The higher you advance in your career, the more likely your chances for appearing on camera—as panelist on an early morning talk show, as an interviewee on a newscast, as the “endorser” of a company training program, as the spokesperson for corporate policy and procedures regarding your latest merger or acquisition.

If your overall appearance doesn’t command respect, your message will float into never-never land. Good looks and expensive clothing don’t necessarily have to be part of the picture on the screen. But you must look confident, authoritative, and professional. Can you communicate all that simply through appearance? Certainly. What’s your impression of the TV personality PeeWee Herman? A nerd, right? Even before he opens his mouth. Appearance creates much of our total speech impact.

For on-camera speeches, you have to pay special attention to clothing, make-up, and gestures to make sure the real you gets translated on the screen. First, your posture and mannerisms: Most people notice that they have a rather stern look on camera. To lighten up your facial expressions, try to adopt an “amused” expression. That is, lift your eyebrows slightly and keep your gaze and chin turned slightly upward. Sit or stand straight and keep your gestures close to your body, moving your hands between waist and head only. Be careful about sudden movements toward the camera—an outstretched hand or shifting your weight and recrossing your legs. Such gestures look aggressive and even make your hands or arms much larger as they plunge forward. Wide, sweeping gestures and pointing figures are greatly exaggerated on camera and may make you look hysterical rather than authoritative. Remember to keep your palms upward and open to welcome intimacy with the audience rather than crossing your arms defensively across your chest.

Eye contact is what generally throws speakers off-stride. When you are used to the warm feedback and encouraging nods of a live audience and instead face a cold camera, you tend to become mechanical yourself. Instead, force yourself to gaze into the camera as if into a lover’s eyes. Caress the camera with your eyes to show sincerity and warmth.

Or try to visualize the camera as a colleague sitting directly in front of you, nodding or raising an eyebrow at everything you say. For practice, sit in front of a mirror and talk to yourself with gestures and all. See how you look; “feel” your facial expression and the warmth from the mirror. Your subconscious can remember that feeling so that it doesn’t seem so foreign and cold to you in a studio.

Clothing is easier to handle because you can prepare ahead of time without having to account for nervousness and the resulting forgetfulness. Camera lenses have difficulty in balancing certain extreme colors such as black, white, and red. Also, you want to avoid fabric patterns that “move”—stripes, dots, plaids, shimmering prints. Plain colors at the center of the spectrum package you best for the screen.

If you wear glasses, avoid ornate ones that shine and call attention to themselves. Touch the frames with powder to tone down the shine. In fact, avoid any accessory that “stands out”; you want the audience to remember you and your message, not the necktie or necklace you were wearing.

Where make-up is concerned, the idea is to look natural. The days of the necessity for heavy make-up on screen are over. That means that you should avoid bright, shimmering colors in lipsticks, eyeshadows, and blush, which the camera will accentuate and “play with” to your disadvantage. Powder any shines on the forehead, nose, chin. Cover dark circles or shadows under the eyes, which will be even darker on camera.

In general, if you are understated in your own mirror, your coloring will be fine under the bright lights of the camera.

This attention to your movements and gestures, clothing, and make-up will add the polish that enhances your professional appearance and important message.

If it can go wrong, it will. If you speak routinely, it’s simply a matter of time until you must deal with some disaster. The lights go out and plunge the entire room in total darkness for half an hour. The screen for showing the sales figures stands lopsided so that all your visuals look as though somebody wrote them lying down.

Plumbers are next door pumping the water from the burst pipes. The carpenters are tearing out the wall at the back of the room. The lighting flickers, causing migraines for the people seated in the center of the room. The meeting next door scheduled simultaneously with yours boasts six sopranos singing the Amway “fight” song.

The only answer to these disasters is to check out every possible glitch beforehand. If you have disasters over which you have absolutely no control or no warning—such as a power failure or improperly working equipment—simply stop your speech and locate someone who can help.

If the distraction is outside noise, call an unscheduled break and see if you can deal with it yourself. If not, make a joke of it and continue. Continually referring to the noise and showing irritation increases the distraction. If you ignore it, your audience will generally follow your lead.

Being human, you’ll find hecklers much more difficult to ignore. Keep in mind, however, that hecklers generally create audience sympathy for you and create hostility for themselves. If you can ignore them without showing irritation yourself, continue your speech and your audience will listen all the more carefully to what you say and sometimes “handle” the hecklers for you.

If hecklers do gain attention so that the audience can’t listen to you, you can always ask them to give their name and their company before they state their objections. Hecklers are much braver when they can hide behind anonymity. But put on the spot to give a name and associate their organization or company with the disturbance, they seem to give their behavior second thoughts.

If the hecklers begin their harassment before your speech, try to make them see you as a person rather than a “company representative.” Physically move toward them and make eye contact. Courteously ask why they are protesting. Your sincere approach sometimes defuses their hostility, regardless of whether it changes their views, and gives you peace during the speech. Remember that only you control the microphone.

When you find yourself in front of an out-of-control audience for any reason—freak accident, power failure, malfunctioning fire alarm—you simply have to let the air clear before you regain control. After the situation is again under control, tell a personal experience or joke related to what just happened. Or simply acknowledge the interruption, and then begin again. The audience will empathize with you and give you their attention all over again.

If you hear someone say he or she isn’t nervous before a speech, you’re talking either to a liar or a very boring speaker. If speakers don’t have a certain amount of anxiety, their adrenalin will not be flowing to push them to a peak performance.

The secret is to perform despite the nervousness, actually making it work for you rather than against you.
“Stage fright” often begins long before we’re on stage. If you’re like most, the condition overtakes you the moment someone phones to ask if you could “put together a few words for Charlie’s retirement banquet” or “kick-off the district meeting with a little encouragement to the sales staff.”

Fears come in all flavors. We fear that our information or comments are not exactly what the audience expects, needs, wants, or agrees with. We fear they’ll challenge our authority or attack our performance. We fear making an embarrassing misstatement or omitting a key point or illustration that would render the entire message murky. We fear embarrassing ourselves in any number of ways, some rational and some not.

What shakes our normal confidence in our ability to perform on the job is the absence of feedback. In a one-on-one conversation, we get verbal nods, smiles, questions, and other encouragements that help us to communicate clearly. Before a group, that feedback comes to us differently. We simply have to be our own inner motivator to keep the energy and enthusiasm flowing.

So how do you tweak that nervousness and make it work for you in the absence of encouragement from a one-on-one contact? First, the physical things: Take a few deep breaths and exhale slowly. Let all the muscles in your body go limp, then tense them, then let them go limp again. Yawn, dropping your jaw and keeping your tongue flat against the bottom of your mouth. Suck in a few short breaths and you’ll yawn yourself into relaxation. Take a brisk walk or jog before showing up at the event.

Second, the psychological things: How do you talk to yourself to rid yourself of irrational fears? Try these tracks: “What’s the worst thing that can happen to me if I bomb this speech?” “Will the Wall Street Journal run a story about my fiasco on the front page?” “Will these people physically assault me?” “Who will even remember what I said three days from now?” “Will my career take a nosedive if I blow this opportunity?” “Will I never have another opportunity to redeem myself with another speech?”

In case of a poor speech, time is on your side. People quickly forget exactly how you said something and tend to remember only that you spoke. If you can live with the answers to any of these questions, your performance will be uphill.

When you feel those butterflies, get them in formation and visualize the swarm as a powerful push propelling you to a peak performance.

To Write or Not to Write a Complete Script?

That’s the question. For assurance that the words will come when you need them, many speakers like to have a complete draft in hand. A draft helps you time a speech and polish your prose.

If you choose to draft a version, try dictating it so that your sentences and choice of words will be closer to being usable than those from a draft that has been composed by writing. Then edit your draft, using the techniques mentioned in the previous chapter.

Once you’ve polished the prose, you’re ready to throw away the script—almost. You want your polished draft for your practice but not necessarily for your delivery. And your practice will depend on your delivery method. Let me elaborate:

To Read or Not to Read Your Script?

Reading from a full script, speaking from an outline or notes, and memorizing—these are your delivery choices until technology makes it possible and affordable for all of us to have a portable teleprompter the size of our pocket calculator.

Here are the pros and cons of each delivery method.

Reading From a Full Script

You’ll be tempted to use this method because preparation time is less—if time is the sole issue. If effectiveness also matters to you, consider the pros and cons:

Pros—
• A script quiets your fears that you will go blank. Every single word in black and white in front of you provides a security blanket.
• Your timing will be perfect. You will know exactly how long each point takes, and with practice in reading, you will know that you can end on time.
• Your language will be more exact, precise, colorful, and grammatically correct than if you speak extemporaneously. You’ll have opportunity to rework and polish each sentence.
• You’ll have something “official” to give to the media if you’re a spokesperson for your organization. Scripts are often necessary if you have to gain official approval of your exact wording from your company’s public affairs officer or if you’re otherwise concerned that you’ll be misquoted. You can, however, always provide a written text to the media for their quotes and still deliver the thoughts extemporaneously.

Cons—
• You’ll have little eye contact with your audience. No matter how much you’ve practiced your upward glances, you’ll be tempted to read more and more. Particularly in the all-important beginning when you either win or lose your audience’s attention. The reciprocity of the situation is lost. When you speak to an audience eye to eye, you have their attention because they have yours. When you stare at the script, their temptation is to reciprocate by looking at their own notes or glancing around the room at others’ reactions.
• Your words lose their genuineness and intimacy. When you can’t look your audience in the face, you lose one of your best techniques for credibility. The effect is the same as when a lover who speaks a language different from his sweetheart pulls a scrap of paper from his back pocket and reads, “I love you for your beautiful personality, your thoughtfulness, and your sensitivity.” She gazes at his eyes while he gazes at the paper.
• You won’t sound natural. Despite the skill of an experienced speaker, you’ll have difficulty not sounding stilted—much like the “average Joe” testimonials on TV commercials.
• Your gestures will be nonexistent or contrived. To be effective, gestures should come from the gut. Reading stifles that unconscious signal to gesture where necessary.
• You’ll be tied to a podium without the freedom to move toward your audience.
• You may lose your place. The danger is that you’ll frantically find yourself paused in an inappropriate spot groping for the next phrase or idea.
• If it’s an audience you know well, they’ll contrast the way you usually talk and gesture with this different image and focus on the disparity between the two.

Speaking from Notes or Outline

By far, this is the most effective delivery method for the majority of speakers. Here are the pros and cons for your own evaluation:

Pros—
• You can maintain the all-important eye contact throughout.
• Your ideas will seem genuine and intimate because they will be spoken in your own spontaneous way with fresh inflection and emotion.
• Your gestures will be natural.
• Notes will provide you with an outline for security but freedom to move around and interact with the audience.
• You will have no fear to add or delete ideas, facts, or illustrations as necessary to suit audience needs or reactions. You’ll eliminate the fear of losing your place and your poise or of trying to find a spot in the script to jump back in.

Cons—
• Your exact phrasing will not be as precise as when read from a polished script.
• Your timing will vary.

Memorizing Your Speech

The final presentation method is memorization.

Pros—
• If you work very hard to memorize a script verbatim with all the appropriate inflection and gestures, you will sound like a genius—although maybe a robot genius.

Cons—
• If you have a memory lapse, you will feel like an idiot and your audience will think you foolish for being so “unprepared.”

How to Learn Your Material—Whichever Delivery Method You Choose

To Read from a Full Script

Whether or not you intend to use your script in actual delivery, prepare it for practice with inflection and timing. First, consider the layout of the page. Always double or triple space. For ease of reading, consider laying it out in two columns. Your eye can grasp shorter lines much easier than longer ones. That’s why newspapers and magazines use short-line, column layouts.

You may also skip extra lines between paragraphs to signal yourself that you’re finished with an idea.
If you decide not to use the two-column arrangement, then you probably will want to add further markings to your script to help you grasp ideas in a glance and deliver them with the proper pace and emphasis: Mark a single \ to indicate a pause; mark a double \\ to indicate a longer pause. With a highlight pen, mark key words and phrases that need special emphasis. Choose certain colors to help you quickly grasp the layout of your ideas. For example, use green for basic key points, red for examples and statistics, blue for the introduction to a long anecdote.

As for ease of handling your script, don’t break a sentence, paragraph, or list between two pages. And never type the script in all uppercase type; upper- and lower-case lets your eye quickly grasp where sentences begin and end.

Leave pages unstapled so that you can lay them aside more easily as you read each one. You may also want to insert margin notes for use of visuals, demonstrations, or other movements away from the podium.

If you plan to use a full script in delivery, always, always deliver your speech from the same copy you used to practice. Your mind will “photograph” chunks and the first words of a section will help your brain recall the remainder.

When you deliver your speech, don’t try to hide your script. The audience will know you’re reading, and trying to discreetly hide the script looks deceptive and silly.

Finally, concentrate on the meaning of what you’re saying rather than the phrasing. With concentration on concepts, your inflection, pauses, and gestures will improve.

To Speak from an Outline Only

If you agree that the outline-only delivery method lends the advantages you need, prepare two kinds of delivery aids: a full practice outline or script (laid out and marked as previously described) and a brief delivery outline.
A practice outline is a detailed outline on multiple pages or note cards. Again, the benefit of such detail is that it serves as a memory crutch for practice. But the negatives are that you will fumble with the pages during delivery and refer to the outline too frequently, losing eye contact and destroying credibility. For your actual delivery, construct only an outline of key words on a single page or on a few note cards that will trigger your memory with just a glance.

Try what I call a half-and-half outline script: Write the opening statement and the transitions for each point in polished form. Then express the meat of the idea only in key words. Those ideas will remain spontaneously fresh in the final speech.

Here are a few other guidelines to help you handle your notes or outline during delivery: Always number any note cards, but feel free to reshuffle them as needs change. Note how much time each point or illustration takes so that you can make an on-the-spot decision about what to eliminate or add if time runs short or long. Memorize your opening, your closing, and your transitions between points.

No audience will mind that you use notes or an outline. After all, they want to know you’re prepared. The issue is how you use them. To avoid depending on them too much, practice with your detailed outline. Then use only key words or phrases on your final outline to force yourself to look at your audience and deliver your points with conviction and freshness.

To Memorize a Script Verbatim

Prepare a written text (laid out and marked as previously described) and read it and reread it and reread it. Practice from the same script because your eyes will “photograph” copies of the page to aid memorization.
Break it into chunks and memorize one chunk at a time, devising some acronym or other mnemonic device to remind you of the correct order of the chunks.

My suggestion is not to memorize your script verbatim. You’ll fear going blank, particularly if there are any distractions. Memorization also makes the audience uneasy. At first they marvel, and then they worry that you’ll make it to the end.

But learning your material is a must.

Read your outline, notes, or script over and over. Read it aloud. Time yourself on each section and record the timing in the margins. Connect the ideas in some acronym and learn to predict the next thought before your eyes catch the next prompt.

Then stand in front of a mirror to practice so that you can see how often you are able to glance up from your notes.

After you’ve grown less and less dependent on your script or notes, memorize the opening, the transitions between key points, and the closing. That will allow you to maintain the all-important eye contact at the most important times—when you’re making a first impression and your audience is deciding whether you’re worth listening to, and at the conclusion when they fix in their minds how good you were.

As you practice, don’t be tempted just to read through your notes without actually expressing the key ideas in complete sentences. As someone has said, “There’s no substitute for scrimmaging.” The time required to express your ideas aloud in complete sentences and in the correct order will add polish and confidence to your “real” speech. Particularly pay attention to your delivery of any funny stories. They, more than any other part of your speech, succeed or fail based on delivery.

Do it live, aloud, alone. Do it in front of a mirror, an audiotape, or a videotape. Video is by far the best because you will be able to see distracting mannerisms, poor posture, and weak gestures. If a video is unavailable, an audio is the next best thing. You’ll catch irritating voice fillers (aahh, uh, okay, right?) and repetitive phrases (Let me emphasize that…).

Additionally, you’ll become more aware of your rate of speech, the tendency to let words trail off at the end of sentences, mumbling, or poor diction. You will also note where to add emphasis and variety. Another benefit of audiotaping is that once you record your speech, you can listen and fix the material in your mind as you complete other tasks such as driving to work or eating. Tape. listen. Rehearse again. Tape. Listen. Retape. You’ll hear dramatic improvements, and, again, these improvement will build your confidence.

Finally, you can practice in front of friends, family, or colleagues and get their feedback. If they’re interested, your enthusiasm and confidence will grow. If their attention wanders, you need either more practice or better material!

Have you ever seen a novelist’s first draft or a speech writer’s first script? If so, then you know that an excellent speech represents several drafts of hard work. I once heard prize-winning short-story writer Grace Paley laugh about the problem when she’s supposed to be the expert. “I try to let my students see my own struggles with rewrites. Sometime I even take one of my own drafts to class—it’s usually somewhere around the seventh or eighth draft, but, of course, I tell them it’s the first.”

Force Yourself to Edit

If you’re an excellent speaker, you’ll never be satisfied with a first draft. Editing paves the road to perfection.

First, in editing be aware of the subtle differences between the written and spoken word. As a writer, you can use longer sentences and a multitude of sentence patterns. You can also decide to be formal or informal in word choice and tone.

By contrast, as a speaker, you need to use shorter sentences, simpler words, and easy-to-hear words. The best speakers also use a less formal tone—contractions and the “you” approach.

A president may write: “Finally, corporations must examine one remaining classic manufacturing enterprise, namely, the production of major household appliances found in most cultures around the world.”

But she’ll be wiser to say: “Let’s take a look at a classic manufacturing enterprise—appliances such as refrigerators, washers, garbage disposals. You’ll find them everywhere.”

The difference makes it apparent why we have so many deadly speeches: Many speakers try to “present” an article published in some journal or monthly sales report to the board of directors.

If you want a good feel for the differences in your own spoken and written words, select a written report and read it aloud so your ear can help you with the tone. (If you need a prop, hold the telephone receiver and pretend you have another person on the line.) Ask yourself: Would you really say those words? If not, change them for a speech.

Another consideration in determining speakable words is the use of foreign phrases and other difficult-to-pronounce words. Former president Lyndon Johnson was notorious for making his speechwriters change words that he found difficult to say.

We all have them. In recording an audio series for Nightingale-Conant, I discovered that I couldn’t say the word error. After two days of trying to correct the problem, we had to replace every occurrence with mistake. So consider having a friend make you aware of words you may have been stumbling over or mispronouncing for years. A friend’s correction is much less embarrassing than an audience member’s mention of your goof.

As a final consideration in your editing, add emotional appeal. Some words sound like their meaning. For example: She harangued him and hammered at his confidence.” Or: “She clobbered the intruder.” The hard sounds help convey the meaning.

Choose words that are specific and visual, words that make the listener feel: For example, here’s a ho-hum sentence: “Accountants prefer to eliminate these retirement benefits for our elderly.” An emotionally charged example: “Beancounters want to cut off the money to your retired grandparents.”

Ho-hum: “Withdrawal of capital can be quickly achieved with these alternatives to lobby service.” Improved: “You can dash right up to the automatic teller, get your money, and be on your way.”

As you edit, also cut out the fat. Think lean.

Remember Rhythm

According to some people, you’ll never be a great dancer if you don’t have natural rhythm. But that’s not true with drafting a good speech. You can plod and clop along in a first draft and then go back and add the rhythm with a few simple techniques: triads, variety in sentence length and pattern, and alliteration.

Let’s take them one at a time. First, triads. That’s the use of three’s—three words, three phrases, or three sentences. For some reason, people like to hear speakers talk to the beat of three:

Thank you for your invitation, your attention, your support. All that remains is your action.

Today is a day of progress and growth. Of celebration and fear. Of zeal and commitment. Today is the occasion of….

He gave us hope. He gave us courage. He gave us love.

Triads work wonders for your style.

A second consideration is sentence construction. Sentence pattern and length are to writing what inflection is to speech. When sentence patterns are inverted, cumbersome, and long, even the most skilled speakers have difficulty in breathing in the appropriate places and inflecting the appropriate ideas. That doesn’t mean that you’ll never have a long sentence in your speech text. You may. But it should be preceded or followed by a short one that packs punch and gives your listener time to catch up.

Sentences that are parallel also add beauty and help the audience anticipate and follow equal ideas:

We gave for varied reasons: That the lonely could find companionship. That the bereaved could find comfort. That the frightened could find peace. That the sick could find health.

We are one nation—black, white, brown. We are Protestants, Jews, and Catholics. We have Irish blood, Indian blood, German blood. We are intellectuals and of common thinking. We are lighthearted and somber. We are engineers and beauticians, artists and plumbers. We make our home in the East and in the West. We are liberal and conservative, rich and poor.

Finally, don’t forget how easily you learned nursery rhymes and how easily you still recall song lyrics. Why? For the most part, they rhyme. The technical term for that is alliteration—repeated sounds in words.

Here’s an excellent line from a speech delivered by James Baker, former CEO of General Electric:

U.S. business faces a threefold choice in the eighties: automate, emigrate or evaporate.

And here are a few other examples:

Their numbers mushroomed—with clubs, cokes, and cartoon characters on every corner.

Americans eat peppermint and pistachio. They listen to Mozart and Michael Jackson. They drive Cadillacs and Camaros. To Americans of our century, freedom means an array of choices—from lifestyle to livelihood.

We wish you health, happiness, and hope.

To add punch to your own speeches, make ample use of triads, alliteration, and sentence patterns that are both varied and, on occasion, parallel—depending on the effect you intend.

Like dancers with fancy footwork, those people who “have a way with words” have learned these simple techniques to add rhythm to their speeches. The result is music to an audience’s ears.

When running short on time, beginning speakers will generally cut the anecdotes and the illustrations from the speeches. Just give the audience facts, they tell themselves, the rest is fluff.

Not true.

Anecdotes and illustrations make ideas understandable and memorable. They give vague concepts specific interpretations. We don’t understand the “bad economic climate” until we know that means our relatives can’t sell their house in Dallas,… that the computer company won’t deliver the equipment unless we prepay the invoice,… or the tax base for our child’s school has declined by $40 million dollars.

Always prefer to cover two points with several illustrations rather than cover ten points with no illustrations. Anecdotes and illustrations breathe life into your sentiments.

The important question then is not whether to add or to omit illustrations, but which ones have the greatest impact. For the most part, the best are those that are brief, personal, and closely related to your specific audience and subject. Those that also appeal to the emotions are a bonus.

Brief: In general, the longer the story, the better the punch line or the emotional wallop must be.

Don’t confuse speechmaking with lovemaking. In lovemaking, the longer the romance and anticipation, the greater the satisfaction. Just the opposite is true in giving a speech. Anticipation of a point or punch line can build hostility in the listener. When an audience tunes into a story, they are making an investment of time in its outcome; the details along the way are rarely significant within themselves. When your listeners get to the end of the story, they must feel that it has been worth their investment of attention.

On the other hand, to convey the major idea of your speech, a long story may be far more memorable because of its length and perceived importance that bears its telling. I once told an eight-minute, blow-by-blow narration of a speaking tour across the country to illustrate one major point—poor customer service. I wanted the audience to feel the growing frustration of such a lengthy ordeal. But such a lengthy anecdote for one point is rare.

Length conveys importance of the idea. Don’t mislead your audience with a long story for a short point.

Personal: Search for the story or illustration that you can make your own. Of course, source books of biographical sketches, quotes, and maxims serve as excellent references for one-liners. And you can start your own anecdote file with clipped articles, stories, cartoons, and statistics as you read newspapers, magazines, and journals. One tip: File them by subjects you’re interested in as you go; illustrations not quickly retrievable are of little value to you.

If you choose a “canned” story or illustration, then personalize it. If you’re talking to accountants, the hero in the story becomes a number cruncher. The buffoon of your punch line becomes your Uncle Joe rather than “the farmer.” The department store may become a computer shop.

But there is no substitute for the personal experience story—your experience or that of a colleague or acquaintance, or your real Uncle Joe.

Don’t say that computers have increased rather than decreased the paper blizzard that floods our office. Instead, tell me how many documents your office generated in the process of correcting an incorrect billing on the Hooker account.

Don’t say that quality service should be the aim of everyone in your organization. Instead, tell me how a nobody, such as Joan Croy in your office, discovered a defective gadget in Customer Jones’s typewriter and repaired it on the spot during her lunch break when she was technically off the clock.

Illustrations—whether anecdotes or statistics—carry far more weight with audiences because they are woven of common people, common circumstances, and common feelings.

For example, a headline from the Scripps Howard News Service reads: “Taxes cost 163 minutes for every eight working hours.” That puts the “high cost of taxes” in perspective; we work almost three hours out of eight to pay them. Then the writer goes on to illustrate other facts: Food and tobacco cost 59 minutes; transportation, 40 minutes; medical care, 39 minutes; clothing, 24 minutes; recreation, 20 minutes; and all other expenses, 50 minutes.

Bombarding your listeners with numbers confuses them so that they recall none. To make those you select meaningful, bring them within the understanding of your audience. Make them personal.

Related to subject: In addition to being brief and personal, a statistic, anecdote, or other illustration must be closely related to your point. Most speakers violate the “illustrations must be related” rule when they are searching for humor. Yes, humor adds a light touch to an occasion and gives audiences a warm fuzzy feeling of a shared laugh. But humor for humor’s sake rarely works. Use humorous stories only if they relate to your point. And if you tell a long story, you’re getting more impact for the minutes if more than one detail of the illustration or anecdote makes a point.

In selecting related statistics as illustrations, use them with care. That means they should be up to date and relate to your audience’s current needs and circumstances. Nothing destroys credibility like having numbers that are ten years old.

Also, make sure your statistics aren’t misleading. If your competitor’s profit increased by 400 percent last year, that may mean that he sold four quilts rather than one. “Averages” are often deceptive. You can describe a hiker crossing a desert at 125 degrees and then plunging into a mountain stream at 41 degrees, and conclude that the temperature on his vacation averaged a pleasant 83 degrees.

Be wary of using too many statistics and round off the ones you select. Just remember that it’s easier to gather statistics and facts than to make them relevant and memorable. Don’t get sidetracked on the first and omit the second.

Emotional: Make them laugh or make them cry. Nothing makes you or your message more memorable than an emotional appeal. If fund raisers want contributions, stories about orphans and disease move people toward their pocketbooks. If sales managers want to get through a difficult customer’s door, they make their sales reps laugh until the task seems like challenging fun.

Humor helps in most any speech situation. Why? Because humor gives us a personal identification with the feelings of the audience. Humor makes you a human and approachable speaker—not robot-like. He laughs; therefore, he is.
You can add a humorous touch with a joke or one-liner. But, again, the funniest stories are usually your own personal experiences told with pizzazz you’ve practiced. The TV show Candid Camera and a similar show based on home-video shots have made millions off the fact that people love to laugh at ordinary people caught in funny, everyday circumstances.

Be concise, be personal, be relevant with your stories and statistics. For a bonus, add emotion.

If you’ve been in the workforce for a while, you’ve probably heard hundreds of farewells to employees, presentations of awards, holiday greetings, dedications of new buildings, and motivational speeches. And you’ve also noticed some general guidelines in this software at the beginning of each of the categories on such speech occasions. Obviously, there are similarities in these speeches and all those you’ve heard through the years.

So how can one of these speeches, or any other, every really be uniquely yours? In the same way, old songs take on a new identity when they’re performed by different artists. Do Elvis, Sinatra, and Sammy Davis, Jr. sound the same singing My Way? Of course not. The artist makes the crucial difference in three ways: audience, delivery, and attitude.

First, let’s look at customizing for your specific audience. The key is immediacy. As Ronald Reagan so aptly put it about the tough economic times: “Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.”

Immediacy of your ideas to the needs of an audience generates attention and interest.

As a child listening to your parents tell you about all the starving children in China who would love to have your plate of spinach, you weren’t too concerned with poverty. But after ten months without a job and only $188 in your checking account, poverty gets your attention.

Immediacy makes the difference.

When you read an article in Sunday’s newspaper about the cost of funerals in today’s society, you glance over the statistics, shake your head in amazement, and turn to the next article. But if your mother is dying of lung cancer and your siblings have already begun to argue about the funeral arrangements, you pay more attention to the options and costs detailed in the article.

Immediacy makes the difference.

Therefore, the key to gaining an audience’s attention is not to speak to them as business people in general. What is their immediate interest in/need for/use for your information? To focus specifically, you need to consider the following:

• What is their educational level?
• What is their income level?
• What are their prejudices and biases about your subject?
• What are their problems?
• What do they fear?
• What are their challenges?
• What are their goals and wants?
• What’s taboo with them?
• Will they appreciate humor or is this a solemn issue with them?
• What is their attitude about hearing you? Passive? Manipulated for having to attend or participate in any way? Competitive with you and each other? Unified with you and the others in the group? Resistant to your ideas and philosophy? Afraid they can’t do what you’re asking for? Challenged to adopt your ideas? Eager to try out your information?

With the answers to these questions in mind, you can go a long way in customizing your remarks to minimize or encourage their feelings and reactions.

A second way you make a speech uniquely yours is your delivery style.

Psychologist and social scientist Albert Mehrabian has done an often-cited study that shows content accounts for only 7 percent of the impact of speeches. That’s right, only 7 percent. So why did you buy this software? To save you time. After all, you have to have some ideas to express in the first place, and these ideas here help you collect your thoughts in an organized, succinct format.

And your words in presenting those ideas can work for or against you. Simple words and short sentences help your audience grasp those grandiose ideas quickly. Remember that listeners don’t have a written script, so they can’t go back and pick up the idea they missed because of a long tangled sentence. They can’t check a dictionary for the word that totally blocked their thought processes.

A good speech involves much more than talking through the ideas in a recently published journal article or ad libbing a monthly report.

Had President Bush told the American people that he wanted a “more benignant, more docile cosmos” rather than a “kinder, gentler nation,” would he have carried half the country? Ideas and word choice count.
But back to Mehrabian’s study: The other 93 percent of your impact while speaking results from your voice quality (38 percent) and your physical appearance (55 percent)—in other words, your delivery style. How you say what you say, not just what you say. You always have to decide what tone to take with your audience—that of expert, teacher, motivator, critic, or peer.

Translated that means your delivery is a combination of who you are and how you present yourself. Do you want to preach to them or do you want a “we’re all in this together” tone? There are occasions for both. Bush needed to overcome his “wimp” label. “Read my lips. No new taxes,” did that for him. Granted the idea came through clearly, but his effect resulted largely from his tone and expression—his delivery.

Consider your own voice and its impact on your audience. Can’t you remember your mother’s impact with these two very different statements and tone: “Billy Ray, Jr., come in this house right this very minute.” Versus: “Oh, Billy—did you draw these pictures yourself?” Examine the content of these two statements: taken alone, the ideas are neither positive or negative. But you’d recognize the tone of each anywhere, right?

Delivery makes a difference.

Volume, pitch, quality, and pace give your voice its impact. In today’s business environment, wimpy voices go unheard. Volume gets attention. Also, you want to aim for a lower pitch. Tension or relaxation in the vocal cords largely determines pitch. Stress makes you sound higher pitched, revealing insecurity and nervousness. Relaxation and confidence come across in a lower pitch. Authoritative voice tones are low and calm, not high and tense.
Voice quality involves such things as a breathy sound, a tense harshness, hoarseness, nasal tones, or a deep resonating solemn sound, slurring of words, accents, diction and so forth.

Pace is the rate of speaking. You should know the pros and cons of both fast and slow deliveries to determine the effect you want. A fast rate reveals excitement and energy and commands attention so that listeners do not miss what you say. A slow speaking rate, on the other hand, adds drama and emphasizes key points.

And don’t forget the use of silences. They effectively involve your audience in introspection.

The disadvantages to both slow and fast deliveries? A fast delivery may create difficulty in your audience’s understanding your words and reflecting on your ideas. A slow delivery may give your listeners’ minds time to wander. Worse, slow delivery may convey the impression that you don’t know what’s coming next or don’t really have much information to offer.

With variety, you can achieve just the effect you want.

To add emphasis, vary your voice volume, pitch, quality, or pace: A deep resonant, precise articulation of the fourth-quarter profits followed by a slangy conclusion, “There ain’t nothin’ doin’.” A quickly delivered rah-rah for the sales team, followed by a slow sincere thank you for their efforts. Variety.

Variety in voice volume, rate, and pitch also leads to an enthusiastic delivery. Don’t equate enthusiasm, however, with hysteria. We’re not talking about an unnatural acting career, a style that pits you against a football coach on the sidelines at the Super Bowl. We’re talking about your natural speaking style—your natural speaking style when you’re talking one on one to a close friend about your chance for a promotion and a huge raise.

Be your naturally enthusiastic self—only in front of a group. That’s not to say that you comment on everything with the same fervor in your everyday conversations. “These files need to be updated to reflect last quarter’s quotas” will not be delivered with the same feeling as “We just landed the $300 million contract with Universal!”
Those who argue “It’s just not me” when encouraged to adopt a lively speaking style need only to hear themselves with friends around the lunch table. In such settings, most people have a lively voice and an animated face with glowing eyes and nice smile. Their hands and arms gesture appropriately without their giving any thought to the conversation at all.

So to determine what your natural style is, catch yourself while talking on the phone to a colleague about the latest Wall Street gossip or the neighbor about the airport traffic. You’ll hear your natural self. Feel what it feels like and hear what your voice sounds like when you’re enthusiastic about your subject.
Think of your speech as a conversation with an audience larger than one. The idea is to duplicate that feeling, tone, and animation when you’re in front of a group. That’s the natural you, and that’s your most effective delivery style.

Your delivery either supports or discredits your ideas. You may be completely serious about and confident with what you have to say. But the audience may perceive you to be insincere because of poor eye contact, a slouched posture, a bored expression, or limp gestures.

Eye contact is the most noticeable mannerism. If you want to make the audience yours, look at them. When you’ve caught the eye of someone in your audience, you’ve established a bond. You’ve signaled your interest in that person and your sincerity in what you’re saying. In fact, we often hear it said, “I bet she couldn’t look me in the eye and say that.” It’s extremely difficult to turn away from someone who is looking at you.
Use your eyes to build a bond with your audience, even though they may have heard your sentiments time and time again. Don’t flit your eyes around the room as if they’re afraid to land on anyone’s face. Don’t stare at your notes. Don’t look around, through, or over your listeners’ heads.

Simply glance around the audience and sweep in the view of everyone. Hold your eyes on different individuals to establish personal contact with them. Let your eyes fall on one individual, hold that contact, make your point, then move to the next pair of eyes. What the audience notices that you’ve said to Joe, they’ll take as intended for them also. One or two sentences delivered to each person establishes intimacy for even the tritest words.
Your delivery—particularly your body language—conveys to your audience how you feel about them. That’s attitude, the third way to make a speech uniquely yours.

If you sense a friendly atmosphere, you tend to walk and stand closer to the audience. If you’re afraid, you cloister yourself behind a podium or table and lean away. If you want to shield yourself from challenges and establish authority, you can choose to stand on a platform, elevated above your audience.

Why do you think negotiators and heads of state spend weeks and months choosing just the right setting for their talks? Podiums, tables, or raised platforms put artificial barriers between you and your audience. Your audience wonders if these props are in place to protect you from them or to keep them away from you.

Here again, in your use of physical space as part of your presentation, your attitude shows.

Your attitude about your audience and subject also comes across when you choose either to memorize, read, or speak from notes. When you read, the audience often wonders if you believe what you’re saying, if the ideas are yours at all. Unless you’re a terrific actor, memorization can make you sound like a robot.

Speaking from a well-written practice script that’s been learned and committed to brief delivery notes is the best of all worlds. (More about this technique later.) You have memorized openings, closings, and transitions verbatim, but can still present your key points and illustrations, using fresh wording with only a phrase to jog your memory.
Your attitude about the subject and audience also comes across with your openness to questions and your attention to the accuracy of what you say.

Consider integrity and genuineness. Audiences want to listen to someone they feel has the same integrity they have, someone who holds the same moral values, has the same problems, and the same upbeat attitude about life. They want to know that what they see is what they get. They want to believe you when you give facts, offer goals, and relate experiences. They want you not to hide behind your content—formal, emotionless, and indifferent.

They want to see your personal involvement with them and with your subject. If you’re emotional because you really feel conviction about what you’re saying, then you’re on solid ground with an audience. When you feel that you are faking enthusiasm and sincerity, back off and cool down. Both you and your audience will be the judge about your enthusiasm, because genuine enthusiasm is contagious.

Whatever your ideas or your delivery, your attitude must reveal a determination to give value. How much salary are the members of your audience worth per minute while they listen to you? If you don’t have the time to prepare, don’t want to make the effort to customize, and don’t have the proper attitude toward your audience or subject, then let someone else have the stage for this occasion.

To sum up: To make a speech yours, take stage when the spotlight falls on you. Approach the front of the audience with deliberate, purposeful steps rather than as if you were being dragged forward against your will. Stand with your weight evenly on both feet, get your bearings, gaze out and take in your audience. Greet them and then respond to your introduction, acknowledge the occasion, or simply begin your planned remarks.
Just remember that these first few seconds are crucial as your audience takes stock of you and your attitude about the occasion and the subject. Impromptu comments about something that’s happened earlier in the meeting always impress your audience with your wit, your freshness, and your openness in departing from “scripted” comments.

And when you’ve finished, end with impact rather than whimpering to a close. When your ideas run their course, simply stop. Add nothing. Don’t mumble. Just smile and physically “close up shop.” Pause and sweep your audience one last time with confidence that they’ll agree with what you’ve just said. Take your ending time as seriously as you expect airlines to do. Land on time and with precision.

To make the audience and speech yours, take charge completely. Use your posture, body language, attentive gaze to the audience, voice tone and fresh comments delivered in a natural style to convey to the audience that your purpose is to speak to them specifically.

It’s your speech, you delivered it.

A friend of mine, Larry Rogers, makes few waves in our social circle. Quiet and unassuming, he has been a member of our group for almost five years. But I’d bet fewer than a third of our acquaintances would recognize his name on a membership list. Smart? Sure. Successful? Sure, you should take a look at his paycheck. But nobody in our social circle has an inkling. Why? He never says anything.

But at work it’s another story. I was conducting an effective writing seminar for a large financial services firm, when the participants’ lunchtime conversation turned to communication skills in general.

“You should hear one of our VPs. Talk about the golden-tongue orator! He has everyone eating out of his hand. He gives speeches for just about every occasion, and audiences just hang on his every word.”

“So, who is this guy?” I interrupted the amens of the others.

“Larry Rogers, our corporate lawyer. You know him?”

My mouth gaped. My friend, Larry, who said fewer than 50 words on any given social encounter?
Since that time, I’ve learned that on behalf of his company, he frequently addresses Wall Street, gives interviews to the national media, and speaks at corporate board meetings—not to mention the rah-rah speeches of day-to-day internal business.

Evidently, the two “split” personalities and reputations could be attributable to his taking communication skills seriously only on the job.

But what a major difference that becomes. Good ideas alone aren’t enough; good ideas are floating around everywhere. If you don’t believe it, listen to the cabbie who knows a solution to the city’s transportation problems or to the techies who develop new software programs.

But if you never get great ideas to the right people, what good do they do? Ideas are only good if they can be communicated. Speechmaking catapults a professional to the forefront of his or her career, and speechmaking confirms success.

For the business person who aspires to motivate people, lead organizations, sell ideas, inspire creativity, and deliver quality, communication becomes everything. Nothing can light a fire in your career path or your corporation’s profit-and-loss statement like the visibility gained through speechmaking.
Think message. Think audience. Think results.