Executive Speech Coach NJ - Sims Wyeth

Public Speaking: A masterful performance

SimsBeth — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:18:13 +0000

I give the ClassAct Award for the best thank you speech at the Oscars to Christopher Plummer.

The man is 82 years young. No wincing in pain as he rose from his seat. No creaky knees up the steps to the stage, as waves of affection from the hall broke across his shoulders. We see Max von Sydow and Queen Meryl beaming in his direction. He takes the statue and coos to it, “You’re only two years older than me, my darling. Where have you been all my life?”

Such longing. Such humor. Such self-effacement. A “pretend” private moment in front of the known world (which is what actors do for a living.) He had us at the start.

But then he lands another self-mocking blow. He turns from his faux private moment and confesses his actor’s vanity. “When I first emerged from my mother’s womb, I was already rehearsing my Academy thank-you speech. But it was so long ago, mercifully for you I’ve forgotten it.”

So nice of him to be concerned about our experience of his moment in the sun. (Well, why not? He’s an actor, giving a performance.)

And then comes the tell-tale sign that he has not forgotten to prepare for this moment. He is a great artist, actor and writer, and he links ‘forgetting’ to the next important point.

“But I haven’t forgotten who to thank. The Academy, of course, for this extraordinary honor, and my fellow nominees: Kenneth, Nick, Jonah, dear Max. I’m so proud to be in your company.”

I believe this is called the hook-and-eye technique, something Abraham Lincoln was also skilled at. Highly effective for spoken communication, as it builds a bridge and continues a theme from one point to the next.

One more bit of self-mockery. He declared, “ I would share this award with [his co-star] if I had any decency, but I don’t.” Another laugh from the enchanted crowd.

How wonderful that he took the time to craft these simple and intuitive remarks, rehearse them, and include the names of his fellow nominees. How remarkable that he could remember them at the age of 82. And notice that the audience gave him a spontaneous burst of applause when he rattled off the names of his competitors. Graciousness, even when rehearsed, moves the souls of men.

He went on to thank those who made the movie. He expressed pride in his daughter, and then awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to his wife for, “coming to my rescue every day of my life.”

The camera focused on her. She is beautiful, and made an expression as if to say, “Oh, don’t be silly.”

Such art. Such humanity. Such British lack of ostentation. Humble in victory. Acknowledgement of others. He made us glad that he won.

Such is the power of a tiny little speech.

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: How you come across

SimsBeth — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:56:57 +0000

Jim Fyfe is a friend of mine and a very funny man. He has been an actor, a comedian and is now an educator.

In his younger days, he was asked to judge a contest for students of architecture who were assigned the task of designing a comedy club.

There were two phases to the contest. First, Jim was to look at the models by himself and rank them. Second, he would meet with the students and ask questions as though he were a client. Then he would deliberate and award the prize.

When he met the student whose model he’d ranked #1, Jim was disappointed in his attitude and what he had to say. The guy was sloppily dressed, unshaven, and too cool to care. He held his hand over his mouth while he talked and showed no enthusiasm for his own work.

Jim changed his mind and awarded the prize to another model.

You could say, “Who cares what the student was like? His model was the best!” That’s rational, but human decisions are not always rational. How you come across speaks loudly too.

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.

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.

Occupy PowerPoint

SimsBeth — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:40:02 +0000

Occupy Wall Street has given voice to long-simmering resentments in our economy. But there is yet another dystopia that is giving rise to a rebellion, and strangely enough, it’s against elite software.

American business culture expects its white collared millions to use slides when they speak to groups. But many business presenters are beginning to lift their voices against the tyranny of PowerPoint. Crushed under the monopolistic power of the nearly ubiquitous Microsoft slide-maker, brave cubicle denizens have been heard to complain of their inability to utter a word on the public stages of corporate Amerika without filtering their thoughts through the sieve of slide designs and pre-fab layouts. As you might expect, the movement lacks central leadership, is disorganized, and lacks specific demands and messaging, but it is growing.

Let’s first look at what is good about PowerPoint. What does it bring to the meeting? Before a meeting it allows attendees to review presentation material, and after the meeting, those unable to attend can read the slides.

It rids us of the need to pay recording secretaries to jot in short hand the powerful points made by the speakers at the meetings, and then pay them again to circulate their apt summaries to attendees. It also stores information in a familiar format to refresh our memories, and thus allows us to reflect on the drift of the conversations in which we found ourselves engaged.

PowerPoint is also good because it provides a visual to focus the eyes of the listener while he or she is listening. People learn more when they simultaneously see images and hear spoken words (a fact proven by educational psychologists.) However, few business presenters use creative images on their PowerPoint slides, which may be one cause of their antipathy to the software: many corporate cultures have micro PowerPoint cultures based on the traditional bullet point model.

Senior executives want it done the way they did it in the past (a lethal number of bullet points), and thus newly minted MBAs cling to the same format, lest they be thought fringey by their superiors. We must also acknowledge that few business leaders are great writers, or skilled essayists, and I haven’t met too many MBAs capable of marshalling the language and sending it into battle. So bullet points, despite their lack of nuance and subtlety, seem to suffice for the guys and gals making the big decisions in the executive suites.

But the resentment, felt and expressed by a growing number of highly accomplished people, is real, even though it’s hard to measure the actual cost of using PowerPoint. So let’s do a little math. We know that American workers deliver an estimated 30 million PowerPoint presentations per day.

Let’s assume that the average length of a presentation is 30 minutes, the average audience size is four people, the average salary of those in attendance is $35K, and that one-quarter of the presentations are entirely useless, all of which are conservative estimates.

The cost to our economy is $250 million per day, and about $100 billion per year. And that’s just for those in the audience. What about all of us who struggle to create the presentations?

PowerPoint represents a staggering burden on our economy, and a troubling medium for speakers and audiences alike. It can give the illusion of competence, the illusion of simplicity, and the illusion of understanding.

It has also excused the great majority of our leaders from learning to use language as an incisive tool of leadership.

It is not all bad. PowerPoint can save us money, and store information. But as a tool, it is over-used and frequently abused by those who do too much public speaking and not enough private thinking.

Keep your ears open. The low grumble you hear in the halls may soon swell to a chorus, a cacophony, a crescendo of complaints. PowerPoint may soon be demonized as a tool of the devil, an instrument of dystopia, the destroyer of Western Civilization that wastes time, wastes money, makes us look and sound like idiots, and prevents us from flourishing in a state of high dudgeon when calling our listeners to action.

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 Tire They Want to Kick

SimsBeth — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:09:00 +0000

A few years ago, I was on a panel at the Princeton Club in New York. The subject was “best practices in raising assets.” At some point in the meeting, I said to a roomful of hedge fund managers that we should all take a consultative approach to selling our strategies, a suggestion that made the audience bristle. To remind you, the consultative approach suggests the best salespeople uncover the customer’s business problem through effective questioning, diagnose causes and consequences, and recommend solutions that will take away the pain.

But, as I was told, in raising assets for alternative investment strategies, this approach may not work, and in fact could be irrelevant. The problem potential investors have is patently obvious: they want to increase return and lower risk. And, I was told, they will almost certainly refuse to tell you anything about their portfolio of investments, thereby cutting off the possibility of you conducting an empathetic discussion about their business needs.

If this is the case, and I understand it usually is, then our best hope is to tell our story well and respond to their questions with candor. How can we do this so that we increase the likelihood that we can raise sufficient assets in the required time frame?

The Investor’s Point of View

One way is to reconsider asset raising from the investor’s point of view. At the core of the decision to hire a manager is the question of risk. While the investor will certainly have rational business concerns about your track record, performance, team turnover, etc., they might also be concerned about personal risk. After all, the decision they make will reflect on their judgment, and they may be rewarded for the performance of the manager they hire. This is especially true for large institutional investors, where lack of trust can cause them to delay their decision or prevent them from responding favorably.

So in a sense, we are back to a consultative approach to asset raising. The investor has a problem – he is full of skepticism, distrust, and fear. When we meet with him, it is our job to overcome these obstacles and persuade him that we are capable of meeting both his rational business needs and his personal emotional needs for security.

Persuasion

There are two ways to persuade people. The first is by using conventional rhetoric, which is what most executives are trained in. It’s an intellectual process – you build your case by giving statistics and facts and quotes from authorities. It’s what we do with our pitch books. But there are two problems with rhetoric. First, the people you’re talking to have their own set of authorities, statistics, and experiences. While you’re trying to persuade them, they are arguing with you in their heads. They’re questioning your selection and arrangement of the numbers. They’re comparing you to the six other firms they’ve been talking to. And second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve done so only on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired by reason alone.

The other way to persuade people, and ultimately a much more powerful way, is by uniting your strategy with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story – about yourself, your strategy, the founding of your fund, and all the obstacles you’ve overcome, and continue to overcome, as you strive to serve the needs of your investors.

In a story, you not only weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your listener’s emotions and energy. The story you tell about your approach can communicate who you are, where you come from, where you’re going, what you believe, all in a vivid way that will enable your listeners to connect with you.

Persuading with a story is hard. Any intelligent person can sit down and make lists. A standard recitation of the fund’s history, staff, approach and accomplishments may be traditional, but your audience might very well find it repetitive and indistinguishable from hundreds of others they’ve experienced. It takes rationality but little creativity to design an argument using conventional rhetoric.

However, it demands vivid insight and storytelling skill to present an idea that packs enough emotional power to be memorable. If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well-told story, then you get people to truly listen, nod their heads and reach across the table to shake your hand, rather than sitting there slouching toward indifference as you round up the usual facts and figures.

Telling the Story Face-to-Face

The interesting thing is whatever you do in a face-to-face meeting with potential investors, you and your strategy become a story. While they’re listening, they’re telling themselves a story about you. When you leave, they tell others the story of your meeting. You become a story, filed away in their library of experiences.

Cognitive psychologists describe how the human mind, in its attempt to understand and remember, assembles the bits and pieces of experience into a story, beginning with a personal desire, a life objective, and then portraying the struggle against the forces that block that desire. Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.

For instance, the traditional pitch follows a predictable pattern, and in fact, most funds will make more or less the same claims about their managers, strategies, processes, and teams. This is a safe approach, but not optimal. Instead, you want to display the struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness. Tell the truth, in other words.

Most companies and executives sweep the dirty laundry, the difficulties, the antagonists, the struggle under the carpet. They prefer to present a rosy and boring picture to the world. But as a storyteller, a blood and guts guy who’s out there every day running money for his clients, you want to position the problems in the foreground and then show how you’ve overcome them.

The typical positive, polished pitch doesn’t ring true. They know you’re not spotless. They know everyone slants their statements to make their company look good. Positive boilerplate actually works against you because it foments distrust among the people you’re trying to build trust with. When you tell the story of your struggles against real antagonists, your audience sees you as an exciting, dynamic person.

I was pretty upset with myself when I left the Princeton Club, thinking that I’d demonstrated a lack of understanding of the hedge fund market. But in the end, I think I was right. If you take a consultative approach to raising assets and look at the investor’s business and professional problems, you discover several things: (i) they see a lot of pitches that look and sound the same, (ii) they are skeptics, and rightly so, (iii) the decision to hire a manager represents both a business and personal risk.

In the end, given relative parity between your strategy and others, their decision is about you, the manager. You’re the tire they want to kick. If you dramatize the challenges you face, and tell stories about how you overcome them, you make yourself more real and increase the awareness of your alpha. And that should help you raise assets more efficiently.

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.

Presentation skill: Problem definition

SimsBeth — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:00:36 +0000

Our audiences are interested in their own problems and how to fix them. This is old news to anyone who has studied the arts of rhetoric, persuasion, and of course advertising. If you can define the problem faced by your audience, you build your credibility and engender in them a need – an itch – to solve the problem.

So how and when can a public speaker talk about the problems of the audience? The answer is: right off the bat.

A few years ago at Cisco, the sales organization got together for a major overhaul. Individual sales guys were hoarding client information, which benefited them but undermined the progress of the enterprise and the quality of the company’s service.

Among the speakers was a young woman speaking on a new subject: the data warehouse. She stood in front of a large auditorium filled 99% with men, and said simply, “Cisco, we have a problem.”

You could have heard a silicon wafer drop.

She went on to describe the problem, its causes and consequences, and only after she had finished her problem definition did she introduce the solution: the data warehouse.

There is a point at which the presentation skill of problem definition becomes tedious. But it doesn’t come as soon as you think. If you truly understand the issue, and tell stories that illustrate the problem, then you have got the audience hooked emotionally and intellectually: they are going to listen hard to your problem definition, and your proposed solution.

You may get push back, because every idea gets scrutinized by critics and skeptics, but that’s good – they are pressure-testing your reasoning. And it’s better to get them involved in a discussion than to have them ignore you.

The presentation skill of problem definition helps your audience move forward in the right direction, creates dialogue, and gives birth to creativity and innovation. Plus it makes you look like one smart cookie.

Good presenters are problem solvers.
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.

The purpose of presentation skills

SimsBeth — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:54:12 +0000

When we watch American Idol, we may talk about the competitors’ singing skills, but what we really care about is whether or not they created a little moment of magic for us.

When we go to the symphony or the opera, we may discuss the mechanics of the fingering required of the first violinist in Bach’s B Minor Mass, but what we really care about is the enchantment we experienced, the transport we felt as we were taken out of ourselves by the music.

When we attend a business presentation, we may momentarily think about the presenter’s ease and comfort at the front of the room, but what we care about, and remember, is the value of the experience, what we learned, and how much it shed new light on an issue important to us.

Our audiences want to get our big idea, and have that idea illuminate their battlefield like a flare, so they can do business better, or make a better decision. They don’t give a hoot about our presentation skills unless they’re having trouble grasping what we’re trying to say. They’re looking for an “Aha!” moment, not for body language or eye contact.

It reminds me of my transition from theater into business. In theater we spoke about the truthfulness of the moment, about what the actor was trying to say with the words, about his expression of intention, his ability to be in the moment – responsive and alive to the immediate circumstances.

In business, I was suddenly engulfed in conversations about the mechanics of speaking – how to stand, gesture, move, and use your eyes. It was all about appearing, and not about being – being enthusiastic, being full of conviction, being able to bring new ideas to life.

I recognize that actors have scripts written for them – scripts they memorize, and that they are pretending to be passionate, or ambitious, or sly. So do we. But the audience doesn’t want to see acting skills. Acting skills are a given. The audience wants to be deceived to such an extent that they believe that what is happening on the stage is really happening. That it’s real. We want to suspend our disbelief, and live vicariously through the dramatic (or comedic) struggle to which we are witnesses. Otherwise, without the illusion, we don’t get the emotional kick. When we see the mechanics, the illusion is destroyed.

The art of presenting lies in hiding the art. As long as you can suspend the audience’s disbelief – in other words, get them to believe in you and your message, you’re doing your job.

Your skills are in service to the creation of value for the audience, and like all good servants, they’re at their best when they don’t draw attention to themselves.

Public Speaking: 3 reasons why your voice does not do you justice

SimsBeth — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:43:55 +0000

I can think of any childhood friend and recall the sound of his voice, and I believe we can all do the same. Your voice is an auditory thumb print, and it gets smeared on the memory of your listeners.

Yet few of us are happy with our voices. We hear them on recordings of any kind and we’re shocked. And we should be. A lot of us have voices that do not do us justice.

Here are the 3 most common voice problems that could be holding you back.

Uptalk

Also known as Valley Girl, this is a pitch pattern that rises at the end of sentences that would normally resolve on a downward slope. Repeated, the rising intonation causes the speaker to sound tentative, as though she were asking for agreement. Anything repeated too often is annoying and destracting, but this vocal habit causes the speaker to lose any trace of credibility and gravitas.

Glottal Fry

Again, this is primarily a girl-thing. Not sure why, but it seems to be more common than in the past. A speaker with glottal fry grinds her vocal chords in the back of her throat when she speaks, so her voice sounds like she’s croaking, or frying her voice, rather than supporting it with her breath.

The most pronounced frying comes at the end of sentences, when the speaker has run out of breath to support the sound. I even hear glottal fries on the radio, and it makes me think the mouth of the speaker is closed, and that she’s too lazy and self-important to generate any vocal energy. A glottal fryer makes the listener come to her. She is not making the effort to reach out to them.

Compression

This is a both-sex-thing. And mostly a young person thing. It’s basically speaking too fast, or machine-gun speaking, but it tends to come in bursts, rather than in a continuous flow.

For instance, a speaker could be walking calmly through his thoughts, and then suddenly burst in to a sprint through a particular phrase so that all consonants are lost (burs in oo a sprin through a particular phrase.) Listeners are polite and don’t say anything, but they often have to work hard (offen hata wur har) to decipher what was said (wa wa seh), and while they are deciphering, they aren’t listening.

Again, this tends to happen at the end of a sentence or a thought, and it undermines the speaker because he sounds as if he thinks that what he has to say is not worth listening to and that his inner word processor has lost the functionality of the space bar.

Your career depends on how you speak. These vocal habits make you look bad, and you should, and can, clean up your act.

Webinar vs. Seminar: Webinar Tips

SimsBeth — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:39:27 +0000

The key difference between a live presentation and an online presentation is the challenge of holding attention. An audience member sitting in his underwear scarfing a bagel, holding a baby in his lap, and flipping through emails on a Blackberry is a hard guy to connect with.

If the same guy were sitting in a room with his colleagues and bosses, he would be more focused, making an effort to impress his colleagues and bosses with his seriousness of purpose.

How to grab and keep him? Here are some webinar tips to capture and keep attention:

Base your presentation content on a case study your listener can see in his mind.
Or, focus the content of the presentation on a relevant business problem.
Spend less time per visual to keep the scenery changing.
Write sentence headlines on slides to get the BIG IDEA across.
Keep visuals real simple, preferably graphical.
Require interaction. Give quizzes using multiple choice questions. Then give the correct answers, and show how many listeners got it right.
Do this often to increase retention of presentation content.
Move through the agenda reminding them where they are on the journey.
Use a conversational style. Or have two presenters in conversation.
Rehearse a lot.
Time your rehearsals.
Have some one in the room with you to look at and talk to so you feel and sound more natural.

Like drugs, technology has side-effects. Online presentations isolate listeners, where their attention can wander. The peer pressure and expected behaviors of an actual live gathering of people tends to make people more focused.

You can reduce the risk of losing them, and talking to the void, by using some of the presentation techniques mentioned above.

Greeks on strike

SimsBeth — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:57:44 +0000

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

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

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

The psychology of persuasive speaking

SimsBeth — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:36:12 +0000

I’m in Athens exploring the origins of public speaking. I’ve always been fascinated by rhetoric, and I’ve finally pulled the trigger and launched myself back into the 5th century BC.

Because Athens was a democracy, they needed leaders who were capable of speaking to large crowds and convincing them to take action together. It was a government that functioned by winning the assent of the governed, just like ours. And public speaking was the primary tool of governing.

They had no radio, TV, advertising, whistle stops, bus tours, microphones, websites, email, or direct mail. Just words in public places, strong voices, and passion for their city and their culture.

The Athenians believed that there were three keys to being a persuasive speaker. The first they called ethos – the ethical appeal of the speaker. We get our word ethical from the Greek. If you are not perceived as trustworthy, you could not be persuasive. David Brooks, the columnist for the New York Times, has said that Lincoln may be the only U.S. President who could qualify for beatification from the Catholic Church. That’s ethical!

The second key to effective speaking, according to the Athenians, is pathos – the emotional appeal of the argument. We get our word empathy from this Greek word. The Greeks believed that people make decisions using both reason and emotion, and that any speech that does not connect emotionally with listeners will fail to move them. Martin Luther King is a good example of someone in our own history who appealed emotionally to our national desire to live up to our own stated values.

Finally, logos – the logical appeal of the speech. You have to be seen as an expert to be persuasive, smart, well-informed, and clear minded. Of course you can be an expert without being trustworthy, and you can be trustworthy without being an expert.

For instance, Gary Hart, the former Senator from Colorado who self-destructed during his presidential campaign, is an example of someone who was seen as incredibly smart but lacking in the ability to connect with people emotionally. Same with Governor Dukakis, who also ran for president. Both of them were logos oriented individuals, meaning that they believed that just because they could prove something to be true, others would accept it.

The study of rhetoric, or persuasive speaking, indicates that logos arguments only go so far. Without trust in the speaker, and with no emotional reason to believe, people are not likely to be persuaded.

Three very large ideas in one short blog, but they have huge practical (and tactical) implications for any speaker.

Here I am in the land of Pericles, Demosthenes, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – to name a few of the Greek superstars who thought long and hard about how to speak, govern and live.

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.

Scientific Presentations

SimsBeth — Thu, 05 May 2011 17:29:03 +0000

Over the last few years, I have worked to help discovery scientists within the pharmaceutical and biotech industries make persuasive scientific presentations in order to sell their ideas for new drugs to decision makers.

The challenges were many. Often, scientists had to report to their bosses in Europe via video conference. The image projected in Switzerland was a wide-angle shot of six people sitting at a table in New Jersey. It was difficult to know which person was talking.

English was being spoken in a variety of accents. America is blessed to have brilliant people from all over the globe come to work in our pharmaceutical and biotech industries, but understanding each person, on both sides of the Atlantic, through a wire thousands of miles long, was a continual challenge.

When English is spoken as a second language, it is often delivered in the pitch pattern and rhythm of the first language, which makes it hard for us Americans to grasp, and perhaps even harder for those who come from yet another country and whose first language is different from that of the speaker.

Sensitive cultural issues arose. In some European cultures, one does not tell a senior scientist overseeing a vast number of crucial experiments that his presentations are incomprehensible. One calls on a consultant to say such things, if in fact the scientist in question agrees to meet with the consultant.

And then there’s the problem of the traditional approach to scientific communication. The language, form, and conventions of published scientific papers- which spill over into scientific presentations- could almost have been devised to conceal information.

Even in conversation, scientists use words that are perfectly ordinary within science but are simply never heard at a bar, dinner party, or on the side of a soccer field. When speaking to marketers, scientists have to learn to stand back from their own work and see it as strangers might.

They need to ask themselves what is the most significant thing about their research? Is it that they can’t account for 70% of the efficacy since the mechanism of action is unknown? What is the detail, the issue, the problem that will make most people sit up and pay attention?

Many distinguished scientists- Richard Feynmann, J.B.S. Haldane, and Peter Medawar among them- knew how to hold a popular audience, and they weren’t afraid to address their peers with the same vividness and economy. In fact, their fame became inseparable from their gift for words.

Scientists can be great communicators. Carl Sagan, Primo Levi, E.O. Wilson were (are) great examples. They each had the engaging quality of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is derived from a Greek term that means divinely intoxicated.

In order to be useful to their companies, and to society, scientists must be able to sell their ideas. Most scientists can think clearly. Many can write clearly. Fewer are spellbinding on the presentation platform, but thoughts that are clearly expressed, especially in live meetings, have greater potential value, and bring credit to the presenter.

What makes a great presenter?

admin — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:35:50 +0000

Adam Bryant, author of the weekly “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, has compiled 70 interviews with CEOs and come up with five X-factors that contribute to great leadership.

You can find them all here, but I want to share one of them as it relates to this blog: A simple mind-set.

A Simple Mind-Set

There is a stubborn disconnect in many companies. Most senior executives want the same thing from people who present to them: be concise, get to the point, make it simple. Yet few people can deliver the simplicity that many bosses want. Instead, they mistakenly assume that the bosses will be impressed by a long PowerPoint presentation that shows how diligently they researched a topic, or that they will win over their superiors by talking more, not less.

Few things seem to get C.E.O’s riled up more than lengthy PowerPoint presentations. It’s not the software they dislike; that’s just a tool. What irks them is the unfocused thinking that leads to an overlong slide presentation. There is wide agreement it’s a problem: “death by PowerPoint” has become a cliche.

If so many executives in positions of authority are clear about what they want, why can’t they get the people who report to them to lose the “Power” part of their presentations and simply get to the “Point”?

There are a few likely explanations. A lot of people have trouble being concise. Next time you’re in a meeting, ask somebody to give you the 10-word summary of his or her idea. Some people can do a quick bit of mental jujitsu, and they’ll summarize an idea with a “Here’s what’s important…” or “The bottom line is… .” Others will have trouble identifying the core point.

Another possible explanation is that a lag exists in the business world. There was a time when simply having certain information was a competitive advantage. Now, in the Internet era, most people have easy access to the same information. That puts a greater premium on the ability to synthesize, to connect dots in new ways and to ask simple, smart questions that lead to untapped opportunities.

“I’d love to teach a course called ‘The Idea,’” said Dany Levy, the founder of DailyCandy.com. “Which is, basically, so you want to start a company, how’s it going to work? Let’s figure it out: just a very practical plan, but not a business plan, because I feel like business plans now feel weighty and outdated. It seems, back in the day, that the longer your business plan was, the more promising it was going to be. And now, the shorter your business plan is, the more succinct and to the point it is, the better. You want people to get why your business is going to work pretty quickly.”

Steven A. Ballmer, the C.E.O. of Microsoft, said he understood the impulse in presentations to share all the underlying research that led to a conclusion. But he changed the way he runs meetings to get to the conclusion first.

“The mode of Microsoft meetings used to be: You come with something we haven’t seen in a slide deck or presentation,” he said. “You deliver the presentation. You probably take what I will call ‘the long and winding road.’ You take the listener through your path of discovery and exploration, and you arrive at a conclusion.

“I decided that’s not what I want to do anymore. I don’t think it’s efficient. So most meetings nowadays, you send me the materials and I read them in advance. And I can come in and say: ‘I’ve got the following four questions. Please don’t present the deck.’ That lets us go, whether they’ve organized it that way or not, to their reccommendation. And if I have questions about the long and winding road and the data and the supporting evidence, I can ask them. But it gives us greater focus.”

From persuasion to enchantment

admin — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:07:10 +0000

I grabbed my Blackberry when I woke up this morning and saw that Bnet was promoting a webinar called How to Change Hearts, Minds, and Actions: Guy Kawasaki Speaks on Enchantment.

Guy Kawasaki, for those of you who don’t know, is a venture capitalist and an original thinker. For instance, when people came to him with an idea for a business, he enforced the 10, 20, 30 rule: No more than ten slides; no longer than twenty minutes; and no font smaller than 30.

Now he’s into enchantment, which is a game-changer. Most of us are talking about persuasion, story, brain science, stickiness, and presence. Suddenly we’re into the realm of the magical, the mystical, the enchanting!

It is a great word, one that has freshness and bite, so let’s run with it. But it speaks of the oldest art of the public speaker, the rhetorician, the spellbinder, and rainmaker. The ability to get an audience to believe, to see a new reality in the theater of their own minds, and to carry it with them into action.

You may be familiar with Bruno Bettelheim’s seminal work, The Uses of Enchantment, in which he writes about the power of folk and fairy tales.

Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially-evolved stories, children would ge through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures.

- Wikipedia, The Uses of Enchantment

We are enchanted by stories and by performances; by the artificial world of opera, sports, and theater. Any story that doesn’t suspend our disbelief is a failure. Good novels and movies are more vivid than real life. They lodge in our minds forever. And because they last, they have a chance to teach us how to behave, how to act. The drama is so captivating, so enchanting, that we are penetrated by it – and instructed by it.

Combined with the wisdom of rhetoric, cognitive and social science, and the art of the theater, the spoken word can also be enchanting. When we learn how to shape our arguments, structure language patterns to captivate the mind, be both conceptual and concrete, and perform like an actor, we can alter reality for our listeners.

Percy Bysshe Shelley said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. I think what he meant to say is that great speakers and storytellers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

They are, in fact, the acknowledged leaders of countries, companies, and institutions, because they are the people who are able to tell the stories that shape their followers vision of the future, and their interpretation of the past.

And maybe even more importantly, the personal story of the leader – his or her biography – very often embodies the values held up by the institution he or she leads. Think, “Obama,” a new kind of President. Think: “Lincoln,” “Mandela,” “Thatcher,” “Reagan.” Their personal stories represented the aspirations of their cultures. They enchanted the electorate, not only by what they said, but also by what their lives said.

The bar has been raised. Kawasaki has done it again – jumped out ahead of the conversation and elevated the discourse to urge us to a higher level.

It’s no longer persuasion and influence. It is no longer presence or power. And it certainly is no longer “presentation skills,” that mechanical, pedestrian phrase that fails to lend any magic to the art of speech – that is so 1980s. No, the new word is enchantment. Can we enchant our audiences?

Can you see it now? A whole generation of MBA’s studying the art of suspending disbelief.

The first purpose of language and presentation

admin — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 18:40:23 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Make your PowerPoint headlines sentences

admin — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:01:22 +0000

Michael Alley has investigated an alternative to the default PowerPoint slide layout, which he terms the “assertion-evidence design.”

This approach employs succinct sentence headlines (sentences that make an assertion) at the top of the slide. Under it, in the main section of the slide, there would appear a visual representation of evidence, such as a picture or a graph.

In multiple experiments, Alley has found that students viewing presentations following this design were better able to recall the main assertion of slides than were those students viewing presentations employing phrase headlines and bulleted text.

An example of a phrase headline would be, “Product safety,” a phrase that contains no information of value and no point of view.

If the author of such a slide were to use Alley’s “assertion-evidence design,” the headline might read, “Product safety is competitive.” That is, the sentence would make an assertion, or a point, and then the viewer would be able to glance down to review the evidence on display that supports the assertion.

McKinsey and Co., a leading consulting firm, has used this methodology for years, if not decades, as have other reputable institutions, including the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

Any presenter whose job is to create clarity out of complexity will benefit from using Alley’s “assertion-evidence design.”

Energetic Lips

admin — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 22:25:27 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

Packing a presentation for the FDA

admin — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:55:04 +0000

We carefully packed the sculptures in our suitcases when we returned from Africa, using our dirty clothes to cushion them from damage. Leave it to the airlines to outsmart us and find the weak spots in our preparation. When we got home, three of the sculptures were broken.

No problem. A little SuperGlue, and now, from a distance, they look fine.

It’s not so easy with a presentation. I recently worked on an Advisory Board presentation at the FDA. We worked hard to locate the weak spots in our data, prepared arguments to stress the appealing risk/benefit profile, and told our story to the distinguished physicians on the board.

Leave it to those who treat the patients on the front line to find the weak spots in our argument, and send us packing to get more data to ensure the safety of those they treat.

It’s hard to protect the weak spots. Perhaps no amount of packing could have saved our African sculptures from damage, given the mauling they were destined to get on their way to the States. Similarly, perhaps no amount of back-filling argumentation could have saved us from the weakness in our data, given the bruising skepticism of physicians entrusted with the public interest.

I believe wishful thinking plays a part in these two episodes. My wife and I were exhausted at the end of our trip. We had too many bags. They were overweight. We had to fit the sculptures in the best we could. We crossed our fingers, and hoped.

On the professional side, my clients and I may have brought wishful thinking to the FDA as well. We were desperate for a new compound to be approved: the company had not had a winner in a long time. We saw a chance that this new one might get over the hurdles. We made the commitment, ratcheted up our belief, and began to prepare. The train left the station, and once it was rolling, we had to keep believing, even when weak spots emerged.

The day arrived, we did our best, but a jury of our peers poked a hole in our claim that the drug’s benefits outweighed its risks.

Back to the drawing boards we go…for a couple of years. It takes more than SuperGlue to fix a clinical trial.

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.

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.

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.

Training the Speaking Voice

admin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:47:18 +0000

Some of us are born with, or acquire through experience, a voice that is tentative and evokes in others the tendency to ignore what we say.

Habits such as talking too quietly, or too quickly, or going up at the ends of sentences, or sounding too breathy, or too stereotypically “blue collar”—all these, and other vocal habits, can cause listeners to dismiss our ideas.

This is most obviously a problem for professional people whose job demands that they communicate their expertise, compete for promotion, and sell themselves and their ideas both inside their organizations, and out in the marketplace.

What can be done to help them?

Make them aware of the problem. We are reluctant to do this because the voice is such a deeply personal part of us. To criticize the voice of another, we think to ourselves, would be hurtful to them. Quite the contrary, if done in a supportive manner. Broadcasters and actors were not born with the voices we hear on radio and TV. They work with voice and speech teachers to improve the appeal of their on-air presence. Since we in the business world are always “on” at work, why should we not do what we can to improve our chances to climb to the top?
The voice is a wind instrument. In order to play it well, we must know how to breathe to support the sound, and how to use our tongues and lips to make crisp, intelligible sounds, just as the fingers of a flautist move to stop the air to make specific notes.. These behaviors are easily learned with practice. A good voice and speech teacher can be found at any university with a drama department. He or she can help improve the credibility of a voice, and reduce the effect of any accent that might be getting in the way.
Finally, someone who seeks to improve his or her vocal presence should expect that it will take some time. One does not learn how to play a wind instrument in a day. But with effort, one can improve the expressive range, the strength, and the resonance of a voice, and discover an ancient truth: that we are judged by how we speak.

I say the truth is ancient because I recently discovered this quote from The Book of Sirach, written in Hebrew in the 2^nd Century BCE.

When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear;

So do a man’s faults when he speaks.

As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace,

So in his conversation is the test of a man.

The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had;

So too does a man’s speech disclose the bent of his mind.

Praise no man before he speaks,

For it is then that men are tested.

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.

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.

Scientific Presentations and the Gettysburg Address

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:46:50 +0000

When working on scientific and technical presentations, I am often amazed by the wonders of the science being presented and, at the same time, shocked by the speaker’s lack of awe or appreciation for the mystery and power of his own work.

It seems to me that many scientific and technical speakers take their own work for granted, as if expressing appreciation for the mysteries they’re exploring would be unprofessional.

I find this tendency to be damaging to the scientific and technical presenter’s ability to create excitement and comprehension in their audiences, especially when they’re speaking to lay audiences, where it is crucial to set up the context and dramatize the strangeness and wonder of the work.

Furthermore, when the scientific or technical speaker is trying to raise money or sell an asset or idea, his ability to generate enthusiasm and curiosity helps predispose an audience to take a second look.

What can be done for scientific and technical presenters who are tasked with getting lay audiences to understand and appreciate the dramatic power of their work?

Strangely enough, the Gettysburg Address has something to teach them.

The Back Story

President Lincoln began his famous speech with the back story—the big picture. “Four score and seven…” He reached back 87 years (a score is a quantity of 20) and summarized American history in one sentence.

Scientific and technical presenters can do this too. They can summarize the work done in their particular field up until the present, implying that the project under discussion builds on a body of research that is important to humanity.

The Current Problem

President Lincoln then defined the intractable problem the country faced in the present moment. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war…” he said.

Scientific and technical speakers should do the same. Having summarized the work of previous experts, they should describe the problem that remains to be solved. This is important because it helps people take an interest in the topic.

The Question that Needs to be Answered

Then President Lincoln asked a question—not directly, but he implied one—which is, “What can I possibly say here to honor the men who died?”

He answers the question by saying that no words he can speak will do the job. Instead, he asks his audience to rededicate their lives to the “proposition that all men are created equal.”

Scientific and technical presenters can also use this technique: ask the question that needs to be answered, and then offer an answer.

For instance, a biotech firm developing on a new HIV compound might phrase such a question like this: “Given the long march HART (highly-active anti-retroviral therapy) has taken, and since, in that time, few agents in this class have made it to market, and those that did suffered from food issues and lipid abnormalities, what attributes has this compound demonstrated to justify our confidence in its ability to clear all regulatory hurdles and play a significant role in the treatment of HIV?”

The Answer to the Question

At this point in the talk, the scientific or technical presenter should proceed to make his or her argument for the value and importance of the product, just as President Lincoln made the case for honoring the dead by continuing to prosecute the war.

Delivery

Finally, the scientific and/or technical speaker must make the case with some enthusiasm. Getting others to appreciate the incredible journey science continues to take requires more than words. It requires the emotional expression of awe and wonder—an overt appreciation for the mystery of things.

After all, emotions are contagious. Without emotion, a speaker’s ideas are rarely catching.

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.

In search of creative public speaking

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:47:47 +0000

You may be familiar with Matt Latimer’s book Speech*Less about his career as a speechwriter in Washington during the Bush administration.

Apparently, President Bush had learned at Yale that all speeches should have an introduction, three points, a peroration, and a conclusion.

(What’s a peroration? It’s the wrap-up, in which you remind the audience, in new words, what has been proven and what you urge them to do.)

Matt the speechwriter found this template lacking in creativity. “To hell with Yale,” says Matt on page 188 of his book. “I’d gone to the University of Michigan, where we learned that speeches should be fun.”

I agree. A speech without the spirit of humor, or joy, or playfulness is about as exciting as a mashed-potato sandwich.

To stimulate your creativity as a speechwriter or presentation developer, I give you Mr. Tom Waits.

Tom Waits is a good model for creativity, because on National Public Radio, Tom interviewed himself (itself a creative act,) asks himself some creative questions, and comes up with creative answers.

For instance, he asks himself what’s the most curious record in his collection.

His answer? “In the seventies a record company in LA issued a record called ‘The best of Marcel Marceau.’ It had forty minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.”

Then he asks himself what’s wrong with the world.

“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge.

Quantity is being confused with abundance, and wealth with happiness.

Leona Helmsley’s dog made $12 million last year… and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000.

It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.”

Click on the link and read the rest of it. It’s playful and will invite your creativity to e-merge with your business savvy.

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.

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.

PowerPoint hits the front page

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:10:25 +0000

On April 27, on the front page of the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller has an article entitled: We Have Met the Enemy, and He is PowerPoint.

Speech professionals like me, along with many other communication experts, have had a love-hate relationship with PowerPoint for years.

Now we see that the leaders of our military are having the same debate: At what point does PowerPoint become a hindrance rather than an aid?

I remember the story about Lou Gerstner when he took over IBM. He went to his first meeting as CEO and sat down to watch a PowerPoint presentation on what was wrong with the company.

Within minutes, he asked that the projector be turned off and simply said, “Let’s talk.”

There is something wrong when we ask people to listen to us and give them something to read at the same time. I’m not a cognitive scientist, but I don’t think the human brain was designed to listen to a speech and read at the same time.

There are many people who have done research into these issues and we should heed their call.

Cliff Atkinson at www.sociablemedia.com has published a book entitled Beyond Bullet Points. He makes an elegant case for the use of imagery, the structure of story, and the effective use of clear outlines and headlines.

Cliff based some of his methodology on the work of Professor Richard E. Mayer at the University of California.

Professor Mayer and others have done ground-breaking research into the Principles of Cognitive Guidance: basically, how do you get people to follow what you’re saying.

These Principles apply to teaching, lecturing, and presenting, and are extremely useful to all of us who must make sense out of complexity.

Many of us are also familiar with Edward Tufte, Professor Emeritus at Yale, who has done extraordinary work on the visual display of quantitative information.

His paper, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, was published in May 2003, and while it has been found to be strongly biased against PowerPoint, it has helped to point the way to a more effective use of visual displays in business settings.

In my work within big Pharma, financial services, and strategic consulting shops, I am amazed at how much time managers spend designing slides.

When you add up the cost of pulling everyone into a meeting, and the cost of an executive salary paid to a manager to create slides for a week, the amount spent is considerable.

And if you add in the fact that the audience may frequently get bored, or confused, or simply exhausted from the onslaught of daily PowerPoint presentations they have to sit through, you have an additional cost in lower morale and disengagement.

As the article in the Times says, PowerPoint probably isn’t going away anytime soon. But it is time to make it clear that PowerPoint is a tool that we can use more effectively by using it according to proven principles of science, and not according to our legacy corporate habits.

Presenting in LP Meetings: Mistake #99

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:00:40 +0000

It’s still LP Meeting season in private equity and hedge fund land, and I keep running into basic errors.

Here’s Mistake #99: Not rehearsing together.

I just came back from a meeting in which the Founder spoke first, followed by the President of the firm. They had not rehearsed together.

The Founder had been planning to discuss the macro-economics of the horrible year past. Unfortunately, he also elaborated on various aspects of the investments in the portfolio.

When the President (the next speaker) reached the lectern, he had to do some quick thinking to rearrange his comments, since his fearless leader had stolen much of his thunder.

This was partly the Founder’s fault for changing his talk at the last minute; partly the President’s for not insisting on a joint rehearsal; and partly mine for rehearsing with them both privately and not anticipating the need to collaborate and coordinate.

The price they paid for this error was a low buzz of complaining about the length of the meeting and the repetition of information.

It could have been worse. Limited Partner Meetings are a key branding opportunity. If the teamwork between Founder and President isn’t seamless, what does it say about the decision-making process in the firm?

Could faulty teamwork lead to a much bigger mistake?

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.

Scientific and Technical Presentations

admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:17:35 +0000

Ironically enough, the biggest challenge faced by scientific and technical presenters is their reluctance to follow the scientifically established principles of communication.

What are those rules? One of them is that the human mind is drawn to problems, puzzles, and mysteries.

Rather than seeking to capture the attention of the audience by making a case for the puzzling mystery of the topic at hand, most scientific and technical speakers simply begin with their objectives, methods and data.

This may be admirable science in some circles, but it is not effective communication because it fails to provide the context for the content.

Effective communication seeks to gather the attention of an audience by igniting curiosity and emotion, and only when it has done so can it pull the many human minds present in the same direction.

For instance, let’s say a locomotive is backing up to hook onto a long train of railroad cars. If it fails to connect, it cannot pull the train forward.

A speaker who does not connect with an audience has the same problem: He cannot pull his listeners forward unless he has somehow gotten his hook into them.

To sink the hook, a scientific or technical speaker must leave the narrow realm of his expertise and put it into broader context. He must make a case for the importance of the problem he is working on, or for the maddening slipperiness of the always- receding solution he seeks.

This is the skill of the storyteller, the weaver of tales, the painter of pictures that draws us in—deeper and deeper. This is the skill of the dramatist, whose opening scene makes us want to stay tuned, and whose subsequent scenes keep us asking the question, “Where’s this going? What’s going to happen? “

A doctor, researcher, or engineer can improve her outcomes by applying the scientifically established principles of communication.

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.

Short Public Speech on Health Insurance Rhetoric

simswnj — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:27:13 +0000

On the Senate floor, Judd Gregg compared health care reform to not only a “huge asteroid,” but a huge asteroid that will “land on our children’s heads.”

“Tyranny” and “socialism” are the buzz words of the day. States are filing lawsuits because they believe the requirement that individuals carry health insurance infringes on constitutionally guaranteed liberties.

These are emotional arguments. They inflame the already throbbing belief systems of some of our fellow citizens.

If our friends and neighbors had the patience to reflect on these claims—that our children will be squashed by debt, and that our political freedoms have been curtailed—they might think twice before putting on their hats and coats and going out for tea.

Yes, we are in debt. What portion of it comes from health care? And what portion of it comes from razing and rebuilding a nation in Mesopotamia? Does health care reform add to our debt or reduce it in the long term?

Can we do the research and get the answers to these questions before we start shooting life-threatening emails and bullets into the offices of elected representatives?

Is the requirement to carry health insurance worthy of the label, “tyranny?” What about the requirement to carry automobile insurance? Is that tyranny? Or the requirements that we drive on the right side of the road, or obey the speed limits?

No, these don’t amount to tyranny. While these laws do limit our freedom of choice, we give up these lesser freedoms to preserve our own safety, and the safety of others.

And living without health insurance? Is that such a great freedom? If it is, it’s a freedom we should agree to give up for the same reason—the safety, security and well being of our American society.

Presentation Skills for Pharma Reps: 3

simswnj — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:45:23 +0000

If you’ve ever lied, you know that specificity is more persuasive then generalities.

Therefore, be specific when speaking to physicians.

Not because you’re lying, but because you want to tell the truth in a memorable and convincing manner.

For instance, when I got home after shooting spitballs at cars through a straw when I was 10, I told my mother I had been building a tepee out of sticks and leaves that Mr. Johnson had raked up after the recent windstorm and piled behind his barn under a tarpaulin. Worked like a charm.

Data might seem persuasive, but actually it’s not. That’s because we know in our hearts that 63.92% of all statistics are made up. (Cough, cough.)

Really though, data is about large numbers of anonymous people. And doctors know that no two patients are alike. At least the good ones do.

Be specific about your target patient population, and make sure your doc hears you probing for specifics about his patients, and talking about specific patient types that could benefit from your drug.

Go figure! Limiting your market can make you a more successful rep!

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.