.

Begin with a question that gets the audience involved: "Remember a time when you felt "I'll never get through this"" and then tell your own story about such a time. Continue with another colorful piece, then mention a black and white piece, and so on.

While this may seem artificial as you're writing it, once you speak through it you'll hear the rhythm developing. You can add diagloue, a lot of vocal effects and some questions as you move along. All of this variety keeps the audience engaged.

Your audiences love color and fast movement; ups and downs; surprises; challenges; and the unexpected. Speak with lots of color and a little black and white. Color yourself an engaging, edgy and admired speaker.

What stories have you told that engaged your audiences? Share your experiences in our comment box.

 

Stand Out! That's What Zig Ziglar Did

What stands out for me about Zig Ziglar was that he stood out! And the most memorable part was when he went to the edge of the stage, knelt down, and spoke directly to the audience.

Here was a man of the highest stature, with many tools at his disposal for creating bells and whistles that could knock your socks off, and he relied on this humble action to help him stand out.

There will never be another Zig. Don't copy him: his movements, his stories and his quotes. What you can learn from him though is to figure out how YOU can stand out.

What is authentic to you? Zig's story about how he got started selling door-to-door worked because it was authentic to him: honest, hard-working, modest. If you have an advanced degree from a prestigious institution, you can't pretend you came from humble beginnings. You can, however, talk about what you did to stand out from all the others who studied at the same prestigious institution, had lots of benefits and early success and other lessons you learned.

Quotes are a favorite of many speakers, but I'm frustrated by how many speakers think all they have to do is drop a quote and they've become memorable. Zig used quotes that reflected him through and through. And he examined their meaning in his context and how they could be meaningful to his audiences. You can do the same with quotes: find those that fit in your context, and go deep into them to help your audiences get their own meaning from them.

A executive speech coaching client asked me how to use quotes, since that's a favorite technique of the CEO of his company. Here are three ways:

1) State a quote, then tell a story about how the meaning of the quote influenced your actions.

2) Combine a quote with an analogy. What is the quote like?

3) Follow or preceed a quote with one fact. Facts don't persuade by themselves, but in combination with a quote that has emotional content, the fact becomes more sticky.

Every person who aspires to success, as defined by them, should be thankful that Zig Ziglar shared his grace and widsom with the world. Thank you, Zig.

 

 

Props: 3-D Impact for Business Speakers

"What do you mean by props?" is a question many business speakers ask when they study my Write a Speech Now visual.

Props include any physical object that is 3-dimensional and that you and/or the audience can hold. Here are some props options for you to use in your speeches and presentations:

1) Objects you handle that demonstrate a concept or process. A recent speaker brought a box of blocks with him to use as he described how a process was assembled from a groups of separate ideas. By holding the 3-dimensional blocks and assembling them as he spoke he engaged the audience completely. Even though we didn't touch the blocks ourselves, we felt the size and shape of them and we felt the phsyical experience of building. This would never happen with slides, even animated ones.

How can you use physical objects to educate your audiences about how a process was built?

2) Pens and paper. Gift logo pens are ubiquitous and usually distributed and never mentioned. You can boost the stickiness of your ideas and your company by incorporating the use of your gift pen in your speech or presentation. If you don't give gift pens, you'll want to do this because of the stickiness factor.

Provide a sheet of paper that your audience can write on. Even in these digital times, people will write with pen on paper if you give meaning to it. The sheet can be designed with your company logo and your name and contact info but keep these marketing elements small. In the main white space include two or three opportunities for writing.

(i) You say: "Pick up your (company name) pen and write three steps you need to take to accomplish X (relevant to this audience)." Give them lines or blank space to write.

(ii) Design a simple crossword puzzle related to one section of your speech or presentation. Tell them they'll hear the answers to the various clues you've provided and to write them down when they hear them.

(iii) Using a pie chart or bar graph, give people a few moments to shade in the sections in a way that represents how much or how well they do something. Give them a scale for guidance. This is a powerful way for them to get insight into their behavior, both good and not so good.

The act of writing on paper strengthens the impact of your ideas because they are engaging the sense of touch/movement along with seeing and hearing. The more senses, the more stickiness.

What simple games or exercises can you use to engage your audiences' sense of touch and movement?

 3) Physical objects related to an analogy. When I speak about networking I focus on the concept of the net. I use fish tank nets and fill them with various objects to make several points. I recently spoke about deception and opened with some images of magic. I used a few props to engage the audience with something familiar and fun before getting more serious about how deception can hurt. With my "One Life Many Journeys" keynote I want everyone to realize they can learn from the many paths they travel in their lives to create and strengthen their one life and I use a few props that relate to my various journeys.

What analogies do you use and what props reflect those analogies?

BONUS PROP TIP) Your product or a model of your product. I'm surprised by the many business speakers who show pictures of their products rather than the actual product. If your product is too large to carry around, invest in a small model of it. Several years ago one client's product was a training program installed on an iPod. I showed the speaker how to hold up an iPod and then emphasize the value of that by also holding up a 500-page printed manual as a comparison. The audience really got the point. This particular technique is now outdated; however, think about other ways to use physical objects as a means of comparison.

Share your stories about how you've used props in your speeches and presentations. Post your ideas in our comment box.

 

 

Surprise! The Low Value of Too Many Steps

You've crafted 5, 7 or 10 "Steps to Success" or "How to Change Your Life" or "Achieve Your Goals." You're passionate about the value of your approach and enthusiastically share it with your audiences. 

Have you asked your audiences how they really perceive their value?

Over my decade+ coaching business speakers I've implored them to keep lists short, preferably with no more than 3 points, steps or concepts. My experience shows that when people hear a speaker talk about 5, 7 or 10 steps they don't hear even the first one. This is because they know they won't be able to keep that many ideas in their mind, so why bother at all.

Now I've read an article called The Presenter's Paradox which adds another perspective to the question of how much should you tell? Researchers focused on how audiences calculate value and they've found that the preponderance of audiences calculate value by the process of averaging, rather than the process of addition. This means that lower value ideas pull down the average value of all ideas.

Audiences will average your list of 3 powerful steps or concepts or they'll average your list of 5,7 or 10. If any of those 5-10 ideas are perceived to have less value, the value of the whole list will be dragged down.

Smart speakers will craft 3 high-value steps or ideas or concepts and no more. They'll use stories about how others have benefitted from adotping these 3 steps and they'll paint vibrant pictures for the audience about their future based on the 3 steps. With only 3 steps, powerfully spoken, your audience's calcuated average will remain high. If you have any more steps and some of them seem less valuable, the value of all of them will be diminished.

Please tell your story about the impact of 3 steps compared to 5, 7 or 10. What do your audiences say about how they value the 3? Share your story in our comment box.

 

So Much to Say, So Little Time

"I have so much to say and only 15 (or 20, 30 or 40) minutes for my speech or presentation! How will I get it all in?"

I love this question, because it shows the speaker's enthusiasm and passion for the topic. He or she is eager to inspire and inform their audiences about an idea or concept or project that's near and dear to their hearts.

What are my recommendations?

1) First, you do have to Put the Audience First. This means that the speech/presentation can't be everything you love about the topic--it must be what the audience wants to hear about your topic. When we're passionate about something, it's hard to recognize that not everyone feels that way (yes, really!) and that as speakers we need to think first about the audience's capacity and level of interest.

2) Less is often more. For those of us with deep knowledge and a passion for sharing it, it's so easy to think "Well, I have to say this and I have to say that and I really must tell them...and on and on." Yet the audience can't absorb in a few minutes what it's taken you years to gather and make meaningful. So once you've answered the question "What does the audience care about?" you need to streamline or select from your vast repetoire just the perfect tidbits that inspire them, and let them come to you for more at a different time.

3) Craft your speech or presentation like it's a work of art. Painters or chefs or landscapers have thousands of colors, ingredients and plants at their disposal. Yet they select carefully in order to craft an outstanding piece of work. Think like an artist, chef or gardener and be selective, looking for a composition that makes a powerful impression from a small amount of material.

Audiences always appreciate a speaker who shares their passion but briefly, gives them a taste of the topic, and doesn't rush to cram too much into the allotted time. Create a powerful work of art from highlights and your audiences will be asking for more.

Have an example about a time when you realized that less is more? Share it in our comment box.

Revisions Boost Your Speaking Confidence

Yes, most people are short on time and just want to get the speech or presentation done already. So the thought of revising is painful. You'll change your mind, though, when you realize how easy it is and much your confidence is increased when you take the time to revise.

First, though, what's my definition of 'revising'? I think of revising as a once or twice review of your content. You stand up and talk through your ideas to hear how they flow. When you hear something that is off track, awkward, makes you feel stuck, is hard to remember, then you know it doesn't work and you'll revise it. Do this two times at most. Why? If you don't limit yourself to two revisions, you'll fall into the rabbit hole of endless tweaking and never have time to practice and rehearse. The most fabulous "perfect" content delivered poorly is wasted.

Audiences experience your speech or presentation on a large scale not a minute one.

Your revisions should be large scale. Your biggest ideas, organization of your content, order of your Key Points. Use your Write a Speech Now worksheet as a guide to your out-loud talk through. Make your adjustments, talk through again. Then you'll be confident that the audience will be engaged, able to follow you and embrace your call-to-action.

Confidence with your content selection and organization is a huge component of overall speaking confidence. When you believe in your content, you stop worrying about little bits and pieces. Use two revisions to strengthen your belief in your content and enjoy the confidence that follows.