The Gestalt of Public Speaking.

Why do you need to learn better public speaking delivery skills?

When speaking, content is king, no doubt. However, if all you have is content and no delivery skills do everyone a favor: Write up a report, hand it out and keep your seat.

Delivering a speech is a gestalt, worth more than the sum of its parts. Good content, well delivered is more powerful than the content alone flat on the page.

You will actually undermine your content with poor speaking skills. People will tune out. Worse, they will decide that your poor speaking skills are directly related to the quality of your ideas.

Learn better delivery skills to get out of your own way and let your message shine.

What are your thoughts on content and delivery?

When communicating...

INFORM me with useful knowledge infused with wisdom.

ENTERTAIN me to help me pay attention.

PERSUADE me to think or feel something different, because why else should I listen.

INSPIRE me to DO something different!

A Really Scurvy Story About Change

Great ideas always spread rapidly, right? People see the obvious merits of a really good idea and change, don't they?

Let's look back in history at the treatment of scurvy in Britain's Royal Navy.

Oooo exciting.

On long sea voyages many years ago, scurvy killed more sailors than all other causes, including warfare and accidents. For example, 160 men sailed around the Cape of Good Hope with Vasco de Gama in 1497. 100 died of scurvy.

Captain James Lancaster conducted an experiment in 1601 to see if lemon juice could prevent scurvy. Captain Lancaster commanded 4 ships. He gave 3 teaspoons of lemon juice to the sailors on one ship. Most stayed healthy. The men on the other three ships, his control group in modern parlance, did not get the lemon juice. 110 of the 278 men on the ships that did not get the juice, died of scurvy.

Clear cut evidence, right?

So the British Navy immediately started to give lemon juice to its sailors, right?

Of course not.

In 1747, almost 150 years later, another experiment was conducted by James Lind a British Navy doctor. He found when sailors, stricken with scurvy, were given citrus fruits, the treatment cured them.

Wow! Surely the British Navy was overjoyed at this news and started supplying citrus fruits and juice to sailors on all its ships.

It did, in 1795... 48 years later!

And in 1865, a mere 70 more years, the British extended the policy to its merchant marines. Yay!

Why so long?

No one really knows. Maybe because even though Captain Lancaster was a captain, he wasn't as famous a Captain as Captain Cook, whose journals did not support a link between citrus and a reduction in scurvy. And maybe the the good Dr. Lind simply wasn't a prominent doctor who might have had the ear of some naval bigwig (and in those days bigwigs literally had...big wigs).

Whatever the reason, here's what you need to know:

Just because you have a good idea, just because it's proven to work does NOT mean your idea will be adopted.

You will have to work to get even the best idea accepted, let alone implemented. Knowing how to talk to those who can help, knowing how to rally people to your cause, these skills are as important as your idea.

Persistence and perseverance often trump brilliance.

Searching for Speech Topics?

Just don't do it!

Instead, of wondering what should I talk about, ask what do they need.

It's a better approach and immediately starts helping you relax. With this approach you are not the focus, your audience is.

Don't hunt for a topic. Decide what you want your audience to do. Your audience may be a client, a prospect, a group of fellow employees, your club, the city council whoever you talk to. What do you want them to do differently after your talk?

Gather the information they will need, then design, deliver and interpret that information in a way that will lead your audience to action. This way your focus is on the audience.

What THEY say after you're done talking.

After my presentation last Saturday a woman came up to to comment on something I'd shown the group about peeling a banana. It was just a little thing, really. But this woman was moved... by something I didn't do to move people but to illustrate a point. You just never know.

She said that her sister had cerebral palsy and the woman believed her sister could learn to peel a banana using the trick I had demonstrated in my session. She was moved to have learned something that might help her sister be just a little bit more independent.

I just opened and peeled the banana from the flower end rather than the stem end. (Try it sometime. You just squeeze the tip and the banana opens right up.)

I was inspired to share this by a post in Darren LaCroix's blog here http://www.humor411.com/blog/2008/03/what-do-people-say-after-you-give-a-presentation/

Way to Promote Your Business!!

My wife and I have a water garden and keep koi. We belong to a club of other people who do likewise called the Capital Area Koi and Water Gardening Club.

Last night a fellow from a Michigan gardening business called Grass Roots, that deals in water gardening supplies and pond fish gave a presentation on how to open and clean one's pond in the spring. Given the matter-of-fact subject we could have been in for a llllooooonnnnggggg night.

But Scott was interesting, imaginative, and funny. How do you get funny out of cleaning the guck from the bottom of your pond?

Well, I don't know how but he did. He looked and sounded like someone from The Sopranos. He was chewing gum. He read from his notes.

Was it a polished, perfectly articulated, presentation complete with PowerPoint?

No. It was better! It was REAL! He was REAL!

He earned Grass Roots a lot of goodwill with about 40 folks who buy a lot of supplies and fish.

That means business.

Speak Up! Promote your business, your career, or your community organization by speaking to groups who can, and will, buy.