Great Speaking Coach

Reduce Your Fear of Speaking - 3 Tips

Are you happy to talk about others' contributions and achievements, but not about your own? Do you allow yourself to make mistakes doing your work, but think speakers must never make mistakes? Have you thrown together a slide deck just hours before a presentation, then felt stiff and uncomfortable in front of your audience?

These are the expressions of fear about speaking and presenting that I hear all the time. And because of these fears, people refuse to speak and thus deny themselves the benefits that speaking and presenting generate.

There is good news for fearful speakers. These fears and others like them can be diminished with some simple, focused steps.

1 - Audiences love it when speakers and presenters talk about them (the audience) and tell relevant stories about other people like them. Speakers should not put themselves in the starring role or fill their speeches and presentations with "I". Those of you who like to talk about others will find the speaking platform very comfortable if you do this during your speeches and presentations.

2 - Audiences really crave authenticity--a sense that the speaker is being real and the same person they would meet in the hallway. Everyone knows that real people make mistakes. It's what they do about the mistake that's important. Just as you would do in a conversation, if you make a mistake during  your speech or presentation, you simply correct yourself and move on.

3 -Throwing slides together minutes or hours before you speak is a terrible mistake and one that you can prevent from ever happening again. First, reduce the number of slides, and the content on them. One slide for 5 minutes, with one image or two bullets is plenty. Then you speak about it from your deep expertise. Second, schedule time in your calendar for your slide writing and do not give up that time. Your audience deserves that amount of commitment from you. If you stand firm on your prep time, others will respect you.

Post your review of these ideas about overcoming fear of speaking and share your own success stories through our comment link.

Stand Out Speaking--Why Be Different?

Executive women listened to and participated with me in Speakonomics! (TM)Four Little Words You Must Know to Make More Money. Afterwards several of them complained about what I modeled for them.

Their complaint? They want to speak and present just like everyone else, but a little bit better. And I showed them speaking and presentation techniques that are not like what everyone else does.

Standing out from the crowd is what gets you ahead and makes you more money. If your fear of being different is stronger than your desire to get ahead, then by all means just do what you see others doing. You'll get the same results, but you'll be comfortable.

When you really, really want to leap over your competition you must plan for that. Part of your plan is to figure out how to stand out from the crowd. Think Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Bill Gates.

Better yet, think of stand out women: Oprah, Carly Fiorina, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. These women and the others who come to your mind are not just a bit better than their peers--they stand out big time.

Which of my unusual suggestions did my audience object to? Asking the audience to put their hands in the air. Embedding 40 seconds of music into a photo. Suggesting that they use video of people coming and going into their office buildings rather than a still and sterile office building photo. Providing simple writing exercises for audience engagement.

You don't have to be outrageous on the platform. You do have to be appealing and engaging and create stickiness. Those results will bring you huge return from every speech or presentation. The higher the return on memorability, the higher your status, and eventually the more money you will make.

If you are worried about being different on your own platform, send your objections to me through the comment link.

Public Speaking - Grab Your Audience through Their Senses

Humans have 5 senses, as we all know: hearing, vision, touch, taste and smell. Studies of how the human brain works have proven that when several of the senses are stimulated simultaneously, that person's capacity for creativity and learning increases. It's as if 1+1=3.

Business speakers can make this research work for them by going deep into the senses of hearing, vision and touch. Use visuals that cover a wide range including photos, graphics, cartoons, video, many colors, and multiple dimensions.

Sounds that stimulate the sense of hearing (beyond the speaker's voice) include ambient sounds of a workplace; the sounds of nature such as water flowing and birds chirping; airplanes, trains and cars; music of many types; IT device alerts; movies and video games. You would include just a few seconds of any of these at strategic points to open the brain to learning more. As Alicia Anderson of Attache Services said after my Speakonomics! (TM) keynote: "I will use audience and video in my next speech."

Touch is about movement, and using paper exercises that require pens, and perhaps some promotional gifts. Give your audience a pen with your company logo on it, and ask them to complete a short puzzle or quiz or list with it. That pen and the points you make through the exercise will become very sticky for those people.

Ann Morgan-Jones is committed to using sensory stimulation to touch people's hearts in her next presentation. She said that adult learners, such as her Capital Hospice staff will learn by things that relate to them.

How do you grab your audiences through their senses? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Public Speaking - Boosting Your Speakers Ego

You've prepared: audience research, well-designed speech or presentation, audience participation, a few great slides, Yet the audience was quiet as a stone, giving few facial expressions or heads nodding as you spoke. You leave feeling very down and questioning yourself.

This happens even to the best business speakers. If you have any insecurities, it feels even worse. What to do to recover?

The most important thing is not to blame the audience--because you have no control over them so you can never, ever make an audience be want you want it to be.

Focus on what you can control--yourself. But don't beat yourself up and make blanket statements such as "I was just terrible."

Ask these yourself three questions:

1. What could I have missed in my audience research? Did I ask the right questions, did I understand the answers, did I assume more interest in my topic than I should have?
2. Did I put myself in the audiences heads as I designed and prepared my speech? Does my expertise get in the way of clearly seeing how the design and content work with my audiences?
3. Was I rested enough and did I clear my mind of other things early enough that I could be in the moment with my audience?

Use your answers to guide you in the days preceding your next speech or presentation.

I think the most important idea to focus on is the future. Let the provide a lesson or two and then put it behind you.

Share your tips for boosting yourself after a presentation that didn't go as well as you would have liked by posting through our comment link.

Public Speaking - How is Speaking Like Driving?

Clutching your brand new driver's license in your hot teenage hand, you feel triumphant. You call yourself a driver and you hit the road.

Then about 10 years later you realize that now you are a driver--it took years of actual experience, facing all the big and little things that happen when your'e behind the wheel to grow from someone who is licensed to drive to someone who is an experienced driver.

Speaking is like that. Learn some rules or speaking practices and implement them. You're speaking but you have a long way to go to call yourself an experienced speaker. You have to face all kinds of audiences and the various challenges of speaking venues, expectations, busy schedules, the ebb and flow of your passion and increasing amounts of knowledge. After 10 years of speaking, you will have the right to call yourself an experienced speaker--and more importantly, others will be asking you to speak.

Just like driving improves with practice facing many and varied obstacles, so speaking improves with each speech--if you recognize that great speakers get there by traveling a road.Too many business speakers think they've "got it" when they do what everyone else does--no imagination, no deviation from the norm, nothing to shake up the tired old habits.

Focus on your passion and your inner knowledge and then zero in on the answer to the question "What does the audience care about?" Then design your speech or presentation to answer that question in creative and iimaginative ways. Fill your content with your knowledge and your speaking style with your passion. Each time you speak ask yourself what was the best part, what was the worst part and then get rid of the worst part.

Repeat, repeat, repeat, and as you speak again and again, always fixing the worst parts, you'll earn the privilege of calling your self an experienced business speaker.

Share your "bumpy road" speaking experiences through our comment link.

Public Speaking - Be Ready for Unexpected Opportunities

Could you provide an exceptional speech or presentation with one day's notice? If another speaker has to withdraw or cancel and calls you to substitute, are you ready to say "yes" and then blow the audience away?

You should always be ready to deliver your best speech or presentation on short notice because those opportunities could bring you in front of audiences you'll treasure.

Design a business presentation with all the components you would include when you're giving the speech to your own audience and have plenty of time to prepare. Since you're thinking of the speech as a series of interrelated but discrete elements, you'll then be able to extract just the right elements for an unexpected speaking opportunity.

Please do not under any circumstances think "Oh, I can speak about anything" so that you're always open to filling in. While you may be able to get up and say things, that is not what professional quality speaking is about and you'll only hurt your reputation if you do that. If you are not prepared or if your topic is not relevant to the audience, do not accept this speaking opportunity.

Keep working on your speech and look for the right audience. Develop relationships with other speakers who have related topics. Then you could likely fill in for them.

How do you handle last minute speaking opportunities? Share your ideas through our comment link.

Public Speaking - Let Superman Help Your Speaking Stick

What surprising and unexpected bits can you add to your next speech or presentation to make your ideas sticky?

During a recent appearance with Speakonomics! (TM) I demonstrated one simple example. When talking to your staff, especially now when morale is low, you could highlight special things that people are doing to keep the company going. You might describe someone as dedicated and hardworking with a surprising side that shows up to deal with a crisis--and then project a cartoon with a business man tearing open his shirt to reveal the Superman logo on his chest.

This was less than one minute of my sixty minute speech, yet it was very memorable. Dr. Lynese Lawson, DO and medical director of Proactive Wellness LLC said later "Susan gives you information that you can use to spur people to think outside the box. She shows you that by adding a piece to the presentation that is not traditional, a picture of Superman for example, it makes the audience remember you."

Dr. Lawson further said "She teaches you how to connect to the audience showing your human side, so that you are a real person, not just a presenter. I came away from her presentation with tools that I will incorporate into my speeches right away."

How are you connecting to your audiences as a human being? Whenever you answer the question "who is in my audience and what do they care about?" remember this most important fact--the audience is composed of human beings who have hard-wired impulses and needs. The better you are at meeting the needs of the human being, the better you will be able to mobilize them to take action.

Share one new and different thing you include in your speeches and presentations through our comment link below.

Public Speaking - High Value Low Cost Marketing

How do you let your clients and customers, your industry and your potential referral partners know you are controlling your destiny?

Your company has made smart moves--put an abundance of resources into your best service area or product line so you perform better than ever. You've undertaken critical thinking-based planning to ensure that you make it through 2009.

This is in contrast to many of your competitors who are operating out of fear these days. They slash expenses which means fewer services and the people to provide them. Don't their customers worry about whether it's safe to do business with them?

You must let people know that they can and should do business with you and your company. If you don't make it clear, everyone will assume you've succumbed to the same sorry fate.

Speaking is the single most effective, high-value, low-cost marketing tool at your fingertips. When you speak you:

• Raise your visibility

• Are the stand out name in the marketplace

• Show you have your finger on the pulse of the industry

• Are known as high profile thought leader

• Show that your company is shining above the crowd

Make overtures to meeting organizers such as industry association organizations and chapters, service groups, community non-profits, chambers of commerce, economic development agencies, business roundtables and offer to share your expertise about about a topic of interest to their members, such as critical thinking in the (name industry here) or growth strategies (for the audience) in an economic downturn or keeping workplace morale strong.

Your speech must be well-designed and focused on the specific audience, plus you must have a clear call-to-action. If you need help designing your presentation--making it about the audience, not about you--let me know.

How do you use speeches and presentations to increase your visibility? Share your ideas through our comment link below.

Public Speaking - Avoid the Tim Geithner Mistake

Big build up, lots of expectations, the guy has a strong reputation--and what happened? Tim Geithner spoke to the world and said--virtually nothing.

The stock market sank, journalists and broadcasters panned him, the voice of the opposition got louder. You do not want these kinds of results from your speeches and presentations. Granted, you are not the Secretary of the Treasury, but still--if your audience has expectations, you better meet them.

If you want to make an impact with your speech, you will do what it takes to create expectations, so that step is important. It is how you meet them that will be remembered and can help or hurt your reputation.

Geithner's biggest lapse was promoting a "plan" and then delivering only a "concept."  A plan would include the starting point and the end goal. A plan would include specific steps and details that make it clear how to get from the start tot he goal.

Washington Post staff writer Neil Irwin wrote:

"And the more novel elements of the Geithner plan -- the creation of an entity with public and private money to buy up bad assets from banks, a "stress test" of 20 or so of the nation's largest banks, and $50 billion to prevent foreclosures -- came with so few details about how they would work that it contributed to the very public anxiety and investor uncertainty that Geithner criticized. "

So Geithner got an audience response but not he one he wanted.

Follow these tips to avoid his huge mistake:

1. Know what the audience is thinking

2. Set expectations accordingly

3. Deliver on those expectations

How do you generate the response to your speech that you desire? Share your thoughts through our comment link.

Public Speaking - Be a Great Speaker Like Jack Welch

Thanks to social networking I read an article written by Dr. Jim Anderson about what made Jack Welch so successful as the Chairman and CEO of GE. GE is the 4th most valuable brand in the entire world. And Mr. Welch's own public speaking went a long way towards achieving that status. The value of the company grew from $14 billion to $410 billion under his leadership.

I invented Speakonomics! (TM) Four Little Words You Must Know to Make More Money because it is crystal clear to me that speaking is an enormous opportunity to grow a business--and yet 9 out of 10 business speakers waste those opportunities.

Jack Welch insisted that he and everyone else who spoke as a representative of GE would tell the audience something new and forward looking. That would replace the boring status reports that are the default corporate speech these days.

GE grew and the confidence and reputation of all GE speakers grew. Imagine that--when people were given permission to be creative and passionate and interesting--they responded and so did their audiences.

These tips will get you started:

1. Talk about topics that interest the audience
2. Craft stories and deliver them with dramatic effects
3. Speak about what you know--you will automatically gain confidence and polish and overcome your fears

You can look through my blog posts and my articles on my website and ezinearticles and learn how to become a speaker like Jack Welch. The only limit is your mindset--if say you can't, you won't. If you say you can, you will. Get a coach to support you through the shaky beginnings. It is the single best thing you can do for your career and your business.

Share your stories about how better speaking helped you make more money. Use the comment link below.