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Want to Become a Much Better Speaker? Take an Acting Class.

You want to really boost your public speaking skills -- but you've hit the ceiling on help available from books, training DVDs, and speech coaches.

Raise your sights by taking an acting class.

Your goal isn't to become a good actor -- or even a so-so one.  Your goal is to stretch your idea of who you are and who you can be to an audience.

Great speakers –- Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, MacArthur, and JFK -- had a touch of the actor in them.

In most acting classes, you'll be the fish out of water.  That's okay.  You have your own big picture strategy.

Take the acting exercises seriously and work at them.  You'll have an opportunity to see how other students convey emotion and create mood.  Good actors create a strong, emotional connection with the audience.  This is exactly what you want to do to become a really effective speaker.

Acting is a journey out of yourself to somewhere else.  Think of it as therapy, with an audience. 

When your acting class is successful at making you a better speaker, you'll probably never be able to quantify what happened or why. 

Your logical brain can only carry you so far.  But your whole brain can work wonders when you let it out to play.

 

Thank you Francisco, Tony, and Olivia

Before last week, I didn't know a living soul in Portugal or New Zealand.  Now I do -- thanks to the networked world that's erasing distance from our everyday lives.

I was interviewed by Portuguese blogger, public speaker, and Toastmaster, Francisco Saraiva.  He's a marketing and PR executive for the Port of Leixoes.  Check out his English-language blog at http://franciscosaraiva.com.

On the other side of the globe, 12 time zones away, in Wellington, New Zealand, Tony and Olivia Mitchell included me in their "Review of top 10 speaking blogs at Alltop."  The Mitchells do presentation training and consulting for New Zealand speakers.  Their blog is www.speakingaboutpresenting.com.

Twenty years ago, when I thought of visionaries who were predicting the future we're living today, the names Alvin Toffler, Marshall McLuhan, and Tom Peters came to mind.  Who knew that those cuddly Disney characters singing "It's a Small World After All" were also foretelling our future?

 

 

 

Turn Your Script into a Roadmap of Ideas

Your script is more than just words on paper.  Whether you use a full script, notes, or bullets, the format of your script can add richness and meaning to your delivery. 

Here are some guidelines:

• One sentence per paragraph -- preferably a short, simple sentence.  This lets you look up at the audience and back to your script -- without losing your place. 
• Use a big font size.  Print out a few script pages in various font sizes and pick the one that works for you.
• Each script page should have a very narrow top margin -- with text ending no more than two-thirds down the page.  This keeps your head up and eyes out at the audience.
• Insert pauses right into the script -- each as a separate line.  (Pause)  Pause when you change subjects, highlight a point, or ask a rhetorical question.
• Highlight text in yellow for key ideas -- and emphasize them.
• Underline keywords in sentences for vocal oomph.
• New thought = new page.
• Big page numbers.  The speaker who is lost loses the audience.

Your script is much more than words on pages.  It's a roadmap of your ideas.  And it's a roadmap you can easily customize to suit your message and your style.

Alltop: A Great, New Resource for Public Speakers

Guy Kawasaki and his gang have developed a simple but powerful new Web resource for public speakers.  Check it out at http://speaking.alltop.com/.

Alltop aggregates public speaking blogs in a clever, intuitive website.  It hides its magic behind a super simple interface.  Think iPhone and the original Palm.

With Alltop, you can surf along the tops of the waves -- scrolling through pages full of individual blog sites along with their last five entries.  But as your cursor slides over the entries, a text window quickly opens -- showing you the first couple of paragraphs.  It's like looking below the water line with a scuba mask.

When you click on an individual blog title or an entry, you’re into full scuba mode -- swimming leisurely through the actual website and its contents.

One click of the back button takes you to Alltop and you're on your surfboard again -- zipping across the waves of the public speaking blogosphere.  Very cool.

Alltop is a great example of how to make it powerful, seductive, and audience friendly.  Not a bad model for your next speech or presentation.

 

Your Career = 1X. Your Career + Effective Public Speaking = 2X.

(As a senior executive, you can give your younger execs a boost by forwarding this to them.  Then step back and see who goes for it.)

Careerwise, whatever you've got going for you will likely double if you're an effective public speaker. 

Being effective, interesting, and authentic on your feet multiplies your value by a factor of at least two.

You'll be the natural choice to present that important project report to top management.

You'll be tapped to represent your department, company, and industry when the time to speak comes up.  And that time will come many times.

You'll be a familiar face to a lot of people in the company -- and to top management. Your superiors will have confidence in you.

Whatever you bring to your work will increase dramatically if you're an effective speaker.  Think what this could mean over a span of 30 or 40 years.

Given this kind of leverage, it's a mystery why public speaking isn't the hottest, most in-demand course in every undergraduate and graduate curriculum.

Seize this great, undervalued opportunity.  Join Toastmasters.  Volunteer to speak.  Stick with it and you'll get better and better -- and become more successful.

 

Opening Your Speech: Slow Versus Fast

There are two schools of thought on how to open a speech.

 

In the slow open, you warm up the audience, establish a connection, and ease into your content. 

 

In the fast open, you launch right into a compelling story -- one that will grab the audience's attention and establish you as the driver on this journey.

 

So which one do you choose -- open slow or open fast?  It depends on how well you know the audience -- and how well they know you.

 

Think of your speech as a conversation with just one other person.  That's the way your audience sees it.  To them, you're not speaking to a group.  You're speaking to each individual in the group. 

 

In a social conversation, if you're meeting someone for the first time, you use the slow open.  "Hi, my name is Pete.  My friend, Jeff, is the host.  We were roommates in college.  How do you know Jeff?" 

 

But with someone you know really well, you jump right into content.  You see a golfing buddy in the clubhouse and say, "That putter you suggested?  Unbelievable!  Bought it on the spot."

 

Here's a slow open for an audience you don't know and they don't know you.  "Thanks, Jim for that flattering and mostly-true introduction.  Good evening everybody.  I'm a big fan of the Churchill Club.  Years ago, when I lived in Silicon Valley, I was a member and attended just about every meeting.  Tonight I want to talk about something that Winston Churchill was very interested in -- the international balance of power.  These days we call it "globalization." 

 

Now here's a fast open for that annual ritual: your pump-up remarks to the sales force.  When you're introduced, you walk out, take an extended pause, and begin, "Last week I had a long talk with our biggest customer.  Guess what he said."

 

In your opening -- and all through your speech -- engage the audience on their terms and on their turf.