I heard an Indian novelist interviewed recently.  Asked what struck her when she first came to America, she said, “I noticed that in America, the rich are thin and the poor are fat—the opposite of my country.”

Of course, she meant that, compared to the poor, a higher percentage of wealthy, educated people are thin and healthy.

I am tempted to say something similar about my experience as a consultant to speakers and presenters.  In America, the highly-educated people are tongue-tied, while the less educated people speak with more impact.

As soon as my fingers type these words, I can think of exceptions.  President Obama, Robert Reich, Bill Buckley—all are (were) highly educated and all are good speakers.  And of course, we can all conjure images of less educated people who could prove to be ineffective at the lectern.

Still, in my work with scientists, MDs, PhDs, MBAs, statisticians, actuaries, PharmDs, and engineers of all stripes, I encounter a large number of them who struggle terribly with the task of making compelling sense when they stand up to speak about their area of expertise.

And I also work with many people in the sales profession, and while they all possess native intelligence, and have gone to college, they do not have letters after their names.  And perhaps because of their experience, or their natures, they are, for the most part, pretty darn good on their feet.

Why might this be true—that the highly educated struggle more as public speakers than the less educated?  (By the way, I have no letters after my name.)

Let me speculate.  First, highly educated people see things in shades of gray, not in black and white.  They tend to pride themselves, and are rewarded for being careful with language, avoiding indefensible generalizations, and striving to make fine distinctions in logic and reasoning.  They follow the rules of evidence.  In a word, they’re boring. 

I heard someone say that in a political rumble, Republicans show up with knives and chains, while Democrats show up with library cards.  This is a hit on Obama’s professorial image, but it suggests that an over-educated approach to popular debate is ineffective.

Highly educated people like their speaking to show off their educations.  Regular people like to speak in order to get things off their chest, or to make other people do something.  Like sales people.  They like to get people to buy their stuff.  They don’t care if they sound smart. 

The other thing about highly educated people is that they know more and more about less and less.  They have had to specialize so early in life that they have not been able to read widely outside their area of expertise.  They have a highly specialized vocabulary, and struggle to speak the language of the market place.

Nor have they ever had to study rhetoric, or take a class in public speaking.  Some of them never even took any liberal arts courses.  And by the way, rhetoric is not the dirty word many people think it is.  It is the ancient art (and now science) of getting other people to understand and accept your ideas.   A good thing to know if you’re planning on having a career of any kind.

So America is a funny country.  The rich are skinny, the poor are fat and the highly educated are tongue-tied.

Happy New Year!

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Most of us need training because: 

1. We are unaware.
2. We don’t do what we want, or know how, to do.
3. We don’t practice.

We are not aware of how we come across.  We have blind spots.  Blind areas.  Our education is incomplete.  We have not read the great books on the subject of effective speech.  We have not trained under masters of the art.   We need to expand our awareness.

Even when we know what we should do, or want to do, we don’t do it.  Doing it a new way is hard.  It takes time.  It feels weird.  We experience a drop in our abilities before we see a rise. 

We need a teacher, mentor, trainer, guru, or coach to keep a tab on us.  We need that coach to give us the right tools—the right suggestions—convince us that his or her ideas are the right ones, and then attend to us, patiently, until we are able to make use of the optimal techniques he or she is offering.

We need greater awareness of ourselves and of the inherited traditions of highly effective speech, and we need a chance to practice those techniques under the watchful eye of a coach. 

All top performers have coaches.  They used to be called Dutch Uncles—guys you went to for advice.  Now the uncles specialize in narrow little areas of life, and get paid for their knowledge and their ability to help you implement that knowledge.

You need Dutch Uncles and coaches because this stuff is important, it doesn’t come naturally, and it takes time and effort to make it real.

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

I recently had the privilege of sitting through four investigator meetings, two in the United States and two in Europe. 

They comprised speaker after speaker with slide after slide.  Topics included the disease, the drug, the PK, the efficacy and safety, statistical modeling, and then the process by which patients were to be enrolled and cared for throughout the study.

Occasionally, at the end of a presentation, the speaker would ask multiple choice questions about the topic just covered, and the audience could select an answer using a remote control response device.  The percentage of correct answers ranged from a high of 70% to a low of 35%.

One of the key scientific presentations was delivered by a young doctor with a foreign accent, her hair in her face, and a specialty in another disease state.  She was hesitant, focused primarily on her notes, and unsuccessful in creating any excitement or passion for the long and arduous assignment the investigators had in front of them.

Another similar problem occurred with the presentation delivered by the statistician who had devised the null hypothesis and necessary endpoints for the study.  He had a severe foreign accent, spoke extremely quickly, and although he was appealing and expressive, was for the most part unintelligible.  I surveyed about five people after his talk and they all complained that they could not understand a word he said.

Some of the other speakers were quite effective, in that they stated their objective at the start, showed an agenda slide, and then marched the audience through a slide deck with varying degrees of energy, volume, and personality. 

Each meeting lasted two days, even though the investigators themselves only needed to be there for the first day, while their assistants did in fact need to be there for both days.

The sponsor is no doubt obliged to document that a meeting was held, and that thorough and precise instruction was given.  But might the sponsor accomplish more than checking the regulatory “tick box” and actually create real learning, while at the same time creating a strong attachment to their company within a community of influential doctors?

We all know that a process such as the one described above is not optimal for teaching adults how to do something.  Adults actually need to “do” what they are being asked to learn, in addition to listening to instruction and reading slides. 

Adults need to practice active problem solving, engage in role plays and case studies, and participate in debate.  Hands-on learning gets better results and better reviews.

It’s time to get creative with investigator meetings. 

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.