New York Executive Speech Coach » public speaking training ny

Public Speaking: From the State of the Union to the Campaign Trail

SimsBeth — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:09:25 +0000

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.

Sims Wyeth & Co. offers Training the Speaking Voice

SimsBeth — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:58:04 +0000

Client facing skills are the skills of a dynamic and purposeful conversationalist. The medium of conversation is the voice, and as Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, or at least a large part of it.

A speaking voice that lacks clarity and expression can undermine the success of an otherwise bright and talented individual. And when there is a regional or foreign accent present, the challenge can be even greater.

Sims Wyeth & Co. provides voice and speech training for executives and professionals of all stripes who need to have their voice and speech do justice to their knowledge and professional abilities.

The process begins with a diagnosis of the clients’ needs. A curriculum is then developed to address those needs, light homework is provided, and teacher and student meet regularly to address those speech habits that require improvement.

The method emphasizes “the whole voice.” In private and group instruction, clients learn that the voice is a wind instrument. They learn to strengthen the breath stream, open the back of the throat, release the jaw, and expand their verbal expressiveness, so that the speakers’ logic is more evident, and their personal presence more appealing.

The method also helps speakers improve their diction. Physical exercises requiring the student to increase the mobility of the tongue and lips can change the speech and vocal habits of a lifetime. Drills and cold readings challenge the speaker to use greater range in pitch, volume and speed, which can lead to greater confidence and the ability to be more assertive. The physical change can give birth to a psychological change.

Course materials include written exercises, and digital sound files for student practice.

About the instructor

Sharon Wyeth is a veteran voice and speech coach to executives in high tech, pharmaceuticals, professional services, theater and other industries. She is the former head of the Voice Department at Actors and Director’s Lab, then part of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

“My goal is to bring out the best in my clients,” says Sharon, “which means insisting that they speak with confidence, conviction, and clarity without sacrificing what makes them unique.”

She holds a B.A. degree with honors from Harvard University and an M.F.A. with distinction, from Hunter College, City University of New York.

General areas of study:

1. Breath control

2. Clarity of articulation and accent reduction

3. Expressiveness, i.e. pitch, volume, speed, inflection

4. Alignment: an area where qualities of vocal expression are aligned with intention. For example, clients often need to sound “enthusiastic” or communicate “confidence” in their products.

Training the speaking voice

SimsBeth — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:28:07 +0000

In her work with clients, our voice and speech coach Sharon Wyeth often works with people who are soft-spoken.

As she introduces her voice and speech students to breathing techniques that strengthen the voice, she finds it necessary to differentiate between volume, projection, and intensity—three words that at first glance appear to be synonymous—but upon closer scrutiny have useful and distinct shades of meaning.

Volume implies loudness, or number of decibels. However, we’ve all encountered deranged people on the streets who have loud voices. And any sane person who is consistently loud, no matter the social circumstance, will have difficulty building a trusting relationship with an audience of any size. So loudness is sometimes necessary for an effective vocal presence, but certainly not sufficient.

Good presentation skills require adequate decibels, but they also need the voice to project to its intended listeners. This means it must carry the intention to connect with those it seeks to influence. It must be suitable for the environment, appropriate for the audience, and couched in a discriminating awareness of the occasion. It is volume moderated by calibrated intention.

Finally, in addition to volume and projection, a highly effective voice has intensity. Sharon defines intensity as the expression of emotion, or conviction. Intensity implies belief, confidence, and intellectual certainty. Intensity has energy, a sense of urgency and excitement.

The words we use to describe a good speaking voice, one suitable for highly effective presentations and speeches, are similar to those we use to describe music. As we train the speaking voice to be stronger, we increase its musicality, and thus expand its capacity to hold attention and influence the thoughts and feelings of others.

The Ultimate Presentation Skill

SimsBeth — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:11:19 +0000

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.

Presentation Skill #43: Begin with the backstory

SimsBeth — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:21:30 +0000

When you send an e-mail to a friend and ask a question such as, “Are you coming to get the bikes?” and then two days later you get his email in response saying, “Yes,” and your original email is not visible, then you probably have no idea what your friend is talking about. You’ve forgotten that you sent the email. You need to be reminded.

The simple old-fashioned way to do this is to write, “To answer your question: Yes, I am coming to get the bikes,” or something to that effect. You have to remind the sender of the previous exchange.

Same thing when you’re updating senior execs on how things are going. If you don’t remind them about what you said last time they will have no idea what you’re talking about – they’re busy, and have too much to think about. They need to know the backstory.

So presentation skill #43 is begin with the backstory. It’s old news to you, but the senior people have been busy since they last saw you. Take them back to the material they’ve heard before. They will appreciate the update, and your news of progress will make more sense: you’ll be putting the content into context!

Presentation skill #65: Getting attention for the right reasons

SimsBeth — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:00:14 +0000

Last September, the malevolent toadstool you see in the picture on the left thrust its slimy head out of the familiar soil of my front yard. It got my attention.

I have rarely had mushrooms in my garden, and never a toadstool with an orange stem and a phallic tip topped by a red pimple on its nosecone.

I remain horrified by the sight of it, and worried about the malicious conspiracy transpiring under ground. What other alien life form is going to come out of the earth under the hydrangeas?

Sharon and I washed our hands after we touched it, but half an hour later, we still had to scratch an alarming epidemic of itches that popped up in unmentionable anatomical places.

An otherwise routine Saturday morning was made famous by this unexpected visitor. We will talk about it for years…but for all the wrong reasons.

Some people bring toadstools into their presentations and get attention for all the wrong reasons. They tell jokes that fall flat. They wear clothes that make them look cheesy. They talk about themselves too much. They show off, pontificate, grandstand, ham it up. They go over the time limit. They scratch in the wrong places. They mispronounce key technical or industry terms that they should know. Or they use their own technical language despite the fact that the audience doesn’t know it.

It’s good to be memorable, but only for the right reasons. Not for being outrageous, or shocking, or sensational. Rather, be memorable for your expertise, warmth, and relevance.

Don’t bring toadstools into your talk to get attention. You will quickly wear out your welcome.

Public Speaking: The story about Obama’s lack of storytelling

SimsBeth — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 13:48:53 +0000

I am usually allergic to buzzwords. When storytelling became a popular metaphor for public speaking, influence, and persuasion I began to feel a little grumpy. But I have been released temporarily from my distemper by an article in the New York Times called What Happened to Obama, by Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University and the author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”

In this article, Mr. Westen points out that Obama was elected to the presidency and given control of both houses of Congress to do the will of the people, which was to restore the rule of fair play to the American economy, and abolish the golden rule, which stipulates that he who has the gold makes the rules.

Whether you agree with the majority of the American people is not the point of the Times article, or of this post. The point is that we humans are designed to absorb information through stories. We tell ourselves stories about the past (history), stories about what’s going on in the present moment (news and commentary), and stories about the future (setting a course for a more perfect union). And, according to Mr. Westen, Obama has failed so far to tell any of these stories that he was elected to tell.

Stories have heroes and villians, but due perhaps to his conciliatory disposition, our President does not like to name names and point out culpability. He prefers a balanced approach and compromise, even though he was elected to clean up Washington.

Arthur Miller, the great American playwright, pointed out that when we elect our presidents, we are electing an archetype, a great father who will provide and protect, a hero who will create safety for us, and lead us into fights against those who mean to do us harm. In essence, said Miller, we elect a metaphorical killer, someone who is brave enough to step onto a battlefield, whether that be in the halls of Congress, the mountains of Afghanistan, or the bully pulpit of Sunday morning TV, take out our enemies, and come back with their scalps. Obama got bin Laden, but he has not taken the heads of those he was elected to neultralize (metaphorically!).

The present seems to be swarming with intractable problems. The future is a frightening blankness fraught with a range of horrific possibilities. We need and want someone to tell us a story about how we got here, how we can get out of this mess, what the future can be and how we can shape it.

I urge you to read this article. It is relevant to any speaker who is trying to get an audience to do something.

Public Speaking: Tips and tricks, or spelunking?

SimsBeth — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:10:52 +0000

Is developing yourself as a highly effective public speaker a journey into your inner recesses and resources, (what I call spelunking, which is technically the exploration of caves), or are presentation skills basically a set of techniques, tips, and tricks that anyone can master, bolt on to their exterior, and remain unchanged?

Let me think aloud. If you bolt the public speaking techniques onto your exterior, aren’t you automatically deepened by the process of using them, or at least changed in some way by the effort?

Or, if you approach presenting as a spelunker, someone who sees the task as a process of personal growth and development, do you eventually arrive at the tips and tricks, buried like treasures in the center of your being, only this time they’re growing from the inside, out?

This idea presupposes that the public speaking tips and tricks are somehow fundamental universal principles that are present in all of us, lying dormant deep inside us.

Maybe if you approach the discipline of public speaking as a set of mechanical techniques they remain just that – tools you use – due, perhaps, to your willingness and ability to see them as tools that you put down once the job is done.

But then you are changed by the knowledge that you have a new ability, a greater power to influence others through your persuasive speaking, which could very well be a self-fulfilling prophecy, since your increased sense of power will give you greater confidence, which could speed you up the steep and thorny path to career success.

However, you may use your new-found confidence to speak lies, half-truths, and ideological blather to your audiences, in which case you have improved yourself as a speaker, but not as a person.

So it all comes down to intention. You can become a better public speaker or presenter through acquiring tips and tricks, or by approaching it with the intention of using your skills for the greater good, but what will determine your personal growth is not your technique, but your purpose.

Which reminds me of this line from T.S. Eliot:

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Presenting is seducing

SimsBeth — Tue, 17 May 2011 20:02:57 +0000

Words are the fuel of courtship. Other species win their mates through a series of escalating dances, but humans use conversation.

Geoffrey Miller notes that most adults have a vocabulary of about sixty thousand words. And yet the most frequent one hundred words account for 60 percent of all conversations. Why do humans bother knowing those extra fifty-six thousand words?

So they can more effectively sort through and impress potential mates, says Miller. He calculates that if a couple speaks for two hours a day, and utters on average three words a second, and has sex for three months before conceiving a child (which would have been the norm on the prehistoric savanna), then a couple will have exchanged about a million words before conceiving a child.

That’s a lot of words, and plenty of opportunity for one of them to get offended, bored, or annoyed by the other. It’s also ample enough time to fight, make up, explore and reform. And it is long enough for them to stay together to raise a child, which is crucial since a single woman in a prehistoric environment could not gather enough calories to support herself and her offspring.

The logic of this is astonishing. Basically, Miller is saying that we are creatures biologically wired to:

1. Use language to impress potential mates.

2. Use the language of potential mates to eliminate them as contenders.

3. Use language to entertain so that men and women stay together during vulnerable pregnancies and birth.

4. Use language, therefore, to ensure the survival of the species.

The implications of this are even more astounding. If language is designed to help us pick partners, exclude those who are unsuitable, and then serve as the glue to create the future, I venture to say that our use of language, in all its forms, is the most important skill we can ever have.

We get jobs based on how we talk–how well we use words to make fine distinctions. We keep jobs the same way. And the business cultures we build, and the products and services we create, are generated by words…by the awesome, generative power of language.

Our careers depend on it. Apparently, our marriages depend on it. Our children will depend on it. And the survival of the human race depends on it.

I am language. My hands are on the wheel. My foot is on the gas. There are no brakes. Where do you want to go?

How to stop speaking too fast during your high stakes presentation

admin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:19:29 +0000

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.

Storyboarding your presentation

admin — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 20:39:11 +0000

I recently came across Lillipip, a company that creates animated videos about your product, service, or concept. Check them out.

They have a simple storyboarding template of four blank squares. In the first, you draw or paste a picture of your client in pain, along with the exclamation that’s coming out of your customer’s mouth. Nice and simple.

Then, you draw or paste a picture of the visual metaphor for your product, service, or concept. For example, a health club might visualize itself as being able to turn a couch potato into an Adonis.

In the third panel, you draw or paste a picture of your client– happy after you’ve removed the pain. Again, you also draw the exclamation that comes out of the client’s mouth.

Finally, in the fourth panel, you draw or paste a picture of you, your logo, or your product, and write one thing you want the client to do or remember.

This is good stuff for presenters too. It helps us think visually. It keeps our presentations focused on our listeners’ problems, and forces us to present solutions. It makes us think about emotions in addition to information. It encourages us to use metaphor, which is the ability to link what is new to something familiar. And finally, it demands that we have a call to action at the end of our presentation.

Plus, it helps those of us who are word people speak the language of picture people, which gives us stereophonic input into the brains of both tribes.

UPMs: The Filler Word Debate

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:00:10 +0000

Twice last week I encountered speakers with a high number of UPMs: Uhms Per Minute.

I was willing to forgive one of them. His UPMs were around 16. I wasn’t so easy on the other guy. His UPMs were around 12, but they were more disruptive.

I’m not sure why. Let me blog out loud.

The guy with the higher UPM rate was older, and the Chairman of a company. He spoke with quiet confidence at a thoughtful pace, taking his time to choose his words carefully. It was during his thoughtful moments that his UPMs came out. They were quick and discreet UPMs, like tiny bubbles of sound.

The guy whose UPM rate was about 12 was much younger, in his late 20s, and he spoke quickly. It could be that his youthful appearance and the rapidity of his speech combined to create an impression of insecurity, which was made worse by the presence of his uhms.

His UPMs seemed to be signals of anxiety, whereas the Chairman’s UPMs seemed to be quirks or eccentricities. No one could argue that the Chairman had not had a successful career. He is at the top of his industry, and at the top of his game.

I could say no such thing about the younger guy. He looked nervous, sounded nervous, and made me nervous about his ability to do the job being asked of him.

Could it be that the Chairman’s credibility could withstand the presence of 16 UPMs, while the younger guy’s relative youth and inexperience made his credibility vulnerable to the presence of a mere 12?

I think so. The Chairman would be a better speaker, and a shorter one, if he cleaned up his act. But the younger guy is going to have to find a sense of ease in front of a crowd, and that will take a whole different set of muscles.

Sims Wyeth is a 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.

Pulic Speaking Training: The power of smiling

simswny — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:08:01 +0000

Robert Zajonc (pronounced ZYE-unts) was an American social scientist who explored the interplay between feeling and thought—between emotion and cognition.

He was interested in determining which influenced the other more strongly. On balance, he came down on the side of emotion.

In one widely reported study, he found that smiling or frowning can alter blood flow to the brain as facial muscles relax or contract.

This in turn affects the parts of the brain that regulate feelings, helping induce happy or sad emotional states.

Could smiling help speakers with stage fright? I think so.

The Buddha is depicted most often with a slight smile on his face—and he had true inner peace. Little Orphan Annie knew that, “You’re never fully dressed without a smile,” and now we have the work of a renowned scientist to confirm the fact—on balance, it’s better for us when we smile.

Presentation Training: Presence of Mind

simswny — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:00:11 +0000

I spent last Thursday with Patricia Fripp, a great speech coach and friend of mine. We were at the National Speakers Association, New Jersey Chapter. I can’t get her out of my mind. She is a presence!

Someone with presence makes you pay attention. You don’t have to work hard to listen to them or watch them. In fact, you can’t help being engaged by them. Fripp is one of these people.

She does it in at least two ways: intellectual and emotional.

Fripp says interesting things in interesting ways, such as, “The enemy of the speaker is sameness.”

Then she tells you why she phrased it the way she did. She will say that the last word in your spoken sentence should pack the punch.

That’s a powerful thought, one that will change the way I talk.

To be a presence in someone else’s mind on a substantive level is a good thing. It means you have made them think, aroused their curiosity, and stimulated further dialogue.

Great conversationalists, (I am thinking of Barbara Walters, Leonard Lopate, and Dick Cavett) can carry on a dialogue on a wide range of topics. In other words, they can be present in almost any discussion.

There is more to presence than animal magnetism. We take for granted intellectual presence, yet it is the currency of success for many of our most accomplished colleagues.

Read the first blog in this series: Presentation Skills: Stay Tuned for a Month of Presence.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching 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.

Effective Public Speaking: The Cure for Stage Fright

simswny — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:12:13 +0000

I attended a great seminar this weekend at the Integral Yoga Institute in New York City. The teacher was Boris Pisman.

Boris teaches Yoga philosophy, and described one aspect of Yoga as the ability to learn how to handle anxious thoughts.

He said that Yoga makes an assumption that there is a natural state of mind in which human beings are free from anxiety.

Boris, who is a wide reader, mentioned a study called the White Bear Study (Schneider and Wegner, 1987, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.)

The paper documented the fact that, “people can, but only for brief periods of time, suppress thoughts of white bears,” Schneider said. “But on removal of suppression instructions, people are typically flooded with the thoughts they were supposed to suppress.”

“These observations suggest that attempted thought suppression has paradoxical effects as a self-control strategy, perhaps even producing the very obsession or preoccupation that it is directed against.”

Consider a person who is fearful of public speaking being encouraged not to think about the terror of facing an audience. The White Bear Study suggests that thought avoidance, or suppression, is a poor choice for such a person.

Further studies point to the “remarkable health effects” of disclosing a thought rather than suppressing it, and the negative effects of depressed people trying to suppress self-critical thoughts.

It seems we are better off entering into dialogue with a thought than we are chasing it away.

In fact, concentrated thinking about the negative thought, along with writing down descriptions of what you fear about it, and reading aloud the description, have been proven to be highly effective ways of curing anxiety disorders.

As Boris was careful to point out, these findings are not cure-alls for everyone, but they have worked for many people if the therapy is sustained for a certain length of time.

Stage fright can be a chronic anxiety for even highly successful people. These methods may prove to be helpful to those seeking to gain mastery over their fear of speaking.

What’s the Difference between a Speech and a Presentation?

simswny — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:38:59 +0000

Asked to describe a speech, I think most of us would say, “It’s a guy standing at a lectern on a stage reading from notes, a script, or a teleprompter.”

Asked to describe a presentation, we would say, “It’s somebody standing in front of a room with a screen behind her, where she’s showing visuals to explain something to the audience.”

So what’s the difference?

First, the similarities are pretty obvious. Both involve one person talking to a group of people. The people listening are sitting down, facing the speaker, and passively listening. The person speaking is working hard to say something to the listeners, and has probably worked hard to prepare her thoughts and materials.

The first difference is that we don’t see visuals in a speech. The speaker strives to paint a picture in the mind of the audience, but he’s doing it with words, not with images on a screen.

The next difference is the degree of formality. Speeches are more formal than presentations. They date back to 500 BCE and maybe even further, beyond our historical record. Great speeches have rocked the world. They are about (or should be) about big ideas, values, and concerns.

Presentations are more informal than speeches. We associate them with more technical, mundane circumstances. They have their roots in education, the military, and the practical trades, such as building and engineering. They tend to be about facts and figures.

Speeches are given to larger crowds, and therefore must to appeal to the emotions. The larger the crowd, the less complex the material should be.

Presentations are generally given to smaller groups, and therefore can be more detail-oriented. The smaller group should always be given a chance to discuss the material, ask questions, and engage with the speaker. This is not possible when thousands are listening to a speech.

Speeches are made in suits and tuxedos, presentations in shirtsleeves and slacks. Speeches require broad vision, whereas presentations often require a deep, narrow focus.

Speeches can be made to persuade or entertain, but not to inform. Presentations can do all three — inform, persuade, and entertain. Occasionally, someone gives a presentation that accomplishes all those goals simultaneously.

Just because you’re good at one, it doesn’t mean you’re good at the other. Speechmaking is a different muscle, requiring development. Likewise the informality and accessiblity of presenting can be hard for those accustomed to the lectern and the teleprompter.

CEOs and thought leaders give speeches. Managers and technical experts give presentations. Of course this is an oversimplification, but it evokes the distinction I’m making.

Someone once said ( I forget who) that the only reason to give a speech is to change the world. That’s a tall order, requiring the speaker to ratchet up her degreee of intention.

Presentations require clear thinking and organization, but do not often demand that the speaker light the world on fire–just throw a little light on the subject at hand.

Voice and Speech: The Sound of Obama

simswny — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:08:40 +0000

Whether you agree with his policies or not, you have to admit that our current President won the office in large part because of his ability to speak well.

A lot goes into speaking well. It’s a big topic. But one of the key ingredients is an appealing speaking voice.

Now, I’m NOT saying that President Obama has a PERFECT speaking voice. I’m sure most of us have a quibble here and there.

But compared to John McCain and Sarah Palin, Obama was a Caruso to their PeeWee Herman.

His sound is open and resonant, whereas both McCain and Palin have high-pitched nasal sounds.

Candidate Obama’s enunciation, for the most part, was crisp and professional. I say for the most part because he occasionally lapses into slangy sounds that, I suppose, are meant to make him sound folksy.

McCain and Palin, both impressive people, projected vocal images that were less Presidential. McCain sounded young, his squeaky tenor voice seeming less authoritative than Obama’s.

And Palin’s voice was a serious liability. Her resonance was squarely in the bones of her face and in her nose, and those sounds, coming from a strong-willed woman, are not likely to win the hearts and minds of men.

Vocal Presence is an interesting concept. It suggests that sound itself, independent from substance, can have a decisive effect on a voter’s decision to say, “Yes,” to a candidacy.

I would be interested to learn if in our history the candidate with the deeper, more masculine speaking voice was more likely to be elected.

I know it’s true about the taller candidate. If it were also true about the voice, than we would have known early in the primaries that Barack Obama was the favored candidate.

His voice speaks so loudly that it almost doesn’t matter what he says.