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. 

Most large corporations have a budget for executive education, and the question becomes, “Where do we spend the money?”

If the choice is between the intellectual/cognitive vs. the emotional/affective, choose the latter.

Reasons Why

Information metastasizes every day. New books, magazines, journals, websites, documentaries, and research are published every day of the year in every country around the globe. Information is a commodity, and too much of it is a brain killer. A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. Executives already have too much information.

Executives need better judgment, not more information. They need to make decisions and predictions based on information brought to them by trusted employees. They need to make better decisions and better predictions based on a limited amount of information. Sending them to acquire more information in an educational program is quite possibly not only a waste of time and money, but could also be damaging to the quality of the decisions the executive makes.

Information is conflicting. Consult with company A and you get one thing. Choose B and you get another. Their methods of gathering information varies, and their methods for analyzing it differs. You might as well choose either one and get to work improving your judgment.

Judgment comes from thinking about thinking. It comes from meta-cognition. The Buddhist tradition might call it mindfulness, the ability to be aware of your awareness. Executives who are not aware of their awareness, or who don’t know themselves, are dangerous to themselves and their enterprises.

Logic does not rule. Psychology rules. Those who are aware of their own awareness, mindful of their own minds, know just how illogical we are. The amount of crazy flotsam that washes up into consciousness from the seething sea of the subconscious is truly astounding. It’s a surreal cinema, and we are both director and audience. To think that the power of this reality does not rule the bulk of our lives is naïve. Most of the conversation in the world is intra-personal and goes on between our awareness and the savage, terrified imagination.

Good judgment about human psychology is powerful.

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. 

We all know speaking too fast during our high stakes moments is not good, for us or our listeners.  It makes us sound nervous, disorganized and hard to understand.

So what can we do in private to teach ourselves to slow down?

Here’s a presentation tip,  practice the following voice and speech training techniques every day:

Break your speech into breath-groups

A breath-group / is basically a phrase. /  For instance, / if I were to recite / the Gettysburg Address, / I would take a breath / at each of the following marks./

Four score and seven years ago / our fathers / brought forth / on this continent / a new nation, / conceived in liberty / and dedicated to the proposition / that all men / are created equal./

Start by whispering each phrase, and use up all your air on each phrase.  Take your time, (count at least to 3) when breathing in at the breath marks.

Don’t grab with the muscles of your throat when whispering.  Keep an open, relaxed throat so the air can stream out without any tension.

Honor every consonant

When whispering in short phrases, pronounce every syllable (every letter!) with care and love.  Lavish your attention on each little letter.   Hold the “n”s and the “m”s longer than you normally would.  If you whisper the word, “lavish,” you can stretch out the “L” the “V” and the “SH.”

Paying attention to each of the building blocks of speech will help you slow down, and will teach your tongue and lips to shape each and every element of the words you speak.

There are other voice and speech training techniques, but this is a good place to start.  Ten minutes a day is a good regimen and the beginning of your own public speaking course boot camp.   Mark a newspaper or magazine article into short phrases and whisper it, breathing at all the breath marks.

Let me know when you make progress, share the results of your next high stakes presentation, or call if you have any questions.

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