Two-Minute Vocal Warm Up

Do you warm up your voice? If you don’t, you should. Good speech takes muscle. And just as your leg muscles work better if you warm them up before a run, so will your speech muscles work better if you warm them up at the start of your day. Your voice will sound better, stronger. Your articulation will become more clear and crisp. You’ll be easier to understand. And as you strengthen your speech muscles, you’ll be able to talk longer without vocal fatigue.

While warming up the voice is important for those who speak a lot, it’s also important for those who don’t. Some people have solitary jobs where they hardly speak at all, such as computer programmers, artists or writers. If the vocal chords are under used, they may actually begin to weaken and atrophy.

So that your voice stays as healthy as possible, I include a short version of my favorite vocal warm up below. Here’s how it works. The sentences in the warm up have been designed to work many of the vowel and consonant sounds in the English language. Saying them properly can actually strengthen your articulator muscles. Before you begin, drink a glass of warm water. Then, read each sentence aloud slowly, pronouncing each word as carefully and properly as you can. These are not tongue-twisters. DO NOT RACE. While doing the warm up, if your throat becomes sore or your voice feels strained, stop immediately. Work up gradually until you can comfortably do the entire exercise. And of course, if you have persistent hoarseness, weakness or any kind of throat or voice problem, please see your doctor.

Eat each green pea. Aim straight at the game. Ed said get ready. It is in Italy. I tried my kite. Oaks grow slowly. Father was calm as he threw the bomb on the dock. An awed audience applauded Claude. Go slow Joe, you’re stepping on my toe. Sauce makes the goose more succulent. Up the bluff, Bud runs with the cup of love. Red led men to the heifer that fell in the dell.

Maimed animals may become mean. It’s time to buy a nice limeade for a dime. Oil soils doilies. Flip a coin, Roy, you have a choice of oysters or poi. Sheep shears should be sharp. At her leisure, she used rouge to camouflage her features. There’s your cue, the curfew is due. It was the student’s duty to deliver the Tuesday newspaper. He feels keen as he schemes and dreams. Much of the flood comes under the hutch. Boots and shoes lose newness soon. Ruth was rude to the youthful recruit. Vivid, livid, vivifying. Vivid experiences were lived vicariously. Oddly, the ominous octopus remained calm. The pod will rot if left on the rock. Look, you could put your foot on the hood and push. Nat nailed the new sign on the door of the diner. Dale’s dad died in the stampede for gold. Thoughtful thinkers think things through. Engineer Ethelbert wrecked the express at the end of Elm Street.

When You Must Step In There are times when you may be

asked to step in for a co-worker and give a presentation with only a few moments to prepare.

Take into consideration that you were most likely asked to speak because you have knowledge

about the topic. The most important thing --- don’t panic. If you can, find a copy of the

presentation handouts and scan them, writing down the main topics for each portion of the

presentation. This allows you to quickly look at the content of the presentation.

If the original speaker planned to use slides, quickly skim each slide and write down the key

points. Do not concern yourself with the exact words on the slide. If the slides are properly

prepared, each will have only a few key phrases—your talking points for each section of the

presentation.

In the event you don’t have a co-worker’s handouts or slides, quickly develop an outline or

mindmap and do the following:

• List your main points and write down a few key words about each

- Speak spontaneously and confidently from your heart.

- Trust your experience and knowledge.

- Focus on your message and not on the fact that you had to rush to put together a presentation.

Body Movement / Walking Patterns

Changing your position or location while speaking is the broadest, most visible physical

action you can perform. Therefore it can either help drive your message home or spell

failure for even the most well-planned speech.

Moving your body in a controlled, purposeful manner creates three benefits:

1. Supports and reinforces what you say

2. Attracts an audience’s attention

3. Burns up nervous energy and relieves physical tension

However, body movement can work against you. Rememember this one rule:

NEVER MOVE WITHOUT A REASON

The eye is inevitably attracted to a moving object, so any body movement you make

during a speech invites attention. Too much movement, even the right kind, can become

distracting to an audience. Bear in mind the following types of body movement:

- Stepping forward during a speech suggest you are arriving at an important point.

- Stepping backward indicates you’ve concluded an idea and want the audience to relax

for a moment.

- Lateral movement implies a transitional it indicates that you are leaving one thought and

taking up another. For example, if you are ready to move on to your next point, move

slowly sideways until you are standing next to the lectern.

The final reason for body movement is the easiest; to get from one place to another. In

almost every speaking situation, you must walk from the location you are addressing your

audience to your props, especially if you are using visual aids. Always change positions

by leading with the foot nearest your destination.

You may ask, Why move in the first place? Moving forces people to focus and follow

you. The way you walk from your seat to the speaker’s location is very important. When

you are introduced, you should appear eager to speak. Many speakers look as though they

are heading toward execution.

- Walk confidently from your seat to the lectern. Pause there a few seconds and then

move out from behind the lectern. It is wise to use the lectern as a point of departure, not

a barrier to hide behind. I personally do not use lecterns.

- Smile before you say your first words.

- Don’t stand too close or move beyond the first row of people.

- Walking stresses an important idea. It is essential that you walk with purpose and

intention, not just a random shift of position. For example, taking about three steps,

moving at a slight angle, usually works best.

- Use three positions with visual aids, Your “home” position is front and center. The

other two positions should be relatively near the “home” position. You can move to the

right of the lectern and then to the left. Using and varying these three positions prevents

you from favoring one side of the audience. If you’re speaking on stage, these three

positions are called front center, stage left, and stage right. Never stand in front of any

visual aid.

- Practice your walking patterns to and from your three positions. These positions should

be planned just as your hand gestures are, to some degree. For example, you want your

body to move and gesture naturally. However, since most people are nervous about

speaking in public, they tend to stiffen their muscles and hold back their natural tendency

to gesture. Let your body tell you when it wants to move.

Hints for Eliminating Visual or Verbal Clutter

These tips will help you become more aware of your speaking manner:

1. Before you begin to speak, think about the words you want to use.

Think about what you want to say before you open your mouth.

When you find yourself saying uhs and ums (verbal clutter), stop yourself and repeat the sentence, this time replacing the ahs and uhms with silence.

Use the pause as an effective technique. Work hard at replacing this verbal clutter with a simple pause, and during these short pauses allow your mind to catch up and think about what you want to say next.

Practice some of these quick tricks in everyday speaking situations such as making a phone call or

running into someone at a bank or store, but this time focus on replacing your verbal clutter with

silence.

Tips You Should Know About Facial Expressions Leave that deadpan expression to poker players. A good

speaker realizes that appropriate facial expressions are an important part of effective

communication. In fact, facial expressions are often the key determinant of the meaning

behind the message. People watch a speaker’s face during a presentation. When you

speak, your face - more clearly than any other part of your body - communicates to your

audience your attitudes, feelings, and emotions.

Dr. Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco has made a career of

studying facial expressions and facial animation. He mapped out a technique for coding

facial expressions called the facial action coding system, FACS, based on the role facial

muscles play in expressing different emotions. Ekman’s research indicates that there are

seven emotional expressions shared by everyone: sadness, happiness, anger, interest, fear,

contempt, and surprise.

Here is a list of tips you need to know:

1. Be yourself. - Don’t try to copy the facial expression style of someone else. For

example, just because your favorite professional speaker starts his or her presentations by

telling a story using exaggerated facial expressions doesn’t mean it will work for you.

2. Don’t overdo it. - Some people intentionally try to control their facial expressions by

forcing themselves to smile or use another expression that isn’t natural to them. Watch

out for “fake” facial expressions that have a negative impact on your speech or

compromise your sincerity.

3. Practice in front of a mirror. - Notice what expressions you use while speaking. Study

how to control your facial expressions. Ask yourself, Do they match my words?

4. Create different moods. - While practicing in front of the mirror, see if your facial

expressions convey the mood you want to create. If your face isn’t showing any emotion,

stop, refocus, and try again.

5. Think about what you are saying. - Focus on your message and communicating with

your audience, and your facial expressions will follow.

6. Smile before you begin. - As I’ve said before, the one true international non-verbal

expression understood by all is the smile. A warm smile before you begin to speak warms

up an audience quickly, and ending with a smile puts your audience at ease with what

they’ve just learned.

What to do After Delivering a Bad Speech With every speech one gives, one should always ask themselves two things:

1. What did I like about the speech I just gave? 2. What would I have done differently if I had to do it all over again?

One thing to remember is that no speech is ever perfect. There have been many effective and powerful speeches delivered over time where the speaker did not have the perfect diction or even had distracting mannerisms; however, the message they gave was powerful and the audience will often overlook some poor speech habits if the message was effective.

At the same time, there are many smooth and slick speakers who appear to be confident and eloquent, but when it comes down to it, their message is not clear and the audience is not motivated or inspired.

Remember, there are always three speeches a presenter gives:

1. The one we planned 2. The one we gave

3. The one we wish we gave

We often beat ourselves up over the speech we “wish we gave”. Don’t beat yourself up, but ask yourself, “What would I do differently the next time I give this speech”?

Hopefully, you recorded the speech so you can accurately assess your verbal and non-verbal aspects of your speech. Below are some tips I would recommend you seriously consider to improve your speeches:

• First ask yourself, “What was my intended message of my speech?” Listen to your speech and determine if this message came across clearly?

• Was my speech too long or too short? If it was too long, what might I consider changing to reduce the time I took? If it was too short, do I really need to make it longer? I am not aware of anyone who got upset with a speaker who spoke shorter than you had anticipated.

• What verbal or non-verbal distracting mannerisms did I use? Did I have too many “uhs” or “ums”? These usually occur when a speaker feels they must be speaking constantly. If one just replaces these “uhs” or “uhms” with a pause the speech will sound better.

• Did my speech have a good structure? Did it have a clear introduction, did it have a clear body and included some main ideas and points, and lastly, did I have an effective closing? Did I give the audience a “Call to Action”? In other words, tell them what to do with the information I just provided them.

• Don’t be afraid to make changes in your speech or presentation so it can be better the next time we deliver it.

• Learn to speak using our everyday conversational language. Quite often, we attempt to use phrases or verbiage that is not our usual style and it is awkward to us and it comes across awkward in our speeches. Learn to be as conversational as we can.>

Grow from every speech you give. Public speaking is a learned skill and some of the best speakers today will admit how terrible a speaker they were in the past. Practice your public speaking and take the time after each speech to assess what you liked and did not like about the speech. Sometimes the exact same speech is very effective and well received, while other times it may not be. The reaction of an audience is not always within our control and we are not responsible for the audience.

If you come away, feeling you delivered the best speech you could deliver; however, the audience did not react as you expected, it may not have been your speech. It may have been the time of day, the attitude of the audience or some other attribute of the speaking environment outside of your control. Remember,

tomorrow is another day and the next time you deliver the exact same speech, may result in a standing ovation.

Meetings Escape From Meeting Hell It’s time for another soul-sapping, oxygen-depriving, time-wasting, mind-numbing company meeting. Or is it? We offer 15 clever solutions to the problems with most meetings.

Quick show of hands: Who hates meetings?

So that’s most of you. It’s not surprising. Workers across this land are gripped by soul-deadening angst as they shuffle down the hall every Wednesday at 3:30 to go review “housekeeping issues.” Days, weeks, months, years of our lives are slipping away in stuffy, overcrowded conference rooms and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Michael Doyle and David Straus, authors of the 1976 classic How to Make Meetings Work, famously claimed that there were 11 million meetings in the U.S. every day, and that executives spent 50% of their time in them. And for what? Doyle and Straus have been in print for 28 years, and while meetings are up to 25 million a day, according to Doyle, they generally don’t work. They bring down morale and blow holes in the workday, and pitifully few constructive ideas come out of them—which, of course, means that yet another round of meetings is called....

Take into account the bottom line, and the picture is even grimmer. For all the value they’re getting from meetings, some companies might as well open the windows and throw cash to the breeze—at least it would save time. “Meetings should be a precious resource, but they’re treated like a necessary evil,” says social psychologist Kenneth Sole, who runs Sole & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in organizational behavior. Sole, who has worked with diverse clients that include Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, NASA, Apple, and the United Nations, often asks executives to imagine a meeting with 15 of their top-level people. On the wall at this imaginary meeting is a giant meter with a running total of both the costs of the wages of those assembled and the revenue they aren’t bringing in while they’re languishing in a conference room. It’s a sobering exercise.

Fortunately, there is good news—like Good News, the required 15-minute Monday-morning gathering at American Megacom, a communications consultancy in Livonia,

Mich. CEO Jane Sydlowski shares the love through positive updates about what employees have accomplished in sales, client satisfaction, and public relations. “They know how to make you blush,” says Sean Stevens, a sales specialist at the firm. “The ego stroking can get a little nauseating, but I know I can rely on those people because of the confidence they get knowing how they are helping the business.”

That’s just one example of a company fighting to break the chains of mediocrity. There are more. This may astound you, but companies everywhere are holding meetings, week in and week out, that are successful and productive and that employees look forward to. Creative minds are solving the problems that have plagued conference rooms since the dawn of the regularly scheduled postlunch get-together. Below you’ll see how.

“I really don’t know how to run a meeting”

Hire—or create—a specialist

Entrepreneurs want their employees to be the best at what they do, whether it’s in accounting, sales, or restocking the soda machine. But little thought is given to who is most qualified to take charge of hours upon hours of company time. “There is an art to running meetings as a forum for shared problem solving,” says Anne Donnellon, professor of management at Babson College and author of Team Talk: The Power of Language in Team Dynamics. “So why wouldn’t you send someone to get training and make quality facilitation a primary function of an internal employee?”

That someone could well be the boss. By default, managers run meetings, and many business owners assume that they know what they’re doing—even if the entire company disagrees. Local consulting firms and business schools, and occasionally bookstores and libraries, offer improvement courses.

“Everyone slumps down and zones out”

Stand up for yourself

Nobody likes meetings; nobody likes standing for long periods of time. Ergo, to meet on the feet should keep things moving along. It’s the way Dan Cunningham, CEO of Dan’s Chocolates in Braintree, Mass., likes it, so he holds standing meetings a couple of times a month, even when somebody from outside the office is involved. Cunningham wants these meetings focused on immediate problems, which is nicely emphasized by the lack

of physical comfort. “Variables on a problem constantly change,” says Cunningham. “We would rather do triage right over the patient then sit down and put something together that we’ll just end up revisiting in a few days.”

Gary Berman, CEO of Greyhawk North America, a construction management and consulting firm in Woodbury, N.Y., is a former stander—and don’t think he won’t go back to it. He also reserves the right to push meetings to 5 p.m. on Friday, which ensures that employees don’t hold court with their long-winded war stories. The natural itch to start the weekend drives people to the heart of the matter; they figure out what needs to be done and go home.

“We’re slaves to the agenda”

Let it flow

An agenda can be a blueprint, but it should never be the tool that sets the discourse. Idea generation should be more important than adhering to arbitrary agenda bullet points. That’s why Ryan Simons, CEO of Print-Tech, a commercial printing and promotional product outfit in Madison, Wis., rarely lets anyone else see what is on his agenda, and why he monitors strategy meetings with a great deal of elasticity, unafraid to change course on the fly. If bullet point A flows to bullet point C, he’s happy to skip B and save it for the following week—better that than encroaching on the living, breathing, developing organism. “There’s no magic solution, but it’s a constantly changing dynamic,” says Simons. “I like to mix it up to see what happens.” Another trick he uses to shake out the doldrums is to switch a couple of the attendees in regular meetings, throwing the head of one division (IT perhaps?) into another (marketing?) division’s meeting, or simply shrinking the roll call—any combination to keep the voices in the room fresh and the discussions freewheeling and thought-provoking.

“It’s just an information dump”

Don’t hire the illiterate

If you bring people together strictly to update them on sales numbers, software upgrades, vacation-day policies, and/or baby-pool standings, you get what you stray for. “The only rational defense to interrupt talented people with an information dump is if your employees can’t read,” says Kenneth Sole. “These are the meetings that induce hypnosis.” Meetings are never the place to heap employees with material that they could

read via the electronic mailing system. Meetings should be about attacking problems, or else they’re going to be about boring employees.

Kevin Grauman, CEO of the Outsource Group, a Walnut Creek, Calif., company that administers outsourced HR functions (and was formerly the top company in the Inc. 500), adheres to the “no information dump” policy. Every gathering is a strategic session to share ideas, get feedback, and distill the overall perspectives of the company. “Employees should be empowered to solve problems and take the risk inherent in participation and not be spoon-fed answers,” Grauman says emphatically.

“I’ve got a room full of yes men and yes women”

Make your bobbleheads engage

If all you want to see is a smiling face in complete agreement with your mandates, hang a mirror in the office. John G. Miller, author of the QBQ! The Question Behind the Question, has monitored some 10,000 hours of meetings, workshops, and training sessions, and he’s concluded that a room full of nodding yes men and yes women wastes everyone’s time. Miller has a few basic exercises to combat bobblehead tendencies: (1) Plant seeds by sending out a question of the week prior to the meeting so that people will come in with thoughts that they can be expected to share; (2) Throw out a problem and break up employees into groups of two or three for 10 minutes, and then have them report their ideas. A short shift into teams changes the dynamic of the room, both because employees are usually more comfortable talking to peers and because it cuts down on lecturing; and (3) Praise those who speak up and participate. If managers reward only the completion of projects, there is no acknowledgment of the work that’s done within meetings.

Stuart Levine, a strategic consultant, author of The Six Fundamentals of Success, and a CEO with 25 employees of his own, is known to hand out Tootsie Roll Pops on the spot for intriguing thoughts. It’s a modest but effective little gimmick. “Recognizing contributions gets the intellectual capital flowing and brings the more introverted off the bench,” says Levine.

“We always peter out”

Leave the room like George Costanza

In a classic Seinfeld, George Costanza offers an astute insight into giving meetings a needed shot of flair and excitement. George took the old comic saw of “Always leave them wanting more” and began exiting meetings the moment after he threw out a well-received witticism. Costanza wouldn’t seem to be the gold standard for productivity, but in this case he’s in step with the eggheads. John Clemens and Scott Dalrymple, professors of management at Hartwick College and co-authors of Time Mastery (due out this summer), spent two years researching effective leadership for their book about using time as a strategic tool. They strongly encourage leaders to seize the big moment of a meeting. The Wednesday 3 p.m. meeting might have its climax at 3:17, so cut it off on a high. There’s no need for a denouement—this is a meeting, not a novel, and besides, there’ll be another one next week. Clemens says that to truly own the room, managers have to develop a sixth sense as to when a major moment is at hand so that employees walk out jazzed up—and never discount the natural high of exiting a meeting early.

“This conference room puts me to sleep”

Get out more

Who made up the rule that all meetings have to be held inside the same four drab walls? Greg James, CEO of consumer software company Topics Entertainment, considers his off-site meetings a secret weapon, which is why two or three times a month he takes his employees on reconnaissance missions at the mall. They grab some nosh at the food court and then undertake a thorough examination of the software departments of stores all in and around the mall. They analyze packaging, pricing, endcap placement, and markdowns, and check out new products from the competition. They’ve also been able to identify nontraditional selling arenas where they might make headway, such as when they realized Topics could place needlepoint software at the arts and crafts chain Michaels. “Our meetings are a form of reverse engineering,” says James. “We make products retailers want, instead of we made it, you buy it.” James is such a fan of lunch-hour mall trolling that he recently moved the company closer to a major Seattle-area shopping center.

As CEO of Planet Tan, Tony Hartl oversees eight big tanning clubs in greater Dallas. He thinks fresh air equals fresh ideas, so he regularly takes his top people out for what he calls “BOB”—Business on the Boat. Even when he holds meetings in-house, Hartl tries to make employees feel like they’re somewhere else. Planet Tan’s monthly all-day strategy sessions kick off with a “circle meeting” in a dark room, with a candle in the

middle and bean bag chairs on the floor, all meant to ensure employees are comfortable and feel safe being open and honest. “It sounds strange,” says Hartl, “but it’s a good way to get reclusive people to open up. Most organizations only get bodies, but we get hearts and minds.”

“I already know what we have to do today”

Look to the future

Raymond Sanchez, CEO of Security Mortgage Group in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., loathes meetings because they are so often used to “rehash the hash that’s already been hashed.” If this Yogi Berra-esque complaint sounds typical, John Clemens and Scott Dalrymple are on your squad. They feel that entirely too many meetings are steeped in the past and present, rather than looking to the future. Their research found that successful managers are forward-thinking in meetings, and also that many leaders direct their attention (and the attention of others) to the future a lot less than they might think. Clemens and Dalrymple came up with a simple exercise, called VerbAudit, that shows whether the language used in a meeting is primarily focused on what’s happening today—which is counterproductive for tomorrow—or on what will happen next. The next time you run a meeting, tape and transcribe it. Circle all the verbs in the transcription. See how many of the verbs, particularly your own, are in past tense, how many in present, and how many in future. You may be surprised to learn that your own words are betraying the very vision for the future that you want to convey.

“It’s hard to keep everyone’s attention”

Lay out some cash

It’s nice to believe employees understand that meetings are essential to the heart of the company and are always looking for ways to improve, but putting a little green on the table always helps. Jay Steinfeld, CEO of Houston’s Blinds.com, doles out $50 on the spot for good, original ideas (he’s the arbiter), creating, in essence, a living suggestion box. “Most employers resist change, but we encourage it,” says Steinfeld. One employee threw out a suggestion that made a giant difference and increased the amount of free samples sent out by 25%--and it cost the company the price of dinner and a movie. Gil Bonwitt, president of New Horizons Computer Learning Center of Miami, livens up his monthly all-departments meeting with a $100 giveaway to an employee who has gone “above and beyond” his or her regular duties in the previous month. Anyone can be

nominated, and after Bonwitt reads aloud the names of each nominee and describes his or her contributions, a name is selected at random for a C-note. “It went from being a little dorky to great positive energy,” says Bonwitt, “and most importantly, everyone looks forward to the meetings.”

“I’m so bored I’m cutting myself with a plastic fork”

Make ‘em laugh

Sheldon Arora, CEO of Esoftsolutions, an IT systems company in Plano, Texas, does not want gloomy meetings. So the last person into the room at the monthly companywide meeting has to tell a joke. That sets a relaxed tone and also gets seats filled on time.

Then, at the end of the meeting, Arora settles up on his wagers with employees. A year ago, at a company happy hour, Arora overheard a few younger sales folks bragging about the numbers they were going to hit, so he proposed a little bet. If they hit the targets, dinner at a Dallas restaurant was on him; if they didn’t, they’d go up in front of the next meeting to perform a song. They ended up singing Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” on company time, and since then the bets have become a staple that the employees love. Things don’t always go the CEO’s way, either. One lost bet reduced Arora to carting around a napkin and tray while serving coffee as the butler for a day. “I’m willing to make a fool of myself,” says Arora, “because the return on investment is so high.”

“This meeting has all the excitement of sitting in traffic”

Spark up a confrontation

Name-calling and fisticuffs should be off-limits in the conference room, but confrontation should be stoked and allowed to breathe. “Conflict is the spark of creativity,” says John G. Miller. If employees keep quiet because they fear what they say will come back to haunt them or unconsciously ask themselves whether they’ll be punished for challenging the status quo, then no revolutionary ideas will come out of the meeting. It’s a good thing when people are fired up and have strong opinions about the direction of the business; it means they care.

Alex Lekas, a vice president at Web hosting and servicing company Advanced Internet Technologies in Fayetteville, N.C., says his company thrives on confrontational communication. Now, Army guys founded AIT, so maybe verbal combat is less

intimidating to them, but all companies should inspire and foster passion. “We encourage skepticism, because every project is going to have proponents and opponents,” says Lekas. “We want honest discussions and vigorous arguments.”

“No one retains a thing”

Let’s review

Meetings frequently accelerate in the latter stages because everyone wants out. But a quick recap at the end can go a long way toward ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Pamela Schindler, director of the Center for Applied Management at Wittenberg University, has been researching how to make meetings an efficient “process of work” for years. She believes that meetings should have a clear outcome that is recapped at the end in a five-minute synthesis report. If you want everyone to walk out knowing exactly what they’re supposed to do, don’t leave without “thinking through the meeting,” as Schindler says, by revisiting the major points. And Schindler says that clarifying the potential outcomes, the next steps, and who is responsible for each step has another upside: “The real joy of synthesis is realizing how many meetings you won’t need.”

“We’ve been having the same weekly meeting since the Carter administration”

Continually take your company’s pulse

Nietzsche claimed that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but that doesn’t explain the slow death of attending the same depressing weekly meeting year after year after year. However, a company can be quickly resurrected through an analysis of what’s working and ditching what isn’t. Sean McLaughlin, CEO of Eze Castle Software, a Boston-based company that makes software for investment management, constantly reevaluates the effectiveness of his company’s meetings. His reassessments have led to decisions such as wiping out all meetings on Monday. McLaughlin realized his employees needed a clean, unfettered day to coalesce their thoughts, get organized, and plan for the week, and that his type-A go-getters were getting “Sunday fever” and preparing for Monday instead of relaxing or hanging out with their kids.

Eze Castle also uses what it calls a “barn cat,” a roving problem-solver whose functions include meeting watchdog, dropping in randomly to ensure that meetings are productive and not spreading malaise. McLaughlin thinks it’s critical to evaluate how meetings are

working because they’re a microcosm of the company and a definer of culture. He’s not afraid of change—he says that in a couple of years, Eze Castle Software might have a completely different outlook on how meetings should be run.

“I don’t have time to read this article”

Learn, and live by, the golden rule

Don’t hold meetings for meetings’ sake. Amen.

Meeting adjourned.

Sidebar: And if nothing’s working? More meetings!

Meetings can be likened to an engine that drives a company forward and thus needs the occasional tune-up. Unless, of course, said company can’t get started and never even leaves the driveway, in which case a total overhaul is necessary. And how should a manager fix a dead, nonstarting engine? Pat Lencioni suggests a lot more meetings.

Lencioni, CEO of the management consulting firm the Table Group and author of the recently published Death by Meeting, says that the main reason for unproductive and inefficient meetings is the attempt to make them everything to everybody. Lencioni refers to “meeting stew,” a bad mix of disparate elements such as monthly tactical goals, administrative details, and big-picture issues, all of them addressed in a preordained chunk of time. “It’s a case of all the ingredients tasting good, but thrown together it tastes terrible,” says Lencioni. “And human beings aren’t smart enough to shift context quickly.” Without explicit directives, meetings ramble, managers babble, eyes roll back in heads, and the chances for success are shot.

Lencioni suggests having distinct types of meetings. A given company’s lineup might include a five-minute daily check-in strictly for immediate concerns and to ensure nothing falls through the cracks; a weekly tactical that includes a one-minute quick hit of priorities for each person, followed by a progress review and an agenda-setting for the week ahead; and a longer monthly strategic for executives to delve into a couple of topics without the restraint of deadlines. If that sounds like a lot of time in meetings, think of how many e-mail strings and cubicle drop-ins could be avoided by means of a mere 300 seconds a day of clearing up issues.

Lencioni doesn’t want to hear that e-mail and IM make it acceptable to skip meetings. “A table is still the best piece of technology to sit around and figure out how things work,” he insists. Hence, the Table Group.

Mike Maddock, president of the Chicago advertising agency Maddock Douglas, is a believer. In addition to a mandatory five-minute executive daily (which requires calling in from the road), the company blocks off six hours on Mondays and holds meetings back-to-back-to-back. They start with a town-hall gathering, followed by tightly scheduled breakout meetings meant to address weekly goals and get different departments in sync. Maddock feels this approach has eliminated a lot of the redundant, ad hoc “hey, you got a minute?” conversations that break up the work processes much more than regularly scheduled programming. “Giving Monday morning over to hammering out issues is an investment in the rest of the week,” he says. “Through fewer interruptions, we gain a lot of that time back.”

Meetings Go Virtual Success in the global market was giving Marla Landreth headaches.

Her company, InfoGenesis in Santa Barbara, Calif., was doing well. Customers as far away as Australia and Asia were buying its systems that link sales terminals together to track sales, inventory and customers across large properties such as resorts, casinos and stadiums. But each sale was an added challenge for Landreth, who heads training for the company, which has 150 employees and 17 sites.

Most customers had steady employee turnover and a constant need to train new hires on InfoGenesis’ systems. Add to that the quarterly updates of new bells and whistles to the company’s software and Landreth faced big budget hits for training and travel. The dilemma grew as many clients cut their own travel following 9/11 and the economic downturn.

“We use to distribute documentation and have everyone call in with questions, but that didn’t address the needs,” Landreth says.

So InfoGenesis tried Web conferencing through Centra Software Inc., in Lexington, Mass. By setting up training sessions over the Internet, trainees several time zones away

can click a link on their computers and enter a virtual classroom with a simulation of the InfoGenesis system and real-time instructions from a trainer.

Students see what the software looks like in action. They can interrupt the lesson with questions using text chat or voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) technology, which lets them make long-distance telephone calls over the Internet rather than over telephone wires. The online solution, Landreth says, “has solved a huge problem of training and turnover for our customers.”

Once the province of larger firms, Web conferencing and other collaboration technologies—tools that help people work with one another through their computers—have become more available and affordable. This is a boon for smaller companies whose only previous collaboration option was to gather workers in a room with coffee, donuts, and a whiteboard.

Simple collaborative tools such as instant messaging (IM) can be incorporated into company systems, and even on individual employees’ home computers, courtesy of the AOLs and Yahoos of the world. Calendaring—the ability to check colleagues’ schedules or add a meeting their calendar—is now a standard feature in Microsoft Outlook. Web conferencing is being bundled into operating systems sold by companies like Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp. Such systems will soon or already offer teamware—software that creates virtual workspaces for project groups inside or outside a company.

The choices don’t end there. The marketplace teems with companies challenging larger companies like Microsoft and WebEx Communications Inc., a hosted Web-meeting provider based in San Jose. Flypaper.com, a San Carlos, Calif., firm hosts secure digital workplaces where teams can gather and share information, and Co-create Software, an Hewlett-Packard spinoff in Fort Collins, Colo., makes software that lets engineering and manufacturing teams work together. You can even buy turnkey systems, with servers and software, for $40,000. All tolled, the collaborative market is now estimated at around $3 billion a year.

“The field is really growing by leaps and bounds now, in part due to the whole history of 9/11 and SARS [last year’s outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome that put a chill on international travel],” says Mark Rice, a former Xerox executive who saw the potential of collaborative technologies and started his own Web-meeting business called Webinar Resources in Florissant, Mo.

With the flood of collaborative products available, how do you choose? The best advice is to think hard about what you need and take it slow.

“It’s hard to assess the values of these technologies,” says Erica Rugullies, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. “Some companies are afraid of collaboration because they see it as something that is just cool” rather than truly valuable, she says. “But there are advantages when you look at the business process, such as reduced phone bills or e-mail storage costs.”

Web conferencing and teamware—software designed for groups and for communication, including e-mail, videoconferencing, chat features, and document collaboration—hold the biggest promise of savings in both money and time. Coworkers, clients, or prospective customers in different locations can look at documents and images on their computers while talking on traditional teleconference lines or directly over the Internet via VoIP.

There are several ways to go. You can contract with the main players, like Microsoft’s Live Meeting, WebEX or IBM, which put together larger, more expensive Web conferences. You can also try going solo: Microsoft has bundled Net Meeting into all its new Windows products. Click the icon of the globe with the two arrows and you can try your hand at conferencing with up to 10 people.

The third route is to sign up with a smaller conferencing firm such as Centra, which can take the mystery out of Web conferencing, especially for companies with small or nonexistent IT departments. For a fee of around 20 cents per participant per minute, Centra will set up your Internet meeting place, send out invitations, and register participants. All you have to do is click on the site, hook up a computer headset, and log into the meeting. (Centra also provides a Cost/Benefit Analysis, which shows the cost savings involved with online learning initiatives.)

Going the third-party route may make the most sense for newcomers, the experts say. As with any new venture, due diligence is a necessary first step. Talk to the conferencing companies, check out their websites, ask for reference lists of customers, or even sit in on a conference, which many hold to demonstrate product features.

But if you discover that conferencing works for you, you begin to use it frequently, and you and/or your IT department is up to the task, you might consider purchasing the technology to do it yourself.

Microsoft offers Office Live Communications Server 2003, which lets companies set up their own IM networks via Office applications. OpenScape from Siemens AG combines voice, e-mail, IM, and collaboration features. Apple Computer Inc. has added video to IM with its iChat AV software and iSight digital camera. Oracle Corp. is challenging Microsoft’s e-mail dominance with its own Collaboration Suite, which builds on Oracle’s already considerable collaborative capabilities.

The overriding advice is to take your time, especially with your own staff. Shifting cultures from donuts and coffee to computer screens and headphones may be jarring at first.

“With options like teamware you have to change habits,” says Mike Gotta, senior vice president and principal analyst at Meta Group Inc. of Stamford, Conn., an industry advisory firm. “Getting people to change can be tough. You have to convince them that new is better.”

Meetings 101: Was That a Good Meeting, or a Bad One? Many organizations have been swamped by information overload. Contrary to popular opinion, you can indeed have too much of an otherwise good thing. Information is good, particularly when you have the right information, in the right quantities, at the right time. Alas, in too many organizations, directives for urgency and quantity have replaced deliberateness and quality. As a result, surveys show, people within the organization feel overwhelmed by the non-stop avalanche of information that seems to careen their way.

One reason for perceptions of information overload—and there are several reasons—is the epidemic of unnecessary or inefficient meetings. Take any large organization, in particular, and you’re likely to see employees who spend the majority of their time going from one meeting to another. At a fair share of these meetings, attendees arrive ill-prepared and the conversation meanders along for hours in a meeting that could take 15 or 30 minutes, if it needs to occur at all. If you add this to less-than-optimal

organizational skills that can make remaining non-meeting time efficient and productive, it’s easy to see where the flood of information can become overwhelming.

What distinguishes an effective meeting from one that is a complete waste of time? Here are five factors that help ensure a good meeting:

(1) Having a good reason to meet in the first place; (2) Having an agenda that clearly states the purpose of the meeting and key steps to satisfying that purpose by the end of the meeting; (3) Stating a timeframe at the beginning of the meeting and sticking to it, with few exceptions; (4) Requiring that participants come prepared to discuss the topics on the agenda, meaning that participants have received the agenda and have been told what’s expected from them personally; (5) Having some degree of skilled facilitation—someone who can keep participants focused on the agenda items and can navigate prickly interpersonal issues so that the meeting is effective instead of dysfunctional.

And what about those meetings that disintegrate into a collosal waste of time and energy, contributing to unproductive information-overload?

Among the worst meetings are those that exhibit the opposite of the “good rules” stated above: There isn’t a good reason for the meeting, there’s a poor agenda or none at all, the meeting “creeps” its way into a several-hour ordeal, participants arrive unprepared, and/or there is no skilled facilitation. The result? Wasted time and deflated energy for the participants, not to mention a culture of meeting-dread.

Everyone has stories of horrible meetings, and a few examples of good ones. Earlier in my career, I facilitated public meetings about hazardous waste cleanups that were taking place in various communities, so I have seen more than my share of tense or awful meetings. But in the workplace, most fall into the “out of control” or “unnecessary” categories. One of the worst of these that I’ve experienced saw six participants droning on for four-and-one-half hours about which category should appear in the first column of a planning document, and it really didn’t matter. It was a hideous waste of time.

Another meeting faux pas occurred when a corporate representative stood up at a community meeting and made a statement that showed he didn’t even think about the situation, or comment, from the community members’ perspective. He ended up getting a 30-minute tongue-lashing from an elected state legislator who was in the audience (and campaigning for re-election).

In another case, employees from the company’s information technology department routinely showed up unprepared. When asked at one meeting to give a presentation on the department’s progress, the representative positioned himself in an alcove of the meeting room, which meant that most participants couldn’t even see him and thus had trouble hearing him! Needless to say, it didn’t make a very good impression, but worse, no one at the meeting brought it to his attention or asked him to reposition himself—they just complained about it afterward. The result? Wasted time during the meeting itself, and more wasted time rehashing it later.

Most workplace meetings are just disorganized and go well beyond a necessary timeframe, if they need to happen at all—and many do not. Often, such meetings show the confusion that exists in many organizations between a business meeting and a social function. Business meetings occur to define and move a business strategy forward, to ensure that the group is on the same page, to share vital information needed to keep various activities moving along in a way that is aligned with the bigger-picture strategy or goals. A social gathering allows people to get together to enjoy one another, share personal information, follow a more relaxed timeline, and chat about various topics of shared interest. Too many corporate—and more than a few non-profit—meetings are a murky hybrid, when they should be scheduled and facilitated, clearly, as one or the other. Or they’re infected by a bureaucratic malaise that eats away at purposefulness, efficiency, and clarity.

Good meetings are more rare, but you know when you’re attending one. The schedule and purpose are clear, participants are prepared, conversation is dynamic, and the meeting ends promptly, with next steps defined and confirmed among all participants. The meeting may be pleasant, and even fun, and there may exist an enjoyable cameraderie amongst participants. But the meeting is clearly about moving forward the work of the day and is energized by the preparation and clear-focus of its participants.

How can we make our meetings more effective and educational? Leadership & Strategy mentor Keith Lamb responds: We’ve been trying to improve our meetings for years now, and we think we’ve come up with a good formula. Generally speaking, a systematic—and lively—meeting process ensures that everyone’s business and financial acumen is constantly reinforced and enhanced. Here’s some advice:

• Develop your own unique meeting format. We’re big on weekly staff meetings that focus on our key financials and operational issues, and we address those issues, one by one, as they relate to information, communication, accountability, and education. If we’re trying to correct a cash flow problem, for instance, we talk about the source and quality of the information, who is responsible for finding the solution, and how they’re going to make it happen. Then we try to work in a cash flow lesson that relates to our current situation. We stick to that format as best we can, keeping the meeting under an hour long.

• Make your meetings flow. Meetings flow when people know what to expect. Our associates know that our weekly meetings always focus on how the group’s activities are tied to our overall company goals. We just take a different cut at the numbers, depending on which ones need to be watched and what issues need to be addressed. Our goal is to identify challenges and then brainstorm action items to tackle them. We hold our meetings at the same time every week; a tight agenda keeps things moving. We also give everyone the opportunity to lead a meeting, which helps keep the communication fresh and interesting.

• Give everyone at least one takeaway lesson. Our associates want to know how they can improve our business, so we teach them. If, say, our overall goal is to improve profit before tax, then someone in purchasing might learn that he or she can negotiate with one of our vendors to reduce the cost of a particular product we use regularly. Our salespeople might learn that they have to better understand the profit margins for each service, and then build a sales strategy that emphasizes higher-margin items. Delivery people might leave with the goal of reducing errors in shipping.

• Host quarterly learning events or workshops. These meetings might be led by your financial team, which can develop a series of courses such as Income Statement 101, Balance Sheet Basics, Cash Flow Forecasting, Fun with Ratios, How to Create a Budget from Scratch, and anything else you can dream up. Workshops are a great way to gather everyone in a more social setting. We bring in some food and try to create a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Once you finish the learning, you can share business-related know-how, best practices, and lessons learned.

Cure the Sick-Meeting Ills Many people dread meetings for being time consuming, pointless, and boring.

The primary reason for meetings is to share or brainstorm information or to develop action steps toward accomplishing a goal. Period. But if this were the result of most corporate meetings, people wouldn’t moan and groan when they learn that another meeting is going to be held. From our experience facilitating and attending meetings, we’ve found that bad meetings have similar traits regardless of the industry, company, or project:

Poor meetings lead to poor project results

Most meetings create at least one unwanted result, such asmore meetings, frustrated participants, or unclear expectations. All of these lead to poor performance or no performance at all. People aren’t converting decisions into action because often no decisions were made or articulated. Culture plays a part in how meetings are perceived, too. For example, Americans consider meetings a place where decisions are made; in contrast, the French use meetings to share ideas, allowing the decision makers to review their newly gathered information and come to a decision.

Signs of bad meetings are participants arriving late, leaving early, unnecessarily attending by phone, not participating when at the meeting, canceling altogether, spending hours and hours in a meeting, or leaving without a clear idea of why the meeting was held and what the outcome was.

The long-term results of poor meetings are more damaging. Low morale, ineffective time management, high project turnover rate, unavailable employees, and zero headway will doom a project and frustrate participants, leading to wasted company funds and talent.

Facilitators turn poor meetings into productive worksessions

Have someone facilitate your meetings. Yes, it must besomeone who knows the essentials of good facilitation—or your meetings still won’t improve—but it’s well worth

the investment. Here are some thoughts that every facilitator should keep in mind when preparing for, running, and following up on a meeting:

Create an agenda and stick to it.

Going into a meeting with the nuts and bolts of what the group wants to discuss, agree on, and accomplish increases the chances that participants will make actionable decisions within a set time frame. Without an agenda, people will bring up loosely related subjects

that aren’t critical to achieving the meeting goals—that distract from the main issue. Great ideas and beneficial tangents will occur with an agenda and artful facilitation.

Watch the clock. Meetings that are too long can cost a bundle. The Center for Continuous Quality Improvement at the Milwaukee Area Technical College surveyed its 130-person management council to find out how much timeits

members spent in meetings. Multiplying the time spent by members’ salaries, the survey found that the college was spending $3 million per year on council meetings!

A good facilitator will chart out periods of time for each discussion and will help the

group decide how best to use the remaining time allotted if an agenda item requires more discussion. He or she will also give participants checks on time and keep the meeting on

track.

Curious how much your meetings cost? Calculate the per-hour salary of each participant and add up the fees. Doing so will inspire you to trim unnecessary meeting time.

Turn ideas and decisions into action. Meetings can be so vague that participants don’t know what they’re supposed to do next.

Bad meetings can cause two people to do the same task while another task sits idle. Because the capacity for misunderstanding is limitless, good facilitators should get

agreement on every decision, help the group develop an action item associated with every decision, and assign a person responsible for the action. The meeting minutes reflect

these assignments. Have fun, but don’t mismatch activities and people.

Meetings are work. But that doesn’t mean participants can’t have fun. Allow joking, small talk, etc., if it makes the group more productive. (Know when to cut chatter, too, like when no one has focused on the issue at hand for a couple of minutes.) Make the

environment one in which people are comfortable—both physically andemotionally—but watch out for inappropriate games or exercises.

For example, you might avoid a “touchy-feely” get-to-know-you game for an IT group.

Many technologists are not very extroverted and might crawl into a nonparticipatory shell if confronted with such an uncomfortable task. Also, don’t plan an activity that involves

an inappropriate invasion of space, such as sitting on a stranger’s knees while he guides you with his hands on your hips (as was the case in a recent meeting I attended), unless

you know for a fact that all attendees will be comfortable with that level of physical contact. Know your meeting participants, including cultural interaction issues, and

always give people the option of not participating. Speak plain English.

You can’t make decisions and accomplish goals if no one knows what you’re talking about or if what you’ve said allows for multiple interpretations. Eliminating meaningless

corporate jargon allows for more natural conversation and a better understanding of what’s expected—leading to better ideas and realistic action items.

Learn from your mistakes. At InnoVision Communications, we’re always looking for ways to improve our

facilitation skills. After each meeting or workshop we conduct, we review what worked and what could have been improved. Good facilitators reserve the end of a meeting to get

feedback from the group and learn from that feedback. Take responsibility.

Participants can also use facilitation techniques in a meeting, whether asking for clarification on a point, checking the time, using language that everyone will understand, or getting the discussion back on track. If you see symptoms of a poor meeting, put the

onus on yourself to cure it.

We’ve Got to Start Meeting Like This A look at companies that hold unique meetings for developing products, building camaraderie, generating ideas, and reviewing employees’ needs and achievements.

We’ve all been there. Stuck in yet another agonizingly boring, ineffective, unproductive meeting. When, we wonder, can we get back to our real work? We’re happy to report that there are exceptions to this sad state of affairs. We’ve checked out a variety of organizations to see what we could learn about making meetings work. Here’s a look at some of the more creative strategies and tools we discovered.

“OK, hands up.”

With that simple phrase and a raising of the leader’s hand, meetings at City Year, a Boston-based, nationwide nonprofit service organization, are called to order. Other hands shoot up as one by one, conversations cease, until all is quiet. Although City Year uses this physically engaging meeting-start-up technique in groups as small as a dozen, it’s especially valuable with large groups, says Edith Buhs. Buhs is the national director of the Academy, the training arm of City Year, which teaches effective-meeting techniques

and provides tools—not only to City Year’s 1,200 staff and corps members but also to interested nonprofit and for-profit corporations.

Effective-meeting workshops were originally deemed necessary because of the youth and diversity of City Year’s members, but experienced meeting goers could easily adopt some of City Year’s power tools. Most meetings begin with a warm-up exercise of some kind. At a recent meeting anticipating the organization’s 10th anniversary, a four-by-eight-foot magazine-cover mock-up commemorating the event encouraged big thinking: participants generated ideas for the stories the “magazine” would feature. Other meetings might begin with what are called “ripples,” named for a phrase in a speech by Robert F. Kennedy, in which he said that acts of courage send a “tiny ripple of hope.” Anyone can share a ripple. The ripple may be something that happened within the organization. Or maybe it’s something from last night’s 11 o’clock news. The point is to celebrate the good, to create an updraft of positive emotion.

Most City Year meetings employ a ground rule called NOSTUESO to keep domineering or wordy individuals from monopolizing discussions and to ensure that all voices are heard. The acronym stands for “No One Speaks Twice Until Everybody Speaks Once.”

Meeting leaders are also taught to end their meetings with another meeting, a minimeeting called “+(delta).” The mission: to quickly assess the meeting itself. Under the plus sign, leaders write down what worked. Under the delta symbol, they record changes that need to be made, phrasing those recommendations in positive terms: not, for instance, “Meeting too long,” but rather “Meeting should be shorter.”

The Computer-Aided Note Taker Organization: Mattel Media, a division of giant Mattel Toys in El Segundo, Calif. Purpose of Meeting: To develop products

“If people are writing things down, they’re often not paying attention,” says Andy Rifkin, senior vice-president of creative development for Mattel Media. Thus, there’s no note taking allowed at Rifkin’s new-product-idea meetings, creative huddles of seven or eight people. Just one self-proclaimed “technographer,” Bernie DeKoven, records everyone’s ideas on a laptop, the entries appearing before the group either on a 35-inch color monitor or projected onto the wall.

DeKoven—whose title at Mattel is “doctor fun/staff designer”—is not your ordinary note taker. An expert in meeting dynamics, he founded the Institute for Better Meetings, which nowadays takes a backseat to his full-time duties at Mattel.

Unlike whiteboards, which fill up and have to be erased, the holding tank in DeKoven’s computer is boundless. Following the group’s direction, he can edit ideas as he goes along, drag related notions alongside each other, rerank choices, and, without saying a word, redirect everyone’s attention merely by scrolling back to earlier notations.

Even without a meeting maven like DeKoven on board, you still might want to consider the idea of having one person take notes on a computer, because of a key additional benefit: everyone can leave the meeting with a hard-copy record in hand, and that instant meeting record can be E-mailed to the rest of your company. As a plus for Mattel, DeKoven stores what he and Rifkin call “boneyard” ideas—ideas that are rejected in the meeting—in a separate section of the notes. Out of sight but easily brought back to mind, some of those dismissed notions often become valuable later on in the context of another project. Touring with toy buyers a while back, Rifkin heard repeated requests for activity-based toys for boys. Picking through the boneyard of a year-old meeting, he found a Hot Wheels CD-ROM concept for designing and decorating cars and printing licenses and tickets. Thus did Hot Wheels Custom Car Designer go from idle to high speed in about 6.5 seconds. It has disappeared from toy-store shelves almost as quickly. The meeting moral: Don’t flush your rejects.

Standing-Room Only Organization: The Phelps Group, a Santa Monica, Calif., marketing agency Purpose of Meeting: To build camaraderie and cooperation

Every Monday at 9:28 a.m., Joe Phelps goes on the public-address system with a “two-minute warning.” Each of his 50 or so employees heads for an all-purpose room, where most of them remain standing. The carrot for prompt attendance and the first item on the agenda: a $100 bill to the employee whose phone extension is drawn at random—if he or she can correctly answer a question from the employee handbook.

The meetings themselves move through the same five agenda headings each week. After the drawing, the second item on the agenda is for the company’s teams—advertising, direct marketing, production, and media—to show off their new work. The third is to announce important agency or client business. The title of the fourth agenda item,

“Minutes,” is a clarion call for brevity. Each of the teams delivers a one-minute mini-lesson, teaching the group about some key piece of expertise or perhaps handing out and summarizing a helpful article. There’s also a technology minute, a grammar minute (on the use of quotation marks, for instance), and an office-machine minute (which might cover, say, copier jams).

The last agenda item: the Atta Boy/Atta Girl Award. This two-by-two-foot wooden plaque, festooned with personal effects (pennies from the company controller, a Pez dispenser), is awarded each week. The current award holder selects the next recipient and passes on the ever-more-decorated plaque, which has become a powerful company totem.

“It’s great to have a group experience at the beginning of the week,” says CEO Phelps. It’s one counterbalance to the increasingly technology-enabled workplace, which fosters less and less face-to-face contact.

Get Ready, Get Set—Type! Organization: Any group with $5,000 to spend on one meeting Purpose of Meeting: To generate and select ideas

For $5,000 a day, meeting facilitator Douglas Griffen, a managing partner of D.S. Griffen & Associates, of Scottsdale, Ariz., will arrive at your doorstep with networked laptops, a server, a laser printer, and even a CD player.

At one particular meeting, the question on the table is “What new markets can we enter?” The question appears on 20 laptop screens set up around a U-shaped table. You type a suggestion and hit the submit key. Your screen clears and asks, “What else?” You can see everybody’s ideas on the top half of your screen. One of those suggestions gives you an idea, which you quickly type and submit. Fifteen minutes of brainstorming passes—and nobody has said a word.

What does this get you? More ideas and quick, reliable, computer-assisted skimming of the cream, says Griffen. Lively jazz pumps up the energy level. Theoretically, all 20 people at the meeting can talk simultaneously—and anonymously. No more wasting time kissing up to the boss’s idea. No more inhibitions on those reluctant to speak up.

With brainstorming in progress, Griffen watches as many as 200 ideas bubble up on his screen, as he scans for the 12 to 15 prominent themes. He projects a tentative list of those

themes onto a big screen for all to see, and the group adds and subtracts ideas. Then it’s back to the laptops. Participants now rank the ideas—“Tag ‘em, move ‘em, drop ‘em”—on their screens. As soon as the last person hits the vote key, the results are instantaneous. The advantage: participants can spend time focusing on the top-rated ideas instead of wasting time shooting down the easy marks.

Tête-à-Tête Organization: Domino’s Pizza Purpose of Meeting: To review an employee’s aspirations, needs, and achievements

Tom Monaghan, founder and president of Domino’s Pizza Inc., with headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich., conducts individual job-planning and review (JP&R) meetings—each at least two hours long, and sometimes far longer—with his six executive vice-presidents, plus his chief of staff, once a month. “My first job planning and review with Tom Monaghan lasted eight hours,” says Don Vlcek, who was hired in the late 1970s and ran the company’s $600-million-a-year distribution subsidiary until 1994, when he left to form his own consulting firm in Plymouth, Mich. Now JP&R sessions are a key component of Vlcek’s executive workshops.

Spending several hours a month with those you supervise may seem like Meeting Impossible. But don’t stop reading. Other aspects of these reviews may strike a chord with you. For one thing, talk of salary is forbidden in a JP&R meeting. Even more interesting, the subordinate, not the superior, leads the discussion, moving point by point through 10 areas of a review form that the subordinate has filled out in advance.

Vlcek’s JP&R meetings include a discussion of the subordinate’s dream or mission (a chief financial officer, for instance, might strive for 100%-accurate profit-and-loss statements that are never a day late, with zero past due in collections or payments to suppliers), an analysis of his or her role (what the employee does on a regular basis), a discussion of the employee’s needs (both professional and personal, or the need for new software or more employees), and a report on achievements (accomplishments of the last 30 days) and struggles (which provides an opportunity to admit screwups before the boss identifies them). The benefit to the boss: a framework to diplomatically address job concerns. He or she might say, “Instead of this, I think I’d like to see you doing more of that.” The meeting closes with a review of the goals and an action plan to meet them.

And 30 days later, you’re back revisiting those goals. Over time, says Vlcek, you learn to ask yourself, Can it wait till the JP&R? “Eighty-five percent of the time, it can,” he says.

But how do you find time for all the hours spent in JP&Rs? Vlcek tells of an executive who countered, “I have seven people reporting to me; I can’t spend 21 hours a month doing this.” Vlcek handed him a stopwatch and provided these instructions: “Keep it with you. When you’re spending your time on something that’s screwed up, on something that other people are paid to do and now you’re doing, when you’re reexplaining things, start this stopwatch. I guarantee you, over the course of a month you’ll spend more than 21 hours—because you and your people haven’t come to mental agreement on key issues.” The executive called back five days later; he was already up to 25 hours on the stopwatch.

Follow the Dots Organization: An educators’ task force Purpose of Meeting: To write a vision statement for a new-concept high school in two sessions

To get from ground zero to a developed concept in only two sessions lasting two and a half hours each: that was the task facing a dozen educators charged with drafting the vision statement for a new public high school, a magnet-style school to be located on the grounds of the Minnesota Zoological Gardens.

The group succeeded, thanks to a high-speed, high-performance meeting powered by—no kidding—index cards. These workaday note cards form the backbone of a meeting method called “compression planning.” A low-tech equivalent of computer-mediated meetings, the technique is taught in workshops by the McNellis Co., in New Brighton, Pa. GM has used it. So has Habitat for Humanity. And so did facilitator Burton A. Cohen, to run the meetings that gave birth to the now three-year-old School for Environmental Studies, in Apple Valley, Minn. (Cohen is now a teacher and administrator at the school.)

One idea of this storyboarding system that could be adapted to almost any meeting: there’s no clean slate at the start. On the first board is a statement announcing the purpose of the meeting. On other boards appear ground rules: “We listen to each other.” “No speeches.” “We address ideas, not people.” A meeting leader need only point to a statement to remind attendees of the guidelines.

At the school meeting, two designated people recorded ideas on three-by-five cards. Another person stuck them on fabric-covered boards four feet square. A designated timer watched the clock, signaling the facilitator when it was time to move from the exploration or brainstorming phase of the meeting to the focusing phase, then to the concept board, and finally to the action board. In the focusing phase, ideas were winnowed out and categorized by colored dots. Everybody converged on the boards, selecting their favorite ideas by sticking a dot on the appropriate card. Consensus was easy to spot. Everything was out in the open, and all eyes were on the ideas.

Overcoming Speaking Anxiety in Meetings & Presentations Do your knees feel like Gumby’s when you have to get up and speak in front of a group? Do you feel like the next words out of your mouth are going to be the dumbest words ever uttered by a human? If you said yes to either of the questions above, be advised, you have a full-blown case of stage fright, says Lenny Laskowski, a professional speaker and President of LJL Seminars. According to the book of lists, the fear of speaking in public is the #1 fear of all fears. The fear of dying is #7! Over 41% of people have some fear or anxiety dealing with speaking in front of groups. People who have this fear can experience all kinds of symptoms: Sweaty palms, accelerated heart rate, memory loss and even difficulty in breathing. Some of the world’s most famous presenters have freely admitted to nervousness and stage fright. Mark Twain said it best, “There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars”. Everyone, even experienced speakers, has some anxiety when speaking in front of a group of people. This is perfectly normal. The best way to deal with this anxiety is to first acknowledge that this fear is perfectly normal and you are not alone. To reduce your fear, you need to make sure you properly and thoroughly prepare yourself before you speak. Proper preparation and rehearsal can help to reduce this fear by about 75%. Proper breathing techniques can further reduce this fear by another 15%. Your mental state accounts for the remaining 10%. Below are just a few suggestions you should use to overcome your speaking anxiety. The first and most important of all is preparation. I like to think of it as the 9 P’s: • Prior Proper Preparation • Prevents Poor Performance • of the • Person Putting on the Presentation. Nothing will relax you more than to know you are properly prepared. Below are 10 steps you can take to reduce your speech anxiety. 1. Know the room - become familiar with the place in which you will speak. Arrive early and walk around the room including the speaking area. Stand at the lectern, speak into the microphone. Walk around where the audience will be seated. Walk from where you will be seated to the place where you will be speaking.

Know the Audience - If possible, greet some of the audience as they arrive and chat with them. It is easier to speak to a group of friends than to a group of strangers. Know Your Material - If you are not familiar with your material or are uncomfortable with it, your nervousness will increase. Practice your speech or presentation and revise it until you can present it with ease. Learn How to Relax - You can ease tension by doing exercises. Sit comfortable with your back straight. Breathe in slowly, hold your breath for 4 to 5 seconds, then slowly exhale. To relax your facial muscles, open your mouth and eyes wide, then close them tightly. Visualize Yourself Speaking - Imagine yourself walking confidently to the lectern as the audience applauds. Imagine yourself speaking, your voice loud, clear and assured. When you visualize yourself as successful, you will be successful. Realize People Want You To Succeed - All audiences want speakers to be interesting, stimulating, informative and entertaining. They want you to succeed - not fail. Don’t apologize For Being Nervous - Most of the time your nervousness does not show at all. If you don’t say anything about it, nobody will notice. If you mention your nervousness or apologize for any problems you think you have with your speech, you’ll only be calling attention to it. Had you remained silent, your listeners may not have noticed at all. Concentrate on Your Message - not the medium - Your nervous feelings will dissipate if you focus your attention away from your anxieties and concentrate on your message and your audience, not yourself. Turn Nervousness into Positive Energy - the same nervous energy that causes stage fright can be an asset to you. Harness it, and transform it into vitality and enthusiasm. Gain Experience - Experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective speaking. Most beginning speakers find their anxieties decrease after each speech they give. If the fear of public speaking causes you to prepare more, then the fear of speaking serves as it’s own best antidote. Remember, “He who fails to prepare is preparing for failure - so Prepare, Prepare, Prepare” For more specific techniques on handling nervousness, order our booklet, “Techniques to Handle Nervousness” or our 60 minute audiotape, “Overcoming Speaking Anxiety” from one of Lenny’s “live” seminars. This guide will provide you with both physical and mental techniques you can use immediately to help you reduce your anxiety.

11 Tips for Using Flip Charts More Effectively

While everyone seems to be interested in creating high-tech computer generated presentations, the flip chart still continues to be the most effective presentation media of all. One should not assume that investing a lot of money in high tech

visual aids & equipment will “make” your presentation. The best visuals have been and still are the simplest. Remember, the purpose of using visual aids is to enhance your presentation, not upstage it.

Since most presentations are delivered before small groups of 35 people or less, the flip chart is the perfect size. I feel the flip chart will continue to be the workhorse of most training seminars.

There are several advantages of using a flip chart. Here are just a few:

1. Flip charts do not need electricity - You don’t need to worry if the bulb will burn out or worry that you forgot the extension chord.

Flip charts are economical - They do not require you to use any special films or printers to produce them.

Color can be added very easily - An inexpensive box of flip chart markers allows you all the creativity you want.

Flip charts allow spontaneity - Any last minute changes can be easily made.

In today’s world of high tech computers, fancy software and sophisticated infomercials, many presenters today feel they have to create a presentation which shows off their ability to use computers and their latest clip art library.

Although the software available today does allow everyone the ability to create colorful slides and overheads, we often find that the visuals become the presentation and not the speaker. As a speaker, your visual aids should not be the presentation. You are!

Even though flip charts are low tech, they are reliable and don’t require any special skill to use them but here are some tips to help you use them effectively.

1. The best flip chart stands have clamps at the top and will hold most type of flip chart pads. Most allow you to hang your flip charts while some stands will only allow you to prop them up. Don’t wait until the last minute to find this out.

2. Make sure the flip charts you use will fit the flip chart stand you will be using. Some have different spaced holes at the top.

3. Flip chart pads are usually sold in packages of two and come either plain or with grid lines on them. Using the pad with grid lines makes your job easier for drawing straight lines and keeps your text aligned. Also, make sure the pad has perforations at the top to allow easier removal of sheets. I have seen many presenters struggle to tear off a sheet evenly.

4. When preparing your charts, it is best to first design your charts on paper first before drawing them on the actual flip chart pad.

5. Lightly write your text in pencil first before using the actual flip chart markers. This will allow you to make any adjustments with text spacing and any figures you will be drawing. Do NOT use all block letters (UPPER CASE). Using upper and lower case letters makes it easier to read. I like to use the 7 x 7 rule. Have no more than 7 words on each line and no more than 7 lines to a sheet. Using a 6 x 6 rule is even better.

6. Use flip chart markers and not regular magic markers. Flip chart markers will not “bleed” through the paper. Also, they do not have as strong a smell as regular markers. You can also find “scented” markers. They usually come in various fruit scents.

7. Avoid using the colors yellow, pink, or orange. These are extremely difficult for the audience to see. Don’t make your audience have to strain their eyes to see your points. Avoid using too many colors. Using one dark color and one accent color works best.

8. You can write “lightly in pencil” any notes next to key points you need. The audience won’t be able to see them. You may also write what is on the next sheet. Knowing this will allow you to properly introduce your next sheet.

9. If you make any mistakes you can use “white out” to correct any small errors. For larger areas, cover the mistake with a double layer of flip chart paper and correct the error.

10. Have a blank sheet of paper between each of your text sheets. This will prevent the written material from other sheets to “peek” through.

11. Properly store and transport your flip charts in a case or the cardboard box that some come in. This will protect your flip charts and keep them fresh and ready to use each time. Take great care of your flip charts. I have some flip charts I have used over 100 times and they still look as good as new.

Making “prepared” flip charts can take a considerable amount of time. Make sure you start preparing your charts early enough so you can review them and make any changes or corrections before hand. It takes practice to learn how to print neatly. If you do not have neat printing, ask someone who does prepare them for you. A poorly prepared flip chart can be very distracting.

The most important point to remember in preparing your flip charts is to start preparing them early.

Improve Your Communication Skills

If the thought of speaking in front of an audience sends you into a cold sweat, then this Inc.com guide is for you. Communication experts and CEOs share their strategies for smooth communications with employees, making winning presentations to investors, writing and delivering speeches that get standing ovations, and much more.

Better Communication with Employees and Peers

A Crash Course in Communication Recently I heard someone say, “Communication is easy.” I disagree. Talking is easy; communication, which means an exchange or communion with another, requires greater skill. An exchange that is a communion demands that we listen and speak skillfully, not just talk mindlessly. And interacting with fearful, angry, or frustrated people can be even more difficult, because we’re less skillful when caught up in such emotions. Yet don’t despair or resign yourself to a lifetime of miscommunication at work or home! Good communicators can be honed as well as born. Here are a few tips to get you started.

• Don’t take another person’s reaction or anger personally, even if they lash out at you in what seems a personal manner. Another person’s mood or response is more likely about fear or frustration than it is about you as an individual. Take a deep breath and count to 10, and see it as a way of letting the other person vent before he is able to communicate what’s really on his mind.

• You don’t have to have all the answers. It’s OK to say, “I don’t know.” If you want to find out, say so, then follow up to share your findings. Or you may decide to work on the problem together to find the answer.

• Respond (facts and feelings); don’t react (feelings) -- e.g., “Tell me more about your concern” or “I understand your frustration” instead of “Hey, ‘m just doing my job” or “It’s not my job” (which is sure to cause more irritation). Share responsibility for any communication in which you’re a participant, and realize that sometimes, maybe often, your own personal reactions may be causing your frustrations about communicating with others.

• Understand that people want to feel heard more than they care about whether you agree with them. It’s strange how many people complain about others not hearing

them, yet they don’t listen to others either! You can show that you’re listening by giving someone your complete attention and saying things like:

1. “Tell me more about your concern.” 2. “What is it about XXX that concerns you?” 3. “I’m interested in what you’ve just said. Can you share a little bit about

what lead you to that belief?” 4. “What would have to happen for you to be more comfortable with XXX?”

• Remember that what someone says and what we hear can be amazingly different! Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort what we hear. Repeat back or summarize to ensure that you understand. Restate what you think you heard and ask, “Have I understood you correctly?” If you find yourself responding emotionally to what someone said, say so, and ask for more information: “I may not be understanding you correctly, and I find myself taking what you said personally. What I thought you just said is XXX; is that what you meant?”

• Acknowledge inconvenience or frustration and offer a timeline, particularly if you need someone else’s cooperation or your activities will affect them. For example, if you’ll be updating someone’s desktop computer system and need access to her office, you might say, “I know it’s frustrating to have someone in your space at a time that might not be convenient for you, and I appreciate your cooperation. It’ll help us to keep your system working well. We expect to be in your office at about 3 p.m., and out by 5 p.m.”li>Don’t offer advice unless asked. This can be tough, particularly if we have experience that we think might benefit another person. Use respectful expressions such as “One potential option is...” or “One thing that helped me in a similar situation was X. I’d be happy to share more about my experience if you think it’d be helpful to you” instead of “You should do X.”

• Look for common ground instead of focusing solely on differences. What might you both be interested in (e.g., making the experience as nondisruptive as possible)? One way to begin discovering commonality is to share your underlying intention—for example, “My intention in sharing this is to help you succeed on this project.”

• Remember that change is stressful for most people, particularly if your activities affect them in a way that they aren’t scheduling or controlling. Our routines can be comforting in the midst of what appears to be a chaotic world. So if you’re in someone’s space or need him to do something on your timeline, provide as much information as you can about what you’ll need from the person and when. If you can, tell him how what you’re doing will benefit him.

• Work to keep a positive mental focus. One of the choices we always have is how we see or experience any given circumstance. Many people who are considered skillful and successful, including professional athletes and cultural leaders, work to maintain a positive mind-set. Ask yourself, “What’s great about this?” or “What can I learn from this?” to help maintain a positive state. Don’t forget to adopt a variety of stress reduction practices that work best for you.

• Understand that most people, including you, have a unique, often self-serving, agenda. This isn’t necessarily bad, because it helps us achieve and protect ourselves. Just don’t assume that someone will know or share your agenda, so

talking about what’s most important to you and asking what’s most important to others, can help build a solid foundation for conversation.

• Improve your listening skill. Most people think they listen well, but the truth is that most of people don’t listen at all—they just speak and then think about what they’re going to say next. Good listening often means asking good questions and clearing your mind of distractions, including what you’re going to say next, whom you’re meeting with next, or what’s going on outside. When someone makes prickly comments or complaints, there’s often a concern or fear lurking. Like a detective, ask questions that get to the bottom of someone’s real concern or agenda. Only then can you have a truly rich, beneficial conversation.

Tools for Boosting Communication Effectiveness Communication and organizational development tools are the fodder of many intellectual discussions. However, without action, they collect “ mental dust” and benefit no one.

Always on the lookout for real-world ways to employ effective tools in the today’ s world, we’ ve put together some great tips on how to use three outstanding communication- and organizational-development technologies—Appreciative Inquiry, Dialogue, and Open Space Technology—with ways you can apply these “ systems strategies” in smaller ways throughout your organization:

IN A MEETING

Circle up: Ensure that no one person is the “ head of the table” or in control of the discussion (and therefore what gets discussed, and how). A circle of chairs welcomes others to participate fully and contribute ideas that enrich the group.

Employ the law of mobility: If you find that you are not learning or contributing in the meeting, use your two feet and walk to a more productive place. This saves your time and reduces the likelihood of worthless meetings. Also, discussion-in-motion can have the advantage of breaking through log-jams that occur when people are—and sometimes silenced by—traditional meeting venues.

Suspend judgment: Don’ t arrive at conclusions until you have honestly absorbed multiple perspectives and ideas. When you automatically conclude that you’re right and

others are wrong, you eliminate any possibilities for dialogue and participation (and your perception may not even be correct!). Just because you think something, doesn’t make it universally true. Why shut the door on a potentially great idea for your group?

Leverage what works: Rather than sticking to a formulaic meeting style—agenda, flip chart, one meeting leader and a task list—conduct your meeting in a manner that works best for the group. Apply this thinking to the ideas shared during the meeting, too.

DURING A CHANGE INITIATIVE

Tap into personal responsibility and passion: The success of Open Space Technology rests on—and requires—commitment from all players. Through meaningful and respectful communication, tap into each participant’ s motivation and interests in order to allow those participants to take the gifts discovered during the meeting out into the organization in positive and lasting ways.

Stay curious: Don’ t make accusations, advocate for or tear down elements of a change initiative (or other topic of discussion). Pause long enough maintain your curiosity about what is happening, why it’ s happening and how you fit into it all. This allows you to gather more information, which can expand understanding, reduce stress and eliminate the “ instant assumptions” and resulting judgments that we humans normally (and all too often) make. When you feel the urge to slam the door on the discussion with an “ I’m right” statement, ask a question.

Use stories: An organization’ s “ inner dialogue” or stories help shape the culture. Communicate real-life stories that exemplify your organization’ s ideal culture, benefits, areas of potential and strength, and where the company is headed.

AS PART OF AN INTERVIEW (or even a meeting with someone you don’t know well)

Focus: Whether the interviewer or interviewee, concentrate on real business issues that you’ re passionate about. You’ ll be more able to identify “ good fit” employees and employers, or vendors, associates and clients.

Understand your intentions: Ask about the intentions of others. Respectful and honest questions about a person’ s interntions—including one’ s own—can help reveal how well

one’ s thinking compares with organizational culture. Also, by allowing yourself to become familiar with someone else’s (or your own) intentions, you deepen your understanding of why someon else thinks the way they do.

See the flip side of unfavorable traits: Someone who seems jittery in an interview might actually be nervous because she wants the job very much. Someone who seems overly strident or judgmental may simply have at his core the intention of making a positive difference. An interviewer who asks tough questions without cracking a smile might have such admiration for the company, that he wants to ensure that only the best of the best become employees, and this is the only approach he knows to select the top candidates. Ask probing questions to delve more deeply and collect more information, rather than making assumptions based only on “ surface traits.” Beyond that, allow someone else his or her humanity—even if it doesn’t measure up to your personal standards of perfection!

FOR SELF-REFLECTION

Discover your reasons to reflect: Find your own reasons to reflect, rather than external ones. If you’ re averse to reflection, consider why you are resisting it, and ask yourself whether this is truly a productive position to hold or whether it is limiting you. Ask, “ Why am I resisting this suggestion to go inward, or be more reflective, and what potentially positive outcomes does that produce or block?”

Be comfortable in the unknown: Don’ t be surprised by elements that arise in your mind, such as potential career shifts, new ways of seeing old habits and possibilities that are “ out of the norm.” Reflection opens the doors to new understandings and perspectives. Remember that you can choose fear or faith in the face of the unknown.

Motivate yourself: Rather than hamper your mindset by thinking of everything that’ s wrong with you, concentrate on what’ s right and what you enjoy about yourself. Then, determine how you can expand these traits to other parts of your self-expression. Balance this with a bit of external feedback to ensure that your assumptions about yourself are correct—such as if you ask someone else to “ accentuate the positives” about you or share ways in which you might become more skillful.

Lost in Translation

Say What? Only a fraction of an interaction’s meaning is derived from words.

When employees report to work on Fridays at Roberts Golden Consulting in San Francisco, they’re greeted with a gentle reminder from president Sara Roberts: Remember, today is No E-mail Friday.

From Monday through Thursday at this management consultancy, as at most companies, e-mail reigns as the primary form of communication—whether with colleagues, clients, or suppliers. But on the fifth day of the workweek, Roberts’s employees give their keyboards a rest. Too much e-mail, says Roberts, makes it harder to build rapport, and that threatens to derail effective business relationships. “People hide behind e-mail,” she says. “For just one day a week, I want us to pick up the phone or talk to someone face-to-face.”

Uneasiness about e-mail is almost as old as e-mail itself. But until now, most of the complaints have focused on things like e-mail overload, or the damage and embarrassment caused when messages go to the wrong people, or the need, for legal reasons, to be careful about what is put into writing. But those concerns just scratch the surface. New research indicates that overreliance on e-mail can degrade an organization’s interpersonal communications. If it’s not used properly, instead of making your company

quicker and more efficient, too much text-based communicating can actually make it stupider.

To be sure, e-mail is not inherently evil. But it can be the kiss of death when it’s used to communicate anything sensitive, important, or complicated, says Ron McMillan, who is co-author of Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High and who spent 10,000 hours observing how companies nationwide communicate. As text messages fly between desktops, laptops, and hand-helds, McMillan says, they arrive without the rich stew of nonverbal information, such as tone of voice, facial expressions, and eye gaze, that we typically rely on to figure out what someone really means. One study by UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian found that 55% of meaning in an interaction comes from facial and body language and 38% comes from vocal inflection. Only 7% of an interaction’s meaning is derived from the words themselves.

Since e-mail is, by definition, just the words themselves, it’s more easily misunderstood than an actual conversation. Yet managers and employees rely increasingly on text messages for nuanced conversations that really ought to be handled face-to-face, or at least voice-to-voice, says McMillan.

The results range from the merely comical to the truly horrifying, as Sara Roberts observed during a 10-year career in corporate America prior to founding her company. In one case, a colleague interacted on a near daily basis with a client over e-mail—without ever figuring out whether the person was male or female.

More seriously, text messages often touch off needless conflict. At one company, Roberts witnessed an explosive turf battle sparked when one employee left another off a “reply all” e-mail chain. Battles started over e-mail often rage longer, and more dramatically, than face-to-face disputes. People tend to be less inhibited over e-mail and more prone to conflict, according to Barry Wellman at the University of Toronto. Indeed, several studies comparing e-mail with face-to-face communication found that e-mail was more blunt and included more swearing and insults. “Everyone has an e-mail that they wish they hadn’t sent,” says Wellman.

That’s why the 40 employees at MSCO, a marketing firm based in Purchase, N.Y., are not allowed to use e-mail or their BlackBerrys if they plan to criticize one another. It’s just too easy for an exchange to escalate out of control, says CEO Mark Stevens. A few months ago, one employee complained about another’s work performance via

BlackBerry—and copied four others, including Stevens, on the message. “The person doing the criticizing was two offices down from the person being criticized, so what was that about?” wondered Stevens, who dropped what he was doing, sat down with the e-critic, and let him know that what he’d done was inappropriate.

Of course, there’s no reason to go office to office looking deep into the eyes of every staffer whenever you send an e-mail. But periodic in-person check-ins will let you know when you need to do some damage control. In fact, if you make the time for old-fashioned face-to-face encounters on a regular basis, e-mail and IM actually may strengthen your working relationships, says University of Toronto’s Wellman. “The face-to-face world and the bit-to-bit world can fit together,” he says.

JoAnne Yates, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management who studies e-mail usage in the workplace, advises people to use electronic communication only to transmit and confirm simple information, and have actual conversations for anything that could possibly be sensitive. At the same time, flexibility is key. Sara Roberts, for example, knows she can’t force her employees to ignore a message from a client who expects an immediate written response—even on No E-mail Friday. The point isn’t to achieve perfect adherence, she says, but rather to remind people of the importance of communicating face-to-face. “No E-mail Friday helps us to remember we really could go over to that person sitting right over there and collaborate more,” she says. In a wired world, it’s worth remembering that there’s still no technology more powerful than an actual meeting of minds.

All E-mail (All the Time)

Sometimes, face-to-face communica tion simply is not possible. That’s the case at Alpine Access, a provider of outsourced call-center services based in Golden, Colo. Senior executives at the company log zero face time with their 7,500 employees—including call-center agents, managers, and trainers, nearly all of whom work from their homes scattered across the country. Hiring, training, day-to-day management, and strategic planning all are handled electronically or over the phone. “There’s no opportunity to look into someone’s eyes to make sure they understand what’s being said,” says co-founder Jim Ball. So the company has developed a number of practices to compensate—practices that will boost the effectiveness of e-mail at any company.

Clarity is everything

Important messages, such as word that everyone needs to work harder to meet a monthly target, are vetted by several people for everything from grammar to nuance.

Trust but verify

When employees get an e-mail, they’re required to acknowledge receipt and are immediately offered the opportunity to ask questions. Managers check back regularly to ensure that employees are on track and not missing any critical info.

Know when not to type

For truly difficult conversations—such as performance reviews—forget the bits and bytes. “You can be just as empathetic over the phone as you would be in person,” Ball insists. “It’s more difficult, but it can be done.”

Perfecting Your Pitch Marcelo Claure and his team of seasoned executives had five hours to convince a trio of VCs that his company, Brightstar, was worthy of a $50 million cash infusion. During that five hours they were able to roll out a convincing enough story to keep the VCs enthralled and asking questions, if not personally shelling out their cash, as writer Chris McDougall documents in “Closing the Deal,” in the March 2004 issue of Inc.

Claure was definitely more prepared than the average business owner. His company is successful, and he has a seasoned executive team in place that’s impressive in its own right. But what if you don’t have the luxury of making a five-hour presentation? Or a wildly profitable company (BrightStar grosses $1.2 billion annually) with a seasoned executive team to back you up? That’s where the advice we’ve rounded up on Inc.com comes in.

Use this collection of stories to discover some entrepreneurial wisdom and expert advice on the topic of pitching investors and creating presentations that speak volumes to your audience.

Craft Your Story

Finding the Perfect Pitch

Three rookies take a five-week course to gear up for the VC presentation of a lifetime. Here’s how they faired and what they learned in the process about themselves and the secrets to creating the perfect pitch.

Elements of a Winning Pitch

A presentation to potential investors in your business—to family, friends, or angels—should include most of these elements.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Presenters

Entrepreneurs learn pretty quickly that making a verbal pitch to investors is very different from submitting a written business plan. Here are seven good practices gleaned from a venture-capital boot camp.

Success Story

If you’re looking to put the proper spin on your company’s story, you might want to take a cue from a screenplay or two.

The Adventures of a Pitchman

Howard Getson, president and cofounder of IntellAgent Control Corp., has raised substantial capital with an aggressive and obnoxious approach inspired by junk-mail advertisements.

Pitches We Love... Or How Not to Find Capital

Learn from the confusing pitches one investor has received from small businesses looking for capital.

Create a Compelling Presentation

Powerful Presentations

Rhonda Abrams has made hundreds of presentations, and even though they haven’t been to investors, the critical skills she’s learned in the process can boost anyone’s presentation performance.

More Power Than Point

Inc. columnist Adam Hanft warns that if you’re going to use a PowerPoint presentation, be careful not to let it oversimplify the points you’re trying to make.

Persuasive Projections

Predicting the future is hard. But when you’re making financial projections, that’s exactly what you need to do. You can avoid some of the most common mistakes by following this list of dos and don’ts.

Your Telephone Speaking Voice

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover but how many of us make judgements about people just based on their telephone speaking voice? People form opinions and make judgements about us in the first 60 seconds they see us. People also make judgements about us based on the way we sound on the telephone.

Because people cannot “see” us over the telephone they will form these opinions based not only what we say, but also on “how” we say it. In fact the message we communicate over the telephone is based on two qualities; (1) “What” we say (Verbal) and (2) “How” we say it. Several studies have indicated that as much as 87% of the opinions people form about us, when speaking to us on the telephone, are based on the tone of our voice. Only 13% is based on the actual words we use. We all do this. People can “hear” our personality and mannerisms through the tone of our voice.

We live in a world of answering machines and “voice mail”. This is especially true in the business world. How many of us find ourselves playing “telephone tag” with each other. By the time you actually speak with the person you were trying to contact you’ve left 2 or 3 messages. In those short message exchanges, the party on the other line has already formed an opinion about you based solely on your speaking voice. In order that people form a good image about you here are some tips which will can help your spoken image.

Tips when “Answering” the telephone call

1. Answer the telephone by the third ring - Answer the telephone or make sure your answering machine picks up the telephone by the third or fourth ring. Do not let the telephone ring and ring. Many of us say how we “hate” speaking into these answering machines, but at the same time we also hate not having the option of leaving a message.

2. Make sure your greeting is professional - Make sure your greeting is short but very professional. Write down and practice your greeting several times before you actually record your greeting. Play it back and listen to your own speaking voice. Is your message too fast? Is it too slow? Make sure your greeting sounds professional and clear. Give the caller clear instructions what to do when leaving their message.

3. Be prepared before you answer the telephone - Have a pad of paper and pencil ready when you answer your telephone. Be prepared to be an “active” listener and take notes when someone calls. Especially write down the person’s name who has called so you can use their name during your conversation with them. People “love” to hear their name.

4. Be an “active” listener - Take notes as you speak. Let the people know you are taking notes and this will signal them not to speak too fast. Ask for the correct spelling of their name. Don’t assume their name is spelled the same as others. It may have a unique spelling.

5. Return telephone calls promptly! - To me, this is the most professional telephone habit people should possess. Be that person who DOES return telephone calls. Many people DO NOT return telephone calls! I have left numerous messages with people and companies who DO NOT return telephone calls. Quite often I have received a call from someone asking to order one of my products and I spend days, even weeks trying to contact them. I always try and return telephone calls within 4 hours, regardless of where I am. People who know me know that I am prompt in returning telephone calls.

6. Check Your Messages Frequently - If you are out of your office often as I am, check your messages several times a day. People may be looking to contact you quickly. It’s not unusual for me to receive calls from newspapers or magazines looking for information on a story. They are usually on a deadline and are looking for “quick” turn around. In my case, being a professional speaker, the call I receive may be a speakers bureau who is looking to check my availability for a client today! If I do not return the telephone call promptly, I may have lost that speaking engagement and that potential client.

Tips when “Leaving” a telephone message

1. Do not speak too fast! - Slow down when you are leaving a message, especially if you have an accent. I receive many messages where I cannot even understand what the person is saying. Even worse, I cannot write fast enough and I find myself replaying the message several times to record the entire message.

2. Pronounce your name clearly - Announce your name slowly and clearly, especially if your name is not a common name. Spell your name slowly if necessary. Allow people to get the correct spelling of your name.

3. Slow down when saying your telephone number - This is the biggest complaint I have when people leave their telephone number. People state their telephone numbers TOO FAST! Say the numbers slowly and place a “pause”

somewhere in the sequence of providing your number. People will appreciate this, especially me!

4. Give your company name, your title & why you are calling - Describe to the person, in a few short sentences who you are, which company you are with and why you are calling. If you are requesting information, leave a detailed but brief message.

5. Let them know when to call you back - Leave a date, time, and preferred telephone number for people. They can’t return your telephone call if you don’t leave your telephone number. Providing them with the preferred time to call back makes it much easier for them.

6. Always sound professional - Remember what I indicated in the beginning of this article. People DO judge you by the tone of your voice and what you say. If you come across sounding unprofessional in your message, they may not return your telephone call. Also, do not leave very long winded messages or they will stop listening.

The Power of Listening How does an old-line manufacturer in a stagnant industry manage to grow 25% a year for 10 years? By taking its employees seriously.

Cover Story

In the beginning was the Dream, as is the case with most entrepreneurial ventures, only at that stage it wasn’t too grandiose. “Seven years and out,” says Paul Centenari. Buy the company, fatten it up, sell it.

Not long after came the nightmare. What had been a tidy, profitable little business when Centenari and his brother Peter bought it was suddenly a charter member of its bank’s workout group, one step this side of bankruptcy. The Centenaris were on the hook personally, big time. “I’d come home and look at my house and wonder, ‘Will they take my house?’” says Paul. “I’d look at my wife and wonder, ‘Will they take my wife?’” He smiles wanly at the feeble joke. It wasn’t a funny time.

But when they woke up from the nightmare, the company finally back on its financial feet, the Centenaris had a revelation, which is to say that they began to dream a different kind of dream altogether. Wait a minute, they told each other. We can do this. We can start with a tiny company in a hardscrabble nickel-and-dime industry and build it into a billion-dollar business. We’ll expand our existing plants. We’ll scarf up competitors. We’ll learn to do things that nobody else can do.

If this were a movie trailer, the music would be swelling. Oh, and one more thing. We’ll show the world there’s a different way of running a company—a better way. We’ll open the books. We’ll share ownership and help everybody get rich. Hell, we’ll build a democracy! We’ll have our people vote on how to spend the company’s money.

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly an all-at-once epiphany. Life is not the movies. But however it evolved, the Centenaris today do have that dream, and they do have a nickel-and-dime manufacturing business that has grown almost 25% a year for 10 years, is now up to nearly $70 million, and shows few signs of slowing despite a dismal economic environment. And, yes, the business, Atlas Container Corp., is indeed a company that operates like no other company most of us are likely to bump into—votes and all.

Which is probably a good thing, because if you don’t do something different from what everybody else is doing, how on earth can you hope to succeed in a down-and-dirty industry like cardboard boxes?

If a person just sort of stumbled across Atlas Container, the first question he or she would no doubt ask is, what were a couple of good-looking, well-connected Harvard Business School graduates even doing in a place like this, “this” in the first instance being a sprawling early-1960s-vintage corrugated box plant on a two-lane blacktop in Severn, Md., and “this” in the second instance being the box business itself, as brutal an industry as you’ll find anywhere. It’s a market in which a few big dogs (such as Weyerhaeuser and International Paper) and a kennel full of smaller ones scrap over a $2,500 order, and if you consistently make 5 cents on your sales dollar, you’re doing very, very well. “It’s a bottom-feeding business,” says one of Atlas’s customers bluntly.

BREAKING OUT OF THE BOX: Paul and Peter Centenari have built a culture most

companies would kill for by giving workers extraordinary input into business decisions.

But it turns out, of course, that those onetime Harvard kids are pretty tough themselves. And that something like the box business is exactly what they wanted.

Peter and Paul Centenari grew up in the tony Boston suburb of Wellesley. The two are only 13 months apart in age. (Peter is the elder, though it’s Paul who serves as the company’s CEO.) They went to fancy New England colleges—Tufts and Dartmouth—before getting business degrees at Harvard. Still, we’re not exactly talking the tea-party set here. In college Paul took up boxing, eventually joining the Golden Gloves circuit. In 1981 he flattened one Jim Fox in the first round of a Massachusetts 178-pound tournament, a scene captured in a Lowell Sun newspaper photograph and thoughtfully captioned “Bye, bye, Jimmy.” Enlarged, it hangs for posterity on Atlas’s conference-room wall.

The box business is as brutal an industry as

any you’ll find. “It’s a bottom-feeding business,” says one customer.

The brothers’ first excursion into entrepreneurship, a boutique investment bank in Colorado, was, well, unsatisfying. “We wanted to get into an honest business,” says Paul, leaving the implication about the ethics of investment bankers hanging in the air. More specifically, they wanted a business that was low tech and off the beaten track—in other words, one that was undercapitalized and undermanaged, where a couple of bright M.B.A.’s could add large amounts of value and then sell out for a bundle. Cardboard boxes? Perfect. They wrote to 450 box company owners to see who was interested in selling. They visited 23 and made an offer on one. Atlas was “beautiful,” says Paul, a profitable, debt-free business. The brothers bought it for $3 million. Paul was about to turn 32; Peter was just 33. The year was 1988.

From then until 1993 or so, those clever young M.B.A.’s got a taste of what Jim Fox must have felt as he hit the mat.

The first problem was simply inexperience, compounded by boneheadedness. “We were acting like investment bankers,” says Paul with a shrug. “We weren’t watching costs. It was out of control.” Then came the workout group and a plan to rescue the company from its near bankruptcy, which the brothers somehow managed to pull off. By 1992 they had two small acquisitions under their belts and were ready to buy a larger plant—the one that the company now occupies—from a big player named MacMillan Bloedel (which is now part of Weyerhaeuser). After they did, those earlier problems looked trivial. The new employees they hired to replace departing workers didn’t have a clue as to what they were doing. Nobody could work the new information system. Just as things were turning around, a pounding snowstorm shut down the local economy for three weeks. Six months later, the paper market tightened. Suddenly, nobody wanted to sell paper to an upstart little company with a lousy credit rating. Peter and Paul “put on the kneepads” and went begging for paper, eventually finding a supplier in Puerto Rico. For a while, it was touch and go. Paul Snider, a customer-service rep for Atlas both then and now, remembers a

stark time: “Every night we walked out of here, we were discussing whether we were coming back the next day.”

But most nightmares come to an end, and when the Centenaris woke up from this bad dream, they realized that not only had they survived, they could even catch a glimpse of prosperity. In a year or two, they were growing again. Better yet, they were beginning to make consistent money.

Sometime after that awakening, in 1995 or so, the new dream began to emerge. Hey, they told each other, this is fun. Forget selling out. Let’s build a big company, one that keeps acquiring competitors, just the way we’ve been doing, and keeps on swiping market share from the stodgy inhabitants of this low-rent industry. Figure on 20% annual growth for 10 or 20 years, the brothers realized, and you eventually wind up with some very large numbers on the top line. “Billion-dollar business” began to be a phrase that you heard around Atlas.

Then there was that idea of building a different company, one founded on what the Centenaris liked to feel was their basic philosophy of business—namely, that you should treat employees like human beings rather than like interchangeable parts. In cultural terms, Atlas would be Southwest Airlines, a hotbed of enthusiasm and cooperation in an industry characterized by lethargy or contention on the shop floor. “We believed that people should have stock,” says Peter. “They should have ownership. And we thought if we were going to sell people stock, they’d have to have education.” They’d also have to have access to all the financials—open books. Maybe they should even have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.

It wasn’t as if they absolutely had to change their culture; the company was already turned around, and the Centenaris could have gone on their merry way with conventional managerial ideas. In fact, when a consultant, over lunch in a delicatessen across from the plant, first broached the idea of opening Atlas’s books, Paul nearly gagged. (“’You gotta be kidding me.’ That was my word-for-word reaction,” he confesses.) But he did read the guide to open-book management that the consultant recommended. Paul talked things over with Peter. They read more books. One of them was the mid-1990s hit Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace by Ricardo Semler, in which the author, a Brazilian CEO, describes running a democratic, open-book company in which people set their own salaries. Before too long, they were sold. We gotta do this,

the brothers said. “The whole idea—it was not only challenging, it was exhilarating,” Paul says now. “We also looked at it as a strategy to help us achieve our goals, to build this thing and become a major force. It made the business much more interesting, much more exciting.”

What is this company—this force—today, eight years later? As a business, Atlas is undoubtedly successful, its sales up from $5.8 million in 1990 to $45 million in 2000 and an estimated $69 million in 2002, its net profit positive every year for nearly a decade. Not too shabby for a manufacturing company in major growth mode. And is it truly a different kind of company? Well, you wouldn’t want to exaggerate. The work on the shop floor, as in any box company, is hard, blistering hot in summertime, and occasionally dangerous (the number of lost-time accidents last year: five). People screw up, the way people do everywhere. (A major accounting error last summer forced the company to take big write-offs in the fourth quarter, eating into profits.) Still, what you see in the old plant outside Baltimore really is different from most other companies, on at least three counts. And what you get from those differences is a bunch of reasons to think that, like Southwest, Atlas Container may indeed be capable of growing and growing and growing some more, just as the Centenari brothers are imagining.

Difference No. 1, if you were to put the differences into categories, would include a bunch of little things—little, that is, only to people who have spent their working lives in white collars and well-lit offices. The bathrooms are spotless. There’s a big room dubbed the Learning Center, where employees can take classes or pursue self-directed training programs on company computers, and another room equipped with Nautilus machines. Employees and spouses alike can pursue high school equivalency degrees (G.E.D.’s) and other educational goals at the company’s expense; children and grandchildren who need help for supplementary tutoring get it at a Sylvan or Huntington Learning Center. “My wife got her G.E.D.,” says Bruce Foster, the lead man in the press department and die cut area, “and it ended up costing me 10 grand—because then she went back to get a college degree.”

Another “little” thing: The door that separates the shop floor from the office and the doors that lead into the Centenaris’ offices are open both in theory and in fact, a small revolution in itself. During the old regime, “you didn’t even talk to management,” says Tim Blevins, a press operator who has worked at the plant for 15 years, under the previous ownership and the present one. “You weren’t allowed past the door.” Blevins

and several other employees say that today they really do go talk to Paul or Peter if they have a problem—or, in fact, pretty much anytime they feel like it. In a factory, that’s no small matter.

Difference No. 2 revolves around ownership and open books. Atlas is an S corporation, so the Centenaris can’t issue stock directly to employees. Instead, they’ve created a legal device called stock appreciation rights (SARs), a kind of phantom stock that can be bought through payroll deductions and that pays off, according to a formula, when the employee retires or if the company is sold. About 100 of 150 eligible employees joined the plan when it was offered three years ago; 90 of those 100 are still with the company. Another round of SARs is likely to be offered to employees in the near future, so that newer employees can buy in as well.

Atlas employees vote on disciplinary policies, whether to keep managers in their

jobs, and what equipment to buy.

As for opening the books, that caught employees by surprise. “We were like, hey, this ain’t gonna work,” remembers Blevins. “This is unreal. People don’t do this kind of stuff. And so we figured it was a fake deal.” But Paul and Peter persisted in the tools and techniques associated with open-book management. Employees took in-house classes to learn basic financial concepts. The company began showing them the real numbers—sales, costs, profits, and so on—along with virtually every other piece of information they might want to know. Atlas today pays monthly bonuses whenever a month’s EBITDA, the company’s preferred measure of profitability, exceeds a certain level. At regular employee meetings—monthly for the whole plant, weekly for most departments—the numbers are reviewed and results are forecast. “We get to where if things slow down, we pull up the financials to see how’re we doing in the middle of the month instead of at the end of the month. And we see what we gotta do to make our goals,” says Foster.

So far, Atlas is much like a few thousand other small companies with imaginative, employee-oriented cultures. But then there’s difference No. 3, which is that people

actually do vote on stuff. In some small way, Atlas Container is what you might call a democratic workplace.

Since this is a notion freighted with fears and fantasies, it’s worth spelling out what Atlas is not as well as what it is. It is not a constitutional democracy. It’s a closely held business that is 80% owned and wholly controlled by two people. Some things don’t get voted on, such as buying other companies. “We have never and probably never will vote on an acquisition,” says Peter. It’s not, he adds, because he believes employees aren’t qualified to have an opinion, but because any acquisition opportunity demands secrecy and speedy action. Nor is there any set of rules for what gets voted on or who may cast a ballot. Typically, a vote takes place when Paul decides it should. The voters include everyone who will be directly affected by the outcome.

All that said, it’s sort of amazing the things Atlas employees have voted on. They chose between competing health insurance plans. (See “Anatomy of a Vote,” below.) They voted on whether to take a bonus when the company came within an inch of hitting its profitability targets. They vote on disciplinary policies, whether to retain managers in their jobs, and what equipment to buy. A couple of years ago, the Centenaris decided to invest roughly $1 million in the corrugator, the giant machine that turns big rolls of brown paper into the corrugated sheets that will eventually become boxes. They asked shop-floor employees first to vote on which part of the multistep machine should get the investment, and then to choose between two competing suppliers for what they had collectively decided on, a robotic slitter-scorer. As it happened, Paul and Peter favored an Italian vendor, while a majority of the employees voted for the American competitor. Atlas bought the American equipment. To say that that pretty much blew the employees’ minds is to put the matter mildly.

“Paul went ahead and said, ‘Okay, that’s what you people want, we’ll get that’—and Paul didn’t want that!” remembers Foster, shaking his head in incredulity. “But he took it to a vote, and that’s what the people wanted, and that’s what the people got.”

Of course, the Centenaris and Atlas may have marched boldly into a minefield here: Democracy, as countless political leaders have discovered to their chagrin, is a costly and unpredictable process, notoriously hard to control. In a business, it has some obvious downsides.

One problem is simply the unfamiliarity of the terrain. “People are more used to the command-and-control model, where decisions are made for them,” says Peter. The Centenaris—usually Paul, both acknowledge—have had to push voting, and at first had to convince the employees that they were serious about it. Nobody was too sure, either, exactly what could and could not be put to a plebiscite. Can you vote on reinstating an employee who violates a drug policy, for instance, as Atlas once did? Oops! To make an informed decision, you’d want to know whether he had used drugs since, whether he was in a rehab program, and so on. Ask those questions in public, the Centenaris have learned, and you violate confidentiality laws.

A second problem: Nobody wants decisions made by people who don’t understand what they’re voting on. “We weren’t about to empower dummies,” Paul told a reporter a few years ago. His choice of words may not have endeared him to Atlas’s work force, but his point was valid: Somebody needs to spend time researching alternatives and communicating them intelligibly to the voters. In the case of the corrugator, the competing vendors made elaborate presentations to the workers who would make the decision. More often, the preparation is done by someone on staff. The process takes time, so it costs money.

What’s striking about democracy at atlas is how much the concept has become part of

the cultural woodwork.

Given such obstacles, what’s striking about democracy at Atlas isn’t how far it has progressed—we’re talking baby steps here—but how much the concept has already become part of the cultural woodwork. Paul has pushed votes on big things, like the corrugator, and on little things, like the colors used when the office was redecorated. Most recently, he held an election for the new team leader of the customer service department. Amazingly, that didn’t faze anybody.

“Anything we’re going to do, we put up for a vote,” says customer service rep Snider, as if it were the most logical thing in the world. “We don’t just have someone say, ‘Well,

this is the way we’re going to do it, and you guys follow us.’ That’s the way we work it. The whole plant works that way.”

A skeptic might want to ask a couple of questions—maybe starting with, Why bother? -- about all these breaches of managerial convention. Niceness and open doors may come cheap, but education benefits are expensive, and open-book management and internal democracy both require serious commitments of time and training. And then there’s the issue of how far you’re willing to trust your employees. Suppose someone betrays your confidence? Suppose the group makes stupid decisions?

Leaving aside the counterargument that CEOs and managers aren’t immune to either of those vices, a fan of Atlas’s we’re-all-in-this-together culture—and there are many in the Severn plant—might respond by pointing to the hard realities of the cardboard box business. It’s an industry in which the opportunities for screwing up are legion. (Atlas may ship as many as 200 separate orders a day, each one a different kind of box, from the same plant.) It’s a price-competitive industry in which the difference between profit and loss is tiny. (Let paper waste creep up a few percentage points, and suddenly, your business is in the red.) Everybody has to pay attention to details in such an environment, and the company that saves a nickel earns a nickel. Quick, now: Who is more likely to be paying attention and worrying about those nickels, employees who trust management and feel like owners or employees who are only putting in time? “It isn’t just about being nice,” says Paul. The open books and democracy are ways to shape a company that can do things that its competitors can’t. “When people feel they’re part of an organization, they feel the passion. And if they feel the passion, you’re going to be dangerous in the marketplace.”

Though passion isn’t something that can be measured, it has clear-cut benefits. Whatever the up-front costs, for example, the Atlas culture is dramatically cheaper in the long run, simply because it obviates the need for an army of frontline managers. “I’m the only supervisor on the East Coast running a box plant that has 35 people under him without assistance,” says Charles Kilgore, one of Atlas’s printing managers, who has spent 39 years in the industry. “At another plant, I might have a general foreman, training supervisor, die-cut supervisor, and two lead men. But we don’t need supervisors in this place. We have people here that run the plant themselves.” Another cost saver: the fact that employee retention averages around 85%, compared with an estimated 50%

elsewhere in the industry. Atlas isn’t spending a lot of money to replace and train people who don’t stay because most do stay.

The culture also promotes employees buying in to tough decisions, instead of the kind of grousing that undermines morale and performance at a lot of companies. Health insurance costs are going up? Both company and employees are going to have to pay more? Okay, let’s put it to a vote: Do we want to change the coverage, or keep it the same and dig deeper into our pockets? It’s the employees’ call, not management’s. The decision to buy the new machinery for the corrugator wasn’t so different. Installing and learning a complex piece of equipment is always costly and difficult. But once they voted on it, it was the employees’ machine, and they had a lot invested in making it work. The installation took three days when it might easily have taken a week—the smoothest in the company’s history, says Paul. Sure, people continue to grouse at Atlas. They just don’t do it much, because there’s no “them” to grouse at.

If the devil is in the details, the details reveal a company in which people take ownership of problems because they can understand and see—and know everybody else can understand and see—exactly how the problem shows up in the financials. Take Ralph Layman, the corrugator superintendent. He watched the line for inks and starch, under cost of goods sold, creep up. Maybe he could change the formula for the starch used in corrugation, he figured, using fewer solids, and thus save money. The first try didn’t work—too much warped board. Eventually, he found the right mix: “More quality boards with less starch dollars,” says Paul approvingly.

Shipping manager Russell Jones was coming under fire because the shipping cost line was high. The problem, he realized, was that he couldn’t use full truckloads for shipping, because the right combination of orders wasn’t coming off the production line. So he talked to the production crews and learned that the job scheduling needed to be changed. A group met with the scheduler to explain the problem and work out a solution. The result: lower shipping costs and less work-in-process inventory.

Customer service is just one more department in which employees go out of their way to reduce costs. Everyone there knows the department has to monitor one key number: credits issued to a customer because an order was entered wrong. “You have to watch your own orders when you’re booking them and when you print them off,” says Paul Snider, “and double-check your orders before you put them in.” If customer service keeps

credits below $2,000 a month, everyone gets a small gift certificate. “That’s the ‘game’ in our department,” says Snider.

“We’ll jump on a problem with a lot less resentment and foot dragging than you would find in another company,” says chief financial officer Thomas Downing, who spent most of his career working for other companies. The culture “creates an organization that’s more responsive and more malleable,” which is a nice way of saying that what we have, a lot of companies would kill for.

Of course, the proof of Altas’s cultural pudding comes when the company buys another business. In a mature industry like boxes, acquisitions are the surest and fastest—maybe the only—route to rapid growth, and hence to the Centenaris’ dream. But what happens when you try to impose the togetherness approach on a company that may have a quite different set of expectations and practices?

The question, it turns out, is being answered even as we speak in Meriden, Conn., where in October 2001, Atlas bought a 200,000-square-foot box plant from Weyerhaeuser. The plant was by all accounts a microcosm of corporate America—a facility that was well equipped but had a toxic atmosphere, the kind of place where managers perpetually told employees what they were doing wrong and union workers retaliated by finding excuses not to work. “We had monthly reports, but they were always negative,” says Walter Vazquez, now a supervisor but then a union steward. “There was always finger-pointing.” When Atlas bought the plant, its on-time delivery stood at about 60%. It was losing between $150,000 and $250,000 a month.

The union was history, decertified by a whopping 40 to 17 vote. Monthly sales were

up 30%; labor costs had dropped.

By year-end 2002, however, a turnaround was in full swing. The union was history, decertified in a formal National Labor Relations Boardsupervised vote by a whopping 40 to 17. Average monthly sales were up 30%; on-time delivery was up to 97%; labor costs had dropped. New customers were being courted for higher-value projects such as

complex point-of-sale display boxes. The bottom line—net profit—turned positive in about a month and a half, and at the end of 2002, it stood at more than $500,000. The adversaryism was drying up as well: Rather than working on only one machine, for instance, shop-floor employees moved from one to another to help jobs get out the door more quickly. “When Atlas came in, it was, ‘Everybody’s equal,’” says Vazquez. “Everybody works together.”

It’s been just a little more than a year since Atlas bought the plant, so it’s wise to withhold final judgment. But there’s no doubt that the Centenaris had learned something in Maryland, something they could put to work in Meriden. Paul hired Shaun Teevens, a college friend and “open-book nut,” to manage the plant. Teevens promptly began doing things like learning everybody’s name, listening to complaints, asking for suggestions, and spending days out on the shop floor getting to know how to run the machinery. He showed people the plant’s numbers. He had them vote on matters like which forklift to buy. Along the way, he cleaned what had become a top-heavy house, ridding the company of several well-paid managers. (“We probably took out $300,000 or $400,000 worth of salary,” he says.) He also began paying bonuses connected to profitability, a practice that in the first year put an average of roughly $1,000 in every worker’s pocket.

He says there are still miles to go. “We’re not anywhere near there yet,” says Teevens. “We’re not even as good as we think we are.” But neither does he minimize the accomplishments. Where the employees are concerned, “It’s no longer, ‘This is my job, and I don’t do that.’ It’s more, ‘Okay, this job is more important. It creates more revenue. I’ll go over and help these people get the product out the door.’”

The thing about dreams, of course, is that they multiply.

Plenty of the people at the Severn plant have come to share the Centenaris’ dream of building a big company—particularly when Paul predicts, as he did at one recent meeting, how much their stock appreciation rights will rise in value if Atlas keeps growing at its current pace. Now Teevens and his charges at Meriden are no doubt coming to share in the dream, as will future acquirees. There’s something in this for everybody.

But sometimes the most powerful dreams are those of a single individual, maybe of an individual like Bruce Foster. Foster, 37, has worked at Atlas’s facility for 15 years. He ran the three-color die-cut press for 10 years; recently, he was promoted to lead man in

that area. He took immediately to the business training that the company offered when it opened its books, and now he can talk SG&A or EBITDA with the authority of an accountant. “Open-book management has bettered me as a person,” he says frankly. Foster also began to realize that there might be alternatives to working on the shop floor, even though he had no college education. So recently, in his off-hours, he started selling boxes. He recalls how he began: “On Saturday I went to EZ Storage. I talked to the person and looked at their boxes. I said, ‘I’m trying to get into sales. How would you like to get better quality boxes? And better on-time delivery?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ So I talked to the vice president.”

Foster beams. “It was all downhill after that.” One of his accounts will generate an estimated $450,000 in revenue for Atlas this year.

That, of course, is the attitude that Paul and Peter Centenari have been dreaming about and building their business around. And who knows? What they’ve done in Maryland and what they’re doing in Connecticut and what they hope to do soon in Virginia and other locations up and down the East Coast may turn out to be the foundation of an iconic, visionary company—one that really does work differently from most companies, and better.

Are Your Meetings Like This?

It’s 2 in the afternoon, and about 150 people, most of Atlas Container Corp.’s Maryland employees, are filing noisily into the big room off the shop floor known as the Learning Center. As the room fills up, there’s a scramble for seats: Managers and sales reps plop down beside first-shift machine operators coming off nine hours of work and second-shift people who’ve come in early, still yawning. Pretty soon a five-line financial statement for the month is on the screen at the front, and CEO Paul Centenari is deep into a discussion of Atlas’s recent performance.

“Look at this number,” he yells, his tone carrying that elusive mix of “Isn’t this cool?” and “Pay attention!” found in the voices of the best teachers. “Look at this! Is this high or low?” The audience members whoop. They know the answer to this one: Several people shout out, “High!” Grinning, Centenari chucks a pack of M&Ms in the direction of the first person to answer. “High? How high? Where should it be?” More shouted answers,

more M&Ms sailing across the room. If he loses his class for a moment, he says, “Hey, are you with me?” and waits until he has everyone’s attention, which he invariably gets, and not only because of his engaging manner. People know that their monthly bonuses, not to mention the health of their employer, depend on these financials.

The number of the moment is sales, general, and administrative expenses, or SG&A, which at 14.2% of sales is higher than Centenari wants it to be. (“We’re gonna cut two points off that. We’ve got a team working on it,” he says.) But it could be operating profits, monthly shipments, or indeed pretty much anything that will determine whether Atlas makes its financial goals. The point of the meeting isn’t to solve problems, rather just to make sure everybody knows the score. Some employees will be asked to join that SG&A team or perhaps a team working on reducing paper waste. Others might be asked to work Saturdays to make a production goal or to postpone some elective maintenance on the machinery. Centenari wants them to know the reasons for all those moves. And the reasons, he has taught them, lie in the financials.

A side benefit: The monthly meetings are one helluva sales tool. Sitting in on one, two representatives from Timberlane Woodcrafters, a customer, couldn’t quite believe the energy and enthusiasm of Atlas’s employees. “We said, ‘We need to find out what they’re doing,’” says Timberlane’s Dave Seelig. “It wasn’t just their salespeople or managers; it was everybody. They were cheering and shouting out answers to questions.”

Anatomy of a Vote

The problem: A sharp, sudden rise in health care costs at Atlas Container Corp.

The touchy issue: Should both the company and employees pay more to maintain the same coverage as before? Or were there cheaper alternatives that employees would view as preferable?

How to resolve it: In traditional Atlas fashion: Let the people decide. “We’ll vote on it,” said Atlas CEO Paul Centenari.

Preparing the ground: First came an announcement, at the company’s regular monthly meeting, that the cost of health care was on the way up and that management was looking for solutions. Later, insurance broker Tom Benney met with purchasing agent Kim Hall

and a small group of Atlas staff members to review the plans of competing insurers and winnow the field. All agreed that Blue Cross Blue Shield (known in Atlas’s region as CareFirst of Maryland Inc.) offered the best value. But the group didn’t know which of Blue Cross’s alphabet soup of plans—HMO, PPO, and so on—was best for the employees.

Informing the voters: Benney kicked off a long all-hands meeting with a PowerPoint presentation. Costs and coverage for each plan. Deductibles. Cost per week—taken out of the paycheck—for individual, parent-child, family plan, and so on. The biggest concern: Is my doctor on the plan? “We had computers set up right there so people could check the Blue Cross website [to see the answer],” says HR director Sherri Renner.

The vote: Employees got a couple of days to talk it over with their families. Then they selected two plans, an HMO and a PPO, for the company to offer. The savings: substantial, both for the company (which pays two-thirds of the premium) and the employees. People buying individual plans, for instance, would see only $2 more a week taken out of their paychecks, compared with an extra $11 if Atlas had stayed on its previous plan.

The payoff: “I was coming out of the parking lot one day, and there was a guy who’s been with us for a long time,” says Centenari. “I said, ‘Hi, Larry. How’re you doing?’ He said, ‘Not that well.’ I walk over. ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Well, my doctor is not in the new insurance.’ I said I was sorry to hear about that. He said, ‘Yeah. But I’ll tell you what, Paul. I understand why we moved from this insurance plan to the other plan. It saves us and the company a lot of money. It’s a pain in the butt to me, because I don’t have my doctor. But I understand.’ That’s exactly why we do it. You present the options, and they make their own decisions. The voting itself creates such a valuable learning experience.”

Just Listen to Yourself What can you do to increase employee participation in company meetings? Maybe your employees aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s you. In particular, maybe it’s the way you communicate. Ralph Stayer, CEO and owner of Johnsonville Foods, a sausage manufacturer in Kohler, Wis., discovered the truth when he was trying to encourage

employees to take more initiative. Traditional tactics weren’t working, so Stayer put simple technology to work. He literally listened to himself talk.

Stayer started to record his staff meetings. When, later, he reviewed the tapes, Stayer was surprised to hear himself distinctly stifling employee participation. For example, as soon as an idea was opened for discussion, Stayer himself would jump in with, “What do you think? Here’s what I think.” Painful as it was to play back his own words, Stayer says the tape helped him understand and change his management style. And employees are now more comfortable voicing their opinions.

Speech Writing and Delivery

Writing and Organizing a Winning Speech How do I organize my talk?

There are two basic outlines that work well for the beginning speaker.

The Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) format.

AA members use this when they stand up and “qualify” their experiences: • This is where I was. • This is where I am now. • This is how I got here.

This simple outline can help you tell the audience who you are and why you are qualified to speak on the topic you’ve chosen. A friend of mine had been asked to present a 25-minute speech for the local Board of Realtors because of her great success in real estate. I suggested she use the AA outline and open like this: “Twelve years ago, when I went into the real estate business, I had never sold anything but Girl Scout cookies and hadn’t done well with that.” (This is where I was.) “Last year, I sold $15 million of real estate in a slow market, selling homes that averaged $150,000 each.” (This is where I am now.) “Today, I’ll tell you how I did that.” (This is how I got here.)

The Q & A format. List the questions your prospects, clients, and friends ask you most often about your business. Then open your talk with, “The five questions I am most frequently asked about investments (or engineering or whatever your field is) are...” Pose the first question to the audience, and answer it for them in a conversational manner, just as you would to a potential customer or someone you meet at a party. You may never have given a speech before, but you certainly have a lot of practice answering these questions.

How do I write my speech?

Open with a bang. The first and last 30 seconds of your speech have the most impact, so give them extra

thought and effort. If you haven’t hooked your audience’s interest, their minds are going to wander off. Whatever you do, don’t waste any of your precious seconds with “Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be here tonight.” Open with an intriguing or startling statement: “Half the people in this room are going to . . .,” “As a young man, my father

gave me this valuable advice...,” “Of all the questions I am most frequently asked...” Use humor cautiously.

Opening a speech with a joke or funny story is the conventional wisdom, but nothing falls flatter than inappropriate humor. A friend who works at AT&T was convinced a joke was the only way to start a speech. He called me late one night, frantic to find the perfect joke

for his boss to use the next day. I asked if his boss was funny. “No!” he answered emphatically. Then, I said, “you’re going to make your boss look like an idiot in front of the troops.” I suggested opening with an inspirational quote instead. We chose one, and

the speech was a great success.

Before you use humor to open your talk, test each possibility by asking: • Is it appropriate to the occasion and for the audience? • Is it in good taste? • Does it relate to me, my product or service, the event, or the group? • Does it support my topic or its key points?

If you can’t answer yes to these questions, choose a different opening. It’s safer and more effective to tell the audience what they most want to know from you. For example, I helped a neighbor, Mike Powell, with a speech he was putting together for the Continental Breakfast Club in San Francisco. Mike was a senior scientist with Genentech at the time. I suggested that since most of us don’t know what scientists are like or what they do, he should tell the audience what it was like to be a scientist. Mike captured everyone’s attention by saying, “Being a scientist is like doing a jigsaw puzzle in a snowstorm at night: You don’t have all the pieces and you don’t have the picture you are trying to create.” You can say more with less. Think about your audience. What is the information they want the most from you? If you know your business, you’ll be able to predict what

their questions will be simply by experience. If you’re not sure what a particular audience might want to hear, talk to the program chair ahead of time and get that information.

Develop strong supporting stories. If you’re using the AA format, the middle of your talk is where you expand on your key points and develop personal stories that support where you were and where you are now. In the Q&A format, develop one or two strong anecdotes to support each answer. Personal anecdotes are best, but you can also insert some of the ideas and examples you’ve been gathering in your journal or computer.

Close on a high note. Your close should be the high point of your speech. First, summarize the key elements of the investment process (or whatever your topic is). If you’re planning to take questions from the audience, say, “Before my closing remarks, are there any questions.” Answer them then. The last 30 seconds of your speech must send people out energized and fulfilled. Finish your talk with something inspirational that supports your theme. My scientist friend Mike talked of the frustrations of being a scientist, and he closed by saying, “People often ask, Why should anyone want to be a scientist?” Then Mike told them about a particularly information-intensive medical conference he had attended. The final speaker rose and said, “I am a thirty-two-year-old wife and mother of two. I have AIDS. Please work fast.” Mike got a standing ovation for his speech. He told his audience what they needed to know.

Polishing and Rehearsing for a Perfect Presentation

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How do I polish it?

Once you assemble your notes and write a draft of your speech (or you may prefer to speak your ideas into a tape recorder), you still have more work to do before delivering your speech. Read your draft over to confirm that it is:

Interesting After every point you make, ask yourself, “Who cares?” If you imagine no

one does, edit it out. On track

Did you go off on a tangent that doesn’t relate to your main theme? Edit it out.

Concise Are you redundant, saying the same thing three ways? Are there cliches like

“without further ado,” “that’s a tough act to follow,” etc.? Edit out all nonessential words and phrases.

Effective Are your supporting examples strong and on target? If not, replace them.

Personal Does it have a high I/You Factor? Be sure you’ve connected yourself with your audience by putting them into your speech. If your subject is financial planning, for example a low I/You Factor would be: “I always pay myself first. Not the recommended 10%. I save 20% of my gross income.” Your

audience would probably be rolling their eyes and thinking, “Yeah, right...” But if, instead, you said, “We’re all hurting in this economy. That’s why

saving money is more important than ever. Your goal is to get something—anything! -- out of each check. Sometimes I can manage to squeeze out up to 10%, but I know that even 1% is essential if I’m going to maintain the habit

of paying myself first. That 1% is the difference between winning and losing.” You’ve put your audience in your speech. Instead of scoffing, they

are more likely to identify with what you’re saying. Politically correct

Being “PC” is sometimes overdone, but it is essential. Consider the opening of an address by cartoonist Gary Trudeau at Yale: “...Distinguished faculty,

graduating seniors, people of color, colorful people, people of height, the vertically challenged, people of hair, the differently coiffed, the optically challenged, the temporarily sighted, the insightful, the out of sight, the

homeless, the home boys...” Trudeau was poking fun at political correctness, but if you don’t use inclusive language, you may offend and lose part of your audience. The safest (and politest) thing is to call people what they

want to be called. Refer to adult females as women. Say “physically challenged” rather than “disabled.” Whether you’re talking about managing employees or selling cars, your stories need to reflect a balance of male and female. Remember that not all doctors are “he’s”, not all nurses are “she’s.” Ask the program chair if there are any terms and phrases you should avoid

or include. Vigorous polishing makes your talk tighter, more powerful, and less likely to bore or irritate your audience.

How do I rehearse?

You’ve edited and fine-tuned a written version of your talk. Now you’re going to practice it. (You may think this is too much trouble, but you’ll be glad you did.)

Read your talk out loud. Read your written talk into a tape recorder to get some idea of timing and emphasis.

When you are happy with it, go on to step 2. Prepare outline notes.

Even though you’ve just gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare a written speech, you’re NOT going to read it! Nothing puts an audience to sleep faster. Instead, you’re going to speak directly and spontaneously to the audience, maintaining essential eye

contact. The secret is to prepare easy-to-read notes. Write your key points on a pad or card that you’ll keep on the lectern or table. Use a felt tip pen or a large typeface on your laser printer. As you speak, follow your road map with quick glances. An easy-to-read

wristwatch or small clock on the lectern lets you keep track of the time so that you can speed up or slow down, cut or add material, and finish on time.

Tape your “impromptu” talk. Again, check for timing. As you play back your tape, notice repetitive phrases and

nonwords such as “er” and “ah.” Try again, minus these distracting irritants, until you are speaking smoothly and confidently. Practice in front of an audience.

Ask one or two perceptive people for their feedback. Make it clear that you want constructive criticism, not just praise. Did they understand the points you were making? Was there a lack of logic or continuity? Did they think you spoke too quickly or slowly?

Use their feedback to polish your presentation.

Now you’re nearly ready to do your talk. You have one more task. Am I done writing now? No. Write your own introduction and bring a printed copy to your talk. Even if you’re speaking for free, you want the emcee to pronounce your name right, mention your company’s name, and tell people how to get in touch with you. You want all attention on you, so you don’t need an introducer who rambles on or tells tired jokes.

If you’re not sure what to say about yourself, use your ré sumé as a guide, customized to fit your topic. If you’ve earned or been honored with impressive designations or awards, let the introducer say so. But don’t include your job as a lifeguard in your intro unless it directly relates to your subject. Don’t leave anything to chance. If you’re working on a stage, explain to the introducer that you’ll come on stage from the wings before he/she leaves the lectern. The introducer needs to get off the stage before the audience stops applauding.

This way, the audience looks at you instead of the emcee. You’ve taken center stage—now take it away!

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Eight Ways Public Speaking Improves Every Area of Your Life

Whether you are having a casual telephone conversation, teaching a Sunday school class, having a conversation with your boss, or giving a formal presentation, your are involved in public speaking. Following are examples of how public speaking can positively influence your everyday life, your career, your relationships, your communication style, and much more. Let’s get started on the path to successful public speaking.

1. Build success in your professional life. - Most presidents and CEOs of companies possess strong speaking skills. I work with many high-level executives in the business world, and when I ask them why they feel they need coaching to improve their speaking skills, they all indicate that they know their success and their companies’ future business ventures rely on their ability to speak well. Their promotions to the top were related directly to their ability to communicate effectively.

2. Communicate with others more clearly. - Many mistakes or misinterpretations are a result of not properly communicating your ideas. Good public speaking skills help you articulate ideas well and make them come alive for the listener. This was one of the most critical skills I needed to develop as an engineer, because I often had to speak to audiences that didn’t know the first thing about my area of engineering expertise, which was materials engineering, but had the authority and the money to fund my next project. If I was ineffective in conveying why they should invest more money, I might have been out of a job.

3. Build overall confidence. - As you become better at organizing and communicating your ideas effectively, you will start to exhibit more confidence. People with this ability have a “glow” of confidence when they speak in public. (Let’s not confuse this with the red glow of terror on the face of someone scared to death.)

4. Increase your comfort level in social situations. - How many of you have ever been invited to a party and are afraid to strike up a conversation? (Don’t be shy, no one can see you.) Social situations are, in fact, the perfect opportunity to

practice your public speaking skills. Here’s a little bonus: It is a known fact that people who speak well are perceived as better looking. Thank God, now I know why I worked so hard at it, and it wasn’t just my cute smile that made me popular with the girls.

5. Speak more confidently on the telephone. - Whether you call to request information, make a cold call at work, communicate with a client, or just leave a phone message, others can hear your confidence level in the tone of your voice. Did you know that over 86 percent of your telephone message is communicated through the tone of your voice?

6. Run meetings or present new ideas more effectively- I remember running my son’s Cub Scout pack. Having the ability to conduct a Cub Scout meeting with six to eight screaming, energetic boys definitely challenged my public speaking skills (and required a lot of aspirin). Organizing and running a meeting with adults is more difficult, I think, because you can’t bribe them with candy.

7. Become an effective member or volunteer. - At some point in your life, you may volunteer or even be affectionately coerced to lead or participate in a professional or social organization. Your success within the organization depends significantly on your ability to speak to a group and keep their attention engaged in order to achieve common goals and objectives.

8. Establish trust and respect from others with greater ease. - Your success in dealing with clients - or even your own children -depends a great deal on your speaking skills. The ability to convince people with words is key to establishing trust and respect. This can include not only what you say, but how you say it.

If these examples describe characteristics you want to possess, then congratulations - you have the desire to succeed as a public speaker.

Videotape & Analyze Your Speeches Using a Four-Step Approach One of the best ways to improve your speaking skills and remove any superfluous mannerisms or language is to get an accurate perception of your body language and voice. Videotape yourself during an actual speech or presentation and then review this videotape. As painful as this may

sound, watching a videotape of yourself can be the most tools you can use to improve your speaking skills.

In order to get the most out of this, I have provided a four-step analysis process you can use to help improve your speaking skills. Once you are familiar with the process, you can use your own judgement depending on the speech situation. Here is a list of elements to look for when reviewing your videotape:

• Posture • Gestures • Body Movement • Facial Expressions • Eye Contact • Voice

Sit with a notepad and write down everything you notice about your body, language, and voice.

• Review #1. Review the tape without looking for particular mannerisims. Just listen to the presentation as if you were hearing it for the first time and evaluate the overall impact you experience from watching the tape. During this initial review, pretend you are a member of the audience and evaluate your reaction to the presentation, trying to separate the fact that you are watching yourself. This will be difficult. Here are a few questions to think about and ask yourself during this review.

• Did I like the presentation? - Was it informative or entertaining? - Would I recommend someone else watch this video?

• Review #2. Turn off the sound and look only for visual distractions. Jot down notes on what you observe. Make two lists, one for the things you liked and another for the things you did not like. Don’t worry of your list of cons is longer; each time you give a presentation your performance will improve. Look specifically for the following:

• What did you do with your hands? - What were your facial expressions? - What did you did with your body? - Did you move around? Did you stand still?

- Were there any mannerisms you found distracting or annoying? - Did you seem appropriately animated?

• Review #3. Darken the picture or turn your back to the TV so you cannot see yourself and listen to only your voice. Many people have never heard a tapoing of their own voice before except maybe on their answering machine. Become accustomed to listening to your voice, The first reaction I have had from most people when they hear themselves for the first time is, “That doesn’t sound like me!” What happens is that when you hear your voice for the first time you are not hearing it from “inside” you rhead. While listening to your voice, focus on the following:

• What do you like and not like about your voice? - How was the speed of your speaking? Was it too fast or too slow? - How was your tone of voice? - How was your pitch? Was it too high or too low?

• Review #4. After you have completed your list of pros and cons, ask one or two family members to wacth the tape with you. Get their initial impression. Have them take their own notes. Keep this list handy and tackle each negative point one at a time. And remember the posiive ones!

Another important step is to gather all the notes and make another list. This is a list of those areas you believe need improvement. Make sure you are as specific as possible. Now take the items on the list and break them down into the following categories:

• Voice and tone. This includes the tone of your voice, speed, pitch, and any verbal distractions suach as uhms, uhs, ers, and ya knows. - Nonverbal actions. List them specifically by the parts of your body such as your hands, facial expressions, legs, arms, walking patterns, and so on. Don’t be surprised if the list is long. That’s okay. All novice speakers will have a long list when they first begin giving presentations. With practice, practice and more practice, you eventually will see fewere areas you want to start working on immediately.

Make a conscious note of these areas and observe and listen to how you speak during your everyday activities. The next time you are at a party, business meeting, or with a friend see if you notice any of these distracting mannerisms. Also, do you notice any of these distractions while talking on the telephone?

Each time you speak, make an effort to eliminate or replace the distracting mannerism with a verbal or nonverbal technique. Practice

every day. By making adjustments and changes in your everyday speaking style, you will find it easier to apply these strategies to your more formal speaking engagements such as a presentation at work, a toast at a wedding, or a speech to a large group.

Another helpful tip is to keep a journal after each presentation. Take a few moments to reflect on your speech. Make notes about your strengths and weaknesses and write a brief summary on your speech topic, the audience, and any other factors that will come in handy for future presentations.

Customized Training Solutions for Selling Your Ideas and Responding to

Your Clients Instead of Excedrin,Try These Quick Tips

for Handling Your Anxiety!

When an opportunity comes along for a meeting with an important client,it is not the time to rely on Excedrin or look like the village idiot!Customers need to see you as con .dent and knowledgeable, not nervous and unsure.To avoid freaking out,try the following quick tips. 1.Be prepared .The more you know your con- tent and your audience,the more secure you will feel.Do your homework up-front. 2.Practice,practice,practice .If you want a polished presentation,it is important to prac- tice on your feet,in front of your bathroom mirror.It is also important to practice with your visuals because technology can add an- other dimension of insecurity.Additionally, make sure to time your presentation.Allow time for questions,so make sure your pre- pared remarks take up only about 75%of your allotted time. 3.Don ’t rush on the day of your presenta- tion .Pick out the out .t the night before,in- cluding all accessories.Make sure you have the right tie or the appropriate pin.The out .t needs to look up-to-date and appropriate for

the audience you are addressing. 4.Do a quick run through in the morning . In the shower or on the way to your presen- tation,rehearse your opening and close and anything that is particularly complicated.It is important that you begin and end strong. You should not be note dependant. 5.Get there early .By being there early,you can scope out the room and be ready to greet people.You can also check your audio visual equipment. 6.Drink lots of unchilled water .It will lubri- cate your vocal cords.Avoid caffeine since caf- feine or caffeinated beverages are a diuretic. 7.Take some deep breaths.By breathing deep- ly,you will eliminate the adrenalin rush that makes you feel nervous.The tension you feel will start to evaporate.You will feel more in control and eager to share your message. 8.Release nervous energy in the upper body by doing some head rolls and shoulder rolls.Your body should not show signs of tension. 9.Have usable notes available .Do not hold them in you hand but have them where you can see them if you need them.Your notes should be in a story board layout so that you can quickly gain the point you want to cover. 10.Picture yourself being unbelievably suc- cessful .Do not go into a presentation just wishing to be done.You will rush and be less engaging.Psyche yourself up by remember- ing how prepared you are.Focus on your audience,not yourself. 11.Say something funny or clever when you begin .It will relax you.If you are being in- troduced by someone else,be sure to think of some amusing anecdote about your self. Your listeners will see you as relaxed and con .dent. 12.Be yourself.While there are a lot of good speakers out there,the most successful ones are the ones who are genuine and real. While it is natural to feel nervous in a high stakes presentation,you don ’t want your audience to see you anxious.Nervous energy is a good thing if you

can channel it and release it appropriately.By using the suggested tips,you will come across as profes- sional and con .dent.

Customized Training Solutions

Making Yourself Understood by Everyone —

Seven Keys to Global Communication It ’s important to talk to people in their own language. If you do it,well,they ’ll say,“God,he said exactly what I was thinking.”When they begin to respect you,they ’ll follow you to the death.

• Lee Iococca Strategic messages are important to any company. Key initiatives have to be implemented.The challenge facing global corporations today is making these messages understood by all.There are seven keys to making cross-cultural communication successful. 1.Recognize that differences exist.It is easy to assume that because people are all part of one organization,their way of doing busi- ness is the same as in the parent company. Acknowledging that cultural differences exist is an important .rst step and so is a basic understanding of how the country as a whole conducts business.For example,if there are divisions of a US company in Shanghai and Beijing,it is important to know the typical styles for communicating,negotiating,en- tertaining and greeting.Do they bow or do they shake hands?What is their orientation towards time?How do they make decisions? What is their value system that affects their business practices? 2.Demonstrate curiosity.Read about the his- tory and culture of the country.Ask ques- tions.Learn simple phrases for hello,good- bye and thank-you.The fact that a colleague

in another country is interested in learning about their customs,religious beliefs and holidays goes a long way to cementing rela- tionships and making the other person feel a part of a team.If it is possible,make on-site visits and participate in local events or hap- penings. 3.Error on the part of being overly cour- teous.It is easy for a person from another country to be judgmental and to think their way i s best .One-chi l d-onl y f ami l i es,ar- ranged marriages or .nes for gum chewing while odd to you,may make perfect sense to the nationals.Consequently,it is a good idea to avoid conversations about politics,social and religious customs.Also,it is a good idea to avoid humorous asides since people may feel uncomfortable because they don ’t under- stand your comment. Being courteous also means being open to local foods and food preparations.For ex- ample,in Korea,foods are prepared with kimchi,a pickled cabbage.Some foods are boiled in a hot pot.In Japan,all parts of the animal are eaten,and the eyes of the .sh are offered to the most senior person.It would be offensive to show displeasure with the lo- cal customs. 4.Keep it simple.It is dif .cult to know just how well people understand English,so it is best to keep communications,whether writ- ten or verbal,simple.De .ne all acronyms and abbreviations.Be consistent in word choices.Make sure sentences are short and uncomplicated.Avoid sport references.Make technical ideas explainable by using simple charts and grafts.Any visuals should be di- rected to the host audience -the more picto- rial,the better. 5.Be warm and friendly.Greet people ap- propriately and use their names.Give the appropriate eye contact and,by all means, smile.A smile crosses all barriers and en- dears you to your host.Be aware of customs for gift giving.Upon your return home,send a hand written note thanking your hosts for

their hospitality. 6.Speak slowly and pause often.Whet h- er you are speaking face-to-face or on the phone,allow people time to process the in- formation by speaking slowly and pausing often. 7.Get help.If people clearly have limited lan- guage ability,provide help.Use a transla- tor or another employee with strong English skills.Ask people frequent questions to see what they comprehend.Consider providing on-site English classes for business profes- sionals. Cross cultural communication can be challenging, as well as tiring.Any small misstep can be disas- trous.Without the ability to communication glob- ally,business professionals will miss opportunities to grow their business and deepen relationships. But as Lee Iococca mentioned,if you do a good job of communicating,people anywhere will follow you to the death.

How To Conquer Public Speaking Fear

Public speaking is a common source of stress for everyone. Many of us would like to avoid this problem entirely, but this is hard to do. Whether we work alone or with large numbers of people, eventually we will need to speak in public to get certain tasks accomplished. And if we want to be leaders or achieve anything meaningful in our lives, we will often need to speak to groups, large and small, to be successful.

The truth about public speaking, however, is IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE STRESSFUL! If you correctly understand the hidden causes of public speaking stress, and if you keep just a few key principles in mind, speaking in public will soon become an invigorating and satisfying experience for you.

Purpose Of This Report

The purpose of this Special Report is to help you overcome the fear of public speaking. It begins by discussing ten key principles to always keep in mind. If you approach any problem in life with the right starting principles, everything else will fall into place. On the other hand, if you start with the wrong guiding principles, you can try all you want, but there is little chance you’ll improve.

This Report also reveals eleven “hidden” causes of public speaking stress. I have summarized these eleven causes, along with the ten key principles, at the end of this Report, so you can easily review them.

Key Principles

Principle #1--Speaking in Public is NOT Inherently Stressful

Most of us believe parts of life are inherently stressful. In fact, most of us have been taught to believe that life as a whole is very stressful!

To deal with any type of stress effectively, you first must understand that life itself, including public speaking, is NOT inherently stressful. Thousands of human beings have learned to speak in front of groups with little or no stress at all. Many of these people were initially terrified to speak in public. Their knees would shake, their voices would tremble, their thoughts would become jumbled . . . you know the rest. Yet they learned to eliminate their fear of public speaking completely.

You are no more or less human than they are. If they can conquer the fear of public speaking, so can you! It just takes the right guiding principles, the right understanding, and the right plan of action to make this goal a reality.

Believe me, it’s not difficult. I’m a good example of someone who conquered the fear of public speaking. And while I didn’t do it overnight, it wasn’t difficult. All it took was approaching the problem in the right way.

Principle #2--You Don’t have to be Brilliant or Perfect to Succeed

Many of us have observed public speakers and thought to ourselves “Wow, I could never be that smart, calm, witty, entertaining, polished . . . or whatever.” Well, I’ve got news for you—you don’t have to be brilliant, witty, or perfect to succeed. That is not what public speaking is all about. I know it may look that way, but it’s not. You can be

average. You can be below average. You can make mistakes, get tongue-tied, or forget whole segments of your talk. You can even tell no jokes at all and still be successful.

It all depends on how you, and your audience, define “success.” Believe me, your audience doesn’t expect perfection. I used to think most audiences did, but I was wrong! Before I discovered this, I used to put incredible pressure on myself to deliver a perfect performance. I worked for days to prepare a talk. I stayed up nights worrying about making mistakes. I spent hours and hours rehearsing what I was going to say. And you know what? All this did was make me even more anxious! The more perfect I tried to be, the worse I did! It was all very disheartening (not to mention unnecessary).

The essence of public speaking is this: give your audience something of value. That’s all there is to it. If people in your audience walk away with something (anything) of value, they will consider you a success. If they walk away feeling better about themselves, feeling better about some job they have to do, they will consider you a success. If they walk away feeling happy or entertained, they will consider their time with you worthwhile.

Even if you pass out, get tongue-tied, or say something stupid during your talk . . . they won’t care! As long as they get something of value, they will be thankful.

They don’t even need to feel good to consider you a success. If you criticize people, or if you stir them up to ultimately benefit them, they might still appreciate you, even though you didn’t make them feel good at the time.

Principle #3--All You Need is Two or Three Main Points

You don’t have to deliver mountains of facts or details to give your audience what they truly want. Many studies have shown that people remember very few of the facts or information speakers convey. While you may choose to include lots of facts and information, you only need to make two or three main points to have your talk be successful. You can even have your whole talk be about only one key point, if you wish.

When I first began speaking in public during medical school (kicking, screaming, and quivering all the way), I wasn’t aware of this simple principle. I wrongly believed that my audience wanted encyclopedic knowledge from me, which of course I didn’t have. So I tried to research my topic thoroughly and deliver as much worldly wisdom as possible.

Boy was that exhausting! It was also boring for my audience to suffer through.

Later, when I began giving public seminars on how to cope with stress, I spent hours each week typing a twenty-page script to read from, so I wouldn’t forget any important tidbit.

As time went on, I gradually learned that this degree of complexity wasn’t needed. As a result, the length of my discussion notes gradually declined. My twenty-page typed manuscript gave way to a five-page detailed outline. Then, I replaced my outline with ten or fifteen index cards. Eventually, I could conduct a full two-hour seminar with only one 3X5 index card (containing my two or three key points) to support me!

As long as I focused on these two or three key points, I was able to speak at length about them by naturally drawing upon my past experiences and knowledge.

Remember, all your audience wants from you is to walk away with one or two key points that will make a difference to them. If you structure your talks to deliver this result, you can avoid lots of complexity that isn’t really needed. This also should make your job as a speaker much easier, and more fun too!

Principle #4--You also Need a Purpose That is Right for the Task

This principle is very important . . . so please listen up. One big mistake people make when they speak in public is they have the wrong purpose in mind. Often, they have no specific purpose in mind, but the one that is operating within them unconsciously causes a whole lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety.

This is a prime example of what I call a “hidden cause” of public speaking stress. When I first started speaking in public, I thought my purpose was to get everyone in the audience to approve of me. I mistakenly thought that this was what good public speakers try to do. I wasn’t consciously aware of this purpose, nor how foolish it was, but it was there nonetheless.

Because of this hidden purpose, I felt I needed to be absolutely perfect and brilliant to win my audience’s unanimous approval. If just one person in the audience disapproved . . . my goose was cooked! If one person left early, if anyone fell asleep, or if someone looked uninterested in what I was saying . . . I was defeated!

This was very anxiety-producing.

Later, after I became aware of this stress-producing purpose, I was able to look at it honestly and realize how foolish it was. How many public speakers get 100% approval from their audiences? The answer is zero!

The truth about public speaking is no matter how good a job you do . . . someone is going to disapprove of either you or your argument. That is just human nature. In a large group of people, there will always be a diversity of opinions, judgements, and reactions. Some will be positive, others will be negative.

There is no rhyme or reason to it. If you do a lousy job, some people will sympathize with you and feel for you, while others will critique you harshly. If you do a fantastic job, someone will resent your ability and might disapprove of you on that basis alone. Some people will leave early because of an emergency. Some will fall asleep because they were up all night taking care of a sick child. Therefore, it’s foolish and unrealistic to attempt to get everyone in your audience to think well of you.

More importantly, it’s the wrong type of purpose to adopt in the first place.

Remember, the essence of public speaking is to give your audience something of value. The operative word here is GIVE not GET! The purpose of public speaking is not for you to get something (approval, fame, respect, sales, clients, etc.) from your audience. It is to give something useful to your audience.

Yes, if you do this well, you’ll gain notoriety, respect, sales, and new clients. But this should never be your organizing purpose going in. If you focus on giving as much as you can to your audience, you will then be aligned with the truth about public speaking. You also will avoid one of the biggest pitfalls that cause people to experience public speaking anxiety.

Giving of yourself is rarely stressful or anxiety producing. When I give a talk to a group of people, I often imagine myself handing out $1,000 bills to everyone in the audience. I try to give them at least that much value. If a few individuals in the group reject this “gift,” it no longer surprises or demoralizes me. I no longer expect anything different.

Principle #5--The Best Way to Succeed is Not to consider Yourself a Public Speaker!

While it may seem paradoxical, the best way to succeed as a public speaker is not to consider yourself a public speaker at all.

Many of us have distorted, exaggerated views of what successful public speakers do. We often assume that to be successful ourselves, we must strive very hard to bring forth certain idealistic qualities we presently lack.

Consequently, we struggle desperately to emulate those personal characteristics of other speakers which we wrongly believe are responsible for their public speaking success.

In other words, we try to become someone other than ourselves! We try to be a public speaker, whatever that image means to us.

The truth about public speaking is that most successful speakers got that way by doing just the opposite! They didn’t try to be like somebody else. They just gave themselves permission to be themselves in front of other people. And much to their surprise, they discovered how much fun they could have doing something most other people dread.

The secret, then, to their success is that they didn’t try to become public speakers!

You and I can do the very same thing. No matter what type of person we are, or what skills and talents we possess, we can stand up in front of others and fully be ourselves.

I now love to speak in public. Why? Because it’s one of the few times I give myself permission to fully be myself in the presence of others. I can be bold, compassionate, silly, informative, helpful, witty . . . anything I want. I can tell jokes, which I don’t normally do, tell humorous or poignant stories, or do anything else that feels natural in the moment.

As a result, I make much better contact with my audience. I don’t drone on and on about some uninteresting subject. I’m alive, I’m energized, I’m fully invested in everything I say and do. That’s another gift I can give my audience. It also allows me to tell when I’ve gone on too long or when the people who are listening to me begin to drift away.

When you really get good at being yourself in front of others, you can even stand up in front of a group of people without any idea how you’re going to get across your two or three main points. Sometimes, I enjoy throwing myself in front of a group without knowing specifically what I’m going to say. I just focus on my three main points and

remember I’m there to give people something of value. Then I give myself permission to say whatever comes to mind. In many instances, I say things I’ve never said before! They just come out of me spontaneously while “being with my audience.” Sometimes, I’m truly amazed at some of the things I end up saying or doing.

And you know what? People in the audience often come up to me afterward and say, “you were great, I wish I had the confidence to give public talks like you.” That’s exactly the wrong way to think. Don’t try to give talks the way I do, or the way anyone else does. Just go out there, armed with a little knowledge and a few key points, and be yourself. Everything else will usually work out. It might be a little rough the first few times you try it, but after a while, you’ll settle into some very successful ways of being that will be all yours and no one else’s.

Principle #6--Humility and Humor Can Go a Long Way

While each person will eventually find his or her style of public speaking, certain maneuvers can be used by almost everyone. Two of these, humility and humor, can go a long way to making your talks more enjoyable and entertaining for your audience.

Humor is well understood by most of us, so little needs to be said about it here. If being humorous feels comfortable for you, or if it fits your speaking situation, go for it. It usually works, even if you don’t do it perfectly.

By humility, I mean standing up in front of others and sharing some of your own human frailties, weaknesses, and mistakes. We all have weaknesses, you know, and when you stand up in front of others and show that you’re not afraid to admit yours, you create a safe, intimate climate where others can acknowledge their personal shortcomings as well.

Being humble in front of others makes you more credible, more believable, and paradoxically more respected. People can connect with you more easily. You become “one of them” instead of a remote expert who’s head and shoulders above them (which you really aren’t). It also sets a tone of honesty and self-acceptance, which people recognize in themselves as well. Don’t try to do this, however, if it’s not authentic for you. True humility is easily distinguished from the pretense of acting humble. If you pretend, your audience will perceive this and lose respect for you.

Often, humor and humility can be combined very effectively. Telling humorous stories about yourself, or using your own personal failings to demonstrate some point you are trying to make, can be both entertaining and illuminating.

For example, if you get nervous when you stand up to speak in front of a group, or if you suddenly feel nervous during the middle of your talk, don’t hide this fact from your audience (they can tell anyway). Be real—and humble—by acknowledging your fear openly and honestly. Ask your audience for forgiveness while you take a few moments to collect yourself.

Or, you can start your talk with a humorous story that produces the same effect. For example, I’ve seen speakers begin their talks by saying “What lies at the bottom of the ocean and shakes all over?” Answer: a nervous wreck! This is a very endearing strategy that also helps relieve speaking anxiety.

Principle #7--When You Speak in Public, Nothing “Bad” Can Ever Happen!

One thing that adds to the fear of public speaking is the dread people have that something awful, terrible, or publicly humiliating will happen to them.

What if I pass out from nervous exhaustion? What if I forget everything I intended to say and am left standing there, totally speechless? What if the audience hates me and begins throwing things at me?

What if they all get up and leave after the first ten minutes? What if they snipe at me with harsh questions or comments once I’m done? What if someone in the audience tries to turn the group against me?

These could be embarrassing if they occurred. Fortunately, most of them don’t happen.

Even when they do, it’s useful to have a strategy in mind that has them turn out perfect. Sound difficult? It’s not really.

I’ve found that most of the “negative” things that happen when I’m speaking can be handled by keeping this one simple, but powerful, principle in mind: everything that happens can be used to my advantage.

If people get up and start to head for the door, I can stop what I’m doing and ask for feedback. Was there something about my topic, my style, or my manner of presentation that was offensive to them? Were they simply in the wrong room at the start and didn’t know it? Did someone misinform them about what my talk was going to cover?

Regardless of what they tell me, just stopping to deal with this situation, honestly and humbly, will often score points with my remaining audience. It also will give me the opportunity to learn how I am affecting people, so I can make any corrections that might be needed.

Even if everyone walked out and refused to give me a reason, I could ultimately find ways to benefit from this experience. At the very least, I could use it as the opening for my next presentation. “You know, I gave this same talk the other day and everyone in the audience walked out in the first ten minutes. That’s my current record, so I guess we’ll just have to see what happens today.”

The same principle holds for dealing with hecklers or people who ask harsh or confrontational questions. If you assume that nothing truly bad can ever happen when you’re speaking in public, you’ll be amazed how well you can relate to such events and how often you can indeed use them to your advantage.

And once you’ve successfully used this principle many times, your anxiety about public speaking will almost completely go away. You’ll know it will be virtually impossible for anything “bad” to happen that you won’t be able to handle. That is a very comforting thought.

TIP: If you want a good role model for developing this skill, rent a video tape of Johnny Carson’s opening monologues. He was a master at using this principle. No matter how his audience responded, Carson was always ready to use their response, positive or negative, to make another joke. He simply couldn’t lose, even if the material his writers provided him was rotten.

Principle #8--You Don’t Have to Control the Behavior of Your Audience

To succeed as a public speaker, you don’t have to control the behavior of your audience. There are certain things you do need to control—your own thoughts, your preparation, arrangements for audio-visual aids, how the room is laid out—but one thing you don’t

have to control is your audience. They will do whatever they do, and whatever they do will usually be “perfect.”

If people are fidgety or restless, don’t try to control this. If someone is talking to a neighbor, or reading the newspaper, or falling asleep, leave them alone. If people look like they aren’t paying attention, refrain from chastising them. Unless someone is being intentionally disruptive, there is very little you need to control.

Thinking you need to change or control other people is a hidden cause of stress in many areas of life. This is just as true for relating to a group as it is for relating to your friends, spouse, children, or other acquaintances.

Principle #9--In General, the More You Prepare, the Worse You Will Do

Preparation is useful for any public appearance. How you prepare, however, and how much time you need to spend are other matters entirely.

Many of the errors in thinking we’ve discussed so far often creep in to people’s strategies for preparation. If you have the wrong focus (i.e., purpose), if you try to do too much, if you want everyone to applaud your every word, if you fear something bad might happen or you might make a minor mistake, then you can easily drive yourself crazy trying to overprepare your talk. In these instances, the more effort you put in, the worse you probably will do.

On the other hand, if you know your subject well, or if you’ve spoken about it many times before, you may only need a few minutes to prepare sufficiently. All you might need is to remind yourself of the two or three key points you want to make, along with several good examples and supporting facts and . . . BOOM you’re ready to go.

Overpreparation usually means you either don’t know your subject well or you do, but you don’t feel confident about your ability to speak about it in public. In the former instance, you’ll need to do some extra research. In the latter, you’ll need to develop trust in your natural ability to speak successfully. The only way to do this is to put yourself in the spotlight, over and over again.

Go out and solicit opportunities to speak on your subject in public. Offer to speak free or for a small fee, enough to cover your expenses. If you have something of value to tell

others, keep getting in front of people and deliver it. In no time at all, you’ll gain confidence. You’ll also begin to respect the natural public speaker/communicator within you.

Principle #10--Your Audience Truly Wants You to Succeed

The last principle to remember is that your audience truly wants you to succeed. Most of them are scared to death of public speaking, just like you. They know the risk of embarrassment, humiliation, and failure you take every time you present yourself in public. They feel for you. They will admire your courage. And they will be on your side, no matter what happens.

This means that most audiences are truly forgiving. While a slip of the tongue or a mistake of any kind might seem a big deal to you, it’s not very meaningful or important to your audience. Their judgements and appraisals will usually be much more lenient than yours. It’s useful to remind yourself of this point, especially when you think you’ve performed poorly.

Review Of 11 Hidden Causes Of Public Speaking Stress

Thinking that public speaking is inherently stressful (it’s not).

Thinking you need to be brilliant or perfect to succeed (you don’t).

Trying to impart too much information or cover too many points in a short presentation.

Having the wrong purpose in mind (to get rather than to give/contribute).

Trying to please everyone (this is unrealistic).

Trying to emulate other speakers (very difficult) rather than simply being yourself (very easy).

Failing to be personally revealing and humble.

Being fearful of potential negative outcomes (they almost never occur and even when they do, you can use them to your advantage).

Trying to control the wrong things (e.g., the behavior of your audience).

Spending too much time overpreparing (instead of developing confidence and trust in your natural ability to succeed).

Thinking your audience will be as critical of your performance as you might be.

Review of 10 Key Principles To Always Keep In Mind

#1---Speaking in Public is NOT Inherently Stressful

#2---You Don’t Have to be Brilliant or Perfect to Succeed

#3---All You Need is Two or Three Main Points

#4---You also Need a Purpose That is Right for the Task

#5---The Best Way to Succeed is NOT to Consider Yourself a Public Speaker!

#6---Humility and Humor Can Go a Long Way

#7---When You Speak in Public, Nothing “Bad” Can Ever Happen!

#8---You Don’t Have to Control the Behavior of Your Audience

#9---In General, the More You Prepare, the Worse You Will Do

#10--Your Audience Truly Wants You to Succeed

That’s all there is to it. Just look for these eleven hidden causes and keep the ten corresponding principles in mind.

Of course, you will need to practice. It’s extremely easy to forget the ten key principles. No matter how often you review them, you’ll instinctively fall back into your old stress-producing patterns.

What is the best way to practice? Go out and speak in public. Join a local Toastmasters Group if you like. Take a community college course in public speaking. Better yet, offer to teach a course about something you know very well.

Just keep throwing yourself into the arena, and in no time at all, your skill, confidence, and natural ability will come to the surface.

And remember, if you get up in front of a group and find this stressful, it only means you forgot the truth about what public speaking is all about. Go back and review this Report. Find out what you did wrong or what you didn’t remember. Then go back out and speak again until you get it right. It may take time, but the long-term rewards will be impressive

How to Deal With a Hostile Audience 1. Listen carefully to the question & repeat it aloud - Make sure you understood the question correctly & that your audience knows the question to which you are responding.

2. Answer directly. Look directly at the person asking the question - Give simple answers to simple questions. If the question demands a lengthy reply, agree to discuss it later with anyone interested.

3. Refer to your Speech - Whenever possible, tie your answer to a point in your speech. Look upon these questions as a way to reinforce & clarify your presentation.

4. Anticipate areas of questioning - Prepare factual support material in three or four areas in which you anticipate questions.

5. Be friendly, always keep your temper - A cool presentation creates an aura of confidence. When the questioner is hostile respond as if he or she were a friend. Any attempt to “put down” your questioner with sarcasm will immediately draw the audience’s sympathy to the questioner.

6. Always tell the truth - If you try to bend the truth, you almost always will be caught. Play it straight, even if your position is momentarily weakened.

7. Treat two questions from the same person as two separate questions

8. Don’t place your hands on your hips or point at the audience - These are scolding poses and give you the appearance of preaching.

9. Keep things moving - There is a rhythm to a good question-and-answer exchange. They volley back & forth in a brisk manner. Keep your answers brief and to the point with many members of the audience participating.

10. Conclude smartly - Be prepared with some appropriate closing remarks. End with a summary statement that wraps up the essential message you want them to remember.

A.U.D.I.E.N.C.E. Analysis - It’s Your Key To Success

As speakers we all know the importance of properly preparing our material far enough in advance so we may have sufficient time to rehearse and “fine-tune” our

speeches. Unfortunately, this is not enough to assure that your speech or presentation is well received. Your speech preparation must also include

gathering information about your audience and their needs. A well prepared speech given to the wrong audience can have the same effect as a poorly prepared

speech given to the correct audience. They both can fail terribly.

It is critical that your preparation efforts include some amount of audience analysis. The more you know and understand about your audience and their

needs, the better you can prepare your speech to assure that you meet their needs. Speech preparation should use what I like to call the 9 P’s.

Prior Proper Preparation

Prevents Poor Performance of the

Person Putting on the Presentation.

Nothing will relax you more than to know you have properly prepared. The stage fright or speech anxiety felt by many speakers is due to not knowing enough

about the speaking environment or the audience. The more you know about your speaking environment and your audience, the more relaxed you will be when delivering your speech. Many speakers, however, often overlook the need to

include any kind of audience analysis as part of their speech preparation. Proper audience analysis will assure that you give the right speech to the right audience. Most professional speakers send their clients a multi-page questionnaire in order

to gather enough information about them and the speaking event to properly customize their speeches. Using the word “A-U-D-I-E-N-C-E” as an acronym, I have defined some general audience analysis categories that these surveys should

include.

A nalysis - Who are they? How many will be there?

U nderstanding - What is their knowledge of the subject?

D emographics - What is their age, sex, educational background?

I nterest - Why are they there? Who asked them to be there?

E nvironment - Where will I stand? Can they all see & hear me?

N eeds - What are their needs? What are your needs as the speaker?

C ustomized - What specific needs do you need to address?

E xpectations - What do they expect to learn or hear from you?

Develop specific questions which fit into each of these eight categories and ask the client or audience to tell you what they want. Essentially, ask them what they

need and give it to them.

Elements Of An Effective Speech

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t; the other half have nothing to say and keep saying it.”

Anyone can give a speech. Not everyone can give an effective speech. To give an effective speech there are 6 elements you should consider.

1. Be Prepared - Being prepared is by far the most important element. How many times do you practice your speech? As a general rule, you should spend about 30

hours of preparation and rehearsal time for every hour you will be speaking. Use a tape recorder or videotape yourself. This will help you to get an accurate picture

of how you speak.

Give of Yourself - Use personal examples and stories in your speech whenever possible. Make sure

your stories help to emphasize or support your point. The stories must match your message. Use examples

from your personal and professional life to make your point. In either case be willing to give of yourself by sharing some of yourself with the

audience. Stay Relaxed - To stay relaxed you should be

prepared. Also, focus on your message and not the audience. Use gestures, including walking patterns.

Practice the opening of your speech and plan exactly how you will say it. The audience will judge you in

the first 30 seconds they see you. Use Natural Humor - Don’t try to be a stand up comedian. Use natural humor by poking fun at

yourself and something you said or did. Be sure NOT to make fun of anyone in the audience. People will laugh with you when you poke fun at yourself but

don’t over do it. Plan Your Body & Hand Positions - During the

practice of your speech look for occasions where you can use a gesture. Establish three positions where you will stand and practice not only how to move to them

but where in your speech do you move. Pick three positions, one on center stage, one to your right, and

one to your left. Do not hide behind the lectern. When you do move maintain eye contact with the

audience.

Pay attention to all details - Make sure you have the right location (school, hotel, room & time). Make

sure you know how to get to where you are speaking. Ask how large an audience you will be speaking to. Make sure you bring all your visual aids and plenty

of handouts. Arrive early so you can check out where you will be speaking and make any last minute

adjustments.

It is very important that you pay attention to even the smallest details. You can never overplan. Remember, “He who fails to plan is planning for failure”

Speech Preparation As A Process

Real speech preparation means digging something out of yourself. You have to gather facts and arrange your thoughts. As you collect the ideas, you have to nurture your ideas and think about a unique way to express them in an organized manner.

A speech needs time to grow. Prepare for weeks, sleep on it, dream about it and let your ideas sink into your subconscious. Ask yourself questions, write down your thoughts, and keep adding new ideas. As you prepare every speech ask yourself the following questions.

1. In one concise sentence, what is the purpose of this speech?

Who is the audience? What is their main interest in this topic? What do I really know and believe about this topic as it relates to this audience? What additional research can I do? What are the main points of this presentation?

What supporting information and stories can I use to support each of my main points?

What visual aids, if any, do I need? Do I have an effective opening grabber? In my final summary, how will I plan to tell them “What’s In It For Me?”

Have I polished and prepared the language and words I will use? Have I prepared a written and concise introduction for myself? Have I taken care of the little details that will help me speak more confidently?

Impromptu or Extemporaneous Speaking

While many of us do not like to speak in front of people, there are times when we are asked to get up and say a few words about someone or a topic when we have not planned on saying anything at all. We are more shocked than anyone else. Has this ever happened to you? If and when this does happen to you, be prepared to rise to the challenge. Below

are some tips you can use the next time you are called on to speak.

• Decide quickly what your one message will be - Keep in mind you have not been asked to give a speech but to make some impromptu remarks. Hopefully they have asked you early enough so you can at least jot down a few notes before you speak. If not, pick

ONE message or comment and focus on that one main idea. Many times, other ideas may come to you after you start speaking. If this happens, go with the flow and trust your

instincts.

• Do not try and memorize what you will say - Trying to memorize will only make you more nervous and you will find

yourself thinking more about the words and not about the message. • Start off strong and with confidence - If you at least plan your opening statement, this will get you started on the right foot. After

all, just like with any formal speech, getting started is the most difficult. Plan what your first sentence will be. You may even write this opening line down on your note card and glance at it one more time just before you begin speaking. If you know you have three

points or ideas to say, just start off simple by saying, “I would just like to talk about 3 points”. The first point is... the second point is...

and so on. • Decide on your transitions from one point to the other - After you have decided on your opening remark or line, come up with a

simple transition statement that takes you to your main point. If you have more than one point to make, you can use a natural

transition such as, “My second point is... or my next point is...” etc. Just list on your note card or napkin, if you have to, the main points or ideas. Do not write out the exact words, but just the

points you want to mention. • Maintain eye contact with the audience - This is easier to do if

you do not write down all kinds of stuff to read. Look down at your next idea or thought and maintain eye contact with your

audience and speak from your heart. Focus on communicating TO your audience and not speaking AT the crowd.

• Occasionally Throw in an off-the-cuff remark - Because you want your style to be flexible and seem impromptu, trust your

instinct and add a few words which just pop into your head. Keep it conversational and think of the audience as a group of your

friends. • Finally, have a good conclusion - Gracefully just state, “And the last point I would like to make is ....”. Once you have made

your last point, you can then turn control back to the person who asked you to speak in the first place.

With a little practice, this process will feel more natural to you. Anticipating that you MAY be asked to say a few words should force you to at least think about what you

might say if you are asked. Then if you ARE asked, you are better prepared because you anticipated being asked. This is much better than thinking they won’t ask you and they

actually do!

How to Gesture Effectively 1. Respond naturally to what you think, feel, and see. - It’s natural for you to gesture, and it’s unnatural for you not to. If you

inhibit your impulse to gesture, you will probably become tense.

2. Create the condition for gesturing, not the gesture - When you speak, you should be totally involved in communicating-not thinking about your hands. Your

gestures should be motivated by the content of your presentation.

3. Suit the action to the word and the occasion - Your visual and verbal messages must function as partners in communicating the same thought or

feeling. Every gesture you make should be purposeful and reflective of your words so the audience will note only the effect, not the gesture itself. Don’t overdo the

gesturing. You’ll draw the listener away from your message. Young audiences are usually attracted to a speaker who uses vigorous gestures, but older, more

conservative groups may feel irritated or threatened by a speaker whose physical actions are overwhelming.

4. Make your gestures convincing - Your gestures should be lively and distinct if they are to convey the intended impressions. Effective gestures are vigorous

enough to be convincing yet slow enough and broad enough to be clearly visible without being overpowering.

5. Make your gestures smooth and well timed - Every gesture has three parts:

• The Approach - Your body begins to move in anticipation. • The Stroke - The gesture itself.

• The Return - This brings your body back to a balanced posture.

The flow of a gesture - the approach, the stroke, the return-must be smoothly executed so that only the stroke is evident to the audience. While it is advisable to

practice gesturing, don’t try to memorize your every move. This makes your gesturing stilted and ineffective. The last rule is perhaps the most important but

also the hardest.

6. Make natural, spontaneous gesturing a habit- The first step in becoming adept at gesturing is to determine what, if anything, you are doing now. The best

way to discover this is to videotape yourself. The camcorder is completely truthful and unforgiving. If you want to become a better speaker, you need to make the

camcorder your best friend.

Videotape yourself and identify your bad habits, then work at eliminating them, one at a time. You will need to continue to record yourself and evaluate your

progress if you expect to eliminate all your distracting mannerisms.

To improve gestures, practice - but never during a speech. Practice gesturing while speaking informally to friends, family member, and coworkers.

Gathering Information & Materials The most difficult and also the most important part

of making a presentation is actually getting started.

Your first step is to collect and read as much information as possible about your subject. Take notes.

The next step involves selecting the information and deciding how much of it you will present. To accomplish this, you need to know how long your talk will be. Naturally, the amount of material you will discuss in an hour differs from the amount you will handle in a full-day presentation; however, the format or structure should be the same in both cases.

Deciding on the format is your next step. It is at this point that you need to decide how and in what sequence you will present the material you have chosen.

Other matters to consider are:

1. What visuals will I use?

Where will I stand when I speak? How can I present the material clearly and in an interesting fashion?

When asked to speak in public, the first things some people think about are: “What am I going to wear?”, “Will there be a lot of people there?” “What if I mess up?”

These are all important questions, but they represent just a small part of what needs to be taken into consideration when preparing a presentation.

Quality Speech Material

We often ask ourselves, “What if my speech is not good enough?” If we construct our speeches with care and properly prepare and practice, our speech material will always be good.

Don’t be afraid to take risks and present new material. Remember, practice makes perfect.

Speech Preparation as a Process

Genuine speech preparation means digging something out of yourself. You need to both gather facts and arrange your thoughts. It is not enough to simply collect ideas. You must also nurture them and reflect on how to present them in a unique, organized manner.

A speech needs time to grow. Prepare for weeks. Sleep on your topic, dream about it and let your ideas sink into your subconscious. Ask yourself questions. Write down your thoughts. Keep adding new ideas.

Once you’ve determined your purpose for delivering this speech, state the purpose in a sentence and focus your speech around that purpose. Ask yourself, “How does this purpose relate to the audience?”

Let your purpose drive your speech

Try to come up with a good title, too. Aim not only to inform your listeners, but also persuade them.

As you prepare each presentation, you should develop a simple and orderly outline. You will need to decide the sequence you will follow from these organizational patterns:

• Sequential

• Categorical • Problem and solution • Contrast and comparison

In developing the sequence of your presentation, mind-mapping or webbing techniques can be very useful. Remember to decide, too, on the transitions between sections and examples you will use. Real-life anecdotes can be particularly effective.

The use of personal stories always works best for my audiences. Most professional speakers always use personal stories and quite often it is a personal story that becomes their “signature” story.

To be successful it is extremely important to start gathering information as soon as possible. Many people ask me, “Lenny, how far in advance should I begin preparing for my speech?” I always tell them, “You should begin preparing your speech the moment they ask you to speak!” The sooner you begin the more time you will have to practice your speech.

I’d like to leave you with one of my favorite Mark Twain stories. As many of you may or may not know, Mark Twain was a great speaker. In fact, Mark Twain is one of the earliest known professional speakers and when asked one day if he could prepare a speech for an upcoming engagement, he responded ,”If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready today.” “If you want me to speak for just a few minutes, it will take me a few weeks to prepare.”

As with most speakers, it usually takes more time to prepare a short version of a speech than a longer one. When you prepare your next speech, try preparing two - one that will run approximately one hour and one that will only run 10 minutes. You will find that Mark Twain was right. “ In either case, you must gather your facts and decide on what is most important.

Using Visual Aids as Notes Using visual aids has 4 important advantages

• You don’t have to worry about what you’re going to say next - Your next visual aid has your next major idea on it. Use effective titles which properly capture the main message of the visual aid.

• Visual aids allow you to move around the room - inexperienced speakers don’t want to move around. Movement helps you to relax and adds energy to your presentations. Movement also allows the listeners to follow you and pay closer attention to you.

• You can have good eye contact with your audience - You can look at your audience all the time, except when you look briefly at your visual aid. That’s okay

since the audience will also look at your visual aid. This will help them see your message as well as hear your message.

• Your Audience feels comfortable knowing you’re on your planned track - Well designed visual aids show that you have a plan and have properly prepared and you are following your plan.

Your visual aids don’t have to be only word charts; they can include diagrams, pictures and graphs.

NOTE: When you use visual aids, always introduce your visual aid before you actually show the visual aid. Rehearse your presentation with your actual visual aids. It is very important that you are very familiar with your visual aids. Make sure your message and visual aids match. There is nothing worse than showing a visual aid which does not go along with what you are saying.

Practice using different transition phrases. For example: “Now that we have seen the ... let’s look at ...”

Using LCD Projectors In the ever

growing world of technology, the popularity of computers to generate presentations is growing. Today’s laptop computers coupled with many of the common software packages offer flexibility to the presenter. A professional looking presentation can be prepared ahead of time and displayed using this exciting technology. The use of this technology can be very attractive, especially to professional speakers who travel with a laptop computer.

The limitations of LCD technology is that the equipment can be very expensive with systems ranging from a few thousand dollars to systems which can run $25,000 or more depending on the features and options of the display projector. It does require the use of a computer and the necessary technical interfaces to work properly. Significant preparation is required to assure that everything is working properly.

Here are some tips to consider when using LCD display projectors:

1. Read the LCD projector manual on its proper operation Not all LCD projectors work the same and each have their own unique operating

requirements. Become very familiar with the projector BEFORE using it during your actual presentation. Make sure your computer can be properly interfaced with the LCD projector.

Practice setting the equipment up several times - Spend some time making sure you know how to properly set up the LCD projector with your computer and other computers. Set up the LCD projector in the actual presentation environment you will be using, if possible.

Set up well in advance - Allow yourself plenty of time to set up your computer and the LCD projector. Check any last minute details.

Check the LCD projector bulb life- LCD projector bulbs do have limited life. Some bulbs have shorter lives than others. Check and make sure the bulb you will be using is not close to the end of its life.

Bring a spare bulb and cables! - Always carry spare bulbs with you and make sure you know how to properly change the bulb. Also, remember, “Hot” glass looks like “Cold” glass; be careful and bring a towel or glove to use when changing the bulb. Practice changing the bulb during one of your practice sessions.

Check your presentation color combinations - Take some time to check out the actual presentation for the color combinations you will be using. Some colors and color combinations do not project well.

Check the font size you are using - Nothing is more frustrating to an audience than text that cannot be easily seen or read. Make sure you are using the proper text size for the distance you will be projecting your slides.

As with any sophisticated piece of equipment, it is critical that you familiarize yourself with the proper setup and operation of the equipment well in advance of your actual presentation. Remember, the more technology you bring to your presentation, the more care and time you need to include during your preparation stage. If everything is well planned, properly checked out and you have properly rehearsed with this new equipment, it can add a lot of excitement and life to your presentations.

How to Use Transitions Effectively Transitions are an integral part of a smooth

flowing presentation, yet many speakers forget to plan their transitions. The

primary purpose of a transition is to lead your listener from one idea to another. The following are some examples of transitions that work well:

Bridge words or phrases

(furthermore, meanwhile, however, in addition, consequently, finally.

Trigger transition (same word or idea used twice: “a similar example is ...”).

Ask a Question (“How many of you ....?”)

Flashback (“Do you remember when I said ...?”)

Point-By-Point (“There are three points ...The first one is.. The second one is..etc.)

Add a Visual Aid as a Transition - Many times it may be appropriate to add a visual between your regular visual aids for the sole purpose of a “visual” transition. Many times a clever cartoon used here can add some humor to your presentations.

Pausing (Even a simple pause, when effectively used, can act as a transition. This allows the audience to “think” about what was just said and give it more time to register.

Use Physical Movement (The speaker should move or change the location of their body. This is best done when you are changing to a new idea or thought.

Use a Personal Story The use of a story, especially a personal one is a very effective technique used by many professional speakers. Used effectively, it can help reinforce any points you made during your presentation.

Use the PEP formula (Point, Example, Point) (This is a very common format used and can also be combined with the use of a personal story. Make sure stories or examples you use help reinforce your message.

Three common mistakes made when using transitions:

1. The most common mistake people make is that they DON’T use transitions at all. Transitions help your information flow from one idea to the next.

2. The second most common mistake is using transitions that are too short. Not enough time is spent bridging to the next idea. This is extremely important when changing to a new section of ideas within your presentation.

3. The third most common mistake is that people use the same transition throughout the presentation. This becomes very boring after a short while. Try to be creative with your transitions.

Transitions and the Team Presentation

Transitions become extremely important when a team presentation is involved. The transition from one speaker to the next must be planned and skillfully executed. Each speaker should use a brief introduction of the next topic and speaker as part of this transition.

4 Common Ways to Remember Material

Remembering speeches can be a very intimidating experience. There are many ways one can remember material and I would like to focus on what I believe are the 4 common ways to remember material.

1. Memorizing

Reading from complete text Using Notes Using Visual Aids as Notes

Let’s take a look at each of these in detail.

1. Memorizing -In my opinion, this is absolutely the worst way to keep track of material. People are preoccupied with trying to remember the words to say and not the ideas behind the words (or with the audience). As a result, normal voice inflection disappears. With memorizing, mental blocks become inevitable. With memorizing it is not a matter of “will” you forget; it’s a matter of WHEN!

2. Reading from complete text - Listening to someone read a speech or presentation is hated by most people. People say, “If that’s all they were going to do is read there speech, I could have read it myself.” I’m sure many of us have experienced this at least once while attending a conference or two. Below are some reasons why I believe people read poorly:

• The speaker loses normal voice inflection because they lose touch with the ideas behind the words. Listen for pauses. Natural speech is filled with pauses; unnatural speech is not.

• The text isn’t spoken language - too often speakers write their speeches in “business language”. That is often hard to read, much less listen to.

• The speech isn’t static - the potted plant will probably move more. There is little movement, little energy, little interest behind the lectern.

• There’s no or little eye contact - any eye contact is with the text, not the audience. To read text while trying to maintain eye contact with the audience takes a lot of practice.

• The speaker is scared - many speakers read because they are afraid to try anything else. They know reading will fail but at least it will fail with a small “f” rather than a capital one.

NOTE: Don’t get me wrong, there are times when speeches MUST be read. Many times it is necessary to read policy statements or company announcements. Also, some speeches must be timed right down to the second.

WHEN YOU HAVE TO READ!

If reading is absolutely necessary, here are some suggestions:

• Pay attention to the inflection in your voice - to sound natural, rehearse often, checking yourself for pauses. Ask yourself if your words sound the way you would say them if you weren’t reading. Tape yourself and listen to your own voice. Take notes where changes should be made with the inflection in your voice.

• When preparing your written speech, say the words “out loud” first in order that your written text will read closer to your speaking style. This will make it easier to read and much easier to listen to. People often DO NOT write the same way as they speak and this makes reading more difficult. If we use wording and phrasing we normally use in our everyday language it will be easier to add the correct voice inflection and tone. Annotate your text to indicate which words to emphasize. Numbers are the easiest target words to say slowly with emphasis on each syllable.

• One of the biggest problems speakers face when reading text is that we often forget to use gestures. We are so busy making sure we read the text we fail to communicate effectively with our entire body. One thing we can do to help this is to “double space” your typed text to leave room to add notes or cues about gestures and other reminder type clues. We need to practice using this annotated text of our speech so we can easily and smoothly react to these cues for our gestures while at the same time correctly read the text. This does take some practice. Some people do this very effectively.

I work with ministers who do this extremely well, but they also practice a lot! Videotape yourself reading the speech and then sit and watch the speech, making notes as to the gestures which could have been used. Add notes to your written text based on this review, using notes or even pictures of the gestures to use and deliver the speech again, trying this time to add gestures. After a little practice, this will become second nature.

• When we read speeches, the amount of eye contact with our audience is usually less. In some cases, people who read speeches have NO eye contact. To avoid this, first write like you speak (see suggestion #2). When typing the text, use upper and lower case letters. This will make it easier to read. TYPING EVERYTHING IN UPPPERCASE, AS I HAVE DONE HERE, MAKES IT MORE DIFFICULT TO READ> Don’t have long paragraphs or you will lose your place every time you look up. Start a new paragraph every sentence or two. Also, have your text double spaced. Some people even go so far as alternating the color of the text for each paragraph.

Use unstapled pages for your text. Paper clip your pages and just before you begin, remove the paper clip. As you prepare your text, keep in mind that you will have to handle these pages and you want to do this smoothly and as quietly as you can. Do not have part of a sentence begin on one page and continue onto the next page. End the page with a complete sentence and paragraph.

During your pauses, smoothly “slide” the page you just finished using to one side and continue with the text on the next page. Do not pick up the page and place it behind or turn the page over when done. This will be distracting and will bring attention to the fact that you are reading. Avoid handling the pages as much as possible while you are reading.

With a lot of practice and careful preparation, you can deliver a powerful speech, even when reading. Some of the world’s greatest speeches were read, but you can be assured, they weren’t reading them for the first time when delivering their speech to their audience. Practice, practice, practice.

3. Using Notes - This is the most common way for remembering material. Using notes is better than reading since the speaker can have normal voice inflection and make more effective eye contact. If your notes are on the lectern, you probably won’t move very far from them. If notes are in your hand, you probably won’t gesture very much.

Below are some suggestions to consider if you decide to use notes:

USING NOTES

• Use note cards. Include quotes, statistics and lists you may need, NOT paragraphs of text. VERY IMPORTANT: Number your note cards! (Just in case you drop them).

• Don’t put too much information on each note card or you will find yourself reading too much. Put only a few words or key phrases.

• Leave your notes on the lectern or table and move away occasionally. Don’t be afraid to move away from your notes and get out of your comfort zone. Too many speakers use the lectern to hide behind and this restricts the effective use of your entire body.

• Practice using your note cards. If you find yourself reading your note cards too much, this is a sure clue you need to reduce the amount of written text on each card. Remember, all you need are short phrases or key words, enough to “jog” your memory.

• Use pictures or picture maps to guide yourself. Pictures help you to “visualize” the key points of your speech. Use mental pictures as well to tell the story in your head. This will take some creativity, but will be worth the effort.

4. Using Visual Aids As Notes - Simple visual aids can effectively serve as headings and subheadings. Speak to the heading. Say what you want to say and move on. If you forget something, that’s okay; the audience will never know unless you tell them.

Practice creating just a few meaningful headings to use and practice using only these headings as your “cues”. This will take practice, but practicing using only these few words will force you to better internalize your speech.

This has four important advantages:

• You don’t have to worry about what your are going to say next. Your visual aids provide you with your “cues” of your next major idea or thought. All you need to do between ideas is to use an effective transitional statement. (See my tips on using transitions).

• Having only a few key words on your visual aid allows you to move around the room without the need or feeling you need to go back to your notes. In fact, most inexperienced speakers don’t move around at all. Movement also helps you to relax and adds energy to your presentations. Movement also allows the listeners to follow you and pay closer attention to you and your message. Plan your movements during your rehearsals. Decide where in your presentation it makes sense to move. If you find yourself starting to sway from side to side, take one or two steps and stop again, standing evenly on both feet. Keep your weight evenly distributed on both feet. This will help keep you from swaying.

• You can have good eye contact with your audience. You can look at your audience all the time while speaking - except for that brief moment you look at your visual aid. But that’s okay since the audience will probably follow you and also look at your visual aid. This will help the audience to “see” your message as well as “hear” your message. The more you rehearse and the more you become familiar with your visual aids, the easier it becomes.

• Your audience will feel comfortable that you are on your planned track. Well designed visuals aid show the audience that you DO have a plan and have properly prepared and are following your plan.

Keep in mind, your visual aids do not have to be only word charts. They can contain diagrams, pictures or even graphs.

When you use visual aids, always introduce the visual aid BEFORE you show it using one of your transition statements. You can even use the “looking back / looking forward” transition: “Now that we have seen the ...let’s now look at ....”

Regardless of which method you choose to use to remember your material, nothing will help you more that proper planning and preparation. Remember to prepare, prepare, prepare!

How to Handle That Dreaded Question & Answer Period

Many presentations today are followed up with a question and answer period. To some people this can be the most exciting part of the presentation. To others it can be their worst nightmare. In fact, there are some presenters who purposely avoid the question and answer period all together. Below I have provided a 5 step approach to handling questions along with some additional tips to make your next question and answer session go smoother.

1. Listen to the entire question Listen to the entire question BEFORE you begin to answer any questions. Too many people start responding to a question before the entire question is even asked. Not waiting to hear the entire questions can result in you providing a response which had nothing to do with the question. Force yourself to LISTEN to the entire question and make sure you understand the question.

Pause and allow yourself time to value the question and listener. REPEAT the question out load so the entire audience can hear it. It is important that everyone “hear” the question or the answer you provide may not make sense to some of the people. By repeating the question, this will allow you some additional time to evaluate the question and formulate a response.

Credit The Person for asking the question. You may say something like, “That was a great question” or, “Glad you asked that question” or even, “I get asked that question by many people”. One word of caution. If you credit one person with asking a question, be sure to credit EVERYONE for asking a question. You don’t want people to feel their question was not as important.

Respond to the Question honestly and the best you can. If you do NOT know an answer to a question, do not try to fake it. Be honest, and tell them you do not know but DO promise to research the answer for them and DO get back to them.

Bridge to the next question by asking them a question. “Does that answer your question?”, “Is that the kind of information you were looking for?”. This is critical.. Once they respond to you, “YES” you now have permission to go on to the next person. This also gives them one more opportunity to say, “No” and allow them to clarify their question more by asking it again.

Additional Tips on Handling Questions

A. Ask people to stand up when they ask a question. This does two things: (1) It shows you more readily who is asking the question, and (2) It make it easier for the audience to also hear the question.

B. Have small sheets of paper available for people to write down their questions during your presentation. They may forget what they were going to ask earlier.

C. Allow people to pass the questions to you if they feel uncomfortable standing up and asking the question out loud. This gives the person who truly wants to ask a question an option.

D. Always repeat the question - this does three things: (1) it makes sure you understood the question, (2) it gives you a chance to value the question and think of an answer, and (3) it assures the other people in the audience can hear the question since you are facing them.

E. Always take time to think “before” you answer all questions. This allows you time to think, especially for those difficult questions. Do the same for those questions you readily know the answer for. Responding too quickly to those questions you are most comfortable with will only bring attention to those questions you do not.

F. Have a pencil and paper available for you to write down questions you can’t answer. You select someone to record the questions on paper. This way, you can properly follow up with the person who asked the question you couldn’t answer. Be sure to get their name & phone number or address. Promise to get back to them and DO get back to them.

7 Aspects Of a Dynamic Presentation There are 7 aspects people must deal with when

preparing and delivering presentations. An effective speaker learns to deal with all 7 aspects at the same time. Failure to pay attention to all of these aspects can result in an ineffective presentation. Failure to pay attention to too many of these can result in disaster.

1. Speaker 2. Message 3. Audience 4. Channel 5. Feedback 6. Noise 7. Setting

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--------- ASPECT #1 - The Speaker

------------------------------------ One of the major components of any speech or presentation is the speaker themselves (the source of the message). Many people forget they THEY are the

presentation and NOT the visual aids. Many presenters today put so much effort into the visual aids and they forget that those are just aids to the speaker.

There are three factors we need to consider about any speaker:

a. His / Her motivation in giving the presentation b. His / Her credibility as a speaker

c. His / Her delivery or speaking style

a. A Speaker’s motivation can be approached in terms of two considerations:

==> Whether direct personal reward (e.g. $$$) or indirect rewards (feeling good about helping others) are involved. ==> Whether immediate rewards ($$ today) or delayed

rewards (getting a college degree after 4 years of college play a part.

In essence, a speaker may be motivated by one or BOTH of these factors. Before speaking you should consider what YOUR motivations are.

b. Speaker’s credibility

A speaker’s ideas are accepted as believable only to the degree that the speaker is perceived to be credible. The speaker’s credibility depends on his or her trustworthiness, competence, and good will. The speaker who is well organized will usually be considered competent. The speaker who is attractive and dynamic will be seen as more credible than one who is not.

The most fundamental factor a speaker projects is the attitude they have toward himself.

c. Speaker’s delivery

The delivery, the way the message is presented, should compliment the speech’s objective. A well written speech delivered poorly can quickly lose effectiveness.

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ASPECT #2 - The Message

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The message refers to EVERYTHING a speaker does or says, both verbally and non-verbally. The verbal component may be analyzed in terms of 3 basic elements:

• Content • Style • Structure

Let’s look at each of these elements.

a. Content - is what you say about your topic. The content is the MEAT of your speech or presentation.

Research your topic thoroughly. Decide on how much to say about each subject. Then decide on the

actual sequence you will use. It is important that you consider the audience’s needs, time factors, and other items as the content of your speech or presentation is

prepared and presented.

b. Style - The manner in which you present the

content of your speech is your style. Styles can vary from very formal to the very informal. Most

presentations fall between these two extremes and in EVERY case, the style should be determined by what is appropriate to the speaker, the audience, as well as

the occasion and setting.

c. Structure - The structure of a message is its organization. There are many organizational

variations, but in each case, the structure should include:

o An Introduction o A Body o A Conclusion

The introduction should include:

• an opening grabber such as a quote or shocking statistic. - an agenda - the purpose or main message of your presentation.

The body should include:

• your main points or ideas. - points which support your main message.

The conclusion should include:

• a summary of your main points. - a closing grabber. - time for questions & answers, if appropriate.

When speeches and presentations are poorly organized, the impact of the message is reduced and the audience is less likely to accept the speaker or the speaker’s ideas.

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ASPECT #3 - The Audience ---------------------------

----------- As a speaker you should analyze your listeners and then decide how to present your ideas. This analysis might include considerations related to:

• Age - Sex - Marital Status - Race - Geographic location - Group membership - Education - Career

For example, if you are making a presentation on “Future Careers”, knowing your audience’s average age is vital. A well prepared speech that is ill-suited to the audience can have the same effect as a poorly prepared speech delivered to the correct audience. Both speeches will fail terribly.

Proper audience analysis will assure that you give the right speech to the right audience. To properly customize the speech, most professional speakers send their clients a multi-page questionnaire in order to gather information about them and their speaking event. I will usually call some of the members who can find out what the current trends are in their industry and ask what people are looking for.

Using the word “A-U-D-I-E-N-C-E” as an acronym, I have defined some general audience analysis categories that your surveys should include:

A_udience - Who are the members? How many will be at the event?

U_nderstanding - What is their knowledge about the topic you will be addressing? D_emographics - What is their age, sex,

educational background, etc.? I_nterest - Why will they be at this event?

Who asked them to be there? E_nvironment - Where will I stand when I speak? Will everyone be able to see me? N_eeds - What are the listener’s needs?

What are your needs as a speaker? What are the needs of the person who hired you? C_ustomized - How can I custom fit my

message to this audience? E_xpectations - What do the listeners expect

to learn from me? NOTE: See my article on Audience Analysis for a more detailed discussion on this topic. Also, my new book, “No Sweat Presentations - The Painless Way to Successful Speaking” provides some specific questions you could ask along with a sample questionnaire you can use.

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ASPECT #4 - The Channel

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When we communicate with our audiences, we use many channels of communication. This includes non-verbal, pictorial and aural channels.

It is very important that you use as many channels as you can to communicate with your audience. The more channels of communication you can use at the same time, the better. I have provided a brief list of examples for each of these types:

A. Nonverbal

1. gestures 2. facial expressions 3. body movement

4. posture B. Pictorial

1. diagrams 2. charts 3. graphs

4. pictures 5. objects

C. Aural

1. tone of your voice 2. variations in pitch and volume

3. other vocal variety ----------------------------------------

ASPECT #5 - The Feedback

----------------------------------------

By “feedback” I mean the process through which the speaker receives information about how his or her message has been received by the listeners and, in turn, responds to those cues.

The feedback process is not complete until the speaker has responded to the listener. This process includes the listener’s reactions to the speaker’s response and so forth.

You can ask your audience questions and even ask them what their understanding is of the point you have just made. Watch for non-verbal clues from your audience and be prepared to respond to the reactions of your audience throughout your presentation.

It is your responsibility to provide the information your audience needs to hear. Many times, you may be asked by management to provide a specific message to their employees that they may not want to hear. Remember, it is the management that is paying your fee and you are responsible to deliver the message they hired you to deliver. At the same time, it is important that you are sensitive to the audience and try to establish a relationship with them through the use of your surveys, conversations during the social hour, and even discussions following your presentation.

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ASPECT #6 - The Noise

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There are two types of noise a speaker must contend with:

a. External Noise b. Internal Noise

Let’s look at each of these.

External Noise - consists of sounds, people talking, coughing, shifting patterns, poor acoustics, temperature (too warm, too cold), poor ventilation, and visual interference such as poor lighting, or an obstructed view.

Internal Noise - if a speaker is confused or unclear about what he or she wants to express, this is due to internal noise. Internal noise can also arise if the speaker does not know or misanalyzes the audience.

The role of the audience and the speaker is to simultaneously communicate with each other. It is this transactional nature of speech that makes feedback, and attempts to eliminate noise, so important.

The most specific way a speaker can use to combat noise are:

a. Use more than one channel of communication at the same time (verbal & non-verbal)

b. Use repetition and restatement. The speaker can help combat this noise by making an extra effort to use as many channels of communications at the same time. It is important to include both verbal and non-verbal means of communication.

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ASPECT #7 - The Setting ---------------------------

------------- The place in which you deliver your presentation may be one that enhances or interferes with the effectiveness of your presentation. Determine ahead of time what the facilities are like before you speak. This way you can properly plan your delivery or make adjustments, if necessary.

I recommend, when practical, that you make a trip to the location where your speech will take place. I even go so far as to ask the exact room I will be presenting in and ask the hotel conference coordinator to let me visit the room and check things out.

On one particular occasion, several years ago, I had visited a room about 1 month before I was to speak at a large association meeting and noticed the room WAS NOT equipped for a microphone. This was a problem since the attendance was expected to be about 800 to 1000 people. I checked with the hotel if there were any other rooms available that

same day of the event and I contacted the client and informed them about the situation. The client contacted the hotel and was able to change the room for their event. It was my planning that saved both myself and my client some embarrassment had we not changed the room. I have since spoken for this same client every year for the past 4 years because of the attention to detail I provided as part of my planning when I first spoke for them. This little “extra” effort on my part made me memorable to the client.

Look at speaking engagements as opportunities to practice your speaking skills.

To be truly prepared and effective as a presenter, you must pay attention to all 7 of these aspects discussed above. This will take practice. The time you spend remembering these aspects will be worth the effort.

Lenny Laskowski is an international professional speaker and the author of the book, 10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking and several other publications. Lenny’s products can be purchased “on-line” from this website at:. Lenny is also available for hire to speak to your organization, college or association. Lenny also provides in-house seminars and workshops. Why not contact Lenny today for your next function or event..

Speaking - From FREE to FEE

Many people often ask me what it takes to get people to “pay” you to speak. Before an organization is willing to pay a speaker they need to feel there is value in what the speaker has to say. Keep in mind speaking for free does NOT mean that you do not offer something of value.

The goal of speaking before a group should not always be motivated by money. I can remember situations during my career where I would have been willing to pay for the opportunity to speak to a group. One thing that always occurs when you are speaking before a group, whether being paid or not, is that you are making impressions to everyone in that group. The more people that hear you speak, the more people there are who can refer you to others who CAN pay you.

Organizations such as Rotary, Elks, Lions, Moose, Chamber Of Commerce need speakers all the time. Several non profit organizations and associations have

meetings every month and often have trouble looking for speakers. Contact all your local associations and introduce yourself. Many of the members of these associations have businesses of their own and often have the ability and authority to “hire” speakers to speak within their own organizations.

The speaking business, and I emphasize the word “business” is a heavily referral based business. Most people prefer to have a friend or colleague refer a speaker to them that they have actually heard speak. The more people that hear you speak and are familiar with your abilities and message the more people there are who can refer you to paying clients. Whether you get paid to speak or speak for free you should focus on delivering your message to each audience.

Most audiences have people who do have the ability to hire you or know someone else who can. I can honestly trace paid speaking business to many of the free speaking engagements I have performed. Over the years I have learned various methods and techniques that help me to maximize these free speaking engagements.

Often these same organizations that do not have budgets for the speaker can offer other “in kind” services that are worth more than your actual speaking fee. For example, I have spoken for an organization who did not have a budget to pay speakers but did have the resources (people & equipment) to professionally videotape my presentation. In the end they provided me with an original recording along with several copies of the video of my presentation. Had I hired someone to professionally videotape my presentation, it would have cost me much more than my regular speaking fee.

Many speaking bureaus will not hire you until they have seen and heard you speak. They may hire you if someone they know refers you but typically will still ask for a demo tape (audio or video). Whenever I am speaking at an association meeting in a new city, I try to contact the local speakers bureaus and let them know I will be speaking in the area. After getting permission from the client who hired me, I offer the speakers bureau the opportunity to come and hear me speak.

When you do speak to any organization, bring plenty of business cards. Have your name, address and telephone number on all your handout materials. I also include my web address and e-mail address as well. It still amazes me the people

who have attended keynotes I have delivered 3 or 4 years ago contact me because they saved my handout. I have had people who have attended one of my sessions give copies of my handouts to other people they know because they felt the materials I provided were worth sharing. These people, just based on the handout, called me and hired me to speak to their group.

Speaking to associations is a key part of my marketing efforts. Let me explain. The bulk of my speaking services (about 60%) is providing “in house” workshops and seminars to the corporate market. Another 25% is “keynote” speaking to associations and organizations. Providing “one-on-one” coaching to executives and individuals accounts for 10% and the remaining 5% is providing local continuing education seminars. These four types of speaking provide a constant source of referral based leads for my business. The percentages do vary from year to year. Some years I may spend 40% of my time delivering keynotes, 20% coaching individuals and the balance of 40% is providing “in-house” corporate programs. A lot will depend on associations. Most associations will not hire the same speakers as they hired last year. If they do hire you again it may not be until 3 years later because they like to have different speakers each year. On the other hand there are associations that I have spoken to each year for the last 4 years, but I will usually provide a different program.

Not all speakers can provide “in house” seminars and also provide keynote speeches. The speaking skills involved for delivering a keynote and not the same as those skills required to provide a “hands-on” workshop. The keynote speaker is usually hired to entertain a group at some special function. That is not to say, that the keynote speaker does not offer substance and education value, but the speaking delivery and approach of a keynoter requires some different skill sets. This is important to understand from a marketing perspective since the people you may be marketing to are different.

Corporations typically hire trainers and workshop leaders. They generally do not hire keynote speakers for “in house” programs. They are looking for people who can provide some type of training for their staff.

Associations generally hire keynote speakers, lunch time speakers and after dinner speakers for one of their regular meetings or special annual meetings.

Some associations will also offer some special training seminars to their membership in conjunction with their event. The speaker who can provide both a keynote and training session will often be hired because they can meet the needs of the client for both speaking situations. For example, in October of this year I will be providing three half day seminars for a client as part of their annual conference. On the last day of their conference, I will also be providing the lunch time keynote. Because I was already being paid my full fee for these three seminars and needed to be there during lunch, I offered to provide the lunch time keynote at no additional fee. This is a “win-win” situation for both of us

Keep in mind, many of these association members also work for corporations who need “in house” programs. Speaking at association meetings continues to generate leads and actual work for me as an “in-house” trainer. I have even provided many FREE lunch-time 45 minute programs that have lead to multiple “in house” seminars. The condition of providing the program FREE was to require that key decision makers attend these lunch time programs and hear me speak, especially those people who have the authority to hire me. I also make sure I am introduced to these people during the lunch time event and follow up with them afterwards. This was the way I “broke into” the corporate market and established some credibility as a corporate trainer. These corporate executives then referred my name to other corporate executives, which in some case were either their next door neighbor of a member of the same church they attended. As I mentioned earlier in this article, this is a referral based business. I can trace many of my best paying clients back to some “pro bono” speaking I provided either that year or a few years earlier.

Many of these associations will often provide you with the names & addresses of their entire membership list. I also ask the person who hires me to provide me the names and contacts of other people they know who they think may be interested in hiring me. I also ask that they make the initial contact with these people. When I do call them, it is not a “cold call” but a follow up call to the one initially made by the people who hired me. I add the names of these people to my mailing list, especially the members who attended my session and heard me speak. If you do offer to speak for free, ask that the person who hired you provide some kind of press coverage and place an article in the local newspaper announcing your speaking engagement. Always try to have them include a photograph of you as

part of the article. An article with a photograph always draws more attention. It also helps you establish a “celebrity” status, at least in the local newspaper. Other executives, both corporate and associations will read this article and may contact you just based on the article. This article will more effective in attracting other business, than a classified ad you would have paid a lot of money for.

You can even call the local newspapers and mention that you will be speaking in the area and offer to write a short article about your topic that they could publish in the local newspaper. The article should not be too promotional but offer some sound advice to the typical client you would like to attract. Have them include your name, address and telephone at the end of the article so people will be able to contact you. This also lets the newspaper know that you would be available as a good contact for future articles and believe me they will contact you.

Another effective method is to become an active member of key associations who have the types of business contacts that may be good for your business. Becoming an officer in the association affords you the opportunity to become first known as a member of this association and get to know the members personally. Through this professional association, the other members become more familiar with your speaking services and what you have to offer. They are then in a better position to either refer you to someone they know or even hire you for their own company.

The moral of the story is to speak every where, even if for free. It works. The more people who know about you the more people there are who can tell others. Continually build your network of business contacts and soon you will be asked to speak for your full fee. The key is to learn how to “leverage” these FREE speaking engagements into generating PAID speaking engagements.

How to Create a Great First Impression

They say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover but how many of us judge people by the way they talk, or even by the way they answer the telephone?

We form opinions about people the first time we see or hear them. We even form opinions about people we have never met!

People’s “perception” about us DOES matter. As a professional speaker who provides workshops, keynotes and consultations on presentation skills and public speaking, I know that we are all judged by people through “What we say”, and “How we say it”. We are also judged by “How we Dress”, “How we walk” and even “How we eat our food”. In the work environment, we judge people by the size of their office, the location of their office or by the number of people working for us. As a business owner YOUR company is judged by the way your receptionist answers the telephone or greets people at the door.

Think about it!

You CANNOT, NOT! make a first impression. People always form an initial impression about us the first time they come in contact with us whether it is in person or whether it is over the telephone or even by the way we leave a message on THEIR answering machine. Every other contact with us after that first time either supports or conflicts with that first impression. Create a good first impression and the relationship grows from there. Create a bad first impression and your relationship with that person can be an uphill battle.

Whether we are communicating “one-to-one” over the telephone, “one-to-a-group” such as a small business meeting or “one-to-a-hundred” such as during a presentation other people’s impressions of us is very important and we should work hard to make sure that FIRST impression is a great one. Below I have provided some tips to help you make a great first impression in two telephone situations:

1. Receiving a telephone call 2. Initiating a telephone call

Receiving a Telephone Call

1. Answer the telephone by the 3rd ring (Or your answering machine) - I usually answer my phone by the second ring and rarely do I answer it on the very first

ring. My answering machine will automatically answer my phone after the third ring.

2. Make sure your greeting is professional. - It is important that your greeting is friendly and professional. Don’t answer the telephone and try and speak with food in your mouth! - (How many of us can tell when the person we are speaking to on the other end is EATING!).

Playback your answering machine,s personal greeting. Does it sound professional? Do your greet people politely?, do you leave them with instructions on “what to do”? I am amazed how often I call someone and their answering machine greets me with a greeting which I can’t understand, and worse the person has used the words, “Uh”, or “Uhm” over 3 times during the 15 second greeting. Remember I am a speech coach and I especially notice these things.

3. Be prepared before you answer the telephone. - Have a pencil or pen along with a pad of paper near your telephone so you can write down important information such as their NAME. When speaking to them, use their NAME during the conversation but don’t overdo it.

4. Be an “active” listener. - by using step 3 above you can be an active listener by writing down important information. Ask them to spell their name if you are not sure. Ask them when it is the best time to call them back.

5. If you answer the telephone and someone wants to ask you some specific questions but you ARE NOT prepared because their file is in the other room or at the bottom of the pile just say, “I am in the middle of something at the moment, can I call your right back?”. This will give you a chance to collect the materials you need and when returning their phone call you are now prepared to speak. (A more controlled situation). If they insist on “holding on” just say, “Please give me a moment to get your file”.

NOTE: If you put someone on hold DO NOT make them wait more than 30 seconds. I have had people put me on hold for so long I was able to read that article I was dying to read while waiting for them.

6. If you are out of town, check your messages frequently. I usually check my messages twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, unless I am not able to interrupt what I am doing. If I am in the middle of a seminar or coaching session with a client, THEY are the most important priority. I will call at a break or when I get home.

7. Return telephone calls promptly. - One of most unprofessional things a business can do is NOT RETURNING PHONE CALLS. How many of us have attempted to contact some over a period of days or even weeks and you find that YOU are the only one initiating the telephone call. One of the comments I have heard from my clients or potential clients is, “Thank you for returning my call so promptly!” or “Thanks for getting back to me”. I have actually been hired for speaking engagements over other speakers because I not only returned their call but I returned it that same morning, not 3 days later.

I have been contacted by newspaper reporters who are working on an article and have contacted me for my expert opinion. I have even had calls from magazines who would like to publish one of my website articles and are calling for permission and need to know TODAY!

Remember, these people are often working on a deadline to complete their article and cannot wait days for you to return their call.

8. If you have a staff which works for you, call in once in a while on the road and see for yourself how they greet people when they call. Pretend you are a potential client. How were you treated over the telephone? If it was less than favorable, it’s time to make some changes.

Remember that first impression WILL be initiated by that “in coming” telephone call and the impression you make, either directly by you, your staff or even your answering machine’s greeting or voice mail will determine if they call you back. Think about the eight points I have discussed and make changes or adjustments where you need to.

Initiating the Telephone Call

1. Organize your thoughts before you place your call. It is important that you are concise but thorough with your call. I like to make a short list of important items I want to discuss during the telephone call. In the event I do not actually “connect” with the person I need to, I can quickly summarize a short message based on these notes. Have a pad of paper and a pen or pencil handy to take notes.

2. When speaking on the telephone try to SMILE.-When we smile and change our facial expressions, it affects the sound of our voice. Our vocal tone can be greatly affected by the manner when use our facial muscles. One of the oldest telephone sales tricks is to have a mirror near the telephone so you can monitor your facial expressions and to be sure you are smiling. Several studies have indicated that as much as 87% of the opinions people form about us when speaking to us on the telephone are based on the tone of our voice. Only 13% is based on the actual words we use. We all do this. People can “hear” our personality and mannerisms through the tone of our voice.

3. Should the person you are trying to contact ACTUALLY answer the telephone (I know this can throw some of you off when they do), after shortly introducing who you are, begin by asking them, “Is this a good time to talk?” You may have called while they were in the middle of something and will appreciate your consideration. If they are, ask them when the best time would be to call them back. Remember to be sure and call them back at the correct time.

4. If you are trying to reach a senior level officer (CEO, President or V.P.) call after usual working hours. You are more likely to get the CEO to answer the telephone after normal business hours since their clerical staff has gone home. Should their secretary or receptionist also be working late and answer the telephone, be kind and courteous as you always should be with them. They may be working late and would appreciate a kind voice at the end of the day.

5. Do not speak too fast! - Slow down when you are leaving a message, especially if you have an accent. I receive many messages where I cannot even understand what the person is saying. Even worse, I cannot write fast enough and I find myself replaying the message several times to record the entire message.

6. Pronounce your name clearly - Announce your name slowly and clearly, especially if your name is not a common name. Spell your name slowly if necessary. Allow people to get the correct spelling of your name.

7. Slow down when saying your telephone number - This is the biggest complaint I have when people leave their telephone number. People state their telephone numbers TOO FAST! Say the numbers slowly and place a “pause” somewhere in the sequence of providing your number. People will appreciate this, especially me! Repeat the telephone at the end of your message so they will not have to play back the message.

8. Give your company name, your title & why you are calling - Describe to the person, in a few short sentences who you are, which company you are with and why you are calling. If you are requesting information, leave a detailed but brief message.

9. Let them know when to call you back - Leave a date, time, and preferred telephone number for people. They can’t return your telephone call if you don’t leave your telephone number. Providing them with the preferred time to call back makes it much easier for them.

10. Always sound professional - Remember what I indicated in the beginning of this article. People DO judge you by the tone of your voice and what you say. If you come across sounding unprofessional in your message, they may not return your telephone call. Also, do not leave very long winded messages or they will stop listening.

Setting Your Personal Speaking Goals At the end of each year I try to sit down and establish some new goals for the upcoming year. Before I do this I take some time to reflect on the previous year as what I accomplished. I try to look at what went well this year as well as what did not work so well.

It is only after this process can I decide what makes sense to eliminate and what makes sense to keep doing.

Do you set goals? Do you have some established end-of-year routine that you do to determine what needs to change? If you don’t already, this is the year to start the process of reflecting on your accomplishments for the previous year and establishing new goals for the current year.

I often decide in the early part of each year what seminars, workshops or training I want to take for myself. People often ask me why I continue to attend seminars even though I am a professional speaker. I tell them that even professional speakers need to “sharpen their skills” or even attend courses to just validate what they do now.

Professional speakers learn a lot from each other. Professional speakers realize the importance of honing their skills on a regular basis and often work with speaker coaches. Whether you are a professional speaker or someone just starting as a speaker it is important to constantly improve what you do. Maybe your goal is to develop a new or additional topic to speak on. That’s what I did… I have prepared several sessions aimed at helping other people, especially speakers grow their internet business. My new 90 minute keynote and FULL day session is entitled, “How to Grow Your Business Using the Internet”. These programs are designed to help people with the powerful technology we have in front of us today…The internet.

Maybe your goal is to become a professional speaker or maybe your goal is to speak more than your did last year. Maybe you goal is to learn how to use the internet more effectively. In any event, take the time to reflect on what your did this past year and write down what you hope to achieve this year.

Five Ways to Make Your Body Speak Dr. Ralph C. Smeadly, the founder of Toastmasters International, wrote, “The speaker who stands and talks at ease is the one who can be heard without weariness. If his posture and gestures are so graceful and

unobtrusive, that no one notices them, he may be counted as truly successful.” When your actions are wedded to your words, the impact of your speech will be strengthened. If your platform behavior includes mannerisms unrelated to your spoken message, those actions will call attention to themselves and away from your speech. Below I have provided 5 ways you can rid yourself of your distracting mannerisms.

1. Rid Yourself of Distracting Mannerisms

Eliminate vocal and visual impediments.

Some common faults of inexperienced or in-effective speakers are:

• Gripping or leaning on the lectern

• Finger tapping

• Lip biting or licking

• Toying with coins or jewelry

• Frowning

• Adjusting hair or clothing

• Head wagging

These have two things in common:

• They are physical manifestations of simple nervousness.

• They are performed unconsciously.

When you make a verbal mistake, you can easily correct it, because you can hear your own words, but you can’t see yourself, so most distracting mannerisms go uncorrected. You can’t eliminate them unless you know they exist.

Videotape yourself.

The first step in eliminating any superfluous behavior is to obtain an accurate perception of your body’s image. This should include:

• Posture

• Gestures

• Body movement

• Facial expressions

• Eye contact

The next step is to free yourself of physical behaviors that do not add to your speech. This can be accomplished by simply becoming aware of your problem areas. After you have videotaped yourself speaking, review the tape several times and make a list of all the distracting mannerisms you notice.

First review. Review your tape the first time without looking for mannerisms. Just listen to the presentation as if you were hearing it for the first time and evaluate the overall impact you experience from watching the tape.

Second review. Review your tape a second time (with the volume turned down) and look for visual distractions. Take notes on what you observe.

Third review. During this review, have the picture turned off and listen only to your voice. Many people have never even heard a taping of their own voice before. Become accustomed to listening to your voice. Get to know it as others hear it. Note what you like and what you don’t like. Pay attention to the speed, the volume, and the tone of your voice.

Fourth review. Once you have made lists both of your distracting mannerisms and your more positive points, you are ready to have one or two family members watch the tape with you. Get their initial impression. Ask them to be honest.

Once you have completed these reviews, go over the list of all the distracting mannerisms you saw and heard. The next time you are having a conversation with someone you know well, try to notice whether you use any of these distracting mannerisms even in casual circumstances. Tackle each of your negative points one at a time.

2. Build Self-confidence by Being Yourself

The most important rule for making your body communicate effectively is to be yourself. The emphasis should be on the sharing of ideas, not on the performance.

Strive to be as genuine and natural as you are when you speak to family members and friends.

Large vs. small audiences. Many people say, “I’m okay in a small group, but when I get in front of a larger group I freeze.” The only difference between speaking to a small informal group and to a sizable audience is the number of listeners. To compensate for this, you need only to amplify your natural behavior. Be authentically yourself, but amplify your movements and expressions just enough so that the audience can see them.

3. Let Your Body Mirror Your Feelings

If you are interested in your subject, truly believe what you are saying, and want to share your message with others, your physical movements will come from within you and will be appropriate to what you are saying.

By involving yourself in your message, you’ll be natural and spontaneous without having to consciously think about what you are doing or saying. For many of us, this isn’t as easy as it sounds because it requires us to drop the mask that shields the “real self” in public.

To become an effective speaker, it is essential that you get rid of your mask and share your true feelings with your audience. Your audience

wants to know how you feel about your subject. If you want to convince others, you must convey your convictions.

Speak from the heart and to the soul.

4. Build Self-confidence Through Preparation

Nothing influences a speaker’s mental attitude more than the knowledge that he or she is thoroughly prepared. This knowledge leads to self-confidence, which is a vital ingredient of effective public speaking.

How many of us have ever experienced a situation in which we had not prepared well for a presentation? How did we come across? On the other hand, think of those presentations that did go well. These are the ones that we had properly prepared for.

5. Use Your Everyday Speaking Situations

Whenever you speak to people, make an extra effort to notice how you speak. Observe, too, whether the facial expressions of your listeners indicate they do or do not understand what you are saying. Before calling to request something on the phone, plan and practice what you are going to say. Even this is essentially a short presentation. Another exercise is to prepare a 90-second presentation about yourself. Describe who you are and what you do. Record your presentation and review it using the four steps described above.

Since you are talking about yourself, you don’t need to research the topic; however, you do need to prepare what you are going to say and how you are going to say it. Plan everything including your gestures and walking patterns.

Facial Expressions

Leave that deadpan expression to poker players. A speaker realizes that appropriate facial expressions are an important part of effective communication. In fact, facial expressions are often the key determinant of the meaning behind the message. People watch a speaker’s face

during a presentation. When you speak, your face-more clearly than any other part of your body-communicates to others your attitudes, feelings, and emotions.

Remove expressions that don’t belong on your face.

Inappropriate expressions include distracting mannerisms or unconscious expressions not rooted in your feelings, attitudes and emotions. In much the same way that some speakers perform random, distracting gestures and body movements, nervous speakers often release excess energy and tension by unconsciously moving their facial muscles (e.g., licking lips, tightening the jaw).

One type of unconscious facial movement which is less apt to be read clearly by an audience is involuntary frowning. This type of frowning occurs when a speaker attempts to deliver a memorized speech. There are no rules governing the use of specific expressions. If you relax your inhibitions and allow yourself to respond naturally to your thoughts, attitudes and emotions, your facial expressions will be appropriate and will project sincerity, conviction, and credibility.

Eye Contact

Eye contact is the cement that binds together speakers and their audiences. When you speak, your eyes involve your listeners in your presentation. There is no surer way to break a communication bond between you and the audience than by failing to look at your listeners. No matter how large your audience may be, each listener wants to feel that you are talking to him or her.

The adage, “The eyes are the mirror of the soul,” underlines the need for you to convince people with your eyes, as well as your words. Only by looking at your listeners as individuals can you convince them that you are sincere and are interested in them, and that you care whether they accept your message. When you speak, your eyes also function as a control device you can use to assure your listeners’ attentiveness and concentration.

Eye contact can also help you to overcome nervousness by making your audience a known quantity. Effective eye contact is an important feedback device that makes the speaking situation a two-way communication process. By looking at your audience, you can determine how they are reacting. When you develop the ability to gauge the audience’s reactions and adjust your presentation accordingly, you will be a much more effective speaker.

How To Use Your Eyes Effectively

1. Know your material. Know it so well that you don’t have to devote your mental energy to the task of remembering the sequence of ideas and words.

You should prepare well (remember to use the 9 P’s) and rehearse enough so that you don’t have to depend heavily on notes. Many speakers, no matter how well prepared, need at least a few notes to deliver their message. If you can speak effectively without notes, by all means do so. But if you must use notes, that’s fine. Just don’t let them be a substitute for preparation and rehearsal.

Even many experienced speakers use notes. Often, they take advantage of such natural pauses as audience laughter or the aftermath of an important point to glance briefly at their notes. To make this technique work, keep your notes brief. (See Chapter 6 for more on this topic.)

2. Establish a personal bond with listeners. How do you do this? Begin by selecting one person and talking to him or her personally. Maintain eye contact with that person long enough to establish a visual bond (about 5 to 10 seconds). This is usually the equivalent of a sentence or a thought. Then shift your gaze to another person.

In a small group, this is relatively easy to do. But, if you’re addressing hundreds or thousands of people, it’s impossible. What you can do is pick out one or two individuals in each section of the room and establish personal bonds with them. Then each listener will get the impression you’re talking directly to him or her.

3. Monitor visual feedback. While you are talking, your listeners are responding with their own non-verbal messages. Use your eyes to actively seek out this valuable feedback. If individuals aren’t looking at you, they may not be listening either. Their reasons may include one or more of these factors:

They may not be able to hear you.

Solution: If you are not using a microphone, speak louder and note if that works.

They may be bored.

Solution: Use some humor, increase your vocal variety or add powerful gestures or body movements.

They may be puzzled.

Solution: Repeat and/or rephrase what you have just said.

They seem to be fidgeting nervously.

Solution: You may be using distracting mannerisms. Maybe you have food on your clothes (or worse, maybe your blouse is unbuttoned or your fly isn’t closed). Make sure you are aware of these embarrassing possibilities before and during your speech. If necessary, try to correct them without bringing more attention to them. On the other hand, if your listeners’ faces indicate pleasure, interest and close attention, don’t change a thing. You’re doing a great job!

Your Appearance

If your listeners will have on suits and dresses, wear your best suit or dress - the outfit that brings you the most compliments. Make sure that every item of clothing is clean and well tailored.

Don’t wear jewelry that might glitter or jingle when you move or gesture. This might divert attention from your speech. For the same

reason, empty your pockets of bulky items and anything that makes noise when you move.

Part of the first impression you give occurs even before you are introduced to deliver your speech. As the audience arrives, your preparation should be concluded. You shouldn’t have to study your speech. Instead, mingle with the audience, and project that same friendly, confident attitude that will make your speech a success.

When you speak-especially if you aren’t well known to the audience-the most crucial part of your presentation is the first few minutes. During that initial segment, the audience will be making critical judgments about you. Your listeners will decide whether you are confident, sincere, friendly, eager to address them and worthy of their attention. In large measure, they will base this decision on what they see.

After your introduction, walk purposefully and confidently to the speaking position.

Walking Patterns

Why move in the first place?

Moving forces people to focus and follow you. The way you walk from your seat to the speaker’s position is very important. When you are introduced, you should appear eager to speak. Too many speakers look as though they are heading toward execution.

Walk confidently from your seat to the lectern. Pause there for a few seconds, then move out from behind the lectern. As discussed before, it is wise to use the lectern as a point of departure, and not a barrier to hide behind.

Smile before you say your first words. Be careful not to stand too close to, nor move beyond, the people in the front row. Be careful not to walk too much. Doing so will work against you. Continuous pacing is distracting. Walking can be an effective way to stress an important idea.

It is essential that your walk be purposeful and intentional, not just a random shift of position. Taking about three steps, moving at a shallow angle, usually works best.

When employing visual aids, use three positions. One position is your “home” position and should be front and center. The other two positions should be relatively near the “home” position. Never stand in front of any visual aid.

When you practice your speaking, make sure you also practice your walking patterns. Try walking to and from your three positions. These positions should be planned just as your hand gestures are.

When standing still, remember to maintain good posture. Stand up straight.

Remember it’s not what you say it’s how you say it and your body does speak very loudly. Only when you marry your verbal message and your nonverbal message do you begin to command presence as a speaker.<P< BODY>

What Not To Do When Making a Keynote Presentation -keynote n : an address

designed to present the issues of primary interest to an assembly and often to arouse unity and

enthusiasm. A wonderful communication device, that keynote presentation is. Did you ever have

to sit through a bad one? It happens. If you would like to give a -snoozer- yourself, here are a few

sure-fire ways to give your audience the sleep they may have been lacking.

1. TRY TO FOOL THE AUDIENCE. It probably won’t work. Audiences are very perceptive.

They know when the speaker in congruent and “walks the talk”. They also know when the

presenter is just giving a book report, having spent a little time in preparation to learn about the

high points of the topic presented. When you are the keynoter, your audience ought to sense that

you are not just a gallon of water, but, rather, a fountain of knowledge.

2. READ IT FROM YOUR TEXT. We liked hearing stories read to us as children. But our

audiences are adults. They want to experience what is in your heart and in your mind. Notes to

guide you through the important points are fine, but if you are reading from a text, you may as

well hire a professional actor who is trained to bring a script to life. Know your material cold.

Tailor it as you deliver it. As your audience reacts to a particular point, expand on it. Feed them

what they hunger for.

3. USE INSIDE STORIES. Be sure to mention some event or some anecdote about someone that

most of your audience will know nothing about. Isolate the majority of your audience. Keep them

in the dark. Make them feel that they are not among the chosen few. Use their time to have a

private, inside dialogue with someone. They will be riveted.

4. MAKE YOUR AUIDIENCE THE BUTT OF A JOKE. Humor is a wonderful

communication tool (if you are funny). Self-deprecating humor that reveals your own

vulnerabilities and foibles works. Stories about people and events, other than your audience, if

done in good taste, will set the tone for a positive learning environment. But if you direct the barbs

of your humor directly to your audience, you set up an “us versus him/her” climate that will

interfere with your message getting out. Attacking an audience, even if not meant to offend, will

tend to make them defensive and distrustful of the speaker.

5. GO OVER THE TIME LIMIT. You have a contract with your audience. Their obligation is

to be attentive. Yours is to deliver the material that was promised and to do it within the

announced time frame. If you are given twenty minutes, finish in twenty minutes. If no time frame

is announced, tell the audience up front how much of their time you will take. (“We are going to

be together for the next 50 minutes and during this brief time”). I frequently tell my audiences at

the outset of my presentation, “I will be your speaker and you will be my audience. If you get

done before I do, please let me know.”

Dr. Donald E. Wetmore-Professional Speaker

Productivity Institute, Time Management Seminars,

60 Huntington St. P.O. Box 2126, Shelton, CT 06484

Toll Free: (800) 969-3773 or (203) 929-9902 fax: (203) 929-8151

Hints for Eliminating Visual or Verbal Clutter

These tips will help you become more aware of your speaking manner:

1. Before you begin to speak, think about the words you want to use.

Think about what you want to say before you open your mouth.

When you find yourself saying uhs and ums (verbal clutter), stop yourself and repeat the sentence, this time replacing the ahs and uhms with silence.

Use the pause as an effective technique. Work hard at replacing this verbal clutter with a simple pause, and during these short pauses allow your mind to catch up and think about what you want to say next.

Practice some of these quick tricks in everyday speaking situations such as making a phone call or

running into someone at a bank or store, but this time focus on replacing your verbal clutter with

silence.

HOW TO CURE THE VERBAL VIRUS -

A FIVE-STEP TREATMENT PLAN

Warning! You may be infected with a virus that could be lethal to your sales, your public relations and even your social life. I call it a “Verbal Virus”. Verbal viruses are meaningless fillers that speckle our speech, distract from our message, drain our impact and annoy listeners. I call them verbal viruses because they seem to be contagious and we pick them up without being aware of it. The most common verbal viruses are: “uh” “um” “like” “you know” “well” “okay” and “sort of”. They also include annoying mouth sounds and lip smacks. Verbal viruses are jarring to the ear and inconsistent with a professional image. They can make you sound unsure, unprepared and poorly educated. The good news about verbal viruses is that they are easily cured. Here’s my 5-step plan for prevention, treatment and cure.

1. DIAGNOSE THE PROBLEM: Since verbal viruses are unconscious, the only way you’ll hear them is on tape. Record a few of your phone calls on a typical business day to quickly determine if you are suffering from a verbal virus infection. 2. PAUSE: Whenever you catch yourself saying a non-word, just stop talking. Say nothing. This gap of silence will feel scary at first, but if the pause is no longer than 5 seconds, the listener will scarcely notice. A pause will help you gather your thoughts while giving the listener time to reflect on what you have just said. 3. RECORD THE VOICEMAIL MESSAGES YOU LEAVE FOR OTHERS: Listen to them at the end of the day and note whether or not unwanted fillers have crept into your messages. 4. ENLIST THE HELP OF A FRIEND OR SPOUSE: Explain what you are trying to do and invent a code word he or she can use every time you use a filler word. The constant reminder will help you break the habit fast.

5. HOLD YOUR BREATH. When you feel you are about to use a non-word, take a breath, hold it for a moment and then begin to speak. The focus on your breathing will occupy your mind, keep you calm and centered and make the silence between the words seem much less scary.

From “The Voice Coach” ezine by Susan Berkley, reprinted with permission. Author of The Voice Coach ezine, a newsletter that provides tips and techniques for people who want to make a powerful and positive impression every time they speak. Susan is a top voice-over artist and communications expert. A former radio personality (including the Howard Stern Show), Susan’s voice has been heard on thousands of TV & radio commercials and telephone lines. You’ve probably heard her say: “Thank you for using AT&T.” Susan is the author of Speak to Influence: How to Unlock the Hidden Power of Your Voice, dozens of published articles, several comprehensive audio tape programs on voice-over careers, and more! Her proven techniques are used by business and sales people, customer

service representatives and even medical professionals who use their voices to soothe their patients.

HOW TO GET ANY AUDIENCE TO LOVE AND ADMIRE YOU:

Six Lessons Learned From FDR’s Fireside Chats

Although TV and radio are mass media, the best broadcasters are able to make each listener feel as if they are sharing an intimate one-on-one conversation. They never elevate themselves about their audience, but speak to everyone as if they were a dear, cherished friend.

Perhaps the first broadcaster to use this technique was President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his famous radio broadcasts, the “fireside chats.” FDR delivered 31of these chats over the course of his presidency, beginning on March 12, 1933. Fortunately for us, he was closely observed by his labor secretary Frances Perkins, who gives us great insight into FDR’s media style.

Here’s what we can learn from Perkins’ observations of FDR. While these techniques are especially useful for radio and TV interviews, use them when speaking to ANY audience; over the phone or face-to-face.

1. He visualized his audience as individuals, never as a mass of people.

When I was a broadcaster on the #1 morning show in New York City, there were hundreds of thousands listening. If I had thought about all these people, I probably would have fainted out of nervousness. Instead I imagined that the only person listening was my very best friend. Your audience listens to you one person at a time, so speak to them as

individuals, never as a group. Create a prototype audience member and make up a story about their life, their problems, their needs. They are sympathetic to your cause. They have come to you for help. Speak to this one person whenever you have a faceless audience- on radio, TV or over the phone. With practice, you can learn to transpose the face of your prototype onto an entire live audience.

2. He visualized his audience on the porch, at the dinner table.

The dinner table visualization works great to create a feeling of intimacy and trust. I use it all the time when pitching my products and services over the phone. I imagine I’ve invited the other person over for dinner. We’re having a casual conversation in a familiar setting. We both feel comfortable and relaxed . The telephone works just like the radio. It’s the theatre of the mind, and you are the set designer. So create a set that works for you.

3. He was conscious of their faces and hands, their clothes and homes.

The more specific you are about your listener, the more you will connect. Can you tell me the color of their eyes? What are they wearing? Where do they live? Hands speak volumes about a person. What do they reveal?

4. His voice and facial expression as he spoke were those of an intimate friend.

Your tone of voice is closely linked to your facial expression. A frown on your face will make your voice sound harsh and cold. But a smile will warm up your voice, making it sound warm and inviting.

5. As he talked his head would nod and his hands would move in natural, simple gestures.

Most people think that good communication is mouth-centric. Nothing could be farther from he truth! To be a powerful communicator, you have to use your entire body. Gestures and body language add energy and enthusiasm to your speech.

6. His face would smile and light up as though he were actually sitting on the front porch or in the parlor with them. People felt this and it bound them to him in affection.

A smile is one of the most powerful tools you have to create rapport with your listener, even when they can’t see you! Smile while you speak. Smile while you dial. Smile even if you don’t feel like it. The techniques used by FDR over 60 years ago are still relevant today. Give your very own fireside chat the next time

you have to speak to an audience: over the air, on the phone or face-to-face ...and that’s one more way to unlock the hidden power of YOUR voice.

From “The Voice Coach” ezine by Susan Berkley, reprinted with permission. Author of The Voice Coach ezine, a newsletter that provides tips and techniques for people who want to make a powerful and positive impression every time they speak. Susan is a top voice-over artist and communications expert. A former radio personality (including the Howard Stern Show), Susan’s voice has been heard on thousands of TV & radio commercials and telephone lines. You’ve probably heard her say: “Thank you for using AT&T.” Susan is the author of Speak to Influence: How to Unlock the Hidden Power of Your Voice, dozens of published articles, several comprehensive audio tape programs on voice-over careers, and more! Her proven techniques are used by business and sales people, customer service representatives and even medical professionals who use their voices to soothe their patients.

SOFT SPEAKER RX:TOP 4 WAYS TO LET YOURSELF BE HEARD Do people often tell you that they can’t hear you or understand what you’re saying? You may think it’s because you are not speaking loudly enough. But actually, volume may be only part of the problem. I suggest doing a systems check on these four areas:

ARTICULATION/PRONUNCIATION

VOCAL VOLUME LEVEL

VOICE PROJECTION

THE WAY YOU FEEL ABOUT YOURSELF

1.ARTICULATION/PRONUNCIATION

There is a difference between not being heard (being inaudible) and not being understood (being unintelligible). Sometimes people confuse the two. Unintelligibility may be caused by problems with articulation and pronunciation. People with poor articulation can sound throaty because their tongue is pulled too far back, or they may sound muffled because they don’t move their tongue

enough when they speak. Both problems affect our ability to be understood. Make sure your tongue is positioned toward the front of your mouth and that you use your tongue to clearly enunciate your words. For severe articulation problems, consult a licensed speech pathologist.

If you mispronounce your words you will also have a difficult time being understood. Brush up on pronunciation skills by consulting a good pronouncing dictionary. At the Merriam Webster website you can actually hear how many words are supposed to be pronounced in standard American English. Try this cool

2. CONTROLLING VOCAL VOLUME

Imagine that your voice has a volume knob with five settings:

1-WHISPER

2-SOFT

3-CONVERSATIONAL

4-LOUD

5-YELL

For normal and healthy conversational speech, do not use volume levels 1 or 5. Both can strain the voice. Yell only in an emergency and save your whispers for the library, theatre or bedroom.

Strive to speak most of the time at volume level 3. Use levels 2 and 3 for color, emphasis and variety. A conversational level will differ with each situation. To be heard it must be adjusted so that we are speaking at a level that is slightly louder than the background noise around us. Obviously, there is much more background noise, for example, in a crowded restaurant than in a quiet conference room.

3. PROJECTING THE VOICE

Volume level should not be confused with projection. To project the voice, don’t try to yell or force it out of your body. This causes strain. To have a voice that carries well, you must use your body’s natural resonators.

Your body has three resonating cavities: the voice box, the mouth and the nose. The voice is produced at the vocal chords and then amplified in the facial mask around the lips and nose. To have a beautiful voice and project it without strain, you must focus your voice in the facial mask, blending the oral and nasal resonators.

Speech therapist Dr. Morton Cooper says the simplest way to find your facial mask is to hum. Try it now. HMMMMMMMM. Good. Now practice alternating humming and speaking. HMMMMMMy name is Susan. HMMMMMy favorite color is blue. HMMMMany people say I’m a great dancer... etc. Have fun with it. Practice humming and speaking throughout the day. Once you get the hang of what a resonant voice feels like, you can drop the hum and feel the vibration of your words in your facial mask.

4. THE WAY YOU FEEL ABOUT YOURSELF

I have found that there is often a strong psychological component to communication difficulties. Soft speakers may unconsciously be trying to hold themselves back, inhibit their self-expression, or stifle themselves, and these factors should be explored.

What to do After Delivering a Bad Speech With every speech one gives, one should always ask themselves two things:

1. What did I like about the speech I just gave? 2. What would I have done differently if I had to do it all over again?

One thing to remember is that no speech is ever perfect. There have been many effective and powerful speeches delivered over time where the speaker did not have the perfect diction or even had distracting mannerisms; however, the message they gave was powerful and the audience will often overlook some poor speech habits if the message was effective.

At the same time, there are many smooth and slick speakers who appear to be confident and eloquent, but when it comes down to it, their message is not clear and the audience is not motivated or inspired.

Remember, there are always three speeches a presenter gives:

1. The one we planned 2. The one we gave

3. The one we wish we gave We often beat ourselves up over the speech we “wish we gave”. Don’t beat yourself up, but ask yourself, “What would I do differently the next time I give this speech”?

Hopefully, you recorded the speech so you can accurately assess your verbal and non-verbal aspects of your speech. Below are some tips I would recommend you seriously consider to improve your speeches:

• First ask yourself, “What was my intended message of my speech?” Listen to your speech and determine if this message came across clearly?

• Was my speech too long or too short? If it was too long, what might I consider changing to reduce the time I took? If it was too short, do I really need to make it longer? I am not aware of anyone who got upset with a speaker who spoke shorter than you had anticipated.

• What verbal or non-verbal distracting mannerisms did I use? Did I have too many “uhs” or “ums”? These usually occur when a speaker feels they must be speaking constantly. If one just replaces these “uhs” or “uhms” with a pause the speech will sound better.

• Did my speech have a good structure? Did it have a clear introduction, did it have a clear body and included some main ideas and points, and lastly, did I have an effective closing? Did I give the audience a “Call to Action”? In other words, tell them what to do with the information I just provided them.

• Don’t be afraid to make changes in your speech or presentation so it can be better the next time we deliver it.

• Learn to speak using our everyday conversational language. Quite often, we attempt to use phrases or verbiage that is not our usual style and it is awkward to us and it comes across awkward in our speeches. Learn to be as conversational as we can.>

Grow from every speech you give. Public speaking is a learned skill and some of the best speakers today will admit how terrible a speaker they were in the past. Practice your public speaking and take the time after each speech to assess what you liked and did not like about the speech. Sometimes the exact same speech is very effective and well received, while other times it may not be. The reaction of an audience is not always within our control and we are not responsible for the audience.

If you come away, feeling you delivered the best speech you could deliver; however, the audience did not react as you expected, it may not have been your speech. It may have been the time of day, the attitude of the audience or some other attribute of the speaking environment outside of your control. Remember, tomorrow is another day and the next time you deliver the exact same speech, may result in a standing ovation.