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.

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.

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. 

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.