This is the 4th podcast in my series based on Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  In this podcast I discuss open content -- the rhetorical rules for an open communication.  In looking at these essential conditions for successful communication, I discuss why the debt limit talks are failing as currently undertaken.  The podcast is just under 6 minutes - enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 4

 

 

In this, the 3rd podcast in the series from Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I focus on the 4 steps of the title -- how to align your body language and content for effective communication.  The podcast lasts about 5 minutes.  Enjoy!

Trust Me Podcast 3

 

 

In this second podcast in the series based on my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I talk about what has changed so that we demand authenticity and charisma from our leaders, where those two qualities come from, and how to achieve them.  The podcast lasts just over 2 1/2 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 2

This is the first of a series of podcasts based on my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  The podcast discusses the difference between what the conscious mind and the unconscious mind do for us when we communicate, and why that's important.  It's about 2 1/2 minutes.  Enjoy! 

 

 

Trust Me Podcast 1

 

In an era when everyone feels overwhelmed with information and many think that their attention is the most precious gift they can offer someone, clarity of speech and writing is essential.  If you’re going to ask a friend, a colleague, or an audience to pay attention to you, you need to have your thoughts in order.  Following are 5 simple but powerful ideas for improving your clarity in both areas.  

1.  In writing, start with the known and move to the unknown.   In writing, you want to begin with something that your audience knows and agrees with you upon, by and large – call it a situation.  Associated Widgets has had many years of uninterrupted growth.  That will get your audience nodding its head.  Then, you want to hit them with the news, your reason for writing – the complication:  But these last two quarters have seen tough competition from Global Undercutters.  Then ask the question that is the purpose of your communiqué:  What can we do to respond to this incursion?  And then you’re set up to answer the question in the body of your memo, or proposal, or whatever:  I’m proposing a new kind of widget, priced at half the competition’s price, to grab market share back.  The rest of the proposal will describe this widget.  And it can do so in a series of sub-heads answering the inevitable questions about cost, design, manufacturing, and so on, each of them following the same structure of situation – complication – question – answer. 

2.  In both speaking and writing, get the bad news out of the way first.  We’ve all made the classic mistake of pulling our punches – saving the bad news for last – because we’re reluctant to hurt someone’s feelings, or distress people unduly.  But if you hold out on people, they’re going to feel sandbagged.  Don’t do it.  Always get the bad news (when you have some to deliver) out of the way first. 

3.  In speaking, begin by answering the question ‘why’.   Audiences come into speeches asking why – why am I here, why does this matter, why should I pay attention?  If you answer that question quickly, in the first 3 minutes of the presentation, you’ll avoid a host of troubles and give your audience a reason to rejoice.   You don’t answer that ‘why’ question in detail, just at a high level to orient everyone.  Today, I’m going to talk to you about how we as a company can re-launch ourselves, take on Global Undercutters, and win our market share back.   

4.  In speaking, talk first about the problem, then the solution.  The Ancient Greeks figured this one out; this format has worked for persuasive speeches for 2500 years.  Don’t mess with it.  Ask yourself, what is the problem that the audience has for which my information is the solution?  Then talk about that problem first (after you orient the audience at a high level – see #3).  Follow it with the solution.  You want to spend roughly the same amount of time on each.  So, if you’ve got 30 minutes, spend a minute or two orienting the audience, then 10 minutes on the problem, 10 on the solution, and that leaves about 8 minutes for Q and A.  Done. 

5.  If speaking off the cuff, give a headline, support it, and repeat the headline.  If you have to give extemporaneous remarks, or if you find yourself in the middle of Q and A, then give yourself a few long seconds to come up with a point of view.  State it.  Then give some reasons – 3 is a good number – for why your point of view is the right one.  That’s the proof.  Then restate your POV in a concluding headline.  I believe that Associated Widgets is well-positioned to take back the market share we’ve recently lost to Global Undercutters.  That’s because, 1…..2……3…… And that’s why I’m so confident that we will win in the battle with GU.  

If you follow these 5 simple rules, you’ll find yourself speaking and writing with clarity and persuasiveness. 

For more information, see my blog: http://publicwords.typepad.com/nickmorgan/.  For further reading, check out The Pyramid Principle, by Barbara Minto; Style:  Toward Clarity and Grace, by Joseph M. Williams; and Revising Prose, by Richard A. Lanham. 

In an earlier blog, I asked – rhetorically – if you were worth $40,000 an hour (or up), the amount that a top professional speaker can earn in an hour giving a keynote speech. 

But what should you actually charge for speaking?  Most people at the early end of their speaking careers probably respond with “Gee, thanks!” when someone calls them to ask them to speak.  That doesn’t put you in a very strong negotiating position.   What should you ask for? 

And indeed, if you’re speaking primarily to promote your business – say, you’re offering a seminar on tax preparation in hopes of generating new clients for your accounting firm – then you should speak for free. 

But if you decide to make a paying business out of it, then you have to figure out what the market will bear, where you stand in that marketplace, and what you will charge so as neither to drive too many people away nor to leave too much money on the table.

Here are some guidelines to help you do that, in the US market at least, as you get started. 

Think like a real estate agent, especially at first.  Real estate agents are forever facing the delicate task of explaining to the proud homeowners that the home that they love isn’t worth as much as they want it to be on the open market.  Especially when you’re starting out, you don’t have much experience, and you haven’t established a track record of successful speeches, it’s better to begin on the low end. 

The issue is that if you price yourself too low, you’ll send out a message of low quality.  One way to get around that is to say, early on, “I don’t charge for my speaking, per se, but I do get paid an honorarium of $X,000 plus expenses.” 

When you’re ready to start really charging, then I would recommend beginning at the $5,000 level (plus travel), because that’s the level that serious speaking commences. 

Then publish your book.  As I’ve blogged about before, a book is still necessary to sustain most professional speaking careers.  Once you’ve got a traditionally published book out, then you’re in the $10K and up category. 

If the book sells well….  You’re ready to move up!  New York Times bestselling authors regularly command fees of $40K and up, which is where I began. 

Then think like an airline.  Separate out travel expenses from your fee.  You might also discount specific amounts for book purchases, or add the book purchases to your fee.  I tried to start a movement of giving out a comprehensive fee, since it can take time and bureaucracy to get your travel fees reimbursed, but the movement didn’t get very far.  People are so used to paying travel that I couldn’t persuade them to do without.  So instead, break those out of your fees. 

Finally, measure your fees by the market demand.   If people are coming to you to ask you to speak, that means there’s market demand.  That’s a far more persuasive position to negotiate from than if you’ve started the conversation.  Once you’re getting calls, then keep raising the fees until you get pushback more than, say, 20 % of the time. 

Please take these numbers as guidelines only.  For a whole host of reasons, this is not an exact science.  Any market in which one former president commands fees of $250K and another of millions is one for which money in the end is not really the motivating factor.  It’s the desire to have the face time with the speaker.  And that’s not about an hour’s work, or enough money to buy a car, or a really expensive house.  That’s about the right person providing an experience of the right kind for the right audience. 

What are your experiences charging for speaking?  How did you decide upon your fees?  I’d love to hear from you on this tricky pricing question.

Sheryl Sandberg’s TED talk is a tour de force of strong message coupled with an elegant delivery.  The talk is aimed at women and discusses the role of women in the workplace, but both men and women can profit from studying this compelling speaker. 

Sandberg begins with the problem – women make up more than 50 % of the population, but only hold a small percentage of leadership roles in government, non-profit organizations, and the private sector.  She makes her case well, supporting it with a few well-chosen stats and one or two great anecdotes. 

Moving on to her solution, Sandberg keeps the spine of her talk clear and simple – why don’t more speakers follow this ancient structure, codified by the Ancient Greeks, and used by smart speakers ever since?   She offers 3 ideas to help the situation:

1.  Sit at the table
2.  Make your partner a real partner
3.  Don’t leave before you leave

She then explains each one in more depth.  “Sit at the table” means that women shouldn’t hold themselves back out of deference or a desire to be liked.  As she notes, success and likeability are positively correlated for men, negatively for women.  Meaning that women need to get more comfortable with success. 

Second, "make your partner a real partner" means getting your mate to contribute equally at home.  We’re still a long way from this happy state.  As Sandberg says, it’s probably not all due to Sunday afternoon football and laziness….

Finally, Sandberg says, don’t leave before you leave.  Don’t start to check out because you’re thinking about taking some time off for a family.  Guys don’t.  You need to keep pushing your career ahead, so that at the very least when you come back you get a good assignment, not the mommy track. 

Sandberg doesn't pull her punches about the attitudes of either men or women.  As a stay-at-home Dad myself when my daughter Sarah was young, I can attest that what Sandberg says is true – you feel like a freak.   The other mommies don’t talk to you while you’re waiting in line to pick up your kid.  Sandberg closes with a plea to women to help push the change forward by changing their thinking, as well as trying to change the thinking of the other 50% of the population. 

Sandberg delivers the talk with a quiet poise that helps us understand why she’s running Facebook, more than holding her own in what must be a male-dominated culture.  While she uses some unnecessary (but understandable) self-protective gestures at first, she commands the stage with consistent grace and style, moving on her thoughts and planting her feet to finish them.  Many a speaker could improve just by watching Sandberg’s choreography. 

If I were coaching her, I would work on her voice, getting her to open up and access her passion and strength more deliberately.  But she’s already speaking at a very high level, and this TED talk is a pleasure to watch.  Take it in for what Sandberg can teach you about speech structure and delivery. 

 

 

A recent Zogby poll commissioned by Sliderocket, a PowerPoint rival, found that “respondents would rather do the following miserable activities than sit through a PowerPoint presentation:

o    24 percent would forego sex tonight
o    21 percent would rather do their taxes
o    20 percent would rather go to the dentist
o    18 percent would rather work on Saturday”

Of course, Sliderocket is pushing its software, but the question is a clever one, and the company and its marketers deserve high marks for creativity and a bit of summer fun.  It caught my attention. 
And here’s the serious point lurking behind – way behind – the poll.  

When I taught public speaking at Princeton, I developed a variety of ways to help nervous students combat speaking anxiety.  One of the most useful in the long run is cognitive retraining.  That’s a fancy phrase for a simple process. 

You take the symptoms that are making you feel bad and ask yourself, “What’s really going on here?”  My heart is racing.  My palms are clammy.  My face is flushed.  My knees are a little wobbly.  My thoughts are going a mile a minute.  What’s about to happen to me?

When I asked students that very question, one cheeky guy in the back of the room would always shout out, “Have sex!”  And that would make the point exactly:  the same symptoms get defined as bad when you’re about to speak and great when you’re about to have some fun. 

So if you tell yourself, “the symptoms themselves won’t kill me.  In fact, I rather like them under other circumstances.  So instead of thinking about how awful the symptoms are, and then thinking about all the things that could go wrong, thus starting a vicious feedback circle, I’m going to think positive thoughts about how these symptoms are helping me to show up at the top of my game, and do a great job.” 

You retrain yourself to treat the symptoms as useful rather than pointing to a train wreck.  This technique takes a little time to master, but once you do you will find it very helpful.  You will learn to recognize the symptoms in a variety of settings and realize that they are in fact beneficial because they take you to the top of your game. 

The next time you offer to forego sex instead of watching a PowerPoint presentation, understand that you will be denying the speaker a chance to experience sex-like symptoms.  So at least one of you would be having fun. 

I love long summer nights, fireworks, and up tempo music.   So the Boston Pops 4th of July fireworks and patriotic music spectacular is made for me – and the roughly 800,000 other people who thronged the Charles River Esplanade last night.  Some years I’ve attended in person; this year I watched it on TV. 

Michael Chiklis, best known to TV audiences for his portrayal of Vic, the tortured policeman on The Shield, had MC duties for CBS, which meant that he had two audiences, one big and one little.  The big audience was all those people on the Esplanade.  The little audience was the millions of TV viewers. 

If that seems backward to you, that’s because it’s a performer’s perspective.  To reach a live audience, especially one that has been – ahem – celebrating for hours before you even get to the microphone, you have to go big.  It’s not a time for subtlety.  It’s a time to yell, “Hello Boston!” with a cheek-splitting grin on your face and hope for the best. 

TV audiences, on the other hand, need subtlety, because the cool medium of TV magnifies the little changes in emotion that the camera catches – a look, a sigh, a change of heart.  As a result, a great, big, “Hello Boston!” looks goofy and over the top. 

Michael Chiklis worked the big crowd like the pro that he is, but there was no way that he could make much of a connection with the little audience on the other end of the TV camera.   Every time the camera cut back to him, it felt like we were interrupting someone else’s party. 

When you find yourself on a big stage, with a live audience of thousands in front of you, go big.  Amp up the energy.  Talk to the back row, not the front row.  And ride the wave of energy you will get back from that audience.  But when you’re doing a television interview, go small.  Feel the emotion you want to convey.  Don’t shout it out, or try to emote.  Just let the emotions happen inside.  Let the camera come to you. 

It’s impossible to serve both masters – the large live audience and the tiny TV one.   The former is stadium rock, and the latter is chamber music.  Even a pro like Michael Chiklis can’t do both at once.