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Is it possible for anyone to become a great presenter?

Let’s define our terms. Anyone is a college graduate in the western world between the ages of 21 and 65.

Let’s define “possible” as an 80% chance that after reasonable instruction, training, and experience, anyone could cause an audience of peers and bosses to say to themselves, “Damn, that anyone gave a great presentation.”

And let’s say that “great presenter” means that anyone (again, after instruction, training and practice) can organize their information into a coherent argument that holds attention, do it in an efficient manner, and deliver it so that the delivery stands guard over the material.

Given the definition of the terms used, I believe that the answer is, “Yes.” The question is, “How can they achieve this goal?”

By WANTING to do it, first of all. And then by HAVING to do it. And finally, perhaps because by accident of birth or circumstance, they were born with the ability.

Shakespeare said this same thing through the character of Malvolio in Twelfth Night: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.”

So I’m saying 80% of us can achieve greatness, as in, “Great presentation,” followed by a thump on the back. And of that 80% of anyones (as defined), 40% would achieve it because they WANTED to, 59% because they HAD to, and 1% because they emerged from the womb as great presenters.

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.

I have a theory that the first purpose of public speech is to warn a community of imminent danger.

For instance, in the animal world, vervet monkeys have three distinct cries for eagle, snake and leopard. Beavers signal danger with a slap of the tail on the surface of the water. And there is a difference between a dog’s everyday bark and one that is laced with fear and aggression when something goes bump in the night.

In our own human community, our leaders cry out against the dangers of a foreign foe, of economic inequality, government intrusion, or abortion—take your pick. And in business, we do our SWOT analyses and generate strategies to protect our market share, our price point, our bottom line.

The experience of seeing danger and yelling at the top of your lungs to save self, family, and friends generates anxiety and adrenalin—in fact, it requires anxiety and adrenalin. The voice (or in the beaver’s case, the tail) must communicate emotional arousal. It must electrify one’s neighbors—enough to take action—to run, fly, leap, hide, or in our less dramatic case, vote.

It is highly unlikely that a vervet monkey, sitting at the top of a tree and seeing an eagle dive with talons outstretched, is cool as a cucumber. He is more likely to be red-lining, and his blood chemistry is most likely flooded with the neuro-chemicals of a soldier in battle. He needs the terror in his blood, because he must send out a cry that will strike terror in the hearts of his comrades. And of course, if he’s at the top of the tree keeping watch, he’s the most exposed to the outstretched talons.

When we choose to speak in public, we step into a pool of primitive impulses and instincts, such as the lust for power and status, the need for attention, the desire to belong, and the need to be recognized by our peers.

But these are not the origins of public speech. These are the pollutants in the pool. I believe that the original, pure purpose of public speech was to cry out, in a voice as loud and passionate as possible, about a danger that threatens self, family and friends.

And to do that effectively requires adrenalin, terror, and panic. In short, it requires stage fright.

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.

Let’s begin with the bald truth: we draw our leaders from a pool of imperfect beings. Millions of years of evolution have yet to yield The Perfect Leader. We all come from imperfect families, have experiences that blind us or make us needy, and as a result we have cognitive biases that can lead to poor decisions. Quite honestly, many of us are drawn to leadership as much by our weaknesses as by our strengths.

One common bias that many business leaders have is the belief that reason, logic, and expertise are the primary ingredients for successful leadership. They are important, but they are not the whole magilla. Expertise is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Leaders need something else, a kind of special sauce that appeals to the non-rational taste buds of those being led.

This special sauce has many names, such as empathy, charisma, and presence. It’s hard to define, but you know it when you feel it. However, it has its own problems too, because those who have it often recognize they have it and use it to their own advantage, to the detriment of those they lead.

I believe that the word empathy comes closest to the quality I’m trying to evoke because to me it suggests a degree of caring that the other words do not convey. Part of empathy is the ability to understand how others are thinking and feeling, but if that were the full definition, it would make empathy the ultimate tool for manipulation.

In my mind, empathy also comprises caring about the well-being of others. Caring enough to take action, and make decisions that go against one’s own short-term self-interest in order to achieve a greater good.

Few of our leaders seem to be able to demonstrate the whole magilla that would include expertise and empathy. They appeal to our biases and needs, but seem to be unable to elevate our thinking and awareness. As a result, in some remote corner of our minds, we wonder why they want to be leaders, and we are forced to conclude that they must be in it for themselves.

After all, history tells us the first instinct of those in power is to hold on to what they’ve got.

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.

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.” — Teddy Roosevelt

Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican President who was committed to checking the power of elites. His remark that I quote above is apt for our time. I don’t know if it was true then, or if it’s true now, but the thought that it might be true gets my hackles up.

If we looked at every government of every nation, tribe, or empire in the recorded history of homo sapiens, and we calculated what percentage of those governments were designed to benefit the majority, and for how long those benign governments were able to sustain such a system, I would guess (I’m not a social or political scientist) that the percentage would be small, and the time would be short.

I would guess that most systems of government have been designed to reward elites, so that they (the elite) could control the affairs of the people. For such governments, there was no need to win the assent of the governed. They only needed to retain the loyalty of the elite. If the people didn’t go along with the program, they were hanged, tortured, drawn or quartered.

Aside from our current western democracies, one moment in human history stands out, and that is the brief moment of democracy in the city-state of Athens starting around 500 BCE.

Athenians were not perfect according to our standards: They kept slaves, and women did not participate in public life. But they were committed to winning the assent of the governed. And they did so by developing a practice they called rhetoric. We call it public speaking.

Public speaking is a tool designed 2500 years ago, not to concentrate power in the hands of an elite, but to ensure that decisions are made to benefit the majority of people in a society. The Athenians said rhetoric was needed to govern the souls of men. The fact that these tools of power have frequently been used to ignite prejudice, hatred and violence does not diminish their importance to society: what makes a speaker harmful to his fellow man is not his technique, but his purpose or his ignorance.

Teddy Roosevelt’s remark seems to frame the key issue for our upcoming election. I hope the candidates will address the issue openly and honestly. Is the remark true? If so, to what extent? What is the evidence? And what can we, and should we, do about it?

Or is it true, and rightly so, because 99% of governments since the dawn of time had it right? That it’s best to reward an elite so they can manage the affairs of the people.

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.

Last week I woke up in the middle of the night nervous that I was not nervous about a speech I had to make.

The thought that I was giving a speech in a few hours floated between my ears and in an instant I fell into a hole of nervousness because I was not nervous.

It was as if I had tried to step over a crack in the sidewalk, but as I stepped, the crack widened and became a hole. And in I went, heart pounding. I had to get out of bed and labor over the speech, beginning to end.

My wife Sharon had the same experience teaching her first class of the semester at a college where she is a new faculty member. She reported that she delivered the class without any of her usual pizzaz and efforts to entertain. The next morning, she mentioned she was concerned about how the class went because she herself had not been hyped up with energy. Essentially, she was nervous that she had not been nervous.

What’s going on?

Could it be calmness and worthiness are staging a coup within us, and toppling the tyrant anxiety? And anxiety is fighting back in order to prolong his reign?

And could anxiety have been doing some good, pushing us to excel.  Could his demanding nature have driven us toward excellence, when we might have otherwise settled for good enough. 

We are getting older. Maybe we are becoming more unflappable, more able to face our challenges  knowing that nothing is as bad as it seems, or as important.

While there may be less going on in my speech and her class than meets the eye,  some anxiety is good before-hand.  Psychologists call it anticipatory anxiety: it’s what drives you to prepare, to rehearse, to think of all the stuff you need to do a good job, to anticipate possible problems and take preventive action.

However, if you have too much anticipatory anxiety, you will not be able to concentrate.  If that happens, you will not be able to prepare well, and that could cause you to have a difficult time in performance.

Once you step onto the stage–whatever it is–a small amount of performance anxiety will fill you with adrenalin and give you an extra shot of energy, but too much and you will not be able to do justice to your own abilities.

So anticipatory anxiety is useful in planning, and performance anxiety is useful in delivering a talk or a class, but only in modest amounts.    If you have too little of either  you may lack the necessary oomph, and with too much, you may crash and burn.

It is wise to wear life like a loose garment, to care–but not too much.

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.

You’re preparing a presentation and the question comes up, “How much detail should I include?”

The answer is, “Just enough,” and that’s not a cop out, because there are so many different circumstances, audiences, and types of presentation.

For instance, when trying to convince an FDA Advisory Board that your drug is not more likely to cause adverse events in a particular population (say, African-Americans, or Asian-Americans) because the data seem to be suggesting just such an effect, you better be prepared to drill down into outcomes in those groups. That’s a whole lot of detail.

However, if you are trying to convince your field force that the coming year will be particularly challenging, and then you list each challenge, both internal and external, and go into detail on the causes and consequences of each one, with a bullet point slide or two for each problem, each cause, and each consequence, you are bound to outstay your welcome on the porches of their ears. They will swiftly and invisibly sweep you from their porches, and return to pondering the mysteries of their iPhones.

On the other hand, if you make a prediction or a recommendation to senior decision makers, and you fail to expand upon the various options you considered and the reasons why you rejected all but one, you will be peppered with skeptical questions. People like solid ground on which to make a stand, and your opinions unbuttressed by facts will cause them to pause and doubt the wisdom of your choice and your judgment.

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.

We all know that clay can be molded: clay can be bricks, or pots, plates or pitchers. It is a malleable substance.

The body can be molded: resistance-training turns 90 pound weaklings into incredible hulks, and fatsos reveal their inner Adonis when they change their diet and exercise.

Your voice and speech can also be shaped. If your voice is nasal, you can learn to shape your mouth to create a more blended sound. If your diction is fuzzy, you can become articulate by strengthening your tongue and lips. If you speak too quickly, you can learn to speak more slowly, and create a stronger, more positive impression.

Your voice is a wind instrument. It is your calling card in the world. What you sound like is more memorable than what you look like. It is largely responsible for communicating how you feel, and for how you make others feel. Long after you have passed on to a better place, your voice will echo in the ears of those who knew you and loved you.

An increasing number of people these days are getting plastic surgery, or taking hormones to mold their bodies. They would better serve their interests by improving the impression they create when they open their mouths to speak.

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.

Don’t think that your slides are your presentation. They’re not. Your slides are like beads lying on a table in a big messy pile until you assemble them into a coherent order and string them into a beautiful necklace.

I like to watch Law and Order. There are a certain number of scenes in episodes of Law and Order, and if they are not arranged in the right sequence, there is no drama, no message, no clarity, no meaning!

This is pretty obvious, and I imagine you’re good at arranging the scenes of your show into marching order. But what do you say to the audience when you’re moving from one scene to the next?

If you’re like most people, you say nothing. You just click the clicker to bring the next slide up. Then you stare at it for a few seconds to get oriented, and then you begin to talk about it.

When you do this, you’re giving up your power as the creator of the narrative, an act which diminishes your stature and your control of the message.

Better to link the next slide to the current one before you leave the current. Stitch the scenes together: Make them curious about what’s coming next. In Hollywood, it’s called foreshadowing.

For instance, at the end of a slide that provides quantitative evidence that there is a 3 to 1 return on advertising dollars, you might say, “So, you might think that the more we spend, the more money we will make. And it turns out, that’s not exactly how it works.”

And suddenly all your listeners are like bird dogs on a hunt, tense with interest as they await the nugget of insight you’re about to reveal–on the next slide.

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.

I have a speaking assignment coming up and I want to do something new.  I have been working hard on strategy and messaging for my talks.  I have defined what I want my listeners to do as a result of my talk.  I have crafted a few simple messages to convince them that what I want them to do is important to them and possible, and then give them guidance on how to get it done.

But last night I had a dream about the presence of a speaker.  I dreamed about a speaker, faceless and nameless (although he might have been the Dalai Lama) who was radiant with optimism and confidence.  He was relaxed, cheerful, and engaging.  He lifted the aspirations of the people in the room, and gave them the feeling that change was possible, and that the change could (and should) start in them.

Yes, he had good things to say, but how he said them (or who he was) spoke as loudly as what he said.  There was something about his inner state that was infectious.  He was not exhausted, overly serious, or intense and theatrical.  He was joyful and in the moment.

This speaker I dreamed of is going to be the new me.  I have labored on the rock pile of running my own business for a long time.  I have pounded out cold calls, the warm leads, and the hot opportunities.  I have mastered the techniques, understood the industries, blogged, lectured and coached to the point of burn out.  I just want to show up and be glad.

I have substance, but do I have presence?

Big question for all of us who aspire to lead, influence, and move the mountain of the market in the direction we want.

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.

Presentations are delivered to create results, or outcomes.  Two common desired outcomes are 1.) a decision, or 2.) a prediction.  Your presentation skills should make you more effective and efficient at achieving desired outcomes when you speak.

In order to achieve your desired outcomes, you need to know the predisposition of your audience so that you can connect with them psychologically as well as logically. One theory relevant to presentation skills and leadership communication about how to make a deep connection with your audience is called the Image Theory of Decision Making.

This theory asserts that decision makers represent information as images. For instance, one image consists of the principles that the decision makers hold dear. (Perhaps corporate sustainability is one of their principles.)

A second image represents the goals they have in mind based on their principles (a 10% reduction in green house gases.)

A third image would be the future state of events that would result from attainment of those goals. (Greater efficiency and market appeal and PR.)

A fourth image would represent the plans to be implemented in the attempt to attain the goal. (Do the plans take into account risk as well as reward?)

The Image Theory of Decision Making has been consistently validated as reliable. So, whether you intend to win over Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street, colleagues, or customers, one presentation skill you should have in your bag is: The Image Theory!
Your audience will first want to know how compatible your idea, service, or product is with their current principles, goals, and plans. Your job as a speaker is to link your recommendation to their existing mental insfrastructure. (Have you ever noticed that Thomas Edison shaped the light bulb like a candle flame? Smart move! It matched the existing image of light.)
Next they’ll want to know if the future state you’re offering is consistent with the one they have in their own heads.

Finally, they’ll want to hear and see a description of the possible gains and losses that could result if they were to implement your recommended plans.

Leadership communication depends on the leader’s ability to attach new ideas to the minds of constituents. In other words, leadership communication should take into account the principles, goals, and plans that are important to the followers.

And selling new ideas to senior decision makers demands the same presentation skill: the ability to evoke cherished principles, goals, plans and future states in order to earn a fair hearing, and get the results you’re looking for.

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.