This blog is about presentations & public speaking - how to make 'em, how not to make 'em and how other people are making 'em. Feel free to read, use and comment on what you find here. And good luck with your presentations...
America the Brave…
I sat down this morning to do some research on speaking styles with reference to the American Presidential election campaign. I was particulalry interested in the Democratic race for the nomination (because there’s nothing interesting about the Republican non-race).
I found this: pretty much job done, in many ways.
Essentially, the article discusses in a little detail the fact that Obama’s at a bit of an advantage because his style of public speaking is better than Clinton’s. (I’m inclined to agree - Clinton can sound badly like a fish-wife if she’s not careful.) Ironic, isn’t it, that she’s the wife of one of the best public speaker the modern world has seen! 
Clinton’s response? Far from trying to improve her style, she’s tried (hard) to move beyond issues of style at all, already accepting, implicitly, that it’s a battle she’s lost. But it won’t do. It’s not working. People aren’t always able to hear the content of her speeches because the style of delivery can rub them up the wrong way.
And closer to home (this blog is written by a presentation skills trainer in the UK) look at the relative popularity of Blair and Brown. One of them was a natural orator, one of them not so. You may or may not like or approve of either of them (or what they say) but the statistics are on my side!
Garr makes a point
Whenever I do freebie sessions (such as this one and the stuff I do for UNN, Newcastle and so on) I finish with a “Where to get more help” slide. Naturally I include this blog but I also point them towards the best one around - Presentation Zen.
On this particular blog entry, he makes a good point.
Actually he makes a series of good points. The point I wanted to pick on, however, was that Sir Ken seems to be speaking to people in a personal and relaxed way.
… and that, ladies and gentlemen, is down in large part to the way he uses his voice. Sir Ken, whether by training or instinct, breathes low in his body, using his diaphragm rather than his chest. It’s that relaxed (correct) way of breathing which releases the chill-out hormones and allows for a more emotionally rich way of projecting his voice. Breathing the other way - with intercostal muscles - releases adrenaline and the other stress hormones.
With breathing sorted out like this it’s very much easier to be (and sound) relaxed and authoritative. Anything else, breathing with intercostal muscles, sounds like you’re shouting (even if you’re quiet - and trust me, parents will all any about shouting quietly: “If you don’t tidy your room right this minute there will be trouble!”)
Get the breathing right and almost everything else will follow….. (sort of)
Simon
Can’t be heard ?
How often have you struggled to hear a presenter? More than you care to? The good news is that you’re not along - even professional actors are having problems making their voices carry to the back of the room.
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that people are worried about not being “real” when they perform - forgetting that the very act of performing means that something isn’t real….? Presentations are no more real than Shakespeare (especially sales presentations! ) but there’s a really significant difference between something being ‘real’ and something being ‘realistic’. Using your voice as a performance tool when you make a presentation isn’t ‘real’ - it’s not how you normally speak, for example - but that doesn’t mean it’s not a realistic presentation of you, your beliefs and what you want to say.
When you present, you perform: you have to stop being ‘you’ and start being a special version of ‘you’. That doesn’t mean you have to be fake, or false (heaven save me from people pretending to be what they’re not!) but nor do you have to be ‘just the same old you’ that I’d meet down the pub!
The ‘performer you’ is an interesting concept to play with. The PY might be a bit bigger: might make bigger gesticulations; might have a bigger voice…
There’s an advantage to thinking of the PY - you can ‘put this persona on’ - and it’s a great way to deal with nerves when you do that… but that’s a post for another time.
teleseminar recording…
Happy New Year to everyone. I hope 2008 works out well for you. I just spent New Year’s Eve at Epcot in Disney World, Florida. If anyone can do fireworks, it’s Disney! They also ‘invented’ a technique for looking at projects and problems which I’ll talk about some time, but for now I wanted to start the new year with, ironically, re-visiting something quite old.
I while ago now I did an experimental teleseminar on how to deal with nerves when you’re doing a bit of public speaking. You can down load it here.
By experimental, I mean that the system of delivery was experimental, not the content! The content is sound but all I did to record it was set a copy of Audacity running in the background while we talked. That means the quality isn’t fantastic (which is why I’m giving it away - though it’s certainly okay at least) and you might struggle to hear questions, but you’ll hear the guts of it well enough.
It runs for over half an hour (nearer 45 mins) and it’s all yours. Have fun.
Simon
PS: A good backup to it would be to read a copy of “…like a brick wrapped in velvet…” !
Going down! (A simple, straight-forward tip)
Presentations are about making a connection with your audience - even in business- and this is a tip you’ll have heard in action: I (almost) guarantee it. If you were ever read a story at school by your teacher you’ll have been on the receiving end of this one! It’s an advance tip in that you shouldn’t go for it unless you’re confident of your technical ability first - but if you are it’s really effective.
It’s also very simple - drop your voice. Just the volume, perhaps the pitch, but not the “projection”.
Get this right and you create a greater sense of intimacy between you and the people you’re talking to (think of them as individual people, not an aggregate of people called “an audience” and you’re half way there). If you can combine the clarity of a fully-fledged speech with the cozy atmosphere of a “fireside chat” the effects can be quite startling.
Of course, you can’t just drop the volume out of the blue because you’ll not be heard - you have to make sure of a few other things first or the effect will backfire…..
- Check the audience are ‘on your side’; if you drop your voice when people aren’t actively listening to you, all you’ll do is alienate them because they’ll feel excluded and won’t be able to hear you. They have to be interested before you do this
- Check that there’s not too much outside interference; sudden, odd or loud sounds outside your room can be difficult
- Check that you’re breathing absolutely correctly; any significant breathing in your upper chest will make a dropped voice sound more like a Dalek!
- Check that you’re not stopping projecting your voice just because you’re dropping your volume; you still want people to be able to hear you after all
… but if you’re confident and your audience is ready for it - go for it. There’s nothing more effective than an audience already interested in you and your message really buying into the intimacy of the feeling that it’s just you and them having a chat……
mouth exercises
A great deal of communication is carried in the words we use (beware of the 7% rubbish!). Without understanding what you’re saying no one can get to any other part of your presentation - your meaning, your intent, your content all go by the wayside…. so it’s important to get your diction and articulation sorted out.
I’ll not go into the ‘why’ of it here, but there’s a strong argument to suggest that, as adults, we don’t articulate as well as we could/should and so our lips “get out of condition”. A few simple exercises will sort that all out for you and - despite yourself, I promise - you might find yourself enjoying them!
- Over-articulate the street signs as you drive around making sure you fully open your mouth. Make sure you say the whole word with the last syllable pronounced. Or read number plates clearly and projecting your voice.
- Stretch your mouth into different shapes.
- Practise reading/presenting your speech and really over-articulate each word.
- Make sure you build pauses into your speech.
- Learn a few tongue twisters, like these:
- A monk’s monkey mounted a monastery wall and munched melon and macaroni.
- A pale pink proud peacock pompously preened its pretty plumage.
- A bloke’s back brake block broke.
- A big beadle placed a body in a big black bag.
Farewell Luciano…
One of my key beliefs about presenting is that if it looks like you’re working hard when you ‘perform’, you’ve not been working hard enough when you prepare. (See this post.) He had that down!
On another point, he was also a technical master. The loud bits (fortissimo, if you’re interested) were certainly that, but they sounded even louder than they were because he had the technical skill (and discipline) to sing the quiet bits (piano) quietly!
He may have lost it a bit in the last decade, but who cares!
Amazon prices!!
Of course, I’m very flattered, but….. just here it appears that Amazon.co.uk are selling second hand copies of my voice book for up to £114! Brand new from me it’s only £8.50 (+p&p but I’ll throw in a signature! ).
Flattering, of course, but it’s hardly a collector’s item!
Some mistake, surely?!?!!?
Uh? uh-huh!
We live in a high stress society. To prove it, drop your shoulders: if you can drop them, you’ve probably got a bit of a tension issue - unless you’re in a situation that justifies stress, of course. One of the things that goes wrong when you’re stressed is that your voice shifts up in pitch. In short, it gets higher than it “should” be. What’s worse, we get so used to this that we think this is our “normal” voice!
Stewart Pearce is a voice coach of considerable reputation and he suggests that one way to find your “true” voice’s pitch is to say “uh-huh”. If you say it as though you’re confirming something you probably go down on the second syllable and if you’re using it to ask a question you probably go up on the second.
Either way, he says, the higher of the two is typically the pitch you usually use - and think is your voice - but the lower of the two is the ‘true’ voice you should be using… the one you’d use if you weren’t anxious about something or stuck in a bad habit.
Check it out and see if you shouldn’t be making your presentations at a different pitch… it’ll make you sound (and feel!) a lot less anxious about whatever you’re saying.
S
Let’s call her H….
…….because that’s her initial.
I’ve been working with H for a couple of months now, seeing her once every couple of weeks for a reasonable length session and she’s very happy with the progress we’ve made together. To be fair though, any ‘problem’ was solved (at least in my head) within the first hour.
H had a very ‘girly’ sounding voice and she was having difficulty keeping people disciplined because of that - and her job required her to do just that. We noticed together that, because she was from Germany, her English, although very good, was slightly accented. She and her managers had put the lack of discipline down to that - obvious but wrong, I’m afraid.
The real problem lay not in her German accent but in her German thinking. Despite living and working in the UK for a few years (and I take my hat off to her for that because my languages will barely allow me to order in a bar or a restaurant when I go overseas) she still ‘thought’ in German. That meant her vocalisation was a very ‘intellectual’ process.
Consequently, she was breathing by using her inter-costal muscles, as most people do when they’re thinking hard and/or stressed.
… and it was this inappropriate way of breathing that was leading to her sounding immature and people thinking they could ignore her….
The story has a happy ending, I should add, because I worked with H to shift the focus of her breathing do her diaphragm. She quickly got the hang of it and was surprised by how confident and authoritative that made her sound.
