http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6kOTIXAxo4

Dr. Jim Anderson investigates how a speaker’s posture can impact their breathing and speaking speed.

Dr. Anderson reveals how speakers can take control of how they breath while giving a speech in order to impact their speaking speed and prevent themselves from running out of breath half-way through their speech.

To get more tips and techniques for creating and delivering great speeches, sign-up for the free The Accidental Communicator newsletter at: http://goo.gl/GJ2Z1

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A Poorly Given Toast Can Burn A Relationship

Editor’s Note: This article has been selected to be included in Angela DeFinis’ “Public Speaking and the Holidays” Blog Carnival. If you aren’t familiar with blog carnivals, they are a compilation of blog posts from numerous authors on a given topic that are housed on a central blog.

Enjoy this article and be sure to check out the other ones at Angela’s blog.

It’s the holiday season once again, a virtual minefield of social speaking opportunities. I can just see it now: you’re at the office Christmas party, there will probably be some sort of food served, drinks will flow, and then someone will do it – they’ll stand up and give a toast. Oh, oh – now it’s your turn to do the same thing. How are you going to do this without looking like a fool or destroying your relationship with the person(s) of honor (your boss perhaps?)

First off, get rid of any plans that you might have to say something naughty. Rarely this might go over well; however, more often than not it falls flat on its face and so just say “no”. Michael Varma is a professional speaker who has seen his fair share of toasting disasters and he’s got some advice for all of us.

Michael says that when you are giving a toast, you should always start out by introducing yourself – in a crowd of people, there are probably a bunch of folks who don’t know who you are. Also spell out how you are related to the person(s) of honor because this will help to make your toast clearer. Michael suggests that your actual toast have three characteristics: make it brief, make it bold, and then be done with it.

A toast is NOT a speech! Mark Twain probably said it best when he recommended that toasts should never be longer than 1 minute. The longer your toast, the less impact that it will have. The “air time” that you are taking for your toast belongs to everyone and you need to use as little of it as possible.

When you are giving a toast, this is not the time to be shy. You are probably talking to a noisy room in which people may be eating, drinking, and having their own side conversations. You need to speak up! Your goal should be to speak loudly enough that everyone in the room, including the folks in the back, can hear you clearly.

When you are done speaking, shut up and sit down. Yes you’ve just given a performance; however, this event is not all about you so don’t do any bowing or waving. Shut your mouth and sit down so that everyone can once again return their attention to the person(s) of honor.

If you want your toast to be memorable, then the trick is to tell a story. I must once again reemphasize a key point – keep it clean! You shouldn’t tell stories about old girlfriends at a wedding and you shouldn’t tell stories about stealing office supplies at the annual Christmas party. Instead, tell a story that shows the person(s) of honor in a good light. Oh, and keep it to under a minute.

My recommendation is to get a little sappy, a little funny, and hopefully that will be just right for a toast at any holiday gathering.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

What is the best way to become a better public speaker?  The problem with most approaches is that they take time. Too much time. A much better way to quickly improve is to find a professional speaker who is doing it right and ask them how they do it…

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A Speaker's Power Comes From Within

If you really want to connect with your audience and make an impact in their lives, then you’re going to have to discover out how to speak with power. The trick is that power is a tricky thing – you can’t touch it, you can’t buy it, you’ve got to find it and hold on to it. The good news is that I know how you can do this…

It Isn’t All About The Slides

In the quest for speaking power, all too often speakers attempt to create the very best PowerPoint slides in the vain hope that if they have powerful slides, then their speech will also have power. Sorry, it doesn’t work this way.

George Torok is a professional speaker who has spent time studying how speakers use PowerPoint slides. He’s come up with the three following observations:

1. Everybody Uses PowerPoint: one of the big problems with PowerPoint is that everyone uses it – it’s not special. No matter how good your slides are, your audience has seen similar slides like that before.
2. PowerPoint Is Easy To Use: because it’s easy to use, it’s all too easy to start to believe that your slides are the centerpiece of your presentation. This is not the case and many presenters have been fooled.
3. Good Slides Can Cover A Bad Presenter: the belief that fantastic slides can smooth over flaws in a presentation has lead too many speakers to fall flat during their presentations.

Where Does Power Really Come From?

It turns out that the power that you need in order to deliver an effective presentation comes from within you. If you believe in yourself and the message that you are delivering, then you’ll have the power that you need to give an effective presentation. Once you believe in yourself, your next job is to convey power to your audience.

Projecting Power

In order to communicate your power to your audience, you’ll need to do the following four  things:

1. Look Powerful: How you physically look to your audience is the first step in communicating your power to your audience. The simplest way to do this is to smile at your audience. This helps you to convey both trust and confidence.
2. Posture Counts: Taking the time to stand up straight. All too often we stoop over and hunch our shoulders as we focus on what we are saying. If we stand up straight we’ll be projecting power to our audience.
3. Use Your Voice: One of a speaker’s most powerful tools is your voice. In order to communicate power to your audience, you need to speak slowly and deepen your voice. Additionally, using pauses and actually saying less will allow more time for your words to sink in with your audience.
4. Your Words Count: keeping your words short and simple will allow your speech to have more power than using longer more complicated words. The harder it is for your audience to understand and comprehend your message, the more diluted your power will be.

Final Thoughts

Audiences want to be told what to do or what to believe. However, in order for a speaker to be able to accomplish this you need to be able find and use your power.  Realizing that this power does not come from PowerPoint slides is the first step.

In order to release the power that you have within yourself you need to use your appearance, your voice, and your words to convey power to your audience.  Learn to do this well and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you think of the perfect speech in your mind, what do you see? Do you see yourself up on a stage giving a speech, reaching the end, and then having everyone stand up and applaud until their hands grow tired? Nice picture. However, all too often that doesn’t happen…

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When Speakers Hear Their Own Voice, They Need To Make A Decision...

We’ve all had that moment of disbelief – you know the one, when someone recorded you saying something and then played it back to you. You listened to the voice coming out of the speaker and you did what we all do – you winced and said “No way that’s me!” However, yes it was you – as you sound to everyone but yourself. Ouch!

From that moment on, you were forever changed. Just like in that move “The Matrix“, you had taken the red pill and now you couldn’t ever turn back – you now know how your voice sounds to others.

Nancy Meyer is a national speaker and author who has spent a lot of time looking into why we sound different to ourselves than we do to others. I think that she’s solved this mystery.

Nancy says that the reason that we sound so different to ourselves has three reasons: your inner ear, your outer ear, and where your voice comes from. Of course, that’s not quite enough info for you to do anything about it. So lets dive in just a bit deeper and find out what all of this means.

• Your Inner Ear: Your speaking voice originates in the middle of your neck. You expel air which then passes through your vocal cords, gets magnified in your voice box, resonates in the cavities in your head and then the sound exits out your nose and / or  mouth. Your inner ear (the part that actually “hears” sounds) is located quite close to all of this so only you get to hear your voice as it starts out.
• Your Outer Ear: So here’s something that you may not have thought of – you don’t actually hear the sounds coming out of your mouth. If you think about this, your ears are in the wrong place to hear what’s coming out of your mouth. Instead, what happens is that the sounds that come out of your mouth shoot out, bounce off of something, and then get picked up by your ears. This means that what you are actually hearing is really the sound of your voice plus a lot of extra noises.
• Where Your Voice Comes From: Since you are creating the sounds that you speak in your throat, these vibrations end up rattling your entire head. This means that the parts of your ear that pick up sound are getting bounced around just by the very fact that you are speaking. This changes what you hear.

So this all leads to the big question: what if you don’t like the voice that others are hearing coming out of your mouth? In all honesty, there’s not a lot that you can do.

The key recommendation is that you don’t change your voice drastically – small changes are the best. You can practice with a tape recorder making changes and then playing them back. If you still don’t like what you are hearing then it may be time to go out an invest in a vocal coach. You should hear what you’ve been missing!

Have you ever hear a recording of your voice? How did it sound to you? Do you wish that you sounded different? Have you ever tried to change how your voice sounds to other? Did it work? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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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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Presenters Need To Be Careful When They Give A Toast!

So you’ve been invited to a wedding, a retirement party, or some other celebration in which friends and family are going to gather in order to honor someone. There will probably be some sort of food served, drinks will flow, and then someone will do it – they’ll stand up and give a toast. Oh, oh – now it’s your turn to do the same thing. How are you going to do this without looking like a fool or destroying your relationship with the person(s) of honor?

First off, get rid of any plans that you might have to say something naughty. Rarely this might go over well; however, more often than not it falls flat on its face and so just say “no”. Michael Varma is a professional speaker who has seen his fair share of toasting disasters and he’s got some advice for all of us.

Michael says that when you are giving a toast, you should always start out by introducing yourself – in a crowd of people, there are probably a bunch of folks who don’t know who you are. Also spell out how you are related to the person(s) of honor because this will help to make your toast clearer. Michael suggests that your actual toast have three characteristics: make it brief, make it bold, and then be done with it.

A toast is NOT a speech! Mark Twain probably said it best when he recommended that toasts should never be longer than 1 minute. The longer your toast, the less impact that it will have. The “air time” that you are taking for your toast belongs to everyone and you need to use as little of it as possible.

When you are giving a toast, this is not the time to be shy. You are probably talking to a noisy room in which people may be eating, drinking, and having their own side conversations. You need to speak up! Your goal should be to speak loudly enough that everyone in the room, including the folks in the back, can hear you clearly.

When you are done speaking, shut up and sit down. Yes you’ve just given a performance; however, this event is not all about you so don’t do any bowing or waving. Shut your mouth and sit down so that everyone can once again return their attention to the person(s) of honor.

If you want your toast to be memorable, then the trick is to tell a story. I must once again reemphasize a key point – keep it clean! Don’t tell stories about old girlfriends at a wedding and don’t tell stories about stealing office supplies at a retirement party. Instead, tell a story that shows the person(s) of honor in a good light. Oh, and keep it to under a minute.

I have always found wedding toasts to be a bit of  a challenge. There are too many ways that things can go wrong, too many people that you could end up offending. Over the course of time, I have refined and polished my wedding toast so that it goes something like this:

“Friends and family, we are gathered here to celebrate the wedding of … They are who they are because the people in this room have taken the time to shape and mold them into the people that they have become today – and for that we apologize! However, from this day forward, it will be up to them to determine together who they want to become and we wish them all the luck in doing so.”

So there you go, a little sappy, a little funny, and hopefully just right for a toast.

Have you ever had to give a toast at an event? Were you able to prepare or was it spur-of -the -moment? Have you ever seen a toast go horriably wrong? What was the result? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Presenters Use Acting Tips To Keep Their Presentations From Becoming Boring

Previously we had discussed the fact that any presentation that you give is really sort of like a one person show – if you know how to act, then you’ll be more effective.

The challenge, of course, is that very few of us have been trained to be an actor. Additionally, we tend to think of actors as being “over the top” types of performers (sorta like Heath Leger in that Batman movie).  The truth is actually much different – acting is simply knowing what to say or how to move in order to influence your audience in some way. We’d all like to be able to do that, right?

Here are five acting tips that you can start using in order to improve your next presentation.

Speak In The Moment: In order to make your presentation more powerful, you need to fine tune it to your audience and their current mood. Great actors don’t just memorize their lines, they “stay in the moment” and are constantly reacting to what’s going on in their scene. You need to be constantly reacting to your audience’s feedback and using this to modify how you present your information.

Keep It Fresh: There is the old saying that “variety is the spice of life”. This is especially true when it comes to presentations. Anything that you do for too long will start to bore your audience. Today’s audiences have very short attention spans and you need to be constantly changing your presentation in order to keep them engaged. Ways to change your presentation include emphasis, movement, volume, energy level or material being presented.

Risky Business: If you are not taking any risks in your presentations, then you are not providing a dynamic presentation – it’s going to be the same every time and that’s boring. Trying out new things, interacting with audience members, these are all things that carry an element of risk. Risk keeps things interesting for both you and your audience.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Commitment: When you decide to add some acting to your presentation, do it full throttle. The worst thing that you can do is go at it half speed. It’s your passion and your commitment that will win your audience over in the end.

Concentration Is The Key To Relaxation: If you aren’t careful and you let your mind wander, then you will end up focusing on just how nervous you are. Do what actors do: focus your mind on how you have prepared, the words that you want to say, and your audience – basically anything but your nerves.

There you have it, all of the tips that you need in order to start using the skills that actors use in your next presentation. I can’t promise that you’ll bring home a golden globe award, but the greatest complement will be if your audience can’t wait to see your next show!

How do you vary your speech to keep it interesting for both you and your audience? When was the last time that you took a risk with a presentation? What risk did you take? How do you work to relax before starting a presentation? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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We can spend all the time in the world talking about how to prepare better presentations, capture and hold your audience’s attention, create great PowerPoint slides, etc. and it will all be for naught if we forget to talk about one very important thing: your voice. I don’t know about you guys, but I really don’t spend very much time thinking about my voice – until it’s not there!

So if everything is going along fine, then you don’t really need to worry about your voice. However, if you have a big presentation coming up, that’s when things can start to get bad in a hurry. You pick the cause: weather changes, allergies, a cold or flu, no matter the cause – the results are always the same. If there is something wrong with your voice, then that’s what your audience is going to be focusing on – not what you are saying!

We all have ways of dealing with sore body parts that we can get to like an arm or a leg. How does one go about taking care of a voice that is located “in there” somewhere? It turns out that it really comes down to a list of things that you SHOULD be doing as well as another list of things that you SHOULD NOT be doing. Let’s take a look…

Fluids, fluids, fluids. In the end, having a healthy / happy voice requires that you keep your vocal cords supple. Ways to do this include drinking fluids such as sports drinks which replenish sugars, sodium and lots of other nutrients.

Of course, there is a flip side to this – you need to stop drinking some things. You can say goodbye to coffee as your presentation date / time grows nearer. Oh, the same thing goes for alcohol in any form. The reason that you have to avoid these fluids is because they act as a drying agent and that’s the last thing that your vocal cords need.

How do you start your day? I personally enjoy having a glass of orange juice. However, it turns out that orange juice has the potential to irritate your throat. Dang! The OJ has to go on presentation day.

If you start to come down with something as your big presentation day approaches, there are some defensive activities that you can start to do. Adding a humidifier to your bedroom will help to lubricate your throat while you are sleeping. Additionally, you can spend some time in a steamy shower in order to sooth your entire respiratory system.

Once you get your fluids taken care of, you need to make sure that you don’t screw things up now. This means that you need to avoid clearing your throat because this will end up irritating your vocal cords.

If you feel yourself starting to become hoarse there are a couple of things that you can do. Try to gargle with warm salt water a few times during the day. Additionally, you should start to drink herbal tea with honey in order to fight back the hoarseness.

Be very careful about doing what we all normally do: popping a throat lozenges that contains menthol or some other anesthetics. The reason that these are so bad for you is that they numb your throat and this will hide your body’s warning signs that it’s time to stop using your voice.

One final recommendation: during your actual presentation you should do your best to keep your tone at a conversational volume level. By doing this you will be able to avoid overexerting your vocal cords.

Have you ever been in danger of losing your voice just before you were to give a big presentation? What did you do to save your voice? Did it work? How did you sound when you gave the presentation? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Speakers Can Use Dramatic Reading To Make Their Presentations Memorable

In the bag of skills that a public speaker needs to have, there is one that is not used very often: dramatic readings. Now just because we don’t use it very often, does not mean that we shouldn’t be using it more. Remember that anything that we can do to make our presentations stand out from everything else that our audience gets assaulted with each and every day will help to make it more memorable (in a good way) and improves the chances of our message “sticking” with our audience. The big questions are when should I use a dramatic reading as a part of my presentation and just how do I go about doing it?

The first question is actually the easiest to answer. A dramatic reading from a book is a great way to do two things: add color to  a presentation and add credibility to WHAT you are talking about. Published authors often have taken a great deal of time to get their words just right. Opening a book during your presentation and reading their words to your audience allows you to capture the time and effort that they put into creating their ideas and enrich your speech by doing so. Additionally, in order to motivate your audience to make a change or to take some action (the purpose of any presentation), you need to convince them that you know what you are talking about. By reading a passage from a published book perhaps written by a well known figure in the field that you are talking about, you can reinforce your words by having them appear to support your position.

Now the big question is how best to do a dramatic reading. The problem here is that most of us have very little experience with either listening to or actually doing dramatic readings from a book. That’s why we can turn to Mark McLaughlin who is an author of horror books. Mark is often called on to give speeches that contain, what else?, dramatic readings. He probably does this much more than the rest of us ever will; however, this also means that he can teach us a lot about how to do them correctly.

Here are Mark’s top 10 tips for how we can all do dramatic readings as a part of our presentations correctly:

1. Don’t Read From The Book: Books are great for sitting by a fire and reading. They are quite poor to read from during a presentation: their print is too small, it can be hard to find your place, and turning the page is awkward at best. Instead, copy the pages and blow them up.
2. Use Voices: Something that you may not realize is that we all make different characters sound different in our head when we read a book. When you are reading from a book, you need to use a different voice for each character so that your audience doesn’t get confused about who is talking or thinking.
3. Prepare Using A Rainbow: Mark up what you are going to be reading using many different colored highlighters. This way you will automatically remember to switch voices when you are reading.
4. Characters Are More Than Just Voices: Different characters can have different mannerisms and these can be useful when you are reading their lines. Smokers should have a raspy voice, nervous characters should speak quickly, etc.
5. Try Out Different Voices: You won’t get it right the first time so be sure to experiment with different voices in order to find the one that will capture the character the best for your audience.
6. Practice, Practice, Practice: This is always a good idea and it’s even more critical when doing a dramatic reading. McLaughlin recommends that you practice at least a dozen times and even more if you feel that you need it.
7. The Power Of A Friendship: Nothing beats live feedback. Try your presentation out on friends and see what kind of feedback they give you. This can be worth its weight in gold.
8. Look At Your Audience While Reading To Them: You can’t do this all the time of course; however, eye contact is always a good idea.
9. Have A Panic Button Ready: Look, anyone can lose their place while doing a reading – it happens to all of us. If this happens to you, have a question about the reading ready to ask an audience member. Use the time that they are speaking to find your spot again, mark it with a finger, thank the audience member for their answer and then continue on.
10. Enjoy Yourself!: Dramatic readings are done all to rarely in presentations today. The fact that you have been willing to step up, practice, and then deliver a dramatic reading shows that you are better than the average speaker. When your audience sees that you are enjoying yourself, then they will get into it also and your presentation will be your best ever!

Have you ever been to a presentation where the speaker used a dramatic reading? How did it turn out – was it well done or half-baked? Have you ever had a chance to use a dramatic reading as a part of one of your speeches? Did you practice enough? How did it turn out for you? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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What Works Well For Webconferencing?

So is delivering a presentation over the web easier or harder than delivering it to a live audience? Just to make sure that we’re all on the same page, let’s agree on what webconferencing is (hint: it’s not sending your PowerPoint presentation to someone via email). For our purposes, we can define webconferencing as a way to give a presentation, hold an important meeting, or even train employees without requiring the people participating to have to travel. Thanks to phone bridges, PowerPoint decks, and high-speed Internet connections this is now a viable way to deliver presentations.

The technology is pretty slick – you can quickly come up to speed on how to technically DO a webconference. The real trick is to find out how to do a GOOD JOB of presenting using this new technology. Dave Zielinski recently had a chance to talk with Laura Vizzusi and David Goad who work for Cisco’s WebEx division. WebEx rules this space on the web so these guys really know what they are talking about. Here are their top four suggestions for webconferencing public speaker wanna be’s:

1. Prep, Prep, Prep: Just because the medium has changed, does not mean that the rules have changed. Even through you don’t have to travel to give the presentation and since, possibly, the audience won’t be able to actually see you, some people will be tempted to slack off. DON’T DO IT! You can still put your audience to sleep if you don’t deliver a polished presentation.
2. It’s All In The Voice: How you sound is even more important in a webconference than it is when you are presenting in person. Whatever you do – don’t use a speakerphone! You will sound far away and your voice will fade in and out as you move your head. DO use a headset mic if you can. In fact, stand up and present if at all possible – this will allow you to project your voice better and will allow you to use the full range of your voice.
3. That’s Why They Call Them Visual Aids: Since your audience won’t be able to look at you, they will be spending more time looking at your slides. Make sure they are worth looking at! You are also going to have to keep your slides moving right along in order to keep your audience’s attention. Slide transitions and the liberal use of photographs are always good ideas.
4. Welcome To The 21st Century: Most webconferencing tools come with a variety of bells and whistles that allow you to interact with your audience during your presentation. Used poorly, you’ll tick everyone off. Used correctly, this is a great way to dynamically engage everyone in what you are saying. Tools like interactive polls and on-screen annotations can capture and hold everyone’s attention.

Don’t forget one of the biggest benefits of webconferencing is that it is very easy to record your presentation. This is a great way to give a presentation once and then use it over and over again…

How have the webconferences that you’ve given gone so far? Do you find that they are harder or easier than presentations given in person? Do you use the fancy new technical features that come as a part of webconference tools? Do you feel that you do a better or worse job of keeping your audience’s attention? Leave some comments and let me know what you are thinking.

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