Part 1: Trigger Emotion

Part 2: Captivate The Mind

Part 3: Asses The Landscape

Part 4: Merge with the Audience

Part 5: Influence Behavior

Part 1: Trigger Emotion

Module One: The Psychology

Behind Effective Speaking

Case Studies—What’s Effective and What Isn’t

• Emotions Move People: To persuade others and to influence them to take action or transform, you as a speaker must appeal to their emotions. Even if you have data to support your cause, your data will be meaningless to people unless you can wrap it up in words that will stir their emotions and engage their spirits.

• Words Create Emotion: Churchill was one of the world’s greatest speakers. He actually had a stutter, but he used it to his advantage by pausing and letting it out before a key word or vital phrase to provoke an emotional response. He would use unusual words that were clear within the context of a sentence and grab his audience’s attention and emotions. He also used this stammer pause to take a familiar phrase and lend it grandeur. Here he does it with a Shakespearean reference--“Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves to our duties that if the British Empire and its Commonwealths last for a thousand years, they will say “This was (stammer pause) our finest hour.”

• Emotional Impact Equals Power: Those who have mastered using emotional triggers in their speeches use historical anecdotes, Biblical and poetry quotes, or lyrics from emotional and inspirational song lyrics. Here is an inspiring example from Martin Luther King: “When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” *Notice also the repetition that Churchill and King put into these remarks. Repeating something a slightly different way helps your listeners to assimilate your intent.

Psychology Facts:

Human beings make judgments about other human beings quickly and these judgments are not necessarily logical. They are based primarily on emotions.

• We Follow Leaders: As a presenter, you’re automatically thought of as an authority on a subject. The audience expects you to lead. But, you will quickly lose favor if you don’t own that spirit of leadership from the start. Milgram’s controversial experiments show that it’s very difficult for people to resist authority. Use these findings to your advantage.

• We Read People Quickly: We read people within a split second and we pay attention to body movement as well as vocal tone. The past 15 years of psychological research clearly indicates that people made an unconscious judgment within one second as Malcolm Gladwell explains in his book, “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.” The way you stand with confidence and the way you modulate your speech as well as the warmth of your tone all make a difference to whether people will let you have access to their emotions.

• We Sync With Others: We simulate the emotions of others as we listen to them. We also sync the patterns of our brains when listening to another person speak. Two emotions that are highly contagious are nervousness and enthusiasm. If you are nervous, your listener will quickly pick up on this, but if your talk is filled with vitality and enthusiasm, your audience will feel the inspiration.

How the Brain Processes Information

• Models of the Brain: Many models of how the brain functions are not correct. For example, there are a wealth of studies that show that memories are not stored in individual cells. Large areas of the brain become active when triggering memories or emotional experiences, whether they are pleasurable or painful. In a study of plane crash survivors by Brian Levine, a neuropsychologist at the University of Toronto, recalling the plane crash lit up five or six areas of the brain.

• The Brain is Not a Computer: Many people think of the human brain as a computer, but this isn’t the correct model at all, even though we are certainly capable of logical thought and problem solving. The brain is an organ that responds to sensory stimuli. It then connects those stimuli to a deeply personal emotional response. For example, if you and I both attend a concert and we are both listening to Beethoven’s 5th symphony. The way your brain reacts and processes that information will not be exactly the same as mine does.

• Brains Respond to Stories to Create Emotions: Your goal as the speaker is to find a way to touch people’s emotions. If you want to inspire them to action, then you want them to feel inspiration. If you want them to feel empowered, then you must find a way to communicate that sense of power to them. There are some universal stories and patterns that can accomplish this goal even though each person will process your words, your story, or your metaphor differently. For example, most of us as children were told the story of Pinocchio when we were youngsters. All of us interpreted and stored the memories of that story differently, but today it’s common for people to make the motion of touching their noses when they are saying something that they feel isn’t true. It’s a “tell” of that universal story.

The Conscious Mind

• Using Your Brain Takes Energy: Our brains require a huge amount of energy to function. Think about how you feel first thing in the morning when you’re asked to solve a difficult problem.

• We Don’t Use Our Conscious Minds All Day: When you concentrate or problem solve or make a decision, you are using your conscious mind to function, but our brains would get exhausted if we had to do this all the time. Also, depending on what you’re doing it can be a somewhat slow process.

• Your Unconscious Mind Handles Auto-Pilot: One way that our brains solve this problem is by putting actions and learned patterns on “auto-pilot.” For example, when you first learned to drive a car, you had to think about how to turn the steering wheel or how to park but now that you’ve driven for many years, your conscious mind doesn’t have to work to drive at all, unless you’re jarred by something you don’t expect.

The Subconscious Mind

• The Subconscious is the Iceberg Below the Surface: Once something is learned or processed, it no longer needs to be part of the conscious mind on a daily basis. You will slip in and out of an active conscious state at many times throughout the day. Surprising as it may seem, as much as 95% of our behavior, reactions, and actions on a daily basis happen at this subconscious level.

• The Subconscious is Emotionally Charged: Our subconscious minds also store our experiences, knowledge, and memories, which are all blended with the feelings and emotions we experienced during those sensory events.

• Our Subconscious Using Patterns: These patterns in our subconscious minds are how we attach meaning to new people, objects, or events. Over time, this is how our attitudes develop. We can re-program our subconscious minds through hypnosis and self-hypnosis.

Module Two: Getting Your Head Together

To master anything in life takes research, dedication, and study. Once you obtain that expertise, it’s a question of feeling

comfortable in your own skin and allowing that expression of yourself to come forward with no negative self-talk impeding

your progress.

Master Your Own Mindset

Remember that the opponent within your own head is more of an obstacle to your success than the audience is. Prepare yourself well, but when the moment arrives to speak, stay in the moment and act without hesitation and without second-guessing yourself.

• Influence Principles Part 1: Reciprocity, Commitment (and Consistency), Social Proof: If people do us favors, we tend to support them in turn; We have an inherent need to be consistent with our own self-image; We’re more likely to do things if we can witness others doing the same. We don’t like to miss out when there’s a buzz about something.

• Influence Principles Part 2: Liking, Authority, Scarcity: We are predisposed to be influenced or align ourselves with people we like; Speakers should present themselves as authorities in order to influence others; Scarcity makes items appear more valuable.

• Persuasion Techniques are Like a Blueprint: Anyone can learn the proper persuasion techniques to persuade others in business and in life. However, the measure of how successful you will be in making others remember your message as well as repeat your message to others will be based on how effective your delivery is. That delivery is largely based on your speaking persona and how effectively you master the following “six persuasion power levers.”

The Six Persuasion Power Levers, Part A

Effective speaking requires that you create a persona that will leave your audience with a favorable impression of you as well as the topic and message you wish to share. Ask yourself these questions for areas in which you can improve.

• Awareness: In order to be persuasive you need to establish rapport with others. How in alignment are you with the beliefs, thoughts, and values of your audience? How well do you know their wishes, desires, and, perhaps most importantly of all, their feelings? Listen carefully to others and ask probing questions in order to get to the inner core of what others are seeking. Then, deliver it to them and/or wrap up your message in the language and aesthetics needed to connect it to your audience’s deepest emotions.

• Authenticity: Most people have an internal measurement mechanism for “genuineness.” They sense whether someone has their best interests at heart or not. If they feel for any reason that the person isn’t authentic, they immediately “tune-out” that message. Be introspective. Do you care about your audience? Do you really want them to be successful, perhaps even more successful than you are? If you don’t feel secure or authentic in what you’re offering, you may want to consider offering something else. A product or service you believe in will make your true authentic self shine

• Authority: The way you stand and deliver your message will give your audience a feeling for whether you know your subject or not. Do you own the stage? Do you use words that are powerful and stir people’s emotions? Do you have a commanding presence? Does your voice have richness and resonance? Do you use gestures and pauses to give your message emphasis? All these are important factors in whether your audience perceives that you are an authority on your subject.

The Six Persuasion Power Levers, Part B

• Aptitude: Authority is about PERCEIVED knowledge and expertise, but aptitude is about the REAL knowledge and expertise you have about your subject. No one knows everything about their subject, but it’s important to work toward mastery in an area if it’s going to be your life’s work. That means you work every day to add expertise, credibility, and knowledge in the topics that will make up the core of your message. When you’re truly knowledgeable about a particular subject, it shines out like rays from the sun.

• Adaptive Ability: Being an effective speaker is all about flexibility. You need to be attuned to your audience, whether it’s one person, a small group of people, or thousands. You’ll receive verbal feedback as well as feedback from people’s attitudes and body movements. Your success will be somewhat dependent on how adaptable you are to their feedback. Can you easily and smoothly shift your presentation to be more in alignment with your audience’s feedback?

• Articulative Ability: How masterful are you at articulating your message? Do you have command over the English language? Do you choose your words carefully? Do your words convey action and vitality? Do you make an effort to add new, interesting, specific words to your vocabulary? Can you adapt the vocabulary you’re using based on the receptiveness or level of the audience? For example, if you were giving a scientific speech, you would prepare it differently for a group of colleagues than you would for a mainstream, layperson audience.

Using a Hook to Communicate Your Ideas

There are many different potential hooks that you can use to start your speaking presentation. The most important thing is to find hooks that you feel comfortable with. If you feel comfortable, then the hook will become a natural part of your speaking persona and not something you just tacked on to get attention.

• Three Different Potential Hooks: Make an outrageous claim, but then back it up with a story or data that’s presented in an interesting, unique way; Tell a story—people remember stories and they have the potential to touch people’s emotions; Show a video that’s relevant to the topics at hand.

• Three More Potential Hooks: Ask some questions to get people thinking and lead them to a hypnotic state; Set up an expectation of what people can expect from your presentation and what the takeaway will be; Show them an interesting object that will pique their curiosity

• Three More Potential Hooks: Use a quote or adapt a quote and connect it with the topics in your speech; Begin with “Imagine if you could…” and connect this with the topics you’ll discuss to get your audience to engage their thinking; Reference an event, such as an important moment in history, that connects to your talk

Creating Your Own Unique Blueprint for Speaking

In addition to all the power levers you need to create an effective speaking persona, you also need to offer the audience something new and exciting. Novelty grabs interest and attention. Our brains are hard-wired to look for something new. It’s these new items, something that appears “delicious” that make us curious to know more. Begin with a base of novelty and create a style that’s uniquely yours and can be branded as part of your presentation persona.

• People Want Knowledge: Your audience craves knowledge just as they would a cool drink in the desert. Even if they only have a very mild interest in the topic you’re presenting, if you can teach or present something new that relates to their everyday lives, you’ll accomplish your goals.

• Novelty is Important: Learning something new actually activates the same addictive reward sections of the brain that are active when doing drugs or gambling. Learning new things gives you a “buzz” that’s helpful instead of harmful to your brain.

• Even Data Needs a Soul: Even statistics and mathematical data, some of the most boring information in the world can be presented in a novel fashion. One of the most well-regarded TED speakers is Hans Rosling. He tracks global health in connection to poverty. Instead of providing bland statistics to his audience, he provided his information in an animated morphing sequence. While the information was playing on screen, he called out the changes from country to country as if he were broadcasting a sporting event. The audience was intrigued and the information stuck.

Module Three: Your Voice as a Persuasive Tool

Think of the best speaker you have ever heard. His tone of voice was engaging. Her tone of voice gave you a feeling of authority

and in-depth experience. He spoke with passion and enthusiasm, but it was measured throughout his speech. She

paused here and there for emphasis as she told you an exciting story.

Tonality

• Your Tone is Like a Map: We’ve all heard speakers who speak in a dull, same-sounding monotone. To engage your listeners you need to put some passion and enthusiasm into your voice. The voice throughout your speech should be like a topographical map—some highs and some lows based on the information you’re offering or the place you are in your story.

• Fill the Room: When you are authentic and when you have a presence of authority, these characteristics should flow naturally from your voice. Don’t be afraid to project and fill the room with your presence.

• Strive for Voice Improvement: Not everyone can have a “radio quality” voice, but anyone can improve his or her voice by practicing. One exercise you can to do is to hum. Halfway through, start speaking and it will get a feeling for how to improve your voice quality so it has more resonance. Knowing your material inside out will give you a feeling of confidence and enhance your tone so you can come across as relaxed instead of nervous.

Pace

• Natural Pacing: When you’re making a presentation to just one person or a group of people, it’s important to get a sense of their natural pace of speaking. There is a huge difference from region to region in terms of people’s natural speaking pace. From country to country this is true as well. To establish rapport, you’ll want to “do what the Romans do.”

• Conversational Pace: Most established speakers know that their pace should be similar to a conversation they are having with someone over dinner. Bryan Stevenson, a well-known TED presenter speaks at a little over 190 words a minute. Tony Robbins, famous motivational coach, speaks at a high- energy 240 words per minute, almost as fast as an auctioneer. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State during the Nixon administration, was a brilliant man but an incredibly boring speaker who spoke at a snail’s pace of 90 words per minute.

• Pause for Emphasis: Don’t be afraid to pace your speech. Most people who speak very quickly can seem less confident. A pace that’s too fast is associated with a burst of adrenalin so you may appear nervous, instead of confident like Tony Robbins. When you pause it seems like a long time, but for the listeners, appropriate pauses help them assimilate what you’re saying so they can anticipate what you’ll say next.

Volume

• A Low Voice Seems Unsure: The volume you use when speaking makes a great deal of difference in the perception of your talk. If you speak too quietly, people will perceive you’re not confident.

• Optimal Volume: A speaker who is speaking at an adequate level can be heard by the audience but only if the listeners are paying careful, focused attention. There is quite a bit of difference between adequate volume and optimal volume. At the optimal level, your audience can easily hear and understand every confident word you say.

• Overpowering Volume: Your volume is overpowering. If you come off too strong, you will turn people off. What you want to do is to get to optimal volume before you reach overpowering. This is sometimes a fine line and because speakers fear becoming overpowering they don’t strive for optimal.

Breathing

• Measured Breathing: A measured pace of breathing so that you can speak clearly and project from your diaphragm for resonance is very important to a successful speaking style.

• Posture Affects Breathing: Posture makes a huge difference in how affectively you’re breathing as you are giving a speech. If you are standing straight and tall and breathing in deeply your voice will have more richness and confidence.

• Speak “On the Breath”: This means as you take in your full breath begin to speak. You should have enough air to get through your full sentence and take in a full breath before you begin the next sentence.

Case Studies—Good and Bad

• Good: At a TED talk, explaining the changes in teenage brains, Dr. Jill used the speed and volume of her voice to demonstrate the way hormones make teen’s brains crazy. Because she speeded up and slowed down her voice, she demonstrated what she was talking about and used her voice in a creative way to do it.

• Good: In his TED talk, How to Speak so that People Want to Listen, speaking consultant Julian Treasure does a demonstration showing that some people talk through the noses, others talk from their voice boxes, still others talk from deep in the chest and this last voice is the one that gives a deeper, richer tone that conveys authority and purpose.

• Bad: When Jim Roddy president of Jameson Publishing interviewed Jon Dudenhoeffer for a recruiting job, he liked everything about him, except for his voice. Dudenhoeffer’s low-key, deliberate tone worked well when he was an Air Force trainer. He had to loosen up and put some vitality into his voice to work in the corporate world. He practiced and was soon able to let his natural personality out, thereby garnering a top sales job.

Module Four: Power Gestures & Words

Gestures

Gesturing and speaking are tightly connected. If you make a video of yourself speaking and cover your face with a post-it note, you can focus on the way you use gestures. Gestures help you to emphasize key points. Using gestures will help your voice be natural and expressive. No one can speak in a monotone when using gestures because they naturally emphasize the most important words and ideas. Your hands instinctively know which words are worthy of emphasis. However, practice will give your gestures muscle memory just as an athlete prepares for a performance. A golfer practices his golf swing over and over until he can perform it without thinking. We’ve all seen talks where we can “see the person’s brain gears shifting” as he decides what gesture to use next. Once your gestures are established by practicing, the “thinking part” disappears and they become a flowing muscle memory.

• Conduct Yourself: Imagine how it would sound if you were sitting in a concert hall and the conductor conducted the music in 1/5 of the time it would usually take. At this sped-up pace, would you enjoy the concert? The same is true with gestures. You can’t speak slowly if you are gesturing quickly. To slow down your speech, slow down your gestures. Words and gestures have a physical as well as a mental connection. You want your words and presentation to have some “weight.” Be slow, smooth, and expansive at the very beginning of your presentation to order to make a strong impression on the audience. The beginning of your presentation is very important. Practice the first few sentences and the gestures you want to use to emphasize key points.

• The Ready Position: No one gestures all the time during a speech and people are often uncertain where to place their hands. It’s best to put your hands in the “ready position,” which is in front of you at your waistline as if you were going to open a book. Your gestures will flow most naturally from this position. Research has shown that your audience won’t even notice where you have placed your hands throughout your speech if you use this position. If it gets uncomfortable you can use the “secret handshake” position where you hold your thumb.

• On the Shelf: It’s useful to imagine that you have a shelf in front of you. You can “place” your question to the audience on this shelf or you can use both sides of the shelf to express opposites. There are three types of gestures that are used in regular conversation: give, chop, and show. With give, you are offering the audience a question to consider. Your hands are palm up and extended. With chop, you are speaking emphatically to get your point across to your listeners. Your hands are sideways as if you were chopping something. With show, you’re literally demonstrating something to the audience. As if you were demonstrating, her left hand held one child’s pigtail and her right held a second child’s belt buckle.

NLP-Milton Model

The Milton Model is not precisely what Milton H. Erickson used to use with his clients. Instead, it’s the language pattern code that Grinder and Bandler established from their studies of Erickson’s work. Remember that Milton’s “artfully vague” language chunks to more general. The purpose of Milton’s use of vague language was to give the subject the context for taking charge of his or her own beneficial change. The Milton Model is basically two statements: what unspecified and how unspecified. The purpose of being vague on purpose is to allow your subject the broadest range of creativity to fill in, to delete, to add, to distort, or to generalize for themselves.

• Delete: to remove what is or isn’t relevant to the outcome: Presenter or listener says: “As you make sense of this on your own timeline…”

• Generalize: in order to learn and to classify: Presenter or listener says: “You’re able to discover new ways…”

• Distort: creatively develop and shift meanings: Presenter or listener says: “I know that you’re becoming more interested…”

NLP-Meta Model

The NLP Meta Model offers you a way to help others by listening carefully to the wording they use. When people communicate using deletions, generalizations, and distortions they are giving you clues to their “inner programming.” You can use these clues to ask the proper questions to determine their limiting beliefs. Remember that the NLP method chunks to more specific—it’s basically two statements: what specifically and how specifically. The idea is to build rapport through the use of vague hypnotic words and conversation to achieve a specific outcome.

• Delete: An example of deletion and its companion question: Subject says: He’s better than I am. Listener says: In what way is he better than you?

• Generalize: An example of generalization and its companion question: Subject says: I can’t. It just isn’t possible. Listener says: What’s specifically preventing you? What would be different if you could and it was possible?

• Distort: An example of distortion and its companion question: Subject says: She made me feel terrible. Listener says: What exactly did she do that made you feel that way? Can you imagine how you could feel good about yourself no matter what anyone said or did? What would you need to do to get to that point?

Word Substitutions

Substituting words, phrases, and statements with multiple meanings gives you the opportunity to communicate on more than one level.

• Use Hypnotic Statements: Vague, universal statements put your audience in a state of agreement with you. For example, if you said something like “We all have fears that we don’t admit to others or ourselves.” This statement is vague, but it is a statement that’s universal. It doesn’t specify the fears or even what types of fears we’re talking about. Instead, as soon as the audience hears the statement, their minds drift to their own fears.

• Use Words that Tap the Subconscious: Words such as “explore,” “discover,” “imagine,” “suppose,” “pleasure,” “wonder,” “curious,” can have different meanings depending on their context. For example, if you say to an audience, “Imagine how you would feel if you were going on vacation for six weeks,” each person in the audience will start feeling and thinking about different things and assign his or her meaning to the vague statement you’ve made.

• Words Spark Feelings: Meanings can be sparked or activated unconsciously. For example, if you wanted to give the feeling of quickness you could use words like running, racing, sprinting, or hurrying even if you’re not talking about speed. If you wanted to express the attainment of lofty goals you could use flight words such as “soaring to new heights.”

Case Study—Good and Bad A story that will explain the use of vague language and can be seen as a

symbolic representation of the Milton Model.

• Story Part 1: There was once a small boy who played a drum until his parents and neighbors were driven mad. When his parents tried to take the drum away from him he screamed so loudly they were afraid the neighbors would think they were killing him. They had given him the drum as a gift, but never thought it would become an obsession. They consulted some therapists to see what could be done to reason with the child so they could have some peace and quiet.

• Story Part 2: The first therapist told the boy that if he continued to bang the drum, he would destroy his hearing by blowing his eardrums out. The child was too young to understand this so it had no effect. The second told him that the drum should only be used on certain special days. This also had no effect. The third therapist gave the parent earplugs and advised them to buy earplugs for the neighbors. This helped for a limited time. The fourth therapist had the child listen to meditation tapes to ease his staccato nature and make him more placid. This worked for a while but eventually the child went back to his old ways.

• Story Part 3 and conclusion: Finally, the parents were told about a new therapist who had performed miracles with other children. When he arrived at their house, they were shocked that this therapist was so young. In fact, he only looked about ten years older than their child. However, the parents were desperate, so they allowed him to observe the child’s behavior. The young therapist walked three times around the child and observed his behavior closely. He went out to his car and came back with a hammer and chisel. He squatted down next to the boy before speaking to him. Then, he handed him the hammer and chisel and said, “Did you ever wonder what’s inside the drum?” Conclusion: A hammer and a chisel are powerful and so are words. You can use vague words, such as “wonder,” to help others solve their own problems or guide them to do so. Milton believed that everyone can “crack open the drum” of their inner selves to solve their own problems.

Part 2: Captivate The Mind

Module Five: NLP Techniques

There are four basic pillars of NLP that you can come back to each time you prepare a presentation. These techniques can be used to connect with the audience as well as to ensure that you get the outcomes you’re striving for, whether you’re presenting

to one person or one thousand people.

• Rapport: Begin to build a relationship with your audience as soon as you engage them. A second way that you can use rapport is to build rapport between your conscious and subconscious mind so that you can achieve optimal performance.

• Sensory Awareness: Appeal to the audience’s senses in order to engage their emotions. All our deeply emotional experiences come through our senses. You want the audience to have the experience of seeing, hearing, touching their way through the stories and metaphors you’ll present to them.

• Outcome Thinking: Think about what you want the audience to get from your presentation. What emotions do you want them to feel? What actions do you want them to take? What new concepts do you want them to remember when your talk is over and they are driving home?

• Behavioral Flexibility: If you observe that the audience isn’t moving in the direction of your desired outcome, be flexible enough to use something else in your repertoire. Pay attention to the behavior of your audience so that you can get a feeling for how your message is being received.

Engaging Speakers

Think about all the speakers you’ve heard in your lifetime. How many of them were engaging? How many were so inspirational you never forgot what they said? How many launched you into action so that you were able to get unstuck? What’s preventing you from becoming the best speaker possible? There’s just one person preventing you from becoming that inspirational speaker and that person is you.

• You Are Not the Focus: Inspirational speakers don’t focus on themselves and their own anxieties or self-doubts. They don’t worry about whether the audience admires them or not. They’re too busy making sure that they provide the audience with something that’s new, something that’s educational, and something that’s entertaining. In other words, they care less about being admired than they do about the nuggets of gold they provide the audience to take home with them.

Inspirational speakers turn their focus away from themselves and turn their focus to the welfare of the audience. The audience can intuitively sense this caring, but only if the speaker is authentic.

• Influence Your Audience: The purpose of public speaking is very basic. The purpose is to influence your audience. As you become a masterful speaker, you’ll be in tune with your audience’s responses and you’ll become flexible enough to adjust yourself to get the responses you want (pillars 4 and 3 respectively).

• Provide Good Feelings: The topics and information that you want to present are definitely important. However, your audience will never remember that information unless you present it in an inspirational way. Your presentation must be entertaining and brimming with novelty as well as providing an education for the audience. These two e’s, education and entertainment, must be in balance for your talk to establish rapport with the audience as well as to achieve your desired outcome (pillars 1 and 3 respectively). As a public speaker you are in the edutainment business. If you’re not able to balance these, you’ll never be great at public speaking.

Think about being stuck in a classroom with a teacher who was boring or sitting in a business management meeting with someone who droned on about information but wasn’t able to communicate it in an interesting way. You felt imprisoned. You don’t want your audience to feel that way. You have an opportunity to give your audience “good feelings,” if the topic is appropriate, give them an opportunity to have fun as well as provide them with information that could potentially change their lives for the better.

There’s No Charisma Gene

There isn’t a gene for charisma. Charisma for many people isn’t natural. More people have a fear of public speaking than all the other phobias combined. However, this fear can be overcome if you concentrate more on the audience and their needs instead of your own. You can learn to be charismatic and you can also learn to enhance and improve your charismatic qualities. One way to do this is to think of your voice as a musical instrument. No matter how uncomfortable you may be with the sound of your own voice, your voice is perceived differently by the audience. You can vary it in tone, pace, rhythm, depth, and richness. By doing this, you are appealing to the way that the audience perceives you through the sound of your voice (pillar 2).

Learning and applying NLP techniques can help you in three different ways:

• Persona--NLP techniques show you how to feel confident and project authority no matter which group of people you’re speaking to.

• Purpose--NLP techniques show you how to make the purpose of your presentation as transparent to the audience as glass.

• Personal--NLP techniques show you how to use language to touch the minds and, more importantly, hearts of your audience.

Before Your Presentation

• Visualize: Use visualization to picture yourself giving a very successful, inspirational speech. Use visual, auditory, and kinesthetic words in your visualization to make it as real for yourself as possible (pillar 2). Think how you felt at another time in your life when you felt incredibly successful and anchor those feelings to this visualization. If you have a deep-seated fear of public speaking, ask an NLP coach to perform a “fast phobia cure” to desensitize that memory.

• Persona: How do you want to appear to the audience? Do you want to be laughing, jovial, with dry wit like Bill Murray? Do you want to display the mastery of language and wisdom of Winston Churchill? Do you want to be filled with energy and big ideas like Tony Robbins? No matter which demeanor you adopt you can show authority and confidence in your presentation.

• Chunk Your Information: Prepare a diagram to show how you will chunk your information. Remember that the Milton Model chunks up to general ideas. Stories and metaphors chunk across. The Meta Model from NLP chunks down to specific ideas. People assimilate ideas from these three methods so if you have all three in your presentation you’ll be able to appeal to the cognitive style of everyone in the audience. (Milton Model versus Meta Model)

Preparing Your Presentation

• Focus on the Audience: What are the audience’s needs and desires? Why are they coming to hear your speech? How will you educate as well as entertain them? Consider organizing your information using the 4MAT® system: The Why? (the imaginative learner wants to know why in order to make connections); The What? (the abstract-sequential learner wants to know what to learn so that he or she can create ideas); The How? (the concrete-sequential learner wants to know how to apply what he or she has learned; The If? (the abstract-random learner wants to figure out what he or she has learned to modify it for his/her unique situation)

• Decide Your Outcome: If your audience remembers only one or two things from your message and speech, what would you like them to remember? What feeling do you want them to have when they leave the room?

• Prepare Your Speech: Make sure that you use VAK-- visual, auditory, kinesthetic descriptions to engage the emotions of your audience (pillar 2). Add appropriate personal stories, metaphors, and analogies that take your audience on a journey to their final destination.

During Your Presentation

Establish rapport by pacing, pacing, pacing, and then leading. Show authority and credibility with your gestures, tone, and body movements.

• Use Anchors on Stage: You can use spatial anchoring to take control of the stage. Divide the stage into areas for speaking, answering questions, telling stories, imparting technical information, or sharing something light-hearted or a joke. Your audience will associate that area on stage and they will be primed to engage in the type of information you offer when you’re at that location. It will help you keep focused and organized as well.

• Adjust Your Presentation to the Audience: Pay attention to the body language and verbal cues that your audience gives you. We’ve all sat through presentations where the speaker seemed completely oblivious to how the audience was receiving his or her talk. Don’t be inside a speaker bubble! Pay attention and adjust your talk to make sure it’s a “page turner” so your audience’s attention doesn’t wane (pillar 4).

• Use the Logical Levels Model: Speak from the heart about something you care passionately about. Use the logical levels model to help you get to the very core of why it’s important to you and how to communicate it to the audience so they grasp and feel the emotions related to its importance. Ask yourself the questions: How do I make a difference? Why am I here and why am I here giving this speech? What would I like my contributions to others be? How would I like to be remembered if I was no longer here?

Module Six: Confidence and Charisma

Techniques

Confidence and Charisma go Hand in Hand

Despite what you may think, these skills can be learned, even if they don’t feel natural to you at this moment.

• Practice Power Movements: Our nonverbal behavior shapes what others think of our confidence level, but it also shapes our own feelings about ourselves. For example, social psychologist Amy Cuddy has shown that if we practice “power movements” that we will eventually change our perception of ourselves. Stretch out, lift your arms, and own the space you’re in. Our minds change our bodies, but our bodies also change our minds. Adopt power poses in private for a few minutes a day and it can change your level of confidence and your life.

• Don’t Accept Failure: Confident people truly believe that the failures in their lives can point the way to significant improvements. They also believe that failures are just temporary setbacks. They don’t allow negative self-talk to keep them from their dreams and goals.

• Become an Expert: Master your chosen topic and field and continually work toward self-improvement. When you know your topic back and forth, left and right, it gives you a feeling of confidence to be able to communicate about it effectively. Life-long learning should be part of your daily mantra.

Second Skin

There are certain key strategies you can employ to become more charismatic. Once you practice these strategies they should become like a second skin. (Notice the simile!)

• Masterful at Metaphors: Become masterful at using metaphors, similes, and analogies. For example, in one of his speeches, Martin Luther King compared the 1960s civil rights situation that African-Americans were experiencing to “getting a bad check” which gets sent back due to “insufficient funds.” The audience members quickly understood what King was communicating.

• Personal Stories: Use well-thought-out personal stories and anecdotes. For example, in his 2008 speech, A More Perfect Union, then Senator and presidential hopeful President Obama tied his own family history and multicultural background and his campaign for the presidency to the American motto, “out of many, we are one.”

• Use Clearly Defined Contrasts: Contrast is incredibly effective to your audience because it’s a one-two punch of passion backed by reason. One of the most famous uses of contrast is Kennedy’s quote “don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Bring Them Up

The questions you ask people to think about and the lists you provide them can bring people up to a higher state where they can envision the future and take action to bring it about.

• Ask Questions: Ask rhetorical questions that get your audience thinking. Can you imagine a future where no one goes to bed hungry? Can you imagine mankind transforming Mars into a second Earth? Can you imagine how much more confident and charismatic you’ll feel after you complete this course?

• Use Three-Part Lists: Use three part lists to your advantage in making major points. This technique is based on the fact that people tend to remember things that are presented to them this way. Three part lists can be announced or they can fly under the radar, but will still be picked up subliminally by your audience. Here are a few famous examples: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” (from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address); “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” (Sir Winston Churchill); “Veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered—Julius Caesar)

• Express Moral Convictions: Don’t be afraid to express your moral convictions when appropriate. Who wouldn’t be stirred by Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!”? or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Bridge the Gap

You need to meet people where they are but then bring them up to the next level. To do that, you need to acknowledge their thoughts and feelings, but then bridge the gap to a higher level of inspiration and positive action.

• Where Are We Now: Reflect on your audience’s sentiments, then pause, then move forward. For example, after a disappointing sales quarter, the manager of a sales team wanted her people to regroup. Here is segment of what she said, “We all feel disappointed and unmotivated. There have been sleepless nights and tensions within the team. We feel that success slipped from our hands. However, this is a temporary setback and before we leave this room, we’re going to construct a plan with everyone’s best ideas for getting back on track.”

• Set High Goals: Don’t be afraid to set high goals. Ghandi said that if the country banded together in their goal and their single-minded focus, the British occupation of India would end without bloodshed. Many thought that his goal was impossible to achieve.

• Achieve with Confidence: Project confidence that the high goals you’ve set will be achieved. In a sense, you are stating what will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ghandi continued to project confidence regarding the previously stated goal by saying, “India will wrench with nonviolence her liberty from unwilling hands.”

Power Thoughts, Power Movements

Confident and charismatic people are not afraid to let their physical bodies and voices reflect their powerful thoughts.

• Rich, Vital Voice: Use an animated voice when speaking. Display your inner core of vitality. If you’re not energetic, your audience will sense this and respond accordingly.

• Facial Expressions: Don’t be afraid to convey your message with your facial expressions. You won’t have to think about this too much if you are “present in the moment” and focusing on the core message you want to communicate. It will be natural, just as if you were having a conversation with your best friend.

• Powerful Gestures: Use gestures or use movement to give you presence on stage and emphasize your key points. Cross country skier Janine Shepherd’s life and career potential was almost destroyed when she was in a severe accident. She delivered a TED talk after she recovered and used 5 different chairs to provide a visual metaphor for the chapters of her life after the accident. She moved from chair to chair as she delivered the talk.

Module Seven: Persuasion Techniques

Shape Your Audience’s Perception

Instead of just launching into a pitch to get your audience to comply with a specific action, you can alter their perception by changing the “lens” with which they are viewing a particular situation. By priming the audience in this way you influence how they will perceive your request or message.

• Prepare Their Mindset: You can prime people’s mindsets by introducing words or images that have universal associations. For example, in an experiment people were introduced to words that related to the elderly and when they got up to leave they walked more slowly than usual. In another experiment, people were exposed to two logos, Apple’s and IBM’s. Apple is associated with creativity. The group that saw Apple’s logo first, found more creative uses for a brick than the group that was primed with IBM’s logo.

• Firm Up Their Perception: All judgments that people make are based on comparisons. If you can influence those comparisons in your speech presentations, then you can influence their compliance on the requests or action you want them to take. For example, let’s say your goal is to get people to sign up for your course after your speaking presentation. Offer them two or three options:

• Option A: A one hour consultation, $150

• Option B: The course in its entirety, $295

• Option C: A one hour consultation plus the course, $295

Presenting the options in this way will increase your chances of having more people select Option C, since when Option B and Option C are compared, Option C is the obvious choice.

• Express High-Level Outcomes: The way you describe a person, an event, or an item makes a major difference in how your audience will perceive the same. For example, if you describe a person as cold, aloof, and self-serving before introducing them to someone, the person you’re introducing will react in a certain way toward the person you’re introducing, because this is how his/her expectation has been set. However, you might choose to describe that same person as warm, friendly, and fun. The person being introduced will have a completely different attitude toward the person you’re introducing based on your description. Your description will make a difference in how the parties behave toward each other. Another example is to make sure you put the positive descriptions at the beginning of a list. If you describe someone with their positive traits first, that list will be perceived differently than a list where the negative traits are listed first.

Work Toward Attitudes That Are Congruent

Suppose you were asked to persuade others that a very boring exercise was actually interesting. Studies have shown that if you’re only given $1 as a reward to do so, you have to change your attitude toward the exercise yourself in order to convince someone else that it’s fun. However, if you’re given a more substantial reward, you’ll convince the person based on that but will not change your attitude, since you’re doing so for the reward only so it explains your incongruence over feeling that it’s boring but making it seem interesting to someone else.

• Display Specific Body Language: There’s a strong association between the mind and the body. Most of the time we think about the mind influencing the body, but sometimes consciously or unconsciously with your body has an impact on your mental state. For example, if you are giving a speech and can elicit head nods from the audience, they will transition to an agreeable and possibly pliable state of mind. Another example is when you are feeling nervous or insecure before a presentation. You can help alleviate your fears, by sitting or standing upright will help you to feel more empowered.

• Form Consistency in Behavior, Strategy 1: If it’s your goal to get people to form or adopt a particular attitude, you should guide them to display behavior that matches with that attitude. For example, people who were asked to put a small sign in their yard that said “Be a safe driver” were more likely to say yes when they were requested to display a much larger sign with a similar message. This technique, which is essentially like getting “a foot in the door” was popularized by Robert Cialdini.

• Form Consistency in Behavior, Strategy 2: A sales pitch that asks people “How are you feeling tonight?” and gives them a chance to respond with a “good” or “fine” helps them to maintain that attitude when you ask for the sale since they don’t want to appear incongruent with their earlier response.

Spark Social Pressure and Repeat Your Message

Social rejection is very powerful. In fact, social rejection and physical pain share the same circuitry on a neural level. In other words, social rejection hurts.

• Reinforce Norms: In your speech presentations, if you want to encourage or discourage a specific type of behavior, it works best to point the norm in the direction of the behavior that would be a desirable outcome. For example, if you’re giving a speech where you’re trying to get college students NOT to drink alcohol, demonstrate or persuade them that most students drink safely.

• Discover and Offer Similarities: Whether it’s one person you’re trying to persuade to do something or an entire group, emphasizing your similarity to that person or persons can greatly enhance your ability to establish rapport and subsequently to persuade. Because similarities are so powerful, you can also mimic your audience’s nonverbal behavior to establish rapport.

• Use Numerous Exposures and De-Emphasize Negative Messages: Repetitions are very powerful because they increase a cognitive response called “cognitive fluency.” In other words, if something or someone or an image is repeated often, even if it’s flashed before us and we’re not conscious of picking it up, it becomes more familiar to us and that familiarity means we can process it more quickly. The speed at which we process information, also increases whether we like the information or not. If we can process something quickly, due to repeated exposure, we tend to like it more. To de-emphasize the negative aspects of a message that you know your audience will find objectionable, you can “de-sensitize” it by habituating it.

This technique is most effective if (1) you can introduce the changes in very tiny gradual increments, (2) your audience can’t make a side-by-side comparison, (3) your audience isn’t expecting changes to occur, (4) you combine whatever’s unfavorable or unpleasant with something that is favorable or pleasant.

Maximize Your Message

There are two ways that an individual makes a judgment about a particular issue. They use a type of systematic processing for decisions that are important and a type of heuristic processing for a decision that is not as critical. With systematic processing, the individual will be influenced by the quality of the content. He or she will evaluate the content step-by-step. On the other hand, heuristic processing is a quick judgment that is often swayed by a massive amount of information that shows support, the way the message is presented or the aesthetics of a message, the rapport with the presenter in terms of his or her attractiveness, confidence, expertise, etc.

• Change Their Evaluation: To ensure that someone will judge your message regarding systemic processing: Provide them with some caffeine (really); enhance the aesthetics of the message with your graphics or other visually appealing presentation; state your request in an unusual way; enhance the personal relevance aspect of your message—in other words, why is your message of particular importance to that specific audience. You can enhance personal relevance of the message by using “you” frequently throughout your message. You can tell a story to engage your audience in a more personal way that will touch their emotions. You can also use rhetorical questions that will guide them into asking themselves deeper questions.

If you instead want your subject to judge your message using heuristic processing, there are also things you can do to increase that likelihood. Surprisingly, if you increase the complexity of your message by using a difficult-to-read font or something else that makes it more complicated for the subject to process, he or she will equate it with the uniqueness of your offer and also consider your offer more valuable. Also, if you want your subject to make a quicker decision you can do something to put your subject in a good mood. When we’re in a good mood, we tend to be more optimistic about decision-making.

• Refine Your Message: You’ll encounter situations where you won’t be able to change someone’s evaluation style. Fear not! You can still refine your message to achieve the best results. If you know that your audience is likely to use systemic processing, then you can construct your message accordingly. The same is true for heuristic processing. For systemic processing, present a two-sided argument with just a little negative information so it doesn’t appear that your argument is too one-sided. Also, make sure your arguments are sequenced properly. Position your strongest arguments first and last, because these are the ones that will be most readily remembered. Weak arguments should go in the middle. For heuristic processing, your audience will be swayed by your attractiveness as well as your authority. They will also be persuaded by the amount of information you present (hint: provide more!), present your information in an aesthetically pleasing manner, and give a justification for your message.

• Position Yourself for Success: If you position your message close to another positive message, it will influence your audience’s perception. For example, placing an advertisement for your book after an interview with a bestselling author will make your book be perceived in a “bestseller” light. Even though the audience knows that your book may or may not be a bestseller, subliminally they will have seen the “bestseller” previously and it will lead to an association with your book.

Keep the Flow Going and Maintain Their Compliance

When behavior is reinforced, we continue it. When it is punished, we avoid it.

• Offer Appropriate Incentives: Large monetary incentives can sometimes backfire because people tend to choke when they get worried about losing the potential cash. You need to price such an incentive so it’s not so high as to cause anxiety. When people are seeking a large external reward, they feel that they are performing the requested action just to obtain the reward (extrinsic motivation). However, if they are performing the task for a small amount of money or no money, they develop the attitude that they are performing the action because it is congruent with their own beliefs. (intrinsic motivation, which is more powerful than extrinsic). Social incentives, such as small gifts, praise, or positive feedback, are more effective if you want to keep the relationships social instead of business.

• Use Limitations to Help Motivate: When we perceive that something is becoming limited, we want to reclaim the freedom to have it. This is why scarcity works in advertising. If something is scarce, we tend to value it more highly. Sometimes when people are offered many different options, it tends to overwhelm them instead of making it easier for them to select. You can avoid this problem, but organizing the different options into categories. To solicit a quicker decision, you can limit the amount of time the subject has to choose an option.

• Create Quality Connections: You can create the associations that you want your audience to have with your produce or services. For example, advertisers sometimes present their products at fun, sports events. The feeling of fun and excitement gets transferred from the event to the way the audience feels about the product. Use metaphors to quickly bring your audience to the mindset you want them to have. For example, things that are associated with “up” are thought of as good. Advertising at the top of a page puts the product or service in a better light than the same ad at the bottom of the page. If you want to communicate about something new in your speech presentations, use metaphors to compare it to something your audience is already familiar with. It will make it easier for them to understand as well as heighten their trust in you.

Module Eight: Storytelling, Metaphor, and

Analogy Techniques

Your presentations will be far more effective in capturing people’s emotions if you use storytelling, metaphor, and analogy

to wrap up your message.

Capture Attention

It’s vital to get your audience’s attention and complete focus within the first 30 seconds of your presentation.

• Use a Story, Metaphor, or Analogy as a Hook: Don’t bore your audience with introductory comments. Instead, engage their hearts, minds, and emotions with a story. Work the other information into the rest of your presentation in small bites.

• Stories Have Power: Since the earliest days of mankind, our brains have used stories to remember and learn. We are hardwired to listen to, remember, and react emotionally to stories.

• Take Your Listeners on a Journey: A well-designed and masterfully presented story takes your listeners on an imaginary journey where you want to take them. This gives you as the speaker the golden opportunity to convey a message or teach a lesson without preaching.

Conflict is Crucial

Conflict is what drives a story. Don’t be afraid to share stories that are personal to you.

• Dramatic Conflict: Your audience will be captivated when you offer them a story that has a dramatic conflict. The more dynamic the conflict is, the more engaged your audience will be.

• Engage People’s Emotions: To evaluate whether your story is working to achieve your goals, judge its elements to determine whether it touches on the primary emotions.

• Get Your Audience Curious: Tell your story in a way that makes your audience curious as to what happens next. If your story has a strong conflict, the audience will be moving ahead mentally to determine what the outcome will be.

Use Details that Provoke the Senses

Sensory details help to stir the emotions. Be specific so that your audience can experience the different sensory experiences and imagine the characters. These types of details keep your story alive to the audience.

• Visual, Auditory, Smell, Taste, and Touch: What should your audience see, hear, smell, taste, and touch? How do these experiences make them feel either emotionally or physically?

• Clarity and Conciseness are Important: Even though you’ll be providing a lot of description, work to make your descriptions on point and clear.

• Being Specific and Consistent is Important: For example, saying “he was taller than everyone in his class” you could say he was “18 inches taller than everyone else.” Specificity lends credibility.

Provide a Visual Picture of the Characters

With your words, “paint a picture” of how the characters look and act.

• Provide Interesting Details: By providing interesting details you can “paint a picture” with your words that gives them a feeling for each character. Each character should provoke strong emotions.

• Sensory Details: As you are telling your story, make sure the audience can feel how each character is experiencing the sensory experiences in the story. You can do this by providing sensory details.

• Make Sure to “Show” versus “Tell”: Compare these two descriptions (1) Tell: She found her boss to be intimidating. (2) Show: When her boss towered over her, his commands soared out like blazing hot steam from a steam engine.

When to Use a Story, a Metaphor, or an Analogy

Each technique is useful throughout your presentation.

• Using a Story: A story has a beginning, a high point where there is conflict, a solution to that conflict, and an end. Use stories when you want to teach or get across a very important message.

• Using a Metaphor: A metaphor is a bridge between the new and the familiar. It’s a term or phrase that’s applied to something to suggest a resemblance. Would you rather set up an appointment to go to the dentist or to a “smile stylist”? In other words, here the word “stylist” is being used to equate dentistry with fashion.

• Using an Analogy: An analogy is a comparison between two things that are quite different and unrelated.

Here’s a funny one from Winston Churchill: A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt—long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

Part 3: Assess The Landscape

Module Nine: Public Speaking

When beginning the process of finding speaking opportunities, set aside an entire day just for prospecting. In order to find the speaking gigs you want, you need to ask yourself very specific questions. Go from general to specific: “How do I find gigs?” to “How do I speak at colleges?” to “How do I speak at Harvard?” The more specific you can get about the message you want to

present and the type of audience you want to speak to, the more clear you’ll be about how to network appropriately to get there.

Put yourself in the frame of mind where you can see speaking opportunities everywhere you look. Begin by connecting with

people who can hire you to speak and seek out names of events so that you can connect with the right people. If you don’t

already have it, investigate and purchase a good package of CRM (customer relationship management) software so you can keep

track of all leads.

Businesses, National and Local

• Publications: Most cities have magazines and newspapers that are devoted to business news. You can begin by checking out the publication’s events page, contact the organizations that have listings there, and pitch them your presentation.

• Networking: Business networking groups, such as Le Tip, Local Business Network (LBN), and Business Networking International (BNI) are good resources to put the word out that your are interested in public speaking opportunities.

• Contact Leaders: If you’re interested in going national with your business topic, pitch your presentation to a corporate headquarters or the local branch of a company. Do research at www.leadershipdirectories.com to find business, non-profit, legal, and government leaders to contact.

Educational Institutions and Schools

• Mine the Schools: There are colleges, universities, state schools, technical schools, and high schools all around your local area. Students in all fields and at all levels need inspirational messages.

• From University to Community: At universities and colleges, you can contact a professor or department head to offer a forum or presentation on a subject that’s relevant to you and to the educator’s special interest groups. Invite the larger community as well so you can make valuable contacts for other talks.

• College Speaking: If you’re interested in speaking at colleges, the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA) and the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities (APCA) are both organizations that offer opportunities for speaking. Speakers that get hired have a heavy emphasis on wrapping their educational messages in an entertaining package.

Local Associations, Clubs, and Special Interest Groups

• Clubs: Every city has organizations and clubs, such as Kiwanis, Lions Club, Chamber of Commerce, and Rotary that meet regularly and need speakers. If your topic is appropriate to these groups, contact the programming chair to offer a presentation.

• Chamber of Commerce: Don’t hesitate to tap your friends, neighbors, and colleagues to approach them about connecting you with these local organizations. Attend your local Chamber of Commerce meeting to get contacts for other local associations that need speakers.

• Special Interests: Do you have hobbies or special talents that would match with a special interest group? Do you build robots in your spare time? Or know how to create a quilt? Maybe you love to take photographs or have traveled to an exotic place? There are special interest groups that cater to all different topics and interests. Seek them out and offer them something fun that’s also educational.

TEDx and TED

• TED: TED began in 1984 for short speeches on Technology, Entertainment, and Design but today covers everything from new frontier science topics to trending business and pressing global issues. TED is a national as well as a global stage.

• TEDx: In 2009, the TED franchise launched a regional version of their national program called TEDx. If you’re just starting as a speaker it makes sense to begin regionally and become established before pitching to the national event.

• Getting Booked: To get booked at a TEDx conference: (1) Research Future TEDx events; (2) Research the Process of Application--some events have open call, some don’t; (3) Dovetail into the Event’s Theme; (4) Make Sure You’re Easy to Find (you can make contact through a connection or through a proposal, but another way is to be very active in social media in your field so you can be found; (5) Focus on the Value You Can Give to Others—(TEDx and TED are both about “ideas worth spreading”).

Conferences, Trade Associations, Trade Shows, and Other Special Events

• Trade Associations: There are over 17,000 state, regional, and national trade associations in the United States alone. They all have speaking opportunities. Columbia Books, Inc. (www.columbiabooks.com) offers useful directories in both print and online form for tracking down these leads. Three such directories are the “National and Professional Trade Association Directory” and the “Directory of Association Meeting Planners” and the “Directory of Corporate Meeting Planners.”

• Conference Directories: There are a number of online conference directories where you can customize a profile and potential events will be sent to your email for our review: www.AllConferences.com, www.lanyrd.com, http://www.conferensum.com/Conference-proceedings-documentation, https://www.conferize.com/

• Trade Shows: Another valuable resource is www.EventsinAmerica.com for finding potential trade shows and conferences for your presentation. Meeting planner magazines also offer information that can be mined for contacts and events.

Module Ten: Sales Environments

Sales Training

One of the largest events of the year in most corporations is a huge public speaking opportunity. You can step up to the plate in your company by offering to do a presentation to train sales representatives.

• Pre-Training: (1) Align the sales training methods you will use to the corporations strategies, mission, and goals. (2) Have the right mindset. Sales training shouldn’t be just a once a year event. If you plan strategically, you can keep your team striving for improvement throughout the year. (3) Evaluate where your buyers or clients are. Has there been a shift in their perspective throughout the year? Ask yourself that important question again—what value do we bring to our customers?

• Training: (1) The time that sales reps spend in a room listening to your presentation is valuable time they are taking out of the field. Make the training you present relevant and actionable…and by all means make it inspiring! They need to have the motivation in order to go out and sell. (2) The challenge is to unlock the expert knowledge from subject-matter experts in your organization or in other organizations and package it, in a clear, concise manner so that reps can become smooth in sharing this information with customers in their sales conversations.

• Post-Training: (1) Leverage technology to keep your message alive as you communicate with reps throughout the year. Short video clips where you present key strategies once a week is just one way to do this. (2) Plan a communications campaign that uses different ways to reach the reps through ongoing webinars, social networking, and lunch presentations…all opportunities for getting your message across.

Manager’s Meetings

If you work in a corporation or have your own business, weekly sales management meetings are an opportunity to speak and inspire your team to action. There are three keys to reinforcing successful sales strategies with your team:

• Consistency: Weekly meetings shouldn’t be just something you and your team “phones in.” If you plan a consistent meeting every week, you’ll be prepared as the sales manager to offer valuable information to your team. It also sets up the expectation that the salespeople need to be accountable weekly. In addition, it’s a forum for sharing valuable field information.

• Standard Agenda: Peer pressure works. It’s been proven psychologically. Make sure the reps report on what they sold during the week. Also have them discuss their process throughout the week in terms of customer interactions--What went well? What didn’t? Next on the agenda is what’s in the pipeline. Is there enough in the sales funnel to make or exceed sales quota? Make a note of lessons learned and inspirational stories. If there’s time left, train on new selling skills.

• Participation and Value Add: Sales meetings become boring and drone on because they are not designed for interaction. Don’t concentrate on lack of sales. Instead concentration on having the reps do interactive exercises where they can train their sales “muscles.” Ask yourself the question: Is there something I can offer today that will help the reps sell more or keep customers happier? If you concentrate on this and offer it weekly you’ll yield results. Use your speaking abilities to train, to assist, and to inspire.

Presentations to Clients in Groups

There are many different opportunities to sell by speaking to groups of potential clients instead of to individual clients.

• Before the Presentation: Try to meet people in the group you are presenting to ahead of time so that you can establish rapport with as many individuals as possible. If you can find out who the final decision makers are, it’s useful as you can tailor your presentation accordingly. You can give those decision makers some extra attention, but do it in a subtle manner so you don’t alienate others who may be a help in making the sale. Try to find out if there are any pressing concerns or issues on their minds that you can address in your presentation.

• During the Presentation: Make sure you refer to the problems/issues of the group and show how what you’re offering will solve their problems or fulfill their needs. As you describe the benefits of your products and services use the VAK (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) model as much as possible. You want to appeal to everyone in the audience and most importantly engage their emotions.

• After the Speaking Presentation: If possible, get the group participants to provide you with feedback. Engage them in conversation and pay careful attention to their responses. Active listening is just as important as speaking.

Shareholder or Investor Presentations

These are some of the most important “sales” presentations since they can potentially make or break your reputation in the marketplace.

• Soft Information Counts: Many people believe that investors’ minds are only tuned into data and facts. That’s not true at all. Research shows that this type of information accounts for no more than 10% of stock volatility. If you wrap your data up in a soft information narrative it will be more engaging for shareholders to listen to.

• Part of a Larger Story: Think of the numbers and facts as the ingredients of a delicious meal that you’re serving your shareholders. Those are only the elements. Without the special chef’s magic it will never be a memorable meal. Provide the investors with a story narrative about your company and its future. Relate your achievements to real people and current events.

• Coordinate and Plan Your Answers: A potential way to strategize is to use The Bucket Method (developed by communications coach Carmine Gallo)(1) Identify questions you think will be asked; (2) Categorize the questions into top categories, such as “competition” or “industry.”; (3) Divide the categories among your Annual General Meeting (AGM) team; (4) Create broad answers for every category questions; (5) During the meeting when questions are being asked listen for “trigger” words that align with a category; (6) Look the questioner in the eye and answer confidently.

One-on-One Sales

Everything we do in life has an element of sales to it. You need to sell yourself, your products, and your services. You need to sell your teenager on why it’s important to call in if he’s late. You need to sell your spouse on the idea that it’s time to take a vacation. You need to sell your ideas and your causes to get buy-in from others.

• People Make Emotional Decisions: Many sales people think that selling the features and benefits of a product or service is what will convince someone to buy. However, people make decisions for emotional reasons that are largely subliminal. Speaking and selling is all about appealing to emotions in direct and indirect ways.

• The Two Most Important Words in Sales: According to Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book of Selling, the first of the most important words is “you.” Have you ever tried to buy a car, but couldn’t stand the salesperson who was trying to sell to you? You may have driven a considerable distance until you found a salesperson you could talk to before you bought the very same car you were looking at when you were at the previous dealership. People want to like the people they buy from. As a salesperson, that means you need to establish rapport first. Sell yourself first with your speaking skills and demeanor.

• Get at the Why: The second most important word is “why.” It will take skill to get at the real reason why someone is looking or not looking to buy something. People don’t buy for your reasons. They buy for their reasons. However, sometimes those reasons aren’t obvious. You might need to ask 3-4 probing questions before you get at the real reason why.

Module Eleven: Negotiations

Even if you are not an arbitrator, there are opportunities for speaking up to negotiate at work and at home.

Negotiate to Get Agreement Between Arguing Parties

A key factor in getting people to understand and see the other person’s point of view is getting them to be more open minded. In fact, all types of negotiations depend on this ability to prime people into a mindset that is more open-minded.

• Negotiation Stage 1: You can get both parties to adopt a more open-minded attitude by offering an example where someone was closed off to an idea or attitude but changed his/her mind. In other words, prime an “open-minded” attitude. Present this story or something that is appropriate to the situation.

• Negotiation Stage 2: For example, two neighbors were fighting because the first neighbor was tired of listening to the second neighbor practicing his music in the evenings. Then the second neighbor invited him to listen to his practice sessions and the first neighbor started to more open-minded to listening to the music in the evenings.

• Negotiation Stage 3: The result was that the second neighbor agreed to keep his sessions to a certain time period. Once this example is presented or something more appropriate to your particular negotiation, the fighting parties will be primed to be more open-minded in their unique situation.

Negotiating to Get More Salary for a Start-Up Job

It’s getting more and more difficult not to reveal your salary before someone makes you a job offer. However, it’s an essential part of the deal in ensuring that you get the salary that you want.

• They Go First: Let the potential employer make the first offer when you’re at the end of the job interviewing process. Until then, salary isn’t discussed.

• Use the 4-Second Stall: When the employer makes the offer, repeat the number and then stay silent for a few seconds. This will put some pressure on the employer to revise the offer. Just make sure you have a thoughtful, pensive look on your face instead of an annoyed look.

• Make a Counter Offer: If the employer doesn’t come back with an offer that’s workable for you, then make a counter offer, but be sure it’s based on the homework you’ve already done about the market, the company, and what you have to bring to the table. Once the employer has said yes to your counter offer, negotiate for additional benefits such as extra vacation or a company car.

Negotiating to Get More Salary

Timing is everything when negotiating a raise after working at a company for a while.

• Best Timing: Have you closed a valuable contract for your company recently? Have you saved your company money? Have you received a great yearly evaluation? These are the times when you should put your speaking skills to use to ask your boss for a raise.

• Know Your Value: Review online sources like PayScale and Glassdoor to get a sense of your worth to the company at the level you are today. If you’ve been in an organization for a while, they might not realize the professional growth you’ve attained while you’ve been there. You have to speak up and “toot your own horn” in a nice way to let people know your accomplishments. Praising others in an authentic way shines on you as well.

• Network: Use speaking opportunities to network within and outside your company. Keep in touch with potential mentors who can help you as you gain in influence and salary.

Negotiating to Buy a House

Sometimes speaking up can mean the difference in whether you’re able to get the house of your dreams or not.

• Story Part 1: An older couple was looking to sell their family home. The home had over thirty years of memories in it. They had started there as a young couple and raised their children there. The husband was ill and his wife was caring for him. It was an emotional and difficult decision for them to leave their home, which they loved.

• Story Part 2: Their home was in a hot market and they knew they would sell quickly. Instead of making them feel good, this was actually making their decision harder. The home was already paid for and they were interested in getting a good price but it wasn’t the only factor in terms of selling their home.

• Story Part 3: Within a week, they had five offers on their home. In talking with their real estate agent, they discovered that most of the people who wanted to buy their home were actually planning to remodel their home immediately or worse yet tear it down. This was deeply disturbing to them and they actually considered taking it off the market. On the other side of the negotiation, only one couple had the consideration to ask about the sellers to find out what was happening with them. They were a young couple with two small children and a third baby on the way. Their offer was close to the lowest and they loved the home and really wanted it. They prepared a video presentation to tell the sellers their story and to explain to them how much they loved the home and wanted to give it care. They got the home even though their offer was one of the lower ones. The sellers cried when they left but felt good that their home would have another loving family.

Negotiating with Kids

Kids and especially teenagers are very difficult subjects for negotiation. Some parents believe that negotiation isn’t needed and you should just “lay down the law.” However, if you want to maintain good relationships with your children, negotiation is a better strategy.

• Where Do You Sit?: Sit next to them to get information: If you’re trying to get your child or teenager to talk to you, studies have shown that a side-by-side sitting position works better than across a table from each other. Work to find out the motivation as to why your child wants or feels he needs something.

• Giving Up to Get: Getting something sometimes means giving something else up: Let’s say your pre-teen wants to play for a soccer team that travels. It’s going to tap your wallet and your time and you don’t feel she needs another activity in an already full list. Instead of saying a firm no, ask her why it’s important to her to get a feeling for her commitment. Then find out what on her list she’s willing to sacrifice. Even if she’s not happy with the final result since she had to give up something to get what she wanted, end with a hug or a smile so that you reinforce your emotional connection.

• The Smelly Fish: Be willing to put the smelly fish on the table: Every good negotiator establishes authority while maintaining good relationships with his/her opponents. A business negotiator once said, “Collaboration is, as they say in Denmark, the willingness to put smelly fish on the table.” Your 10 year old wants the same privileges as your 15 year old. Instead of offering her a watered-down swap, which isn’t what she wants you say. “Your sister didn’t get that privilege until she was 14 and neither will you.” Just make sure to keep those privileges and when you rewarded them straight because the kids will remember!

Module Twelve: Video Presentations

LinkedIn

There are several ways that you can use linked in as a springboard for offering your speaking presentation via video. YouTube video links that were shared on LinkedIn resulted in a 75% higher share rate than other types of content. Videos used on LinkedIn should be less about promotion and more about establishing yourself as a thought leader. The videos you share should be business focused.

• Short Posts: You can do a short post and share a link to your presentation video that goes back to YouTube or your website.

• Demo Video: You can add a demo video to your personal profile.

• Long-Form Posts: When you write long-form posts or content on LinkedIn you can embed videos directly into your posts. Currently LinkedIn supports embedded videos from YouTube, Getty, Vimeo, TED, and Lifestream.

Courses

If you enjoy creating content for specific audiences you can create your own course using video presentations as a major component. One of the advantages of courses is that you can edit your presentation and it works for you while you’re doing something else. If you are careful with your planning, you can create modular pieces that can be put together for different types of courses.

• Platforms: You can offer your own courses on sites like Udemy, Teachable, LearnWorlds, Skillshare, CourseCraft or Thinkific. It takes time to research these platforms to discover which might work best for the type of audience who wants and needs your materials.

• Your Own Website: If you’re already driving traffic to your own website, you can offer your course as a package with video presentations.

• From a Sales Page: You can use video at least two ways from this location. You can offer an introductory promotional video as well as offer a video course package that customers can purchase and either download directly after purchase or you can ship to them.

Webinars

Communication is always enhanced when you see and able to connect with the speaker. Online tools, such as GoToWebinar, give you the ability to integrate video into your presentation so that you can connect with 100 people or more. Visual cues and body language help the audience stay connected to you, the presenter. Video helps you to humanize the online experience.

• Executive Presentations: If you are the CEO or a corporation or a leading manager, using video within a GoToWebinar enhances your message. Employees can connect with you even if they work remotely. It’s an easy, effective, and personal way to ensure that everyone on your team understands the mission and helps the workforce and leadership bond over distance.

• Product or Whiteboard Demonstrations: If you want to demo a product or show a mindmap or other quick, hand-drawn diagram as you are presenting, a video works well for this. A presentation is so much more engaging for the audience when they can hear you, see you, and see your thought process with a diagram or demo.

• Analyst Updates and Important Corporate Briefings: In addition to the data you’re presenting in the context of an analyst update or other important corporate briefing, a short face-view video with an introduction is an excellent way to engender the trust needed for a successful analyst update.

YouTube and Skype

Both YouTube (recorded) and Skype (live) are ways to use video to further your presentation presence and business goals.

• Demo Video: YouTube is a great place to offer demo videos of the types of presentations you can make. It offers a very simple way for you to connect with potential clients and convince them to hire you for a booking.

• Informational Videos: Creating a YouTube channel with content gives you the opportunity to connect with meeting planners who may hire you to speak and also gives you the opportunity to gain followers and students who need and want the information you have to offer.

• Skype Presentations: Skype is another way that you can offer small group presentations that are live and allow for questions and answers from your audience.

How to Drive Traffic

Drive traffic from YouTube descriptions to a sales page. You can accomplish this by asking a series of questions that lead people to click on what you have to offer.

• For example, if you have an open statement, such as “Want to learn the secret…” and your audience has to click to show more, it puts them in a frame of mind where they’ve identified themselves as a person who wants to know the secret.

• Step 2: Then, when they’ve clicked the button, it’s a behavior that reinforces that their behavior is consistent with their attitude.

• Step 3: Then, later in the description it says “Want to learn how…” and this gives the audience a chance to once again display their behavior by clicking the button a second time. The more you can guide them to reinforce their behavior, the more chance to have to persuade them to purchase what you have to sell.

Part 4: Merge With The

Audience

Module Thirteen: Audience: The Basics

Getting Your Audience Engaged

Jump right in and ask your audience hypnotic questions, provide a quote, tell them a story or give them something interesting to look at to get their emotions involved before you give more background data. If you feel comfortable offering something that’s funny and it relates to your topic go for it. You need to grab their attention in the first 2-3 minutes to achieve maximum success with your talk.

• Case 1: During a TED talk in 2009, Bill Gates released mosquitoes into the audience to drive home the dangers that children face around the world because of malaria.

• Case 2: Dr. Jill, who is a neuroanatomist, brought a real human brain to her talk. Many people were disgusted and squirmed in their seats, but they were fascinated too.

• Case 3: In 1984, Steve Jobs offered the first Macintosh computer to his audience, a group of 2500 employees, analysts, and media. After discussing the product, he told the audience that everything he’d shown them was in the bag on the table. He walked to the middle of the stage where there was a black canvas bag and took out the Macintosh SE. He inserted a floppy disk and then walked away. The Macintosh showed images and type, something that had never been seen on a computer before. The final wow was when Macintosh spoke for itself. It told a joke about IBM and the crowd roared with laughter and excitement. Jobs was visibly moved at the audience’s reaction. The audience was left with “never trust a computer you can’t lift.”

Priming Their Mindset

Give them guidelines on what you’re going to tell them in your presentation, then make the presentation, then summarize so they’ll know what the most important takeaways are. This is a time-tested three-part formula called Aristotle’s Triptych, but it doesn’t have to be formulaic in the way you do it.

• Tell Them What You’re Going to Tell Them: What do you want to say? What does your audience need to hear? Too many presenters focus on the first question but not the second.

• Tell Them: Convey your message using stories that inspire and instruct. Give them something memorable and new to think about and act upon.

• Tell Them What You Told Them: Wrap up with your key points again so that your audience has a “party favor” to take home with them.

Offering Them Something New

Strive to offer the audience a new way of looking at something that they’ve never thought of before. Novelty will help them remember what your message.

• Case 1: Seth Godin is a popular blogger, world-class marketer and author. In explaining why new marketing ideas are important he used a story about driving down the road and seeing cows in a field. Cows are boring. Cows are invisible. But, if suddenly you saw a completely purple cow, you’d take notice. The brain needs to be jostled awake. Seth went on to use his idea of a “purple cow” for a book about new marketing ideas.

• Case 2: Edi Rama provided his audience with a unique solution for changing crime-ridden areas. He was the mayor of Tirana the capital city of Albania. It was a gray depressing city that was filled with garbage and derelict buildings. As soon as he was elected in 2000, he hired painters to chase away the grim years of isolating communist rule, by painting the outsides of the buildings in bright, beautiful colors. Crime immediately dropped and people began investing energy in beautifying their homes and the city. Rama offered his audience a new way to fight crime with beautiful colors of paint.

• Case 3: In 2013, Stewart Brand who is a professional futurist offered this bold prediction to his audience. Biotech is accelerating at a pace that is four times speedier than digital technology. He predicted that we’ll soon see extinct animals brought back to life. He said: “We will get woolly mammoths back.” His statement blew up on social media.

Telling a Story

Your audience will find stories, metaphors, and narratives much more memorable than just data. Even investors only want to hear hard data about 10% of the time. Without the story there’s no emotional component and touching people’s hearts is important. Stories are data with a soul.

• Stories Carry Significance: The website significantobjects.com was an experiment. The founders bought junk and had writers write stories about the items. The stories gave the objects a huge uptick in value when they were resold on Ebay. The takeaway is that your message, which is much more valuable than these objects, will have even more value when wrapped up in a story.

• Ethos, Logos, Pathos: The Greek philosopher Aristotle broke communication into three major areas: ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos is the credibility you bring with your achievements, position, and experience. Logos is persuading with hard facts and data. Pathos is the art of appealing to people’s emotions. Voted one of the most persuasive talks on TED, Bryan Stevenson’s talk breaks down to 65% pathos, 25% logos, and 10% ethos. Use storytelling to be persuasive.

• Brain-to-Brain Coupling: Experiments at the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton have shown that when people are engaged in a story they “sync” up with the speaker in what has been described as a “brain to brain coupling.” If you want to establish rapport with your audience, master storytelling.

Listening is Hard Work

Did you know that TED talks are only 18 minutes long? People’s attention spans have gotten shorter and shorter. This time span is long enough to get your message out there but short enough to avoid having your audience lose their focus. Video clips online need to be even shorter. Make your presentation short and dynamic and go out on a high note that leaves your listeners wanting more. Remember that listening and assimilating information is very hard work for the brain. Begin by organizing your presentation into three chunks of information. It’s been shown that most people can’t integrate more than three chunks of information that are presented to them in a 15-18 minute span.

• Step One: Draft a Headline That’s “Twitter Friendly.” Challenge yourself to explain your key idea or message in 140 characters or less. The shorter and more specific the better.

• Step Two: Support Your Headline with Three Major Messages: You can use a “message map” to organize your talk. Dr. Jill, a popular presenter at TED, divided one of her talks called “A Stroke of Insight” into three sections: brain circuitry, the day of the stroke, the insight gained from the experience and impact on her life. Steve Jobs gave a famous 2005 commencement speech about “Do What You Love” that can be mapped on a diagram in three pieces: His early experiences, love and loss, and facing death.

• Step Three: Reinforce the three major messages of your talk with three bullet points that provide a trigger for the story or anecdote you will tell to support that message. For example, under the Steve Job talk for “love and loss” the stories he told were about Apple Garage, Fired from Apple, Return to Apple. Your entire message map for your talk should fit on one page.

Module Fourteen: Addressing Individuals While

Speaking to Groups

Every individual is different, and yet, we can all be categorized by learning styles, the way we take in sensory information, ethnicity, social level, gender, and age. By being sensitive to

these differences and similarities, you can address individuals even though you’re speaking to a group.

Tactics for Learning Styles

Cater your presentation to the different types of learning styles with these tactics and techniques.

• Visual Learners: Prefer to see information and visualize relationships between ideas. Give them charts and infographics. Make your presentation very visual. Show the relationships among the various points in a visual way.

• Auditory Learners: Prefer to hear information rather than reading it or seeing it in visual displays. Give them ways to recite the information out loud or give them a chance to repeat key points back to you by asking questions and calling for audience answers. Use music and your tone of voice to best advantage.

• Kinesthetic Learners: They learn best by doing things. They are hands-on experiential learners. Get them to move around and demonstrate an experience. Role playing works well for kinesthetic learners too. Ask them to write things down so they’ll remember.

Use the VAK Model

By offering words and experiences that trigger the three major ways that people take in sensory information you can make your stories and information more accessible and memorable to all types of people.

• Visual: Stacy Kramer began her talk with a photograph of a blue gift-wrapped box from Tiffany’s. Then she said, “what’s inside this box, is a small gift that will change your life forever…it will bring your family and friends closer to you and help you recalibrate what’s most important in your life.” Then, she said that she was sure the audience was wondering by now whether they could buy this amazing gift on Amazon or whether it had the Apple logo on it. As the audience was wondering, she then started to display a package with biohazard on it and a photograph where she showed the scar that was the evidence of her “gift,” which had been a cancerous brain tumor.

• Auditory: Film critic Roger Ebert lost his voice to cancer but this didn’t stop him from giving a presentation. He used a computer voice called Alex and his wife, Dean Ornish, and John Hunter all presented different sections of Ebert’s talk. The four different voices made for an emotional experience as well as one that resonated for those who take in information primarily from auditory.

• Kinesthetic: Dr. Elliot Krane, who is a pediatrician as well as an anesthesiologist showed a remarkable demonstration in his talk. His goal was to explain to the audience how children’s medical conditions sometimes translate into chronic burning pain. He began by stroking his arm with a feather. Then he pulled out a blowtorch and placed it near his arm and said, “Imagine how your life would be if I stroked your arm with this feather, but what you felt instead was your arm being scorched by this blowtorch.”

Speaking to Multicultural Audiences

If you’re giving a presentation in another country or to an audience where there are many different ethnicities, you’ll need to adapt your talk for that audience.

• Connect Your Points Together: Remember that English may not be the first language for some or all of your audience members. Connect your sentences from one to the other with transitional phrases so that your audience can understand your train of thought.

• Move With Your Message: Make sure that your gestures “say” the same thing as your message at the same time. If not, listeners may not be able to track what you’re saying easily. It would be like watching a television screen and then listening just to the audio on another television.

• Use Universal Metaphors: Whichever metaphors you use need to be relevant across cultures. For example, a traffic jam, a great meal, or a lesson in school might be universal. However, certain sports metaphors such as a “home run” or “double-play” might not make sense at all.

Men and Women, Watch What You Say

• Case 1: A new manager was speaking to a group of employees on his first day. He was a well-known publishing executive who had an excellent reputation in Silicon Valley. As he described the process of stripping away the old processes at the company and being open to creating new ones, he said the employees would need to “ take a peek under the kimono.” The women, especially the Asian women, visibly shifted in their seats when he used this metaphor. The takeaway—be careful not to use metaphors that can offend others.

• Case 2: In a 2013 Microsoft keynote presentation on its newest Xbox One event at an E3 gaming event, the male employee was playing a game called “Killer Instinct” against a female gamer who was struggling to play the game. He taunted her by saying she “played like a girl” and then proceeded to make a “rape joke” by saying, “Here we go, just let it happen, it’ll be over soon.” The Microsoft company had to apologize for its employee’s unscripted speech.

• Case 3: Women are not the only ones that can be alienated in an audience, men can be too. Women speaking to predominantly female audiences have to be careful what they say when there are only a few scattered men in the audience. There’s always the “land mine” of mentioning something that is more of a stereotype than real data.

Baby Boom (1946-1964)

Generation X (1965-1981)

Millennials also known as Generation Y (1981-1999)

Generation Z also known as Digital Natives (a fragmented society of those with birthdates from 1997-2012) They have had lifelong use of technology for communication.

Generation AO also known as the Always On Generation (2000-present)

Age Makes a Difference

Are your audience members close to your age? Or are they twenty years younger? Make sure you tailor your talk to the age of your audience. If your audience is all different ages, try to stick with references they can all relate to.

• Motivational Triggers: Each generation has its own motivational triggers. For example, it’s well known that most millennials are very socially conscious and tend to favor businesses that have philanthropy as part of their model.

• Slang: Every generation has its own slang terms that reinforce its social identity. Review the language you plan to use closely to ensure that everyone will understand what you’re communicating.

• Technological Influences: Suppose you use the term “communication skills” in your presentation. A baby boomer may think this means formal writing and speaking abilities. However, when someone in their twenties hears that same phrase, he or she might be thinking “e-mailing and texting.”

Module Fifteen: Picking Up Cues

Every individual is different, and yet, we can all be categorized by learning styles, the way we take in sensory information, ethnicity, social level, gender, and age. By being sensitive to

these differences and similarities, you can address individuals even though you’re speaking to a group.

Observe Body Language

When you’re really connecting with an audience, their body language seems to move almost like one giant organism.

• Cohesion of Movement: When the audience is fully engaged in what you’re saying, their physical movements are generally in sync. On the other hand, if you see people shifting around, playing with notepads or phones, or with their eyes cast down, you should heed these clues. Your talk isn’t resonating and they’re not engaged.

• Cohesion of Sound: In addition to cohesion of movement, there should also be a general cohesion of sound. You can think of sound as a bell curve. There will always be some outliers, but the majority of your audience should be responding to your major points--like great jokes, interesting stories, rhetorical questions--with some responding sounds in unison.

• Case Study: In a speaking bootcamp, the trainers had the audience put on blindfolds. They were given drums and drumsticks and then asked to beat the drums in sync with each other. At the start, they were hopelessly out of sync, but, after a while, even without seeing each other, they were able to get in rhythm with each other. When the rhythm changed, they were able to adapt as well. When groups are engaged, they respond in unison.

Listen to the Sounds the Audience Makes

Depending on the forum for your talk, the sounds an audience makes while you’re speaking or while there are downtimes can provide you with clues as to the effectiveness of your talk. Question and answer sessions provide information for sound and vocal feedback as well.

• Are There Sounds?: It would be unusual, even within the context of a lecture situation, to not hear any sounds in the audience. At the beginning of your talk, it’s natural for people to shift a little or to stop whispering to the person next to them, but after you’re talking and they’re engaged, you can expect to hear some sounds from them. No sound might mean no engagement.

• You Can Hear a Pin Drop: On the other hand, if you’re talking about something extremely serious, you would definitely expect the audience to be silent for that part of your presentation. However, if you show them something very shocking, you might hear audible gasps. It’s all about appropriate reactions. If you’re eliciting the reaction you want, and the audience is in unison, most sounds will happen at the same time.

• Eliciting Audience Feedback: If your talk isn’t a formal lecture style, but allows for more audience participation, you can tell right away if your message is getting through by asking direct questions and getting responses from the audience. Teachers use this daily to see if their students are awake!

Scan People’s Faces

Does Your Audience Appear Open-Minded and Receptive? Just keep in mind that you can’t use facial expressions by themselves to judge receptiveness. They’re not always the best indicator. A raised eyebrow can mean the person is interested. It could also mean that he/she is skeptical.

• Eye Lock: When people are listening intently, they look at the speaker. Scan the audience to see if people are watching you in unison or if it seems that their eyes are not locked with yours.

• Pleasant, Open Expression: Are people responding to you with appropriate expressions depending on the nature of your talk? When people are receptive, their heads are generally either straight or tilted slightly with foreheads back and chins pointed just slightly up.

• Smiles or Empathy: If you are talking about something upbeat, are people smiling? If you’re talking about a sad or heartfelt topic, are people empathetic? Are their eyes a little watery?

Are Questions or Comments Relevant?

Depending on the style of talk or presentation you are giving, you may have the opportunity to allow audience members to ask you questions at the end of your talk.

• On Point: In a Q & A session, when participants ask detailed on-point questions about the topics or message you’ve presented, it’s one of the best indicators that they got tremendous value from your talk.

• Not on Point: In Q & A sessions, there may be one or two people who ask questions that are way out in left field. It doesn’t mean they didn’t hear or didn’t understand your message, it might mean they have a hidden agenda. Some audience participants like Q & A because they think they can make themselves look smarter, or make you look dumber. Either way if their questions are not on point, they just usually make themselves look dumber!

• Bring It Back: No matter what happens in a Q & A session, always try to bring their questions and your answers back to the main points you presented in your talk.

Get Direct Feedback

If you can do it in a comfortable way, get direct feedback after your presentation by having your audience members fill out an evaluation form. Have the audience respond on a sliding scale to these statements or to ones that are more appropriate for your presentation:

The speaker got my attention right away.

The speaker gave me something of value for my professional life.

The speaker stimulated and maintained interest.

My questions were answered.

I’ll remember this presentation and received long-lasting value from it.

…Then, continue with these three essay questions, which you can use to improve your presentation.

• Best: What was the highlight of this presentation? What takeaway will stay with you?

• Least: What was the low point? Is there anything you wish the speaker had done differently?

• Other Topics: Is there any topic that you wish the speaker had addressed that he or she didn’t address?

Module Sixteen: Damage Control

No matter what you do sometimes things go wrong. Remember that even Olympic ice skaters sometimes fall and have to get up.

When you’re going through hell, keep going!

Train of Thought

It’s not just seniors who lose their train of thought. It happens to everyone. It can be very unnerving and the trick is to remain calm.

• Don’t Freeze: In some informal contexts you can ask the audience, “Where was I?” and use it as an opportunity to see if they’re listening! Remember that you can always get the train back on track.

• Remain Calm: Just start a new sentence and move on to the next point. You don’t really need to bring attention to it. Sometimes it helps to bring the audience back to the three main themes of your talk. By the time you do that, it may re-orient you as to where you were before the momentary lapse.

• Drink Some Water: This will give you a second to pause and regroup. Sometimes changing your position or gestures on stage will give you a few seconds and the physical shift will act as a memory jog as well. Many speakers use a chin scratch and a thoughtful look to pause and give themselves a few seconds to regroup.

You’ve Run Out of Time

Depending on the format of the presentation, sometimes an event will happen that will shorten the time you have to give your presentation. Maybe the previous speaker went over his or her time period. Maybe there’s a blizzard and the conference is going to be cut short.

• Flexibility is Key: If you have your presentation prepared at different time increments ahead of time, you’ll be able to easily adjust. If you were supposed to give a 40-minute presentation, but you only have half that time, you can quickly adjust if you’ve prepared for this likelihood in advance. The message map discussed earlier really helps with this. Stick to your three main points just do one bullet point for each one instead of three.

• Must-Know, Should-Know, Nice-to-Know: If you mark these on your message map, you can quickly see on one sheet how to modify your talk to fit the time available.

• Be Expert at Your Software: If you plan to use PowerPoint or other presentation software, make sure you have practiced to the point where you’re very smooth with it, so you can hide slides or skip over them rapidly and still maintain the continuity of your talk.

Your Equipment or Computer Crashes

This can happen in the best of circumstances, but you can minimize the impact if you plan in advance.

• Have a Printout: If you’ve planned well, you’ll have a copy of your slides or the message map of your presentation so that you can still proceed without visuals.

• Ask for Help: Even if you know how to fix whatever went wrong, it’s still best to ask for help. Let someone else do it and keep your speech on track.

• Use Gestures and Stage Positioning: Use your well-practiced gestures and specific positioning on stage. You can still get your points across without the use of the visuals or other information your equipment was supposed to display.

Your Day Hasn’t Started Well

Your alarm didn’t go off and you’re late getting ready. You forgot your materials or laptop at home. There’s an accident on the freeway. Plan ahead to prevent these incidents from derailing your talk.

• Extra Commute Time: Always allow for extra time for your commute. Even if you’re running late, if you’ve planned enough time, you’ll make it there.

• Email Slides or Other Notes: Send your notes to someone else or to your office so if needed they can be sent to you at a moment’s notice. Pack a print copy in your car the night before.

• Keep Your Sense of Humor: If you want to be a full-time presenter, this is essential. Things will happen and over time you’ll come up with ways to handle any situation with ease. Your current disaster may make a great story for a future talk.

The Rambling Question or Impossible Question

You’ve heard these before. During a Q & A session, one of the participants stands up and spends 2-3 minutes with a preamble before asking his or her question. If you’ve done a great job with your presentation, you’re even more likely to get an impossible question.

• X or Y?: Rephrase what you think you heard and interrupt the person if necessary to guide him or her into being more concise. Provide two alternatives so the person chooses before you proceed to answer. If the person seems to be wandering, you can politely ask him or her to rethink the question and come back to them. Most members of the audience dislike when someone does this, so if you handle it with charm, most people will be pleased.

• Respond Later: Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” Take down the question and follow up by sending an email or by posting the response in your blog. This gives you another opportunity to interact with the audience.

• Offer the Question to the Audience: Depending on the group of participants, there may be someone who can respond and provide quality information. You risk your authority by doing this, but, depending on the circumstances, it might be a way to interact with the audience and be of service to them, which is ultimately your goal. Remember that even speakers who know everything can’t answer this question: What is a question that you can ask speakers who know everything that they can’t answer?

Part 4: Influence Thoughts & Behavior

Module Seventeen: Educating Others

In order to educate, you must make people aware. Sometimes to do this in a way that makes them sit up and take notice you need

to “violate their expectations.” This is a method of presenting something to them in a new way. It makes what you’re trying to

influence memorable.

Case Study: Bill Gates

In 2015, Bill Gates drank a glass of water that had been human feces five minutes earlier. The water had gone through a machine that converted sewage to clean, drinkable water.

• Intro: Bill Gates doesn’t need publicity. He did this to educate and make people aware that 2.5 billion people around the world don’t have clean drinking water. Over 700,000 children die each year because they don’t have clear water.

• Influence: He was able to influence his audience to take action and participate in solving this problem by developing a plan to get these machines where they are needed most.

• Impact: By violating his audience’s expectations and drinking water that was formerly feces, Gates was able to generate publicity, gain attention, and get people to take action for this worthy cause. It worked because the human brain is attentive to novelty

Case Study: Terrorism Experts

A group of experts in deterring terrorism were discussing what needed to be done to make a United States city more secure. They were preparing a presentation to take to local officials.

• Intro: In preparing their presentation, one of the photos they had decided to present was a photo of a rusty, broken lock. The lock had been found on the entrance to a power plant.

• Influence: Instead of just showing that photo, they brought rusty locks with them and placed them on the round table where they were having the discussion.

• Impact: Audience members passed the rusty, worn-out locks around. At the end of the presentation as they gave feedback on the speech, state officials said “those locks made an impression on us.” They were moved to take action to improve their infrastructure not because of a well-presented slide, but instead because the speakers violated their expectations with the rusty locks.

Case Study: John Chambers

In 2009, John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, was introducing a new type of technology his company offered called TelePresence to an audience of Indian entrepreneurs and businessmen.

• Intro: Chambers began to explain the product, which is a series of high-definition monitors and cameras designed so that people can experience meetings as if they are in the same room even though they are thousands of miles away from each other. He then mentioned his vice president of video, Marthin De Beer.

• Influence: On cue, Marthin appeared on stage and took his place next to John, except that Marthin wasn’t really there. He was over 14,000 miles away.

• Impact: The two men proceeded to continue the presentation while Chambers was on stage and Marthin was on TelePresence. They discussed the possibilities for face-to-face collaboration over long distances for industry and healthcare. The goal was sales, but also to educate others on how technology can make the distance between peoples disappear.

Case Study: Sara Blakely

A light-bulb moment helped Sara Blakely turn a $98 pair of pants into an empire.

• Intro: Sara had a pair of $98 white pants in her closet for eight months. Every time she tried them on she didn’t like what she saw. None of the traditional undergarments gave her a smooth line in these pants. In desperation, she took a pair of pantyhose and cut off the feet. It worked and she knew she had a potential business. She was selling fax machines at the time and wanted to turn her idea into a business. People thought she was crazy, but her father, who had taught her that failure meant you were trying new things, believed in her. She patented her idea herself and moved forward.

• Influence: Sara picked up the phone and placed a cold call to the Neiman Marcus buyer in the Dallas office. She left her Atlanta apartment with a red backpack that contained her samples. Once there, the buyer gave her 10 minutes to make her pitch. After a few minutes Sara could see that the buyer wasn’t engaged or interested. That’s when the light bulb moment happened and inspiration struck. She dragged the buyer into the lady’s room and proceeded to put on her product and demonstrate it herself. The buyer agreed to try out the product in seven stores. She had sold her first 3,000 pairs of Spanx.

• Impact: Fast-forward twelve years and Sara Blakely is the youngest self-made woman billionaire. Thanks to “violating expectations” Sara was able to educate the buyer at Neiman Marcus and get her product into the stores. Eventually she sold over 10 million pairs of Spanx, making women all over the world more confident in the slacks of their choice. This true story has all the elements that can inspire and educate others. It has struggle, conflict, and the ultimate, successful resolution.

Case Study: Danny Meyer

The founder of Shake Shack, Danny Meyer, is always looking for ways to tell stories in his presentations that will educate his employees and participants on what customer service really means. Someone can be taught how to set a table with flair, but developing a “High HQ,” a high hospitality quotient, isn’t as easy to do because it requires flexibility and attention to details. He used this story in one of his presentations.

• Intro: Meyer was on a business trip to Florida. When he got to his hotel, he was exhausted. He just wanted to order a cheeseburger and watch his hometown Cardinals play the San Francisco Giants. He went down to the lobby bar and ordered his meal. The Jets-Patriots pre-game show was on, but no one was in the bar, so the waiter switched the channel for him. He was enjoying the Cardinals’ game but after several bites of his burger the television switched back to the Jets-Patriots.

• Influence: When the waiter came back, he noticed that the game had been switched. Meyer said that was okay he would take his burger to the other lobby bar in the hotel, but the waiter said, “no, that’s not fair, you were here first.” Then the waiter said, “let me fix this for you.” The waiter came back with the remote control, switched the channel, and handed the batteries to Meyer. Meyer told his audience that the “burger wasn’t superior,” but that he would never forget those batteries and the experience of customer service he received.

• Impact: Through his storytelling and presentations, Meyer is able to create a “high HQ” culture among his employees. Not only do his employees learn and adopt this attitude, they are also motivated to teach it to others.

Module Eighteen: Simplifying The Complex

One of the most difficult things to do is to simplify complex ideas and package them in a way that people can easily

understand them. Your initial presentation should be “twitter-worthy.” Can you figure out a concise, clear message of your mission in 140 characters or less? Founder of Virgin Airlines,

Richard Branson says—Can you write it on the back of an envelope? If not, it’s rubbish.”

Case Study: Richard Branson

When Richard was growing up he had dyslexia. At that time, no one really understood what dyslexia was, but Richard couldn’t read and he was always in trouble in school. Later, reflecting back on his experiences thus far, Richard reframed his life story. He discovered later that many influential leaders had had dyslexia—Einstein, Edison, Da Vinci, and Disney. He dropped out of school at the age of 15, but he’s convinced that his dyslexia gave him an advantage. He learned how to make complicated ideas simpler and communicate them concisely. Here’s a story he presents about his first business venture.

• Intro: When he was still attending boarding school in England, Richard came up with an idea. He wanted to start a magazine called “Student.” The magazine was going to showcase campaigns against bullying and corporal punishment. However, he had several problems in getting his idea off the ground. He had to persuade advertisers to sponsor him and he had yet to publish an issue. He also didn’t have a phone in his room because the headmaster wouldn’t allow it.

• Influence: Branson’s solution was to go to a pay phone to pitch his idea to sponsors. He had to persuade them in less than 5 minutes because if he didn’t the operator would come back on the line and interrupt his pitch, which would destroy his credibility. Branson feels that this forever changed the way he thought of communication. He believes “complexity is your enemy. A fool can make something complicated, but it takes a lot of work to make something that’s complicated simple.”

• Impact: Branson’s communication style—clear, concise language that uses ordinary language is at the core of his mastery of how to influence others.

Case Study: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was a master of taking complicated ideas and putting them into accessible, simple ideas that people could understand and relate to.

• Intro: Steve Jobs knew that most people have no idea what 5 gigabytes means. They can’t get their arms around it. In 2001, he crafted one sentence about Apple’s new product that told a complete story.

• Influence: When he launched Apple’s first MP3 player, the now famous iPod, Jobs described it simply to his audience. He said that 5 gigabytes was equal to “1,000 songs.” But the reality was that there were other MP3 players already selling on the market that could hold this many songs. However, no company had a product that was the tiny, portable size of the iPod. He completed the story when he said that the iPod was “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

• Impact: Apple has sold over 400 million iPods to date. Jobs once said, “You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Case Study: Jorge Mario Bergoglio

You might not know the name Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but he is one of the most sought-after presenters on the planet today. That is the birth name of Pope Francis. During his visit to the Philippines in 2015, over 6 million people congregated to see him and hear him speak. Pope Francis delivers his messages with humility and compassion. He also follows the “rule of three” to lend simplicity to his message and make his talks accessible to his multicultural audiences.

• Intro: Pope Francis uses the rule of three in many of his presentations. Here is an excerpt where he used a striking metaphor in addition to the rule of three: “God created the world as a beautiful garden…man has disfigured that natural beauty with social structures that perpetuate poverty, ignorance, and corruption.” (Three things—poverty, ignorance, and corruption.)

• Influence: Think about the many times that the “rule of three” has had an influence on your ability to remember something important. People think using patterns and it’s been shown that three to seven items is all we can hold in our “random access memory (RAM).” Three is the smallest number that displays a pattern. Here are some quick examples:

• Lights, camera, action

• Ready, set, go

• Turn on, tune in, drop out

• Life, liberty, happiness

• Of the people, by the people, for the people

• Impact: The rule of three offers three major benefits: (1) a simple template to create your presentation; (2) it simplifies your message so it will be accessible and memorable; (3) it leads to the ultimate goal of all persuasion, which is to motivate people to act now!

Case Study: A Construction Company

An industrial construction equipment company revised its presentations and won an $875 million dollar contract.

• Intro: Industrial construction equipment is huge. Some cranes weigh as much as 15 million pounds, the equivalent of 80 space shuttles. There was a small company in this field that wanted to grow into a larger company, but something was holding them back from achieving their goals. They had fallen prey to a disease known as the “text-heavy” PowerPoint. They had so much text and data on their PowerPoint presentation that it was weighing down their message.

• Influence: It was in the time period after 2008 and the company was desperately trying to attract new business. That’s when the marketing director suggested that they simplify their message. He took their 72-slide PowerPoint deck and replaced 30 of them with photo-rich slides that told their story with less than 10 words each. Some of their former slides had had over 200 words on them, which made them documents that were pretending to be slides. An example of a new slide was a picture of the moon with the number 240,000. The narrator would then say, “we’ve installed more than 240,000 miles of pipe. That’s enough pipe to route heating oil to the moon.”

• Impact: They offered their revised presentation to a large oil firm and secured an $875 million dollar contract. When asked why they hired the company, one of the oil executives said, “their presentation made me see new possibilities—it was the type of thinking that I want to invest in.” The takeaway—use visual storytelling to simplify your message.

Case Study: Charles Michael Yim

Charles Michael Yim nets the biggest deal in Shark Tank’s history, one million dollars from all five sharks, with a simple explanation of a complicated product.

• Intro: Yim had been an entrepreneur since the age of six and he had learned a lot before he founded the company and the product that he would pitch to Shark Tank. His product was a “breath analysis platform.” It was essentially a non-invasive way to obtain data on the clinical state of an individual by analyzing the organic compounds in his or her breath.” However, Yim didn’t tell the Shark investors any of this. In fact, his presentation wasn’t technical at all.

• Influence: Yim began by giving the Sharks a glass of wine and giving them a hypnotic suggestion to “Imagine how you would feel at a get-together or sports event where you’ve had some food and a few drinks. You’re ready to go home, but you’re not sure if you’re fit to drive. He then pulled out a police-sized breathalyzer. After they had that picture in their minds, he pulled out the Breathometer, the first Breathalyzer that can fit in your pocket. He demonstrated how to plug the small device into a smartphone and then use an app to test your breath by blowing into the device.

• Impact: Yim’s device and his simple, effective presentation landed him a deal. He also landed a later investment deal with Richard Branson on the strength of his simple message. He won this chance from 2,000 original entrants who wanted the opportunity to pitch to Branson. Since then there have been some rough roads regarding his claims, but the company has now “pivoted” and is using their highly technical analyzing device to analyze breath for other types of health and wellness.

Module Nineteen: Motivating Others

We all need motivation on a daily basis to succeed in life. When you speak from the heart at the right time, whether it’s to one

person or to many, you can provide the inspiration that is needed for people to weather the storm they are experiencing. Many people who have been highly successful in life have had

very rough or humble beginnings. Richard Branson has dyslexia and was a poor student.

Steve Jobs was the son of two college students who gave him up for adoption. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, was born in

a housing authority in the Bronx. Suze Orman’s father raised chickens for a living. Milton H. Erickson had polio in his youth and had to teach himself to walk again. These highly successful people have been able to reframe their stories and become the

hero or heroine who has overcome adversity to become a better version of themselves.

Case Study: John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy overcame a sickly constitution to become a hero during World War II.

• Intro: As a child, Kennedy was very sickly and stuck in bed for long periods of time. While in the infirmary of his school, he read everything he could get his hands on. He especially loved reading about heroes. He saw himself playing the part of the hero in the tales of King Arthur.

• Influence: In 1943, Kennedy was commanding a PT boat on patrol. An enemy destroyer rammed into the boat and it was split in half. Two men of the crew of 13 were killed instantly. One man was very critically injured and would not have lived had he been left to swim to shore on his own. Kennedy took a strap from the life jacket the man was wearing and grasped it between his teeth. He swam for four hours with his crewmate in tow to a tiny island that was 70 yards wide. Kennedy survived the battles of World War II to become president. The man he saved lived until he was 84 years old.

• Impact: Imagine telling this story to a child in a hospital bed. Knowing that someone else who was sickly was able to overcome that and become stronger is a powerful motivator. Inspiration is just as powerful as medicine. Inspiration can help someone overcome sickness.

Case Study: Dr. Rich Guerra

Dr. Rich Guerra is a cardiologist at Walnut Hill Medical Center in the center of Dallas, Texas. Walnut Hill isn’t just any hospital. Their health and wellness model involves the level of customer service you would find at a Ritz-Carlton or a Disney resort. In order to get his employees to understand the level of customer service expected there and to motivate them to make it part of their DNA, he presents this story.

• Intro: Imagine you’re living in medieval times. You’re traveling down a dusty, rocky road and you see a man with a sledgehammer breaking up rocks. When you ask, “What are you doing?” he replies, “I’m breaking up rocks.” You continue a few miles and you see a second man, doing the same type of work. When you ask, “What are you doing?” he replies, “I’m making a living.”

• Influence: A few hours later you come across a third man. Even though you feel very tired and leg weary from traveling something about this man makes you feel better. He seems different than the other two, even though he’s doing the same thing. When you ask, “What are you doing?” he smiles, looks skyward, and then replies, “I’m building a cathedral!”

• Impact: After telling this story, Guerra links it to the customer service level that Walnut Hill is seeking. His job is to motivate people to see that everything they do is “building the cathedral.”

Case Study: Steve Wynn

Steve Wynn, the CEO of Wynn Resorts asked a very simple question and got his over 12,000 employees motivated. It had been standard practice at their weekly meetings for department managers to meet with those who were reporting to them. For example, the restaurant managers would convene with the waiters, chefs, and line cooks who reported to them. At the beginning, these meetings were simply informational, but then one day Wynn asked the managers to include this question: Does anyone have a great customer experience they would like to share? It sparked a customer service tsunami.

• Intro: At the first of the Wynn customer experience meetings, a bellman shared this story. A married couple checked into one of the hotels, but the wife panicked because she realized that she had left her husband’s diabetic medicines including his critical insulin at home. They needed the medicine at 7:00 am the next morning. The bellman asked if anyone was at their house and the woman said the housekeeper would be there. The bellman took the information and told her he would take care of it.

• Influence: The bellman called his brother who lived in Encino not far from the couple’s Pacific Palisades house. His brother picked up the bag of medicines from the housekeeper. The bellman got permission from his supervisor, drove to Encino, picked up the bag, and it was at the hotel for the customer at 7:00 am.

• Impact: “Do you think that the customers will remember the marble and hand-woven carpets in the hotel? That doesn’t mean anything to them. But the bellman’s customer service is priceless.” Wynn believes that if employees are being treated fairly in their jobs, the next thing they desire is to feel that their jobs have meaning. They want to be celebrated. Positive self-esteem is one of the most powerful forces for motivation on the planet.

Case Study: Herb Kelleher and Rollin King

Herb Kelleher and Rollin King hatched the idea for Southwest Airlines on the back of a napkin in 1966. From the very beginning, Herb felt that “If you ain’t got culture, you ain’t got shit.” Part of Herb’s over-the-top commitment to Southwest’s corporate culture was to put his employees first, his customers second, and his shareholders third.

• Intro: When a reporter who was interviewing Kelleher asked him why it seemed impossible for competitors to emulate Southwest’s success, he spoke up and told this story about the importance of corporate culture and power of people to make a difference.

• Influence: “…the difficulty for them is the cultural aspect (of Southwest). The United Shuttle went after our business in Oakland. They had lots of advantages including first-class seats, a global frequent flyer program, and a $30 million dollar advertising campaign.”

• Impact: “However, I have thousands of letters in my office that say something like—I tried them but I like your people more, so I’m back.” The takeaway—successful leaders use their speaking and management skills to create and motivate an award-winning culture. Publicly sharing those stories inspires and motivates people to provide the best customer service possible and to enjoy their work at a very high level. Their work has meaning and that meaning resonates with their emotions and souls.

Case Study: Winston Churchill

As a young man of 29, Winston Churchill was thought to be senile. In one of his first speeches, he completely lost his train of thought and was silent for nearly 3 minutes. After this fiasco, many would have remained silent forever, but instead Churchill promised himself that he would become so practiced and natural at speaking that it would never happen again. To this day, the entire world benefitted from Churchill’s decision.

• Intro: History has almost forgotten that the British almost made a deal with Adolf Hitler. Through a series of inspirational speeches, Churchill changed the tide of history and helped the British people understand the consequences of allowing the evil of the Nazi Empire to march forward. As the British were beaten down by the Nazis, he continued to speak to the British people to keep their spirits up during that dark time. At a critical time during the Battle of Britain, all available British aircraft were in the air attempting to prevent the Nazis from getting close to London. Churchill sat in his car with his military secretary as he gazed at the battle overhead. He told his secretary not to disturb him and he remained quiet for a full five minutes. He was very moved by what he was witnessing.

• Influence: He then wrote down this thought to share with the British people in a later speech: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” The “so much” stood for the priceless freedom, liberty, and democracy of the British lands and those of their allies. The “so many” represented the population of Britain as well as the countries that Hitler had invaded, if not the entire free world. The “so few” signified the brave British pilots, many of whom died defending that liberty.

• Impact: The takeaway is that inspirational speakers are able to motivate large numbers of people and ignite the emotions needed to take action with the fewest words possible. A final quote from Churchill—“short words are best.”

Module Twenty: Launching A Movement

Great speakers know how to ignite emotions with their speeches. And only emotions have the power to start a

movement.

Case Study: Clarence Jones

In 1963, Clarence Jones was Martin Luther King’s speechwriter, but the most powerful speech that King ever gave wasn’t read word-for-word from Clarence’s draft.

• Intro: As the crowd at the Washington Mall increased to over a quarter of a million people, King began his speech. As Clarence heard the first paragraph, he was pleased that King had read his words line-by-line. Perhaps he was finally learning how King’s mind worked. Clarence often felt that he built the walls of the house, but King found a way to furnish that house so it felt like home. King was just settling into his favorite chair.

• Influence: Everything was going smoothly from Clarence’s words until the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson yelled out at King, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin!” Clarence realized at that moment that King would set aside the prepared remarks. The audience was about to receive a spiritual gift as if they were a congregation in a church. King then proceeded to say, “I have a dream….” That sentence and much of what King said in the rest of the speech was improvised.

• Impact: King was a master of improvisation because he had had spent over 5,000 hours preparing and practicing his speeches. The takeaway—great speakers and storytellers are made, not born. Great speakers know how to ignite the emotional fire that sparks a movement. They have practiced creating the kindling from narrative, sensory words, analogy, and metaphor.

Case Study: Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean-In” speech started a movement. As chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl works all day with facts and figures. However, it was her three-year-old daughter pleading with her to stay home that caused the angst she learned to share with others.

• Intro: To prepare for her TED talk in 2010, Sheryl amassed an Everest-high stack of statistics. However, right before she left on her trip, her toddler grabbed her leg and begged her not to leave. She confided to a friend that she was having trouble focusing on the speech she was supposed to give because she realized that she didn’t have all the problems figured out herself. It was hard to make a choice to “lean in” when it came to your own career. Her friend persuaded her to share her story about her daughter. “If you really want women to get serious about leadership roles, you can’t sugar coat how difficult it is,” her friend said.

• Influence: So, Sheryl followed that advice although she found it difficult to share something that was so personal with the audience. Especially since it was in conflict with the advice she was giving women about leadership roles. After telling the story about her daughter, Sheryl, gave the women three pieces of guidance:

• Sit at the table.

• Make your partner a real partner.

• Don’t leave before you leave.

• Impact: Sheryl meant that many women stay by the sidelines in business instead of taking an active part. Even in homes where the husband and wife both have careers, women do twice as much housework and three times as much childrearing. Also, women are more apt to “leave in their heads and hearts” way before they actually leave their jobs, which essentially means they are not engaged in pursuing leadership opportunities. The takeaway—you don’t move mountains with an Everest of data, you do it by sharing personal stories from the heart. Much debate followed Sheryl’s talk and the “lean in” philosophy became a movement with women everywhere sharing their difficulties in rising to the top and coming up with strategies to do so.

Case Study: Pooja Sankar

Pooja Sankar came from a traditional Indian background. She is the founder of Piazza, an online platform for students to share so they can overcome their shyness and get help as they are trying to learn.

• Intro: Educated at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in India, Pooja had earned one of the 2,000 student spots out of 2 million applicants. She was talented and smart, even though there had been cultural pressure for her to follow a strictly traditional path of becoming a wife and mother. She found that she had to overcome her own shyness in order to ask her mostly male colleagues and college professors questions about the material so that she could progress in her studies.

• Influence: After graduating from Stanford University, Pooja began an online platform called Piazza that helps students talk among themselves and their professors for the purpose of accelerating their learning. It was the forum she wished she’d had as she was studying to become a software engineer.

• Impact: Inspired by Sheryl Sandberg while working at Facebook, Pooja made a success out of her business and started a movement of a different style of communication among students and their instructors using Piazza. By giving talks and sharing the emotional story of overcoming her own shyness, she has built awareness and expanded the reach of Piazza, which is now used by thousands of students and professors. She has received over $15 million in funding from investors who believe in her startup.

Case Study: Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani advocate for girls’ education. The Taliban tried to silence her but they did not succeed.

• Intro: As a 15-year old girl tried to attend school in Pakistan in 2012, two masked men stopped her school bus and asked for her by name. They wanted to kill her because she was speaking up for the right of girls to become educated. They shot her three times. Miraculously, she survived their assault. That girl was Malala.

• Influence: One year after the attack that almost took her life, Malala stood in front of the United Nations to increase awareness around the world of the plight of millions of girls who are not allowed to receive an education. Her speech and subsequent best-selling book, called “I Am Malala” started a movement.

• Impact: In 2014, Malala received the Nobel Peace Prize. She is the youngest person who has ever received it. Sixty-six million young girls around the world are denied access to an education. Malala’s story of tragedy and ultimate triumph has inspired people around the world with the desire to take action on this important issue.

Case Study: John Lasseter

John Lasseter loved the Disney company until they fired him. Then his life came full circle.

• Intro: John Lasseter filled notepads upon notepads with sketches when he was a boy. As a teenager, he read “The Art of Animation,” that told the history of Disney’s animators. He worked hard to become an animator at Disney. He was in his twenties when he got a job there. John saw the potential in computer animation and tried to present it to his boss and colleagues at Disney. Then, there was the day that one of his supervisors said to him, “John, we don’t want to hear about your ideas, just do what you’re told.” When he talks about that day, John’s eyes still get watery. John was fired from Disney. He was heartbroken, but he still loved animation and didn’t give up.

• Influence: Fast forward to 1983, John got a position at Lucasfilm’s computer division, where they were developing computer animation technology. In 1986, Steve Jobs bought the division and established it as an independent company called Pixar. John had to pitch an idea for a story to Steve. It was a short film called “Tin Toy.” Jobs listened but he stared off as if he were looking into the future. At the end of the meeting, Jobs looked directly into John’s eyes and said, “John, make it great!”

• Impact: Tin Toy won an Academy Award for Best Animated short and became an inspiration for all of Pixar’s subsequent films. After a rocky relationship between the two companies for several years, the Disney company changed their minds about the ideas percolating at Pixar. Disney eventually bought Pixar, where Lasseter is now chief creative officer of both Disney and Pixar. Those three words of advice from Jobs forever resonated in Lasseter’s ears as he was inspired to make every frame in every film great. Lasseter’s work and the work of his team at Pixar launched an entirely new industry that has brought joy to families around the world. When he gives advice to young artists, John Lasseter says, “Your voice is worthwhile. Have faith in it.”