Executive Speech Coach NJ - Sims Wyeth » public speaking skills

Public Speaking is like splitting wood

SimsBeth — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:36:40 +0000

When I was 12 years old, I went to a canoe camp in northern Quebec. Thanks Mom and Dad. It was great.

We paddled for thirty days straight, pitching camp every night, foraging and cutting our own firewood. I was taught how to split logs by a master axman. In the time it takes for a squirrel to twitch its tail he could split logs into firewood, firewood into kindling, and kindling into pencils.

His rules for us were simple: spread your feet, wear steel-toed boots, go with the grain, and keep the axe sharp. The most dangerous thing to a wood splitter is a dull axe, because dull axes bounce off wood and hit you in the leg.

Can we stretch these rules to apply to public speaking? Let me try.

First, as good presenters, we’re trying to hit the audience where it counts. We need to be talking about something that they care about, so they’ll open up and listen. That’s going with the grain.

When we deliver a speech or presentation, we need to take a stand, have a point of view, and attack the issue in a balanced manner, giving voice to both sides of the argument. That’s presenting with your feet apart—taking a balanced perspective.

Public speakers also need to have thick skin—rhino hide, even—to have the courage to speak in the first place, to advance our opinions and push through any skepticism, prejudice, or inertia. And we need to be able to respond to antagonistic questions from our skeptical listeners. These presentation skills represent our steel-toed shoes.

Finally, public speakers and presenters need to strike the heart of the matter with force, to express our opinions as fact, so that our points sink deep. We can’t be wishy-washy. This is our sharp axe.

Splitting wood is a deeply satisfying activity. When you hit the wood in just the right place, and the log pops open, it feels good.

Public speaking is more complicated. It’s torture to prepare, but if you do happen to build a talk that turns you on, it’s exciting to deliver it, nice to get the compliments afterwards, and satisfying that you did well something that is difficult.

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.

Shock and awe work in presentations

SimsBeth — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:46:15 +0000

I recently got a letter from a lawyer threatening to sue me because I had mistakenly used a copyrighted image in a blog.

The letter was not a cease and desist letter. It was a shock and awe letter, so threatening and hostile—so long, tedious, and burdensome in its language and requests– that I went into a state of deep hostility myself.

I will leave that there, and simply ask if you’ve ever wanted to deliver a presentation that begins with shock and awe. Not the same kind of shock and awe—threatening and hostile—but the kind of shock and awe that is pyro-technical and theatrical, filled with dramatic stories, extravagant claims, and demonstrative behaviors on your part, all designed to make the audience say, “WOW! What a speaker! What a great presentation.”

I have had that desire many times. I collect stories, and admire speeches and presentations that begin with a bang. But I also recognize that when I go for shock and awe, I surrender a slice of my gravitas and professionalism.

I am coming to feel that a good speaker is in service to the audience, and does not draw attention to himself. He only uses his expressive power to bring the message to life for the audience, similar to an actor, who is at his best when you don’t see the acting.

As a speaker or presenter, when you drop shock and awe on an audience, you’re swinging for the fences (a baseball analogy suggesting that you’re taking a big chance and are increasing the likelihood of failure.) Your audience may very well respond to you as I did to the lawyer, and go into a kind of resentment—judging you as a show-off, a person of intemperate character, and watching you skeptically.

There is an old bit of wisdom among actors and other performers: never take your showmanship to the Nth degree. Never get so loud and passionate that you have no more loudness or passion to give. Always stay in control, at least several steps this side of the edge.

Modesty in all things, you might say—even in your dalliance with shock and awe.

The #1 Sales Skill

SimsBeth — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:32:29 +0000

Client facing skills (also known as sales skills and interpersonal skills) are essentially the skills of a very good conversationalist. Good conversations can lead to connection, mutual respect, and understanding (not necessarily agreement.) They can precipitate new, and strengthen existing, relationships. They also reveal character, and can cause two people to become fast friends, be indifferent to one another, or to avidly avoid one another for the rest of their lives.

While the overt medium of conversation is language, the covert media are also highly influential, and they are numerous. In no particular order, they are the voice, the body’s gestures (including the effective use of ears), and the symbolic power of clothing, grooming, and other signs of social status, such as your resume, alma mater, and accent—to name just a few.

If you misuse words—for instance, if you say “irregardless,” instead of “regardless,”—some of your listeners will write you off as half-educated.

If you interrupt someone even once (without apologizing), they may decide it’s not worth their time getting to know such an egotist.

If you don’t look at the other person when you speak, or when you listen, they may conclude that, at best, you are shy and at worst, you’re shifty, unreliable, or maybe even crazy.

If you consistently demonstrate that you either have not heard or understood what the other person has said (because you’ve been busy composing your clever retort rather than listening) they will most likely conclude that it will be difficult to do business with you.

And if your speaking voice lacks an adequate range of volumes, pitches and speeds, or if your speech is laced with “likes, you knows, I means, uhs, uhms, and ers,” your partner in conversation will have a difficult time concluding that you are a bright and talented individual.

But all is forgiven if you are deeply curious about other people. Good conversationalists, and good sales people, are curious. Really curious, not only because they want to make the sale, but also because they are just plain old curious about people and the world.

And if, in addition, you are endlessly interested in others, not because you want to sell to them but because you really do have the capacity to empathize with them, to see the world as they see it (not necessarily agreeing with them), then you can screw up all the things I mention above—misuse of words, interrupting, lack of eye contact, and speaking in a dull-as-dishwater voice—all of these rules you can violate with impunity if only you listen, really listen, and show them that you’ve listened and understood, and made them feel heard.

Public speaking requires self-mastery

SimsBeth — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:21:32 +0000

I am in and out of major American corporations as a consultant, a career which allows me to observe the good, the bad, and the ugly in presentation of self, and presentation of thinking.

I hate to get real tactical-practical on the presentation skills continuum, but somebody’s got to say something. People who jiggle their knees while talking are not doing themselves any favors.

I was sitting across a desk from a young guy and could see that his knee was going up and down like a hummingbird’s wing—so fast you could hardly see it. The rest of him—the part above the desk—was vibrating slightly.

When he got up to present, the amount of extraneous presentation movement detracted from his credibility as a presenter and limited my ability to listen to him. When I mentioned it to him, he said he couldn’t help it, that he’d always done it, that he was Venezuelan by birth, and that his parents had given him espresso from day one.

I said, “Let’s pretend you have no memory of your past. Just for a few minutes, all your memory chips are erased. Do it again, and stand still.”

He did much better. Then I said, “You are still water. You are calmness personified. You are so still you are like a Sphinx. Try it like that.”

Bingo. Even better. Then he sat down and started jiggling his knee again.

Oh well. Now he knows he can stop when he wants to. I have it on tape.

Presentation Tips: All in one book!

SimsBeth — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:55:13 +0000

Heads up! Those of you who read Presentation Pointers may be interested in buying a paperback or e-book version of:

A Zen monk had sweaty palms: Pointers on the path to better public speaking

The 3 Greatest Presentation Skills

SimsBeth — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:30:05 +0000

I came to the career of speech coach and presentation strategist from the world of the theater. I was an actor, director, and writer of plays for 15 years before I joined a consulting firm that served the pharma industry. At this point in 2011 I’ve been counseling business leaders, experts, scientists, researchers, sales people and marketing folk for 21 years.

I have grown.

With my first clients, I was all about the physical stuff, the acting stuff: eye contact, voice and body language. It was all I knew: I had no idea what anyone in business was talking about.

Then I got interested in presentation structure. “Have a grabber,” I’d say, “Something to make them sit up and listen.”

I also found myself urging clients to have a call to action at the end of their talks. I quoted Confucius: “To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish.”

And of course, I was advocating that they limit the number of points they make in their talks and on their slides.

For ten years or so, these bits of advice kept me off the bread lines. However, there were at least three problems with offering up these helpful tips.

1. My competitors were saying the same things.

2. It felt cosmetic instead of transformative.

3. I was giving everyone the same advice.

As a result, my business suffered, I was frustrated because I wasn’t truly making an impact on people’s lives, and I was bored saying the same thing all the time—which is the curse of the advice giver.

What to do with this mid-life crisis, this search for meaning and integrity? Never mind that I also needed to build my savings for retirement, pay off my child’s mountainous college debt, and maintain my self-image as a card-carrying member of the upper middle class.

I stumbled around for a long time, quite honestly, holding it together with duct tape and chewing gum. But I think I may have stumbled on a few ideas that could restore my sense of self-worth. Let me explain.

It is my belief that presentation skills get greater as they become more meaningful for the audience. This means that a presentation skill that makes the speaker look good is not as great as a presentation skill that benefits the audience.

Many skills that are taught by the likes of me are cosmetic, more packaging for the speaker than meaningful contribution to the audience. This is not to say that packaging is unimportant. It is important for the speaker because it helps to predispose the audience to see the speaker as a trustworthy source of information. An example of packaging you may have heard is the injunction to dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

Cosmetics such as this do nothing to strengthen the actual intellectual , emotional, or ethical appeal of the speaker. In fact, they make it harder for the audience to discern the truth. And when such packaging overpromises and under-delivers, trust is broken, the speaker loses influence, and the audience looks elsewhere for meaningful value.

Should the speaker wear more humble clothing and lose his chance to shine? No, not at all. Looking good is a good presentation skill, but it’s not a great one because it benefits the speaker and not the audience. A great presentation skill provides a meaningful contribution to the audience. The improved image, authority and influence of the speaker is a by-product of that contribution.

So here’s the question. Whether as a leader, sales person, researcher, or influencer of any kind…what are the great presentation skills that one must demonstrate in order to make a meaningful contribution to an audience?

The speaker must:

1. Take apart the thinking of the audience on a given topic and rearrange it so that it’s new, improved, and widely embraced by the audience.

2. Move the audience out of a state of contemplation and into a state of action or preparation for action.

3. Give himself so generously and authentically to the audience, and create such a memorable experience for them, that he forges a personal bond with the majority of his listeners.

Please keep in mind that I do not claim these are ironclad laws of the presentation platform. Rather, they are my attempt to define great presentation skills (as opposed to merely good ones), those skills that would enable a speaker to make a meaningful contribution to an audience.

Ask yourself, can you do any of the above three things sitting, slouching, mumbling or standing with your hands in your pockets? I believe the answer is YES. Can you do any of these with poor eye contact, disheveled clothing, and awkward body language? Yes.

Of course a pleasing personality, a lively voice, and expressive, even colorful body language could help. But strangely, such attributes can harm as well, because polished speakers can become slippery ones, and slippery turns people off.

Let me supply examples. Charlie Green of Trusted Advisor Associates took my thinking about sales and rearranged it. I now think of selling as problem solving, as doing well by doing good, so now it’s a lot easier to pick up the phone and prospect.

Barack Obama got me out of my state of contemplation and into a state of action. For me, he was exciting, new, and a welcome change from the previous administration. I was against him at first because of his lack of experience, but he got me fired up, and out of my seat. I took action.

Beth Frates is a physician at Harvard Medical School. She speaks on the subject of exercise—her theme is exercise is medicine. Not only is that a powerful idea, but she has all the science to back it up, and the stories to make it compelling. Plus, she’s working on changing the role of the physician from expert to coach, or change agent, with the interpersonal skills to help you do what’s right.

Good presentation skills benefit the speaker. Great presentation skills benefit the audience. I urge you to start the journey from good to great.

Public Speaking as Olympic Sport

SimsBeth — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:27:23 +0000

The original Olympics were a religious festival meant to occasion the divine spark in man. The early Greeks believed that humans could come close to being gods when competition pulled the best out of them.

They also believed that humans had four fundamental attributes: will, emotion, intelligence, and imagination. These four brothers were most in harmony when forged together by the heat of contests.

Public speaking could very well have been an Olympic Sport, because it requires will to accomplish a goal, emotion to move oneself and others, intelligence to craft a persuasive message, and imagination to see the possibilities, make them visible to your audience, and do it in a novel way.

Overcoming stage fright is a presentation skill

admin — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:29:19 +0000

A study in the Journal of Sports Sciences established that pro-basketball players who had a rigid pre-shot routine were 17% more accurate foul shooters than those who did not.

The rigid pre-shot routine is believed to help transfer control of the activity away from the cerebral cortex (good for learning new things) to the cerebellum (good for performing complicated tasks under pressure.)

This shift is also documented in an article in Scientific American. However, there are two complicating factors: 1.) The cerebellum is not accessible through conscious thought, and 2.) If we over-monitor our own performance in real time, we run the risk of choking.

So how do you get to the zone of peak performance and overcome your stage fright? Research suggests that giving yourself one-word instruction (e.g., “smooth,” or, “calm.”) is a good way to go.

“If you use one word, it prevents you from regressing into conscious control, but it’s still strong enough to activate the schematic cue to get that motor program running,” says researcher Daniel Gucciardi.

A good presenter has a routine for preparing early, rehearsing often, and giving herself effective instruction in order to transfer content from her cerebral cortex to her cerebellum.

My advice: Get a routine.

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.

Public Speaking Course in New Jersey

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:41:01 +0000

There are multiple layers of challenges for the business presenter.

For instance, there’s the psychological—the fact that we are all anxious about public speaking, even the best of us. And when we are anxious, some of us tend to become shy and tentative, and others begin to put on a persona that isn’t natural to them. Both of these tendencies are less than optimal.

Then there is the physical aspect. As soon as we allow our nerves to take over, our voice becomes less confident and so does our body language. And that, in turn, makes us even more anxious.

And then there’s the struggle to select and arrange the material to include in your talk. Too much and you lose their attention. Too little and you lose credibility. And while you’re trying to figure out what to include, you have to ask yourself what your objective is—what’s the purpose of your talk, or what you want the audience to know or do.

And in order to answer that question, (what you want them to do) you have to know who they are, how they think, what their biases are, and what motivates them. Even what words will turn them on, and which will turn them off.

And after that, you have to take a cold hard look at your slides, because if they are designed poorly, they may actually be damaging to your success.

And what if the audience asks you a bunch of tough questions about your information or about possible implications of your content? Are you prepared for questions and answers, and do you know how to stay in control in the midst of debate?

All these issues are addressed fully in a public speaking course in New Jersey called Presenting for Results^SM. It is designed for pharma people, biotech, consultants, financial folk, and anyone else who is a “knowledge worker,” which is someone who makes a living gathering and mastering a body of information, making sense out of it, and then communicating the meaning of it so that wise decisions can be made.

It’s a soup-to-nuts program, two-days long, Feb 22 & 23 at the Upper Montclair Country Club on Rte. 3. The instructor is Sims Wyeth. The program is offered four times a year, and has had participants from McKinsey, Health Strategies Group, Roche, Pfizer, Johnson&Johnson, and many other major New Jersey firms.

Visit the website. Check out the agenda. Or give us a call to get your questions asked. 973-783-4205.

The ability to connect with an audience and sell your ideas has an unfair impact on your career. You can always get better at this hugely important skill.

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.

Kick Butt Presenting

admin — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:50:00 +0000

I just read some Mind Mints at www.garyforman.com. The guy can write.

Who is Gary Forman? He’s a speech writer, a good one. I know he’s good because last year I partnered with him on a speech for Endo Pharmaceuticals, and he kicked butt.

What are Mind Mints? They are nuggets of observed experience that Gary bakes into rich morsels of insight. They are short, conversational, intelligent, positive, and practical. They make you think about speaking in new ways.

Gary surrendered himself to me one day last year to try out a speech he wrote about kicking butt. Kicking butt is important to Gary because he dislikes mealy-mouthed speeches. He is adamant about the value of edginess, verve, and the unexpected. His speech and his delivery were very, very good. He kicked butt.

If you want to read some good, short presentation tips about speaking, presenting, and speech making, subscribe to Mind Mints at www.GaryForman.com.

And no, he did not ask me to write this, and I have no financial interest in his business.

The rich, the poor, the highly-educated and the tongue-tied

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:33:57 +0000

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!

Why you need presentation skills training

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:21:06 +0000

Most of us need training because:

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

Better Investigator Meetings

admin — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 19:39:52 +0000

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.

How to clarify complexity – Part Two

admin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:34:29 +0000

As I said in another recent blog on complexity, most knowledge workers have to find the signal within the noise. In other words, we have to gather information, sift through it, and decide what is important and what is not, draw some conclusions, make recommendations, and defend them.

We often have to do this quickly, or late at night, or on top of other duties. We need a method or a tool to help us think about complex issues, and organize our thoughts and words, so that we can get the work done, save time, look good, feel good, and have a life.

Here’s one way to approach the challenge. After you’ve gathered your information, and contemplated it for a time, and you’re getting ready to put pen to paper, the first thing to do is craft the introduction. And believe it or not the introduction should state the obvious so that everyone is on the same page when you begin.

Think about the broadest possible statement you could make to describe the situation you’re addressing. Abraham Lincoln, contemplating the big picture before he had to give a pretty complicated speech, wrote, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

That’s a 30,000 ft. view of the situation: 87 years of time and a continent’s worth of space in one sentence. It’s obvious, but it sets the stage and makes everyone curious about where he’s going with his talk.

Now that you’ve gotten them all on the same page, see if you can pinpoint the problem that needs to be solved, or the opportunity that needs to be capitalized on. Problems and opportunities are two things that get our attention, and excite the emotional part of our brains.

Lincoln’s second sentence did just that. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war,” he wrote. You might not have such drama to report, but you should attempt to focus the mind of your listener/reader on a problem or opportunity that is meaningful to them. Define the problem as you see it, but then go beyond problem definition to explore the possible negative consequences should the problem not be addressed.

Good. Now you’ve set the stage, introduced the problem and brought to their minds the importance of the problem (or opportunity.) Now you must ask the questions that need to be asked, and answered.

The questions you ask will frame the body of your report or presentation. You do not have to ask them overtly, or aloud, but you should always ask yourself, “What are the questions that my information answers?” Usually, the questions you craft will be answered by one of the Six Brothers: Who, what, why, when, where or how.

If you’ve asked the right questions, and used the right words in asking them, then you are off to the races. Answer the questions, and select the evidence you will mention in support of your ideas.

Lincoln asked the implied question, “What can we possibly say or do here to honor these men who gave their last full measure of devotion to our country?” He answers that question by saying that there’s nothing we can say or do. Instead, he asked this audience to re-dedicate themselves to “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” so that it will not perish from the earth.

Of course, since you are a professional knowledge worker, using PowerPoint, you will be more long-winded than our only “poet president.” You may frame your presentation around a number of questions that require detailed responses lasting an hour or two, and well over one hundred PowerPoint slides.

Nevertheless, you can keep your audience on track by reminding them of where they are on the march of a hundred slides. You can say, for instance, “Now that we’ve covered what to do in response to the law suit, let’s look at how we should execute the plan, and then who should be responsible for each phase.”

Finally, when you’ve gotten to the end of the last answer to your last question, you must remind them, readers and listeners, of the problem or opportunity that they have. Then you must remind them of the answers you have provided to the question, only use different words this time. It makes them pay more attention.

Then urge them to do something: to take action, change their attitude, or take a first step. Lincoln asked his audience to re-dedicate themselves to the cause of our democratic system of government. People like strong leadership, and listeners like speakers who know what they want.

Tell them what you want them to do, then remind them why they should do it, and/or what will happen if they don’t.

Then bow and get ready to bask in the roar of your standing ovation.

Presenting for Results^SM Update:

We have scheduled our 2nd public seminar called Presenting for Results^SM.If you are so inclined, please join us on Nov 18 & 19, 2010, at the Upper Montclair Country Club in Clifton, NJ, which is on Rte. 3 East, just east of the Garden State Parkway. The program is fun, eye-opening, highly experiential and beneficial to your confidence and career, and thus good for your company as well. Or let somebody who could benefit know about the program. There is very limited enrollment to keep it practical and interactive. Click here to learn more.

How to Clarify Complexity

admin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:42:44 +0000

Every time I set up my video equipment, I have to untangle the power cord from the AV Out and In cords. They nest together in the carrying case, and find maddening excuses not to straighten out and get to work.

To clarify this complexity, I have to step back, calm down, and ask myself a question, such as, “What seems to be the problem?” Then I have to look at the rat’s nest of black wires, and begin the delicate surgery of extricating one wire from the clutches of the other, although sometimes a cord gets hung up on itself.

It would help if I put them away apart from one another, neatly coiled and secured with a twisty or a rubber band. But that would require memory and forethought, both of which are dwindling assets in my personal portfolio.

But let’s stick with that thought. Are the cords poorly designed, or am I too lazy to take action to prevent the problem from recurring?

Both. But since I can change and the cords can’t, I should take steps to prevent their further misbehavior.

So, to clarify complexity, once you see it happen, recognize it as a problem, be patient, think, and separate the elements of it, one from another, keeping them apart with mental twisties or rubber bands, until you assemble them as they were meant to be assembled, plugged into all the logical receptacles.

And don’t forget that if the receptacles happen to be on the surface of the human brain, analogies and metaphors can help you get your message into the gray matter.

Presenting for Results^SM Update:

A Workshop for Being not Knowing

admin — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:36:11 +0000

I am excited about the re-launch of our public seminar called Presenting for Results^SM.

On Oct 19th and 20th, 2010, we kick it off at the Upper Montclair Country Club in Clifton, NJ, which is right on Rte. 3, just east of the Garden State Parkway.

I’m excited about Presenting for Results^SMbecause it allows me to do what I deeply want, and what I think so many of my clients need. That is to leave behind, for a short period of time, the culture of measurement and analysis, of information and knowledge, and explore instead aspects of being.

Big phrase there: “aspects of being.” What I’m getting at is stuff like “being in the moment,” “being spontaneous,” “being present, “ and “being authentic,” “being empathic,” and “being assertive.”

Do you remember the album, “Stop Making Sense.” Something liberating about that phrase. It urges me to trust my imagination and do or say something out of the ordinary. It relieves me momentarily of the obligation to be predictable and safe.

I read somewhere recently that any new idea that isn’t shocking and rejected out of hand upon first hearing is probably not a very good idea.

In what state of being does one have to be in order to create a breakthrough idea? And in what state of being does one have to be in order to be (there’s that word again) a dynamite communicator?

Knowing how to define excellence in public speaking does not confer that excellence on the knower. The excellent public speaker is in a state of being that has to be experienced, and can only be experienced through practice and coaching.

There’s a book on improv called “Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up.” At first glance, that doesn’t seem like a good idea. But if you are a performer, and you’ve trained yourself for the requisite 10,000 hours, it makes a lot more sense, because preparing means you walk onto the stage (i.e., the boardroom, the meeting room, the sales meeting, the client’s office) with a fixed set of responses, whereas, if you just show up, you can respond to whatever happens in a spontaneous and authentic manner.

I recognize it takes knowledge of your subject to be a good speaker, and training to be a good improvisor. But the knowledge of how to be on the stage is just as important as your knowledge of finance, or law, investing or drug development.

Being needs to be taught and learned, and can be taught and learned, and that’s what Presenting for Results^SM is about—not all about—but largely.

To register, or to download the brochure, go to http://www.simswyeth.com/services/pfr/ And if you know people who could benefit from an invigorating educational experience, would you please forward them this post?

Presence is knowing what to say

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:38:39 +0000

Robert Selander, the former CEO of MasterCard, had a thing for “presence.”

When asked what he looked for in those he hired, he said, “Leadership, results, and presence.”

About presence he said, “At varying levels of the company you deal with different stakeholders. Having somebody spend time with a member of Congress is very different than having somebody go downstairs and see that they were appropriately replacing a torn carpet.

As I’ve gone through my career, I’ve been challenged to deal with different stakeholders. Internally when I was younger and more junior, I probably did pretty well with peers. But how do you credibly communicate with more senior people, who are not as concerned about details, but want a bigger picture?

So it’s a combination of how you convey things and what you convey to various stakeholders. Presence is learning to deal with different audiences in a way that allows them to get what they need out of interactions and ensures that the well-being of the company is looked after.

I think you can be a good communicator and you still may not have presence. There may be someone who is very articulate on a subject and they know levels of detail. When you get with a particular audience it may not be appropriate to go into those levels of detail, or you may create doubt by even going into the subject matter.

Some people are not very good communicators, but boy, when you get them into their subject matter, they know exactly where and how far to go.

Others are brilliant communicators, but because of the connection between their thoughts and the synapses firing and the words coming out, there isn’t enough time and introspection. Therefore, they brilliantly communicate something that they shouldn’t be talking about.

Presence is knowing what to communicate, and how.”

Stage Fright Vanquished

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:45:02 +0000

This from Body Odd:

Before now, those with performance jitters have had to contend with the nausea and the nerves on their own, or take beta blockers to battle the symptoms. New research has come up with another way to fight stage fright: biofeedback.

“Our research looks at both the psychological and physiological effect of stage fright,” says Dr. Myron Thurber, a counselor, physical therapist and biofeedback expert from Spokane, Wash. “It raises our conscious awareness of our heart rhythms by allowing us to see them on a screen.”

In the study, anxiety-ridden musicians were trained in the use of a small biofeedback machine to “train” their body’s emotional response to stress. After being hooked to the device with an ear clip or finger monitor, the musicians could see their heart’s responses to both anxiety or stress (typified by a jerky, edgy pattern) as well as feelings of joy or appreciation (a smooth, coherent pattern). After four sessions, the subjects were able to shift their emotional response – holding onto the feelings of joy even while performing – successfully keeping the stage fright out of the limelight.

“After we trained them, people reported on average about a 70 percent improvement in playing ability as well as the same decrease in their sense of stress or performance anxiety,” says Thurber.

In other words, no more flubbed notes, flushed faces or tossed cookies in the recital hall restroom.

Even better, Thurber says the biofeedback machine is both versatile – it can be used for other types of anxiety such as test taking or public speaking – and unobtrusive (about the size of an iPod).

“Some people would practice using it in the recital hall before a performance,” he says. “People are used to seeing little handheld devices so we hardly notice them any more.”

Have you ever gotten nervous before performing or speaking in public? What happened?

The Youie Youness of You

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:40:56 +0000

Gary Forman is a speech writer I work with. He was developing a stump speech for himself, and he came over to read it to me and get my feedback.

It was fabulous, and so was he, although I did have a few nits to pick here and there. (It was a little long and I wanted a bit more problem definition.)

But what I really liked was a magical and playful phrase evoking the importance of bringing yourself into any talk you make: the youie youness of you.

Gary was adamant on the subject of authenticity, self-expression, and presence. He made the case that if you hold yourself back, or try to be something you’re not, you are absent, not present.

We debated about the universality of that claim. What if, I asked, the youie youness of you is monotonous, tentative, and disorganized? Does that still work?

Gary is smart, opinionated, and experienced as a writer and performer, so the Gary-like Garyness of Gary is ready for prime time.

But if my name is Casper Milquetoast, the Caspar-like Casperness of Casper may not serve me well if I’m presenting myself in public. Caspar must learn how to project his ideas effectively. He can be Casper, but he needs to learn a few techniques, like how to write a speech, how to craft a presentation, use PowerPoint effectively, and project a stage presence.

It is liberating to hear Gary speak about the Youie Youness of You. He gives us permission to let our talents take over, to trust ourselves, and to say, “I AM GOOD ENOUGH.” He holds out the possibility that there is joy in public speaking and presenting, because it is a deep experience of self-expression for the speaker.

I suppose I’m a bit of a technician. I don’t think the average guy should walk on a wire between two buildings without some serious training. Nor do I think he should walk out on stage to deliver a speech or presentation without an adequate amount of knowledge and skill.

Nevertheless, Gary is right. No matter what you talk about when presenting, your audience is thirsty for the youie youness of you.

Using speaker’s notes

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:24:20 +0000

When we watch TED talks, such as Rory Sutherland’s on the power of advertising, or Hans Rosling’s on the power of data, we are watching two men who know their way around the presentation platform.

Both speak without notes, use pictures and graphics as visuals (without a bulletpoint in sight), demonstrate that they have internalized their content, and in fact have memorized some verbal “riffs” that delight their listeners.

But what if they had used notes? Would that have damaged the appeal of their presentations?

I think it depends on how they used them.

If they had stood, hands in-front, head down, clutching a deck of 3×5 cards, yes—they would have damaged their appeal.

But if they had had, at their disposal, a lectern or a table, where they could have gone to glance down at an outline, would that have hurt their appeal? I doubt it, as long as each of them maintained their liveliness and engagement with their listeners.

Audiences crave intimacy with a speaker. In addition to getting the pleasure of a new thought from a speaker, (or having an old idea buffed and polished) they want the speaker to be good company—entertaining, bright, and well-informed.

When we use notes in such a way that we devote the bulk of our attention to the audience, and not to the documents in front of us, we are in the zone of peak performance.

After all, the presence of notes indicates that we have prepared, that we strive to be organized, and that we are respectful of the gift that our listeners give us—the gift of their attention.

Voice and Speech Training

admin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:57:52 +0000

Angela Lansbury and Cate Blanchett spoke briefly at last night’s TONY AWARDS ceremony. They both have magnificent speaking voices.

They were not alone. Most Broadway actors have strong speaking voices. The question is: did they become successful because they were gifted with such speaking voices, or did they work to develop their instruments?

The answer? Who knows? Some of us are born with a distinctive speaking voice, some of us are not, and others work their butts off to develop their speaking voice so they can have the career they want.

You are not an actor, and yet like an actor, your success depends on the impression you create and on how you perform on the job. In fact, the sound of your speaking voice is arguably the most memorable thing about you: it echoes in the minds of those who have met you and worked with you. Yet most of us get no training on how to use our speaking voices.

That’s too bad, because the speaking voice is perfectly trainable. It can be tuned, like a guitar or a piano. And training your speaking voice can be incredibly fun.

Here in New Jersey, training the speaking voice is a personal and professional goal for many. Whether they are young women seeking to increase their image of authority and gravitas when they speak, or men with successful careers who want to minimize the stigma of an accent, they seek out private or group instruction in training the speaking voice as a passport to success.

Training the speaking voice covers:

how to breath in order to support your sound
how to release habitual tension in the speaking process
how to expand the range, resonance and deep dark color of the voice
and how to enunciate vowels and consonants with clarity and precision

Because New York and New Jersey are melting pots of ambitious and successful people—people who see opportunity and want to take advantage of it—many of them want to develop their speaking voices as their number one calling card.

Also a large number of major corporations in New York and New Jersey want to retain highly skilled knowledge workers who must interact with teams and present their specialized knowledge to others. Helping these people to contribute to the organization is one of the many reasons why companies seek out training for voice and speech.

The speaking voice is the world’s greatest instrument—of leadership, change, and communication. Tune your instrument. Practice your instrument. Become a master of your instrument.

The rewards, for you and your company, will be positively resounding.

The Bush Doctrine on Speech Writing

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:29:02 +0000

The Bush Doctrine on Speech Writing

In his entertaining memoir Speech*Less, speech writer Matt Latimer reveals something about the speeches developed for President G.W. Bush. By the way, he was one of the speech writers.

‘I quickly discovered the answer to a question I’d been asked by people since I’d arrived at the White House: why did the President’s speeches always seem to be so bad? It turned out it was intentional. On my very first day, Bill McGurn and Marc Thiessen both told me that the president was “okay” with a flat speech. All he cared about was logic and organization, not eloquence. As a student at Yale, the President had learned that all speeches should have an introduction, three points, a peroration, and a conclusion. I didn’t even know what a peroration was. The president wasn’t as insanely rigid about this approach, though, as Bill and the other writers thought he was. I’d read many of his finer speeches in his first term, and they rarely followed this pattern. But pushing the President to like a speech that was written differently was too risky. The writers all lived in fear that he’d blow up at them, which on occasion he’d been known to do. So in the quest for rigid logic—point A to point B to point C to conclusion—language that satisfied the President in one speech would be cut and pasted into the next speech and then the next.’

Matt decides that, since he didn’t go to Yale but rather attended the University of Michigan, he was not obliged to follow the routine.

The Bush Doctrine of speech writing sounds suspiciously like the models I’ve seen being peddled to the business community.

Having a model is good, because it saves time and helps you think about structure. But slavish devotion to models creates M&M: monotony and mediocrity.

Look for a way to use your model as a spring board to create an EXPERIENCE for your listeners.

Sims Wyeth is a 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.

How to persuade like an advertiser

admin — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:21:44 +0000

My friend Wick Smith told me about this approach to messaging. Wick has been in advertising for many years, primarily in Asia. He speaks Japanese and is an incredibly resourceful and creative person.

The Wick Smith Approach is based on the four elements in an ad:

The Headline, The Image, The Body Copy, The Logo

Each one has a role to play, and each viewer will have his or her own preference as to which is most important.

The Headline is the big idea or the claim being made by the ad. People who like the big picture and avoid the details prefer to read the headline. Since people make decisions out of fear or desire, a headline should target one of those emotions.

The Image appeals to the visual thinker. The Image could evoke a problem that needs to be solved, or an aspiration that the viewer has. Either one stimulates the emotions and moves the viewer to action.

The Body Copy is meant to give the reader reasons to buy—some would even say “permission” to buy. For instance, expensive chocolate companies often compose body copy trying to convince prospects that they are “worth it,” and deserve a little luxury in their lives.

Finally, the Logo is meant to build the relationship. It is the identity of the company, and therefore the sign of trust and reliability, or perhaps of excitement (Ferrari) or innovation (Apple), or perhaps luxury (Tiffany).

Speeches and presentations need all four of these elements.

First, the Headline. The speaker should be able to articulate the Headline, or premise of the talk, in one simple sentence. For instance, “Everyone can become a better speaker,” is the premise of this blog (and this article.)

PowerPoint should be used to supply visuals to support the spoken word, or if the speaker chooses to NOT USE POWERPOINT, he can tell stories or use metaphors and analogies to paint pictures in the mind of the listeners.

In a presentation, Body Copy is the proof you marshall under your claims. Each slide should have a Headline that makes a claim, and the imagery or data on the slide should supply the evidence that the headline is a valid conclusion.

It is ill-advised to put body copy on a slide because it is hard for the audience to read slides and listen at the same time.

Much better to put dramatic imagery on your slides and put the detailed narrative in the notes section of the PowerPoint page.

Finally, in a presentation, the Logo is YOU. You are not a corporation. You are a person, and your behaviors and look should be consistent with the message you strive to impart.

Furthermore, the presentation should be all about the audience, not all about how cool you, your company, product, or ideas are. So, in a sales presentation, I suggest that you remove your company Logo from all your slides except the title slide. Instead, put your prospect’s Logo on the slides.

Conclusion: Good ads persuade us to buy through four channels of communication:

1. The claim, generalization, or summary headline

2. The details and evidence to prove that the headline is true and valid

3. An image that enables us to feel the benefit of the offering

4. A logo, or a branded source of information, that strives to earn our trust in the argument being made.

Speeches and presentations have similar elements: Key take-aways! Data, facts and other forms of proof (such as stories) that justify the key-takeaways! And Imagery on the slides or created in the mind of the audience by the speaker telling vivid stories!

And then there is you, the speaker, the source of the information. Your comfort, confidence and ease on stage help you generate the willing suspension of disbelief amongst your listeners, which allows them to take a chance on you and your idea.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills andpublic 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.

Public speaking begins with civility

admin — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:36:41 +0000

The current shouting match going in Washington is bad public speaking. Good public speaking begins– literally and figuratively– with civility.

“May it please the court,” says the lawyer.

“Madam Speaker, Vice President So-and-So, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans,” says the President at the State of the Union.

“It is indeed an honor and a privilege to be with you today,” say most commencement speakers.

“May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable to You,” says the preacher, beginning her sermon.

Speeches begin with an elaborate display of good manners because good manners flatter the audience and predispose them to find the speaker and his argument appealing.

So public speech begins—literally—with ritualistic words of respect designed to, at the least, get the audience to lend its collective ear to the speaker.

Later on in the body of the talk, if the speaker is advocating against an opposing point of view, she would be wise to state that view in a fair and balanced way, and acknowledge the legitimacy of it.

Then, without demonizing the values and beliefs that support the opposing view, the speaker can demonstrate why that view is flawed, and hers is better.

In addition to treating the opposing view as reasonable, the speaker should be mindful of her own tone and word choice.

We recognize that being uncivil earns the speaker notoriety, adulation from the partisan crowd, and maybe some emotional catharsis.

But it tends to delay a considered decision made for the public good because it shuts down the other side’s ability and willingness to listen.

In the end, civility gets things done better, cheaper, and faster.

Sims Wyeth is a 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.

Sameness is the enemy of public speakers

simswnj — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:34:16 +0000

My friend and colleague Patricia Fripp, one of the finest speakers and teachers in this world or the next, has a wonderful phrase. “Sameness is the enemy.”

What does she mean by this? Here’s my take on it.

She means that speakers can’t hold the attention of a room full of people when they get stuck on the same channel for too long.

What is a channel? Well, it’s something physical, mental, vocal, or verbal that you are doing too much of.

For instance, if your voice springs forth at the same volume all the time, your audience will tire.

If you plod or speed at the same pace for the duration, they will grow weary.

If you lack variety of pitch, and fail to make important words stand out from the less important, they will struggle to follow your reasoning.

If you stand in the same place for too long, your listeners will get fidgety.

If you move constantly back and forth across the floor like a shark, they will get distracted. Such movement is noise, not signal. It distracts from what you’re saying.

If you gesture too much, they will be drawn away from your content.

If you don’t gesture at all, they will struggle to understand your point of view, or how you feel about the issues, and will be less focused.

If you talk about yourself ad infinitum, their eyes will glaze over.

If slide after slide shows data, they will fatigue.

If you use fat words too often (big fancy ones) some listeners will withdraw in shame, and others will attack in a rage.

If you use skinny words (simple everyday ones) you may lose the more sophisticated members of your audience.

If you spend too much time in the world of the general and abstract, they will lust for particulars and stories.

On the other hand, if you deal exclusively in facts, they will wonder what your point is.

And if you make a theoretical case for action, they will drop out of listening because they hunger for a real world example to help them SEE what you SAY.

To paraphrase Adlai Stevenson, the way of the speaker is hard, requiring constant channel surfing in order to retain the attention of the viewer.

Sameness is your enemy. Variety, diversity, and surprise are your greatest allies.

Bring them with you to your next presentation.

Public Speaking Tips: Familiarity breeds affection

simswnj — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:29:06 +0000

Robert Zajonc (pronounced ZYE-unts) was an American social scientist who explored the interplay between feeling and thought—between emotion and cognition.

He was interested in determining which influenced the other more strongly. On balance, he came down on the side of emotion.

He was best known for establishing what he called “the mere exposure” effect. In this experiment, he showed subjects a series of random shapes in rapid succession—so rapid that they could not possibly tell if any were repeated.

When subjects were later asked which shapes they found most pleasing, they reliably chose the ones to which they had been exposed the most often, though they had no conscious awareness of the fact.

Familiarity, in other words, breeds a kind of affection, an established truth that has, ever since, encouraged advertisers to repeat themselves.

Speakers can do the same. Find a phrase, an image, or a single word to weave throughout your talk.

“I have a dream,” is such a phrase. “Of the people, by the people, for the people,” is another. And the current American President, Mr. Obama, has been repeating the word, “Responsibility,” perhaps to defuse the charge that he’s bailing out reckless banks and irresponsible people.

“Every word uttered strikes a note on the key board of the imagination,” said Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Choose the words or phrases to repeat so that your audience will remember your message with affection.

Empathy from the start: An important presentation skill

simswnj — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:41:16 +0000

Empathy is our ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. It enables us to build rapport, listen, and take an interest in how others see the issues.

Many leaders get into trouble by getting too far ahead of their constituencies without taking the time to connect with those they lead.

Two examples come to mind. The first is Paul Wolfowitz, who moved from the Bush II Administration to be head of the World Bank. It was widely reported that he failed in that position because he was unable to “win the building” before he tried to conquer the global challenges he was hired to address.

The other is Laurence Summers, the former President of Harvard University and now special advisor to President Obama. In his dealings with the faculty, he lost their support and was forced to resign.

Just as leaders need to “win the building” in order to move the organization in a chosen direction, a presenter needs to connect with the audience before he takes them on a deep dive into his content.

A presentation is a micro-moment of leadership, a potentially defining one. How can we connect before we drill down into the details of our message?

Display your civility
Civility is a formal expression of empathy. It is good manners. It predisposes your audience to like you. Civility shows respect for the occasion and for the audience, and in return, encourages them to be civil to you.

Display self-effacing humor
All humor is inherently persuasive, but self-effacing humor is particularly winning. It shows the audience that you don’t take yourself too seriously, that you have a degree of humility and self-awareness, and that you are likely to be good company as you lead them through your content.

It’s all about them
As I have mentioned in other blog postings, make your content “all about them.” So many sales presentations could be titled, “My product is cool,” or “My Company is the best.” It’s more effective to demonstrate an understanding of their situation and then introduce your product/service/company/idea as a solution to their problems.

Display similarity with your audience
People are likely to listen to those they perceive to be similar to them. At the start of a talk, it’s a good idea to try to link yourself to what they are familiar with. However, if it’s too much a stretch, it’s pandering.

I once spoke to a group of anesthesiologists, and pointed out that we were in opposite professions. They knew they were in trouble if their clients were awake, and I knew I was in trouble if my clients were asleep.

It seemed to work. Being honest about differences must help with credibility.

Act as if you heard they love you
Many great plays dramatize the fact that if we think somebody likes us, we like them back, and are much more likely to display gestures and expressions that communicate a sense of closeness. (I am thinking particularly of Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.) Radiate your delight at being in the presence of your “loving” audience, and they will reciprocate.

Display your curiosity
One of the easiest presentations to give is to report research about the audience to the audience. All audiences are fascinated with themselves. If you can tell them things you’ve learned about them, or about individual members of the audience, and express real interest in what they do and how they do it, you stand a better chance of building rapport.

Remember this: if you’re a speaker and you lack empathy, you’re like a sled dog who has slipped out of his harness. You’re not connected, and you’re moving nobody forward.

Overcoming Speaking Anxiety: Step into your stage fright

simswnj — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:16:13 +0000

The sensation of stage fright is bad enough, but what’s worse is the damage it can do to your career and your self-esteem.

If you let it stop you, your sense of self gets smaller and your stage fright gets bigger and more powerful.

However, when you step into your stage fright, you learn quickly that it’s a phantom–a fog—like most of our fears. When you step into that fog, you soon realize that it is a figment of your imagination—and that your effort to cut through it can easily succeed.

Here is a pep talk, courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt, who knew something about courage and determination.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Public Speaking Training: Don’t get too slick

simswnj — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:08:24 +0000

When does a polished speaker become slick?

I ask this question because I occasionally see so-called “professional speakers” behaving in peculiar ways. They have developed a presentation “style” that doesn’t seem natural, that smacks of late night infomercials and snake oil charlatans.

What they do would get them fired in most corporations, not because of what they say, but because of what their style says about them.

First, let’s define the terms. Polished means at ease, organized, and skilled at structuring and delivering a talk.

Slick means gimmicky, schticky, schmaltzy, overdone, histrionic, overly theatrical, manipulative, and insincere.

A polished speaker does not let his desire to impress overwhelm his obligation to provide something of value to the audience.

A slick speaker has a routine that he uses to dazzle his audience, and seems more interested in wowing than connecting.

I’m not saying that style is unimportant. But the style of a speaker should suit the topic and the occasion. A style that draws attention to itself, or is out of sync with the content, undermines the credibility of the speaker and creates a gap between speaker and audience.

Most of us live at a safe distance from the polished to slick border line. But as we get more skilled and confident, let us beware of the danger.

Audiences crave intimacy with a speaker. Slickness turns them off.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching 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.

Presentation Skills: Use emotional arguments

simswnj — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:25:09 +0000

Reason makes us think, but emotion makes us act. So how can we build emotional arguments into our presentations?

When we consult Maslow’s Theory, we learn that people have a hierarchy of needs. At the bottom of the pyramid are physiological needs—the need for air, water, food and excretion. Most business arguments cannot invoke these as rewards for compliance, or as punishments to be feared if the listener fails to do what the speaker suggests.

Next up on the list are the emotional needs for safety. These include the needs for security of body, employment, and property. Politicians often claim that certain ideas, programs or “isms” threaten our security. Healthcare companies appeal to our deep need for well-being. And business arguments can invoke the loss (and the possible increase) of employment security as emotional reasons to endorse a particular initiative.

The need for love in the business world is the need for social connections and a sense of belonging. Since we spend more hours with our colleagues at work than we do with our families, this need provides a strong lever for a business speaker seeking to sway an audience.

The workplace is even more significant for us as a forum in which we can earn distinction and status. Our need for esteem is profound, both self-esteem and the need to be respected and acknowledged by our peers. It is often said that pay is not the greatest motivator. The greatest motivator is recognition and acknowledgement.

If we are lucky enough to satisfy all the needs mentioned above, then we will work for self-actualization. This will include our desire to make a difference, to develop our deepest human abilities for feeling, imagination, caring, and spontaneity. It seems that Apple Computer and Google have marketed themselves as employers where self-actualization is possible—where creativity and “changing the world” are part of the business culture.

All persuasive arguments have an emotional component. But it requires a deft touch. If you overplay your point, you lose credibility. Subtlety and indirectness are essential.

For instance, you cannot say, “You are a small and vulnerable outsider dealing with a vast, deceptive insurance industry. Work with us. We’re friendly.”

Much better to hire a little talking gecko with an Australian accent and get him to personify your company. He’ll reduce your audience’s anxiety, and build customer loyalty, even while he’s making a simple rational argument that he can save you money.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching 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.

Presentation Preparation: Where to Start

simswnj — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:03:29 +0000

How should you start preparing a presentation to senior executives?

Don’t start by digging through your slide library and pulling the old standbys out.

Rather, answer these questions.

What is the topic or subject you are reporting on? Be clear with yourself so you can be clear with your audience.
Why is your topic important enough to be on the busy agenda of senior level managers?
What questions will your audience be asking? Can you answer them early in your presentation?

Presence in Public Speaking and Private Speaking

simswnj — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:03:09 +0000

Presence is intangible, yet we feel it.

People who are confident tend to have more presence. People who are happy have more, as do people who have a deep sense of purpose.

People with good posture have more presence. People who move with abundant energy have it, especially if it’s calm, assertive energy, (I’m quoting Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer.)

People have more presence when they expand rather than contract. I think many presenters contract when in front of an audience, out of fear. People who are able to expand, through experience, preparation, or their own innate qualities, are more engaging and persuasive.

Expansion and contraction are not necessarily physical acts. They are psycho-physical. They come from the inside and move outward. If your inner state is buoyant, you’re likely to be more physically expansive, and project more presence.

Stillness can also create a sense of presence. It can signal control and power. However, if you are still and contracted, then you signal anxiety and uncertainty.

Finally, people who are endlessly curious also have presence, especially when they’re endlessly curious about a topic that other people are also interested in.

Ultimately, you have presence by being interested in others. People like people who like them. If you become a “presence” in their lives, then you have “presence.”

That’s the best kind.

Hamlet as Presentation Coach

simswnj — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:31:24 +0000

Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark in Shakespeare’s play called Hamlet, written around 1603. He hires a bunch of actors to put on a play that he’s written, and he gives them coaching on how to speak their lines.

Four-hundred and six years later, what he says remains good advice for a presenter too. Look how he’s telling them to speak clearly—“don’t talk as if you had marbles in your mouth,” he’s saying.

Also, he warns them not to wave their hands around too much because while passion is a great thing in a speaker, too much passion damages their credibility and distracts the audience from what they’re saying.

Here it is:

“Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you,

trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players

do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the

air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the

very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,

you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it

smoothness.”

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

Act 3, Scene 1

Go to executivespeechcoachny.com to see more ancient wisdom from a speaker coach who was actually a Prince.

Scientific Presentations: Skeptics vs. Believers

simswnj — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:51:20 +0000

Here in New Jersey, scientists grow on trees and work in laboratories, developing and testing molecules for bio-tech and pharmaceutical companies.

Every day, they leave the known world to explore microscopic molecular places and witness scenes that quite possibly no human being has seen before. They are the Lewises and Clarks of medicine.

Like grizzled pioneers, they take their daily journey into the unknown for granted, and don’t express much awe and wonder about what they see. Many are like airline pilots, whose aeronautical culture demands a steady tone of voice, even when tumbling toward the ground at 600 miles per hour.

But when scientists speak to senior business people, who are unfamiliar with their area of expertise, the wrong approach to communication can cause significant business problems, chief among them lost business opportunity.

George Bernard Shaw said it best, “The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”

For example, in 1981, in a small conference room belonging to a large consumer products company, a team of research scientists lost a mousse. Five years later, they found it in their files and launched it as the fourth product in a new category of hairstyling products. After years of struggle, they managed to reach only a 15% market share.

Had they launched their invention five years earlier, they would have been the first to market, and probably would have owned the lion’s share of the market. But they delayed because, according to one executive, the leaders of R&D were simply unable to present the concept cogently to the rest of the company.

What happened? Was the idea of a foamy hair gel so new that anyone outside R&D couldn’t grasp it? Or was there something about the way the researchers communicated that left the rest of the company scratching its head?

The causes for such a rupture between departments are often hard to define, but experience reveals that communication could be the culprit. One of the reasons is that the ranks of business are filled with people from different tribes. For the purposes of this blog, let’s call the sales and marketing functions the Tribe of Belief (TOB), and the R&D functions the Tribe of Skepticism (TOS).

In training, aptitude, psychology, predisposition, language and thinking, Skeptics have special tendencies and approaches. So do the Believers.

How wide is this tribal rift? Consider how the two groups use language.

On the one hand, those in the sales and marketing (the TOBs) are paid, like professional actors, to act “as if” they believe whole-heartedly in the value of their products. Their job is to induce belief, and raise belief to the level of action.

Believers are expected to invent arguments to support their point of view, to be persuasive, to take sides, to draw inferences from fact in order to drive home a point, (exaggeration is a staple of advertising) to appeal to their listeners’ psychological and emotional needs, and to demonstrate the truth of their ideas through the force of their conviction. (Some Skeptics would call this “proof by violent assertion.”)

The TOSs seldom use language rhetorically. Their faith is in the unalterable power of fact. The truth of fact is more important to them than the truth of belief, the detail more important than the dubious “claim,” the content more important than the context.

For them, nothing is truth if it hasn’t been tested, measured, and proven. They distrust generalizations and “benefit statements.” The notion of selling ideas troubles them; it seems manipulative and, well, unscientific.

The gulf between these two tribes is wide, and needs to be bridged. Without good communication between tribes, ideas and initiatives will not get the buy-in they deserve, individual leaders will lack credibility and influence, and research and development may go for naught. Just ask the me-too mousse maker.

The easiest way to close this gap is to teach scientists cross-cultural communication. They need to speak the language of sales and marketing to ensure their intellectual output can leap across the gap. It would be harder to teach sales and marketing to speak the language of science.

Scientists need a basic education in the principles of persuasive speech.

Presentation Skills: Stay Tuned for a Month of Presence

simswnj — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:17:34 +0000

Every great store has a theme. Nordstrom’s has the theme of customer service. Starbucks has coffee. L.L. Bean used to be great when it stuck to its theme of outdoor clothing you could pass down to your children.

Sims Wyeth & Co is a store that sells presentation skills, and one item that some customers want to find on the shelf is PRESENCE.

So, I choose as my theme for a month the idea of PRESENCE. What is it and how do you get it?

If you ever had the pleasure of seeing Merce Cunningham, the great dancer and choreographer, you may know what presence is.

Johnny Carson had presence, more than Dave, Jay, and Conan combined.

Bruce Springsteen has presence, even when he’s not filling a stadium with his energy.

And Roseanne Barr has presence–she radiates mischief. Sarah Palin too, although her presence comes more from combativeness.

All of these people have presence—a magical aura that makes them appealing to others. We suppose they were born with it, they did nothing to cultivate it, and they didn’t have to do anything to send it our way. It just leapt off them like light off a mirror.

I will challenge that notion for the next month, until October 15th. I will argue that all kinds of people can have presence, that it is a multi-dimensional attribute that can be cultivated, and that it can be thrust upon all of us by the circumstances of life’s ups and downs.

So my assignment is to answer two questions: What is presence? And how do you get it?

Stay tuned for a month of presence.

Presentation Skills: Your Passport to Promotion: “1, 2, 3…Poof!”

simswnj — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:46:33 +0000

I had an interesting session with a new client. Let’s call her Fiona. She came in from the field to take a position in marketing with a major pharma, and has discovered that, at her company, your career depends largely on how you present.

Amazingly, they don’t offer any developmental support for people coming into the job. But she pushed her boss for help, and he relented.

Here’s a rough summary of what I learned about her experience in pharma marketing. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have not heard this before, and I have been deep into pharma marketing for 20 years.

1. Everyone wants to get promoted. The easiest way to get promoted is to get visibility in front of senior people. And the easiest way to get visibility is to present to them.

2. If you’re not a good presenter, your boss will know it and will be reluctant to stand you up in front of the senior execs. She could be afraid it will hurt your career chances and her image as an up-and-coming executive who is the fire under a red-hot group of high achievers.

3. Presenting marketing information internally is essentially selling ideas, and if you can’t get listeners to understand and believe in your idea, they are unlikely to see you as a good marketer, even though your ideas may be strong.

4. Finally, everyone listening to your presentation is so busy that they don’t want presentations to go on for too long, and therefore they don’t ask questions. They’re afraid of being seen as the “problem” person, or the “know-it-all” who makes everyone else look bad. She said the preferred method of presenting is, “1, 2, 3…Poof!”

This means that you show your slide, say up to three things about it in a confident voice, and then move to the next slide (as in “Poof. It’s gone!”) Everyone will be pleased that you got through your material quickly, and displayed confidence and conviction as you spoke.

5. Finally, while every product and market is different, the process of marketing is the same across brands. This causes many presentations to look and sound the same, i.e., they’re boring. So listeners like it when you’re articulate, energetic, and concise because you save them from the embarrassment of falling asleep.

She says you’re especially valued if you have a highly expressive voice.

Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun in this big pharma. But if you want the rewards–the promotion and the fatter check– you gotta sing for your supper.

And the name of the song you have to sing? “1, 2, 3…Poof!”

Sales Presentations: Pivotal Moments

simswnj — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:54:26 +0000

Yesterday, I sat through 7 identical new-business presentations at a client site. Each was 15 minutes long. Each was delivered by a team of three. In addition to the 21 presenters, 20 people from the company were observing.

When the last team ended their pitch, I asked everyone to pick out a strong moment–a moment that caught their attention in a positive way.

Here is what they said, in no particular order of importance.

1. When someone said, “I love my work.”
2. Whenever an example was used to illustrate a point.
3. When one person spoke in a very organized, logical way so it was easy to follow what they said.
4. When presenters translated facts about the company and its services into benefits for the prospect.

There were others, too numerous to mention here. But these few responses alone speak to the reliability of ancient wisdom.

Audiences like emotion and personalization.
Audiences like concrete examples to illustrate broad, general statements.
People want the big idea up front, and the supporting ideas in marching order behind.
They want to hear what they get from the service and how it will make them feel.

It’s easy to ramble through your material, difficult to speak so people will listen, and harder still to speak to the audience, in the language of the audience, about what’s most important to the audience.

The latter is the skill we are all in pursuit of.

NJ Voice and Speech Training Coach Can Help Improve Public Speaking Skills

simswnj — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:58:27 +0000

Busy executives who want to improve their public speaking skills now have a new opportunity to master effective speech and public presentation techniques with “Training the Speaking Voice”.

We are judged by how we speak, write, and think-in that order. That’s why it’s crucial that professionals speak their thoughts in a manner that is easy to understand, and inspires trust and respect in their listeners. Training the Speaking Voice, is a developmental process customized for each individual and group to achieve targeted outcomes.

I created the program after an increase in demand from executives and professionals seeking ways to improve the clarity and impact of their sound and enunciation, or with those who speak English with a regional or foreign accent.

The program is excellent for public speakers or executives looking to enhance their professional opportunities with dynamic speaking capabilities. The exercises open up new possibilities for self-awareness as well as professional and personal growth.

Typical voice and speech training issues include:

speaking too softly
speaking too quickly
lack of expression (monotony of pitch, volume, and speed)
vocal fatigue
too many “ers” and “uhms”
an accent that makes the speaker hard to understand

About Training the Speaking Voice

Training the Speaking Voice is an Executive Education Program, customized for each individual and/or group, to achieve targeted outcomes.

Candidates for the program include those whose clarity or personal impact is impeded by an accent, or by less than optimal voice and speech habits.

The program follows an intuitive path.

First, we record & identify the voice or speech challenge.
We introduce exercises to address the issues.
The candidate receives coaching in person, and practices on her own.
We measure the change, report the results, and provide guidance for continuing growth and awareness.

To support the face-to face instruction, we provide easy to use written materials, customized recordings for home (or car) study, and web and phone tutorials.

More information is available online at http://www.simswyeth.com/services/voice-speech-training

Voice Training: The Vocal Fry

simswnj — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:02:56 +0000

When bacon fries, it makes a crackling, bubbling, splashy sound and smells delicious.

When young women fry their voices, they make a grinding sound in the back of their throats, and regardless of how they smell, they are undermining their stature and impact by doing so.

I am going to call the Center for Disease Control to announce that I have detected a dangerous new epidemic of The Vocal Fry. (Please see the bottom of this posting for a definition of Vocal Fry.)

It has mostly infected young women, and it makes them sound as if they’ve run out of air, and are generating their voices by grinding their vocal chords together.

It manifests itself mostly at the ends of sentences. To me, it makes them sound tense, cerebral, and unappealing. I do not want to listen to them speak about anything.

No doubt this is a failing on my part, but I am confessing now, in public, that The Vocal Fry is like fingernails on a blackboard to me.

I think it’s mostly educated young women, maybe even educated young women from a certain background that have developed this as a fashionable way to talk.

I am going to capture recordings of it and put them up here on the blog, or on my other blogs at www.simswyeth.com/blog or at executivespeechcoachny.com

The human voice must stand guard over the content of a spoken message, or the content will evaporate, no matter how precious it was in itself.

The Vocal Fry has to go.

Definition:The vocal fry register (also known as pulse register, laryngealisation, pulse phonation, creak, glottal fry, glottal rattle, glottal scrape or strohbass), is the lowest vocal register and is produced through a loose glottal closure which will permit air to bubble through slowly with a popping or rattling sound of a very low frequency.

Public Speaking: Dress for Success

simswnj — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:10:01 +0000

When you present, dress conservatively, and wear a bit of red near your face.

For men, a red tie does the trick. If you’re not wearing ties these days, at least wear a sport coat you can button. It hides the wrinkles we get in the lap of our pants, and the bulge we may have acquired in the midriff.

For women, lipstick or a red scarf or blouse will work. The red draws the eyes of the listener to your face. I would also suggest avoiding sleeveless blouses and open-toed shoes. Much better to present in a suit, or at least in a blazer or jacket.

Dress for the position you want, not for the position you’re in.

Communication Training: Focus on Your Audience

simswnj — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:31:52 +0000

The paradox of effective speaking is that when you focus on the information needs of your audience, your needs for recognition and respect are fulfilled.

However, when you focus on your own needs to tell them everything you know, regardless of their interest, their willingness to listen and respect you as an expert is damaged by–well, too much talking about what’s in your head, and not enough talking about what’s in theirs.

They therefore think less of you. Thus, paradoxically, when you focus on your own needs, you damage your audience and yourself.

Public Speaking Skills: Obama and the Teleprompter

simswnj — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:45:24 +0000

Many people, in response to an article I wrote on Bnet.com, note a significant difference in the quality of President Obama’s speech between those occasions when he uses a teleprompter and those when he speaks extemporaneously. They imply that his oratorical gifts are actually not as great as they seem because when he speaks without a teleprompter he says “er and uhm” like the average oratorical duffer, and often pauses awkwardly once he starts a sentence, as he re-thinks how to arrange the thought into words that will not play against him.

Barbara Tuchman, the great American historian, suspected that teleprompters would bring down our democracy. She said, in an interview with Bill Moyers, that the devices were “the most devastating tool that technology’s invented…” Our public men “don’t speak spontaneously. You don’t hear them meet a situation out of their own minds. They read this thing that’s going along there in front of them. Words that have been created for them by PR men or by advertisers or whatever. And this is not the real man that we see. And it allows an inadequate, minor individual to appear to be a statesman, because he’s got very good speechwriters. Mr. Reagan. Boy. And to read the stuff off, because he reads it very well. He’s an actor, I guess, a trained actor. … you never know what he’s reading. Nor do you really know this with any of them. They learn it very fast…the teleprompter–is a really, in my opinion, it’s a terrible tool, because what we have is an artificial result.”

Then Bill Moyers says, “And yet George Washington had Alexander Hamilton as a speechwriter (and by the way, Lincoln had William Seward–SW). The Farewell Address, his final major statement as he exited the Presidency, was largely penned by Alexander Hamilton. Is there a correlation?”

And Tuchman says, “No, because the teleprompter show the person in a situation which is not real, and which is phony, and which is deceptive. The thing is, you see, that we’re a public that is brought up on deception, through advertising. From the moment we are children, we learn that some kind of cereal is going to make us strong and win races and one thing and another, and the next thing you know , if you use a particular kind of toothpaste, you’re going to marry Gary Cooper, or at least have a glamorous romance somewhere; all that is deception.”

She raises some questions.
1. Are teleprompters a form of deception?
2. What’s the difference between a teleprompter and a piece of paper with the speech written on it?
3. Do we want our Presidents to speak without benefit of speech writers, teleprompters, or written notes?
4. How important is it that our President be a good “talker”–meaning a strong advocate for his ideas and for our country.
5. What are the skills, attributes, and behaviors of a good talker?

These are questions that are worth answering well.

NJ Executive Speech Coach Talks Obama Style

simswnj — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:47:42 +0000

Executive speech coach, Sims Wyeth, helps dissect the nature of Barack Obama’s public speaking skills to show others how they can enhance their own on-stage performance. Sims Wyeth is a noted resource in the world of high stakes presenting, providing training and coaching to some of businesses top executives for almost 20 years.

According to Wyeth, “Obama is a master at grabbing and keeping his audience’s attention, which is the number one goal of any public speaker. “ In a recent article published by Sims Wyeth, Wyeth offers public speakers five key lessons from Obama’s rhetorical playbook, and tips to master his style.

Click here to read the full story.

Sims Wyeth helps individuals and companies succeed by providing tools and training on the principles and practices of effective, persuasive communication – those approaches that have been proven to work across history and cultures. His work is not only a collection of do’s and don’ts; his knowledge and teaching is based on the science and psychology of how audiences absorb information.

Sims Wyeth & Co. offers customized presentation skills and public speaking seminars, as well as executive speech coaching. Sims assists high stakes presenters with speech writing, effective use of PowerPoint, presenting data, increasing sales, relating to diverse or difficult audiences, improving personal style, confidence, and image.

”The greats all learn from other greats,” says Wyeth, “so don’t hesitate to study Obama’s repertoire, and use what you can to improve your own public speaking.”

Effective Speaking: Yeah, But…

simswnj — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:55:35 +0000

“Every word uttered evokes the idea of its opposite,” said Goethe. This is true because no single statement can summarize the totality of a person, object, idea or event.

For instance, if I say, “President Obama is a great public speaker,” my listener might be thinking, “Yeah, but…” and then come out with, “He says ‘er’ and ‘uhm’ too much in interviews.”

At that point, I am stuck with rephrasing my original assertion, because I was talking about my impression of the President speaking at formal occasions.

I would have done better to say, “The President is a great public speaker on formal occasions, although he ‘ers’ and ‘uhms’ too much in interviews.”

If I’d said that, then I would have been able to talk about the President’s accomplishments as a platform speaker without having to defend my incomplete assertion.

Furthermore, I would have demonstrated that I had thought about the pros and cons of the President’s speaking style, and would therefore have earned more credibility with my listeners.

It pays to say what you have to say, and also say what you’re not saying.