I am a big fan of podcasting. Both those I create myself and post to this blog, but more so those I can download and listen to as a source of news and information from around the world.

Thanks to Jasmine of Online Classes here’s a listing of 80 excellent podcasts.

I was pleased to see the list includes some which I already subscribe to:

This American Life; The History of Rome and The Moth.

That still leaves 77 podcasts which I was not aware of. I’ll be checking many of them out.

I also love browsing the iTunes Store podcast listings (where This American Life and others can be subscribed to) and I am a huge fan of the BBC Radio listings – where a full week of broadcasts on radio stations across Britain are archived. I recommend Andrew Marr’s Start the Week for stimulating conversation on current affairs and arts. And Radio Scotland’s Iain Anderson plays my kind of music.

If you are not plugged in to the world of podcasts, then start with the list above and do check out the iTunes Store listings. Search on keywords. For example, a search on “Public Speaking” lists 50 free podcasts on this topic. Likewise for Leadership, Baking and Sailing. There’s really nothing that is not being covered by audio podcasts.

The history of the annual State of the Union speech is examined in a fascinating article by Bob Lehrman in the Christian Science Monitor.

State of The Union: The crafting of a speech looks back at the speechwriters and presidents who have delivered State of the Union (SOTU) speeches.

The very first speechwriter to help write a STOU speech was Judson Welliver, hired by President Warrren Harding.

Lehrman explains why the speech is inevitably a laundry list of topics, and the process by which speechwriters approach the task.

Changes in technology have had a profound impact. Early in the 20th Century fewer than 1,000 people actually saw Woodrow Wilson deliver his SOTU. Last year 48 million watched Barack Obama on television or the web.

No matter how Obama’s speech is received this evening, somewhere in Washington DC a team of speechwriters will already have moved on to their next assignment.

Kurt Shaver delivers high-impact sales training and consulting to companies seeking increased production from their sales force. Kurt’s live training classes are followed by reinforcement sessions and exercises that insure the lessons become lasting habits. Consulting includes areas such as sales systems (CRM) implementation and effective compensation plans.

Kurt brings 25 years of real selling experience to each client. His “street credibility” is critical to being accepted by a room full of seasoned salespeople. As a sales rep, Kurt learned how to build rapport, uncover needs, and differentiate his solution to win the business. Kurt won numerous Top Salesperson awards in his role as an individual contributor. Major accomplishments include closing a $5M deal for AT&T’s first private satellite earth station for a corporate customer and selling some of the first electronic catalogs to companies like IBM, Sprint, and Texas Instruments.

As his management responsibilities grew, Kurt built sales teams at a number of fast growth companies. One of them made it to No. 11 on Fortune Magazine’s “100 Fastest Growing Companies” list for 2004. In the process, he developed the systems and skills to motivate and train salespeople to be successful.

After 25 years of corporate sales success, Kurt started The Sales Foundry in 2008 to share his knowledge with businesses seeking to accelerate their revenue growth. The name “Sales Foundry” was chosen to represent the blue-collar, roll-up-your-sleeves nature of Kurt’s work. It is not board room strategy. Kurt focuses on teaching salespeople the tactical skills they need to succeed. Kurt has completed just about every well-known sales training methodology there is and he feels that it is less important to pick the right one than it is to pick one and embrace it completely throughout the organization. Kurt was named a “Top 25 Channel Sales Executive To Know” by VAR Business magazine and received the “Partner Excellence Award” from Salesforce.com. He holds a Master in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology but he has never let his knowledge of complex integrated circuitry get in the way of closing a big deal.

Pro-Track Profile

I interviewed Kurt at the January 22, 2011 NSA Northern California 30th Anniversary meeting, the week before the 2011 Pro-Track class kicks off.

Kurt shared with me the reasons he is investing in Pro-Track. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:03 — 1.2MB)

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Alan Stephens’ Presentation Tip of the Week

Alan Stevens is the current President of the Global Speakers Federation. He is a PR Professional and expert on media and communications. His company ,The Media Coach, covers both traditional and social media. He’s also a member of the British Computer Society, and broadcasts regularly on technology and consumer issues. This posting appeared in his weekly newsletter.

Opening Up

The first line of your speech is crucially important. It may be the only line that every member of your audience hears, so it needs to be good. The more engaging it is, the more people will listen to the rest of your speech. If you’ve done your homework well, you will know what interests them. It won’t be the same for every audience, so don’t just have one option.

Firstly, here’s what not to do:

• Tell them your name. They know that already.
• Say how glad you are to be there. That’s a given.
• Start with a joke. You don’t need me to tell you why not.
• List your credentials. They will already have seen your bio.
• Tell them how funny your speech is. If you do, it won’t be.
• Make fun of them. It’s OK to make fun of yourself, not your audience.

Now we’ve got that out the way, what are some positive openers? Here are a few ideas, with examples:

• An intriguing promise “You will improve your memory by 10% in the next hour”
• Something contrary to popular wisdom “The Internet is finished…”
• A puzzle “How could you find the secret of success?”
• A simple piece of value “Three simple steps to double your business this year”

Of course, you have to deliver what you promised. Remember you have give something of value every time you speak. Tell people right at the start what it will be, and you will grab their attention.

This information was written by Alan Stevens, and originally appeared in “The MediaCoach”, his free weekly ezine, available at www.mediacoach.co.uk

Today marks the 5th anniversary of this blog, launched on January 14, 2006 with a posting on English sports fans written after reading an article in the Financial Times.

I’d actually installed the WordPress blog software on my site the previous November. I then suffered through two months of writers block before I felt comfortable enough with the idea of blogging to actually write something.

Since then, finding topics for my blog has not been a problem. I’ve posted 597 articles and gathered 4,139 comments. It goes in cycles. Some weeks I post multiple times. At other times, such as over the past month, things are quieter.

I think my initial writers block was because I was unsure of the “tone” my blog should have. Was I in danger of being too personal? Too abstract and remote? Too English? Too American? Too political, spiritual, profane, radical or middle-of-the-road? Would I, heaven forbid, offend people?

Happily, I think I’ve managed to be all of those things. (Heck, I even had my blog censored when I worked for a major Silicon Valley computer company and my disclaimer that it was “my blog” carried no weight with my managers.)

I still find writing in response to an article in the FT, or a book I’ve finished, or a movie I’ve seen, to be one of the easiest forms of blogging.

Five years on, my thoughts on blogging are:

• It’s been a worthwhile investment of my time. As a writer it allows me a safe, yet public, space to post. It feels like I have my own newspaper column.
• While the blog has not brought me dozens of clients for my freelance speechwriting business, it has brought me to the attention of a couple of clients and paying work resulted. Of course, I have no way knowing if countless potential clients might have looked at stuff I’ve posted and never called because they did not like my opinions, or found the quality of my writing inadequate.
• A primary benefit has been to promote my interests and area of expertise to a wide audience. This has paid off in terms of my professional reputation.
• It’s been important to have a few regular sources of inspiration that challenge me to post to my blog. For example, my many friends and colleagues in the National Speakers Association. NSA conferences, meetings and the annual Pro-Track class have been a reliable source of content.
• I’ve also re-posted articles I’ve written for ragan.com and made it a habit to write full-length reviews of important books in the field of executive communications.
• Guest postings generate a awful lot of traffic.
• I’ve enjoyed podcasting and creating videos for the blog. It’s a lot easier to record a quick interview with conference attendees than post the lengthy reports at the end of a meeting.
• Posting short updates and “gee-wizz” items on Twitter has supplemented blogging, especially over the past couple of years. I’ve posted over 1,100 tweets since I joined in November 2007.
• I’ve made blogging the hub of my social media presence, linking my posts to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
• I’ve found the blog a useful place to archive information I need to share with others. A great example has been the Podcasting 101 article, which I refer people to quite regularly. I’ve used the Comments section to add additional references.
• I’ve seen the value of blogging as a way of curating information, as with the listing of Top Tweets I created for different events, even some I didn’t attend in person.

I spend a lot less time than I used to looking at my site statistics. But here’s some stats (from Google Analytics) for one month last year:

Stats for October 2010

• 11 articles posted
• 4,205 unique visitors
• Peak of 236 visitors on Oct 21, 2010 when I published 227 Top Tweets from #prsa_ic
• 6,882 pageviews. The most popular page was Obama: The Lion in Winter from January 2009 where people spent an average 5:20 reading.
• The three most common search phrases:
  executive communications, magcloud review and rhetorical analysis of obamas inaugural speech

Blog on!

I enjoyed the Tom Hooper movie The King’s Speech with Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter. It details the relationship between a (literally) tongue-tied King George VI and the Australian speech coach he rather reluctantly hires to help him overcome his debilitating stutter. The film covers the period leading up to his ascension to the throne and the times in World War II, when as king he was required to address the nation on radio.

I won’t spoil the movie by giving away the plot. I recommend this movie to anyone interested in:

• Overcoming a fear of public speaking
• Reasons the medical establishment once recommended people “deeply inhale” cigarette smoke
• The relationship between the client and speech coach
• Ways to overcome the barriers of class, rank and power to make an effective human connection
• The historical (as opposed to current) dysfunctions of the British Royal Family

Above all, this is a compelling true story that wonderfully captures the feel of a bygone era. Go see it.

The topic Speaking to Inform was the top request in my recent poll asking what people would like to hear about in my blog.

If you are delivering a public speech the goal should be to communicate as clearly as possible. In business settings, the more succinctly you communicate information, the better. This might not be true of an after-dinner or humorous speech. A speech can be entertaining even though it contains little or no new information. However, when you are speaking to inform, your audience will appreciate hearing information that is relevant to their concerns delivered in a manner they can absorb.

I believe there are four main ways of speaking to inform. More or less information can be delivered in an unclear or clear manner.

1. The foreign policeman

The least-useful form of communication is to deliver little or no information in an unclear manner. A classic example would be a tourist in France, who does not speak the language, hearing a command from a gendarme. The amount of information is minimal, but failure to understand could be fatal.

Acronyms convey information in an abbreviated form. But if members of the audience do not understand them, they are left in the dark. As brief as they are, always spell them out.

Few speakers would risk going in front an audience with little to say and no ability to be understood. However, were Dudley Moore to take to the podium when he was as drunk as he was in the movie Arthur, the result would be a complete disaster. So stay sober when you speak in public!

2. Road Signs

Even very long speeches can be broken down into concise nuggets of information, delivered in a manner that is quickly and easily understood. Road signs are designed to communicate important information instantaneously. When you are whizzing by at 60 mph, universally recognized icons are easily understood.

Intonation, cadence and gestures are your road signs to an audience. They improve people’s ability to follow what you are saying. Done right, they reinforce your message. Done wrong, like an overly verbose sign on the highway, they slow things down or even confuse people.

Presentations that use PowerPoint or Prezi convey information that supplements the spoken word. But the slides must be crisp and clear. The fewer words you display the better. Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte demonstrate the best way to display information visually. Done right, slides can help inform the audience. Done wrong, too much information on the screen will distract people from hearing your message. What you are saying will be ignored while they read the slide. If you have a wordy slide, stay silent while the audience reads it.

3. The subject matter expert

Subject experts often present too much information. They think that speaking to inform is merely creating lists of dry facts, in bullet form, and reading them aloud. Rather than loading the speech with facts, give the audience a white paper or printed report with the data. The fundamental error many corporations make is to put subject experts front of customers to explain their products.

If you need to present complex information, follow these simple rules.

An extreme example of information being presented in a rapid, incomprehensible manner are the legal disclaimers read out at the end of some radio ads. There are a surprising number of presentations given in the corporate world which sound like this. Remember, the answer to having too much information is to simplify the content, not to speak faster.

4. The storyteller

What subject experts fail to understand is the limited ability of the audience to absorb facts. People can only remember two or three main points in a speech. A few days after a talk, most of the information that is presented will have been forgotten.

What will be remembered are the stories you tell.

The most powerful way of speaking to inform is to use stories. These can be as simple as parables or nursery rhymes. By evoking an emotional response they implant information in a more memorable way than merely reciting facts. If you are speaking to inform, tell stories.

As voice coach Kate Peters says:

…creating stories out of raw information can help you see a problem or situation better in order to understand the solution better. Sometimes the data is overwhelming, but the story behind the spreadsheet can be illuminating.

A version of this article was first published by ragan.com.

Thanks to Kate for bringing this wonderful video to my attention.

Poet Taylor Mali demonstrates the problems with run-on sentences, up-speak and the “tragically cool and totally hip interrogative tone” which signals uncertainty to an audience. What has happened, Mali asks, to our sense of conviction and ability to speak to authority:

Joel F. Wade, Ph.D. is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Life and Executive Coach, writer, and speaker. He is the author of Mastering Happiness: Ten Principles for Living a More Fulfilling Life; a book that makes the burgeoning research from the field of Positive Psychology accessible and useful for anybody with a desire to live a happier, more resilient life.

He has played competitive water polo for many years, playing at UC Santa Barbara on their 1979 NCAA championship team, captaining their league champion team of 1981, and as a member of the US National team. Now in his fifties, he continues competing at the Master’s level.

From these experiences and through his work, he knows what it means to be passionate and devoted to a course of action, what it takes to see it through to success, and what resilience and gratification – and great fun – can be borne of such dedication.

Having personally traveled to over 60 countries covering six continents, he has seen and experienced the tremendous variety of lifestyles and cultures; but also the great common ground of human existence. The specifics are as varied as the barrenness of the Kalahari Desert to the richness of the Amazon jungle; but a good life centers on common themes that are intrinsic to human nature: love, friendship, resilience, faith, absorption in one’s activities, mastering one’s impulses, and finding and building a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

In his work with businesses, what Joel offers is not some idealistic system for creating a perfect business culture; but practical, real life coaching, teaching, and problem solving for bringing out the best that you and your people have to offer your hard earned creation: your business.

In his presentations, he teaches a vast array of effective and tested tools and skills that you can use right now to improve your happiness and effectiveness in your life. If you want to learn how you can live a happier, more satisfying life, not as some sort of idealistic or theoretical fantasy, but taking your actual life, as it is, with all of the hardships and problems as well as the strengths and blessings, then you’ll want to have Dr. Wade come and speak to your group.

Pro-Track Profile

This month, Dr. Wade completed the 2010 Pro-Track class offered by the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association. I asked him about his practice and his plans to put the lessons he has learned in Pro-Track into practice. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:38 — 1.5MB)

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