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Many people acknowledge that President Obama is a good public speaker.  At the same time, many note a significant difference in the quality of President Obama’s speech between those occasions when he uses a Teleprompter and those when he speaks extemporaneously.

They assert that his oratorical gifts are actually not as great as they seem because when he speaks without a teleprompter he says “er and uhm” like the average oratorical duffer, and often pauses awkwardly once he starts a sentence, as he seems to re-think how to arrange the thought into words that will not play against him.

While I’ve noticed a certain partisan tone when this distinction is made, I too feel concerned about the use of TelePrompters.  They seem to make public speech more dead than alive. But would we prefer that our leaders step to the lectern and reach inside their breast pocket to withdraw a written speech?

Barbara Tuchman, the great American historian, had a few radical thoughts on this subject.  She suspected that Teleprompters would bring down our democracy.

She said, in an interview with Bill Moyers, that the devices were “the most devastating tool that technology’s invented…” Our public men, “don’t speak spontaneously. You don’t hear them meet a situation out of their own minds. They read this thing that’s going along there in front of them. Words that have been created for them by PR men or by advertisers or whatever. And this is not the real man that we see. And it allows an inadequate, minor individual to appear to be a statesman, because he’s got very good speechwriters. Mr. Reagan! Boy! And to read the stuff off, because he reads it very well. He’s an actor, I guess, a trained actor. … you never know what he’s reading. Nor do you really know this with any of them. They learn it very fast…the teleprompter–is a really, in my opinion, it’s a terrible tool, because what we have is an artificial result.”

Then Bill Moyers says,  ”And yet George Washington had Alexander Hamilton as a speechwriter. The Farewell Address, his final major statement as he exited the Presidency, was largely penned by Alexander Hamilton. Is there a correlation?”

And by the way, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address had help from William Seward, his Secretary of State.

Then Tuchman says, “No, because the teleprompter shows the person in a situation which is not real, and which is phony, and which is deceptive. The thing is, you see, that we’re a public that is brought up on deception, through advertising. From the moment we are children, we learn that some kind of cereal is going to make us strong and win races and one thing and another, and the next thing you know, if you use a particular kind of toothpaste, you’re going to marry Gary Cooper, or at least have a glamorous romance somewhere; all that is deception.”

She raises some questions.
1. Are teleprompters a form of deception?
2. What’s the difference between a teleprompter and a piece of paper with the speech written on it?
3. Do we want our Presidents to speak without benefit of speech writers, teleprompters, or written notes?
4. How important is it that our President be a good “communicator”–meaning a strong advocate for his ideas and for our country.
5. What are the skills, attributes, and behaviors of a good communicator?

These are questions that are worth answering well, and ones that we at Sims Wyeth explore.

Oh!  One more question!  What about PowerPoint? Don’t most of us use it as a teleprompter to remind us what to say?

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills andpublic speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips atwww.SimsWyeth.com.

FUD is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.  I first heard the term when consulting at Gartner.  I was working with the analysts in preparing for a Gartner Symposium, and several of them used FUD at the start of their talks to engage the listeners on an emotional level.

For instance, they might have said, “While e-mail may be the killer-app of first generation internet programs, it could very well become the mass murderer of the second generation as it hurls armies of hackers, worms, viruses and spam against the the gates of your corporate security infrastructure.”

I made that up.  But something like that.

Fear-based arguments are common and valid, in my experience.  Our lives are built around the fear of pain and the hope of gain.  Every story we have ever enjoyed in novel, play, film, or ballad is about a person who had a problem (and had FUD) and struggled to make it go away.

In fact, FUD is what makes drama dramatic.  If we don’t have FUD when the pretty young thing all alone in the house on a dark and stormy night hears a sound downstairs and gets out of bed in her nightgown to see what’s happening, then the story doesn’t work.

We have to care about the girl, and we have to be afraid that something might jump out of the closet, hatchet raised.

What if a CIO heard a noise in the middle of the night, and it was her phone, and she heard that a hacker had broken through her security system at work, the one she touted and convinced the company to buy, and she had to get dressed and drive into headquarters and face the embarrassment of a crisis that higher-ups were likely to blame on her?

Those CIOs in the audience listening to the Gartner analysts are human beings motivated by the same things that everyone else is motivated by–the fear of loss, and the hope of gain.  I’m not a CIO, but if I were, I’d be worried about making bad decisions, not looking good when my systems aren’t successful, spending too much, spending too little, and taking too much time to get things done.

We know that humans are interested in their own problems.  We talk about our problems most of the time.  They’re  number one in the conversation hit parade.  If we talk to our listeners about their problems, they are much more likely to listen.  If we demonstrate a firm grasp of their problems, and the consequences for them if they don’t solve the problems, they are more likely to respect us and trust us.  So reminding them of their problems might not be a bad strategy.

There is evidence in social science that it is not wise to use FUD arguments on people who are already in a state of high anxiety.  But there is also evidence that we retain and value information when it is linked to our emotions–any emotions, positive or negative.

Consulting is based on problem solving (i.e., the removal of FUD.)  Philosophy is built around problem solving.   Politics likewise.  For the client, the voter, the audience, beyond the FUD is a vision of a new and better reality.  But our credibility as speakers depends largely on defining, in vivid and human terms, the problem that your content solves.

Let’s not be afraid of FUD.  Used appropriately, FUD can turn a dry information dump into a compelling story about a person, a product, a department, or a company that prevents disaster and saves the day.

Like that moment in bowling, when your ball leaves two pins standing far apart, there are times when your audience is divided into two camps.

One half is knowledgeable about your area of expertise, while the other half is green.  Or, one half is interested in the science, while the other half is preoccupied with its business application. Or one half of your audience is eager to hear your thoughts, while the other half is not only indifferent, but cynical and disengaged. Remarks you prepare all seem appropriate for one group, but not the other.

What’s the best solution?

First of all, an audience divided in two is probably overly simplistic.  There are those who care about the topic, those who couldn’t care less, and those who are neutral.

Furthermore, certain types of people are most interested in the speaker’s position on the topic and the reasoning supplied to support that position.  Others are more interested in how to execute the idea, and still others on the values and beliefs that are embedded in the stated position.

Generally, when making a proposal, a speaker can expect some listeners to be with him, some opposed, and some to be undecided. As in American politics, there are lefties, righties, and those who vote both ways.

Teachers often say, “Teach to the middle,” suggesting that you can reach the greatest number of students that way.  This also suggests that you are willing to lose the top performers as well as those at the bottom of the class.  It also implies that by appealing to the middle, you follow the Pareto Principle, which says you get 80% of your results from 20% of your effort.

However, I think we can devise a better solution.  I have worked with many medical researchers who are presenting to venture capitalists and Wall Street analysts in order to raise money for their projects.  The audience in these situations is all over the map in terms of expertise. Some know a little, and some alot.

In these situations, I have found that it is helpful to think of the problem of a split shot audience as a problem of attention, not comprehension .  And the way to keep attention is to tell a dramatic story and use all the tools available to a good storyteller.

The first step for the speaker is to set the stage.  The speaker needs to describe the current situation in the disease state, the current standard of care, and perhaps a dab of history to describe how the standard evolved.

Next, the speaker needs to describe the unmet medical need, and the suffering, or financial burden, that is the result.  This has to be emotional in tone.  The speaker needs to make the audience feel the suffering and demonstrate his real concern.

Then, the speaker needs to paint the picture of how patients, or providers, or payors would benefit if only this problem would go away.

And only then, after he has helped the audience to understand the general situation, the terrible problem facing patients and the medical establishment, and painted a picture of what life could be like if only these problems could be overcome–only then does he introduce his new product and tell the story of how it works its wonders in the human body.

In other words, the speaker uses the basic tools of story-telling to make his presentation dramatic.  The basic tools of story-telling are setting, hero, problem, solution, climax, and resolution.

In this way, the skilled speaker engages everyone in the audience because the human mind is hard-wired to think in stories.  We tend to dismiss facts, but we are willing to suspend our disbelief when we hear stories, especially when they resonate with our previously held beliefs.

Furthermore, in my example, the scientific speaker can go into considerable detail if he has set up the story so that his molecule is the hero, riding into town, taking on the bad guys, and putting things right.  Listeners will stay focused because they’re interested in the drama.

And if he is careful to use analogies and metaphors to introduce and sum up complex information, then he will keep the attention of both the experts and the neophytes.  Humor sprinkled throughout can also keep people attentive during the denser parts of the talk.

For example, when I think of a particular cytokine that triggers the cascade of chronic inflamation that we know as rheumatoid arthritis, I often think of Osama bin Laden.  Both remain hidden, unharmed–manipulating levers to cause harm all over the world.  If only we could isolate both of them and knock them out! Then all the misguided minions–men and molecules–would stop inflicting pain on the world, and peace and ease would return to our lives.

Hardly scientific, I know.  But with a vivid and detailed description of how the disease works, it’s ultimately a story about a no-good cytokine–the ring-leader of a violent gang causing pain and suffering, and a heroic little drug who has a plan to get close enough to knock him out once and for all.

Who knows, it might inspire the venture capitalists to remember the pitch, and fund the effort to help the hero.

They are mostly women.

I have now spent 20 years in the speech trade, and most of the people I run into who speak too fast are women.  I have no idea why.  I can only speculate.

1. they are more ambivalent than men about being the center of attention,
2. meaning they simultaneously want to be present and disappear
3. so they speak fast in the hope of being heard and ignored at the same time
4. or they have turned the old saying, “children are to be seen and not heard” on themselves and think that “women are to be seen and not heard.”
5. or because they are more verbally skilled than us men, and have bigger verbal centers in their brains, they are bored chunking through the analog process of speech and instead zip through the verbiage on their way to other thoughts.

I have explored these issues in a more responsible and scientific manner in a new High Stakes Presentation newsletter called The Price of Speaking too Fast.

I hope you will visit the site and read it or download it.  It’s available as a PDF or as HTML.

Speaking above the speed limit is a very common problem, and a dumb thing to do, because it can get your career arrested.

Reva P. Minkoff, Class of ’08 at Harvard and a Staff Writer on the Harvard Crimson had this to say on November 16th:

“Since the days of Cicero, the ability to speak eloquently in public and argue persuasively with others has been a prized skill and a ticket to success. Among our generation, however, the use of the words “like” and “um” predominates, and even at Harvard many students struggle to speak articulately. Yet public speaking is almost completely absent from the curriculum. The Faculty should make public speaking a high curricular priority.

Public speaking is eminently important in today’s world. It is a necessity both in the classroom at Harvard and in the quest to succeed in the working world. The people who are most successful at achieving their goals are arguably those who can express their ideas in the most convincing and articulate manner to those around them. And to be an active citizen and leader” the type of person Harvard seeks to mold”one must be able to speak well.

America, however, is undergoing a public speaking crisis. Most people receive little to no formal training in public speaking and are petrified of it. Experts have cited the fear of public speaking as the most common phobia, one particularly widespread among college students. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is the case at Harvard as well. All it takes to realize the severity of the situation is to notice how few students raise their hands when professors ask questions in lecture and how few students speak up in sections.”

Bravo, Reva! Nobody knows what’s in our heads and hearts until we speak or write, and getting good at both puts us in a very favorable position.

He was the son of a fire and brimstone New England preacher, the brother of the writer of one of our greatest Southern novels, a friend to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mark Twain, and the defendant in one of the biggest sex scandals in American history.

The Most Famous Man in America by Debby Applegate is a recent biography of Henry Ward Beecher, and it is a fabulous book.

His father was Lyman Beecher, one of the great Puritan ministers of the early 19th century. His sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And Henry was the minister of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn.His contemporaries attempted to describe his magic: “He knocked down the stifling solemnity endemic to churches in that era, with a cheerful irreverence that sent shock waves through America. He was like no minister anyone had ever seen. He was bold and funny, a natural actor who made his ideas come alive.”

“He spoke plainly and with an air of candid personal confession that made him seem at once endearingly sensitive, admirably virile, and completely trustworthy.”

“He was always natural, always himself, always giving forth his own interior condition, honestly and frankly. His sermons were filled with funny, poignant stories about his personal fortunes and foibles, inviting everyone to identify with him.”

“He was almost shockingly casual in the pulpit. If a name or date slipped his mind, he asked one of the people near him.”

“He was theatrical, using his whole body to communicate the whole range of human emotion, with dramatic gestures and subtle facial expressions. Audiences were startled by his imitation of a sailor taking a pinch of chewing tobacco and wiping his hands on his pants, of a fisherman casting, or a young girl flirting.”

“He wrote his sermons at the last minute on Sunday morning. ‘Some men like their bread cold,’ he said. “I like mine hot.’

“Abraham Lincoln emancipated men’s bodies; Henry Ward Beecher emancipated their minds. He was phenomenal in his ability to make people love him.”

People often said that if you read the texts of his speeches and sermons they didn’t seem all that special. But when you went to hear him speak, something magical happened between, beneath, and around the words.

Is this what we mean when we use the phrase presentation skills?  I think so.  Expertise and logic are necessary, but not sufficient.  Henry had charisma.

Can we get some of that?