Executive Speech Coach NJ - Sims Wyeth » public speaking training

Public Speaking is like splitting wood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shock and awe work in presentations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The #1 Sales Skill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Public speaking requires self-mastery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Overcoming stage fright is a presentation skill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My advice: Get a routine.

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

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.”

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.

Stage Fright Vanquished

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

This from Body Odd:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Youie Youness of You

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Using speaker’s notes

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

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

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

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

I think it depends on how they used them.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Overcoming Speaking Anxiety: Step into your stage fright

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Public Speaking Training: Don’t get too slick

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

When does a polished speaker become slick?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voice and Speech Training: The Most Human Instrument

simswnj — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:42:35 +0000

Everywhere on earth man is born with a voice able to rouse households from their slumbers.

And everywhere in business, he struggles to keep his listeners attentive to his presentations.

Vocal power

We underestimate the importance of the human voice and we do so at our peril.

Surgeons are more likely to be sued when their tone is too authoritative. Air traffic control is more apt to keep planes in fatally prolonged holding patterns when pilots request permission to land without expressing urgency. And business presenters, who may be dealing with dry material, are doomed to lose listeners if they cannot set their reasoning on fire with passion and conviction.

Reason with passion

Of course, too much passion may lack credibility, but business presenters would do well to communicate excitement! I often hear from clients that they can’t express excitement because the material is so dry. And I reply that the drier the material, the greater the need to make it relevant and appealing to the audience.

Think of a pair of scissors. One blade is reason, the other is passion. In a good presentation, it is hard to know which blade does the cutting.

The voice that lost the client

One of my first clients was the consulting arm of KPMG now known as BearingPoint. When they called me, the firm had lost a major sale because, they were told, the presenters had sounded bored. The prospect did not want to hire a firm that was not excited about the engagement. They wanted me to help, and here’s what I did.

Human bag-pipe

The first thing I did was teach them to breathe properly-by filling the lungs and then contracting the abdominal muscles to drive the breath up and out to strike the vocal cords with force and thus create a full sound.

Sound making for humans is the same as it is for bag pipes. Pipers fill their goat skins (their bags) with air, and then squeeze the skins to release the air to produce sound. Same with people-sort of.

We fill our lungs with air, then squeeze our lungs with our lower abdominal and intercostal muscles (those between the ribs) to push out the air and create vibrations in our vocal cords which produce speech.

However, if we don’t take in enough air, or we don’t use our muscles properly, we won’t have enough energy to make our voices rich and powerful.

Uncork the bottle neck

Next I had to uncork the bottle neck. It’s amazing how many people try to talk without really opening their mouths and throats. In order to teach this basic skill, I introduced the yawning exercise, which stimulates the throat to open wide, and the “Floppy Jaw” exercise, which teaches how to open the mouth all the way for each and every syllable spoken. Both these exercises made the consultants sound like morons, which is very upsetting for people who are 1000% invested in appearing to be highly intelligent. But the experience reminded them that “to speak is to make a noise,” and noise, like music, has emotional qualities.

“You won’t believe it!”

Then, I modeled the “You won’t believe it,” exercise. I asked each of them, one at a time, to cup their hands around their lips and call out across the Grand Canyon to their friend Joe.

“Hey, Joe! You won’t believe it! I found the most amazing thing! You gotta get over here to see this!”

“What is it?” Joe yells back.

Here I would coach and say, “More excited! More amazed! More buzzing with energy!”

The exuberant, long-distance dialogue would continue.

“I found the most amazing consulting firm. They have this process designed to streamline the financial systems of global companies. It’s amazing!”

“All right, I’m coming,” Joe yells.

At first, clients struggle with the exercise, but soon they get the picture. They realize that a significant portion of their emotional impact on others depends on their verbal and vocal expressiveness.

Phone charisma

Most of us think that charisma-that magical appeal that some people exude-has something to do with beauty! It doesn’t. It has more to do with communication-the ability to send and receive emotional signals.

It is widely believed that the ability to communicate emotion over the phone, without the support of gestures and facial expressions, is a good indicator of your capacity for charisma.

To explore this, I asked my consultants to team up with a colleague and sit down in separate chairs with their backs to each other, taking turns speaking as though on the phone.

They either improvised a conversation, or used a script like this:

Jack? This is Jill. You won’t believe what just happened. Frank went into Bob’s office and told him he was quitting. (Listening) Yes! Flat out. He told him everything-that he was sick and tired of Frank’s meddling, that he was tired of being the last one to know, and…(listening) He’s already gone. He took his coat and left. Cindy saw him storm out. He was beet red-I mean crimson!

While each participant took the part of Jack, the other consultants served as Olympic judges. At the end of each performance they held up papers with scores. The room resounded with lusty cheers for great vocal variety.

On a more technical note

English works best when a change of pitch occurs at every stressed syllable. To address this aspect of vocal expressiveness, I gave them a passage to read aloud .

Developed in 1941 by a committee from the faculties of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, among others, it describes a vision of a liberally educated person.

The liberally educated man is articulate, both in speech and in writing. He has a feel for language, a respect for clarity and directness of expression, and a knowledge of some language other than his own. He is at home in the world of quantity, number and measurement. He thinks rationally, logically, and objectively, and knows the difference between fact and opinion. When occasion demands, however, his thought is imaginative and creative rather than logical. He is perceptive, sensitive to form, and affected by beauty.

I found that introducing movement techniques helped with identifying speech patterns. As participants used their hands to “hit” the stressed syllables, they more readily brought emphasis and meaning to the text.

In addition to using the body to connect to expressiveness, I also asked them to use their imaginations. Some people responded to the suggestion that they speak like an eccentric British professor. Once they allowed themselves the freedom, they began to pontificate with greater color and expression.

And there was one consultant who channeled a pompous Southern Senator. It helped him to imagine he was stepping inside the skin of the senator, just as a hand fits inside a puppet. You step into the skin of a good-ole-boy Senator from Alabama, and all of a sudden, you’ve got a voice that can raise the rafters.

Caveat speaker

These exercises are meant for practice. They are stretching exercises for the voice. Just as dancers extend their legs at the barre, and pianists practice scales, speakers need to awaken their most human instrument-the voice.

And if you know someone who thinks this approach is foolishness, let me give you a few words of advice.

Admittedly, we have fixed traits-such as shyness, perhaps, or an unflappable reserve. But we also have free traits-behaviors that are outside our comfort zones that we can embrace for projects aligned with our deepest values.

For instance, many professors are introverts, but in order to earn a living, they force themselves to give lectures. And if they want to attract many students, and not have the dean drop their course due to lack of interest, they may even strive to improve their lecturing skills. Who knows? They may even try to improve the quality of their speaking voice.

These professors choose to act out of character in order to do their jobs well. One definition of courage is acting out of character!

If your mind is sharp but your voice is dull, your ideas may not cut through the clutter.

Your greatest calling card is a pleasing and effective voice. I urge you to explore your most human instrument.

NJ Executive Speech Coach Talks Obama Style

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

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

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

Click here to read the full story.

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

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

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