Nick Morgan, Public Words

10 Rules for Presenting as a Team

I’ve been away a few days in an intensive session helping a team get ready for a high-stakes multi-day presentation.  It occurred to me that a blog on how teams can present effectively would be useful, since so much work these days is done in that way. 

1.  Introduce each other; don’t introduce yourself.  Even though you’re all on the same team, nonetheless, it’s more effective to introduce other people than yourself.  It is inherently more believable for someone else to say, “What’s great about Jeff is that he’s tilled in this vineyard for 25 years; he knows everything there is to know about grapes,” than it is for you to say, “I’ve got a lot of experience.”  Besides, talking about oneself in this way makes most people uncomfortable; why start out uncomfortably?

2.  Appoint an MC; preferably one who is comfortable playing the role.  To the extent possible, you should always build on the strengths of the personalities on the team.  If you’ve got a real extrovert, have her be the Master of Ceremonies.  The MC should think of herself as the audience’s advocate, helping them through the day or days.  But note that sometimes introverted people do better playing a character than themselves.  So it can work to create role-plays and stories for team members to ‘inhabit’ who are otherwise shy presenters. 

3.  Look interested when a colleague is speaking.   If you’re presenting as a team, your audience will be judging the entire team.  It’s the height of arrogance and un-team-like behavior to do something distracting when another teammate is presenting.  Don’t do it.  Ever.  Look interested – and be ready to help if something goes wrong. 

4.  If you’re presenting something technical, or a demo, be prepared for things to go wrong, and get help.   Demos are the Devil’s children.  When they go well – a rare occurrence – they’re quite impressive.  But usually the Imp is in the room and something goes wrong.  Then it’s important to have a Plan B, a co-presenter to talk through things, and support from the team.  The best approach is always to be real.  Don’t think of it as an error, but rather an opportunity.  Explain what’s going on, don’t try to hide it and work it into your story line:  “What’s happened here is that my Internet connection has gone down; I’m now going to try to re-establish it.  This would not normally happen under real circumstances because…..”

5.  Rehearse the hand-offs and transitions.  Rehearse them again.   I always recommend “surfacing” what’s going on when you have a complicated journey to take the audience on.  “We’re about half-way through part one, here, and now Jimmy is going to take over for about 30 minutes on why yak butter is the preferred dietary option.”  “We’re headed into a break here, and we’ll take questions for a few minutes.  Then it’s coffee time!”  “It’s mid-afternoon, and we’re slightly ahead of schedule, so let’s go to the afternoon break a little early and give you a bit of extra time.  We’ll reconvene at 3:30.”  That kind of talking-as-you’re-doing is very helpful for teams that may not get to practice the entire event as much as they need because of time and budget limitations. 

Quick Tip:  In the last days before the big event, a ‘tech’ rehearsal is very important, where you run through all the things that have to happen in the order they should happen, without doing all the actual speeches.  Just the hand-offs, the openings and closings, and so on. 

6.  Practice ‘Just-in-time-information-sharing’. Too many teams present an agenda at the beginning (boring) and then plunge in.  It’s far better to talk through the agenda as you’re experiencing it.  In the same way, don’t introduce all the speakers at the beginning – it’s too much for the audience to remember.  Instead, do a high-level intro, and introduce people with their (relevant) qualifications when they’re about to take over.  “I’m going to ask Jane to walk us through this next section on infectious diseases, because she’s survived 3 bouts of malaria contracted on site.” 

7.  Don’t hog the limelight.   Do stand up to speak.  If you’re presenting as a team, give everyone a chance to shine.  Don’t let one superstar do all the talking.  That’s not teamwork.  But do stand up to speak; the tallest person in the room commands the attention and authority, so if everyone is sitting, it’s a simple way for the speaker to be the center of attention while he is speaking. 

8.  Make it a conversation.  Don’t think ‘us’ vs ‘them’.  Try to bring the audience into the process as much as possible.  Rather than saving Q & A for the end of the day, encourage questions as you go along, if that is at all possible.  It’s much better to handle the concerns of the audience as they come up, rather than having audience members stewing about an issue for an hour, or a day, before learning that the problem was a simple one. 

9.  Panels are good; conversations are better.  As humans, we find interactions among our fellow beings inherently interesting.  A soliloquy can be fascinating, but a good discussion is even more interesting.  Most interesting of all is an argument; don’t shy away from controversy and disagreement.  Properly done, the power of seeing a team debate internally is extraordinary; it makes the team look very strong, open, and fearless.  Panels can be a great way to foster these exchanges, but beware the typical problem with panels:  you hear too much from people you don’t want to hear from and not enough from those you do.  A crisp conversation between two people usually works better.  But see Rule #10. 

10.  Mix it up.   Use all the means at your disposal to vary the mix and keep it interesting for the audience.  Vary the length of presentations, the number of presenters, the kinds of presentations, and the kinds and times for audience participation.  Don’t do all the presentations with Power Point – use video, flip charts, props, and so on to vary the kinesthetic experience of the audience, as well as their visual and auditory experiences.  Always remember that sitting in a hotel meeting room is like a sensory deprivation chamber – typically there are no windows, there’s a background roar from the A/C system, the lighting is bad, and there’s little for an audience to do except sit.  Every way that you manage to change that experience up will be wonderful and invigorating for the audience.   

What experiences have you had presenting as a team?  What went well, and what went not so well? 

TED's best speech? - a talk you don't want to miss

Jill Bolte Taylor gives one of the most moving talks I’ve ever seen on TED on the subject of her stroke and recovery.  The talk is brilliant in spite of some limitations in Jill’s delivery and all serious students of public speaking should study it for an understanding of what makes a talk work – and what makes a talk memorable.

You can see the talk here:  http://bit.ly/blR3hR. 



Taylor, a brain scientist, begins by explaining that she got into the field because her brother was schizophrenic, and she wondered why she could have dreams and realize them in the world, while her brother had dreams that ended as mere delusions.  We’re hooked from that moment on; the simple truth of her brother’s suffering and her quest to find some way to help frames the talk beautifully. 

Taylor then brings a real brain on stage – a real human brain – and shows us the 2 hemispheres.  The right, she says, is in the here and now, the moment, and takes in all the sensory information it is able to embrace our connectedness as a species. 

The left hemisphere, on the other hand, is all about the past and future, thinks in language, and identifies us as separate individuals. 

Then comes the stroke.  Taylor’s description of it is extraordinary – courageous, precise, funny, and heartbreaking.  The character of the woman is revealed in these moments that would terrify most of us completely.  When she says, a moment later, quite dryly, “I realized I was no longer the choreographer of my own life,” the understatement packs a real wallop. 

Had Taylor stopped here, the speech would have been extraordinary enough.  But she uses her stroke, what she experienced during it, and her recovery, to make a plea for universal understanding and to educate us all in how we can “slip the surly bonds of earth” and achieve real bliss in the here-and-now.  That makes both the speech, and her suffering, transcendent. 

There’s much to learn from Taylor’s speech and her delivery.  She is nasal, and her voice grates a little, but soon we’re swept up in the drama of her story and we don’t care.  Her humor and courage both win us over in spite of the limitation of her voice. 

Watch her body language – it’s extraordinary.  She stands quite still much of the time, and is unafraid to use her body almost as a dancer would.  Her hand gestures powerfully evoke the openness that underlies her message – a classic instance of body language and message aligning to make a memorable speech.  So we don’t mind that the gestures are almost too big.  She’s putting it all out there, and we can only respond by giving her an audience’s unconditional love and support.  The audience in the room leaps to its feet once she’s done – not a typical response from a TED audience. 

Taylor’s speech demonstrates how to weave the personal and the global together to make a speech authentic and yet not self-absorbed.  Listen to her speech to receive a master class in structure and construction.  It’s a thing of beauty.  Don’t miss it. 

Do you think it's the best speech on TED?  Please vote for Taylor, or nominate an alternative, by leaving a comment. 

 

How to work with publishers and agents: The Public Words Speaker Forum 2010

As I’ve blogged before, professional speakers need books in order to sustain a career over the long term.  And that means books published by traditional publishing houses for the most part, though there are exceptions.  The exceptions are speakers who already have a strong market for their speeches and can sell the books ‘in the back of the house’. 

But for most speakers, the book helps generate the speaking, and so traditional publishing is important.  At the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010 last week, two speakers held forth on how publishing is changing, what function agents perform, and how to navigate your way through the publishing maze.  Once again, guest blogger Sarah Morgan gives us the scoop.

 

Writers often imagine a published book as the end of a long journey.
  After years of work, finally you’ve handed your masterpiece over to a 
prestigious publisher, and now all you have to do is sit back and wait
 for them to organize your book tour and your interview with Oprah. But 
if that model ever worked – and that is doubtful – it certainly doesn’t work now,
 Harvard Business Press editor Jeff Kehoe said at the Public Words 
Speaker Forum.

Harvard Business itself is adapting to this new reality, Kehoe said –
combining the magazine, book publishing, and website divisions of the 
organization into a unified Harvard Business Review Group that
 takes a more platform-agnostic approach to working with writers and 
thought leaders.  Writers, too, should think of a book as just one of a
 “constellation” of ways to get their ideas out, Kehoe said.  “It’s a 
fundamentally instrumental view of the book,” he said.

Speakers have an advantage in this shifting publishing landscape, said
 Esmond Harmsworth, a literary agent with Zachary Shuster Harmsworth,
 because they’re already thinking about their audience and honing their
 message.  But for some speakers who’ve built a strong relationship with
 an audience, self-publishing may actually be a better choice than
 working with a traditional, mainstream publisher, Harmsworth said.
  Bulk sales earn lower royalties, so a speaker who’s out selling his
 book on his own could be penalized in a traditional publishing deal.
  And authors who see a large portion of book sales from Amazon may be 
offered smaller advances for future books.

Kehoe, too, stressed that for an entrepreneurial author who will drive
 a lot of sales herself, self-publishing might be the best choice. But 
both said the traditional publishers still enjoy a reach and an access 
to a mainstream marketplace that nobody else can match. 

If you decide your book needs to reach that mainstream audience, start 
with a simple 3 to 5 page proposal that includes 3 key points:  (1) an explanation of
 your idea and its value, (2) your intended audience and (3) how you plan 
to reach them.

If you’re looking to work with a large, brand-name 
publisher, look for a literary agent first, Harmsworth said.  

“My job is almost like being a matchmaker,” Harmsworth said.  He looks 
for a publisher that can supplement the author’s skills and provide
 the guidance that a particular writer really needs, whether it’s close
 editing or marketing savvy.  And then, of course, comes the stage where
 the publishers “throw clouds of Monopoly money into the air,” as
 Harmsworth put it. (Sadly, that’s a joke, not a promise – Harmsworth
 actually noted that advances have fallen about 25% as a result of the
recession.)

 

Authors should be looking for a publisher who’s willing to engage in a partnership, Kehoe said. You’ll want to build a relationship that’s based on trust and two-way communication so you can work with the publisher to create a customized plan for how to sell the book and promote your ideas.

As the e-book landscape heats up, authors should start thinking now 
about how their work could take advantage of what will soon be a much 
more dynamic format, with the ability to offer customized versions of 
a book for different audiences, or revise a work to reflect new
 developments or incorporate audience feedback. We’re just now starting
t o see e-books enhanced with audio-visual content – another area to 
watch, Harmsworth said. (Check out the “Alice in Wonderland” iPad app 
for an example of what’s already possible.)

A speaker scam?

A good friend of ours at Public Words, a successful public speaker, recently received a speaking inquiry from a prestigious university in the United Kingdom.  The request came via email, and there were a number of indications that it wasn’t on the level.  The email address was a Gmail account, not the university’s email.  The sender purported to be a professor at the school, but there was no record of such a professor in the university’s online database.  Of course, he might have been newly appointed, but his command of the English language was so bad that our friend was immediately suspicious. 

On further investigation, there was no mention of the conference our friend was supposed to speak at on the university’s website.  In addition, there was an unusual request to “get a work permit” from the “British embassy” (via another Gmail account).

All signs seemed to point to fraud.  And, in addition, the amount of money offered for speaking was unusually large – the final straw. 

My question to everyone is:  have you run across anything similar?  What’s the point – would the scammer have asked for bank information at a later stage if our friend had continued?  If you’ve run across speaker scams like this, please let me know. 

Pam Slim on Social Media and Purpose (Public Words Speaker Forum 2010)

Continuing with the theme of insights from the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010, one of the standout talks was from Pam Slim.  Pam’s generosity and openness made a deep impression on me and everyone else at the conference.  Thanks, Pam, for the inspiration!

Once again, I welcome guest blogger Sarah Morgan. 

The title of Pam Slim’s talk was “How to Use Social Media to Find an Audience That Wants to Hear You Speak” – but that’s not really what 
she was talking about.  She left aside a lot of the “how” questions most of us tend to get hung up on when thinking about social media – should I use Twitter or Facebook? How often should I tweet? How do I get more followers or fans? – and focused on 
the underlying “why” questions:  why am I trying to reach these people 
in the first place? Why do they need to hear what I have to say?

For Slim, the answer to all those questions is Jon the ballplayer:  a
 young guy trapped in a job he didn’t care about who’d had an offer
 to play pro baseball in Germany. His parents didn’t approve and he
 wasn’t sure if he should take the offer, but when Slim sent his story
 out to her audience through social media, the resounding “yes” that
 came back helped convinced Jon and his parents to take that leap.

“The tools of social media were just a way to begin to get the story
 out and also to begin to connect Jon with the community,” Slim said.

  In order to use social media to build a community around your
 work, you first have to understand the essence of what that work is –
the change you’re trying to make, or the meaning that you’re making in 
the world, Slim said. Then think about the specific kinds of people 
you need to reach with that meaning, and what those people need – the 
inspiration, connection, knowledge, or skills you can offer them.

“That’s about you as a human being engaging with people who are 
interested in your work, and using the tool of social media to do it,”
 Slim said.

  Don’t use social media just to endlessly promote yourself.  Write about
 things you’re truly passionate about, and use whatever platform you 
have to advocate for others, Slim said.  Build an “ecosystem of smart,
 generous peers” with whom you can connect and cross-pollinate and help 
each other reach different audiences. 

If you’re truly connected to your community, you’ll not only become a
 source for other authors or speakers, but also for the media.
  Journalists are always looking for sources, and if you have an
 authentic connection with an audience, you’ve got an endless supply of
 people grappling with the issues at the core of your work.

“I’m not a 
publicist, I don’t get a dime for that, but I know I’m doing my job,”
 Slim said.

 

The bottom line: don’t think about the bottom line.  Forget about
 numbers – how many followers, how many fans – and focus on authentic
 connections.  Use social media to do three things:

1.      Connect with people.

2.      Amplify their voices.

3.      Advocate on their behalf.

“When you’re acting in this way, not saying, ‘here’s a picture of me 
in front of my jet,’ but saying, ‘here’s the cool things my people are
 working on,’” Slim said, “people will fall over themselves to help
 you.”

How to make your book successful - a 5-step plan (PWSF 2010)

I'm delighted to welcome a guest blogger to this space:  Sarah Morgan, a writer for SmartMoney.com, attended the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010 and is writing up some of the speakers and sessions.  (Full disclosure:  she's my daughter.)  Welcome, Sarah, and thanks for this insightful piece on how to ensure that your book is a success in the marketplace!  Public speakers take note, because a successful book is still the ticket to a sustained public speaking career. 

It’s every author’s dream: a debut book that bursts onto the national
 stage as an instant bestseller. Rebecca Skloot has been living that dream 
with the publication of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack, winning 
glowing reviews everywhere from Science to Entertainment Weekly and appearing on “Fresh Air” and “The Colbert Report.” But as Mark 
Bloomfield explained at the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010, Skloot’s story isn’t 
quite that simple.

  What looks like instant success was actually the result of 10 years of
 work cultivating relationships with magazines, book review editors,
and other key readers. Skloot also arranged her own 50-city book tour.

Similarly, Chip and Dan Heath did a lot of legwork that helped make Made to
 Stick a success that publishing insiders didn’t see coming.  Anita
 Diamant used a relationship with a female rabbi to spread the word
 about The Red Tent to a core readership of Jewish women.

A book is “a 16th-century technology with a 19th century business
 model trying to operate in a 21st century time,” Bloomfield said – but 
it’s still the most powerful tool for connecting with an audience.
  Even as e-books gain popularity, the book as a physical object retains 
its power. People display them in their homes and offices as signals
 about their identity, and their identification with groups, causes, attitudes and so on.

“Publishers have a privileged relationship with retailers and with the 
media, but authors have a privileged relationship with readers,”
 Bloomfield said. Especially in today’s interconnected world, an author
 needs to think beyond the front-of-store display in Barnes & Noble and
 identify a core group of readers she wants to reach, and a plan for
 converting her fans into advocates for her book.

“Don’t worry about bookstores,” Bloomfield said – worry about readers.
 Only 5% of book sales are made through bookstores now. “People know
 where to buy books, people know how to get them – if they want them. You have to make people want them.”  Once an author builds an audience, readers will
 find his book whether or not it’s got that front-of-store display.

Bloomfield outlined a five-step process for any author developing his
 own word-of-mouth marketing plan for a new work:

1.  Identify and define your brand as an author.

2.  Define your goals. Whom do you need to reach?

3.  Identify your circle of advocates.  Whom do you know, and how can 
they benefit from affiliating with your ideas?

4.  Design your campaign.  How will you engage with these advocates in
person and online?

5.  Plan for turnover.  Understand what the publisher’s marketing plans
 are, and how your work can be coordinated with theirs.

“Publishers who give an advance to an author essentially are seeding a
 new business,” Bloomfield said. “The author is the CEO of the book.”

Quick Speaker Insights from the PWSF 2010

We were thrilled to have a great group of speakers at our recent Public Words Speaker Forum.  As I continue to blog about takeaways from the event, I thought I’d provide some quick reads on some of the most useful talks.  Three are below; I’ll continue with David Meerman Scott and others tomorrow.

Esmond Harmsworth is a super literary agent.  He has represented interesting people from Governor Deval Patrick to Keith McFarland to the estate of Louisa May Alcott.  I first met him when he was in the middle of striking an incredible deal for a Public Words client. You want him on your side. 

Esmond held forth on the subject of what makes a good book proposal, unwrapping that particular mystery for speakers who want to get that book project underway.  What I particularly liked about Esmond’s approach was its simplicity.  He argued that book proposals should consist of three parts:

1.  What’s the idea
2.  Who’s the audience
3.  How are you going to reach them (marketing, platform, reach)

From personal experience with many book proposals, I can heartily concur that these are the essential questions.  If you can answer them in a fascinating, convincing and lively way, your book proposal will sell. 

Pam Slim, consultant, speaker, author, and generous soul, spoke on building your audience, through social media and other means.  She invited us to rethink how we approached the question of audience.  Rather than looking around for people to attract to our individual causes, Pam said we should first connect with people authentically, then amplify them – helping them find their passions and further them -- then advocate for them.  I like that so much I’m putting again here:

1.  Connect with them
2.  Amplify them
3.  Advocate for them

Third, the amazing speaker, author, and California dude Steve Farber spoke on building a lasting speaking career.  His insights came from an introspective look at how his own career has unfolded, and they were counter-intuitive and fascinating: 

1.  Have the passion (that comes before everything else)
2.  Develop the chops (meaning the speaking chops)
3.  Strengthen your point of view (a life-long work)
4.  Develop a body of work (what you do instead of hunting for speaking gigs)

Steve’s point was that any professional speaker is first and foremost a content expert.  That’s how you get hired.  As another speaker I know is fond of saying, “Speaking isn’t a profession.  What you do is a profession.  Speaking is an activity.” 

President Obama’s Oil Spill Speech -- how effective was it?

I’m taking a day off from the discussion of the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010 to talk about President Obama’s Oil Speech.  The speech illustrated both the extent and the limitations of the presidential forum, and it’s worth study in both its rhetorical and non-verbal aspects. 



The speech divided broadly into 3 parts:  first, the spill and the immediate reaction.  Second, the recovery and compensation.  Third, the longer term and the overall energy challenge.  These 3 parts were followed by a curiously weak conclusion invoking prayer to get through the damage that the most massive oil rig explosion and leak in history is wreaking. 

Overall, the speech was well-written and reasonably well delivered, as we have come to expect from President Obama, a gifted communicator.  But something is missing from President Obama that candidate Obama had in plenty:  confidence, energy, enthusiasm. 

We’ve come not to expect passion from this president, but if ever there was a moment for a leader to get angry, or fired up, this was that moment.  This speech was simply too buttoned-down for the occasion. 

Obama was at his most passionate only during a couple of passages in the speech – and they were the wrong places.  First, when he said, “for decades, we’ve talked and talked,” his voice rose and we saw a touch of impatience.  It’s a curious moment to get worked up about considering that we’re watching the most destructive oil spill in history dump barrels of crude and gas into the Gulf minute by minute on a live cam.  Second, a minute later in the speech, as Obama talked about alternative energy solutions, he said, “people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows,” and gave the closest approximation to spontaneous animation in his voice and gestures seen in the entire speech.  Again, a curious moment to become enthusiastic, but perhaps it tells us something about the priorities of this president. 

In truth, the speech reads better than it sounds or looks.  By sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, President Obama meant to convey the gravity of the situation.  But the effect on a speech about something that all of us feel as viscerally as we do – especially, I imagine, people in the Gulf states – was to undercut it.  The president should have been standing, where he could have released his energy and used his full posture and natural confidence to maximum effect.  (See David Meerman Scott’s blog – great idea, David!) 

The problems with the gestures in this speech were caused by the President’s sitting position and the camera, which framed the President with his hands showing above the desk.  What he did was keep his gestures small, describing little circles with his hands and then putting them back down on the desk.  So while his voice was telling us about commitments to stay as long as necessary and put the Gulf and everyone’s lives back together, his hands were saying, “little effort, no big deal, won’t last long.” 

For once President Obama’s body language seriously undermined his speech.  And he’s still using the ‘remote control’ gesture that I’ve talked about before.  This gesture is weak and conveys nothing to the audience and he should forbid it from his gestural vocabulary. 

We have a cool, competent President trying to cope with a chaotic situation.  In moments of high drama, we want our Commander in Chief to match the moment with some passion.  This Oval Office speech was not enough.  Is it the President’s job to clean up this mess that BP has made?  Obviously not, but if he’s going to take charge of the oversight of the recovery, then he has to take charge in a convincing way. 

Why is most public speaking – especially in the business world – so bad?

(This blog is based on the talk I gave at the opening of the Public Words Speaker Forum, June 11-12, 2010.)

Why is most public speaking – especially in the business world – so awful?  And how can we raise the bar, which is set distressingly low.  I think there are three principal reasons. 

First, speakers make it about themselves, and their information.  Too many speeches are data dumps.  But the oral genre is an ineffective format for dumping information.  We only remember 10 – 30 percent of what we hear in speeches. 

And of course, because public speaking is a self-conscious activity, speakers naturally focus on themselves.  Often from the best of intentions, speakers try to tell the audience everything they know on the subject (whatever it is).  They’ve prepared exhaustively, thinking that they have to know everything and are not allowed to say, “I don’t know,” in response to an audience question. 
 
Second, speakers fail to focus on the passion – something they really care about – and so the emotion doesn’t come through, either in the text of the speech, or the delivery.  As a result, presentations are too often boring.  Whether it comes from a mistaken belief that passion is out of place in business, or simply a fear of opening up, the lack of passion makes all too many speeches unbearable. 

Third, there’s Power Point.  Too many people use Power Point as a speaker outline, asking their audiences to read the slides along with them.  That’s idiotic, off-putting, and counter-productive.  And it happens every day.  Probably every hour of every day somewhere in the world. 

What are the alternatives to each of these grave public speaking offenses? 

First, make your speech a journey that you take the audience on – to what you want them to do differently.  Audiences come into a speech asking why – why is this important, why should I care, and so on.  If you answer that question for them, they’re happy and they move on to asking how – how can I get started, how can I make this my own, etc.  The ancient Greeks understood this well, and suggested a good speech should start with a problem the audience has and then lead to a solution.  If you do that well, you will move your audience to action. 

Second, make the speech both an intellectual and emotional journey.  To change our minds, we need to have both intellect and emotions engaged.  Telling stories is the best way to engage the emotions of the audience, since we respond easily to stories with characters that we can identify with. 

Third, use Power Point sparingly, and only for images and video.  Images and video both can convey emotion and clarify, for example, complicated data and concepts.  The goal should always be to simplify.  What’s the one point you want to make?  Make that and get off the stage.

When you do that, it’s fun for everyone, and it’s fun for you – and that’s the Zen insight for success in public speaking:  it’s not about the speaker, it’s about the audience.  That’s the way to move an audience to action and the way to change the world. 

Headlines from the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010

I’m going to do a series of blogs on what we learned from the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010.  If you attended, please add your own takeaways! 

We felt extraordinarily lucky in having a wonderful group of participants.  There was a generous vibe in the air, and the conference was memorable for the enthusiasm and wholehearted participation of the attendees.  Before the conference began we were vowing we’d never do another one, because of the intense amount of work involved in getting it off the ground.  By the end, we were already talking about next year.  That conversion came thanks to the participants.  Thank you all for bringing so much joy and generosity. 

For this first blog, I’ll lead with some headline quotes.  In subsequent blogs, I’ll go into more depth. 

Why are most speeches so boring?  Three reasons:  #1 They’re all about the speaker; #2 The speaker lacks passion; #3 Death by Powerpoint

To make speeches better, have an intellectual AND emotional component.  Well-told stories bring emotion. 

It's your job to know your audience. What are their dreams? What are they afraid of?

All good speeches should take the audience on a journey through a valley of despair before they climb a mountain of hope. 

All entrepreneurs, and professional speakers, have to learn to focus and say no. 

Social media tip from David Meerman Scott:  take advantage of things that happen in REAL time and capitalize on the moment.  Don’t wait for the lawyers to give you permission to act. 

Steve Farber on success: have a deep desire and love for your work; hone your chops to speak about it and get clear on your point of view. 

Pam Slim on your audience:  Whom are you meant to serve? What do they need from you?  Your job is to connect them, amplify their message, and advocate for them. 

Mark Bloomfield on authors:  Authors are the CEO's of their books and publishers are the investors.  Authors should use that that investment to promote your book.

Steve Farber on identity:  What's your life's work? Answer that question, deepen that question, and it becomes a magnet for you. 

Mark Bloomfield on Publishers and Authors:  publishers have a privileged relationship with retailers. Authors have a privileged relationship with readers. 

Steve Farber on new speakers:  New speakers often focus on getting gigs, but that’s the wrong question; instead focus on your body of work. 

Christine Carlson, meeting planner, on how to get invited back as a speaker:  1)  Do your homework.  2)  Understand how the company works.  3)  Speak to as many people in the company as possible

Martin Perelmuter, Speaker Bureau CEO:  The three most important things to remember when working with a bureau:  1)  Be responsive – get back to a bureau right away when they call.  2)  Be transparent – don’t try to do an end run around a bureau.  3)  Be a partner with the bureau to grow the business together. 

Martin Perelmuter, Speaker’s Spotlight CEO:  To connect with a bureau, first get introduced.  Then invite the bureau to a speech.  And then ask them to handle a booking. 

Mark Bloomfield on the book publishing industry:  “books are a 16th Century technology, under a 19th Century business model, trying to operate in the 21st Century.” 

Pam Slim on Social Media:  Before you use social media - think about what's at the root of what you do, who you serve and what people need. 

Does public speaking terrify you? Here's what to do about it.

I get asked a great deal about anxiety, fear, nerves, nervousness, butterflies, panic attacks, terror – about public speaking.  A recent article inspired me to talk about the best ways to deal with public speaking fear – and a recent email asked me to blog about the topic, specifically the issue of a shaky voice.  So, with thanks to Jesse and Didier, here goes. 

Here’s a link to the article: http://bit.ly/cf8CJe.  The two main takeaways are first that if you are the non-alcoholic son of an alcoholic father, a quick drink will steady your nerves for public speaking and not significantly impair your cognitive abilities.  Second, we might have evolved the fear of public speaking for good reason – scanning an incoming crowd for hostile faces might have meant the difference between life and death.  We’re particularly good at finding the angry, unhappy faces in a crowd.  That tends to make us nervous.  Hence our fear.  Something like that, anyway. 

But how much use is that to people coping with the modern, ordinary fear of public speaking?  Let’s get to the help.  What can you do to lessen or eliminate your public speaking fear and the annoying physical symptoms that go with it, like experiencing a shaky voice at the start of your talk?

There are 3 basic categories of things you can do. 

First, you can work on the speech itself – the content.  You can rehearse it over and over again until you’re beyond boredom with it.  That helps with the nerves because one source of those nerves is, understandably enough, the fear that you won’t know the talk, or you’ll forget something, or someone will ask you something you don’t know the answer to.  So practice, practice, practice. 

Pick a subject that’s close to your heart, and talk only about things that matter to you.  That will help with the nerves too, because a part of your brain (the rational part) will see the chance to speak as an opportunity.  And fill the speech with stories that you care about and think are interesting, because stories are easy to remember and tell. 

Second, you can work on your physical symptoms.  To deal with the shaky voice, for example, breathe deep in the belly, tense the diaphragmatic muscles, as if you were about to be punched in the stomach, and let the air come out slowly as you talk.  With practice, that belly breathing should eliminate the shaky voice.  It should also help generally with your nervousness, because we tend to breathe shallow, quick breaths when we’re alarmed, and deep, slow breaths are the opposite of that.  Thus, your body will send a signal to your brain that things are OK. 

If you’ve got a lot of adrenaline, get some gentle exercise before your talk.  Don’t exhaust yourself, because you need energy to get through the speech, but take a little off the top.  It’s hard to be nervous when you’ve got that nice, relaxed, post-exercise feeling. 

Just before the talk, find a quiet place to yourself if you can.  Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.  Starting with your feet, tense and relax your major muscle groups in isolation, one after another.  Give yourself a very gentle face rub (lots of tension in the facial muscles) and you’re good to go.

Finally, you can work on your mind.  There are a couple of ways to approach it.  First, every time you get a conscious thought about how things might go awry – a very common way we all work ourselves into tizzies before talks – replace the thought with a calm, reasoned mantra like, “I’m going to be fine.  I know the topic, I’ve rehearsed, and I’m ready to go.”  The point is to stop the vicious circle of panicked thoughts leading to feelings of panic leading to more panicked thoughts. 

But most fears originate in the unconscious mind, so you should work on that too.  Find a positive mantra like the one above, and repeat it to yourself throughout the day, and especially when you’re falling asleep at night – and when you’re awake in the middle of the night.  If you do this faithfully and thoroughly, within about 3 weeks you will see a major difference in your nervousness.  Who knows, you may even come to enjoy public speaking! 

I'm going to take the next couple of days off to get ready for the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010.  It's not too late to sign up.  Email me (nick@publicwords.com) for a special blog readers' discount if you're local or going to be in the area.  If you're already headed this way, see you Friday! 

How to be a passionate speaker, part 5

IN THIS SERIES

• 1. Passion through content
• 2. Passion through rhetoric
• 3. Passion through effective use of the voice
• 4. Passion through pitch control
• 5. Passion through gesture

Passion is both authentic and charismatic – when it comes from a real place in the emotions. That kind of passion is expressed first, and best, through gesture and motion.  The closer you get to people, the more energy there is between you, and so the more passion.  The basics of expressing passion through gesture are simple:  someone waving her hands around and grimacing looks more passionate than someone standing still and keeping a deadpan face.

But passion can be telegraphed through quiet moments too. Just watch a great actor and feel the emotion emanating from him or her in the quiet moments.  If we’re attuned to the person, we can pick up on very subtle expressions of emotion, from the tiniest changes in posture, in gesture, and in breathing. 

We don’t fully trust people until we’ve seen them get emotional – angry, sad, ecstatic – because these moments allow us to take the measure of their values. What gets them angry, sad, or ecstatic?  That’s how we size them up. If we see someone giving a tongue-lashing to a sales clerk because the store is out of an item, we make one kind of judgment about that person. If we see someone else standing up to a bully, we make another kind of judgment.

Sincerity of emotion shows up in nonverbal conversation through, perhaps surprisingly, stillness and openness. While the strong passions – anger, joy, excitement of various kinds – can all be signaled with energetic body movements, sometimes extreme stillness can be just as effective. Think of it like the voice: the point is to establish a baseline and then vary that to exhibit the emotions.

We worked with a speaker who was telling a personal story to a large audience and revealing information that had not been public before. There was a lot of tension on his staff before the big night. We talked with the speaker about many ways that he could indicate his passion to that audience, but in the end we settled on simplicity. He stood very still and told his story very quietly. The passion came through.

That said, for most of us, when we want to telegraph passion, we need to do so with raised voice, higher pitch, more hand and arm gestures, more body movement in general – all the signs of energy and passion that we are used to recognizing.  But rather than thinking about this as a technical exercise, the better way is to focus on the passion itself.

Before you go into an important meeting, begin a high-stakes speech, or have that conversation with your teenager that you’ve been putting off, focus on the way you feel about the topic and the person or people you’re communicating with. This technique has two benefits. First, it will put you in the moment if you do it well, allowing you to connect the two conversations and appear authentic and charismatic. And second, it will occupy your mind and keep you from getting nervous.

If you think only about your nerves, your self-consciousness, and how poorly the scene is certain to go, you will almost certainly telegraph nervousness in your second conversation and undercut your own best efforts. So spend a moment outside the room or before the meeting begins feeling the excitement you have over this concept you’re about to propose, or the passion you feel for the company and where it’s headed, or the love you feel for your teenager who has to understand the importance of a curfew and personal safety.

Being passionate is ultimately about allowing yourself to fully experience the emotion. Inhabit it, revel in it, and soak it up. That way you’ll send a consistent message, not a mixed one, and you’ll come across as an authentic communicator. If the moment is right, you’ll show up charismatically, because someone who is radiating a strong emotion is fascinating, eye-catching, and lit up in a special way that we call charismatic.

Great actors have something they call the offstage beat that they use just before they go onstage. Mediocre actors just walk on and deliver their first lines. But the great ones are already inhabiting the character offstage before they go on. They figure out where the character just came from and what state of mind she was in, and they play that rather than “an actor coming onstage.” The result is a fully believable character, and one you can’t take your eyes from. You need to develop a little of the same magic, and the way to do it is to prepare, just before the communication, not only what you’re going to say but how you feel about it: strongly, fully, and with all your physical being. That, after all, is where passion originates. And that’s how you radiate passion, align the two conversations, and convince audiences large and small of your authenticity. If you do it with enough conviction, you will be charismatic.

I'll be talking about passion, trust and charisma at the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010, this Friday and Saturday at the Kennedy School of Government on the Harvard Campus.  Please join us if you can. 

How to be a passionate speaker, part 4: your pitch matters

IN THIS SERIES

• 1. Passion through content
• 2. Passion through rhetoric
• 3. Passion through effective use of the voice
• 4. Passion through pitch control
• 5. Passion through gesture

Some people pitch their voices too high or too low habitually. That puts a strain on the voice, prevents it from achieving its full authority, and undercuts passion. I worked with one consultant, a frequent speaker, who used a voice when she was speaking that was so high that people called her the “dolphin lady.” She was extremely smart, but her career was hampered by her crazy voice, which showed up not in casual conversation but in public speaking and important meetings where she had to hold forth.

All signs pointed to some sort of psychological distress that was causing her to push her voice into the stratosphere, and it was my job to work with her to bring it down to earth.  It took a lot of breathing and determination on her part. In the end, we brought in a speech therapist to help because the pressure of speaking in that high-pitched squeak had damaged her vocal chords.  All the combined efforts paid off, and her speaking improved enormously. 

That’s an extreme case, but here’s a way you can test your voice to see if it’s pitched at your maximum natural resonance point. Find your way to a keyboard (get help if you’re not musically literate). Pick out the lowest note you can comfortably sing, and work your way up to the highest. For most people, that’s two octaves: sixteen white notes. (For Mariah Carey, it’s apparently five octaves, but that’s why she’s singing professionally and we’re not.)

Now divide the number of white notes you span by four, and count up that number from the bottom. So if it is two octaves, 16 divided by 4 is 4, you start from your bottom note and count up 4. That note is your maximum resonance point.

Most of your normal talking should be taking place in and around that note.  Some men push their voices lower to sound more authoritative, and some women push their voices higher so as not to frighten men. But male or female, you want to be at your resonance point. That will give your voice more authority and timbre, and it will be most pleasant to listen to.  Most importantly, your voice will be most expressive there, and so you’ll be able to elicit the most passion from it.  Strangled voices, voices that are too high or too low, lack expressiveness and passion.  Finding your natural resonance point will also extend the life of your voice and avoid damage.

If you’re a serious public speaker, you should do the work to care for your voice.  You owe yourself and your audience to use your vocal ‘instrument’ to its fullest – without damage.  A classic text on the voice is by famous voice teacher Patsy Rodenburg, The Right to Speak.  If you've got vocal issues, it's a great place to start. 

Next time I’ll talk about nonverbal ways to express passion.  Don’t forget that the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010 is this Friday and Saturday!  You can still register here.  I hope to see you there. 

How to be a passionate speaker, part 3

IN THIS SERIES

• 1. Passion through content
• 2. Passion through rhetoric
• 3. Passion through effective use of the voice
• 4. Passion through pitch control
• 5. Passion through gesture

Your voice is one of the chief ways you have to give vent to your passion as a speaker.  Heck, as a human.  To be effective, you should care for and use your voice properly.  Following is a quick primer in the care and use of the voice; you can spend a lifetime practicing these techniques and improving your vocal tone.  If you don’t take care of your voice, fatigue and wear will make it less and less attractive to others as you age – and less and less useful as an instrument to you, the public speaker. 

Passion comes from freeing up the voice to sing like Martin Luther King’s. 

There are lots of ways to indicate passion in the voice; chief among them is a rising tone, but a faster pace and a louder volume are also important.  And in contrast, you can pause dramatically and get very quiet. The point is to establish a normal voice and then vary it to indicate emotion.

Watch a clip of Martin Luther King Jr.’s  “I Have a Dream” speech, which I quoted from in an earlier blog in this series.  It’s widely available on YouTube.  King used all three of these vocal means to telegraph his passion.  Most remarkable about his voice was the range in pitch:  his voice rose in tone so much that it is almost as if he sang his words.

Even as King’s voice rose, he did not lose his authority.  That’s an important point to note because so many speakers end their sentences as if they were asking questions. They use a rising tone at the end of every sentence. They introduce themselves, for example, by saying, “Hi, my name is Nick?” as if they weren’t sure. The effect is to reduce the information that’s coming through the vocal channel. We have a hard enough time as it is to understand each other, and when we can’t tell the difference between a question and a statement, it’s that much harder.

The authoritative arc will put you firmly in charge. 

Instead of adopting the annoying habit of rising tone at the end of sentences, use the authoritative arc. That’s what great public figures do (King did it particularly well), and it’s essential if you’re going to be an authoritative communicator. In the authoritative arc, your voice starts on one note, hopefully one where your voice is resonant (more about that later), and then rises in pitch through the sentence to indicate your passion. At the end, it drops back down, at least to the note you started from and perhaps even lower. The effect is to remove all doubt from what you’re saying.

If you try this, you’ll find that people accept your utterances without question – most of the time. If you speak with authority, other people will accept what you say by and large.  Try it the next time you want a better room at a hotel, and you’ll be surprised at the results. Say, “What do you have that’s better than that?” but drop your voice in pitch at the end and watch the clerk jump to offer you an upgrade.

Resonance and presence are essential to be heard, and to be heard happily.

Voices also need resonance and presence. Resonance makes voices pleasant to listen to, and thus persuasive. Presence is that nasal quality of the voice that allows it to be heard.  You need both. 

For resonance, take a deep bellyful of air, and hold it in with your diaphragmatic muscles, the ones that curve along your rib cage over your navel. Watch opera singers and yoga instructors; they breathe this way. Don’t move your shoulders up as you breath in; rather, the motion should be in your belly. It should move out as you take air in, because it’s expanding to take in the air.

Most people who don’t sing at the Met or bend their bodies in elegant pretzels breathe with their shoulders, and as a result they take in only a quarter or half of a lungful of air.  The result is a voice without resonance that’s flat, uninspiring, and unpleasant to listen to. Fight that with belly breathing.

It’s also calming and grounding to breathe in this way.  Before you go into an important meeting with your boss, say, take a breath or two from deep in your belly. You’ll be surprised at how much it calms you, and it has the added benefit of giving your voice resonance, which sounds more self-assured and strong. It will get your meeting off to a good start.

For presence, put your hands alongside your nose, open your mouth wide, and make a noise like a sheep bleating:  Baaa. Baaa. Baaa.  You’ll find that your nasal passages vibrate, and you’ll feel the vibration through your fingers. That’s good presence, and it’s what allows a voice to carry.

You want a little of that in your voice whenever you’re meeting with more than two people so that they can hear you.  A quiet voice that people can’t hear will be taken as either timidity or incredible confidence, à la the Godfather. Don’t take a chance. Get some presence in your voice, and be heard.

Next time I'll talk about how to find your unique pitch.  If you're in Boston next week, I'll be talking about voice and other matters live at our first Public Words Speaker Forum 2010.  Please join us! 

Can you fake charisma?

For my blog today, I'm linking to a podcast I did recently with Phil Dobbie of BNET-Australia on the subject of my book Trust Me.  Phil's a great guy with a big sense of humor, and I think you'll enjoy the exchange:  http://bit.ly/9LWGOo. 

How to be a passionate speaker, pt. 2

IN THIS SERIES

• 1. Passion through content
• 2. Passion through rhetoric
• 3. Passion through effective use of the voice
• 4. Passion through pitch control
• 5. Passion through gesture

What other verbal techniques convey passion? Oddly enough, perhaps, rhetorical elegance on more formal or important occasions can convey emotion when it isn’t merely pompous.

Two main techniques, the rhetorical rule of threes and (appropriate) repetition, are the most powerful ways to convey emotion through rhetoric.  Let’s look at Martin Luther King Jr. giving what many believe was the most eloquent speech of the previous century at the Washington Mall on August 23, 1963.

First is the use of repetition to create passion:

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering in the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

There’s a real art to repetition. How do you manage it so that it doesn’t sound simple-minded but rather, as in this case, creates a crescendo of emotion that builds with each reaffirmation of the phrase, “I have a dream”?

The key is the phrase that’s repeated. It has to be able to bear the weight, and the words have to be affirmative, simple, and evocative. In King’s case, the words were perfect. But it’s not easy to find the right ones. The political world is full of repetitive phrasing and chanting of key phrases that the speaker begins and the audience takes over, but most of them are quickly forgotten.

The rule of three plays magnificently at the end of the speech, when King invokes a spiritual and brings the audience to its feet:

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last!  Free at last!  Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” 

There are actually two sets of threes here: the groupings of black and white, Jews and Gentiles, and Protestants and Catholics, as well as the final triumphant, “ Free at last! ”

And there are further subtleties. By giving us two groups of two — every village and every hamlet, and every state and every city — King creates in us a need to have the completion of a group of three. And of course he balances the two sets of groups perfectly.  It’s an amazing performance.

Perhaps you’re thinking, Well, that was easy for Reverend King. He was a great speaker and had time to prepare. But how can I achieve that kind of rhetorical passion in my communications, which are mostly off the cuff?  You may be astonished to find out that the second half of King’s speech, where these quotes come from, was ad-libbed.

What is it about groups of three that heighten emotion and create passion? Why do we respond so powerfully to them? It’s a mystery – something psychological.  Some say it has to do with religious symbolism, since there are groups of three in most major religions, but that may be putting the cart before the horse: the religions may have settled on groups of threes for the same psychological reasons that everyone else finds them powerful. Whatever the reason, we find something complete and satisfying in a group of three, like a three-legged stool that can stand firmly on uneven ground, and thus you should use them in your communications when you’re striving to convey passion.

Next time I'll talk about using body language to convey emotion.  I'll be speaking live about how to use both content and body language next week at the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010 in Boston.  Join us!

How to be a passionate speaker

IN THIS SERIES

• 1. Passion through content
• 2. Passion through rhetoric
• 3. Passion through effective use of the voice
• 4. Passion through pitch control
• 5. Passion through gesture

Many people will tell you that passion is everything in presentations and communications in general.  “Just be yourself – be passionate,” they say.  There are two problems with that advice.  What if you’re not passionate about the subject?  And what if “being yourself” means being shy, or geeky, or just plain terrified?

Giving a speech or a presentation is not a natural act.  Fighting, eating, breathing, making love – these are natural acts.  To give a successful speech, you have to stand up in front of a crowd and achieve a nice balance of extroverted energy and heartfelt honesty.  If you don’t do those things easily, you have to work at them.  That’s most people. 

More than that, there are a couple of things that have to happen first between a speaker and an audience, before everyone can get down to being energetic and heartfelt. 

First, we have to be open with one another.  Nothing meaningful can happen between people if we’re not open.  Communication is not possible when our hackles are up and our systems are shut down. 

Second, we have to connect.  That means cutting through the crap, the distractions, the issues that everyone is always dealing with.  The speaker has to get the attention of the audience, and the audience has to give its attention to the speaker. 

Once those two essential steps have taken place, we can take the third.  The third step in the layered process of communicating authentically and charismatically is being passionate – showing your heart.

It’s the reason, in the end, that we communicate, and it’s where charisma begins to enter the picture in a meaningful way. It’s the opportunity we all crave to know and be known by someone else. It’s the only meaningful evidence, in the long run, that we were ever alive on the planet. And it’s the chance to form a bond that endures beyond the moment.

Showing your heart to someone is neither trivial nor easy.  Trust must be firmly established, and the way to do that is through openness and connection. 

Being passionate has a verbal and a nonverbal component.  I’ll talk about the verbal or content in the first couple of posts, and the nonverbal in subsequent posts. 

How do you effectively communicate passion through your content? Recognize that all the verbal expressions of emotion are not as strong as the nonverbal ones, and if the two are at odds, the person you’re communicating with will believe the nonverbal always.  That said, there are some ways to express passion through content.

The first, and simplest, technique is to label the emotion. And yet this technique is one that people deny themselves all the time, because of our reluctance to talk about negative or strong emotions. Is it easy to look at a loved one and say, “ I’m angry with you”? How about going into your boss’s office and saying, “Boss, I’m really frustrated because you have systematically under-funded and understaffed this initiative, and you know my career depends on its success”?  And what about telling an old friend that he’s let you down by not showing up at a performance that really mattered to you?

People go through years of therapy and read countless books on how to accomplish this simple yet powerful technique – all to overcome a societal taboo against expressing oneself.  We are uncomfortable with negative emotions and worry that the expression of strong emotions will make us look out of control.

And yet labeling an honest emotion puts the issue squarely in front of the audience. No evasion is possible after a speech that accomplishes this difficult feat. That’s both the opportunity and the danger of labeling emotions. Once done, you have to deal with the issues that arise if you have any integrity at all.

And it’s the same in more intimate conversations. Once a problem has been honestly and directly put in front of all parties, they must address it.

Another equally simple yet profound technique to show passion in your verbal expression is to tell an uncomfortable truth.  It’s important to distinguish telling the truth from labeling the emotion. Certainly there can be overlap, but to tell an uncomfortable truth can often mean keeping your emotions in check.

The passion that shows up in these instances is courage.  The classic instance of truth telling in this mode is whistle-blowing. From the cigarette industry to Enron, WorldCom, and the Federal Aviation Administration, whistle-blowers put their careers, their family’s safety, and indeed their own lives on the line.

Since the natural reaction of the institution that is being taken to task is to stonewall first and deny the credibility of the whistle-blower second, it is essential for the individual to appear not to be superficially emotional.  We measure the power of their belief, ironically, by how much they appear to be holding back.

We may generalize this technique to include many other instances when verbal restraint can be a more powerful indicator of depth of feeling than excess. When a parent gives a toast at a son or daughter’s wedding, we get one kind of reading on how the parent feels if he or she weeps uncontrollably and another if instead we see someone who holds back the tears. The first performance is forgivable but vaguely embarrassing. The second is dignified, heart-wrenching, and an unforgettable way to demonstrate passion in verbal expression.

Of course, the restraint in the verbal component has to be accompanied by a similar set of nonverbal cues of restraint with deep feeling behind the facade. It is essential for the two conversations to be aligned for communication to be effective, authentic, and charismatic.

I'll be talking about passion in communication at the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010, next week in Boston.  Join us if you can!