Here’s a gem from YouTube. A candid video of a very youthful Eric Schmidt in his early days as a manager at Sun Microsystems practicing his public speaking skills in a company-sponsored training class:

He’s being trained on how to better present and also how to handle hostile questions from an audience. His content is a nice insight into the Sun culture of the day.

You can hear him address the issue of criticisms he’s overpaid at 12:26 (before his Google billions) which gets a round of applause. This is followed at 13:00 by his self-assessment of his abilities as a public speaker and it’s apparent how open he is to honest critiques from the audience.

Wonderfully instructive session that shows how senior managers can benefit from presentation skills training.

This according to sales pro Frank Rumbaskus in Chapter 7 of his new book Selling SUCKS — mastery of public speaking skills will benefit any salesperson.

He lists some of the benefits as they specifically relate to sales:

• Your prospects will hear you clearly and never ask you to repeat yourself.
• Your louder voice will enable you to practice better body language, such as leaning back when talking with prospects.
• You will learn how to get your point across with fewer words, thereby appearing more profound.
• Your speech will slow down to a level that creates the appearance of supreme confidence.
• You will begin to naturally add pauses to your speech, again creating the appearance of confidence, because pausing conveys that you know you have their interest and are not afraid of losing it.
• You’ll practice better and more trustworthy eye contact with prospects.
• You will learn the proper posture and stance to make the best impression if you happen to make any presentations while on your feet.
• You’ll learn how to move about in the most effective way when addressing multiple people.
• You’ll learn how to divide your eye contact when addressing multiple people.

He also claims that having the ability to present in public increases your status and your value in the eyes of your prospects and customers.

When you speak at an event, whether it’s big or small, you automatically establish yourself as the leader and the person with the highest status in that room. Decision makers who have the ability to buy from you will recognize this and will tend to seek you out. They will value your advice and opinions far more than they do those of average salespeople who do not put themselves in leadership positions by speaking publicly.

No matter if you sell Fuller Brushes, waterless cookware or are just peddling ideas, this advice is right on.

Why do more people with law degrees than MBA’s run for President? Is there something about the cut-and-thrust of the courtroom which prepares a person for politics, versus an ability to deliver an annual report or run a PowerPoint presentation?

I’ve always been impressed by senior managers whose skills at the podium light up an audience. Being a success as a presenter, however, does not guarantee advancement in business. Many top managers were clearly promoted in spite of, not because of, their public speaking abilities. So it is worth an executives time to invest in improving their rhetorical skills?

Michael Skapinker argues in his column in Tuesday’s FT that chief executives should learn the art of oratory. He hits the nail on the head when he highlights the fact that lawyers are better prepared for politics because they are used to being interrupted (by the judge or opposing counsel) when they speak in public. CEO’s, on the other hand, might give plenty of presentations, but no-one answers back when they speak. Poor preparation for Prime Minister’s Question Time, what?

Skapinker notes the contrast, on a panel at Davos last week, between Tony Blair and his new employer, James Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase as being “like watching the new Australian Open Champion…warming up with a ballboy.”

View the first 5 minutes of the opening panel at Davos and judge for yourself if Skapinker is being too harsh:

But, again, why should CEO’s bother to improve in this area?

Chief executives are there to do, not speak - to make decisions, conclude deals, damp down crises. (But) if you are going to speak on so many platforms, you might as well do it properly.

So, as always, the advice is deceptively simple:

• When you present on a podium, keep it simple and keep it concrete
• Avoid abstract proclamations

Simplex sigillum veri.

Canadian Toastmaster and award-winning speaker and speech evaluator Andrew Dlugan has compiled a fantastic list of Public Speaking Blogs. He currently lists 75 blogs which cover a wide range of topics: speech delivery, visual presentation design, speechwriting, humor, personal development, and interpersonal communication.

I’m honored that Professionally Speaking is included in the list.

He includes a link to a sample posting for each blog. There’s also a useful OPML button at the end to allow you to import all 75 blogs into an RSS reader in one step (this is a little tricky. If, like me, you use Bloglines, first save the OPML file, then use [Edit] [Import Subscriptions] to load all the RSS feeds into a single folder.)

Andrew is actively soliciting more Public Speaking bloggers to contact him and have their blog added to his list.

Useful Video Critiques

Andrew’s blog has other great content. I especially like his video critiques of various speeches. These use YouTube videos to allow you to see the speech being delivered, then, in true Toastmaster style, a thoughtful evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each speaker. I especially liked his critique of Steve Jobs’s well-known Stanford Commencement Address and Al Gore’s talk at the 2006 TED Conference.

Thanks, Andrew, for a great resource for all speakers!

Great series on public speaking by Aliza Sherman!

Part 1: Public Speaking to Market Your Business
Part 2: Finding Gigs.

Hard-nosed executives think ’storytelling’ dilutes their message. They see it as ‘acting’, as being somehow less than authentic with an audience.

Nothing is further from the truth.

So gather round people wherever you roam; draw closer; are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. This is a tale of a filmmaker, Peter Gruber, whose really good article in the December Harvard Business Review reveals the Four Truths of the Storyteller.

Obviously, the corporate storyteller has nothing to do with the Gandalf figure above, or the ‘nighty-night’ bedtime stories we tell our children when they go Up The Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire. No. But there’s a lot of this cultural baggage around ‘telling stories’ that the executive communicator needs to overcome.

Gruber is an experienced executive and filmmaker (he produced The Color Purple and Midnight Express) ideally situated to distill the essence of good storytelling into a business setting. His HBR article does this by discussing Four Truths.

One: Truth to the Teller

Authenticity is crucial for the storyteller. His story must be congruent with his tongue, feet and wallet. He must show and share emotion. This requires vulnerability, or what my friend Lee Glickstein calls relational presence. The good news is you can practice being in relationship just like you practice your golf swing. And people on a podium who don’t practice this as often as they should are as embarrassing as any duffer on the green.

Gruber tells us that the main challenge for the corporate storyteller is to appeal to the listener’s emotions as well as their logical minds:

He must enter the hearts of his listeners, where their emotions live, even as the information he seeks to convey rents space in their brains.

One way to connect is to use what ad-meister Roy H. Williams calls Magic Words:

Learn to choose words whose unconscious associations will accelerate your message: “I stepped into lemon sunshine that was vivid, startling and bright.” In that short sentence, one tart word, “lemon,” added the sparkle. Had I written, “I stepped into the bright yellow sunshine of a summer’s day,” the oatmeal droning of an unthinking writer would have only just begun.

Two: Truth to the Audience

Gruber counsels executives to research the audience and understand what his listeners know about, care about, and want to hear. Beyond presenting facts that will satisfy the intellectual needs of a particular crowd, the speaker must, again, get the emotional arc right. One way to do this is tell the story in an interactive fashion helping people see themselves as the hero of the story. Make the ‘I’ in your story become the ‘we’.

Three: Truth to the Moment

This moment is different from any before and this
moment is different it’s now.
The Incredible String Band – This Moment

Never tell a story the same way twice. The context is always part of the story. The challenge, especially for a CEO, is to tell the same story over and over again and make it sound fresh each time.

Jack Welch does not mince words when recalling what a challenge this is:

Like every goal and initiative we’ve ever launched, I repeated the No. 1 or No. 2 message over and over again until I nearly gagged on the words. I tried to sell both the intellectual and emotional cases for doing it. (Jack: Straight from the Gut, p. 109)

Four: Truth to the Mission

The job of the corporate storyteller is to capture the mission in a story that evokes powerful emotions and wins the assent and support of his listeners.

In Summary

What makes a good presentation? It’s something beyond the PowerPoint your graphics wizards can cook up. It’s beyond the facts your investor relations and corporate communications department can load you up with. It’s beyond the supporting videos and carefully orchestrated cameo appearances your marketing and PR guys fund.

At the end of the day it’s as simple as your ability to tell a story.

Are you sitting comfortably?

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

Winston Churchill

Rebecca Knight, writing on modern philanthropy in the Weekend Financial Times, highlights Gilbert Maurer, the former Hearst Corporation COO who noticed something odd about bright college graduates he encountered:

They could write okay, but they couldn’t articulate,” he recalls. “If ever they had to give a presentation, it was ‘like’ this, and ‘you know’ that. I called it verbal landfill.

His response was to fund the Maurer Professorship, an endowed chair of speech and rhetoric, at his alma mater, St Lawrence University, a small, private liberal arts college in upstate New York.

“Even if a St Lawrence graduate – whether an economics major, a biologist or a philosopher – is able to express himself just 10 per cent better [than his peers] it will be a worthwhile endeavour,” he says.

The St. Lawrence School for Communication Arts offers classes in Advanced Public Speaking; Argumentation and Debate; Interpersonal Communication; Gender and Communication; Communication Theory; Native American Oral Traditions; American Public Address; Rhetoric of Social Movements; Ritual Studies and Presidential Campaign Rhetoric. (There’s no apparent connection between the last two courses - although Presidential campaigns are as filled with ritual as any shamanic rite.)

Specific course descriptions show the depth of the studies:

211. Advanced Public Speaking.
Intensive study of the principles and practices of researching, organizing, writing, delivering and criticizing persuasive speeches. Students employ contemporary theories of persuasion to analyze a variety of rhetorical situations. Students construct persuasive speeches for different speaking situations in order to develop critical and practical skills.

326. American Public Address
A study of American history through examination of the speeches of spokespersons for social, political, legal and religious institutions and movements. From Thomas Jefferson to George Bush, from Susan B. Anthony to Phyllis Schlafly, from George Wallace to Martin Luther King Jr.: a study of the impact of rhetorical strategies upon ideas and events and of ideas and events upon rhetorical strategies.

The school website also references a fascinating resource: the Silva Rhetoricae guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric.

Congratulations to the Maurer family for this much needed correction to the, you know, persuasiveness of American youth, like.

Scott Hammond, the founder of Momentum Creation, is a professional speaker, and a businessman with 30 years of marketing experience.

Scott was born in Emmitsburg, Iowa and grew up in San Diego before moving to Humboldt County, California.

As a father of nine children with a 30-year, award-winning background in radio, newsprint and television medias, Scott is uniquely qualified to offer a balanced perspective on family and career achievement.

Scott uses a comfortable, personal speaking style to motivate, inspire, and train people toward positive personal change.

Scott resides in McKinleyville, California with his wonderful wife Joni and seven of their children.

Scott’s blog Father Speak focuses on Fathering and the Family. I missed the opportunity to interview Scott at one of the Pro-Track meetings. So I employed my new handy-dandy telephone microphone and talked to Scott on the phone at his home in Eureka. To hear our conversation, click on the podcast icon below.

 

 Interview: Pro-Track Profile - Scott Hammond [6:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I spent the weekend at the annual ‘Camp NSA’ training program held at the headquarters of the National Speakers Association in Tempe, Arizona. This workshop takes future Presidents of the regional Chapters in the USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia through an intensive consideration of what’s involved in serving as President of the Board of Directors of a Chapter. I’ll be the 2008-09 President of the Northern California Chapter. It’s been fascinating to hear discussions on subjects such as financial planning; fundraising; program development; membership building and retention; conflict resolution and the mechanics of holding successful Board meetings.

One of the skills a good Chapter President cultivates is communicating the value of joining this organization to potential members interested in the business of speaking.

I realized I had a unique opportunity to ask my fellow Chapter Presidents-in-waiting at the event what attracted them to NSA, what’s the value in being a member and why, in fact, someone who is involved in the speaking, training, workshop facilitation or speechwriting business should consider joining the National Speakers Association.

The voices on the podcast are, in order, those of Naomi Rhode, CSP, CPAE who is the Chair of the Camp NSA program and a past National President of NSA; Manny Diotte, NSA Heart of Texas; Jennifer Powers, NSA Oregon; Glenn Ray, NSA Ohio; Ria Botzler, NSA New Mexico; Steve Mertz, NSA Colorado; Jeanette Nyden, NSA Northwest; Alex Ramsey, NSA North Texas; Myra Corrello, NSA New Orleans; Debra Burrell, NSA New York City; Ted Rogers, NSA Phoenix and - last but not least - the irrepressible Vinny Verelli, NSA Georgia.

To hear their comments, click on the podcast icon below.

If you’re inspired to join the National Speakers Association, or just want to find out more, contact your local Chapter or click here.

 

 Interviews: Voices of NSA [5:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download