Liam Scott: ‘Corporate theatre’: Innovative techniques for getting your speaker heard and remembered

According to Scott, speechwriters are the Canadians of the business world – people don’t pay attention to us unless something goes wrong.

“A day after a speech, people may not remember what you said, but they’ll remember what they think of you.� That’s why Liam Scott prefers not to write speeches but rather to present what he calls “corporate theatre.� He’s created dramatic and successful executive communication programs as elaborate as a six-act musical play and as simple as a no-PowerPoint speech.

He has come to the conclusion that the formal speech is dying if not dead. These days, audiences put a premium on authenticity, not on ideas. “A day after a speech, people may not remember what you said, but they’ll remember what they think of you.” And if you read your speech yesterday, and used a slick TelePrompTer and hid behind your PowerPoint, they won’t think well of you today-especially if you delivered a typical corporate speech, Scott adds: “Ninety-five percent of the speeches I see read as if they were all written by the same computer.”

Of course, most speechwriters know all this is true; many CEOs know it but do nothing to enliven their message. CEOs from hidebound industries like banking, Scott says, are “anxious to be on message all the time. They feel the need to be part of the machine, even though they know the audiences aren’t buying it.” In seven years since he quit his last traditional speechwriting job to found Sugarvision, Scott has been clever and lucky enough to find corporate leaders who are interested in communicating effectively with modern audiences-and willing to take the necessary chances.

“I try to make it a little smarter,� Scott says. He took the time to show the conference how to make it smarter too, by:

What is corporate theatre?

The typical corporate event is a pep rally with the theme “Go Big” or “Pump It Up.” Scott’s productions are often much more elaborate.

To wit: He created a six-act musical play for a meeting of car dealers in Las Vegas. The play, which involved a chorus girl and the ghosts of the Rat Pack, interspersed thematically and creatively supported executive presentations about the need for car companies to rise from the middle to the top of their industry.

Not all of Scott’s case studies are so gaudy; many are simple, and most of them seem designed to involve humanizing corporate issues. In his first meeting with the CEO of a shopping-mall empire who wanted to meaningfully mark the 40th anniversary of its founding, Scott ascertained that the CEO himself was turning 40. The comparison between an organization turning 40 and a person turning 40-a time to consider your health, a time to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, and the CEO bought it immediately.

Some of Scott’s ideas, in fact, are characterized by their simplicity. A telecommunications CEO client was one of a series of speakers at a technology conference. Scott looked at the program and noted that all the other presentations were highly technical in nature and he surmised all of them would involve an impressive PowerPoint presentation. So he advised his client to do no PowerPoint and instead to get up there and just tell a story. The CEO, a longtime client, agreed only grudgingly, telling Scott, “I’ll try it. But if it bombs it’s your fault.” He didn’t blame Scott when conference-goers were slapping him on the back and thanking him for sparing them another PowerPoint snoozer.

Scott says the common difference between traditional corporate meetings and his corporate theater is that his shows respect the intelligence of his audience. “I try to make it a little smarter,” he says.

How to transform your work into corporate theater

Add narrative, setting, and characters. The core of the idea is to generate a ‘shared experience’ among the audience.

Scott measures the effectiveness of speeches by marking lines above, in middle and below sentences on the speech script to show if audience was engaged, indifferent, or disengaged at the time it is delivered. He found that off-the-cuff remarks were most appreciated by audiences. People liked the unscripted as more ‘in the moment’.

There’s not much drama in a typical speech. Look for ways to recover unpredictability and shared experiences. Realize people won’t remember the facts you tell them. They’ll remember how to make them feel. Focus speech on that and build in theatricality.

Corporate Theatre is all about finding common ground with another area of human endeavor and linking that to corporate messages.

When structuring it look at Narrative and Setting:

Research the history of the hotel, location, date of event – any unexpected elements? Where’s the nugget?

What is company situation?

Brainstorm by writing ideas that come to mind on big legal pad. Use free association.

First And Best -> Fab -> Fab Four -> Band Together … lots of spin offs with videos and demonstrations. Photoshop salespeople to look like Beatles.

Example: For a sales Award trip to Jamaica they used Reggae songs with a message that were played onstage by a live band. Drew links to corporate messages. Speakers were interviewed by a well-known Canadian TV Host.

Example: Model a company convention on a political convention.

In all these the element of uncertainty, wondering what’ll happen next, means people pay far more attention.

Example: Doing a talk-show is one of the best and most effective ways to create a sense of shared experience. Lots of options: a Morning Show “Brand New Day�. Make up artists, animal trainers etc from everyday talk-shows are al applicable. Interviewing customers and executives onstage far more compelling than any prepared speech. People like the feeling better than being talked at.

Execution is key — how speakers fit into creative presentations. Capture the persons’ character, how they talk on the golf course, how they make decisions. Screenwriters know: characters are defined by the decisions they make.

Build in rehearsal time and minimize use of teleprompter which acts as a wall between the audience. Keep PowerPoint slides to a minimum, use images.

How to sell these fancy ideas to the executive.

What creative communicator wouldn’t prefer to create a fascinating event to a stale old speech? But how
to sell big ideas to cautious clients?

Scott says there are two essential ways:

1. Building up trust with clients over time so that they’ll take a risk on your recommendation.
2. “Having the confidence to suggest an idea right away” with a new client, Scott says.

When you sell to conservative clients be sure to emphasize the links to their business interests. Bring these out in obvious ways. Start with VP Marketing to sell the idea. They can sell it to actual speakers. Focus first efforts internally not on higher-stakes external speeches. Look for measurements around company culture and employee satisfaction and turn-over.

Interesting post from Jane on the value of blogging in establishing a personal brand for old-media types wanting to break into the new world of social media:

Start a blog with Typepad.com. It only costs five bucks monthly and, again, gets you into new space. Progress on the learning curve takes about three months but, not to worry, you have a survival job or two, right. Having a blog is the new cost of entry. And while you’re blogging your heart out, learn about bells and whistles such as video feeds and digital photos. Will this be exhausting? Yes, the new economy hath murdered sleep.

Some might find that the advice to journalists and speechwriters also applies to old-school public speakers and seminar leaders who limit their activity to face-to-face presentations to live audiences and don’t leverage their content with blogs, video feeds, DVD’s, CD’s and other ways to broker knowledge in a digital world.

I was given permission by Clinton White House speechwriter Vinca LaFleur to post her article on President Bush’s State of the Union Speech. LaFleur was special assistant and foreign policy speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and wrote scores of speeches for the president and his national security advisors. It’s an honor to have her as a guest on my blog.

Her comments form an interesting contrast with those of Communications expert Bert Decker, who takes a far more positive view of Bush’s speech, which he evaluates in terms of body language, mannerisms and behavior as well as content.

It’s not surprising that people can disagree over the impact of a political speech. Pollsters report that there was an even split in the country, half the people liked the speech, half didn’t. Speechwriters and communications coaches are people too.

Here’s Ms. LaFleur’s view:

A Speechwriter’s Take on the Speech
By Vinca LaFleur

As someone who has labored to meet tough deadlines and satisfy tough audiences myself, I sympathize with the task the White House speechwriters faced with this year’s State of the Union. Drafting this annual address to Congress is rarely an enjoyable exercise; my former Clinton administration colleague Michael Waldman once described it as boiling down “gallons of advice into a few tablespoons of intense sauce,� while former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson reportedly dubbed the process the “seven-day death march.�

This year, however, the White House speechwriting team faced an exceptionally difficult task.

With President Bush’s approval rating at an all-time low, an emboldened Democratic majority in Congress, and the inescapable backdrop of carnage in Iraq, many critics had concluded the speech would flop well before the president stepped to the podium.

The White House had tried to generate interest by promising a new and improved address – one that would focus on a few broad themes, not a lengthy list of initiatives. Yet, given President Bush’s lack of trust among Democrats and shrinking confidence and support among Republicans, he never had the political capital to propose a far-reaching agenda. Indeed, as spokesman Tony Snow admitted, part of the impulse behind the new formula was that the White House “want[ed] people to watch� – suggesting they feared the electorate was already turned off and tuning out.

The president’s pens were thus multiply challenged in making their boss look good. It wasn’t within their power to turn small steps on domestic policy into giant leaps for mankind; nor could they reorient the president’s wildly unpopular position on Iraq. But they were the ones who would find the words with which the policies were presented, the ones who would articulate the arguments and bring the benefits of action to life.

Unfortunately, words failed them.

First, the president’s speech lacked a narrative structure to draw listeners in and along. The first part of the address half-heartedly employed the promise of a “future of hope and opportunity� to stitch its key points together, but that framework was jettisoned as soon as the president made the pivot to foreign policy. This was an odd decision, since winning what Bush calls a “decisive ideological struggle� presumably is essential to our nation’s hopeful future as well. By abandoning the phrase, however hackneyed it might have been, the speech’s authors undermined whatever impact it might have had – and lost a chance to connect the end of the address to the beginning.

In contrast, Senator Jim Webb, in the Democratic response, made clear at the outset that he intended to explain the differences between the parties on two key issues – the economy and Iraq – and his speech proceeded to do just that, up to and including its dramatic conclusion.

Second, the drafters missed opportunities to humanize the speech. People connect with people, not policies, yet even on issues like education and health care that lend themselves to real-life success stories, the president spoke primarily in dry terms and generalities. When compared to Senator Webb, who so effectively wove his family’s story of service and sacrifice into his remarks, President Bush’s address had a compulsory feel, as if it was an exercise he had to get through instead of a set of exciting ideas he cared about getting across.

Finally, though the White House wisely resisted excess rhetorical flourish, the final text was more flat than fireside chat, bereft of compelling images or descriptions. President Bush’s supporters have praised his preference for plainspoken language, but excising anecdotes, allusions, and poetry from a speech does not automatically make it forceful; to the contrary, as Mark Oppenheimer recently argued in the Wall Street Journal, “The best speeches…depend for their power on the ability to strike chords that already exist within us.�

Once again, the contrast with Senator Webb’s performance was stark. Despite the Senator’s inherent disadvantage of speaking before a television camera instead of a live audience, he was able to convey more personal intensity and engage more directly with his listeners by using language that was straightforward but not simplistic, and drawing effectively on history, quotations, and rhetorical devices to drive his arguments home.

Thus, for the first time in history, the response to the State of the Union was far superior to the speech itself. But in fairness to President Bush’s speechwriting team, the substance and style of his national address were undoubtedly set from the top. The speechwriters wouldn’t have gotten the credit if the president’s speech had been a smash, and they are not the ones who should be blamed for its shortcomings. A successful State of the Union address is always more than words.

Great speeches, as any speechwriter knows, depend on great ideas. That is why, despite the gracious nod to Speaker Pelosi at the start, and the uplifting stories of American heroism at the end, this State of the Union fell short on eloquence and failed to inspire enthusiasm.

Vinca LaFleur was Director for Speechwriting and Special Assistant to President Clinton. She now runs Vinca LaFleur Communications, an executive speechwriting firm in Washington, D.C.

First, a disclaimer. Cingular is a wonderfully reliable cell phone provider. Our 4-line family plan is a bargain and I have absolutely no complaints about the service. That said, pity the poor CEO of Cingular, Stan Sigman, who discovered to his cost at the recent MacWorld in San Francisco that Steve Jobs is a hard act to follow.

Within a day of the Jobs keynote, communications blogs exploded with an analysis of the failure of the Cingular CEO to come up to the mark during his time on the podium.

First, blogger Seth Godin posted a scathing report which called attention to the speaker’s failings in both style and content (or soul and substance):

Stan sure could use some help. He’s dressed all wrong. Not buttoned down enough to be a CEO, not casual enough for the Valley. And his jacket fits funny. Sort of like he’s at his son-in-law’s second wedding.

Stan gives his talk from 3 x5 index cards, which he holds awkwardly on stage. And he doesn’t really say anything.

This was picked up by the Dale Carnegie Training Center blog which posted the YouTube video and let us see for ourselves what Sigman does that stands in stark contrast to Jobs:

Sigman enters 4:30 into the clip above.

The Dale Carnegie folks place the blame at the feet of the communications team at Cingular who advised their CEO (the Executive Communications team that is, not the guys who give us dial-tone):

Who advised Stan? Here is where they should have been:

Use a teleprompter or earpiece.

Practice, practice, practice.

Talk to the lawyers again, there must be a better way.

Practice

Don’t say it at all. Give us your heart and enthusiasm then sit down. Leave the rest for the press release.

I hope Stan is surrounding himself with people that can be honest with him. This is another testament on how critical presenting yourself is in business.

Next, Garr Reynolds picked up the story, and drew a telling contrast between the Cingular CEO and Jobs, Google’s CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt, and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. A picture gallery shows the contrast:

Reynolds suggests it’s the use of the notecards that scuppered the talk. I disagree. In my stint as Scott McNealy’s speechwriter, I created bullet-point notecards for Scott to use onstage. He was relaxed and confident using them. Indeed, he relished using them as a prop in Tonight Show-style “Top 10 List” gags that the audience loved. He’d toss the notecards aside accompanied by goofy sound-effects:

Some speakers clutch the slide clicker as a security blanket, others grab onto a pen or a pointer as an outlet for nervous tension. Notecards in and of themselves are not the problem, inadequate preparation and coaching in their use is.

Notice, by the way, that we provided Scott pale blue notecards which show up better on camera. The Cingular team gave their man the bright white ones that cause glare.

As Reynolds concludes, we can all learn from Stan Sigman’s mistakes:

My only point in highlighting his short speech was to show what the rest of us must never ever do. Like it or not, our customers, employees, and colleagues judge us in part on our ability to stand and deliver a successful talk. Stan Sigman’s performance was a wonderful textbook example of what not to do. We must find our own voice and our own style, of course, but we must never make the same mistakes made by Mr. Sigman.

Finally, Bert Decker contrasts Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech with the content we’ve discussed above. This is a low blow. We’d all come off the worse for comparison with the great orators. However, Bert is right on when he says it is to the world-class speakers we need to look for inspiration.

That, and a good speech coach, can make all the difference. And thinking twice before you follow Steve Jobs onstage.

Nearly 100 NSA members and Guests gathered at the Airport Clarion on a cold January day for this Chapter meeting. Around 40 stayed for the ‘Members Only’ afternoon session. If you were unable to attend, or were not qualified to participate in the afternoon, this blog is a source for some of the substance you missed. The warmness of the soul of the meeting has, alas, flown.

Dan Burrus, CSP, CPAE: Shaping Your Future Today

Dan Burrus’ speaking career has been nothing short of amazing. Starting as a high-school science teacher he spent two years giving 200+ presentations a year to school assemblies. He underpriced himself to get exposure and experience. He’s now at the top of his game. He has appeared on programs such as Larry King Live, PBS, and CNN Special Reports, and is often quoted in publications like Fortune and Industry Week. The New York Times has referred to him as one of America’s top three business gurus in the highest demand as a speaker. He has delivered over 2,300 keynote speeches worldwide, has authored ten audio cassette albums, several video tape programs, seven books, including his best seller Technotrends which has been translated into over a dozen languages and he publishes a variety of technology publications, including the Technotrends Newsletter.

A few years ago, he launched several innovative electronic newsletters, and as a side note, the least expensive is $120,000 per year! In addition, Dan is a strategic adviser to CEO’s from some of the largest companies in the world. How did he do it? Dan shared his insights and strategies for growing a speaking business.

Dan advised us not to pick a hot topic, but pick something we are passionate on and turn it into a hot topic. It’s not the subject that’ll make you a success as a speaker, it’s you and your expertise.

On his road to the top, Dan self-assigned himself difficult venues: speaking to blind people, deaf people. This prepared him for, among other things, business presentations delivered through interpreters. Assigning stretch goals will cause you to grow.

When Dan saw NSA’er Nido Quibein speak in the early 80’s and heard him state he made $1M+ from speaking he realized it was not Nido’s skills as a speaker that generated this wealth, but but the way he treated speaking as a business.

Dan pitches himself one or two notches below his capabilities and then overdelivers. Often speakers pitch topics that are just not salable (“I open people up to their sense of childlike wonder”). This might be the essence of what you deliver, but you should promise something more prosaic, something that solves a need the audience can identify.

Using lateral thinking can give audiences a unique solution, as when an Insurance Company told Dan they wanted to be in top 10 by revenue in five years time. He suggested ways they can be in top 10 on scales that others may not measure, and achieve these goals far sooner. On another occasion he changed the mission statement for a company from “We’ll be the best media and entertainment company on the planet” to “We’ll be the best media and entertainment company for the planet.” The outside speaker can make simple and effective suggestions like this that over-deliver on expectations. Did they hire you to change the mission statement? No. Was this a suggestion that added value? Yes.

Speak on eternal truths, that way you don’t have to update your content all the time!

Writing a regular newsletter (or blog!) can introduce the discipline of putting your thoughts on paper.

Dan’s made two predictions for the future for the speaking biz:

[1] As the triple curves of Moore’s Law, Gilder’s Law and the explosion of storage capacity converge into vastly improved technological capabilities look for a growing market of speech nuggets to be delivered over mobile devices. Content will be king. Partner with the providers to charge for your content. Look at pay-per-view for small segments of a speech. Start by loading your content on YouTube. Dan’s not the first to notice this convergence, but he’s the first to challenge speakers to take advantage of the opportunity.

[2] Check out this new company which provides a solution for streaming live events over the internet. This offers technology that can expand any audience nationally and internationally. Ask who might want to pay $10 for your keynote in real time. Perhaps the next NSA National Conference can use this technology for members not able to make it to San Diego!

Lenora Billings-Harris, CSP: What’s Your Inclusivity Quotient™? Removing the Barriers that Block Your Messages

National NSA President, Lenora Billings-Harris, CSP gave a fun, interactive and non-judgmental session to help enhance our inclusivity quotient so our soul and substance can be fully received by everyone in the audience.

NSA’ers used to ask, “Do I have to use humor”? The answer was, “Only if you want to get paid.” Now the same answer applies to the question, “Do I have to understand my group’s differences?” The answer is the same. Corporations and professional associations are investing millions of dollars each year to make their organizations more inclusive. They assume consultants and speakers already have the same sensitivities they do. Lenora’s session was jam-packed with immediately applicable information and suggestions, including a multi-page handout/reference guide. Her aim was to help us:

1. Enhance our own multicultural competencies as a speaker.
2. Identify the training and presentation techniques that help learners feel respected and included.
3. Explore the most common multicultural barriers in the learning environment.
4. Explore ways to evaluate our current programs to identify possible oversights, and then utilize techniques and resources to address them.

Lenora opened with the Zulu invocation Ubuntu Ubuntu Ubuntu/em> which can be translated as I am what I am because we are. Audiences want to know us, not just the information we are there to share. They want soul as well as substance. So Lenora shared: her age, child-free status, husband’s foibles, birthplace and potted history of per life. In doing so she reinforced the professional bio of the formal introduction, by the irrepressible Karen Walker-Tunoa, with personal details that allowed us to connect with her.

She modeled other best practices such as:

– Allowing the audiences other ways to respond than raising their hands (people with restrictions on the use of their limbs are not excluded)
– Engaging the audience by using (with permission) photos of key members in slides.

As professional speakers we spend time, money and energy learning our craft. We also honor a code of ethics that sets us apart from the merely public speaker.

Lenora’s statement for valuing diversity and inclusion as a speaker:

Demonstrating the willingness and ability to recognize, understand, and respect the unique talents and contributions of all individuals, regardless of their packaging.

Audience participants variously identified key words as respect, contributions, recognize and packaging as key to this statement. Lenora pointed out that the statement built on the word that preceded it.

Share the Wisdom

The afternoon session kicked off with Dan Burrus asking the 40 members what issues they are dealing with. The questions raised were:

[1] What about blogging?

A great way to put yourself out there. Dan has two blogs. One on his website. The other on Blogger owned by Google which increases your page rank. No rule as to how many times you need to update it. Find what you can do, what’s comfortable for you. Take timeless chunks from past material and post periodically. Ric Giardina uses WordPress so that his blog has become the center of his website. Any changes are reflected via the blog to the rest of his web. If blogging is the center of your activity it makes sense for this to be the center of your website, for others it might not. Blogging can reference the website and visa-versa. It’ll be driven by content – timely materials will elevate your visibility.

Jerry Gitchel did a teleseminar on blogging and referenced keywords.

I pitched the nsa_bloggers Yahoo Groups for anyone who needs to know more. Subscribe here if you are a speaker interested in blogging.

[2] Coaching kids for tests – how to use technology for cell phones with cameras. Should I partner with Apple or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?

There’s a goldmine in the No Child Left Behind Act – see what funding your solution qualifies for. An Association might be a suitable partner. Example: The Association for Curriculum Directors will publish your book and give it as a member benefit to 110,000 members which the author makes nothing on, but has the rights for money from re-orders.

[3] How did you build your speaking career? What were lessons in hindsight?

Focus on relationships. Realize you have no relationship with a Speaker Bureau, you have a relationship with the PEOPLE in a Speaker Bureau. Relationships with people are based on trust. It’s about values.

[4] What about the handout we were given on strategies and technologies?

See if these impact your speaking business.

[5] How do you balance speaking and other sources of income?

Be true to your long-term goals. It’s not all about the money. Take vacations, even if they cost you big-time in fees. Example: skip the problems. Dan consults with companies but does not do paperwork. He asks companies to have their best guy in the room when he speaks with the CEO to write up a report he’ll approve.
Since he started as a teacher he loves long vacations and kept the basic teacher principle of summers off.

[6] What suggestions for getting a career in keynoting launched from a lifetime consulting?

We can all do keynotes, training and workshops. But they take different skills. A keynote is only a keynote and you’ll only go so far. Get good fast with low fee / no fee start-up plan. Develop your skill by doing it.

Look for your unique entree. Most executive suites are dysfunctional families so a family counsellor can sell their skills in the business world by finding the link that fits their pain.

[7] What does the future hold for professional speakers?

A bright future. There’s nothing to substitute for the presence of people, even the highest end video conferencing. Speakers reach inside a person and touch them to change their behaviors. Dan wants to change the way people think about their future, to use technology for a brighter future. Eyeball to eyeball is the most powerful change technique. Example: Dan is working with Hyatt to enable dinner tables with high-definition screens. This would allow you to have dinner with Mom who might be seated thousand of miles away. But the rapport and trust must be established first. Speaking remotely does not allow you to do this.

[8] Free teleseminars – how to follow up effectively with anyone who was preregistered?

(Jill Lublin uses them to sell a course).

You get the behaviors you reward. What reward are they getting / not getting that affects behavior.

Closing advice: Make an appointment to sit down for 1 hr a week and think about your future. What do you know? Strategies based on knowledge are less risky than those based on the unknown. Shift out of crisis management into opportunity management.

After Dan left there was a wide ranging discussion on techniques which better connect the speaker with the audience:

[1] To connect with an audience of kids – change things quickly, use music, don’t speak down to them. 15-year-olds use 5 technologies every day. Be yourself. No age sees though B.S. more than student age.

[2] To connect with any audience – stand by door, walk among them as they enter. Get invited to social events before the event. Even stay for the whole conference, hang around. People appreciate it.

[3] Key people in the audience are willing to give you information and background on audience.

[4] Newsletters and content emailed to audiences are valuable. Blogs are two-way conversations that extend written communication.

[5] Try and remember names of small training groups. Memory techniques can assist. This impresses them. Using someones name is a great way to connect. Use cultural sensitivity when dealing with people’s names.

[6] Be wary of pre-programmed questionnaires. Better: Use telephone interview to ask people relevant questions.

[7] Look for characteristics of group – things you might have in common with them will help create community. Learning even one or two words of a foreign language will help with overseas audiences.

[8] Share your process, mistakes, vulnerabilities. Talk about your history. Tales of rejection, failure. Have courage to talk about these things to connect with you.

[9] Survey the room: Ask people the experience they have on this topic. Their combined experience will exceed yours.

[10] Be clear on expectations. Make sure the audience knows what you’ve been hired to speak on.

[11] Connect with people at a human level. Practice Relational Presence.

Yesterday I heard the wordsmith of the Republican Party, Frank Luntz, on PBS’s Fresh Air extol the virtues of George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language. He begged anyone interested in the real meaning of Orwellian to read it.

Ignoring the delicious irony of a master of propaganda twisting the common use of Orwellian away from the Newspeak of 1984 (of which he is a modern practitioner, advising phrases such as “Responsible Exploration For Energy” over “Drilling For Oil”) I enjoyed the ruthless clarity of Orwell’s essay.

It has a lot in common with more recent indictments of political and managerial cant found in books such as Why business people speak like idiots and Gobbledygook.

Orwell discusses why “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts”. He shows how, especially in political and business speeches, “prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse”. Dying metaphors, meaningless words and a preference for the passive voice over the active are listed as common ways we avoid the real mental effort involved in writing clear prose.

Corporate communicators will recognize this passage describing the tired familiarity with which many executives speak from the podium:

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases … one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself.

Orwell challenges us to make a difference.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?

2. What words will express it?

3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?

4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?

2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

His rules of composition are clear and uncompromising:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never us a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

3. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

4. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

5. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Would that it were so.

Whether you’re a current or aspiring professional speaker, trainer, coach or self-employed knowledgeworker Pro-Track can help you take your business to the next level. I benefited from Pro-Track 2006 (to read my reports on each of the meetings search this blog for Pro-Track). The registration for the 2007 classes which meet in Oakland and run from January 13 until November is still open.

Benefits

• Learn to build upon your strengths and expand your business model
• Learn from successful speaking professionals in numerous topic and market categories
• Build your speaking business from the ground up
• Re-energize your business with new ideas, products, materials, and marketing strategies
• Design your business networking system

Features

• Topic Development
• Content Development
• Presentation Development
• Business Planning
• Marketing, Promotion, and Sales Systems
• Presentation Skills Coaching
• Media and publicity systems

And much, much more!

Costs

For only $1,895, Pro-Track participants receive over 90 hours of training. But that’s not all! Pro-Track 2007 participants are also admitted to all NSA/NC Chapter meetings for free, during the program year.

Apply online today or download and fax your application to 510-530-5370. Direct questions to Michael Holland at (510) 502-9209. Tell him Ian sent you.

Finally figured out the technical issues around posting the 3 minute video of last month’s National Speakers Association Pro-Track ‘Showcase’ presentation to YouTube.

Wonder how many other emerging and professional speakers will take advantage of YouTube to Showcase themselves not only to a room filled with 30 of their peers, but, the planet?

Congratulations were in order on Saturday November 18 when the 32 members of the Pro-Track class finished a journey that began back in January. It’s been an entertaining and instructive 11 months. One member described it like drinking from a firehose. A wealth of information.

Our final session featured two guest speakers.

Pat Mayfield – The Art of Networking

Pat has built a number of successful businesses and authored nine books. She shared the secrets of networking that allowed her to quickly establish herself in the San Francisco Bay Area when she moved here a number of years ago. These were home truths on the importance of a dry handshake; knowing the best way to exchange business cards and tips on remembering people’s names at mixers.

Mitchell Friedman – How to Share your expertise with the media

Mitch is a lecturer in communication studies for MBA students at the University of San Francisco. he demonstrated why expertise is not enough to build a successful speaking business – you need to be able to communicate that expertise.

Mitch encouraged us all to consume the media we would like to be featured in and then identify the people writing about your niche and build a media list to contact them with announcements.

Understanding what makes news is key. There is a cycle of news (November in America – then look for stories about travel at Thanksgiving). Think of ways you could comment on the topics that are hot in the cycle du jour (example: if you are a stress coach, contact the newspapers in early November with tips on reducing stressful travel over the Holidays). Other issues that the news outlets look for: conflict and disagreement; novelty; celebrity and achievement.

The low hanging watermelon for those who want to see their name in print: trade publications, often willing to publish anything.

Team 5 Showcase

The day, and Pro-Track 2006, closed with Team 5 doing our showcase presentations. Thanks to my colleagues for their feedback on my discussion about the important book Not-Two Is Peace recently published by Adi Da. I’d encourage everyone to read this important statement.

This book intrigued me such that I recently bought a copy at SFO for the long flight back to the UK. It’s just been released as a second-rate motion picture. I haven’ t seen the film, but there’s a fascinating angle to the book for anyone involved with the professional speaking business.

The two main characters in this sensational Victorian melodrama are rival magicians whose stage acts provide entertainment in the Music Halls of nineteenth-century London. The book chronicles their careers. What’s fascinating is how much like the business of professional speaking today the business of the professional magician was then.

They have their professional associations, journals and tricks of the trade. E very magician preserves their tradecraft:

Magic has no mystery to magicians. We work variations of standard methods. What will seem new or baffling to an audience is simply a technical challenge for other professionals. (p.68)

They struggle in the early days of their career, learning to showcase their tricks as they learn to tolerate rejection by booking agents. They perform to small audiences where and when they find them. They bomb. They try again. They struggle to establish themselves:

The real problem with theatrical bookings is that while they pay well they provide no continuity. Each is at the end of a blind alley. I do my act, I take my applause, I collect my fee, but none of these ensures another booking. Even the reviews in the press are small and grudging. (p.172)

As today, the secret is finding a niche. It might be running seances, or assuming the character of a French scientist, or embracing the use of the novel aspects of electricity in an act. Their careers peak and they struggle to reinvent themselves. The demands are relentless:

A magician can never practise enough, because every moment spent will improve his performance. So I toil in my workshop…and rehearse until I feel sick with preparation. Although my skill with prestidigitation increases, sometimes, in my darker moments, I do wonder why I am continuing to rehearse at all. (p.210)

In the days before television and radio, the internet and mobile connected c0mmunications, these entertainers were the superstars of their day. Those who make their living on the podium today play to much diminished audiences. The volume of bookings, attention spans of audiences and desire for entertainment to be delivered in person were far greater for the Victorians. There were no requirements to turn off cell phones before a speaker came onstage, no glances at a Blackberry if the message was not compelling. Of course, limelight played havoc with your sinus condition and the demands of a roadtrip were just that.

If you want a ripping good yarn, pick up a copy of The Prestige.