Posts Tagged ‘communication skills’

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Hey Speaker – It’s Tool Time!

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
A Speaker's Voice Contains Many Tools Than Can Be Used During A Speech

A Speaker's Voice Contains Many Tools Than Can Be Used During A Speech

When you find yourself giving a speech, you quickly realize that what you are missing is any sort of tools with which to give the speech. If you were a painter, you’d have a canvas, brushes, paints, thinners, etc. with which to make your creation. However, when you are giving a speech it’s just you and your audience. Make you feel sorta naked, doesn’t it?

It turns out that you actually do have a toolbox with which to create your speech – the words that you’ll be using. It turns out that not only the words that you choose to use, but the way in which you speak these words can cause a powerful reaction in your audience. Debra Johanyak is a professor of English at the University of Akron and she has come up with a list of different ways that we can use our voice to make our point during a speech.

Let’s take a look at the different verbal delivery “tools” that Dr. Johanyak has come up with:

  • Words That You Accent: It turns out that not all words are created equal – you have the ability to emphasize certain words. As an example, consider the sentence “After cutting the green wire, a sudden silence descended over the entire bomb squad.” Simply by pronouncing the word “green” differently, you can draw your audience’s attention to it.
  • Slow Pitch Speaking: The pitch of your voice controls how high and how low your voice goes. This is a powerful way to communicate emotion during your speech: “Once I saw that the cage was empty, I knew that the 6′ snake could be anywhere in the house.” The word “anywhere” can be said in a higher pitch than the other words in order to draw attention to it.
  • Just Be Quiet: The most powerful speaking tool is also the simplest – just be quiet. When we add periods of silence to our speeches, it adds emphasis to the words that came before and sets the stage for the words that are to come next.

There you have it – now your speaking toolbox is actually looking rather full!

When you give a speech do you use your voice to its fullest? Have you ever ever accented words or varied your pitch to make a point? Are you able to remember to use quiet pauses to make a point? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Just How Do Those Politicians Do It?

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Politicians Use Stories To Win Their Audiences Over

Politicians Use Stories To Win Their Audiences Over

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, politicians are by and large fantastic communicators. If you take a look at their technique they may be lacking; however, they sure seem to be very good at getting their point across and wining audiences over. Wouldn’t it be great if we could figure out how they do that?

There are a number of speaking techniques that politicians use, but the one that packs the biggest punch is our old friend the story. Caren Neile has done some research into just how politicians use stories and she’s discovered some things that we can use to make our presentations even better.

Ronald Reagan was known as the great communicator due in a large part to the numerous stories that he would tell. He wasn’t just telling stories to fill space in his speeches, rather he was trying to make points and emphasis parts of his speech.

For politicians, there are four main story-lines that they use over and over:

  1. We take care of our own.
  2. We must protect ourselves from our enemies.
  3. We can’t trust the people who are running government and business.
  4. Anyone can succeed.

The reason that these four story-lines are used is because they are time tested – politicians know that they work, audiences respond to them every time.

For us speakers, we can take advantage of the years of research that politicians have done for us and start to use more stories. We can use the four story-lines that have served our leaders so well for so long and create our own stories that flow in these well-worn ruts. By doing this we almost assure ourselves of being successful with our audiences.

Do you use stories when you give a speech? Have you ever told a story that fit one of these story-lines? How was it received? Do you have stories that you could make fit these story-lines? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Presenters Who Use Naughty Words – Good Or Bad?

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Should Presenters Use Street Language In Their Speeches?

Should Presenters Use Street Language In Their Speeches?

If you are under 18 (or if you were at one time), please cover your ears as you read this posting.

Let’s talk about naughty words. What words do I mean you say? I’m talking about all of the common ones like $^#!, *&@^, &%$#, and of course &#&@. Just for good measure we should also throw in some of the up-and-coming modern phrases like $&^%$#@!%&.

If you watch TV, go to the movies, listen to top 40 music, or even read books that are on the top seller lists then you are being exposed to what we can call “offensive language” all the time. The big question is if there is so much of this in our daily lives, can we now start to work it into our presentations?

I say that the answer is “no“. I believe that there are several reasons why.

Gene Perret was Bob Hope’s head writer for 12 years and he’s spent a lot of time thinking about the use of street language in comedy and presentations. I agree with a lot of what he has to say.

The #1 reason why presenters should not use offensive language in our presentations is because it is the equivalent of taking the easy way out. Offensive words shock our audience when they hear them. It’s the same as if you zapped them with an electrical charge. However, it’s momentary and then it’s gone. It’s much harder (and more fulfilling) to use non-offensive words to capture and hold their attention.

Here’s an example: once upon a time Winston Churchhill was at a party when a woman who didn’t like him came up to him and said “Winston, if I were your wife, I would poison your tea.” Churchill responded by saying “Well, you can just go $%#@ yourself”. Oh, wait. No he didn’t. Instead, what he said was “Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it.” If he had responded the first way, this incident would have been quickly forgotten. However, because of the words that he did use, it has been remembered to this day.

So the next time you are crafting a speech and you’re tempted to throw in some street language just to to show how hip and cool you are, don’t. Instead spend the time and find a way to instead show your audience how memorable you can be.

Have you ever used street language in one of your presentations? How did it go over? If you could give that presentation again, would you use the same language? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in speech writing | 3 Comments »

The Presenter Super Memory System – The Details

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
The Super Memory System For Presenters

The Super Memory System For Presenters

I recently had an opportunity to deliver a 45-minute keynote as part of a training session kick-off for a group of IT Mangers. I decided that in order to boost my creditability with this hard-nosed group, I needed to stay in eye contact with them and not be looking at my notes. This meant memorization.

Here’s how I did it:

  • I broke the speech up into sections – my speech resulted in 9 sections.
  • I then broke each section up into “ideas” – basically sentences.
  • I then picked a place that I had lived in the past (a school or any place that you know well would have done fine also). The only requirement was that it had to have multiple, distinct “locations” – in this case rooms.
  • Then I pictured myself in a room such as the kitchen. I could see myself sitting a the table in a particular chair.
  • Next I came up with a picture AND an action for the first idea / sentence that I wanted to memorize.

Here’s how I had written my speech to start out:

“I’d like to start out our time together today by asking you a simple question: where do you want you want to be at in your career 5 years from now? That will be 2014 – it’s just 1,825 days from right now. I have no idea what you will be doing in 5 years, but there is one thing that I know with 100% certainty – the job that you are doing right now will no longer exist.”

  • I basically had three image / actions to create. Remember, these are highly personal – what you come up with just has to work for you.
  • My first image was of 5 calendars: one each being stuck to each of  the fingers on my right hand. I was shaking that hand very hard and they all flew off.
  • My second image was of a stack of those one-a-day calendar tear-off sheets in a really, really tall pile sitting before me. Just to make it more vivid I pictured it as being sheets from the Dilbert: 2009 Day-to-Day Calendar. I then pictured a card in front of this stack that said “1,825 days” and the stack falling over and making a real mess on the floor.
  • Finally, on the table in front  of me behind the stack of calendar sheets was a very small model of a worker in a cubicle typing away on a computer. All of a sudden a trap door built into the table swung open and the little cubicle vanished.

There you have it. When I went to give my speech, I didn’t even try to recall the words that I had written down. Instead, I had three pictures flash in my head – calendars stuck to my fingers, a stack of calendar pages, and a disappearing cubicle. Without looking at any notes, I was able to quickly and easily recall what I wanted to say without having to look at any notes!

Have you ever had to give a speech without using notes. How long was the speech? How did you memorize what you had to say? How did it go? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Presenter Super Memory System – An Overview

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Presenters Need A Way To Memorize Their Speeches

Presenters Need A Way To Memorize Their Speeches

Congratulations – you’ve been invited to speak for 30 minutes. Remember – don’t use any notes! If you got this offer could you do it?

As though standing in front of a group of people was not scary enough,  now you have to find a way to shove 30 minutes (that’s 1,800 seconds) worth of information into your head – and recall it under pressure. Given that we all talk at about 150 words/min, you’re looking at memorizing 4,500 words. Good luck!

I recently had an opportunity to deliver a 45-minute keynote as part of a training session kick-off for a group of IT Mangers. I decided that in order to boost my creditability with this hard-nosed group, I needed to stay in eye contact with them and not be looking at my notes. This meant memorization.

Now let me make a confession – I hate it when people memorize their speeches. When they do this, they have a tendency to deliver them in an automatic robot-like manner that has virtually no emotion because they are trying so hard to remember what they want to say next. I was determined to avoid this!

Here’s what I did to get ready for this speech:

  • I wrote the speech out word-for-word. This allowed me to create a 6,750 word speech (45 minutes) so that I would exactly fill my time slot.
  • I then “tuned” the words trying to drop in as many memorable phrases as possible. This is the real advantage of writing your speech out completely.
  • I then memorized the speech.

… and that’s what you really want to about. But, I’m out of space for now so I’ll share all of the secrets about how I memorized this speech with you next time.

Have you ever had to give a speech without using notes. How long was the speech? How did you memorize what you had to say? How did it go? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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