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.

At a recent meeting with a potential client, we discussed his desire to transform himself from a reader of scripts to a creator of experiences.

He said that in the old days, one gave a speech at a business symposium in order to have the text of the speech distributed to the media after the event.

Now, the speech is a video, and it goes on Youtube.  If you’re lucky, it’s interesting enough to get people to watch.  And if it’s really good, you get invited to deliver the talk at many other meetings.

A speech is always an experience for an audience.  After all, they live through it.

But an experience that is not surprising, or unexpected, or emotionally moving, is soon forgotten.  It is a plain vanilla experience, and settles to the bottom of the mind.

An experience for the audience that is novel, exciting, and memorable is what he’s after. He reminded me that we are all in the experience business.

So true.  So simple.  And so “not easy.” 

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.