So do all of your colleagues with average presentation skills.

Let’s see why this is so…

Cookies and the Cookie Police

Suppose you are baking cookies. After mixing up the dough, you scoop up a bit with your fingers, roll it into a ball, and plop it on the cookie sheet. Repeat this 50 times, and you’ve got an oven full of cookies. Repeat this 500 times, and you’ve got a freezer full of cookies — or, perhaps, enough for a bake sale.

Now, suppose that you were being investigated by the Homemade Cookie Police. After you plop each cookie onto the sheet, they carefully lift it up and weigh it. For all 500 cookies, they record the weight. When they finish, they prepare a chart (presumably for their PowerPoint presentation back at Headquarters).

If you are a normal human being, the chart would look something like this:

• Most of the cookies would have a weight very close to the average, give or take a few tenths of a gram.
• Small numbers of cookies would be either very small or very large.

The very small cookies might burn in the oven, and the very large cookies might be raw, but the vast majority of cookies would be delicious!

Humans and the Bell Curve

Why did the cookie weight/frequency chart turn out the way it did? Because you’re human!

You may have recognized the shape of the chart as the Bell Curve. (You might know it as a normal distribution, or some other name.)  It has many fascinating applications in mathematics and statistics, but perhaps the most fascinating is that if you consider any variable in a large population, the histogram (the chart of values versus the count) tends to follow the Bell Curve.

In the case of cookies, the weight is a variable because you aren’t a robot.

As another example, consider adult heights. The average height for North American men is about 69 ½ inches. (North American women are about 64 ½ inches.) Height is a variable, and the distribution of heights follows the Bell Curve.

• A large majority of male adults have heights around 69 ½ inches, perhaps a little above or a little below.
• There are, of course, some really tall people and some really short people. Relatively speaking, however, there are fewer of these people.

When it comes to height, being average is good. In fact, it’s preferred. Clothes, cars, and airplane seats are all designed for you. To be extremely short or extremely tall means a life of physical inconvenience.

As another example, consider a sport like golf and let’s look at how well people can hit the golf ball.

• Professional golfers can really smoke it, but there aren’t many professional golfers.
• Some people can barely hit it at all (perhaps they are too frail or maybe just too clumsy to swing a club). There are only a few of these people, too.
• The vast majority of us are in the middle. We’re just skilled enough to avoid injuring ourselves.

When it comes to golf, we’d like to be able to hit the ball at a professional level, but it’s okay to be average. Being average is mediocre, and that’s fine for golf. It’s understandable because most of us never received any golf lessons. Your golf skills are only used a few times per year (or in a lifetime), and your career success doesn’t depend much on your ability with a golf club.

Public Speaking and the Bell Curve

It’s a little more complex to quantify presentation skills, but suppose for a moment that you could. (Perhaps the number of minutes you can speak without anyone getting bored? Maybe the number of listeners who are motivated by your call-to-action?)

On the high end, you’ve got Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, and Steve Jobs.

On the low end, you’ve got hermits and people who cannot communicate at all.

In the middle, you have the majority of people with average presentation skills. Is this good? Or is this bad?

Here’s the key to this article: The line between being an effective communicator and an ineffective communicator is not down the middle of the chart. It’s over to the right. That’s where you want to be. That’s where you need to be.

Statistically speaking, you can suck and still be an average speaker. Most of your colleagues are. This is the Death by PowerPoint abyss. This is the 15 filler words per minute zone. This is the “What the heck is this speaker talking about?” zone.

• Presentation skills are not cookies.
  Chocolate chips won’t compensate for you being an average speaker. Your audience spends a lifetime in meetings listening to people who are average speakers and wishing they were somewhere else.
• Presentation skills are not like height.
  The world is not designed for average speakers to excel. People do not rally around you if you have an average ability to convey your ideas.
• Presentation skills are not like golf.
  It’s not okay to be a mediocre. Your communication skills matter!

To Be a Good Speaker, You Can’t Be Average

Why is the average speaker so bad? Like golf, most people in the world never receive any formal communications training, and they never pursue any informal training either. We all pay the price. Think of the last 50 presentations you have attended. How many kept you interested throughout? Ten? Five? Fewer than five?

The small fraction of the population who strive to improve their skills (that’s you if you are reading this article) has a huge advantage.  If your communication skills aren’t already above average, they will be. And above-average communication skills give you a huge advantage in life. Your ideas get communicated and noticed. You excel in interviews. You are seen as a leader.

The good news is that anyone can improve their skills with dedication, effort, and time. Read Six Minutes. Read other speaking blogs. Read communication books. Join a Toastmasters club. Volunteer to speak whenever you can. Practice. Practice. Practice.

Don’t be an average communicator. Be effective.

Similar Articles You May Like... Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) Love the Process and Improve Your Speaking Skills 8 Faulty Speaker Assumptions and How to Fix Them How to Deliver Group Presentations: The Unified Team Approach How to Deliver the Talk of Your Life The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Your speaking ethos is critical to ensure that your audience is present, listening, and open to being persuaded by your ideas.

But, how do you maximize your ethos for a given speech and a given audience? Is ethos fixed before you open your mouth? Is there anything you can do during a speech that makes a difference?

This article shows you practical tactics you can employ to establish and increase your ethos.

Definition of Ethos

The previous article in the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series defined ethos along four dimensions:

1. Trustworthiness
   Does your audience believes you are a good person who can be trusted to tell the truth?
2. Similarity
   Does your audience identify with you?
3. Authority
   Do you have formal or informal authority relative to your audience?
4. Reputation
   How much expertise does your audience think you have in this field?

We will refer to these four dimensions throughout this article as we link practical actions back to their roots. Look for them in parentheses, like this: (Similiarity). When a certain tactic applies to all four dimensions of ethos, we’ll denote it like this: (All)

Remember that these dimensions are not always independent; rather, they are often intertwined.

Caution: Ethos is not an exact measure

Consider the difference between your weight and your overall health.

• Weight is precise. Yesterday, you weighted 121 pounds. Today, you weigh 120.5 pounds. If you burn 3500 calories through exercise, you’ll drop one pound in weight. Last week, you weighed three pounds less than your sister.
• Health, on the other hand, is not precise. Your health cannot be described by a single number. Still, you can make some assertions. You can be pretty sure that one person is healthier than another. Further, you can be confident that certain actions will improve your health (e.g. exercising more; eating spinach) and other actions will damage your health (e.g. smoking;  eating cake).

Ethos is not like weight. You can’t say “Oh, my ethos score with this audience is 165 today. Yippee!” (Well, you can say it, but it would be meaningless.)

Instead, ethos is like your physical health. You probably have less ethos than Steve Jobs at a technology convention. Having come to this epiphany, you should also realize that there are certain actions which improve your ethos, and certain actions that damage your ethos. Examples of these actions will be the focus of the remainder of this article.

How to Improve Ethos – Long Before Your Speech

Ethos is about your audience’s perception of you, and this perception can be formed over many months or years, or perhaps over many past speeches. So, we’ll first examine things you can do in the long run to improve your ethos.

#1: Be a Good Person (Trustworthiness)

Let’s start with an easy one. Be a good person, do good things, and think good thoughts. There are far more important reasons to follow this mantra than to gain speaking ethos. Nonetheless, your ethos will grow. The positive effect you have on those around you will spread, and will become known to your audience.

Example: How much ethos does Tiger Woods have (in the wake of the fidelity scandal) in terms of trustworthiness?

#2: Develop Deep Expertise in Topics You Speak About (Reputation)

People are busy. (There’s a news flash!) There are many things competing for their attention, and there are often many other speakers competing for their attention. Why will they choose to listen to you speak? Your expertise will often differentiate you from competing speakers.

Example: Suppose an audience has two options for concurrent sessions at a conference:

1. Speaker A has very interesting ideas, but only 2 years of work in a related field.
2. Speaker B has written two best-selling books in the field, and is a sought after consultant with 15 years of experience.

Who is the audience going to choose?

There’s a corollary for this rule too. Stick to speaking about topics for which you have deep expertise.

#3: Market Yourself (Reputation)

Developing the expertise doesn’t earn you any ethos if you don’t market yourself and let the world know about it. You’ve got to take charge of your personal brand and make sure that it’s a brand that emphasizes the qualities you want to emphasize.

#4: Analyze Your Audience (Similarity)

Thorough audience analysis is critical for improving your ethos. (It’s critical for improving your pathos and logos too… but that’s a topic for another article. Stay tuned.)

Audience analysis will reveal valuable clues that you can use to adapt yourself to your audience. Seek to find common traits that you share and highlight them. For other traits, find ways to adapt your language, your mannerisms, your dress, your PowerPoint visuals, or your stories to match the audience.

Example: You’ve been invited to speak to a company that is new to you. You don’t know whether their corporate atmosphere is formal or relaxed. Through audience analysis, you discover that nobody in the company wears a suit to work. So, you choose a less formal outfit to adapt to your audience.

How to Improve Ethos — Before Your Speech

The day of your presentation is too late to develop deep expertise about your topic. However, there’s much you can do before you say your first words:

#5: Show up Early to Welcome the Audience (Trustworthiness)

Showing up with minutes to spare gives the impression that you almost had somewhere more important to be. Showing up early demonstrates your dedication to serve the audience. This, in turn, builds trust.

#6: Share Event Experience with Audience (Similarity)

If your presentation is part of a larger event, try to attend as much of it as you can. Every minute you spend with your audience as an audience member builds your level of affiliation with them. The event becomes a shared experience. The audience sees you as one of them.

#7: Highlight Ethos in Marketing Materials (All)

Depending on the event, you may have an opportunity to provide an author’s bio to complement your speech title. Seize this opportunity. Make it clear to your potential audience why they should spend their time (and their money) to listen to you. This is particularly critical if you are at an event with concurrent sessions. Don’t assume that people make their decisions on topic alone.

Example: Suppose you will be speaking at the Arizona Teachers Association Annual Conference. Positive testimonials from past presentations to teacher associations would be effective to establish your reputation.

#8: Highlight Ethos in Introduction (All)

Your introduction is probably the single best opportunity for you to establish your ethos with this audience on this day. For this reason, you should always write your own introduction. Don’t let an event organizer wing it. Highlight the essential facts that establish your trustworthiness, similarity, authority, and reputation. As in the example above, pick the material specific to this audience and topic.

Beware that you don’t overdo it. Long introductions are boring. Long introductions filled with every accomplishment you’ve had since age 21 are boring and pompous.

Example: Suppose you are delivering user training for employees to introduce the new corporate financial system. Key items to highlight in your brief introduction might be:

1. You were the project manager for implementing the new system (Reputation)
2. You have implemented similar systems twice before in your career (Reputation)

How to Improve Ethos — During Your Speech

If you’ve done well so far, your audience is listening from your first word. Don’t get complacent. Continue building your ethos through your presentation:

#9: Tell stories or anecdotes which show you are consistent with your message (Trustworthiness)

Don’t be a hypocrite. Nobody will act on your advice if you don’t.

Example: Suppose you are trying to persuade your audience to support Habitat for Humanity, an international organization that builds homes to eliminate poverty. You can raise your ethos by crafting stories or anecdotes which demonstrate that you are active in the local Habitat organization.

By demonstrating that you follow your own advice, your audience is more likely to believe you on other points which cannot be so easily verified (for example, statistics about Habitat for Humanity).

#10: Use language familiar to your audience (Similarity)

Using language familiar to your audience is good for two reasons:

1. It aids in their understanding (which, indirectly, makes you more persuasive).
2. It helps the audience identify with you which boosts your ethos.

By “familiar language”, I mean more than English versus Dutch. As well, I mean more than using words which are understood by the audience.

To really get your audience to identify with you, you must use the terms that they would use to describe the concepts.

Example: A few examples might make this clearer:

1. Many people would understand that property agent is the same thing as a real estate agent. However, depending where you speak, one of these terms will be more common. Use it!
2. Acronyms are dangerous if you are using ones that your audience doesn’t know. Conversely, if everyone in your audience uses the term P.M. on a daily basis, you should use that term rather than project manager.

#11: Use visuals/examples which resonate with your audience (Similarity)

For any given message, you have a multitude of options for stories, anecdotes, visuals, or other techniques to convey your speech. From this multitude, try selecting the ones which have the biggest impact with this audience. Not only will you get the big impact, but the audience will also start thinking that you are just like them. That’s good for you!

Example: Suppose you are speaking to company management on the topic of goal-setting. Through audience analysis, you discovered that the company sponsored employees to run the local marathon. Although there are many metaphors and visuals you could use to talk about goal-setting, you choose to draw parallels between corporate goal-setting and the goals one sets when tackling a challenging race. You feature several vivid photographs of marathon races to complement your arguments.

#12: Choose quotations and statistics from the right sources (All)

Quotations and statistics are common speech tools which, on the surface, may contribute more to your logos (logical argument) than ethos. Nonetheless, if you choose the right sources, you can boost your ethos too.

Example: When researching a speech about cancer research, you discover two statistics that will help you make your argument.

1. The source of the first statistic is some unknown author on Wikipedia.
2. The source of the second statistic is the Mayo Clinic.

Which statistic is your audience more likely to believe? If you guessed the Mayo Clinic, you’re right. When you reference a reputable source, you boost your ethos by association.

So, the general guideline is to use quotations and statistics from sources which have high ethos to your audience, whether by trustworthiness, similarity, authority, or reputation.

#13: Reference people in the audience, or events earlier in the day (Similarity)

Earlier, we mentioned that, if possible, you should try to share the event experience with your audience. When you do, you can increase your ethos by incorporating something from that shared experience (or someone in the audience) into your speech. Your audience sees you as “one of them”, and a silent bond forms.

Example: In the presentation preceding yours, the speaker repeated a memorable phrase “It’s never too late.” If you can do it in a meaningful way, try to weave this phrase into your material.

How to Improve Ethos — After Your Speech

Your talk is done, but your effectiveness as a speaker is not yet written in stone. Here’s a few things you can do to continue to build up your ethos with this audience, or with your next audience.

#14: Make yourself available to your audience (Similarity)

Whenever possible, stick around after your presentation is over. Mingle with the audience and continue to share in the event experience. Not only will you have the opportunity for productive follow-up conversations, but your audience will see you as accessible, and accessible is good.

In short, your ethos will rise.

#15: Follow through on promises made during your presentation (Trustworthiness)

One technique for managing a short Q&A session is to defer thorny or complex questions to a later time.

Example: If someone asks a question as part of a 10-minute Q&A session that would take you 20 minutes to answer, it’s okay to defer the question saying: “I’d like to give the complete answer, but we don’t have time today. I’ll send it out to the group on email.”

It’s okay to do that, but only if you do follow up! If you fail to do so, your audience will judge you as being untrustworthy. Even if your presentation was great, your influence on their future actions is diminished.

Ethos in the short term versus the long term

In the above examples, you may have noticed that trustworthiness and similarity were mentioned much more often than authority or reputation. This is not an accident.

• You can significantly influence your audience’s on-the-spot assessment of your trustworthiness and similarity by following the advice above. While your audience may have preconceptions about you in these dimensions, you may be able to change their mind.
• It is much harder to change your audience’s on-the-spot assessment of your authority and reputation. Your audience’s perception of you along these dimensions is mostly fixed before your speech starts. Either you are an expert in the field, or you are not. Either you have formal authority over your audience, or you don’t. Not much that you say in a one hour speech will change either of these.

Next in this Series…

In the next article of this series, we’ll switch our focus to examine pathos: your emotional connection with the audience.

Similar Articles You May Like... What is Ethos and Why is it Critical for Speakers? Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking Book Review: Made to Stick Should a Speaker Apologize to the Audience?

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.

• What’s Inside?
• The Price
• What I Loved
• How could it be better?
• What Others Think
• Verdict

What’s Inside?

Based on the provocative title, you might think this book is heavy on memoirs and light on educational content. You would only be half right.

Confessions of a Public Speaker is packed with personal stories from the author and also packed with tips and advice for speakers from all backgrounds. A more appropriate title would probably have been “Insights of a Public Speaker” or “Lessons Learned by a Public Speaker”; of course, neither of those titles would like sell as many copies as this best-selling book is.

The video below shows the author talking about what the book is about…

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Price

At the time of writing this review, you can get this hardcover book for only $16.49 from amazon.com. This is 34% off the list price.

At this price, it isn’t surprising that this book is the 7th most popular public speaking book on amazon.com since being released last November. Readers love it — everyone’s giving it 5 stars.

3 Things I Love about Confessions of a Public Speaker

The three things I liked most about Confessions of a Public Speaker are:

1. Packed with Great Insights

Confessions of a Public Speaker touches on a broad set of issues — fear of speaking, preparation, organization of ideas, delivery techniques, teaching approach, dealing with a difficult crowd, preventing mishaps, speaking technology, and many others. Every speaker will find new advice and insights here.

As just one example, the second chapter (just 11 pages) is perhaps the most concise, sensible advice on public speaking fear I’ve read.

2. Wonderfully written!

Most public speaking books are written by speaking experts who, if I were to guess, are not authors by nature.

Confessions of a Public Speaker is different.  Scott Berkun is a best-selling author (see: Making Things Happen and The Myths of Innovation) and refers to himself as a writer first, and a speaker second. His humorous, witty, and sharp prose make this a thoroughly enjoyable read.

3. Honest to a Fault

Confessions begins with an odd disclaimer:

This book is highly opinionated, personal, and full of behind-the-scenes stories. You may not like this. Some people like seeing how sausage is made, but many do not.

Although everything in this book is true and written to be useful, if you don’t always want to hear the truth, this book might not be for you.

It’s true. The honesty in this book may shock some, like this passage:

No amount of training will make a man with two brain cells seem anything but dumb, as the problem is not his ability to speak, it’s his inability to think. It’s rarely said, but some people will never be good public speakers. Unless they find someone to do their thinking for them, they only have, at best, half the tools they need.

[...] The problem with most bad presentations I see is not the speaking, the slides, the visuals, or any of the things people obsess about. Instead, it’s the lack of thinking.

Personally, I appreciate this fresh approach.

How could it be better?

1. More Cohesion from Chapter to Chapter

Each individual chapter is well-written and feels “just right” as far as depth. However, I didn’t notice much continuity from one chapter to the next, and there’s no obvious rationale for the ordering of material.

Maybe this isn’t a bad thing. Each chapter stands on its own. It’s easy to read the book in short bursts — like I did, one chapter each night.

2. Better Photos

There are photos distributed throughout the book (and even one short chapter with a whole series of them), many taken by the author at speaking venues. The photos are referenced in the text, and they help to tell the story.

Unfortunately, the photos are not in color, and the contrast levels are too low, so many of them hard to view. A few are completely washed out in my copy.

Maybe this was a tradeoff that keeps the price of the book low? Maybe it was only my copy? Maybe the photos could be shared on the author’s website for keeners like me who want to squeeze every drop of meaning?

Update: Apparently, it wasn’t just my copy. On Scott’s blog, he reports that the low-contrast photos were a mistake in the first print run, and says the 2nd and 3rd run fixes this problem. If you get a copy now, you should get the good photos.

What Others Think

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker:

If public speaking is a part of your job–and it is, in some capacity, whether or not you’re Barack Obama–this book is a worthy read. It’s converted at least one person who has turned down speaking engagements because the idea was too scary to someone excited about getting better at a special and important skill.

Ben Rothke, Slashdot:

[...] Confessions of a Public Speaker is unique in that it takes a holistic approach to the art and science of public speaking. The book doesn’t just provide helpful hints, it attempts to make the speaker, and his associated presentation, compelling and necessary.

Jeff Bailey, Wired Presentations:

If you are new to presentations this should be the first book that you read on the topic. It gives a lot of great advice that many people take for granted.

Rhett Laubach, Authenticity Rules:

I have given at least 100 public speeches each year for the past 18 years and I have found a ton of value in it.

Ian Griffin, Speechwriter:

Confessions of a Public Speaker offers presenters—and those of us who support executives who give presentations—a great source of ideas to improve both the content and delivery of future talks.

Verdict

Here’s my confession… I didn’t want to put this book down.

Confessions of a Public Speaker provides sound advice that can help anyone improve their speaking skills. Highly recommended.

Similar Articles You May Like... What Does Your Personal Brand Say About You as a Speaker? 8 Faulty Speaker Assumptions and How to Fix Them Book Review: The Wealthy Speaker by Jane Atkinson 12 Days of Public Speaking Christmas Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-03-06] Book Review: Made to Stick

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

A dream? Not if you understand how to brand yourself as an expert, one of the steps to becoming a speaker in demand.

In this article, we tap into the wisdom of five experts from the fields of branding and public speaking. They discuss the importance of personal branding, and they offer advice about specific tools you can use to shape your personal brand.

Be the Expert

As a public speaker, you will have plenty of opportunities to speak, but your potential audiences also have plenty of other speaker options. Beyond simply having a skilled delivery, go-to speakers have developed a specific area of expertise. That expertise keeps their audiences coming back for more.

Jane Atkinson stated that the trick is to have your name become synonymous with your expertise. If people aren’t taking you by the sleeve, offering to buy you lunch just so they can pick your brain about your area of expertise, they should be.

Jane Atkinson:

In the speaking industry, it’s all about focus. You can’t be all things to all people. The best way to start building your brand is to declare your area of expertise. People need to know what they are getting from you. As people recognized my expertise, they kept asking me for my professional advice, and I thought, “Some day I’m going to charge for this advice.” I was developing my personal brand.

For Jane, especially in the speaking industry, more is not always better. Likewise, according to Nick Morgan, saying ‘yes’ to every opportunity may seem like a great way to establish more business, but it can exhaust you and dilute the potency of your personal brand.

Nick Morgan:

It wasn’t until I had the courage to say ‘no’ to some people that my brand began to take on some clarity.

The clarity Nick refers to comes from defining an overall vision and shaping our personal brands to help others see that vision the same way we do. But the vision must have a sharp focus. As an example, Aymee Buckhannon related how she found her own focus by helping others develop their personal brands.

Aymee Buckhannon:

I built a website for a life coach as a favor. Then another person saw it, then another person saw it, and the rest is history. Now I define myself confidently as a “branding strategist” and focus mainly on network marketing professionals.

Developing expertise in an area of interest to others may take years. By then, hopefully your area of expertise is something you still are passionate about. When you can align your expertise with your passion, you are well on your way to being the speaker audiences crave.

Manage Your Personal Brand

Even when you’re not behind the podium, you convey a presence to the world, be it in your one-to-one relationships or via the Internet. So, how do you make sure that the image you convey helps your speaking career instead of damaging it?

Joe Calloway wrote, “Your brand resides in the minds of your customers [...] Your brand is whoever customers think you are, whatever they think is your promise to them, and whether or not they believe that you keep that promise.”

It’s not too difficult for a presenter to replace the word “customers” in Calloway’s example with “audience” – or even “potential audiences”. Expanding your speaking opportunities means shaping your brand as a presenter, because your brand affects:

• Your ability to be hired to present.
• The types of speaking engagements you are offered.
• Your audience’s expectations.

Our experts agree that a speaker’s personal brand is as important as how well a speaker delivers a presentation. According to Joe Calloway, the two key questions are whether your brand is what you want it to be and whether you have created it by design.

Joe Calloway:

If I were to ask your clients or professional colleagues what it’s like to do business with you, whatever they say next is your brand. For me, one of the key elements of my personal brand is that Joe Calloway is “easy to do business with.” It’s very much by design and has become a key “tiebreaker” that has gotten me a ton of business over the years.

Cynthia Starks said that, for her, a personal brand is more than a choice of colors for a website or business cards. She takes a “big picture” approach to personal branding, remaining aware of how she comes across to other people in both personal interactions and in her dealings with others on the Internet.

Cynthia Starks:

I think personal branding is who you are – and that “who” comes across most fully in your personal interactions – on the ‘Net and in real life.

Are you kind? Are you willing to hear different opinions? Willing to be a resource to others? Are your online comments encouraging and supportive instead of sarcastic or cynical? These sets of behaviors are truly your “personal brand.”

Jane Atkinson echoed Cynthia’s observations about a more inclusive definition of personal branding. She cautions against losing track of your brand as a speaker.

Jane Atkinson:

People are building their personal brands, whether they’re aware of it or not, and sometimes they may unintentionally be creating a negative brand for themselves. It takes intention and focus to build an effective personal brand.

Jane suggested taking an active role in creating the brand that you want as a speaker, a sentiment shared by Aymee Buckhannon, who pointed out that when people see that you deliver what you promise through your personal brand, you increase your opportunities as a speaker and in other channels, too.

Aymee Buckhannon:

If people like to work with me for what I offer as a leader, or a branding strategist, then it won’t matter which product I carry. Meaning, if that company goes under, or if I change course, my personal brand is me, and not “enter product name here”.

Like many professional speakers, Nick Morgan is also a successful author. He said that the benefits of a well-crafted personal brand have extended beyond his speaking career to help his book sales, even in a difficult market.

Nick Morgan:

All the interviews and connecting I did when my second book came out have paid off in increased book sales. Your book will disappear without a trace unless you personally take charge of marketing it and work very, very hard.

Our experts agree that personal branding is a journey, not a destination. We must think hard about our goals as speakers and consciously develop a personal brand that we can realistically (and diligently) maintain.

Three Fundamentals to Managing Your Brand

Our experts suggest three key ways to promote your personal brand online.

1. Blog it!

Nick Morgan:

The blog is fundamental. You have to have something to say, and the blog is the place to start. Start a blog. If you don’t have a blog, you don’t have an opinion, and why should anyone pay attention to you?

Aymee Buckhannon:

You can even start your blog with a freebie. I believe content is more valuable than “aesthetics” at first. However, as you begin to work your way through the online world, you will need an upgrade and a professional look that stands out from all the “freebies”.

2. Get Your Own Website

Aymee Buckhannon:

If you do not own www.YOURNAME.com, get it now! Once you are famous or you have managed to brand yourself, whoever owns that name will profit.

Jane Atkinson:

When I updated my website, I decided that “all roads lead to the book”, meaning my website’s mission was to promote my book and provide sufficient information about it and easy links to order it.

Cynthia Starks:

The best reason for a website is that when someone says, “send me some speech samples,” you can happily say, “they’re on my website. Here’s the address.” 

3. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Aymee Buckhannon:

The main goal of sites like Facebook and Linkedin is relationship building. Your profile should be about you and not about what you sell. People on these sites are looking for others with whom they have something in common.

Jane Atkinson:

Thanks to social media, it has never been easier to build a personal brand. We need to be careful what we post if we want to maintain a credible brand. I use Facebook for more personal touches that tend to focus on my expertise, but I give hints to my personal side, like when I got my new puppy.

Cynthia Starks:

If you’re on LinkedIn, don’t forget the group LinkEds & Writers, where I’ve discovered some wonderful fellow communicators. The Quintilian Speechwriters Group is another excellent group for both corporate and freelance writers. There, you can pick the minds of some of the best speechwriters in the business on a variety of topics related to the process and business of speechwriting.

Discover More About the Experts

• Jane Atkinson (Web | Twitter) is President of Speaker Launcher and author of The Wealthy Speaker. She coaches professional speakers, celebrities, and CEOs to help focus their careers. She has represented numerous speakers who have vaulted to the top 3% of the speaking industry.
• Aymee Buckhannon (Web | Twitter) is personal branding expert and owner of My Personal Brand. She helps her clients develop cohesive personal branding for websites, blogs, and social media.
• Joe Calloway (Web | Twitter) is a nationally known speaker and author of the best-selling business book Becoming a Category of One. He helps companies align their vision, brand, and employee engagement objectives.
• Nick Morgan (Web | Twitter) is President of the presenter coaching and message development company, Public Words, Inc., and author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma; and Working the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking.
• Cynthia Starks (Web) is President of Starks Communications, LLC and is a former IBM and Fortune 500 speechwriter. Leaders in business, education, and government have delivered her speeches around the world.

Similar Articles You May Like... Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking How to Connect With Your Audience by Moving Closer 8 Faulty Speaker Assumptions and How to Fix Them Are Your Speech Gestures Too Small, Too Big, or Just Right? Book Review: The Wealthy Speaker by Jane Atkinson

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Chaunce Stanton provides marketing communications support for the professional services industry, including architects, engineers, and scientists. For more than eight years, he has routinely helped teams develop messages and craft polished presentations for multimillion-dollar projects. Chaunce is an enthusiastic member of Toastmasters International in St. Paul, Minnesota’s Metropolitan Chapter.

Frustrated… by nerves that never go away.

Frustrated… by audience questions that trip you up.

Frustrated… by the process of skills improvement which is more evolutionary than revolutionary.

In this article, we learn how to end the frustration by learning to love the process. We draw five speaking lessons from an extremely unlikely source: a motivational hooping video.

Lessons of the Hoop

A what?
A motivational hooping video.

The video below is just four minutes long, and chronicles the improvement process experienced by Sandra Sommerville (stage name: SaFire) as she develops her expertise as a hooper.

Watch the video first, and then read the rest of the article.
[If you don't see it below, click here to jump to the original article.]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pretty amazing improvement, isn’t it?

Here are the words which accompany Lessons of the Hoop:

Practice makes… improvement. Try, then try again, and again. Try it slowly, even if it barely counts. Watch for hesitation or you’ll miss your chance. Just keep going. Document, even if you never plan to share. Repeat it over, and over. Stretch your limits. Try different sizes, even if it’s ridiculous. Seize the moment. Celebrate success. Get tangled up. Stop and breathe. Stay creative. Challenge yourself. Remove distractions. Laugh. Accept the uncomfortable. We only learn if we … drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop. And most importantly, try not to judge yourself. Practice makes… improvement. Be strong. Find balance. Take risks. Play hard. Smile, and… love the process.

How Does This Apply to Public Speaking?

Many of the lessons learned by Sandra are the same ones that public speakers must learn.

Let’s consider how these five apply to speaking:

1. Practice makes improvement.
2. Document, even if you never plan to share.
3. Accept the uncomfortable.
4. Stretch your limits.
5. Love the process.

Lesson 1: Practice makes improvement.

You won’t get better at speaking by only reading a book. (Or, this blog!)

You can only improve your speaking skills by practicing. Speak at work. Speak at your child’s school. Speak at a town hall meeting. Speak at your cousin’s wedding. Speak in your car. Speak for your cat. Speak in front of the mirror.

You won’t ever achieve perfection. But you will improve. Little by little, your practice will result in improvement. Most of the time, your improvements will be incremental. Other times, you’ll take a giant leap in an epiphany of speaking prowess.

Lesson 2: Document, even if you never plan to share.

You can keep a paper journal, but it’s probably easier these days to keep an electronic record of your speeches and PowerPoint presentations. Date them so you can look back on them someday and marvel at how far you’ve progressed.

Evaluate yourself, and keep track of the specific areas you are working on.

Keep a video record too. Not only will individual videos reveal areas for improvement, but comparing current videos to past ones will be eye-poppingly encouraging. When you are caught up in the process, it’s difficult to see your own progress. A video record won’t lie.

Lesson 3: Accept the Uncomfortable

Accept the butterflies in your stomach before a presentation.

Accept how your heart races when the pressure is on.

Accept that you will forget a word, a phrase, a story, or a punchline.

Accept that PowerPoint malfunctions will happen to you.

Accept that not everyone in your audience is impressed, or even listening.

Accept all of these things, but know that none of them will prevent you from communicating effectively unless you let them.

Lesson 4: Stretch Your Limits

There’s a quote that gets recycled in motivational speeches: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

If you are approaching every speech or presentation in the same way… if you are preparing the same way… if you are developing PowerPoint slides in the same way… if you use the same speech opening over and over again… if you always speak from behind the lectern… if you always use typewritten 12-point font speech notes…

If you never try new things, your skills will stagnate.

Look for opportunities to stretch your limits by:

• trying new vocal techniques,
• incorporating new stories,
• delivering new gestures,
• adopting a new style of visuals,
• discovering a new source of quotations,
• seeking out new audiences and new venues, and
• pursuing the 1-hour keynote when you’ve only ever delivered the 10-minute teaser speech.

Lesson 5: Love the Process

It’s understandable if you feel that the process is drudgery that you are required to endure before — someday — reaching the pinnacle of presentation mastery.

However, that mindset will only sabotage your efforts.

Love the process. Set small goals and celebrate your milestones. Laugh at your mistakes (because you’ll make lots of them).

The truth is that there is no pinnacle — only a lifetime of going through the process of improving your speaking skills.

Similar Articles You May Like... Average Speakers Suck. Don’t be Average. Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) 8 Faulty Speaker Assumptions and How to Fix Them How to Deliver Group Presentations: The Unified Team Approach How to Deliver the Talk of Your Life The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

How about you?

In this article, you will learn:

• 8 common faulty assumptions you might be making;
• the subsequent result on your presentations; and
• how to fix your flawed thinking.

8 Faulty Speaker Assumptions

Eight common faulty assumptions that speakers make are:

1. Deep knowledge of a topic alone will enable me to present ideas on it.
2. My audience members are mind readers.
3. I can present information/concepts that took me 3 months to learn in a 20-minute presentation.
4. Everyone in my audience is equal.
5. I don’t need to practice out loud.
6. I’ll have plenty of time to get there.
7. If I get off the platform/stage, I will be closer to audience members.
8. If I speak at my normal speed, everyone will understand me.

Let’s examine each of these a little deeper.

Assumption #1 — Deep knowledge of a topic alone will enable me to present ideas on it

Knowledge of a subject you are going to speak about is critical, but it is only a beginning to have an impact on an audience. You also need to determine:

• What you want to achieve by delivering the message? In other words, what is your purpose? What do you want the audience knowing, doing, and/or feeling as a result of your presentation?
• Who you are speaking to? What are their expectations, level of understanding, and attitudes. Depending on this, you will organize your materials accordingly, and emphasize the information that is most critical to the audience.
• Logistical considerations — How much time do you have? How many people will be in the audience? What types of visuals will work best? You need to understand all of this to determine how much information you will be presenting — and how to present it.

Assumption #2 — My audience members are mind readers

Unfortunately, audience members never know what you want them to take away from your presentation, unless you tell them multiple times.

Despite what you may think, they are not hanging on your every word. The goal is to be clear and concise. Don’t let them guess.

Assumption #3 — I can present information/concepts that took me 3 months to learn in a 20-minute presentation

Frequently, speakers want to look smart — or demonstrate that they have worked very hard — so they do a data dump. They forget that audience members can only absorb so much information at a time.

Step back and determine what they must know. Leave the rest out, or save it for the Q & A.

Assumption #4 — Everyone in my audience is equal

Typically, there are audiences within an audience. There may be a hierarchy or politics involved. Analyze the audience, and determine which members are the decision makers, and who are the influencers (sometimes they can be the same), and then plan accordingly.

If everyone is equal in rank, play to the masses.

Do your homework. Learn exactly who is in the audience.

Assumption #5 — I don’t need to practice out loud

Thinking through a presentation is very different than speaking it out loud, in a simulated environment, using your notes and/or slides.

Actors, musicians, and athletes all practice. Why should speakers be any different?

Practice helps with fluidity, timing and comfort level. Each time, say it differently, so it doesn’t become rote.

Peter Drucker said, “Spontaneity is an infinite number of rehearsed possibilities.”

Assumption #6 — I’ll have plenty of time to get there

Although the unexpected can happen, speakers should do everything possible to arrive at a speaking event/meeting well in advance.

If you don’t do your due diligence in leaving with ample time, or getting directions, you will likely arrive at the last minute — harried and looking unprofessional.

If other speakers are before you, sit in to get a sense of the tone of the meeting, and how the audience is responding.

By arriving early, you can talk to audience members, and further customize your presentation. And, of course, this allows you time to check your appearance, do some breathing exercises, check your equipment, and to be there to welcome the audience members as they arrive.

Assumption #7 — If I get off the platform/stage, I will be closer to audience members

Many speakers wrongly believe getting off a platform or stage will help them better connect with audience members. But, in fact, the majority of the audience won’t be able to see them when on the same level.

Getting into the audience can work effectively only if …

• It’s a small audience
• The room is set up for this
• You are tall enough to be seen.

Most of the time, the speaker’s need to get closer to the audience can be an annoyance to audience members when they don’t know where to look.

Stay on the platform or stage, and connect with large audiences in better ways, like using questions to get participants to raise hands, and interactive exercises in subgroups.

In a larger venue, try to have the room arranged with several aisles. That way, if you do walk into the audience, you will have a place to go.

Assumption #8 — If I speak at my normal speed, everyone will understand me.

The standard rate of speech in the United States is 120 or 160 words per minute. This varies in different parts of the country.

Speakers need to adapt their rate regionally, as well as when the information is technical and people need time to absorb it, and also when English isn’t a first language. If they don’t adapt, participants may not understood what they’re saying, or key concepts may be missed.

How to Fix Your Faulty Assumptions

Now that you’ve identified these faulty assumptions, how do you fix them?

What do you think?

What faulty assumptions have you made, only to learn the hard way?

Please share your lessons in the comments.

Similar Articles You May Like... Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking Stop Rehearsing! 3 Critical Things to Do Before Your Speech Speaking Survey says: Speaker DO’s and DON’Ts Average Speakers Suck. Don’t be Average. Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Marjorie Brody is a Hall of Fame speaker, coach to Fortune 500 executives and author of more than 18 books, including Speaking is an Audience-Centered Sport. She is CEO of BRODY Professional Development, a business communication and presentation skills company located in the Philadelphia suburbs that offers tailored training programs, workshops, keynote presentations, and executive coaching. To contact Marjorie, visit www.BrodyPro.com.

When you’re asked to present as part of a panel of experts or a team making a sales pitch, you might think that there is safety in numbers and that you need to prepare less than if you were speaking on your own.

The truth is that, for your audience, a group presentation is only as strong as its weakest presenter. Here’s how to help your team create a strong and unified group presentation.

3 Ingredients of Great Group Presentations

The three ingredients to develop and deliver a unified group presentation are clarity, control, and commitment.

1. Clarity
   • Clarity of Purpose
   • Clarity of Roles
   • Clarity of Message
2. Control
   • Control Introductions
   • Control Transitions
   • Control Time and Space
3. Commitment
   • Commit to a Schedule
   • Commit to Rehearsing
   • Commit to Answering Your Audience’s Questions

Incorporating these elements will give your audience a “seamless” message.

Ingredient #1: Clarity

Clarity means clearness of purpose, thought or style. Developing clarity within your group will help you develop a clear message for your audience.

Clarity of Purpose

Just as your presentation will have a clear purpose, expressed in a thesis statement, your group should create a Charter Statement that explicitly captures the group’s desired outcome.

The charter is different from a thesis statement. The thesis specifically frames the presentation message whereas the charter frames your group’s purpose. This Charter Statement becomes the test of everything that will go into the presentation and help guide the efforts of the team. The charter and the thesis may overlap, but even your thesis statement must be tested against the group’s Charter.

For example, if your group agrees that your general purpose is to sell your product, and, more specifically, you know that the key decision maker in the audience is leery about cutting checks to companies like yours, build that into your Charter Statement.

The purpose of our presentation is to sell our Product to ABC Company by overcoming the objections of the company’s Purchasing Officer through clear examples of how our Product provides a fast return on investment.

The Charter Statement will come in handy when you have a team member who may want to go “off track” to tell personal anecdotes that don’t pass the test of the group’s charter.

Clarity of Roles

Personalities come into play when groups meet to develop presentations. Jockeying for position and ego struggles can quickly deplete the group’s momentum, resulting in hurt feelings and, potentially, a weaker presentation. Providing clarity to group roles helps to establish expectations and keep the entire group moving towards a common objective: a great group presentation.

Identify the roles your group needs during message development. For example, to ensure that team members are meeting assignments, select a Project Manager. This person isn’t the “boss of the presentation”, but rather will focus on schedule and assignments.

Other roles could include a Gap Analyst who is responsible for identifying “gaps” in content and support materials (handouts, graphics, etc.), which in turn could work closely with other roles within the group like the Chief Researcher.

Capitalize on the unique personalities within your group to develop roles that work well for all, but be sure to discuss the roles openly so they are clear to everyone.

Clarity of Message

Instead of writing “speeches” for each individual speaker, try creating one master presentation, a unified narrative, and then decide who speaks to which points, and when.

This is a shift from the traditional segmented method of group presentations where often group members are directed to “give five minutes of talking” and then are left to develop content independently.

In a master presentation, each speaker may weave in and out at various points during the presentation. When done well, this fluid dynamic can hold an audience’s attention better by offering a regular change in speakers’ voices and presence.

By using a master presentation, your group will ensure that each of the presenters will stay “on script” and use cohesive language, smooth transitions, and (when using visuals) consistent graphics.

Ingredient #2: Control

Group presentations face unique logistical challenges beyond just developing presentation content.

Control Introductions

Your audience notices how your group introduces itself, so plan those introductions with your presentation.

Your presentation may be part of a larger event that includes an emcee who will introduce the team. If so, be sure that you provide pertinent information to the emcee that will allow her/him to generate interest in your presentation even before you begin speaking.

If your group is responsible for making its own introductions, however, you will need to decide if you will introduce your group members in the beginning, or when they first speak. Your group also will need to decide if each member introduces her/himself, or if one member will introduce everyone.

There is no one right way to do introductions, but your group must decide how to do them before the day of the presentation.

Control Transitions

Decide how you are going to “hand off” from one speaker to the next. In the “master presentation” approach, you may want to consider simply have speakers pick up a narrative right where the previous speaker left off.

If you use the more traditional segmented approach, each speaker may cue the subsequent speakers by identifying them and their subject matter. For example:

“…and speaking of quality control, no one is more qualified the Bob Johnson. Bob is going to tell us about how this team will deliver a quality project for you.”

Another option is to assign a group emcee who will handle transitions between presentation sections. Your group will need to determine which option makes the most sense based on your presentation style and audience expectations.

Control Time and Space

Multiple speakers translate to occupying more physical space, and the potential to gobble up more time with introductions and transitions.

If you will be presenting in a small room, consider where each speaker needs to be positioned to quickly reach the speaking area, and whether they will sit or stand when not speaking.

Your presentation must fit within your allotted time, so you will need to time your group’s presentation, including equipment set up, introductions, and transitions.

Ingredient #3: Commitment

Commitment from each group member is going to give your presentation the best content and flair that will impress your audience.

Commit to a Schedule

Once you know the date of your presentation, create a schedule that includes specific milestones, such as “presentation draft due” and “final rehearsal”. Having a specific schedule allows members either to agree to the group’s expectations or to offer dates that better fit their personal schedules.

Additionally, you can assign specific responsibilities to the scheduled milestones; for example, who is responsible for bringing the handouts, projector, and laptop to the presentation?

Commit to Rehearsing

Rehearsing is one of the most important steps for presentation success. Have your team members agree from day one that they will make themselves available to practice with the group.

If you find group members who lack the commitment to rehearse, consider finding group members who will commit. Practice makes perfect, and no rehearsal means your group doesn’t know what will happen to the content, timing, or quality of the presentation. Do those sound like things your group would like to leave to chance?

Commit to Answering Your Audience’s Questions

Once your formal presentation is over, you may see some raised hands in the audience, ready to pepper your group with questions. Your presentation is not over yet. How you handle those questions is as important as the presentation itself. A well-done presentation means nothing if presenters fumble questions so badly that they appear incompetent.

Have each member develop a list of potential questions and then, as a group, review the list. Discuss who will be responsible for handling which types of questions. Are there any questions important enough to build into the presentation?

From a Rag-Tag Group of Speakers to a Dynamic Presenting Team

By incorporating these three ingredients into your next group presentation process, you will find that you not only develop a presentation that your audience loves, but your group will transform from a rag-tag group of speakers into a dynamic presenting team.

Similar Articles You May Like... Average Speakers Suck. Don’t be Average. Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) Love the Process and Improve Your Speaking Skills 8 Faulty Speaker Assumptions and How to Fix Them How to Deliver the Talk of Your Life The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Chaunce Stanton provides marketing communications support for the professional services industry, including architects, engineers, and scientists. For more than eight years, he has routinely helped teams develop messages and craft polished presentations for multimillion-dollar projects. Chaunce is an enthusiastic member of Toastmasters International in St. Paul, Minnesota’s Metropolitan Chapter.

Other speaking sins are so grave that when you commit them, your speech or presentation is certain to fail. This article reveals the seven deadly sins of public speaking.

Deadly Sin #1: Sloth

Sloth, or laziness, is committed by speakers who fail to prepare.

Speaking in public, whether formally or informally, is an essential activity that requires effort. Yet, the majority of people expend no effort to improve their effectiveness as a speaker. Tragically, they are content to drift from one frustrating presentation to the next.

You can avoid sloth in a number of ways:

• Enroll in a public speaking course
• Read public speaking books
• Read public speaking blogs
• Join Toastmasters or another local speaking club
• Study great speakers
• Hire a speaking coach

(By reading this article, you’re making the effort to improve. Sloth has no claim on you!)

Failing to prepare for life by improving your speaking skills leads to a chain of excuses, characterized by…

Deadly Sin #2: Envy

Envy is characterized by a false belief that great speakers are simply lucky to have been born with natural speaking skills.

You’ve heard the excuses from your colleagues, haven’t you?

• “She’s so lucky! She’s a natural speaker!”
• “Hmph! It’s so easy for him to speak in front of people.”
• “No, I couldn’t deliver the proposal. I’m not a speaker.”

People who are envious of the “natural” skills of others are more likely to apply misguided solutions when confronted by an unavoidable speaking situation:

• They steal stories and anecdotes from others rather than creating original ones
• They copy PowerPoint slides from others even if they don’t quite apply
• They mimic the oratorical style of others and lack authenticity

Because of bad habits like this, speakers suffer from lack of confidence. They know the stories, the slides, and the words are not their own. Nervousness results because they fear being exposed, and this nervousness leads to crazy behaviors like…

Deadly Sin #3: Lust

The lustful speaker attempts to calm their nerves by applying the common (yet terrible) advice to picture the audience naked!

Please don’t picture the audience naked, especially if I am in your audience.

In theory, picturing your audience naked makes them seem as vulnerable as you feel. It may provide a brief lighthearted moment to feed your teenaged appetite, but it won’t help you speak better.

More likely, it will cause an additional distraction and impede your efforts to connect with your audience. Consider this: how easy is it for you to communicate something meaningful to a room full of naked people? Can you inspire them? Impossible.

Nervous speakers who avoid this lustful deadly sin are, unfortunately, still prone to committing another deadly sin…

Deadly Sin #4: Gluttony

Gluttony is exhibited by speakers who believe that more is always better.

More slides, more bullets, more examples, more facts, more numbers, more details, more words — more of everything.

Packing all possible material into your presentation and then speeding through it is flawed, despite your best intentions to provide maximum value. More is (usually) not better. Cognitive research shows that people have a limited capacity to absorb information (see Kosslyn’s Clear and to the Point and Mayer’s Multimedia Learning). Overloading that capacity will reduce their ability to absorb anything at all! Quantity is no substitute for quality.

It is better to focus your presentation on your core message, select only the very best support material (facts, slides, anecdotes), and speak at a reasonable pace. Supplementary material, if necessary, belongs in a handout.

All of this gluttony — too many slides, too many stories, too many details — leads the speaker down a dark and dirty path towards…

Deadly Sin #5: Greed

Greed is the deadly sin of excess, and is committed by a speaker who goes over time.

Does this sound familiar?

• “Oh, is that clock correct? I’m only halfway through…”
• “I haven’t gotten to the good part yet…”
• “Are there any objections to cutting our lunch break in half so I can finish this?”

Speaking for more than your allotted time violates the contract you have with your audience, and that’s never good. People are busy and do not appreciate having their time wasted. Nobody will complain if you finish a few minutes early.

If you go over time, negative emotions begin to fill the room, making you more susceptible to experience…

Deadly Sin #6: Wrath

Wrath, or uncontrolled anger, is committed by a speaker who handles problems in the worst possible way.

As a speaker, you should always remain in control. No matter how bad your presentation is going, keep calm. Don’t let these frustrations provoke you:

• When you make a mistake (even a big one), resist the urge to draw more attention to it by cursing yourself in an attempt to draw pity.
• When an audience member is disrupting the room, resist the urge to “solve” it with sarcasm.
• When the room or venue logistics fail, don’t start blaming the organizers or anyone else. Instead, roll with in and move on.
• When an audience member is heckling you, do not take the bait.

Getting angry — whether at yourself, someone in the audience, or some other factor — is one of the worst things you can do. Your audience will feel uncomfortable and your credibility will be diminished considerably.

Finally, the first six speaker sins are all symptoms of the deadliest speaking sin of them all…

Deadly Sin #7: Pride

Pride is committed by a speaker who believes that public speaking is about them.

It’s not.

• It’s never about you.
• It’s never about your impressive accolades in your introduction.
• It’s never about your dazzling delivery where you channel Churchill.
• It’s never about your sumptuous slides which prominently feature your company logo beside dazzling 3-D pie charts.

Public speaking is always about the audience and the message you want to convey. Failing to put the audience first will kill any presentation. You need to perform audience analysis to discover how best to structure your presentation and deliver the message.

Avoid this sin by starting to analyze your presentation from the audience’s perspective. Amazingly, most of the other speaking sins will go away.

• You’ll recognize that you need to prepare. (Sloth)
• You will realize that you are uniquely capable of delivering your message to this audience. (Envy)
• You will trim all of the fluff to deliver a message which is focused and easy-to-understand. (Gluttony)
• You will respect the time your audience has given you. (Greed)
• You won’t saddle your audience with your problems. (Wrath)

As for Lust when speaking, well… that’s just silly.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

1. Sloth: failing to prepare for your speech or presentation
2. Envy: believing that great speakers are born with their skills
3. Lust: quelling your nerves by picturing the audience naked
4. Gluttony: believing that more words/slides/facts/numbers is always better
5. Greed: speaking over your allotted time
6. Wrath: rigidly reacting to problems and losing your cool
7. Pride: placing yourself ahead of the audience

How many of these speaking sins are committed in presentations you attend?

Similar Articles You May Like... 8 Faulty Speaker Assumptions and How to Fix Them Speaking Survey says: Speaker DO’s and DON’Ts Average Speakers Suck. Don’t be Average. Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) Book Review: Universal Principles of Design Love the Process and Improve Your Speaking Skills

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Do you provide good service, or bad service? More importantly, does it matter?

Customer Service at Home Depot

Recently, I visited Home Depot to purchase a table saw. I found one in my price range that seemed to have the features I desired.

• I asked the salesman (“Salesman A”)to answer a few questions. He told me that he couldn’t leave his station. (The saw was about 30 feet away from his station.)
• I asked the salesman for the saw specifications. He told me to go home and look it up on the manufacturer website.
• When I returned (hey, it was a good price!), I asked him to have the saw brought out to me. He told me that I’d have to wait for the forklift operator to get one down. I waited ninety minutes. The forklift never arrived.
• When I threatened to leave unless I received better service, he blamed “Atlanta” (head office) for short-staffing. I walked out.

Customer Service at Southridge Building Supplies

Contrast this with my experience at the local tool store, a store that I initially didn’t expect to even carry table saws because they were so small.

• I didn’t see any table saws I liked out front. The salesman (“Salesman B”) left his “station” and walked to the warehouse with me.
• The saw was (as before) up on the top shelf. The salesman ran (yes… ran!) into the back lot and yelled for the forklift operator, who then appeared 20 seconds later.
• Since this was not the same model as the big box store, I asked about the specifications again. He didn’t know… but for the next 45 minutes, he did Internet searches, looked through about about 50 product binders, and rifled through filing cabinets to find the answer. [Eventually, he gave up. But, I appreciated the effort.]
• He didn’t blame anyone. Instead, he told me that he would call the product distributor on Monday to get the answers for me.

Eventually, I got a much better product at a much better price (the Delta model, pictured above). Because of the great customer service, I’ve returned to buy kerosene, deck screws, and sandpaper, and will continue to give my business to them.

Can these lessons be applied to public speaking?

What is Customer Service for Speakers?

Three ways to compete with competitors in any industry are to offer the lowest price, highest quality, or best service. It’s difficult to accomplish all three simultaneously.

These concepts have parallels in public speaking too:

• Price
  Your speaking fee, and also the “opportunity cost” your audience pays to listen to you. (i.e. if they weren’t listening to you for an hour, what else could they be doing?)
• Quality
  The intrisic value of your message, because this is the only thing your audience takes away with them. How much will their lives or their businesses improve as a result of applying that message?
• Service
  How easy are you making it for them to receive your message?

Let’s focus on this third element — customer service — and ask some questions.

1. Do you provide necessary background information?

A poor speaker:

• assumes that their audience has the background knowledge
• expects them to look it up themselves after (Salesman A)

A good speaker:

• performs audience analysis to determine what the audience doesn’t know
• devotes the necessary time to bridge that gap early in the presentation. (Salesman B)

2. Are you willing to meet your audience half way?

A poor speaker:

• will not customize content, slides, or delivery for a given audience
• will put the message out there with facts and figures, but it will be inaccessible to the audience just like the table saw on the top shelf was inaccessible to me without a forklift

A good speaker:

• uses language that is familiar to the audience
• chooses examples that will be understood
• adopts a delivery style that is comfortable to the audience/event
• employs metaphors, analogies, or other devices to make the message understandable

3. Are you flexible, both with the audience and with the event host?

A poor speaker:

• refuses to go beyond what it says in the contract (like Salesman A who would not leave his station)
• insists on using their full planned time (e.g. 60 minutes), even if the event is behind schedule
• ignores questions that arise during a presentation

A good speaker:

• adapts to the situation
• understand that compromises are necessary; (e.g. “okay, I’ll only speak for 40 minutes, and deliver extra material via email to audience members”)
• allows questions (within reason) during the presentation

4. Do you accept responsibility when things go wrong?

A poor speaker:

• blames outside factors (e.g. traffic, the airline)
• blames the audience (e.g. “if you had paid more attention earlier, you’d know this”)
• blames the event organizer (like Salesman A who blamed Head Office in Atlanta)

A good speaker:

• considers what can possibly go wrong, and is prepared when it happens
• arrives early to allow time to implement alternate plans when necessary
• absorbs responsibility for the problem, rather than passing the negativity on to the audience

Why does it matter?

Event planners and audiences have a choice when they book speakers or listen to speakers. In many situations, there are dozens of speakers who can deliver the same message. The level of customer service you provide distinguishes you from other speakers. Often, it determines whether you get called to speak to the same audience again.

What level of service do you provide?

How else can a speaker provide great customer service? Share your ideas in the comments.

For inspiration, you might like to consider these 10 stories of customer service and think about the parallels for public speaking.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

How many times have you sat in an audience and thought to yourself: “Man, I’d like to be up there!”

Perhaps you’ve given a few presentations and you find out that you’re pretty darn good at this speaking thing. Maybe you join Toastmasters and rise to the top of your club. Some time goes by and you start thinking “I can make a living at this. Imagine getting paid to speak!”

You decide to go for it.

So what’s next?

Here are a few broad steps that you can take to get started in the world of professional speaking:

1. Pick a Lane
2. Be the Expert
3. Get Good
4. Set Up Shop
5. Creating a Great Promise
6. Develop a Marketing Program

1. Pick a Lane

The first step along your journey must be to “pick a lane.”

You need to choose a topic area to focus on, based on your expertise. Now you might say, “but I have several speeches that I’m very good at – how can I choose just one?”

Ask yourself this question: “What do I want to be known for 5 years from now?” If you don’t want to be known for anything and don’t care much about getting paid, then by all means continue with all of your speeches.

If you want to get paid well and be known as the expert on one thing, then pick a lane.

2. Be the Expert

When launching into a career as a professional speaker, many people make the mistake of thinking of themselves as just a speaker. In the big picture, however, you are the central cog of a company that helps to accomplish something.

Whether you help people manage their time better, lead others, get motivated, or be educated on the economy, your company should have a mission.

You should think about speaking as just one of the channels which you use to distribute your knowledge. You might also write books, consult, coach, run teleseminars, host retreats, etc.

The key is this: when you think about yourself, don’t narrow it down to professional speaker; be the head of an empire that helps people in your lane of expertise.

Remember that you can’t fake it. Your expertise must be real and credible. If you aren’t there yet, go out and develop your expertise before pursuing this path.

3. Get Good

Winning a speech contest is a step in the right direction towards getting good, but it doesn’t mean that people are going to pay you.

The real test to knowing when your speech has “made it” is when someone comes up to you after your presentation and says “I’d like to book you to speak six months from now in Las Vegas.”

When spin-off, which is king in our business, is happening on average 2-3 times after every engagement, then you can stop working on your speech. Until then, work the speech. [Ed.: spin-off refers to a future speaking engagement you gain as a direct consequence of your present engagement]

4. Set Up Shop

The speaking business is like any business. If you don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in your body, you may be in for hardship.

To get started, you need cash flow – start up capital. If you are starting on a shoe string, then you are going to find it more difficult. That said, with today’s technical world, things are a bit more possible.

For instance, you can use a blog as your website and manage it yourself. If it looks professional enough, then you might be able to save the costs of setting up and managing a website which can creep into the thousands depending on your supplier.

The key is to be able to communicate what you can do for people within 15 seconds of their arrival to your site. In our ADD web world, you don’t have long to impress someone. [Ed.: ADD = attention deficit disorder]

If they don’t see what they are looking for, they will abandon your website in a heartbeat.

5. Creating a Great Promise

The promise statement is the key to communicating your value to your prospects.

It’s like a tag line and would go on your website and marketing pieces. In five to nine words (less is more), the promise statement tells prospects what they will get by working with you.

For example, a speaker who delivers programs on team-building might create a promise “Helping Teams Win in a Competitive Field.”

You can work on making your promise more clever or reflective of your personality, but the real key is to show the outcome and the value, and to get that decision maker to lean in and say “Yes, we need that!”

6. Develop a Marketing Program

Now obviously I’m simplifying here, but once your website is up, you’ll want to create a flow of traffic to it.

You’ll want to choose industries that would be a good fit for your message and start a marketing campaign that will allow you to position with those groups as an expert.

I often recommend to my clients that they start a twelve month marketing calendar. The goal is to develop a list of followers by having people sign up for something on your website. Then to stay in touch with that list on a regular basis so that when they have a need for your expertise, you are top of mind. A few marketing ideas are:

• developing articles for your target markets
• postcard campaigns
• e-mail campaigns
• direct mail
• utilizing social media
• teleclasses

In my opinion (which comes from 20 years of working inside this field) it takes 3 years to launch a professional speaking career. Of course, there have been a few exceptions. But if you are determined to dive in and earn a living in the world of professional speaking you’ll need to pick a lane, establish your expertise, get good on the platform and develop a consistent marketing campaign.

And if you do all that and show your clients the outcome that they will get by working with you, then you will be on your way to becoming a wealthy speaker.

Similar Articles You May Like... Book Review: The Wealthy Speaker by Jane Atkinson Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) What Does Your Personal Brand Say About You as a Speaker? Make Money Speaking – Book Review: Rain Making (Ford Harding)

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Jane Atkinson is the author of The Wealthy Speaker: The Proven Formula for Building Your Professional Speaking Business. She is a business coach for speakers, specializing in positioning and marketing. For more information, visit Jane’s website: Speaker Launcher.