That’s the Golden Mean, or the Golden Ratio It’s the method by which the ancient Greeks would determine how to build something in order to make it beautiful.

I like it because it suggests there is science to beauty, and that proportion is important in all endeavors, including speaking.

For instance, what is the appropriate mix between data and interpretation? Between entertainment and substance? Between self-revelation and listener-centric content?

All these elements–and others– need to be balanced in a highly effective presentation.

In fact, in any important business conversation, we need guidance to balance the myriad views that need to be heard…and spoken.

And there’s another ratio for highly effective meetings: the Listening to Talking Ratio.

Somewhere in the fog of being there’s an optimal mix.

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 arts of music, poetry, literature, and drama have been around so long that each of them has templates.  To dismiss templates is to ignore the wisdom of the ages.

To name a few, music has verses and choruses, poetry has sonnets and haiku, literature has novels and short stories, and drama has setting, character, plot, and resolution.

Templates exist for speeches and presentations too.  Past to present to future is one.  Cause and effect is another.  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis is yet a third. But by far the most useful in the business world is the situation, problem, solution template.

 In business, define the problem first, then argue for your solution.

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.

First of all, don’t overdo it.  If it’s dry, it’s dry.  I heard someone link his call to action to survival, which was a bit of an overstatement.  Modesty in all things!

Nevertheless, since I often find myself urging clients to include emotional arguments as well as fact-based, here are a few tips.

1. Reason makes us think.  Emotions make us act.  You need both.
2. Begin with the problem that your audience faces.
3. If they don’t face a problem, begin with the opportunity they have.
4. Then talk about the consequences if they fail to take advantage of the opportunity.
5. Personalize your message.  Speak about your own experience.  Disclose something about yourself.  Confess your own struggle in regards to the issue, or a similar issue.
6. Tell stories that are about life-changing experiences.  Make sure your stories have a character, conflict, and dialogue.
7. Stories about people they know, or famous people, living or dead, are most effective.
8. Use emotional words.  I once sat through 16 people delivering the exact same presentation, and the only person I could remember when it was over was the one who said, “I love my job.”
9. Look your audience in the eye, one person at a time.
10. Smile when appropriate.  Visibly enjoy yourself.
11. Don’t talk about how dry the topic is.  Ignore the dryness, and find a way to make it moist.

The mother of the great American poet John Berryman told him, “Ever to admit you’re bored means you have no inner resources.”

Don’t let your topic bore you, or you’ll bore your audience.  Find a way to fall in love with it.

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 attended a family wedding last weekend, and the sister of the bride gave a great toast.

I heard her round up her brothers as the cake was being served, saying, “Now is the time. Somebody has to say something.” They looked glum and stricken, and left their wine glasses on the table as they followed her to the center of the tent.

I thought to myself, “This is going to be hard. There are a hundred people yammering and drinking. Music is playing. Some people are dancing.” But I was wrong.

Lizzy tapped a wine glass with a fork. The crowd came to a hush. Somebody turned the music off, and Lizzy said what was on her mind.

It wasn’t fancy, clever, prepared, or eloquent. Just real. Sincere. Simple. Felt. She was happy for her sister and happy that so many family members had come to witness and support the marriage.

She stood still. She projected her voice. She was able to think while she was speaking, and she seemed completely comfortable.

The brothers didn’t need to say a thing. Any more would have been overkill. We clapped. The music returned, and I went back to work on my piece of cake, impressed with Lizzie’s grace, her sentiment, and the fact that her remarks were brief and unadorned.

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.”

On June 20th in the Wall Street Journal, in response to the media coverage of Tim Russert’s untimely death, Peggy Noonan wrote in her Declarations column, “When somebody dies we tell his story and try to define and isolate what was special about it–what it was he brought to the party, how he enhanced life by showing up. In this way we educate ourselves about what really matters.”

“In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn’t. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn’t, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. [...] That’s what we talk about in eulogies, because that’s what’s important.”

Reading this, it struck me that we could say the same thing about public speaking. We make a show of admiring speakers who are clever, rich with data slides, equipped with approved platform behaviors and polished texts. But in the end, what we really like in speakers is character.

Character traits that appeal to audiences are varied, but certainly confidence is one, tempered, we hope, with humility. Genuine interest in the audience is another, or at least an empathetic understanding of their needs and concerns.

Finally, I myself like speakers who appear to be authentic, true to themselves, not working too hard to please me, but are nevertheless skilled at holding my attention.

Think about this. When a speech or presentation is over, which do you remember the longest: what the speaker said, or the impression the speaker created?

Decision makers rarely undertake an important project without first hearing the project leader explain it to them. They are listening for two things–grasp of the material, and the requisite character needed to overcome the inevitable obstacles any large project will encounter.

When a presentation is over, and listeners gather to discuss it and pass judgment, the speaker’s expertise is the dimension they consider overtly. But deep down, their decisions are informed by their perceptions of the speaker’s character.

Ford Harding has lifted his pen to engage with me on a subject of profound importance to sales professionals, leaders, and anyone who seeks to influence others. That subject is the emotional sea on which all decisions float.

FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is one current in that sea. It drives most of us away from the shoals of risk, hardship, pain and loss.

GOG (greed, opportunity, and glory) is another current in the sea. Its siren song calls us to risk our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor in pursuit of objectives that may or may not work out.

I will address Ford’s recent comments in this posting, but first I must clarify my position and then I must make the case for the role of emotion in business decision making. I think Ford and I are using a kind of shorthand in discussing this topic, and some readers might be concerned about the difference between logical persuasion and emotional persuasion.

My position: I am not the champion of FUD and the enemy of GOG. I strive to be the wise master of both. However, I am of the opinion that mankind is more motivated by the fear of loss than the hope of gain. What gets our attention, on a daily basis, are problems. Most people and organizations will not change until the pain of change becomes less than the pain of the status quo. Alcoholics don’t stop drinking until they hit rock bottom. They do not get sober because they suddenly decide to be good little boys and girls. They get sober because they are avoiding the dire consequences of their drinking.

In his book, Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert writes the following:

“One of the most annoying songs in the often annoying history of popular music begins with this line: “Feelings, nothing more than feelings.” I wince when I hear it because it always strikes me as roughly equivalent to starting a hymn with “Jesus, nothing more than Jesus.” Nothing more than feelings? What could be more important than feelings? Sure, war and peace may come to mind, but are war and peace important for any reason other than the feelings they produce? If war didn’t cause pain and anguish, if peace didn’t provide for delights both transcendental and carnal, would either of them matter to us at all? War, peace, art, money, marriage, birth, death, disease, religion—these are just a few of the Really Big topics over which oceans of blood and ink have been spilled, but they are really big topics for one reason alone: Each is a powerful source of human emotion. If they didn’t make us feel uplifted, desperate, thankful, and hopeless, we would keep all that ink and blood to ourselves. As Plato asked, “Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?” Indeed, feelings don’t just matter—they are what mattering means. We would expect any creature that feels pain when burned and pleasure when fed to call burning and eating bad and good respectively, just as we would expect an asbestos creature with no digestive tract to find such designations arbitrary. Moral philosophers have tried for centuries to find some other way to define good and bad, but none has ever convinced the rest (or me). We cannot say that something is good unless we can say what it is good for, and if we examine all the many objects and experiences that our species calls good and ask what they are good for, the answer is clear: By and large, they are good for making us feel happy.”

_____

Ford, I take this to mean that our careful reasoning and efforts to be logical about any important decision –from making an investment, to building a bridge, to figuring out how to land a new client–is ultimately floating on a sea of feelings and emotions, and that we are constantly striving to minimize our FUD (negative emotions) and maximize our GOG (feelings of pleasure.)

If we are sales professionals, leaders, or public speakers, we need to consider all the tools of persuasion at our disposal. This consideration of tools and techniques makes us rhetoricians practicing the art of rhetoric. We are obliged to use the tools of rhetoric when considering a decision for which there is no clear answer–a decision about which reasonable men can disagree.

FUD and GOG are rhetorical tactics which we can use to persuade an audience. You write that fear tactics are despicable, and then wisely mention that GOG tactics can be equally deceptive. Let me remind you that the techniques of persuasion, like many other technologies, are neither inherently good nor evil. They can be used to advance noble or pernicious purposes. “What makes a man a sophist is not his faculty but his moral purpose.”

As for your Venn diagram example, in which you describe the two overlapping circles of FUD and GOG, and argue that where downside risk is high, the use of only FUD is appropriate, and where the upside is larger, it is only appropriate to use GOG, and only in the middle, where they both overlap, is it appropriate to use both, I have to disagree. All upsides have risk, and all downsides have solutions.

It seems to me that Plato, quoted above, is saying that we undertake projects in our lives to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. In other words, to get rid of FUD and grab hold of GOG.

Furthermore, if we are successful business leaders, as soon as we make a decision to pursue GOG (greed, opportunity and glory), we have a whole new set of FUD calculations to make, such as, “What if I’m wrong? What if the future is not like the past? What if, what if, what if?”

It is up to the speaker, the salesman, and the leader to explore these what ifs, and thereby help his audience to the best decision for them. Reasoning and logic will play their parts in the drama, but FUD and GOG will always be the co-stars.

Public speaking is a talent before it becomes a skill. A talent is a latent ability, something that is dormant inside you. When you work at it, it becomes a skill.

If you do have a potential talent for speaking and you work at it, you are likely to receive encouragement and recognition for your talent, which then makes you want to continue, which in turn helps you get better.

However, if you don’t have a talent for speaking, but nevertheless work at it without receiving encouragement and recognition, you are likely to give up, and will therefore not develop the skill.

The hard thing is to persist in the face of discouragement.

Churchill passed out when giving his first speech in the Commons.

FDR bombed over and over again when he was a young Secretary of the Navy. His wife Eleanor thought he was hopeless.

Woodrow Wilson had terrible nerves and worked like a fiend to overcome his fear.

And our own Bill Clinton was booed for his interminable speech at the 1988 Democratic convention.

Yet he, and all the others, went on to become highly respected communicators.

I feel like quoting someone famous on the subject of persisting.

Emerson: “Move confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.”

Or the great Japanese folk saying: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”

It’s the only way to sculpt talent into skill.

I just finished working with a client who had to prepare and deliver an after dinner talk to clients in a museum. Her firm planned to take the clients on a private tour of the museum, feed them dinner, and then she was to stand up and offer them a short talk on investment opportunities in the current turbulent markets.

We spent a few hours crafting the talk, and another couple of hours getting her to verbalize it. At the end of the rehearsal, it was still not right, but she had to go. It was Friday afternoon–the weekend called.

As we parted, I made a few suggestions.

1. Cut it. Your audience is primarily in their 60s and beyond. They will have been on their feet, drunk a few glasses of wine, and will be looking at their watches thinking of bed.
2. Say it aloud at least five times over the weekend (she was to speak on Monday night).
3. Don’t drink any wine until you’ve spoken.
4. Go to the museum tonight, or over the weekend, to see the room where the dinner will take place. Find out where you will stand, what the acoustics are like, and whether you need a microphone or a lectern.
5. Wear something red.
6. Keep it simple, upbeat, and story-like. Don’t drill down into an analysis of the investments.

A few days after the event, I called her. “How did you do?” I asked.

“I give myself a 7 out of 10,” she said.

“How come?” I asked.

“Well, it was too long, they couldn’t hear me, the room was horrible, I didn’t go to see the room over the weekend, I had to cut it on the fly, which made me nervous and look discombobulated.”

“Great!” I said. “Now you know. After dinner speaking is intense. It is intimate. Your audience is on top of you. The rooms are often not good for speakers. There’s noise in the room. The audience is tired and drunk. They want to be entertained–period. They want funny stories and they want them short.”

“It was intense,” she said.

“You’ve had an experience,” I said. And I quoted Mark Twain: “Good judgment comes from experience. And where does experience come from? Bad judgment!”

I told her not to be discouraged. Most people fail their way to success.

She said she was not discouraged, and looked forward to trying again.

She’s a trooper.

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.