For my blog today, I'm linking to a short article I did for CIO magazine on 3 quick ideas for greater impact in your presentations.  Enjoy!

One common problem in the business presentation world – and the cause of many a mediocre presentation – is when the speaker finds herself delivering someone else’s talk.  Perhaps the company line is tightly controlled, so you have no choice.  Or perhaps there’s a new product out and you have to grab the only available deck to present about it.  Or maybe it’s just your boss who calls in sick and asks you to step in at the last minute. 

How do you make someone else’s presentation sing?  Here are 5 ways to make this tricky situation work.

1.  Give yourself enough time to get to know the content.  The first rule of success is don’t wing it.  That’s so important that I’ll repeat it:  never, ever wing it.  It’s bad enough when you wing your own presentation, but don’t even think about taking someone else’s content and trusting to luck.  If someone dumps a deck on you at the last minute, take enough time off (a day, preferably) to learn the deck part of your deal.  Use your brilliant negotiation skills and the fact that the other guy is running out of options too.

2.  Practice the transitions.  A slide-based presentation is made up of two parts – what you say on the slide, and what you say to move from one slide to another.  The way speakers always give themselves away is in the transitions.  I can always tell an under-rehearsed speaker by the way he stumbles from one slide to another. 

3.  Simplify, simplify, simplify.  Don’t be afraid to jettison some portion of the slides in the deck you’ve been given.  Work through the storyline so that it makes sense to you.  That often means cutting out something in order to get you over rough places or places that you have no enthusiasm for.  In order to be successful, you’ve got to make that slide deck your own, so bend it to fit. 

4.  Add a section with your own story.  Find a section of the speech where you can naturally bridge to a segment that you’ve delivered often before.  You’ll find that it will give you something to look forward to, a personal oasis in the desert of others’ ideas.  And it will help the whole presentation feel like your own.

5.  Get an emotional focus for the presentation.  As part of learning the speech, figure out what your (appropriate) emotional attitude toward the topic is.  Focus on that; that will help guide your body language so that you won’t look as hesitant or uncommitted as you otherwise would.  And no, fury at having been saddled with the speech is not an appropriate emotion, alas. 

What are your favorite horror stories – and successes – from presenting other people’s ideas? 

The first question you should ask when preparing a presentation is, who’s my audience?  But that question requires more than a one-word answer.  It’s the beginning of an exploration of the exact circumstances of your audience – who, what, when, where, and why – everything about them you can determine. 

Why should you care?  After all, isn’t it a matter of integrity to say the same thing to everybody?  Yes and no.  The message, fundamentally, has to be the same.  But the shape that it takes may need to be entirely different.  Would you use the same words to describe World War II to a group of six-year-olds as you would to a group of adults? 

For my last blog on audience, let’s consider the importance of emotion. Specifically, the audience’s emotional state going into the speech.  Have they had recent news?  Was it good or bad?  Have there been layoffs at the company in the last few months?  Are you following any beloved speakers – or hated ones?  What are the aspirations of the audience – you’ll want to understand those and speak to them.  And what are the fears of the audience – you’ll want to understand those and deal with them. 

Following these basic questions, you’ll want to know the specifics of their situation on the day of your talk.  When did their day start?  Are they off work the entire day, or getting ready to go back soon?  Is your speech an assignment, or a break?  Are you standing between them and lunch, or drinks and dinner?  If so, go short.  No one ever protested when a speech ended early, but people will hate you for keeping them from their provender. 

You’re not ready to speak to an audience until you understand their emotional state – better than they do themselves. 

As I said in my last blog, modern presentations are doomed to failure because of ancient survival instincts.  Your body goes into flight or fight mode, and your audience responds similarly, thanks to mirror neurons.  Communication breaks down.  You sense that things are not going well, and you panic more completely.  The audience responds with panic back.  What can you do to avoid that doom loop? 

You need to control the many little signals of tension your body is sending out to the audience.  There are two ways to accomplish this feat.  The first is to control your gestures, and the second is to control your emotions. 

Control your gestures.  This is hard work for most of us.  We learn as adults to control our faces reasonably well, smiling when we really want to punch someone, for example, and generally putting on a happy face when we don’t mean it.  But controlling the rest of the body is difficult because it is normally done by our unconscious minds.  It’s very hard to bring it to the conscious level, since our conscious minds are much more limited in power.  We can only process something like 40 bits of information a second with our conscious minds while our unconscious minds can handle 11 million bits of information.  No contest. 

Nonetheless, you can learn to do it, by practicing daily, and by learning your speech very, very well so that you can free up as much of your conscious mind as possible.  Start by observing how you stand, move, and gesture when you’re relaxed, and then practice doing that for your presentation.  After that, it’s repetition. 

Control your emotions.  Surprisingly, perhaps, this is the easier – and usually more successful – way to go about showing up as a confident speaker.  We tend to think about emotions that they are uncontrollable, but you can get yourself into a positive, enthusiastic state of mind by some simple self-talk.  After that, it’s just a matter of practicing that positive self-talk rigorously before the presentation, and then invoking it just before you start. 

Here’s how to do it.  Think of a time when you were genuinely in the frame of mind you desire to show up with at your presentation.  If you want to be positive, high-energy, and excited, then think of a time when you felt that way.  Perhaps when you won the bowling trophy, or your first Senate campaign?  Then practice recalling that specific state of mind, using the entire power of your memory through the five senses.  What did that moment smell, feel, sound, look, and taste like?  The more concretely you can recall it, the more emotion you will invoke.  Practice that for several weeks before your presentation, and it should soon become automatic. 

If you’re in the right frame of mind, your gestures will take care of themselves.  And you will avoid the doom of most presenters, engaging rather than alarming your audience. 

When I’m asked about the secret to good public speaking, my first instinct is to respond, "It's a journey you take the audience on, both intellectual and emotional, involving both content and delivery, and it’s a complex process, an art form, involving lots of moving parts." 

But if I'm pressed for one rule only, it would be this:  have fun. 

That's right -- have fun. 

Could it possibly be that simple? 

Audiences have provisionally given up their authority and bestowed it on the speaker.  They want the speaker to succeed.  Otherwise, they've wasted their time, and who can afford to do that these days?  The best thing the speaker can do is to signal to the audience that he or she is having a good time.  It will let the audience know that it is in good hands.  It can relax and enjoy the experience. 

That creates a virtuous circle -- happy audience, happy speaker -- and those good vibes go a long way toward creating a good experience for all. 

Of course, the hard part about having fun is that most people are nervous when they speak, at least at the start.  So how do you relax and have fun when your heart is hammering away, your palms are clammy, and you're thinking to yourself, I will never, ever agree to do this again?

Focus on the audience.  If you can stop thinking about yourself, and start thinking about the audience, you've got a chance to begin to enjoy yourself.  Remember, a speech is not primarily about you, the speaker.  It's about whether or not the audience is moved to action. 

So relax, forget about you, and have fun.   

When is rehearsing a presentation a bad idea?  Clients often try to talk themselves out of rehearsal, because they’re pressed for time, because they don’t like the feeling of rehearsal (you’re not in control yet), or because they argue that rehearsal will make them stale. 

Those are bad arguments.  People who ‘wing it’ usually betray their lack of preparation in their body language.  They don’t think they do, but they give themselves away.  So generally, more rehearsal is better.  But there are times and kinds of rehearsals that are counter-productive.  Here are 3 ways it doesn’t pay to rehearse. 

Don't rehearse more than once on the day of the presentation. 

I can imagine exceptions to this rule, but not many and not often.  By the day of, most people are in adrenaline mode, and rehearsal is not very helpful.  Do rehearse once, especially in the actual venue, just to get familiar with things and have the performance fresh in your mind.  But obsessive rehearsal at this point simply won't do much good.  You have to have done the work already.  It's too late.   

Don't rehearse the wrong speech or presentation. 

This may sound odd, but you'd be surprised how many times people don't have a speech set until the last minute, so if they do rehearse, it's the 'wrong' speech -- because it's not the one they're ultimately going to give.  Get the speech set, weeks before the date, and rehearse that one.  Many people get nervous as the awful date approaches, and they start to doubt themselves and the message.  So they tinker with the speech, almost always making it worse.  Don't fall into that trap. 

Don't rehearse too often only in your mind. 

Half the reason for rehearsal is that speaking, like, say, acting, is a physical art.  You rehearse so that your body can learn the speech, not just your mind.  Too many people say, "I don't need to rehearse, I ran over it in my mind."  Therein lies potential disaster.  You need to discover physically what it feels like to give the whole speech, to say a particular line out loud, to make the transitions from one section to another.  None of those things can be imagined as effectively as they can be rehearsed. 

How much should you rehearse?  A lot.  Stage actors often get up to 6 weeks, 5 or 6 days per week, 8 - 10 hours per day, to rehearse.  That's how you end up looking natural, assured, and authoritative.  Not by winging it. 

When you stand up to speak in front of others, you're risking a great deal.  You can fail to engage the crowd, you can make a fool of yourself, you can attempt too little or too much and miss the mark.  And while the risk is almost always greater in your own mind that it is in reality, it is a real risk nonetheless.

Knowledge of that risk is what causes people to play it safe when they’re preparing their presentations.  Ironically, that’s the most dangerous tack to take.  Playing safe means you go for the dull rather than the emotional, the read rather than the conversational, and the preachy rather than the interactive.  All of those choices feel safer and are in fact liable to produce a much worse presentation.  They are choices that close you off to your potential audiences rather than opening you up to them. 

Then, when you get up to speak, you’re thinking to yourself, "Why did I agree to do this?  It could all go horribly wrong!  People are going to think I'm an idiot!" or something along those lines.

The result of that emotional self-talk is a series of behaviors that, alas, tends to increase the likelihood that precisely the feared result will occur.  People who fear failure in speaking are defensive, and that defensiveness shows up in a variety of ways, all bad. 

They may pace nervously -- the familiar 'happy feet' of some speakers.  They may clutch and un-clutch their hands in front of their stomachs.  They may cross their arms, hide their hands behind their backs, or keep their arms firmly fixed to their sides, only waving their forearms, in a characteristic gesture of many business speakers that I call the 'Penguin flap'. 

All of these gestures, and others besides, signal nervousness to the audience.  But more than that, they signal that the speaker is trying to protect himself.  The speaker, in fact, is shutting off part of herself from the audience. 

The result is that the audience begins to feel the same way.  That’s because we have these neurons in our brain called mirror neurons that copy the emotions of the people around us.  When we’re focused on a speaker, and that speaker is behaving as if it’s important to protect himself, we feel danger and want to protect ourselves too. 

The result?  Everyone closes down when it’s most important to be open. 

And it gets worse.  If the audience sense that the speaker is holding back, it will not connect with the speaker – in fact, it will fail to trust him (or her).  The work of shutting down and closing off will wrap up with everyone the opposite of where they should be. 

That's not of course what the speaker intends, but that's the tough luck of public speaking. 

If you're preparing a presentation, then, go for openness. Risk big, rather than playing it safe.  Then, when you’re actually delivering, try to begin right away avoiding self-protection.  Get over yourself and your nerves.  Put your focus on the audience.  Be open to the audience.  If you can manage that, they will carry you and give you back far more energy that you put out. 

The irony is that the best way to protect yourself in public speaking is to give up any thought of self-protection at all. 

For my blog today, I'm pointing to a podcast I did with digital marketing guru Mitch Joel.  He's always interesting to talk to -- you can check out the results here.  Enjoy!

Charles Dickens is 200 today, and in his honor, this blog will explore a little-known side of the great novelist:  his public speaking, and in particular 2 lessons the great Boz still can teach us today.

Dickens, a keen amateur actor, carried out several speaking tours of England and the United States during his later life, partly to indulge his love of theatrics, partly to raise money, and partly because he had more energy than a half-dozen ordinary people.  In addition, he gave many speeches at the meetings and dinners a popular public figure of the day was expected to attend. 

He was phenomenally successful at his public readings, though some say the stresses of his last speaking tour hastened his death at 58.   Tickets for his American performances were set at $2.00, but sold on the black market for as much as $26.00 each, a large sum in those days. 

One of his most popular readings was a shortened version of A Christmas Carol, and I’m looking at a facsimile of the prompt copy now that he used for these performances.  It yields some interesting Dickensian secrets. 

First of all, he cut ruthlessly.  What’s left is the bones of the narrative, with the occasional bit kept in because it was pure fun.  At the same time, Dickens adds direction to himself, to remind him of the emotional note he’s supposed to be striking at each point in the story.  So, he starts out “cheerful” when Scrooge’s nephew enters the scene, transitioning to “mystery” for Marley’s Ghost, and “melted” when Scrooge begins his transformation to kindly old man.  And he gives himself stage directions too, noting when he’s supposed to sit, stand, and move.   

This shows Dickens’ keen understanding of the importance of conveying not just the words, but also the emotion, of the story he is performing – while concentrating on the essentials of the narrative.  The same advice holds for speakers today, and raises the question, why don’t more speakers imitate Dickens and put directions for their performances in the margins of their speeches, as well as keeping ruthlessly focused on the point they’re trying to make? 

The second Dickensian tip comes from his after-dinner speeches.  Attendees often marveled at his prodigious memory, as he always spoke without notes, sometimes for an hour or more.  How did he do it?

Dickens broke his speeches down into sections, and then used an Ancient Greek trick to remember the sections.  He would associate a section with a room in his house, linking them in his mind, so that all he had to do was “walk” through the house room by room to remember what he was supposed to say. 

At 200, Dickens can still teach us a thing or two about speaking, performance, and memory. 

We all dread certain conversations -- the one with the boss about a raise, with a teenage child about, say, a problem in school, or with a partner about a festering disagreement over the in-laws.  For some people, the anticipation is the worst part.  For most of us, though, the anticipation is bad enough, but the actual conversation is worse.  We're nervous during it, and we don't express ourselves well, and we don't get what we want out of them.  How to make the experience better?

As a first step, project the future emotional state you want, not the one you fear.  You're experiencing negative mental chatter, and it's creating a doom loop that leads to physical symptoms that in turn generate more negative mental chatter.  Instead, start a positive cycle.  Tell yourself something like, "I am confident and serene.  I will handle the conversation beautifully."  Use your own words and ideas, specific to your situation. 

For the rest of the steps to making a tough conversation better, please follow this link to my new e-book on Amazon, iTunes and Barnes & Noble, Tough Conversations.  In it you'll find the 7 steps to more successful talk.  Enjoy!

For my blog today, I'm pointing to an article I wrote for the Public Words website on handling the all-too-common problem for speakers of coping with a strange room layout on the fly:  http://bit.ly/wixOe3.  Enjoy!

Is someone in your life a public speaker, and does that make the gift-giving a challenge?  And have you perhaps procrastinated?  Here are 5 items no speaker should be without – as well as the public speaking justification for them.  With online buying and overnight shipping, you should still be able to get most of them under the tree on time. 

1.  An elegant leather portfolio – because you should look as cool as the President. 

With one of these, you can walk to the front of the room looking as debonair as the President of the United States giving the State of the Union Address.  Speech notes go in there, along with a back up DVD or USB drive of your slides and video, as well as that check the meeting planner gives you for a job well done.

2.  An iPad 2 loaded with speaking apps – because great speakers travel light.

I had this on last year’s list, and the apps have gotten even better, especially since you can get iMovie on an iPad 2 and create quick videos to dazzle your audience.  Apps will help you keep time, make your notes easy to read, and even turn the iPad into a teleprompter.  You can run your slides (and videos) from the iPad, and even use it as a white board.  And it all weighs a whole lot less than a laptop.  

3.  2 (or 2 dozen) Flip Cams – because it’s always about improving your craft. 

Buy a few of these before they disappear.  These handy cameras are the best things going for recording yourself and the audience (so you can see how you’re coming across).  That’s why you need two.  With two dozen, if you've got the budget, you can hand them out to the audience and get them to video you.  Then edit the various takes into a great show reel of your speaking.

4.   The King’s Speech DVD – because it makes the case for speaking.

Not only does this movie showcase a couple of great speech moments, and the best argument ever for the importance of public speaking, it also inspires speakers of any level to do better.  Because we can all always improve.  And it’s a good story, too.   

5.  A super stylish speaking outfit – because you should look and feel great.  

Don’t order this one online (it’s too late and too iffy); instead, hand your recipient a card giving him or her a shopping trip to get fitted out for the best suit you both can afford.  For anyone who does regular public speaking, a knockout outfit is essential.  When we feel like a million bucks, we stand as if we’re worth it, and the resulting confidence is great for the speech. 

With these gifts, you’ll make that special speaking someone in your life far snazzier, more confident, and better at the job.  Props and style do make a difference.  Happy holidays!

I’ve recently been reminded that one of the universal constants in the public speaking world is fear.  Most speakers have it, a few manage to avoid it, and some are crushed by it.  A recent article about a survey of UK CEOs found that they, too, experience fear.  Recent work with a client involved helping him with his fear of opening a speech.  He’s fine once he gets going, but those first few minutes are debilitating.  And I recently gave a speech after taking about a month off to work on a book proposal, and I found myself rusty and nervous just like everyone else. 

What can you do about it?  Here are 5 ideas to help you with that universal annoyance. 

1.  Redefine the fear as adrenaline, and therefore a good thing.  This is my personal favorite, and it works pretty well if you stick to it over a long period of time.  When we’re faced with having to speak in front of a crowd – or the prospect of one – the adrenaline starts flowing.  It’s the well-known flight-or-fight syndrome that helps you get ready to do battle with ancient enemies.  In addition to the annoying symptoms like dry mouth, or shaky knees, or clammy palms, your brain works faster, you have more energy, and you look a little larger than life.  And that’s all good.  So focus on the good things that those symptoms are bringing you, and you’ll start to think differently about those clammy palms. 

2.  Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.  Rehearse a lot.  Rehearsal is the best way to deal with nerves, objectively speaking, because what you do a lot you get comfortable with and thus are less likely to get frightened about.  Rehearsal has the added benefit of most likely making you better at the presentation – certainly better than if you wing it.  And you’ll look more polished because your body will signal to the audience, “I’ve done this before; I’m cool.”

3.  Breathe deeply, from the belly.  Breathe slowly, and often.  Breathing is good for you, your voice, and your composure.  A slow, deep belly breath supported from the diaphragmatic muscles will start an autonomic relaxation response that nicely counteracts those feelings of terror, so start at the first sign of symptoms.  Because those belly breaths will ground you, make sure you do them just before you get up to speak – while you’re being introduced, for example. 

4.  Focus on the audience, not on yourself.  The real insight at the core of successful public speaking is that it isn’t about you, it’s about the audience getting it (or you were never there, in some sense).  So focus on the audience, let go of yourself, and have a great time.  I think of this as the Zen insight into public speaking, and it is truly liberating if you can convince yourself of it.

5.  Focus on an emotion that you want to convey to the audience.  If you’re the sort of speaker who starts riffing on all the things that might go wrong when you get nervous about speaking, then you’re like most of us.  The idea is to replace that doom loop with something more productive.  For a host of reasons, replacing nervous mental chatter with a strong emotion is a great substitute.  Here’s how you do it.  First, figure out what emotion is appropriate to the beginning of your speech.  It might be anger, joy, excitement, whatever.  Then, recall a time when you felt that emotion naturally and strongly.  But don’t just remember it – relive it.  Recall what it smelled, tasted, looked, sounded and felt like.  Shut your eyes and put yourself there.  With practice, this can become a powerful and quick way to focus before speaking.  And if you do this sense memory thoroughly enough, you’ll chase the nervous thoughts out of your head. 

We all get nervous, but there are ways to minimize nerves, and to use the mental state to your advantage, to make you a better speaker.  Try them all, and pick the one or ones that works best for you.  

What questions should you ask a host or meeting planner when you’re preparing a speech?  Good research means a good understanding of the audience – and that means that you can connect with that audience.  A good connection is the basis of a great speech.  So what do you need to ask your host?

Basically, you need to know about 3 things besides your area of expertise:  the venue, the audience, and the speech itself – how it needs to be tailored.  Here’s a list of questions I’ve developed over a few years that you can use as a checklist to make sure you don’t forget anything important.  And please weigh in – what have I left out?  What do you always ask your contacts? 


A.  The Venue

When is the speech taking place?
Where?
How many people are in the audience?
What time of day will the speech be given?
How long should the speech be?
Will the audience be or have eaten?
What is the hall like?
Is there lighting?
What is the sound like?
The layout?
Are there backdrops, sets, stages, props, podia?
Are there barriers between speaker and audience?
How long is the audience’s day?
How many other speakers?
What is the nature and content of those speeches?
What kind of chair is the audience sitting in?
How long have they sat?
What is the event theme?
Slogan?  
What is the arrangement for slides and other visuals?
How quiet is the hall?  Is there background noise?
When can we get in the hall for rehearsal?

B.  The Audience

Describe the audience
What is the age range?
Socio-economics?
Do they know each other?
Do they work for the same or difference orgs?
Describe the org?
What should my talk be about?
What is the point of the event for the audience?
How is the audience feeling?
What is the business climate?
What does the audience fear most?
What are their hopes and dreams?
What makes them laugh or cry?
What makes them worry?
What do they need to succeed?
What are their cultural references?
What is the worst speaker they’ve ever seen?
What would you like them to do differently as a result of the talk?
Who are their heroes and villains?
What are their recent successes and failures?
Why are they there?
Have you made any arrangements to get feedback?  A DVD?

C.  The Speech

Why did you pick me?
Who and what determine the success or failure of this event?
How will that be measured?
How does the idea of my speech work for your event?
Give me some audience members that are great (or bad) examples of the points of my speech?
Can I interview them?
What is the problem the audience has for which my expertise is the solution?
Is the audience expecting interactivity?
Is the audience used to Power Point?
Can I ask for volunteers?
How many of them will have read my book?
Can we arrange for a signing/sales event?
What journey do you want the audience to go on?
Why should the audience pay attention to my speech?
How will you know if they have taken something important away from the speech?

What is the most neglected piece of equipment in the public speaker's arsenal?  It’s a trick question.  The answer is not the clicker, or your laptop, or your mike. No, it’s your voice. Most speakers take their voices completely for granted. And that’s a big mistake. Voices need care and feeding. Most of us talk all day long, and by the end of the day – and after a decade or two – it shows. 

Every voice has something called the maximum resonance point (MRP).  You can find your own, if you’re not tone deaf and you have access to a keyboard.  Determine the lowest note you can comfortably sing, and the highest.  (Men, don’t use your falsetto range for this purpose.)  Count the number of white notes you span.  Divide that number by 4, and then count that many notes up from the bottom of your range.  That note is your maximum resonance point.

Why is that important?  Because all sorts of good things happen at that point.  Most simply, resonance is pleasing to our ears, so people will respond favorably to your voice.  Second, your voice is happiest at that pitch, so it will last longer than if you try to speak higher or lower habitually.  Men often try to speak lower than their MRP, and women sometimes go higher.  The result is a strangled tone that pleases no one and puts strain on the voice -- and causes long-term damage. 

But there’s more.  There’s some research that shows that we put out overtones and undertones – especially undertones – that are outside of the range of human hearing.  Amazingly, groups align these tones with the leader of the group.  We literally get on the same wavelength as the leader -- the one with the best undertones!  So at your MRP, where you’re putting out the most undertones, you have the best chance to take over leadership of your group.  (And you thought leadership was something you earned by good practices or clever dealing!) 

Have I convinced you to take care of your voice?  If you don’t support your voice with good breathing, as well as the obvious – no smoking, restrained drinking, and so on – you will put long-term strain on it and end up sounding like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.  Breathing -- belly breathing -- is the first and most fundamental step.  I've blogged on the importance of belly breathing before.  

Recently, Klaus Moller, a voice coach based in Denmark, published a great little ebook that gives you a quick primer in how to take care of your voice, and how to produce good sounds with it.  Go to his website, here, and download it.  You’ll find it very useful.  He's charging a little for it, but it's worth it, and so is your voice.  

 

For this penultimate podcast in the series, I talk about how to use your voice and gestures to generate passion.  The podcast is based on my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, and it's about 3 and a half minutes long.  Enjoy!

 

 

Trust Me Podcast 9

 

In this podcast, #8 in the series based on Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I talk about 4 ways of speaking that convey passion appropriately.  Passion -- done right -- creates charisma, and memorable communications.  This podcast is just under 5 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 8

For podcast #6 in the series based on my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I talk about connection - step #2.  Specifically, how to connect better with the people around you with the language you use.  Having trouble getting people to pay attention?  Here are some tips that will help.  The podcast is just under 4 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 6

 

 

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. 

In this podcast, the ninth and final one in the series based on my book, Give Your Speech, Change the World, I talk about ways my clients and I have found useful over the years for reducing fear.  I offer some tips on preparing just before a speech or presentation, and some longer-term ideas.  In addition, I talk about rehearsal -- why it is helpful, and how to do it, including some ideas for rehearsal that you've never thought about, guaranteed.  The podcast is just under 7 minutes long.  Enjoy!

 

 

For podcast #4, I focus on the one step you must take before beginning to prepare a speech -- understand the audience.  It's a quick one; just over 3 minutes.  Enjoy! 

For more discussion of the topic, see Give Your Speech, Change the World, or Trust Me. 

 

 

Podcast #4 - Understand Audience

 

For podcast #3, I've put all my best tips from 2 decades of coaching into a top ten list.  The podcast is 7 minutes -- but you'll get a lot out of it!  Enjoy. 

 

 

10 tips - Podcast 3

 

A few years back, we worked with the CEO of a company on a speech assignment that promised to be both fun and challenging.  The CEO had built the company from nothing to dominant in his industry.   He had achieved a great deal, and was now ready to tell his story to the world.  He had spoken to his employees, and a few industry groups, before, but had never ventured outside of this narrow sphere of influence.

Now he wanted to go big.  He got in touch with a speaker bureau, and asked it to book him.  The bureau counseled him to go small – to begin with a modest venue and a small audience.  Just to get the hang of it. 

He rejected that advice.  He persuaded the speaker bureau to get him a large audience – 6,000 people – and a high fee for his first time out.  So the bureau called us in to help write the speech.  The stakes were high and the speaker inexperienced.  A coach seemed like a good idea. 

We wrote the speech, and it was a compelling one – if I do say so – because the CEO was an immigrant who started with nothing and built the company up through hard work and business savvy – a classic ‘rags to riches’ story.  This was a person who changed the world in a significant way and had as a result a good message for people to hear.    

Once everyone was happy with the speech, we proposed that the speaker rehearse.  The CEO resisted, saying, “I’m very comfortable under pressure, because of my extensive martial arts training.  I’ll be fine.”

We pressed hard, but the speaker ultimately did not rehearse beyond talking through the script in a 10-minute session in his palatial apartment overlooking Central Park in New York. 

I called my good friends at the speaker bureau to warn them that our speaker hadn’t rehearsed and I was worried.  They thanked me for the warning, and we all held our collective breaths. 

The big day and the debut came, and with it disaster. 

The stage was quite wide, and the conference organizers had put a couch in the middle of the wide expanse to break it up.  At one end of the stage – stage right – was the podium, and at the other end, a potted plant.   The speaker began at the podium, but soon left it to roam the stage. 

A couple of minutes in, he jumped up on the couch and executed what everyone figured out later must have been a half-remembered Kung Fu move.  It was dramatic; and the audience was riveted.  Then he jumped down, uttered a few lines from the speech, and jumped up on the couch again, performing another semi-martial-arts maneuver, and a few more lines from the speech.

He kept up this astounding mixture of speaking and martial arts ballet until he had managed to get through – incoherently – about half the speech.  Then he (mercifully) stopped and asked for questions.

There were none.  6,000 people in the audience were stunned into silence. 

The speech was a Grade-A disaster.  The CEO has never spoken in front of a large audience again to date.  The speaker bureau didn’t talk to me for 3 years, even though the CEO had the decency to call both me and the speaker bureau up and apologize, taking the blame on himself.   The organizer of the event has a ‘bootleg’ tape of the speech which is played at late night ‘after event’ parties to riotous laughter.   They coined the phrase ‘jumping the couch’ from this incident to describe a speaker who melts down during a speech. 

You must rehearse.  You don’t want to jump the couch.  Adrenaline plays funny tricks on the mind, and you need to establish the muscle memory of a full, physical rehearsal in order to give your body something remembered to do when the adrenaline kicks in.   A mental run-through is not enough.  You must rehearse. 

If find yourself arguing with me, or yourself, giving reasons why you don’t need to rehearse, that’s a red public speaking flag.  Professionals rehearse.  Amateurs jump the couch.  So rehearse.  Please. 

(Some of the details have been changed to protect the CEO in question.  For a longer discussion of how and what to rehearse, see my article here.)





 

When I was in Japan, I was fortunate enough to take part in a tea ceremony.  I don’t think I understood much of what I was doing then, beyond experiencing the simplicity and elegance of the occasion.  Recently, I ran across The Tea Ceremony, by Seno and Sendo Tanaka, and this beautiful book both brought back the memory and filled me in with many of the nuances I’d missed.  It occurred to me that 3 concepts from the tea ceremony in particular have application to public speaking and are good advice for Western minds trying to improve their own – and their audience’s – experience. 

Lesson One:  Keep It Simple.  The essence of the tea ceremony is bound up in the word that describes it, wabi, which literally means ‘loneliness’ or ‘desolation’, and refers to the simplicity and tranquility that should permeate everything associated with the ceremony.  In the same way, ultimately, public speaking is just about a conversation between people.  If we focus on that, then it doesn’t have to get too complicated.

Lesson Two:  Involve Your Creativity.  The Japanese concept here is hataraki, which means infusing the traditional forms of the ceremony with your own creativity, little touches that keep the ceremony from becoming stiff and static.  In the same way, great public speaking respects the forms and traditions, but brings the speaker’s unique differences to the mix, keeping it interesting.  Trust yourself and bring your own perspective to the occasion.    

Lesson Three:  Quit While You’re Ahead.   The Japanese concept is taru-o-shiru – ‘to know what is enough’ and it means that it’s OK to be imperfect.  If you insist on perfection, you’ll add an element of stress to the occasion that will make everyone nervous.  Instead, accept that you’re human and your efforts will be imperfect.  Let it go at that.  Public speaking is the same way – the 80-20 rule always applies.  Do your best and forget the rest. 

Overall, the tea ceremony is all about the host setting the scene for the guests, keeping it simple, comfortable, and a release from the stresses of everyday life.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all speakers could do the same!

(And if only I had known that when I was in Japan, I might have been able to enjoy the tea ceremony more and worried less about making a wrong move.)

Consider the standard, garden-variety, dull-as-ditchwater business presentation.  A business person wanders to the front of the room, nervous as an auditor in a gambling den.  People look up briefly from their Blackberries, and, seeing nothing of extraordinary interest yet, return to their email and to-do lists.  After fumbling apologetically for a while with the technology, head down, fingers flying, the presenter finally achieves Power Point, and starts by saying, “Here's my agenda slide.  What I’m going to talk to you today about is…..” 

The speaker still hasn’t gotten the attention of the audience.  Why should the audience pay attention?  Several minutes have gone by and all that’s happened is prologue.  The audience is still waiting to hear something new. 

The speaker has wasted a lot of energy on the technology,  and begun to spend the goodwill that audiences have for all speakers at the start, because they want their time to be used well. 

This is not effective communication.  Everyone’s time is being misspent.  Why do it?

Instead, imagine the speaker striding briskly to the front of the room, launching into a story about the perils facing the industry, a story which has the audience nodding in agreement and eager to hear more.  The speaker then asks a couple of key questions of her listeners to involve them and ensure that the presentation remains relevant and focused on the audience’s needs.

The difference between these two scenarios is focus.  The speaker should always be focused on the audience, while creating the speech, rehearsing it, and delivering it.  Then, if the speaker has done her job well, the audience will be able to focus where it should:  on the content.  Right from the start. 

Rehearsal is of course key in this regard, because no speaker can focus effectively on the audience if she is worried about the managing the content in real time.  It's in rehearsal that a speaker will find the ease necessary to take her focus off of herself, or the content, and free it up for the audience. 

So your duty as a speaker in preparing a speech is to get the content and delivery down so well that you can focus on what you should during the performance itself:  the audience.   Which will allow the audience to get the content. 

That’s effective communication. 

How do you deal with the fear of public speaking?  However bad your fear, it's probably not as serious as that of a gentleman I met on a long flight across the country.  Here's the story he told me as we waited on the runway.  Enjoy!

 

 

I’m a big Seth Godin fan, and usually find his blogs insightful and thought-provoking.  Rarely, I disagree with them entirely.  Recently, Seth posted the following blog, with which I disagree so violently that I have to blog in opposition: 

Rehearsing is for cowards
Jackson Browne gave us that advice. He would rather have you explore.
Exploring helps you figure out what you can do the next time you present or perform or interact. Rehearsing . .  . means figuring out exactly what you're going to do so you can protect against the downside, the unpredictable and the embarrassing.
I'm not dismissing study, learning, experimenting or getting great at what you do. In fact, I'm arguing in favor of this sort of hard work. No, I'm talking about the repetition of doing it before you do it, again and again. Just drilling it in so you can regurgitate later. Better, I think, as they say, "...let's do it live."
A well-rehearsed performance will go without a hitch. An explorer seeks the hitches, because hitches are the fissures and chasms that help us leap forward.

For public speakers, this is terrible advice.  I often work with executives who say, “I don’t want to rehearse.  I’ll just get stale.  I’m better when I wing it.”

And when they wing it, what happens?  They ask the first person they see, after the talk, “How did I do?”  Of course, the first person is the Senior Vice President for Stuff, and he says, “You were great, Chief,” because that’s his job. 

In fact, what happens when you wing it, or you don’t rehearse, is that your body language signals to the audience, “Hey, folks, I’m doing this for the first time!”  It's unconscious, but the audience picks it up subliminally right away.  Now, some people are terrified when they’re doing something for the first time, and some people are merely excited, but everyone is at least a little uncertain. 

If a little uncertainty is what you want to telegraph to the audience, then by all means don’t rehearse.  But if you want to show up, instead, as confident, or cool, or in charge, then you need to rehearse. 

The idea of getting stale is widely misunderstood.  It’s your job as a speaker to show up for your speech with 3 things:  a great talk, a passion for your subject, and a willingness to listen to your audience.  To have a great talk – which means knowing it thoroughly – you have to rehearse.  If you bring your passion to the performance, you will never look stale or canned, because you will be genuinely there, in the moment.  And similarly, if you show up in the moment, you will be able to listen to your audience. 

That’s why you have to rehearse.  And that’s why Seth’s blog, just this once, is terrible advice for public speakers. 

Returning to work in the fall after summer holidays is a good time to take stock and make resolutions for the rest of the year.  If you give regular presentations, you’ve probably had some time off and are looking at a fall calendar with some dates marked in red.  Here are a few steps you can take today to ensure that those speaking occasions will be successful.  Make these steps regular practice and you’ll find yourself in demand as a great speaker. 

I. Research the audience and find out what you have in common

If you know what’s on the minds of your listeners, you can focus the speech on their needs rather than on a data dump of the information you already have.  If you know what you have in common with them, you can connect with them better.  And if it’s appropriate, mention those common links early in your speech. 

II. Prepare the speech 3 weeks before you give it, then learn it thoroughly

As good as you think you are at winging it, your body will betray you unconsciously if you’re doing something for the first time.  The audience will pick up – unconsciously – on those little betrayals and will read them as nervousness.  That will make the audience nervous.  The result is a doom loop you don’t want to start.  Instead, prepare and learn the speech 3 weeks out – you need that much time to get it in your bones. 

III. Rehearse the emotions of the speech

What makes a speech memorable is emotion – it’s the glue that makes memories stick in our minds.  So make sure you know what your emotional attitude is toward the material in the speech, and then practice feeling that when you deliver it.  If you’re excited, show it!

IV. Check out the venue beforehand

Many speakers are flummoxed by something unexpected at the venue.  Even the great ones are – Seth Godin once told me that the reason he displayed some awkward body language at a TED speech was that he was thrown off by the unexpected presence of a piano on stage that restricted his room to move. (He recovered and still did a great job!)  So check out the space beforehand – ideally well beforehand – and visualize yourself moving confidently and successfully through the speech in the space.

V. Walk the room before the speech

Just before the speech, perhaps at a rehearsal, or perhaps the night or morning before, walk the entire room.  Get a sense of how big it is, and how the stage looks from every seat.  That way, you’ll be able to project to the entire audience, not just the front row – a classic mistake many speakers make.

Take on these 5 to-dos and watch your public speaking improve rapidly. 

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! 

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. 

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. 

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! 

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!

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!

For my blog today, I'm linking to a recent article I posted on the Harvard Business Blogs that's getting a good deal of comment.  Here's the link:  http://bit.ly/cVrXbV.  Enjoy!  

Last week I was talking to architecture and design students about delivering a great presentation and helping them think about how their body language was a second conversation that would dominate the first – the content – unless the two were aligned. 

I asked them how much time they spend preparing their presentations.  “An entire term,” was the typical answer – because they work on their models for the whole term.  Then I asked them how much time they spent thinking about their body language – the second conversations – for delivering that presentation. 

“None,” was the typical answer.  So design students may be the worst offenders, but we’re all guilty of underestimating the second conversation.  By that I mean that we all spend a good deal of time researching, planning, and writing our speeches, but precious little time planning the choreography.

And yet it’s the choreography that will undo all that great design work in the presentation, especially, as I wrote yesterday, if the student spends all her time looking at the slides rather than the audience. 

So here’s my takeaway – spend as much time preparing your second conversation as you do your first.  And why not?  It’s at least as important.  You simply cannot be successful without it. 

How should you prepare?  Here are 5 quick steps for ensuring a successful second conversation.

1.  Decide where the high points of your speech are.  Then practice the speech moving toward the (imaginary) audience on those important points.  Move away from the audience when you’ve finished the point.

2.  Decide on the emotional message of your speech.   How do you feel about the message you’re imparting to the audience?  You want to convey that enthusiasm, passion, excitement, anger, or fun to the audience as strongly as you experience it.  The only way to do that is to find out what it is, focus on it, and then make a practice of calling up that emotion before you give the speech. 

3.  Check your posture.   Your posture powerfully signals how you feel about your subject, your audience, and yourself.  So rehearse in front of a video camera, imagining that the audience is there and then watch yourself on tape.  How do you look?  Confident or hesitant?  In charge or submissive?  Like a powerful person or merely taking up space?  Then stand up like a soldier at attention, but without the tension; release it by rolling your shoulders, and tensing and relaxing your big muscle groups.  You’re ready to go. 

4.  When you get to the room, check your choreography.  Rooms often present challenges of one kind or another for speakers.  Does the stage form a barrier between you and the audience?  Is it hard to see everyone?  Are there aisles to go up, or are you blocked?  You need to create your choreography on the fly, often with very little time.  Find a central point to begin, from which you can see the whole audience.  Then find places to foray out into the audience (without tripping over yourself or anyone else).  In that way you can plan your moves before you being to speak. 

5.  Before you begin to speak, find the emotional core you’ve identified for the speech and get into it.   Do this by remembering the last time you felt that sort of emotion strongly.  Use all your sense memories to recall it:  what did it smell, taste, feel, sound, and look like?  Once you’ve called up that emotion, you’re ready to speak. 

When giving a presentation, if you’re like most people, you’re going to be feeling exposed until you can get away to the bar once it’s all over.  You’re going to feel like you’re on trial.  And, of course, despite the fact that your audience does want you to succeed, success is still yours to lose.

So you’re nervous for a good reason.  You are on trial.  Don’t expect it to feel great until it’s over. 

All the more reason, then, to be very careful about the emotional story that you’re telling.  Because your body is going to be ready to give you away time and again.  Your body is perfectly happy to radiate nervousness, discomfort, and a compelling desire to flee for the exit.  But none of that supports your content very well, unless you’re giving a speech about terror. 

For most people, talking about a business goal, or an idea for a new direction to take the organization in, or a report on how the last quarter went, their emotional relationship to the content is a mixed one.  But it’s precisely that mixed message – some belief, some skepticism, some terror – that you probably don’t want to convey to the audience. 

When you’re preparing to give your speech, then, find a compelling emotional truth that the speech embodies and spend some time focusing on that.  You need a strong one to overcome the natural tendency for nerves.  Is it hope, or excitement, or triumph, or anger, or -- ?  You decide.  But make it a good one, be clear about it, and spend time in the day and minutes before your presentation thinking hard about that emotion.  What does it feel like?  What does it smell, taste, sound, and look like when you last experienced that emotion strongly?  Put yourself into that sense memory and it will bring the emotion alive. 

Then, when you are focused, go out and give the speech.  You will find that you are better able to connect with your material and with your audience, because you are grounded in an emotional truth.  Your mixed messages will fade away, and you will radiate charisma and success.  And you can still head to the bar when it’s over.

Should you use a teleprompter?  If so, what are the traps for the unwary?  I had a question from an old friend and reader of the blog about the uses and abuses of teleprompters.  So here’s the deal on them. 

1.  Teleprompters make weak presenters better – bringing them up to average.  A teleprompter provides you with two little transparent screens, one left, one right, and an operator scrolling the text on the screens at your speaking pace.  Thus the machine forces you to keep your head out of your notes, and encourages you to move your head left and right as you follow the scrolling text. 

2.  You’re still reading text, though, and that’s not the best way to give a speech.  Very few people can read a text with the same passion and conversational tone they can muster while talking – say, from notes.  Politicians like President Obama have put in hundreds of hours on teleprompters, and they still practice importance speeches in order to sound alive.  Most people fall into a dreadful sing-song when they’re reading.  So, unless you’re a terrible speaker, or one who can’t speak from notes, you’re better off not using the teleprompter. 

3.  If you need to be very precise, say, for legal reasons, in what you say, the teleprompter is a good option.  If reading a text is important to you for some reason beyond the performance issues, a teleprompter can keep you specific and focused.   

4.  To look good using a teleprompter, mix it up a little.  The other danger with a teleprompter is that you’ll create inadvertent comedy by moving your head too robotically left and right to follow the scrolling text.  Again, check out a practiced politician.  President Reagan was particularly good at let his head movements vary, lagging the movement of his eyes, so that he appeared to be making natural eye contact with his audience. 

5.  The best option may be having notes on the teleprompter, not a full text.  I’ve worked often with executives who want the security of a teleprompter or a security monitor but didn’t want to read a text.  What we’ve done is put notes up on the teleprompter (or a security monitor).  That can work quite well – the best of both worlds – with this important caveat:  you must rehearse with the teleprompter operator.  The reason for this is that you need to get comfortable with each other about how literally you’re going to follow the notes, and where you’re going to wax eloquently for whole minutes, say, before returning to the notes.  Teleprompter operators are very good at following speakers in my experience, but I have had a few hilarious exceptions.  Let’s just say that rehearsal is key. 

6.  The bottom line?  Let the technology support you.  In today’s conferences and meetings, you should be able to get just about any kind of technological support you need.  Use the technology that supports you best and makes you look good.  Experiment with teleprompters, security monitors, video, Power Point – the works – but never forget that the reason people give speeches is to make a human connection with an audience in person.  The technology should support that, never detract from it. 

Is rehearsal important?  Odd that I should even have to pose the question, but a surprising number of the people we've worked with over the years have tried to wiggle out of rehearsing even important speeches. 

Speakers want to deliver charismatic, assured, memorable performances.  Some of them say they want to 'wing it', because thinking too hard about it or preparing too much will make them stale or boring. 

Don't believe it, and don't credit that urge in yourself if it comes up.  It's just avoidance.  It's the fear talking.  And more importantly, it's wrong.

In order to achieve the apparently effortless, natural-looking performance a great stage actor delivers, he or she rehearses for six weeks, give or take, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it has become part of not only the intellectual memory, but also the sense memory.  Professional actors rehearse all day for six weeks.  You should rehearse, at an absolute minimum, three times. 

Every speech -- every communication -- is two conversations, I like to say.  One is verbal, the content, and the other is non-verbal, the body language.  You need to practice both.  They must be aligned for the speech to be successful.  It takes time (and rehearsal) for the non-verbal, especially, to become easy and natural-looking.  You can't just 'think' the non-verbal side of things precisely because it's not primarily an intellectual act -- it's a pre-intellectual one.  Different parts of the brain are involved than the frontal lobe, where the intellect is busy. 

I can always tell an under-rehearsed speech not only because the speaker may fumble the words, or the transitions, but because the non-verbal side of the speech looks awkward.  Winging it means that you will look like you're doing it for the first time.  Is that what you want to say to the audience?

Audiences will forgive the occasional verbal slip, but if you look like you don't know what you're doing, they'll write you off as a loser every time.

It's not about being slick.  It's about looking authentic -- looking like you, not some nervous, fumbling version of you.  Rehearsal lets you get there. 

I talk about this in more depth in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  Give it to a public speaker you love this holiday. 

Is rehearsal important?  Odd that I should even have to pose the question, but a surprising number of the people we've worked with over the years have tried to wiggle out of rehearsing even important speeches. 

Speakers want to deliver charismatic, assured, memorable performances.  Some of them say they want to 'wing it', because thinking too hard about it or preparing too much will make them stale or boring. 

Don't believe it, and don't credit that urge in yourself if it comes up.  It's just avoidance.  It's the fear talking.  And more importantly, it's wrong.

In order to achieve the apparently effortless, natural-looking performance a great stage actor delivers, he or she rehearses for six weeks, give or take, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it has become part of not only the intellectual memory, but also the sense memory.  Professional actors rehearse all day for six weeks.  You should rehearse, at an absolute minimum, three times. 

Every speech -- every communication -- is two conversations, I like to say.  One is verbal, the content, and the other is non-verbal, the body language.  You need to practice both.  They must be aligned for the speech to be successful.  It takes time (and rehearsal) for the non-verbal, especially, to become easy and natural-looking.  You can't just 'think' the non-verbal side of things precisely because it's not primarily an intellectual act -- it's a pre-intellectual one.  Different parts of the brain are involved than the frontal lobe, where the intellect is busy. 

I can always tell an under-rehearsed speech not only because the speaker may fumble the words, or the transitions, but because the non-verbal side of the speech looks awkward.  Winging it means that you will look like you're doing it for the first time.  Is that what you want to say to the audience?

Audiences will forgive the occasional verbal slip, but if you look like you don't know what you're doing, they'll write you off as a loser every time.

It's not about being slick.  It's about looking authentic -- looking like you, not some nervous, fumbling version of you.  Rehearsal lets you get there. 

I talk about this in more depth in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  Give it to a public speaker you love this holiday. 

 

Do you have the right voice for public speaking?  Many women push their voices too high, and men push them too low.  The result is that the voice lacks authority in the first instance and resonance in the second.  Neither one is good for public speaking. 

 

To find the right basic pitch for your voice, get to a keyboard.  Hunt for the lowest note you can comfortably match, and the highest.  That’s a range of typically 2 octaves, or about 16 white notes.  Then, walk your fingers up a quarter of the way from the bottom.  If your range is 2 octaves, that would be 4 notes (16 divided by 4 equals 4).  That pitch is your maximum resonance point.  You should be talking at that level much of the time, going higher to indicate passion, and lower to indicate certainty and authority. 

 

Once you’ve found your pitch, work on breathing.  Good public speaking voices have resonance, presence, and authority.  Resonance comes from proper breathing – with the belly, not the shoulders.  As you breathe in, expand the stomach, like an eye dropper.  Then, tense the stomach muscles and let the air trickle out as you speak.  Don't move your shoulders.

 

Presence comes from a touch of the nasal in the voice, but not too much.  Many of us have voices that are overly nasal, because we spend so much of our time hunched over computers, shoulders slumped, not breathing properly.  Try this.  Put your hands along your nose, and make a sound like a sheep bleating.  You should feel the nasal passages vibrating if you’re doing it right.  That’s a nasal-sounding voice.  Now, breathe from the belly, lose 95 percent of the nasal, and you’re ready to go.  Just a touch of the nasal gives your voice carrying quality, so that it can be heard clearly before an audience. 

 

Finally, authority comes from pitching an arc with your voice that starts at your correct pitch, goes up slightly during the phrase or sentence, and comes down again at the end.  Many people today say everything as if it were a question?  With their tone rising at the end of every sentence?  The result is maddening, and lacking any authority?  Don't do it!

 

For more information about the care and feeding of a great public speaking voice, go to my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.