by Beth Levine | Oct 4, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
Time for some hands-on learning!
The learning is in your hands today, and the lesson is transparency. If you choose to read on, you’ll pick up a few tips about being a transparent communicator and then you’ll get a chance to practice what you learn.
But first, what do I mean by transparency anyway? It’s kind of a buzzword, right? Well, transparency in communications comes in two forms—informational and emotional. It’s about being open and real with news and information as well as with feelings and reactions.
Here are 3 tips for being a more transparent communicator:
1. Let your audiences know what they can expect or what they’re going to get from you. Spell out your “win” – or your desired outcome – in the opening seconds of your meetings and presentations. Tell your audiences what you want them to think, or know or do by the end.
2. Pay attention to crises and criticisms, but don’t necessarily run from them or fight back. There may be some important truths you want to stand by or back up. Be open to owning the situation, whether bad or good. It scores big reputational points for credibility and trust.
3. Audiences are smart. Scrutiny and skepticism can be harsh. Be as open, honest, and forthright as you can. Your audiences will see through you no matter what. So be real. It’s easier on you and always much appreciated by them.
Now I turn it over to you!
Choose one of the following two exercises and see how it feels to try a more transparent approach:
[Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Sep 1, 2015 | Just Mouthing Off, preparing for a presentation, public speaking
I view communication as the everyday currency of business; it’s how we get things done. Our success is ultimately determined by interactions with employees, customers, communities, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders. And while most organizations and executives have a mission statement, and many articulate a set of core values—for how they conduct their business or treat each other and their customers—most overlook standards, goals, or guidelines for communicating. Communication is actually the channel for executing a company’s mission, its values, and its expectations for excellence, accountability y, productivity and efficiency. How else could these be realized?
A recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications finds a causal link between communication effectiveness and economic performance. “Companies that align communication with the corporate mission and strategy score significantly better not only on ‘soft’ measures such as image and awareness but also on ‘hard’ economic measures, especially on relative market success in the industry.” In sum, the more effective a company is at communicating—internally and externally—the greater the company’s general performance. Perhaps most telling, the Journal found that companies whose executives support improving communication, and recognize its economic value, performed better than companies without supportive leadership.
Similarly, Cheryl Snapp Conner, @CherylSnapp, recently wrote in Forbes about a new study that finds a connection between a CEO’s presentation skills and the pricing of an IPO. Executives that have a confident and commanding presence actually increase the value of their companies’ IPOs.
A lot of people, including Cheryl Connor, found this pretty amazing – myself included. But it confirmed for me what I have been saying for a long time: that a focus on communication adds value to a company. And I do not mean just some amorphous value of customer and employee goodwill, but actual performance value. Like these two studies show, companies and executives that value and are skilled at communication perform better financially.
[Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Aug 18, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
Most ambitious, achieving professionals already have a measure of confidence, charisma, and presence that got them to where they are and that will carry them through a trip to the podium. Nonetheless, how you comport and present yourself at the podium is pretty critical.
Here are 4 simple best practices tips that can enhance your delivery:
- Use your voice.
Modulate your tone as a way of changing things up for the audience. Attention spans are short and demand regular stimulus changes. Try to speak louder, softer, faster, or slower as appropriate for different portions of your presentation. And pause. Pauses are good; your audience needs time to digest your ideas.
- Use the room.
If there’s a podium, try to get out from behind it. And, if possible, move around the room. That, too, will stimulate attention, changing the scene a bit and keeping the audience alert. However . . .
- Don’t pace, and be aware of any fidgety habits.
Remember what your third-grade teacher told you
the first time you stood up to give a book report: Stand up straight. Don’t jingle or play with things in your pockets. Don’t fuss with your hair. We all want to hear what you have to say.
- Make eye contact.
That’s huge. And not just with one friendly face. Try to cover as many faces and as much of the room as you can. Do not be put off (and I hear this all the time) by that “one guy in the front who was glaring at me the whole time.” One man’s glare is another man’s look of concentration. You never know, so don’t be distracted by one face. Just keep on looking at everyone.
[Excerpted from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Aug 5, 2015 | Just Mouthing Off, public speaking, quote
When Pat Williams @OrlandoMagicPat – a long-time legend in the NBA, most recently as co-founder and SVP of the Orlando Magic – interviewed me about Jock Talk for his radio show on WORL in Orlando, “Inside the Game,” I didn’t know that he too had written a book on public speaking from the vantage point of sports figures.
He told me after the interview that he wanted to send me something. What he sent was his book. As I read through it, I came across a lot of values and concepts he and I held in common.
Because of my work with professional and world-class athletes – and most recently with a medal-winning Olympian – one passage in particular caught my attention:
“There are many retired athletes from various sports who have a lot to offer on the convention and corporate lecture circuit. They could command five-figure speaking fees, but what are they doing? They’re earning a fraction of that, signing autographs at sports memorabilia shows. Nothing wrong with that, but why not take their game to the next level? Why not share the real wisdom that they have to offer? Why not organize their stories and ideas into a presentation that would change lives – including their own?
It’s essentially a matter of organization, planning, and preparation. The only confident, influential speaker is a prepared speaker. Organization and preparation are vital to your success as a communicator.“
Pat has it right. Many retired athletes do miss a great opportunity to tell their story and offer concrete value to corporate audiences.
For any speaker, it can seem daunting to figure out what that value is, but, with a little organization, planning and preparation, it’s definitely doable. Even if you’re not a gold-medal Olympian – but you’re an engineer or a scientist or an entrepreneur – you will still benefit from taking the time and focus to identify your valuable lesson(s) before you speak.
To find your valuable lesson(s), it might help to imagine a Venn diagram: The first circle represents you, your knowledge and expertise, and the second represents your audience and their interests. You have to figure out what’s in the shaded area where the circles intersect. For you, it is an insight or lesson you can offer. For your audience, it is what they want or need. The third circle of the Venn diagram makes it more challenging – it represents what other experts or speakers have to offer.
If you really want to stand out as a speaker, you will spend some time fine-tuning the area of the diagram where you intersect with the audience but other speakers don’t. In other words, given your expertise, what can you talk about that is of interest to your audience that no one else can offer?
For retired athletes, this exercise should be a layup, so to speak. For the rest of us, admittedly it’s more challenging … but it’s well within reach and very worthwhile.
by Beth Levine | Jul 14, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, quote
“Students of public speaking continually ask, ‘How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?’
Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer’s wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by? How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines?
Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle and be ‘half scared to death.’ There are a great many ‘wetless’ bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.”
– Dale Carnegie, The Art of Public Speaking
by Beth Levine | Jun 30, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
I was reminded yesterday by @TanyaRivero on @WSJLive that it’s wedding season, which means lots of toasts are being delivered. Best Man toasts. Maid of Honor toasts. Father of the Bride toasts. You name it!
The way I see it, toasts fall under the category of highly personal speeches – a category that includes not just toasts, but eulogies, graduation and retirement sendoffs and the like. These kinds of speeches are often touching and/or funny, yet they also provide the perfect storm for audience-centricity to implode; the topic is limited to a couple or person, the speaker was chosen for their special relationship to the couple or person, and the audience is made up of people who also have their own special relationships with the couple or person.
Sounds like the perfect storm for perfection not disaster, right? Wrong. Apart from the notorious toast flops that include revealing long-held secrets or telling inappropriate stories, there’s another potentially damaging dynamic that happens when the speaker isn’t careful. And that is, they make the audience feel badly. By taking the opportunity to share personal stories, sometimes to excess or even exclusively, the toaster can make the audience feel left out or less important to the people being toasted. It ends up feeling exclusive and not inclusive to the audience.
By contrast, a speaker who embraces the principle of audience-centricity during a toast or other highly personal speech might talk about the qualities or experiences that everyone in the room knows about and can appreciate or laugh at; they might share lessons learned from the couple or person being toasted that everyone can related to; or they might take a bigger picture view of the occasion and talk only about the couple or the person and not even include their own personal connection.
The audience-centric speaker in the case of a wedding toast or other highly personal speech opens the tent wide so that everyone in attendance feels connected and feels like they could have toasted the couple or person with that very same speech.
