Busy executives who want to improve their public speaking skills now have a new opportunity to master  effective speech and public presentation techniques with “Training the Speaking Voice”.

We are judged by how we speak, write, and think-in that order.  That’s why it’s crucial that professionals speak their thoughts in a manner that is easy to understand, and inspires trust and respect in their listeners.   Training the Speaking Voice, is a developmental process customized for each individual and group to achieve targeted outcomes.

We created the program after an increase in demand from executives and professionals seeking ways to improve the clarity and impact of their sound and enunciation, or with those who speak English with a regional or foreign accent.

The program is excellent for public speakers or executives looking to enhance their professional opportunities with dynamic speaking capabilities.  The exercises open up new possibilities for self-awareness as well as professional and personal growth. 

Typical voice and speech training issues include:

• speaking too softly
• speaking too quickly
• lack of expression (monotony of pitch, volume, and speed)
• vocal fatigue
• too many “ers” and “uhms”
• an accent that makes the speaker hard to understand

About Training the Speaking Voice

Training the Speaking Voice  is an Executive Education Program, customized for each individual and/or group, to achieve targeted outcomes.

Candidates for the program include those whose clarity or personal impact is impeded by an accent, or by less than optimal voice and speech habits.

The program follows an intuitive path.

1. First, we record & identify the voice or speech challenge.
2. We introduce exercises to address the issues.
3. The candidate receives coaching in person, and practices on her own.
4. We measure the change, report the results, and provide guidance for continuing growth and awareness.

To support the face-to face instruction, we provide easy to use written materials, customized recordings for home (or car) study, and web and phone tutorials.

More information is available online at http://simswyeth.com/voice-speech-training.php

I think there are all kinds of voices that work for the audience, as long as they feel real and communicate enough emotional energy to engage the interest.

A few vocal things that can get in the way are:

1. Uptalk. Rising intonations at the ends of sentences, making the speaker sound like a goofy teenager.

2. Glottal fry. Gargling your words. Grinding your vocal chords to make the sounds at the ends of words. That bubbling splashing frying sound that comes (mostly) from young women.

3. Mumbling. Failure to shape the consonants in your speech, and failure to project belief in what you’re saying. It’s both a mechanical and a psychological problem.

4. Speaking too fast. Not good when you’re speaking to senior leaders–makes you look nervous. Studies show you and your point of view are more likely to be “derogated” if you speak too quickly, although listeners tend to rate fast talkers as more “extroverted.”

5. Speaking too slowly. A much rarer problem. Makes you sound like you just fell off the back of a pumpkin truck. Kind of a country bumpkin pumpkin. Plus, you’re a stark contrast to all the fast talkers around you.

All of these things can be addressed and corrected with some basic voice training.

We have been helping speakers for over twenty years increase the persuasive impact of what they say and how they say it.

The voice may not demand the same intellectual resources as strategic messaging, but like it or not, it is required equipment if you want to move the mountain of corporate opinion.

We are judged by how we speak, write, and think…in that order.

And people will long remember what you sound like after they’ve forgotten what you said.

(Unless you happen to be like the speaker in the picture, in which case they will remember what you said and how you sounded.)

This morning a woman told me that when she hosted a company radio show, she heard herself on tape and was horrified to hear how often she said “er” and “uhm.”  She resolved to stop.

The next day, while on the air, she heard herself  “ering and uhming” and began to have a dialogue with herself.  One voice was telling her that she was “ering and uhming” and the other voice was trying to talk to the audience through the microphone.  She described it as an impossible situation.

Athletes practice until their bodies know what to do.  Musicians practice until their fingers know what to do.  Why should speakers be any different?  If you have the habit of “ering and uhming” you need to practice speaking until you’ve created a new habit–the habit of flawless speech.

However, if you are obliged to perform during such a “practice period” in your life, you would be better off forgetting about your “ers and uhms” during performance and simply let your talent take over.

If you ride shotgun on your talent, as the radio announcer did, your conscious mind is trying to interfere with what should be a well-grooved habit.  Psychologists call this “conscious override.”  It’s the mind getting in the way of the talent.

Work on your skills in practice, but when it comes time to perform, give it your best shot.  When the performance is over, you can go back to ridding yourself of those “ers and uhms.”

Webinars seem to be a promising, cost-effective way of building relationships with prospects, but they’re hard to do well. As a medium for communicating with groups, they have their own quirks and require a lot of preparation. Here are a few rules of thumb.

First, define your desired outcomes in terms of what the audience will get out of attending your webinar. What are the problems they want to solve, and what are the questions they want to have answered? Then outline your main points (not too many) and gather evidence to support your main points.

Finally, create or select your PowerPoint slides. Please note that strategy comes first, then the selection and arrangement of content, then the slides come last…not the other way around!

Then rehearse. Time yourself. Build your confidence by building your certainty that you know how to bring your material to life and get it done on time.

Okay, now that you’ve prepared well and rehearsed, it’s SHOWTIME!

Start with a really good visual. Get them to focus right away.

Follow the new 45-60 second rule: display no visual longer than 45-60 seconds.

Use color to divide each slide into thirds: beginning, middle, and end–each a different color.

Slides should be even simpler than normal.

Timing is key. Work through your material rapidly.

Have an engaged listener in the room with you so that you have a real face to talk to–one that sends you signals to which you can repsond.

Maintain a high energy level. Webinars are like radio: The higher the excitement level, the more likely listeners are going to stay tuned. Rev it up.

Use a second speaker. Get yourself interviewed, or interview someone else.

Prepare questions for Q&A, just in case nobody has a question.

Keep your answers to questions as brief as possible. Be diplomatic at all times. And hit one of your main points in your response.

Eliminate all extraneous graphics.

Beware clip art and cutesy stuff. No puppy dogs.

Keep it business like and professional. Do not hype yourself with give aways and promotions.

Finally, make it crystal clear what is the next step for your listeners. It should be easy to contact you by phone, email, or regular mail.

Effective speaking has many enemies. A partial list would include a speaker’s lack of experience, stage fright, lack of training, no clear point, too much information, and finally, no clear flow, or structure.

We could go on. But the items on the list are only those enemies that hide within the speaker himself. What about the external enemies–the environmental obstacles, including those that hide within the audience?

Certainly one of the most stubborn opponents you can face as a speaker is an audience that has endured a morning’s worth of presentations, escaped into a lunch of heavy food and sweet desserts, only to be herded back into their seats to listen to you!

This is a test that separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls. Such an audience can be somnolent, indifferent, and murderously hard on your ego.

What should you do?

1. Throw a match on them. Light them on fire. Henry Ward Beecher, one of the greatest preachers in American history, once found himself on a hot day in a town in West Virginia known to be Death Valley for speakers. Sure enough, that afternoon, as he was being introduced, he saw that half the town was already dozing. He rose from his chair and, wiping his brow with a large handkerchief, strode to the front of the platform.

“It’s a God-damned hot day,” the clergyman began.

A thousand pairs of eyes opened wide. An electrical shock straightened the crowd erect. Beecher paused and then, raising a finger of solemn reproof, went on, “That’s what I heard a man say here this afternoon.”

He proceeded into a stirring condemnation of blasphemy–and took his audience with him.

2. Keep it interactive. Ask the audience questions. Ask them to discuss something in small groups for a few minutes. I’ve seen speakers ask the audience to shout in unison a product name whenever he mentioned the name in his speech. They got into it and listened carefully in order to be part of the chorus.

3. Keep it short and sweet. This is true always, but especially true after lunch. Don’t try to take the audience on a death march through your comprehensive analysis of photosynthesis in the genus papaver somniferum.

4. Speak and move with energy and verve. You are the leader, and your followers need to be inspired. Breathe some life into them.

5. Tell stories. The Golden Rule of after-dinner speaking is to make a simple point by telling a whimsical but relevant story. The same rule should apply to after-lunch speaking, even though your audience is not seated at their lunch table but back in the conference hall.

6. Know your enemy. Your enemy is the food in their stomachs that demands their attention, even as you demand their attention from the lectern. You must be more compelling than the food that drags them into the arms of Morpheus. Your talk must be flavorful, adequately salted and spicy with a variety of fascinating facts, insights, and bold opinions that are sprinkled with a dash of style, passion and humor.

In other words, you’ve got to be well-prepared, well-rehearsed, and well-seasoned to capture and keep their attention.

For other highly challenging speaking environments, go to How to Give Good Webinar

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.

 

Dividing the Dais

Sharing a podium is a frequent method for by-passing yet another dry presentation and (we hope) generating heat and light between two or more people seated on stage engaging in friendly verbal exchanges.

In my experience, each speaker prepares and delivers a short talk (less than 10 minutes) on the topic being considered, takes a few questions from the moderator, his fellow panelists and the audience.

After all the panelists have had their turn to address the audience for 10 minutes, the moderator encourages the audience to ask more questions, which they do, and each panelist, in turn, ventures a response.

It can be a good model.  It limits the damage that any one presenter can inflict on a meeting.  It allows for a variety of perspectives.  It is more audience-centric than a traditional presentation.  And if the moderator is good, she can create drama by teasing out the differences between panelists and creating healthy debate.

But speakers and panelists should remember a few rules of etiquette.

1. Prepare your opening remarks as you would a public speech.  It should be engaging, formally presented, and end on time.
2. If you are first to speak, acknowledge at the start the moderator, the sponsoring organization, and your fellow panelists.
3. If you can, and if it’s allowed, stand to deliver your opening remarks.  If there’s a lectern, move to stand at it.  Please click here to learn the difference between a lectern and a podium.
4. If you are not first, it is always a good idea to find something positive to say about those who spoke before you.
5. If you want to disagree with someone, do so in the most diplomatic manner.
6. In fact, before disagreeing, ask the speaker you disagree with if your understanding of her remark is correct.  If she says yes, then you may proceed.
7. It is never a good idea to say, “You’re wrong,” to someone, especially on stage.  Rather, you could say, “I see it differently,” or “I have a different perspective.”
8. Resist the temptation to be the center of attention.  Your goal should be to contribute to the public discourse by throwing whatever light you can on the subject.
9. Refer to your fellow speakers by name.
10. Remember to sit up straight and project your voice, even though you may be seated (I sound like my mother.)  Make sure you make effective use of any microphones supplied.  And finally, visibly enjoy yourself.  Refrain from looking and sounding like a leg of lamb moldering on the table.

The audience will be alert to any signs of tension between panelists.  Treat your fellow speakers with respect, and your character will speak even more persuasively than your thoughtful remarks.

Derrick called and spoke a mile a minute. His boss, the founder of a new hedge fund and the primary money runner had to speak at a capital intro in a week. Could I come and help?

I asked if the boss knew what he wanted to say, and Derrick said yes, but the talk was not developed yet and he (the boss) wouldn’t have time to devote to it until the weekend.

I asked about the boss. Derrick said he was really smart but not all that experienced speaking to large groups and hard to pin down because he was so busy keeping his eye on the markets.

We set up two meetings. The first to hammer out what the message would be; the second to practice saying it. I asked for a general summary of what would be said. Derrick replied, “He’s going to talk about distressed securities.”

“Is he going to say something unusual about them, or is he going to say something predictable but try to say it well?” I asked.

“By that question, I can tell that you are going to be helpful,” said Derrick, assuring me that I would not see any drafts until I arrived.

When I walked in the door, the receptionist seemed to be expecting me. She jumped up and escorted me into a meeting room off the lobby.

Derrick arrived like clock-work. He handed me his business card, made from the thickest card stock I’ve ever felt. I enthused over the feel of his card. He seemed to enjoy that. It broke the ice.

He briefed me on the status of the script and slides (a work in progress) and then in came his boss, backing into the room as he spoke to an assistant down the hall.

Peter was small and intense, with long hair and granny glasses. If Derrick was natty and professional, Peter was rumpled and professorial. Derrick excused himself immediately and closed the door as he left.

Peter had a handful of wrinkled papers in his hand. They were his notes. He did not know how to connect his computer to the projector, or how to use PowerPoint well enough to re-sequence the slides.

However, his knowledge of distressed securities was encyclopedic and his speech was supersonic. He had so many thoughts stampeding from his mind to his mouth that they got stuck on his tongue and toppled over each other.

Hummingbirds beat their wings 15 to 80 times per second, depending on the species. If a hummingbird could speak, that’s how fast Peter talked.

When I asked questions about his meaning to help him clarify what he wanted to say and in what order, he was wonderfully patient with my modest understanding of his discipline, and used analogies and metaphors to explain his point—a sign, I think, of a good communicator.

In addition to speaking like a hummingbird, he did not look me in the eye, and did not relate what he said to the bar charts on the screen. But he spoke with visceral passion and emphatic verve about the coming crisis in corporate debt—and that made up for his other sins as a speaker. He could lift up his whole body and jump into a key word with both feet–giving it real meaning and significance.

When our rehearsal led him to a new thought, he leaned over the conference table, pawing through his wrinkled pages, and jotted  words on a spare corner of the paper.

He was trying to say that the imminent credit crunch would not be like past credit crunches, due to recent care-free lending practices. In fact, due to covenant-light loans, and CCC loans, he argued, we would not get early warning signs of trouble: we would be in the middle of the crisis all at once.

The challenge was to build the story so that the audience would think they were hearing a standard pitch about the potential attractive opportunities in distressed debt, and then yank the tablecloth out from under the meal spread before them to reveal something entirely new and terrifying.

After two meetings, we had cut the slides down to six and the timing down to less than ten minutes. He had no time to rehearse. He promised he would work on it in his hotel room when he arrived at the capital intro. I continued to e-mail suggestions to his Blackberry over the weekend.

I learned from Peter that he did not rehearse until he was on the plane, and then he stayed up most of the night in a panic working on it.

Two days after the event, he called to say it went well, and that my messages had helped. I called Derrick to get his assessment, who said it was a little short—much shorter than the presentations made by other speakers. I pointed out that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

As Mrs. Hubert Humphrey said to her husband after a particularly long stem-winder, “Hubert, for a speech to be immortal, it need not be interminable.”

The question will be whether Peter can:
1. Get attention at capital intros.
2. Keep attention
3. Make a clear point in a memorable way
4. Stand out in a crowded field
5. Move people to come talk with him.

That’s it. He doesn’t have to sell the fund, or close the deal. His job is to generate trust and curiosity.

About two years ago, I attended a free webinar on marketing and liked what the presenter had to say.  I also liked his voice.  So I called him and chatted about my marketing issues, and eventually I hired him.

He lives in New Hampshire; I live in New Jersey.  We worked by phone, Go-To-Meeting, and e-mail on my newsletters,  website,  blog, corporate identity–the whole thing.  And we never met.

When we had a misunderstanding about cost, it got way out of control–way more wacky than it should have been, and I think I know why.  We never met face to face.

I have read for years about “flaming,” which is the tendency for e-mailers to pour unmitigated vitriol into their messages, unmodulated by the physical presence of the other person.  Now I’ve had the experience.  I was the one who was pissed.

E-mail is a great channel–the killer app–but we all know it has one major flaw: it does not offer the multi-level signals our brains need to calibrate emotion.

Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich.  We interpret what people say to us not only from their voice tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

Amazingly, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally.   This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instanteously and out of our awareness.

Compared to real life, e-mail is emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words.

In an article to be published next year in the Academy of Management Review, Kristin Byron, as assistant professor of management at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management, finds that e-mail generally increases the likelihood of conflict and miscommunication.

In the case of widely dispersed work groups, the potential conflict has been proven to be minimized by occasional face-to-face meetings which serve to augment the electronic communications.

And beware the tendency to e-mail the guy down the hall.  You lose out on giving and getting friendly greetings, those innocuous interactions that slowly add up to rapport and trust.

My point?  Presentations are different from e-mail.  When presenting, you are speaking, in addition to English, several other languages.  You are speaking the language of the body, which is emotional; the language of the voice, also emotional; and the language of clothing and grooming, which is the language of power and status.

Presentations give us the greatest chance we will ever have to move others to action, because they get us all together in one place, at one time, to think about one thing.

If you’re running a country, a company, a department, or a team, those are important moments.

Not the time to mail it in.