Great Speaking Coach

Do You Have the Character to WOW Your Audience?

WOW factors are the mystical, hard-to-achieve qualities that make people leave the room saying "Wow, that was amazing." Right? Well, mystical yes, but not hard to achieve.

It's thrilling to be surrounded by a cheering, stomping crowd listening to a speaker who is charismatic and charming. Your heart beats faster, you're flush with enthusiasm, your mind spins with visions of your own charmed life coming the next day. These experiences make conferences and conventions buzz and leave everyone feeling great.

You, the more down-to-earth business speaker, are not likely to create that experience for your audiences because you don't work at it day in and day out. Keynote speakers who enchant the audience spend their whole working lives making themselves that way. The typical business speaker has to fit speaking into an already packed schedule.

So how can you WOW your audiences? The answer begins with something you have right at your fingertips--your character. Character means being true to yourself and speaking from your inner knowledge with passion and authenticity. When you show your authentic self to your own audiences, you'll connect with them and give them value.

Here are my three best tips for connecting with your audience and making them glad they were there:

1) Think "conversation" not presentation and definitely not "Power Point". No matter how formal the setting, your conversational attitude must come out loud and clear.

2) Put yourself in your audiences' shoes. What path are they traveling? What goals do they have? What troubles would they like to deal with? What gets them excited? I guarantee you that when you craft all of your content with these questions in mind, you'll increase the conversational attitude and the connection. Put the audience first.

3) Rehearse ten or twenty times more than you usually do. You won't understand the value of lots of rehearsals until you do it. Once you've rehearsed 20-30 times, you'll be so conversational and authentic that you'll make them feel that they're sitting over dinner with a good friend.

Speaking opportunites occur in businesses every day. Be the one in your office to embrace them, create "WOW" and see your repute and regard grow.

Share your stories of creating "WOW" through our comment link.

Speaking...The Original Wireless Connection (TM)

Speaking is the original wireless connection: always 4 bars, never at the mercy of cell towers, instant on and realistic sound. Yet people often forget the value of connecting this way even as they upgrade their tablets and smartphones.

Connect, connect, connect with your audience. Do it three times per speech for the ultimate connection experience.

1) Attention-getting opening (AGO): put the word YOU, as in the audience, in the first few words you ever say. (Not 'thank you for that kind introduction' which is not about the audience at all). The best AGOs ask the audience to see or feel something personally. "Imagine you are...", "Take a moment to picture...", "How have you felt when...?" What follows these opening fragments should be related to your call-to-action at the end of your speech.

2) Make your story their story: a one-armed man spent 45 minutes telling the audience ( I was there) how he had managed to golf, shoot hoops, tackle, and swim even though everyone told him he couldn't because he only had one arm. While his own story was remarkable, he never once asked the audience what "limb" they were missing and how they overcame it to do something others challenged them to do. Find the human elements of your story and focus on them, not just on yourself, to make your story meaningful to your audience.

3) Call-to-action (CTA): Get your audience thinking about what they will DO next. Not think about, not talk about, not hope for, but DO. Give them time to say it out loud, share their commitment with their neighbor, write it down, take it with them. Leave them with a short, easy to remember phrase that reminds them to take action. My CTA for speeches about speaking and presentations is "Speaking, it's your ultimate wireless connection."

Please notice frequent speech or presentation elements that are NOT on this list of ways to connect with your audience:
slides
data
policies
financial status
strategic goals
business jargon
formulas such as "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them"
agendas
corporate overviews

These elements can be incorporated into speeches and presentations as needed but you must surround them with the three ways to connect.

Invest in your speaking...your ultimate wireless connection.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
What clients say:
"Susan has a 'way with words' and can transform virtually any subject matter into interesting, understandable, and actionable material. She can help craft presentations resulting in a story that audiences will remember long after the presentation is over. She is gifted in dealing with her clients and inspires creative approaches with her calm yet passionate desire to see others succeed. I am grateful to have benefited from her knowledge, skill, and ability, and encourage anyone seeking to improve their speaking skills to consider Susan."
K.W. Sr. Manager, Defense contractor

Let Your Inner Voices Out

You live in multiple roles: you're mom or dad, husband or wife, boss, direct report, sports fan, coach, student, teacher, and many others. Without being conscious of it, you speak in a different voice as you rotate through these roles each day. Sometimes the voice of a role is actually the sound coming out of your throat. Other times the voice is more about the language you use, your posture, your emotion, your confidence or your perspective.

Wildly popular speakers bring a variety of voices to their audiences. You can do this too.

1) In your business you're both a boss and a direct report to someone. Hopefully your 'boss voice' is one of leadership: vision, encouragement, values, and listening more than talking. And your 'direct report voice' is one of confidence in your work, strong peer relationships and forward thinking. When you craft a speech or presentation be sure to incorporate both of these voices into it. Nancy Duarte says that good speeches go back and forth between "how it is" and "how it could be". These are your two voices. Don't get stuck in one or the other, instead speak with both of them.

2) Business speakers have other roles in other parts of their lives, and their audiences do too. So tap into those other roles for a variety of voices. A 'coach voice' is part observation and recommendations and part unbridled enthusiasm. When you're building up to your call-to-action, you'll be more effective with your coach voice, not your business voice. As you write and then practice your speech, allow your coach voice to take the lead on that part. You'll realize that the words you use, the rhythm and the emotion are very different from those in your business voice.

3) Subject matter experts tend to speak like professors or teachers. This is what their audiences expect and for the most part it is fine. Yet too much of a good thing is not good. So even SMEs and other tech types need to allow their other voices to emerge. A recent client wanted to use some academic definitions in his presentation, but quoting them word for word was bogging him down. So we thought about what other voice he could use and he came up with the coach voice instead of the academic voice. He'd precede the definiton with a little humor his audience would get and paraphrase the definitions in less formal language. This also enabled him to inflect more and keep the flow of his presentatin moving.

What are your top two or three voices? Take time to identify them. What words and cadence do you use with those voices? What's the emotional content of those voices and how does it differ from your 'business voice'? How will you use these voices in your speeches and presentations?

Now, let one of those voices join the conversation through our comment box!

 

How to Rivet Your Audience with Quotes

Well-known quotes that circulate everywhere are other people's ideas. They obviously have meaning to many people--but you don't get credit for any of that meaning if all you do is quote them.

You can rivet your audience by using quotes when you're the speaker if you do the following:

1) Pose a question that the quote is an answer to. For example, this quote was posted recently "Always learn the rules. So you can break them properly." (Dalai Lama)

You might pose this question: "What do you do when it comes to the tension between the conformity that keeps your job and innovation that could propel your career?"

Then you could quote the Dalai Lama.

2) You must also add your own perpsective to the quote. In this example, the quote itself is a guide to your thinking. What does does it mean to you to learn the rules and then break them properly? Why? How have you done this? Tell your story.

Open your story with "What if you were faced with (X)? I was faced with it and it became the perfect time to do as the Dalai Lama suggests. (then tell the story).

3) Clearly guide the audience to understand your take on the quote and then find their own example. At the end of the sotry, you ask the audience to think back to a similar time, and give them a couple of minutes to analyze their own experience, or invite them to share their experience with someone next to them.

This is riveting your audience with quotes: creating the context, using the quote, telling a story.

What's great is that they'll remember you as much as the well-known quote because it was you who helped them create meaning from it.

How have you interpreted a quote in a way that made you really memorable for the audience? Share your story in our comment box.

 

How to Interest the iDEVICE-addicted Audience

What attracts you to your handheld device, whether tablet or smartphone? I admit to these two reasons:

1. There's always something new to read--social media is an unending stream of "new"
2. If I lose interest I can move to another app

Your audiences feel this way too. So your challenge as a speaker is to combat these two attractions of iDEVICES. Since you're a human being, you can't be like an electronic device; you must offer an experience they can't get from any iDEVICE, no matter how new or trendy.

iDEVICES are one-way streets. They come at you and come at you and come at you. All you can do is try to keep up.

Even so-called interactive apps such as games are not really interactive. You enter something and it enters something back but there's no opportunity for you to influence the device. If you're playing a game with others (Words with Friends comes to mind) there's none of the exchange between players that there is when playing a game in person. The thrill of a 7-letter word or the agony of terrible letters. They're all the same to the game.

As a speaker you can interact with your audience. And you can give them opportunities to interact with each other.

Speaker-audience interaction requires using the methodologies of adult learning. Posing thought-provoking questions; giving them time and tools to work out the answers; and then sharing their answers with others in the room, including to the point of encouraging them to debate each other while you observe. Encourage detours and wrong-turns, which enrich the learning.

Your observations then become part of your presentation. What did you notice about how different pairs or small groups interacted with each other? Did everyone have time to speak, or were some people hogging the time? Did you hear people ask others questions, or did they just pontificate? Did the listeners make any effort to speak up? Why not? How could speaking up help them in the future?

Although I encourage speakers to craft and deliver a clear call-to-action (as opposed to a summary or conclusion) as the last remarks of their presentation, you could ask the audience what they want as the call-to-action. After all, it's their lives and their circumstances. You might modify your planned call-to-action based on what they say. Showing that you are always learning is great role-modeling.

In these ways you have far exceeded what they get from their iDEVICES. What other recommendations do you have for speakers to help them Interest their iDEVICE-addicted audiences? Share your ideas in our comment box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Detours and Wrong Turns Improve Your Speech

The starting point of any speech or presentation is the moment when you get the initial idea or you get an invitation to speak. The finish is your call-to-action and the audience's response. How you get from start to finish is the journey.

In all journeys, much of the most significant meaning comes from detours and wrong turns. This is true for the journey you take from start to finish of your speech or presentation.

Let's say you have a call-to-action that seems crystal clear and non-controversial. Then you decide on your three key points--short, crsip statements that taken together lead inexorably to the call-to-action. Yet, when you put them down, and even when you rearrange them, something doesn't feel right. So you take a detour--a different key point, or a revision of the call-to-action. Maybe that detour turns out to be a wrong turn, and you have to find another one. I guarantee that by the time you finalize your call-to-action and your key points, you will have learned a lot, expanded your thinking and improved your own insight into the topic. You will have a much improved speech.

It's so important to embrace, not be afraid of, detours and wrong turns. Revisions reflect a curious and expandable mind, which is a strength, not a weakness.

One caveat... Do not get so caught up in revisions that you take forever to finish your notes/slides and don't have time to practice. You're not writing a document that could affect the world--you're speaking to an audience that wants to be challenged and inspired.

Take the detours and wrong turns in stride and get on with the speech. Stand up and practice, and in the practicing you'll find new detours and wrong turns. Great! Talk around them, through them or over them and keep going. Your speech will be richer for it and your audience will be grateful.

When have you taken a wrong turn or detour in life that turned out to be well worth it? Use that experience as your guide to speaking. The end product will be well worth it.

 

 

To Arrive at the Destination You Must Make the Trip

I hope you find inspiration and ideas from the many sources all around you. If you're not seeing sources, here's one of my recent finds:

David Hagedorn, who writes about food for the Washington Post wrote: (my friend) "wants to arrive at the destination without taking the time to get there." Hagedorn was referring to cooking journeys and as soon as I read this I knew it applies to speaking as well.

Everyone always expresses their desire to be a well-regarded, confident speaker. Yet so often they have reasons for not working on, much less achieving, that goal: "Too busy, other's expectations, get hung up on their slides" and on and on. They want to arrive at the destination without taking (or making) the time to get there.

There is probably a minimum amount of time anyone must spend preparing a speech or presentation although I don't have a feeling for an absolute floor. Instead let's look at whatever time you do spend and how you can use that time better to arrive at your speaking destination.

If the time you typically spend--from the first idea to walking into the presentation space--is two hours, deliberately allocate your time like this:

5 minutes on your call-to-action. This is the end of your speech/presentation and it tells in a few words what the audience should do once your speech is over. Do NOT pass go until you have your clear, simple call-to-action.

5 minutes writing your 1-3 key points. Key points are written in short phrases that are easy to remember. Together they must drive to your call-to-action. No more than 5 minutes.

15 minutes making notes about your leading materials--for example, stories,statistics, research, quotes, examples, questions to ask the audience, relevant tools, processes or approaches.

15 minutes accumulating the details of your leading materials. This is not the time to do deep research or search the web for every last word on the topic. You're speaking, not teaching.

20 minutes writing your speaking notes or putting together a few slides. Use images wherever possible to represent your ideas. Either write note cards or a few slides for the leading materials that precede each key point, then note the key point and go on. Conclude with your call-to-action.

5 more minutes - Now go back to the beginning and spend 5 minutes crafting your attention getting opening. Notes or an image only!

55 minutes--take your notes or look at your slides, stand up and start speaking. Only speaking is speaking and speaking is the only way to arrive at your destination: being well-regarded and confident.

You must make the trip to arrive at the destination, whatever your endeavor. When your endeavor is speaking and presenting, there are no short cuts or substitutes for taking each step. In order to prepare a steak dinner, you've got to shop for the meat, pre-heat the grill, season it just right, cook it carefully, plate it with attractive side dishes and set it on a pleasing table.

This is my recipe for reaching the destination of being a well-regarded and confident speaker. What would you add, subtract or modify? Share your ideas in our comment box.

 

 

 

Find Your Many Voices

What do you know? I was in the desert without water and I didn't even know it. I went to a workshop on storytelling for bloggers and came away with something even better. I learned that I have a business voice, a speaking coach voice, a cook's voice and a horse-crazy rider voice--just as you have several voices. I probably have others which I'm eager to uncover over time.

Two questions: why is this exciting and how will I use these voices?

Why is this exciting? Understanding and feeling my different voices gives me insight into why my speaking and writing on some topics comes so easily and for others is much harder. My business voice makes it easy to talk about crafting speaking content for the benefit of the audience but it stifles my speaking about fear, awkwardness and self-consciousness while speaking. Yet my horse-crazy rider voice, which has no trouble speaking about fear, would help me help others who struggle with fear in many situations.

So now I call upon my rider's voice when fear is holding people back. I'll use this voice instead of using my business voice to approach the fear which inhibits smart and talented people from sharing their knowledge with others, getting recognition and moving along their career ladder.

What voices do you have? How do they help you express yourself? Please share your stories in our comment box.

Coaching is a Fine Art Not a Sledgehammer

My client just finished a practice of his thoughtfully crafted content and genuine delivery when a new listener jumped up and said "You've got to make eye contact or at least make them think you're making eye contact, and you've got to smile and...on and on." The speaker was taken aback, and rightfully so. He and I had set some goals for that practice, which he met---and which did not include any delivery style details.

I quickly asserted to the newcomer that the speaker had done what we were aiming for him to do, and that there can only be one coach, and that was me. To his credit, he sat down and deferred to my coaching for the rest of the week.

This experience made me think about what coaching IS and what it is not:

1. Coaching IS listening, observing, understanding, not jumping in with opinions that may not be related to the speaker's goals.
2. Coaching IS asking the subject what they were thinking and attempting to do during a practice, not telling them what they should have been thinking.
3. Coaching IS using the subject's efforts as the foundation for improvement, not hammering them on getting fixed.
4. Coaching IS transferring your knowledge to the subject so they internalize it for their own use, not barking out and endless stream of instructions.

What else would you add to this list of what coaching IS and is not?

Familiarity and Curiosity to Keep Audiences Attention

Two powerful & opposite emotions: familiarity and curiosity. Evoke them both as you speak to keep the audience engaged. Note well: neither are fact based.

Familiarity comes when you invoke shared experiences, points of view or values. The audience experiences you, the speaker, as someone like themselves, which is a natural attraction factor. The easy way to create familiarity is to tell stories about experiences most people have: family, work, travel, sports, education. You should be sure that you tell such stories in ways that are meaningful to each particular audience. And the emphasis is on the inner experience, not the external factors.

If, for example, you want to tell a story about overcoming travel difficulties, focus on the feelings that arose in you during the difficulties rather than too many details about the mode of travel, the destination or other external details. Everyone can relate to delays and lack of information, even if they experience those moments in a car, plane or train.

You may have a unique life story--say, you're disabled or have a long history of illness and you've accomplished much in your life. You can make an audience generally not facing your unique circumstances experience a sense of familiarity by focusing on how you think, set goals, or respond to detractors and negativity. Everyone has faced these obstacles in their lives, even if they aren't disabled or ill. So you make your connection to the audience over internal qualities, not external ones.

Curiosity is generated when you tell stories about unfamiliar events or experiences with drama and artfulness. Many of the most popular movies are built around arousing curiosity in the audience. Events set the story arc in motion and while the hero faces challenges and works to overcome obstacles, the audience is glued to the screen.

You can do exactly this with artful storytelling. Artfulness comes from juxtaposition of opposites, events unfolding in a zig-zag way, something left out or adding small details, bringing in a new character at an unexpected moment. Drawing out the denouement keeps the audience listening-will he or won't he? Add a component of "what would you do in this situation?" and you hold them even tighter.

Add your own examples of ways to evoke curiosity and familiarity in your speeches by posting in our comment link.