Archive for May, 2010

Business Speaking Is Unlike Any Other Speaking

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
Image Credit
When You Speak In A Business Environment, You Need Special Skills

When You Speak In A Business Environment, You Need Special Skills

Welcome to the world of business: do you know how to give a speech here? All too often speakers spend their time studying how to connect with customers and community members. That’s all well and good; however, that style of speaking is completely different from the style that you need to use when you are giving a presentation within the company. Do you have the right stuff?

The Four Skills That You Need To Know

When you are giving a speech or presentation within your company, you need to take the time to do it in a business manner – there’s a whole bunch of rules that you need to know about. A business audience has an expectation of how you are going to talk to them and what you’re going to say. If you don’t do this right, then they are going to tune you out very quickly.

There are four specific skills that you need to have mastered in order to make your next business presentation go well. Here they are:

  1. Make Your Brain Big: business is all about what is happening right now. This means that any time that you are giving a business presentation you need to make sure that your presentation is packed with current events. World events, industry changes, etc. are what your business audience wants to know about.
  2. Practice Verbal Dancing: Business speeches rarely go as you had planned them. What this means is that you’ve got to be ready for interruptions, questions, and redirection by senior management at any time during your speech. The key skill that you need to have is the ability to remain calm as your carefully planned speech does a 180-degree turn and heads off into a direction that you had never planned on going.
  3. Become a Tailor: In business, there is no such thing as a “canned speech”. You may have a basic set of points that you want to communicate to several different audiences, but you’ll need to change the words that you use and how you deliver the speech to meet the needs of each audience that you give it to.
  4. Use The Power Of Words: Ultimately all we have to work with is words. A business audience is like any other audience and it’s the words that you use that will determine if your speech ends up having any impact on them. Picking the right words to use for the right speech can make all of the difference in the world.

What All Of This Means For You

There are many different types of speeches that we may be called on to give, but a business speech to the members of our own company can be one of the toughest speeches to give.

These types of speeches require a special set of skills. We need to take the time to make sure that our speech will meet the business need of our audience. Sorry, there is no generic speech that will work here.

The real power comes from delivering this type of speech correctly. It’s a skill that too few speakers have. If you can develop the skills that are needed to do this well, then you will have made yourself irreplaceable.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: do you think adding stories to your business presentation will help you to connect with your audience or is this the wrong venue for that kind of speech tool?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you’ve ever wished that there was a formula for giving the perfect speech, are you in luck! Chris Matthews is the host of a couple of TV shows including Hardball with Chris Matthews. He gets paid handsomely for the work that he does now, but he got his start as a humble political speechwriter. Based on all of that experience, he’s come up with a way to give the perfect speech…

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Posted in business | 1 Comment »

Body Language: Plane & Simple

Monday, May 17th, 2010
Mark Bowden's Book: Winning Body Language

Mark Bowden's Book: Winning Body Language

Just like most professional public speakers, I have a bad habit of occasionally starting to believe that I know everything that there is to know. When this starts to happen, I know how to solve it: I go read a book.

The Body Language Book

This time around I picked up a copy of Mark Bowden’s book Winning Body Language: Control the Conversation, Command Attention, and Convey the Right Message without Saying a Word that his publisher had sent to me. My expectations were low — I mean, come on, I’ve been doing the talking thing for a long time.

Well, I guess I need to eat some crow here. Mark’s book was a real eye opener. No, I don’t agree with everything that he has to say, but enough of what he says caught my attention that I’m going to change my speaking style based on his recommendations. Now do I have your attention?

What Plane Are You Speaking In?

Mark covers a lot of material in his book, all of it good. However, the part that really caught my attention was when he started talking about what he calls the GesturePlane system.

In a nutshell, what this calls for is for you to take a look at your body you are speaking in a different way. According to Mark you have one plane that slices you through the middle from your head to your toes. You have another plane that cuts you in half right though the belly button.

Once you are aware of these planes, Mark steps you though a discussion of where you should position your body parts relative to each plane while you are speaking.

It’s All About The Hands

Here’s the part where Mark got me: he told me that I’ve been doing the wrong thing with my hands all these years. Mark is strongly against a speaker keeping their hands at their sides when they are not making gestures. Instead, he recommends that they go in front of your belly button.

The reasoning behind all of this takes a bit of time to fully explain. I’ll leave it up to you to get a copy of Mark’s book ($13 over at Amazon) for all of the details. Needless to say he made a believer out of me.

What All Of This Means For You

You would think that all of this body language stuff would come naturally to us, right? Well, it turns out that it’s actually harder to do right than you might think.

There are a lot of books out there that promise to teach you how to use your body language to make your speeches have more impact. I haven’t read them all, but I have read Mark Bowden’s and I think that he’s on to something with his GesturePlane System.

Whenever you learn something new and commit to changing your speaking style based on something that you’ve learned, it can be just a little bit scary. I’ll keep you posted on how my new body language speaking technique goes — let’s see if I can develop winning body language…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What do you do with your hands while you speak — keep them by your sides or do you do something else?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Welcome to the world of business: do you know how to give a speech here? All too often speakers spend their time studying how to connect with customers and community members. That’s all well and good; however, that style of speaking is completely different from the style that you need to use when you are giving a presentation within the company. Do you have the right stuff?

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Posted in body language | No Comments »

10 Tips For Conquering The Final Frontier Of Speaking: Television

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Image Credit
What To Do (And Not Do) When You Are “On The Air

What To Do (And Not Do) When You Are “On The Air

I think that it was Bruce Springsteen who in his song “57 Channels (and Nothin’ On)” lamented that although he now had access to 500 channels, there really was nothing on that he wanted to watch. Well of course not, you weren’t on TV yet. However, in the very near future this may all change…

Why Being On Television Is So Hard

With the arrival of everything from iPods to iPads that can display video, more and more speakers are finding themselves being asked to come on TV to share their knowledge and opinions. How flattering is that? However, what all too many of us don’t realize is that being on TV is much, much different than standing in front of a live audience and delivering a speech.

For starters, on TV unless you are the President of the United States, nobody wants to listen to you give an entire speech. We’ve all been conditioned to watch TV in small bites that are sandwiched between commercials. This means that no matter how much you may detest politicians who build their reputation based on sound bites, you’re going to have to boil your message down, down, down.

10 Tips For Being On TV

TV is such a different place to speak that we need to reach out and get some professional advice on how to do it well. David Yewman is a media trainer and a presentation coach who has a lot of experience with the world of TV. He’s got a number of suggestions for how accidental communicators can do well when you get your shot at the big time of TV:

  1. Don’t Look There!: On the “little screen”, your eyes are what everyone will be watching. Something that public speakers don’t realize is that your job is to look at the person that you are talking with – never, ever look at the camera. The host CAN look at the camera, but you can’t.
  2. Watch The Plaids!: As you stand in your closet picking out the clothes that you’ll wear, keep this in mind: plaids and checkered patterns are bad, solid colors such as blues and browns are good. Try to stay away from all white shirts.
  3. Posture, Posture: You might think that since you’ll probably be sitting down, you don’t have worry about posture – wrong! Dave suggests that we never let our backs touch the back of the chair – we should be leaning forward by about 20 degrees to clear our breathing tubes and show that we are interested in the discussion. Unless you are Tom Cruise on Oprah, your behind should be firmly planted in your seat and your shoulders should be squared off.
  4. Shut Up And Put The Makeup On: This pretty much goes out to the guys. Sit down and let the TV studio put makeup on you. If you don’t, you’re going to look horrible. The world of TV is unlike the real world – the makeup looks really bad in real life, but it shows up well on TV. Let the pros do what they want to you.
  5. What’s Your Point?: Your time on TV will be very short. You need to have a set of short “points” that you want to get across. When you are asked a question by the host, answer it but see if you can open an opportunity to fit one of your points into your response. Be ready to quickly deliver one of your points if the host asks you for any closing thoughts.
  6. Practice, Practice, Practice: Do I even have to remind you about this one? The world of a TV studio is an amazing environment and you’ll be swept away once you enter it. Make sure that you know what you want to say and how you want to say it before you arrive.
  7. Shh! I’m On TV: The last thing that you want to happen while you are on TV is to become distracted. That means that you’ve got to turn off everything electronic, make sure that your mic works, and that there are no TV screens in your view that are going to draw your attention away from the host.
  8. Show Some Energy: Would you want to watch yourself on TV if you looked tired or as though you didn’t want to be there? No way! So make sure that you’ve got some pep. TV is all about your facial expressions and your body language – make sure that they are telling everyone that you are excited to be there!
  9. Story Time: If there’s one thing that any TV host loves, it’s a guest who comes with great stories. However, your time is limited so you need to keep them as short as possible.
  10. Change Happens: The world of TV is a very dynamic world. Things will change and so you need to be ready to deal with it. You may end up going longer or shorter than was planned. Make sure that you are ready.

What All Of This Means For You

As public speakers our goal is to have an impact on our audiences. The best way to do this is to make sure that our message reaches the largest number of people possible. Being on TV is a great way to make this happen.

The world of a TV studio is much different from the everyday world that we live in. In order to come across well on TV, you need to change how you act and how you communicate so that you work with the world of TV. We’ve shared the tips that you need in order to do this well.

TV, despite what Bruce Springsteen might say about it, is a powerful communication tool. Speakers who can find a way to use this tool will become even more successful!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: How would you go about turning a speech into a set of “talking points” for a TV interview?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Welcome to the real world – things happen. Specially, things happen while you are delivering a speech. Bad things, things that can really screw up your speech. Fire alarms go off, the power fails, a projector bulb quits, your laptop decides to eat itself, etc. What’s a speaker to do?

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Posted in television | 3 Comments »

The Best Speeches Have A Lot Of You In Them

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Image Credit The Best Speeches Contain The Stories That You Can Dig Up From Your Life

The Best Speeches Contain The Stories That You Can Dig Up From Your Life

Congratulations – you’ve been asked to give a speech. Got one to give? Unless someone has asked you to deliver a speech that you’ve already given multiple times, you’re probably in the spot that most speakers find themselves all too often – standing in the middle of tracks while the train known as your speaking date comes racing towards you. What’s an accidental communicator to do?

What Makes A Speech Memorable

Let’s all agree on one thing first: if your speech is not memorable, then it’s really not worth giving. Starting from that point, you may start to feel some pressure – how the heck are you going to make your next speech memorable?

It turns out that there are a lot of ways to do this; however, the simplest way to do it is to work more of “you” into your speech. This means that you’ve got to find ways to share just exactly what makes you you with your audience. This boils down to one thing: you need to tell your audience some of your stories.

As I think back over all of the speeches that I’ve had an opportunity to listen to over my life, the handful that really stand out are the ones in which the speaker did a good job of sharing. You’ve got to remember that before they opened their mouth, I didn’t know anything about them. However, the personal stories that they told were so engrossing that they hooked me – I not only listened, but I’ve remembered their stories over the years since they spoke.

How To Go About Uncovering Your Stories

Fantastic you say, but I don’t have any stories to tell. Or at least no stories that anyone is going to want to hear. I hear you there – once upon a time I thought the same thing.

It turns out that your life story is a great story that, told well, everyone will want to hear. Now, you’ve been asked to give a speech and no, they haven’t really asked you to come and spend the time talking about yourself. However, adding your personal stories to the speech will make any speech have more impact.

One of the reasons that incorporating your personal stories into a speech can lend so much impact what you are saying is because you were there – you actually lived what you are talking about. This means that when you explain what happened, you will describe it using words that will build a vivid mental image for your audience.

Additionally, as you tell your story your body language will naturally synch with your words. This means that your audience will be getting a reinforcing message from your body even as you speak.

What All Of This Means To You

All too often when we get asked to deliver a speech we focus on doing the research needed to create a good speech but we neglect to do what it takes to make a great speech. A great speech is one that includes more of our personal content in it.

In order to personalize a story, we need to include more of our own stories. This means that we need to spend some time thinking about the things that have happened in our lives that would support the topic that we’ll be speaking on.
Speakers who can work their personal stories into a speech are the ones that will make a lasting impact. As long as you are going to go to the effort of giving a speech, doesn’t this seem like a good thing to do?

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: Do you think that it might be possible to work too much of your personal story into a speech?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I think that it was Bruce Springsteen who in his song “57 Channels (and Nothin’ On)” lamented that although he now had access to 500 channels, there really was nothing on that he wanted to watch. Well of course not, you weren’t on TV yet. However, in the very near future this may all change…

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Posted in stories | No Comments »