New York Executive Speech Coach » speech writing

Public speaking error # 17

SimsBeth — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:43:46 +0000

Just sat through a talk with a long and useless introduction concerning what the speaker had considered saying but decided against, how he stumbled upon his approach to the topic, and finally, the five elements of it he planned to discuss. I still didn’t know a thing about his point of view.

Ten minutes of wasted time. Ten minutes burning up our attention spans. Ten minutes that predisposed us to think him an idiot. Ten minutes of extraneous information that had us wondering when it would end before it actually began.

There is value in going slowly, and sometimes it’s necessary. For instance, a commencement address: “Madame President; distinguished members of the board of overseers; magnificently robed and plumed faculty members; generous alumni gloating on the dais; bankrupt parents roasting in the sun; and last but not least, pampered and hung-over graduating seniors dressed in polyester caps and gowns: it is indeed an honor and a privilege to be your commencement speaker.” (By this time, if you speak slowly, you only have to write a few more paragraphs and your job is done.)

But commencement is not a hard-nosed business occasion. It’s a ceremonial occasion, where this kind of verbosity earns you another stripe on your academic sleeve. In the boardroom, it will earn you impatient stares, a reputation for pomposity, and a seat on the back bench of the analytics office.

It is true that we get to know the speaker as he warms up, and ad hocs his way into his subject. But how much better for him to leap into the fray, and demonstrate who he is and how he thinks by taking a big bite out of the subject right up front.

Then, once he’s captured us, he can let up on the pedal and give us a little personal story so we don’t have to think for a while, before he takes us up another steep slope. Everyone listens better when something unexpected happens.

The guy I saw got to the end of his rambling ten minute opening, and then told us he was going to talk for 50 minutes. I looked at my watch. “Holy shit,” I thought, and looked at my watch. “The cafeteria’s gonna be closed.” I couldn’t do anything about it, since I was in the front row squeezed between VIPs. He went on for another 60 minutes. I listened intermittently, waiting for the sound of his voice to cease.

There is no such thing as a speech that is too short, unless you’re a comedian on a roll and in the zone. Our first job is to get attention, and our second job is to keep it ’til the end. Speaking is the opposite of life. In speaking, you want the end to come sooner rather than later.

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.

Public Speaking: The professorial Approach

SimsBeth — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:10:09 +0000

It just so happens I have two clients who talk too much in public. Both are extremely bright, and both strive to speak as though they were writing lapidary prose.

When in the act of public speaking, they challenge themselves to cover all the bases, approach the topic from all sides, and construct clause-laden sentences in the workshop of the mind before putting their polished utterances on the market for others to consider.

Each of them has been asked to stop it – to talk like a regular guy, get to the point, stop hemming and hawing. None of their colleagues could quite put a finger on the problem, but the feeback flung in their general direction was, “You talk too much. It takes you too long to say stuff, and it’s hard to follow you.”

It’s as if both of them imagine themselves back in graduate school giving their oral arguments for their terminal degrees. The number of “whereases, howevers, neverthelesses, and consequentlys” puts them at a disadvantage in the boardrooms where they often present. Senior executives want the executive summary, which they will probe with questions should their antennae sense something amiss.

Theirs are cases of style blocking substance. An impulse to wordiness obscures the meaning of their words. They both do too much public speaking and not enough private thinking. Or, they’ve done their thinking but cling to a professorial style that puts their business colleagues on edge.

Simple arguments stated simply do not necessarily lack sophistication. In fact, they may be the hardest to create. You have to know what you want to say, and say it as clearly as possible, parting with all extraneous information, boiling it down, and talking in plain old English.

The last mile in high stakes presentations

SimsBeth — Wed, 25 May 2011 15:48:50 +0000

You know the saying in the telecom biz. You can have the greatest fiber optic network in the world, but if you don’t have the fiber running from the main pipe to every house on the block, you ain’t got nothin’. In other words, you gotta have the last mile.

Same thing with high stakes presentations. You can have the greatest speech or presentation you have ever been able to capture on slides or page. You can rehearse your butt off, be familiar with the room where you will present, have a dress rehearsal in that very space, and know exactly who is in the audience — and still you can have a nightmare experience.

It happened to a client of mine — a president of a university. We worked on his speech, pushed several drafts through his own recalcitrant communications office, rehearsed at the site of the big event, and then … and then …

On the night of the big event, someone put the pages of his speaking notes into plastic sleeves, and left them on the lectern for him. When he arrived at the lectern, and found his text sealed in plastic, and his audience waiting for him to begin, he faced two problems. One, he had difficulty seeing through the plastic because of the lighting, and two, the plastic was slippery, so the pages kept dropping to the bottom lip of the lectern, where he couldn’t read them.

As a result, he was unable to pick his eyes up and look at his audience. Worse, he had to lean over the lectern and run his finger along the lines of text so that he could decipher the words.

He did a yeoman’s job. He was good enough for the occasion. But he was not what he could have been, not what he was in rehearsal.

He didn’t have the last mile.

The wonders of vehemence

admin — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:42:36 +0000

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.

The autobiography of a speech coach

simswny — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:43:21 +0000

It is Sunday afternoon. My wife is away for a week at a poetry summit in California. No food in the fridge, dishes in the sink, bed unmade. Too much TV.

My daughter is engrossed in the music scene of Brooklyn, hard at work on her new CD. My parents are unhappy in their new retirement home. My sister and I are powerless to make them happier. My Blackberry doesn’t work. I can’t send emails from my home computer. My car had a flat tire last Monday. My lawn is brown. I never know how much money I’ll make. Should I continue?

Nevertheless, I am excited about my work. I have the chance to work with scientists on their scientific presentations, with CEOs on their leadership communication, with consultants on how to move the mountain of client opinion, and with all kinds of people who want to grow and expand their personal and professional horizons.

I have plans for a public seminar, a new book, and I love my office almost as much as I like my home. My assistant is fabulous. All this is good.

I just need to learn how to walk the tight rope between things as they are and things as I’d like them to be. I need to keep my eye on the prize and not look down at the terrifying things I imagine will happen if I misstep.

I am told that I should live in the present moment, and I try. But I find myself lost in thought a good deal of time.

Maybe that’s a start. To find myself lost is to begin to figure out where I am—which is somewhere in thought, somewhere in my head.

I want to be in other people’s heads, not my own. Which means I have to get busy and do stuff that’s interesting.

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.

Your speechwriter: How to get the most out of him

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:18:53 +0000

A good speech has a voice. It sounds like an individual—specifically, the individual who is delivering the speech. It should not sound like the speechwriter.

And yet us speechwriters are often given only a brief time with the speaker to determine what she wants to say. From that brief meeting, we are expected to extract the message she wants to impart, and the sound, tone, texture, and rhythm of her verbal personality.

So, if you are a speaker, and you are working with a speechwriter in New Jersey or New York, (or anywhere else for that matter) how can you maximize the few minutes you have with your speechwriter?

Be prepared for the meeting with the speechwriter. Know the DNA of what you want to say. You can come up with this DNA by imagining that an audience member is considering coming to hear you, and asks, “What’s your speech about?” You’ve got less than 30 seconds to tell her. What do you say? Your answer should be one sentence long, and should contain the benefit that the listener will derive. For instance, President Obama might have said about his speech on race relations, “ My speech urges every American to have the difficult conversations about race so that our country can move beyond the historical divisions that have plagued our nation.”

Next, in order to help your speechwriter (and yourself), figure out the question to which your information is the answer. At the heart of what you will say is the information that you have mastered and your own interpretation of its meaning. But you can’t just dump the info on your listeners. You’ve got to figure out what emotional concern drives their interest in your topic. What question would the audience have to have in mind in order to make that information a fascinating, provocative question? Believe it or not, you have to spend about a third of your speech asking the question—even more if they are not that familiar with the topic or the issues. For instance, when trying to raise new rounds of venture capital, a biotech president might have to answer the question, “Why do we have to spend millions of dollars creating a new formulation for the molecule when it already demonstrates efficacy in its current formulation?”

Finally, give your speechwriter plenty of time to ask questions. Encourage him/her to get to know you. Take her out to lunch. Have a glass of wine with him. He or she needs to soak up who you are, what you care about, how you think, what you like and dislike, and your personal verbal style.

Only by inviting your speechwriter into your inner circle will you get what you want and need—a speech that captures not only what you want to say, but how you want to say it.

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.

Creative Public Speaking and Presenting

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:43:53 +0000

Frank Kern is senior vice-president of IBM Global Business Services. On May 19, 2010, he released a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value. Are you ready for this? According to that survey, today’s CEOs identify “creativity” as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.

“That’s creativity—not operational effectiveness, influence, or even dedication. Coming out of the worst economic downturn in their professional lifetimes, when managerial discipline and rigor ruled the day, this indicates a remarkable shift in attitude.”

Creativity is also important in public speaking and presenting, and in the training and coaching of speakers too.

Many years ago, I heard Kathleen Hall Jamieson speak about the future of public speeches. She predicted that politicians and business leaders would be using music in their presentations—not just as preludes and postludes, but as integral parts of content, just as movies use scores.

We haven’t seen that yet.

And in the realm of training, the standard approach to developing people as speakers is a small group seminar that lasts a day or two in which people give presentations, see themselves on videotape, get feedback, and try to make adjustments.

This is fine, but it needs to be re-invented. Too much training is prescriptive and not creative. Most students are told how to organize their talks, how to design their PowerPoints, and how to stand still and use their hands.

We need to create highly effective speakers and presenters who will become creative speechwriters and presentation developers. And to do that we must create highly effective training and coaching programs in speechwriting and delivery skills.

However, I must admit that when I contemplate doing something new and creative with clients, I get scared. The new and unknown is hard to sell. People resist it. I don’t feel as confident as I would delivering the tried and true.

I feel the truth in what Ghandi said:

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

I want to know how long til the “win” part.

Facts Make the Speech Writer

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:32:44 +0000

The famed defense attorney, F. Lee Bailey, was once asked what the key was to a successful case. People expected him to say a spellbinding closing statement or a good jury selection process or an impressive cross-examination of a crucial witness.

Instead his answer was “investigation”—knowing the facts of your case up and down, forward and backward.

The same holds true for a successful speech or presentation. The key is research: knowing everything about your audience, about the place where the remarks will be delivered, about everything that has led up to the planning of the event, and then tailoring a speech to those facts.

In his new book Speech*Less, Matt Latimer, a presidential speechwriter, tells the story of how he prepared a speech for President Bush to deliver on National Adoption Day.

The first thing I did [as a speech writer] was consider the audience. I pictured the president standing before a large group of adoptive parents and their kids. I thought about the portraits of presidents that people would see just outside the East Room, including a portrait of an adopted son named Gerald R. Ford and another of an adoptive father named Ronald Reagan.

And then I thought of the large pictures of George Washington that would be just to the president’s left as he spoke. George Washington had been an adoptive father too, raising two children who weren’t his by birth. (They were the children of his wife, Martha.)

Searching the internet, I found a letter that Washington wrote to his stepson while he was in college, complaining about his lack of attention to his studies. (I had our researchers verify its existence.) This led to a perfect joke for President Bush. After reading the excerpt to the audience, the president said, “Come to think of it, my dad once said the same thing to me.”

I noted that Thanksgiving was approaching and so many new adoptive parents and children, including those in that room, would have the blessing of celebrating it together as a family for the first time. That thought made people cry. The president teared up. Even Mrs. Bush, who usually stood motionless while the president delivered his speeches, took an interest. She leaned forward and stole glances at the president’s note card, as if to see how this was happening.

When writing a speech, or in working with a speech writer, spend plenty of time thinking about the occasion, the audience, the location, and anything else that might give you an “in” with the audience.

Do plenty of research, on line or in a library. Ask your speech writer to do the same. Knowing the facts makes your speech more original and gives you confidence. And that feeling can make your delivery livelier, and your audience more engaged.

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.

How to work with a speech writer

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:38:50 +0000

Senator Howard Baker said that he and his speech writers had a great relationship. “They write what they want me to say, and I say what I think.”

They got along just fine.

The remark points to the essential challenge of speech writing: it needs to be done in the voice of the speaker.

This is important because the speaker will be more effective if the text of the speech is aligned, in style and substance, with the way he thinks and talks.

There are great speakers who can read anything from a page or a teleprompter and make it sound like them. President Obama is good at this, as was President Reagan.

In fact, anyone continuously in front of crowds develops a knack for reading text.

But most of us are not up at the lectern every day, and so we need a speech writer who has the ability to collaborate with us—who has a good ear for our speech patterns, and can get our thoughts into the right words.

A collaboration with a speech writer should begin with your thoughts about what you want to say and what you want your audience to think, feel, and do after hearing your speech.

Your speech writer should also explore with you the problem that you are trying to solve for your audience. Audiences like it when your speech is all about how they can solve a problem or capitalize on an opportunity.

Audiences like speeches that are short, humorous, and generously sprinkled with stories. But make sure that the humor is your own, not offensive, and takes a back seat to the point you want to make.

Similarly, the stories in the speech should be your own. A good speech writer should spend time with you talking about your life experience and pull some stories out of your memory. Of course, if your speech writer offers you a story that you can make your own, use it. Just make sure you practice enough so that it feels natural.

For some of us, the chance to speak is rare, and so it leads us to want to say everything. Your speech writer should be firm. You can only say a few things to an audience before they get dazed and confused.

Make sure your speech writer doesn’t use any big words that are undeliverable. Undeliverable is one such word. So is indomitable, which can come out as “indominabubble.”

William Safire, the great speech writer for President Nixon and columnist for the New York Times, was once asked for a synonym for indomitable and gave indefatigable. He was fired on the spot when someone nearby suggested steadfast. Safire says in retrospect that he now sees he was intransigent.

In plain language, your speaking style should never be fancier than you are.

Above all, when you deliver your speech that someone has helped you prepare, you must feel comfortable with it and sound natural. The pleasure of listening to a good speech depends on the connections that can exist between the elements of the occasion.

First, there is the speaker and the speech. They need to connect.

Then, there is the speaker and the audience. The speech should help the speaker create that connection, and not get in the way.

And within the speech, your own thought should connect with the writer’s language deployed to express it.

Finally, the speaker needs to connect with his own feelings, and rehearse enough so he can bring to the occasion, with his voice, gestures, and the vivid words of his speech writer, a full-throated belief in what he is saying.

Public Speaking Excellence: Creating an Experience

simswny — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:42:31 +0000

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.”

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.