Empathy is our ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others.  It makes us more successful in our personal lives and in our careers because it makes us able to connect with those around us. 

Leaders and managers need empathy to build a bond with their direct reports one-on-one.  But perhaps even more important to their rapport with others is the ability to display their empathy as public speakers.

It is at such high-stakes moments that listeners develop in their hearts and minds a snapshot of the speaker’s character—an image that they carry with them.  If a speaker lacks empathy—that is, if she demonstrates a lack of understanding of their view of the issues under discussion and their feelings—her audience will disengage from her.

One way to demonstrate empathy with an audience is to talk about them.  Make your content listener-centric. 

For instance, if you are presenting a new product to a sales force, it would be best to begin by demonstrating that you understand the challenges the reps are currently facing in the marketplace.

If presenting the same product to a new customer, begin by demonstrating that you are familiar with the difficulties of their business.

Only after you have shown an understanding of their situation should you introduce your product as a solution to their needs.

As you elaborate on your product (or service) you will be continuously linking its features and functions to the needs of your audience.

The actual content of your presentation will be all about how cool your product or service is, but you will have framed it around their experience

This may seem manipulative, but it’s not.  Remember, empathy is not the same as sympathy.  Sympathy implies that you feel the same as the other person.  Empathy only means that you understand how they think and feel.

By using your powers of empathy, you are more able to get and hold their attention by making your ideas more relevant to their frame of experience.

If you are truly trying to help them, your skill is not manipulative.  It is caring and constructive.

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.

You are a visual. Every move you make, every step you take…they’ll be watching you.

This is good news because once you know this, you can take control of the message you send by aligning your gestures, movements, and facial expressions with your words.

Who you are speaks more loudly than what you say. Actions speak louder than words. You are a visual message. Master your body language.

Needle in a haystack

The audience will be drinking data from a firehose.  The savvy presenter recognizes this peril as an opportunity.

To capture attention—do something that stands out from the environment.  The opposite of getting attention is camouflage. Being attention-getting is not a quality; it is a contrast.

Trying too hard

Lots of people will be trying to stand out, and they’ll make the mistake of telling jokes, displaying cartoons on the screen, or trying to connect with the audience by telling stories about themselves.

Don’t do it.  The audience is content driven, results oriented, and time pressed.  They have limited space in short term memory.  Eliminate all extraneous information.

Not setting the scene

In an effort to get to the point, many speakers will forget to remind the audience of the back story—the space in which their molecule competes, and what the unmet medical needs are.

Your drug is the hero of a story.  It is stepping onto a stage to overcome important obstacles and bring health to sick people.  Set the scene so your drug looks like it has an important job to do.

Offending the experts

Analysts and other savvy investors may curl their toes in agony if you spend too much time on the big picture.

Set the scene quickly, then summarize in a fair and balanced way the achievements of your compound before you walk them through the data.

Using the word, “Robust”

The term “robust” has become a meaningless buzzword, especially in a scientific context.  Be the first presenter to dispense with using it.

Instead, make a statement that is meaningful, such as, “The data are promising,” or, “The data suggest…”

Going down rabbit holes

If you leave information on your slides that you don’t plan to talk about, you are inviting savvy listeners to drag you down into the weeds, which will choke your message with irrelevancies.

Unless there is an ethical reason that the audience needs to know it, keep it off the slide if it does not support your argument.

Not making an argument

There are some presenters who believe their job is to deliver information.  This approach leaves too much room for the audience to draw their own conclusions.

A good scientific presenter should make an argument for the quality of the study, the validity of the data, and the implications of his conclusions.

Blowing Q&A

It’s easier to make a slick presentation than it is to handle a room full of skeptical and insightful questions.

Brainstorm with colleagues to come up with all possible lines of inquiry, and practice responding to the most penetrating and damaging assaults.

Lack of conviction

Finally, your delivery stands guard over the material.  Great data poorly delivered at a high stakes venue is a huge waste of resources.

Rehearse, and where you falter, alter.

And you thought your job was to stick to the facts! Here are the Heath brothers, Chip and Dan, making a strong point about making a point in their wonderful book Made to Stick.

          Nora Ephron is a screenwriter whose scripts for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle have all been nominated for Academy Awards.  Ephron started her career as a journalist for the New York Post and Esquire.  She became a journalist because of her high school journalism teacher.

          Ephron still remembers the first day of her journalism class.  Although the students had no journalism experience, they walked into their first class with a sense of what a journalist does:  A journalists gets the facts and reports them.  To get the facts, you track down the five Ws—who, what, where, when, and why.

          As students sat in front of their manual typewriters, Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment.  They would write the lead of a newspaper story.  The teacher reeled off the facts:  “Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods.  Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown.”

          The budding journalists sat at their typewriters and pecked away at the first lead of their careers.  According to Ephron, she and most of the other students produced leads that reordered the facts and condensed them into a single sentence:  “Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Robert Maynard Hutchins will address the Beverly Hills High School Faculty Thursday in Sacramento…blah, blah, blah.”

          The teacher collected the leads and scanned them rapidly.  Then he laid them aside and paused for a moment. 

          Finally, he said, “The lead to the story is ‘There will be no school next Thursday.”

          “It was a breathtaking moment,” Ephron recalls.  “In that instant I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point.  It wasn’t enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it meant.  And why it mattered.’” For the rest of the year, she says, every assignment had a secret—a hidden point that the students had to figure out in order to produce a good story.

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.

I’ve been introduced with fanfare, and I’ve been introduced with a kind of shrug in my general direction, as if to say, “Hey Sims.  You’re on.”

I like fanfare, pomp and circumstance.  But when it’s touting my resume and puffing me up to make me look important, I’m embarrassed.  I wonder if I’m going to live up to the inflated expectations being created.

I like speakers who are capable of disguising their preparedness with a cloak of informality and spontaneity. 

For instance, I just spoke to a guy who sells software to hospitals.  His favorite presentation happened a year ago, when he was alone with the entire C-suite of a major hospital chain—just him, a whiteboard, and the senior execs. 

He was drawing pictures, constructing diagrams, and modeling their IT infrastructure on the board, all the while answering questions and learning about their business.

It was a sales call, but it was really a chalk-talk. 

This guy is a National Sales Director, so he doesn’t need a PowerPoint deck or a pitch book.  His experience gives him the ability to make it look easy.  He knows his product, their business, and how to connect with them

A sense of ease is the mark of a pro.  Watch Tom Brady or Eli Manning in the midst of battle, and they look like they’re on a stroll with their grandma. 

I’m not saying that formality doesn’t have it’s place in presenting.  But a sense of ease that puts the audience at ease is also a powerful technique.

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.

Things come in threes.  

First Representative Williams of South Carolina yelled, “You lie!” at the President during his speech on health care reform.

Then Serena Williams went off on a line judge at the U.S. Open.

Then Kanye West lost it at the Grammy Awards Ceremony.

The Serena thing is understandable—she’s out there fighting for her life and is all pumped up.  John McEnroe did much worse and is now a distinguished elder statesman of tennis.  Let’s give Serena a break.

But the other two guys stepped way over the line.  Screaming at the President and hijacking a microphone at a public ceremony are disruptive and rude behaviors.

It’s interesting that it got them both a lot of attention. I suspect that was Kanye’s motive.  I think Representative Williams is just a guy who is used to speaking his mind and lost the gyroscope on his social skills.

And that’s what can happen to us as presenters. 

I know one guy who was questioned about his marketing plan by an executive committee.  They wanted to know how he came up with his forecast number.  He told them and they said it didn’t seem right.

After a lot of going back and forth on his methodologies for determining the forecast, he got impatient and said, with his hands on his hips, “Well, if you don’t like the number, what do you want the number to be?”

You can imagine the silence in the room.  The President of the company took a breath and said, “Randy, why don’t we figure that out later.  Thank you for your time.”

Randy did not get sent to Siberia, but almost.  It took him years to earn his way back into the good graces of the executive committee.

Think two or three times before you let your temper get the best of you when you’re in the public eye.  Staying calm under pressure demonstrates maturity and leadership. 

More than communicating information and ideas, presenting is also a demonstration of character. 

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.

I was looking for my childhood home on Google Earth, and caught a glimpse of it from 30,000 ft., then zoomed in and saw my mother’s herb garden at the bottom of the back lawn.

My Mom and Dad still live there, but I saw cars I didn’t recognize parked in the driveway.  The image was of late fall or winter because part of the lawn was brown, where my father had planted Zoisa grass in the early 1960s because he was at war with crabgrass and dandelions.

I saw the weeping willow given to them by my mother’s colleagues in Real Estate when my sister died in 2001.  It was leafless, more evidence of a cold month.

I saw no Jack Russell terriers leaping after tennis balls on the lawn.  It was a still image, one moment at the house I grew up in, viewed from the sky at a great distance, and then, as I zoomed in, from the point of view of a crow, perched on the limb of a nearby maple.

It reminded me that film-makers use wide angles and close-ups to tell their stories.  Wide angles create the setting, and close-ups bring us face to face with brutal reality.

Abraham Lincoln did this in the Gettysburg Address.  With his first sentence, he invites us to gaze at the continent and 90 years of history.

“Four score and seven years ago,” he begins, “Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation….”

In one sentence he summarizes the historical setting for the audience—both time and place.  And then comes the close up.  “Now we are engaged in a great Civil War…”  With that sentence he locates his audience in time.

“We are met on a great battlefield of that war.”  Now we know where we are on that continent we saw in our mind at the beginning.  We are located in space—in Gettysburg, PA.

The President then went on to ask what we as Americans could do to honor the fallen, and his answer suggests that we rededicate ourselves to the principles of representative democracy.

Like me looking for my childhood home on Google Earth, Lincoln first fixed his listeners eyes on the big picture—the wide angle.  He drew them to consider the continent and the history relevant to the present. 

And then he brought to their attention the current conflict, and the bloody field where the bodies lay—zooming in on the problem, on the question that needed to be answered.

This is a powerful model for presentations.  Starting with the big picture, the setting in which the story takes place.  Then zooming in on the problem or opportunity that draws our attention.  Raising the questions that need to be asked and answered.  And then finally supplying an actionable and evidence-based answer.

I zoomed out from my view of my old home so I could see the woods my friends and I used to play in.  Still there, now owned by the Nature Conservancy, I imagined the woods held the ruins of our forts made of sticks and leaves, where we fought battles with imaginary Indians and went home for supper when it got dark. 

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.

If you are present in a conversation or a meeting, you demonstrate your engagement by listening, responding, and then paying attention to how the other person receives your response. 

I have found a technique called Motivational Listening (ML) to be helpful in sales conversations and in talks with clients I am coaching.  The technique comes out of psychotherapy, and is designed to help the other person think about their thinking. 

ML techniques are represented by an acronym:  OARS

O stands for Open-ended Questions, questions that cannot be answered with a “Yes,” or “No.”  For example, “Why do you say that?” or “Can you tell me what you mean when you say ‘concerned’?”  Caveat:  don’t ask more than two or three questions in a row: It makes the other person feel interrogated.

A stands for Affirm.  Affirm the feelings that are either overtly expressed or implied.  For instance, “You seem proud of that accomplishment,” or, “I hear your frustration.”

R stands for Reflect.  This means you simply repeat the words back to the speaker.  For instance, if my prospect says, “I need to have leadership presence,” I could say right back to him, “You NEED to have leadership presence,” and then stop talking.   He will most likely jump right back in and say, “Yes, that’s what I want, and what my boss wants me to do.”

S stands for Summarize. When you get to a point in the conversation where things seem to be wrapping up, you do your listener a huge service by summarizing the gist of what he’s said.  For instance, “So your boss is concerned about your presentations.  You think you did well at the sales meeting, and you are frustrated that he keeps insisting that you need to develop more leadership presence.”  And then be quiet, and let the other person respond.

One of the deepest needs we have is to be heard.  When somebody “gets” that they have been “gotten,” they feel good. 

Using this technique, you are present in the conversation, not as the subject of the discussion, or as an equal participant, but as a witness for the other guy as he sorts through his thinking.

Read other blogs in this series:  Presentation Skills:  Stay Tuned for a Month of Presence, and Presence of Mind.

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.

When I was teaching at The New School for Social Research  in New York, I saw a student step up to the lectern with her cards in her hand, bump the edge of the lectern, and drop her cards on the floor.  They weren’t numbered.  It was a while before she was able to begin, and when she did she was beet red and flustered.

Furthermore, 3 x 5s force you to write small, which makes them hard to read, which could cause you to display the top of your head while you speak.

If you write large letters, you can only get a few words on each card, so you’re constantly leafing through your pack.

And while you’re leafing, you’re holding your pack of cards so your hands are not able to gesture, making you look constrained and lacking in expression.

If you choose to use notes, here’s what I suggest.

1. Rehearse until you only need bullet points, or an outline as a safety net.
2. Put the bullet points on one or two pages, that can be spread out on the lectern.
3. I like using a big piece of shirt cardboard from the cleaners to write my notes on.
4. Use different colored markers to write, so your eyes can quickly pick up the info.

With this approach, your hands are free to talk, your eyes can connect with the audience, and they can see your face.  Plus, you’re talking, not reading!

In the short term, reading a script is the safest strategy for the speaker, but in the long term, it’s the most dangerous, because your speeches may be seen as dull and pedestrian.

Warning! When the speech will become a public document, you must read it. But that’s another topic.

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.

The Constant Contact ads on NPR are annoying me.  They promise great business relationships through email campaigns.  Who are they kidding?
 
Giving a speech is a much better way to build relationships with prospects, and even that doesn’t work all the time. A lot of speakers have a boilerplate talk, and they blast it out regardless of who they’re talking to.

That’s basically what e-mail campaigns are like.  They lack intimacy, which is a pretty basic component of trusting relationships.

I estimate that most e-mail campaigns die in the dust bin of the spam filter.  And some get their senders classified as internet outlaws, as recipients either hit the delete button hard, and harbor resentment, or complain to the authorities about unwarranted email.

Getting spam is like being forced to attend a speech or presentation you don’t want to hear.  I often hear clients at large pharma companies complain that they are expected to attend presentations which have little or no relevance to their work. 
 
E-mail only gets opened if it’s from a trusted source.  People who don’t know this will spend a boat load of dough learning this lesson through experience.

And if the recipient opts in and gets crummy content as a result—content all about how cool the sender’s company and products are—then they will unsubscribe.

I know this from experience, as a sender and as a receiver.

To promise businesses that sending more e-mail is going to win customer loyalty is crazy.  Sending more email is going to drive customers away…unless…
 
…unless senders somehow find a way to connect with the interests of their readers, and Constant Contact isn’t about to teach them how to write well, or market well, or empathize with those on the receiving end of their junk. 

 It’s not about constant contact, it’s about relevant content.