I am on the island of Serifos in the blue, blue Aegean.  My wife Sharon is engrossed in her month-long seminar, and I am left to my own devices.  I have slowed down considerably – reading, swimming, and sleeping is all I do.  Eating too.

But now comes the national strike, a two-day gesture of defiance and outrage over the Greek financial crisis.  In both the public and private sectors, nothing will get done today or tomorrow, except shouting outside Parliament.  No ships will arrive or depart from the harbor.  No planes will fly overhead.  No trains will move between Athens and Piraeus on the mainland.  The Greek-speaking world will come to a halt.  Silence will take over from the noise of scooters and trucks.  Stillness will settle over us.

There is no peace in the silence and the stillness.  Anger and anxiety abound.  But I like to think my own effort to come to rest is radiating from me.  That my micro stillness has become the macro.  That the world around me is taking a breath, and that out of that experience will come new strength.  For the Greeks, it will be the strength to fight through the difficulties ahead, and mine will be the strength to go back to work.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.

It is widely held that man is the only creature with language.  But that may not be true.

African vervet monkeys are always looking around for danger, and when they perceive a threat, they give an alarm that is specific to the threat.

If it’s an eagle, they give an eagle alarm, and all the vervets take up the cry, and take cover under the trees.

If it’s a snake alarm, the vervets do the opposite.  They climb up into the tree repeating the call — Snake!  Snake!  Snake!

If the sentry monkey spots a leopard, it makes the leopard cry, and the vervets likewise leap into the tree, only this time they go out onto the narrowest, most lightweight branches — the perfect place to be when being pursued by a 200  pound cat.

Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney of the University of Pennsylvania have even stimulated these responses in vervets using alarm call recordings.

I think it’s pretty clear that African vervets have a language.  Their vocabulary may be limited, but their cries perform the same task that our presentations are meant to perform: They get their listeners to pay attention, solve a problem, and DO something specific.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.

Once again, I am the speech coach who has run into a very accomplished person who mumbles.  He’s on the fast track at a major American corporation, and his boss has gotten word that senior people can’t understand him when he presents.

Receptive to help and concerned about the consequences of this life-long habit, he is struggling to be mindful of his speech.  Since the physical process of speaking is something we all do without conscious thought, the effort to be aware of the placement of his tongue and lips is a challenge.

He’s getting there.  He’s louder than he was, which is great, and he’s keeping his voice up all the way to the ends of his sentences, but he still needs to slow down and land on every vowel and consonant.  He tends to zip through syllables.  For instance, for constitutional he says cons-too-tional, leaving out that middle ti syllable.

When these mistakes pile up during a high stakes presentation, it makes him appear nervous, and makes him harder to understand.

Smart guy.  He shouldn’t be held back by something mechanical like not knowing where to place his tongue and lips when speaking plain old English.  Of course it’s nothing that voice and speech training can’t fix.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.  Sign up for our presentation tips and learn more about us at http://www.simswyeth.com/.