Your Speech Coach

Your number one job as a speaker is to be the conduit to connect your presentation to the audience.

We know you are smart. You may have expertise no one else in the room has and you are likely to have more information on the topic that anyone else in the room as well. You may believe that showing the audience how much you know and how smart you are about the topic will make you look your best as a speaker. It won’t. When your goal is to look smart you tend to give your audience too much information. When you know so much, you may want to use all the big technical industry specific terms. You look a lot smarter when you choose the most important information, edit down the material for your audience, and use your knowledge and insight on the topic to simplify processes, procedures, and data for your audience. If you overwhelm and or confuse your audience they will walk out of the room thinking, “what a stupid speaker he didn’t think about my needs.”

Consider this: to create a hand written document that’s legible to a reader you must write each letter clearly without a lot of extra curly cues and fancy pants scribbling, so it follows that to create a speech that is understandable to your audience, you must speak clearly and simply, without a lot the erudite monologues with the fancy pants words.

This week I gave a three day workshop on Presentation Skills. What surprised
everyone is that I did not use powerpoint!!! (Collective gasp….)
And during the attendees’ speeches they learned that they could feel and be
so much more powerful without it. Most importantly, they felt how great it is
to be connected to your audience and not stuck facing your projector and or
screen. My students often say, “But I need the slides for my notes.” That is
not what slides are for. They are visual aids for the audience. Last night I
watched the republican presidential candidate debates and talked about my
analysis this morning as a guest on FOX and Friends on the Fox news network.
Guess what? The canididates did not use slides.
Obviously it would have looked funny if they had. We would have thought,
“Why do they need notes?” ” Why aren’t they looking at us?” ” Why aren’t they animated.?”

For more, there here is an NY Time article on the subject of powerpoint. Use discretion folks.

There is another important reason for breathing through the nose. This has to do with maintaining the correct balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our blood. When we breathe through our mouth we usually inhale and exhale air quickly in large volumes. This often leads to a kind of hyperventilation (breathing excessively fast for the actual conditions in which we find ourselves). It is important to recognize that it is the amount of carbon dioxide in our blood that generally regulates our breathing. Research has shown that if we release carbon dioxide too quickly, the arteries and vessels carrying blood to our cells constrict and the oxygen in our blood is unable to reach the cells in sufficient quantity. This includes the carotid arteries which carry blood (and oxygen) to the brain. The lack of sufficient oxygen going to the cells of the brain can turn on our sympathetic nervous system, our “fight or flight” response, and make us tense, anxious, irritable, and depressed. So remember, when possible, to breathe through your nose.

As a body language expert I often get called at the last minute to do media interviews, but strangely enough, I rarely get nervous. Typically I will get an urgent call and then rush to a TV studio to make comments about a breaking story. When I get to the studio, the producer or journalist I will be working with shakes my hand and ushers me into the studio. I sit calmly as they mike me and we do a sound check. One day got a call to do a read of President Bush’s body language. I have done that dozen of times, so I thought it would be fun, and no big deal. When I entered the Fox news affiliate studio, I put out my hand, but the producer pulled her hand back said, “I’m sick and don’t want to give you germs.” She then turned and walked ahead of me. As I followed her into the studio, my heart began to race, I began to sweat. When I sat in the makeup chair and I had to ask for water because my mouth got dry. My hands shook as I sat on the stool in front of the cameras. I was overwhelmed with anxiety, and the damp spots under my arms showed it to the world.

What was different this time? I didn’t get to shake hands. As we enter new and possibly unsafe environments we have a primal need that dates to prehistoric times to see if we are going to be safe, that no one will hurt us. The producer had previously acted as the host or “tribal chieftain” as I entered the studio to immediately shake my hands to show, “hey we are cool, and you won’t die today”. Without that warm greeting I felt danger, my cave woman instincts kicked in and I had a great need for a good antiperspirant! So when you go to give a speech or to be interviewed by the media make it a point to shake hands with every single person you meet along the way. If you are doing a face to face interview ask if it is possible to shake hands with your host of interviewer before you go live on the air. You will be amazed at the difference this small ritual will make in your speech or interview. And hey… you will save money on extra deodorant and dry-cleaning as well!

Oh, what was the outcome of the interview? Well my spot was canceled for a breaking story of plane on fire in Toronto. So I came back the next day to do the story. And I shook hands with the producer that day, who thankfully wasn’t sick and everything was hunky dory.