The Leader's Guide to Speaking with Presence

John Baldoni

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780814433805
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Whether in a meeting or a presentation, a watercooler conversation or a formal speech, a leader's most important job is to.

Your idea may be groundbreaking. The potential profits might be exhilarating. The time to act may be right now, but if you're not able to craft and deliver a clear message that doesn't lead the audience to gain your perspective, that can be the difference between your pitch being transformational and becoming forgettable.

Executive coach and leadership expert John Baldoni provides this concise tool kit containing more than 100 practical tips for creating and communicating meaningful messages with presence and authority.

In The Leader's Guide to Speaking with Presence, you will discover how to:

• Present their ideas clearly and provide context
• Radiate confidence and put the audience at ease
• Refine their delivery
• Use stories to inform, involve, and inspire
• Leverage the energy of any room
• Convey optimism tempered with reality to gain buy-in
• Turn PowerPoint presentations into performances

When a leader learns to own the room with an authentic and persuasive speech, the audience will become putty in their hands. The Leader's Guide to Speaking with Presence helps leaders achieve the kind of genuine presence that evolves into lasting trust and quantifiable influence.

CHAPTER 1

THE SOUND OF YOUR LEADERSHIP SPEECH

 

SOMETIMES REFLECTIONS on leadership lead us to unconventional places. Communication is central to a leader's ability to connect with others. One way leaders connect is through a formal presentation, that is, a speech. The types of speeches are infinite in style and content, but there is something more important than the style or content of a speech, and that is its ability to engage the heart and mind. And for that reason, I like to draw a parallel with something else that does the same, a piece of music.

Think of a speech as a piece of music. Like a piece of music, it has melody, harmony, and rhythm. Melody rises and lowers according to the words. Harmonies are facts and stories blended for meaning. And tempo, fast or slow, matches mood and meaning. Put more simply, every good speech must have its own signature, a rising and falling according to meaning and a tempo dictated by emphasis.

SCORING YOUR SPEECH

Understanding a speech as a score is not strictly an exercise in the arcane, so let me give some pointers that speech givers can learn from musicians and their scores.

• Opening. You want to grab the audience's attention. You want to state the purpose of your presentation, that is, what you are going to say and why you are here. Your opening emerges from your content. You may wish to pick out a point to emphasize and lead with it. Don't give away all the details, but you can, as with a musical phrase, give a foretaste of what's to come.
• Pitch. Up and down, crescendo and diminuendo, make music worth listening to. Your voice is your instrument. Sometimes you are loud, other times you are soft. Up and down. If it were all the same tone, it would become boring. Chant, be it Gregorian, Hebrew, or Buddhist, is delivered flatly. That's for spiritual effect. Speeches are a different matter; fluctuation in voice pulls the audience into what you are saying.
• Rhythm. Most importantly, your speech, like music, must be delivered with verve and pace. How often have you heard a piece of music played at the wrong tempo? It sounds awful. The notes may be correct, but if the tempo is off it sounds terrible. As someone who tried to play piano, I can attest to the power of rhythm. Listening to me try to play Gershwin was an exercise in “I ain't got rhythm.” Pacing for a speech is the same. Monotone is deadly, be it slow or fast. We need variation.
• Pause. If you do nothing else in your next speech, pause. Nothing expresses presence like a purposeful pause. The adjective “purposeful” is essential. In music we call them rests or even pauses. They are noted for a reason. A pause could be for emphasis, or it could be for effect, or it could be for reflection. All pauses give your listeners time to reflect on what you are saying. Pauses are powerful.
• Closing. You want to leave them, as great musicians do, wanting more. You want to end on a high. As with your opening, your closing, be it a summary or a call to action, emerges from your content. So you could end with an upbeat and powerful closing, a mighty crescendo. Or you could close with a soft and intimate whisper. Whatever method you choose, make it memorable.

AN ART REDEEMED

Not all speeches will, or should, have all these elements. Some remarks are impromptu and spontaneous, though many a great speech giver, from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill, practiced long and hard on their “off the cuff” remarks. If you do have the opportunity to speak without prepared remarks, keep a couple of things in mind. First, open by acknowledging the audience. Second, vary your pitch; starting strong is fine, but ease up from time to time to give your audience a chance to digest your ideas.

Giving a speech is somewhat of a lost art, but like music, it is an art that can be quickly regained with rehearsal. Practice what you are going to say. Doing it in front of a mirror works fine for gauging your reactions and rehearsing your gestures.

One more pointer. It is not necessary to memorize what you are going to say. Musicians often have scores in front of them; they know the order of the notes as well as the time signature. The same applies to speaking. Go through your words thoroughly so you know what's coming next as well as the context of the words. When speakers stumble, it is less because of mispronunciation than because of forgetting the context, that is, forgetting why they are saying what they have written. This kind of brain-fade is not uncommon, but it comes from not paying attention or from focusing too closely on words rather than on sentences. Scan the sentence as you speak so you will emphasize key words. Otherwise you will sound like a first-grader reciting a poem about which he or she knows nothing or like a nonnative speaker sounding out words one by one.

Speech delivery, like playing an instrument, is an art that can be mastered; it simply takes a willingness to try and a commitment to speaking in public whenever you have the opportunity to do it.

ACTION STEPS

As you consider your next presentation, think:

• How will you open your presentation on a high note?
• Where might you pause for emphasis?
• How can you make time to rehearse your presentation?
• What are the high notes? What are your points of emphasis?
• What points might you emphasize with a pause?
• How will you close your presentation? Will you tell a story? Or will you issue a call to action?

CHAPTER 2

PRESENT AS A LEADER

 

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN an executive scurry across the stage with his head down, clutching a copy of his presentation, and begin speaking immediately upon reaching the podium? Such an executive resembles a mouse seeking shelter more than a leader about to deliver an important message! Yet we see this kind of behavior all too often. What the speaker has failed to do is acknowledge the audience. Worse, he has failed to demonstrate leadership, the kind that emerges from personal presence.

From my experience in working with executives, I find it is typically not the presenter's fault; she has not been schooled in basic presentation skills. For many people, speaking in front of a live audience can be so terrifying that their single overriding wish is to get it over with as quickly as possible. I teach the presenters with whom I work the art of the “metaphorical handshake,” imagining introducing themselves to each person in the audience.

This is something you want to do when you take the stage to put the audience in a mood to listen to you. Even though they may be seated, they have a full agenda of things to think about from their work or home lives. As a leader, you cannot control what they are thinking, but you can, with your words and behavior, put people at ease and enable them to listen to you more attentively. That is a leadership statement. Here are three suggestions for accomplishing this:

1. Make personal contact. Look at your audience. Nod at people you know. Smile and relax your facial muscles. Some speakers like to wave at the audience, especially at people they recognize. Size up the audience as you reach the podium. Take a deep breath, pause, and look out at the group. Imagine you are a conductor. Your baton is your voice, but before you raise it, you wait for a beat or two.
2. Acknowledge the audience. Before you start speaking, comment on something that everyone in the audience may have in common. It may be the weather. It may be traffic. It may be a busy schedule. Put yourself in the audience's shoes and acknowledge their presence.
3. Break the ice. Effective presentations depend on connection. People want to know you, so you have to reveal yourself appropriately. No life stories please, but offer comments on the connection you feel to your audience. If you are comfortable telling a funny story, do so. If you are not, or if the mood is one of solemnity, then speak about the urgency of your message. These comments may seem ad lib, but you can script them in advance to deliver them as if they were off the cuff.

Of course, some skilled presenters actually do shake hands with audience members prior to taking the stage. They do it moments before the audience files in or as they take the stage. Politicians are adept at doing it. For a speaker, it is an energizing experience and also helps to break the ice with the audience.

Presenting effectively can be a huge challenge for many of us. But learning a few simple techniques about connecting with the audience can go a long way toward establishing a platform for confident delivery, and, more importantly, it can put the audience in a mood to listen to you. Most importantly, it affirms your leadership strengths and gives people a reason to follow your lead.¹

ACTION STEPS

As you consider delivering your next presentation, think:

• What will you do to “make friends with the audience”?
• What steps will you take to put them at ease?
• What is a good way for you to “break the ice”? Will you use a story, a comment on the weather, or humor?

CHAPTER 3

MAKE THE AUDIENCE FEEL WELCOME (AND BANISH STAGE FRIGHT)

“ACCORDING TO MOST STUDIES, people's number one fear is public speaking. Nu...