Should you choose to take it, the road to success, high office, and power leads us all to the frightening slopes of public speaking—the number one fear in America.

Since the last election, we’ve seen an increased respect for the power of rhetoric, thanks to the reputation our current President earned on the campaign trail. Even his enemies concede his power as a speaker. Last night he took off the gloves, and got to his “make-my-day” moment: the upcoming election is going to be a doozy.

The president, as all of us would be, seemed a little short on saliva last night. He had dry mouth syndrome, which means his nerves were acting up. There were, after all, hundreds of people within shouting distance who hate his guts.

But he got some things off his chest. He has tried to gain the respect and cooperation of his own party, and that of his opponents, but so far, it’s been a rough road, and it’s not likely to get smoother.

The process by which public speech moves people to action is complex and mysterious, but it has something to do with lighting up neurons in our brains that want to be lit up. Public speaking is as old as our species, fresh as wet ink on newsprint, and as personal as your private business.

Public speech is personal because while it trumpets big ideas and values, it comes from the mouth of one person and goes deep into your own private intellectual and emotional synapses. You can reject it, or you can open yourself to it, but when it comes from someone you believe in, someone you trust, it’s going to take root in you, and swim in your blood stream.

So let the war of words begin. Game on! Let those who cheer for one leader enjoy their champion landing blows on the ideas and values dear to others. And let all of us, rich and poor, give thanks that it will be a war of words, and not a war of bullets.

And then, after giving thanks for our democracy, let’s hope and pray that it’s a war of reasoned, thoughtful words and not a war of slogans, clichés, and bullet-points.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.

All human societies need leadership.  A company is a micro human society, therefore all companies need leadership.

Good leaders make good companies, and good leaders are, among other things, good at communicating who they are, what they believe, and who the employees should believe they are.  In the end, the final challenge, the ultimate task of leadership is to confer an identity on those the leader leads.

For instance, did Steve Jobs do this?  Did he confer an identity on a large number of people?  I would say that he did.  If you worked for him and his company, I suspect you carried a little voice inside your head that constantly reminded you that you were an Apple person—an Apple-onian; a little voice that made you feel good about yourself.  And in your social life, at parties, when you met people, you might sweetly keep your place of work a secret, but when asked, you might feel a little flash of triumph as you revealed, “I work for Apple.”   It’s like dropping the H Bomb (the Harvard thing.)  It confers an identity on you, for good or ill.

Shakespeare’s Henry V strives for this result in his St. Crispian’s Day speech, when promising his men that they will forever be remembered and honored if they survive the about-to-happen battle of Agincourt.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

I am very interested in giving our clients a process for creating, designing, and delivering presentations that ascend the step-ladder of value-creation, moving from the bottom rung of knowledge to the highest rung of identity—which includes the ability to convey values, principles, behaviors, expectations, and all those soft intangibles that shepherd us to excellence.

Knowledge and intelligence are necessary, but not sufficient for leadership.  We need people who are capable of conferring on us an identity that will help us become our best selves.

Some of us can create such an identity for ourselves, but not for others.  Some can do it for others, but not themselves.  And some of us create destructive identities for ourselves and others.  None of us is perfect, which is why we need laws, and leadership, and cultures.  We need shaping to be at our best, and for that, we need people who are more than knowledgeable, more than intelligent.  We need them to tell us stories—about who we really are, and who we can become.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.

Just back from a trip to the West Coast, where I was working with people at the top of the food chain in terms of their cognitive intelligence.  Yale, Stanford, Notre Dame–brainiacs.  My assignment?  Help them get presence!

I skirted that word by simply saying that presence is hard to define, but we know it when we see it.  So we did not spend any time trying to define it.  Instead, we spent time trying to display it.

So far, having dismissed the foggier aspects of the topic as too obscure for our purposes, we are working on vehemence as a behavior that could lead to presence.

We’re not saying that being more expressive is the only way to have presence, but it’s a start.  To speak with vehemence makes people pay attention, which makes the speaker more of a presence in the consciousness of the listener.

I am aware of the argument that to speak with vehemence is to assert one’s truth by increasing the violence of the assertion.  But I am also aware of the unfortunate fact: if truth were self-evident, eloquence would not be necessary.

We are working on vehemence of purpose, vehemence of structure, vehemence of word choice, and vehemence of speech and gesture.  The before and after contrast was astounding.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides public speaking courses, executive speech coaching, presentation skills training, voice and speech training, speech writing, and courses that address stage fright, body language, presentation strategy, and effective use of PowerPoint, all of which contribute to greater executive presence and personal impact.