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.

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 attended my high school reunion over the weekend, where the organizers had asked each returning alumnus (we were an all-boys school) to prepare a short talk on our best and worst moments as students.

I had trouble with the assignment. My life in high school was a blur of memories, and the more I tried to remember, the more trivial my recollections became.

Pressing on, I remembered the times I cried in high school, and thought to myself, “Well that’s an honest approach. I’ll lose points for being serious, but I’ll be real.”

And so that’s what I did. I watched my classmates read prepared texts and generate laughter, until they demanded I take my turn. I spoke about the times I cried in school–tears of joy and sadness– and sat down.

I’ve been re-thinking it ever since, wishing I had done something different, or devising more clever ways I might have presented the same material.

What’s the best way to respond to post-speech remorse? I suggest (to myself and others):
1. Do a quick rewrite after you fantasize about what you might have said.
2. Ask a trusted ally who was in the audience what worked and what could have been better.
3. Make a promise to yourself not to wing it when you have the slightest chance to prepare.

As far as I’m concerned, presentations are never finished, only abandoned, and every effort can be improved and re-purposed for the next talk. 

If I had rehearsed and polished my talk, I would not have apologized for it.  Instead, I would have explained that memories attach to moments of emotion, and then told my stories as vividly as possible.

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.

 

What should you do when the lights are so bright that you can’t see your audience?

1. Make sure you know where the audience is and look in that general direction with focus and confidence. The audience won’t know that you can’t see them. In other words, press on. (This seems obvious but see story below for details.)

2. Find something to focus on. Windows or EXIT signs have worked for me. Talk to the EXIT sign on the left, on the right, and then in the middle. The audience will think you’re looking at them.

3. Leave the lectern, if possible, and step to the front of the stage, where you will most likely be able to see those in the front row. Talk to them.

4. Look for another spot on the stage where the light will not be so bothersome and you can connect with your listeners.

5. Ask to have the lights lowered, especially if you have slides on display and the bright lights are washing out the images.

6. If none of the above works, follow the advice in recommendation #1. Focus your eyes for at least three-to-five seconds on the darkness in different quadrants of the hall–left, right, forward and back. You will feel like a deer in headlights, but you look more confident and persuasive when your eyes are focused. So, despite seeing nothing, you will be seen as authoritative. (This reminds me of Machiavelli saying, “All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.”)

To elaborate on the first point–”look in the general direction of the audience,” I include an embarrassing story.

I once arrived late to speak at a large event. The host rushed me out onto a thrust stage, where I was immediately blinded by the light. I assumed the stage was surrounded by seating on three sides, as all thrust stages are. Bravely I positioned myself in the middle, then moved to my extreme right to address those who might have been seeing my profile, and then to the left edge to do the same for those seeing my left side. I continued to move in this way throughout my talk.

When it was over, polite applause came from the middle of the theater. The house lights came up, and I saw, to my chagrin, that the small audience was clustered in the middle section of the hall. Not a soul sat to the left or right of the stage. I had been talking to the vacant, interstellar spaces, and not one member of the small audience had spoken up.

I was blinded by the light, and they were silenced.

It pays to have friends in high places.

Eric Schurenberg, a neighbor and friend of long-standing, has seen fit to cast me as a poster child for the road less taken to riches. Since I am not rich, and hardly a good example of anything, except perhaps for my prowess in some unmentionable activities, I allow him a poet’s license to use me as he sees fit.

Eric is the Managing Editor of Money Magazine, and I suppose he knows that most of his readers are thinking about how to acquire ungodly sums of money. After all, anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with human nature knows that most of us are fantasizing about our future wealth at least 50% of the time.

The rest of the time, of course, we’re fantasizing about unmentionable activities.

On page 16 of the July edition of Money Magazine, Eric writes the following:

“I watched with a mixture of concern and awe as a friend, Sims Wyeth, walked out of a perfectly good vice president’s post at a consulting firm, in large part because he thought he could make more money on his own as a public speaking coach for executives. It took him six nail-biting months to land his first customer. But now that his business is thriving–with clients like KPMG, McKinsey & Co. and Pfizer–Wyeth can be philosophical about why he took the risk. ‘If you asked me to choose between being bored and being terrified,’ he says, ‘I’d rather be terrified.’”

Let me say that Eric was right to be concerned, while his awe was probably similar to the feelings most people have when watching Evil Knievel jump his motorcycle over three-dozen parked school buses.

I can say in my own defense, however, that I have managed to be born with–well, a pewter spoon in my mouth–spit it out with disgust, enjoy a career as an actor, teach several graduate and undergraduate courses in theater and communication, raise a child and send her to Yale, and remain happily married to a woman who has been called by the New York Times “mercurial.”

And all while sailing through the air straddling a rocket with a landscape dotted with school buses far below.

It’s the only way I could keep up with my friends in high places.