In order to make choices about actions and identify acting objectives, actors divide the script into units (called “beats”).
Business speakers should do the same. Take a deep dive into the notes for your presentation and divide it into beats. Each beat is a separate topic, smaller than the overall subject of the message (not what you are doing with your words, but what you are talking about).
In the margin of your notes, label each beat: a simple noun or noun phrase.
When you know what each beat is about, you will be ready for the next step: identifying an acting objective for each beat.
Savvy professionals apply acting techniques to help enhance their credibility and gravitas when they speak for business. They know that they need to build belief within the listeners, so they borrow techniques that actors have used for decades. So can you.
Crafted actors spend years perfecting a craft that is designed to build belief. This is why advertisers so often rely upon actors and their craft: they understand that actors’ techniques and performance skills are fundamental to the business of selling any idea, product, or service.
When actors are preparing a role, they make careful choices about what actions to take, to help the audience believe that the make believe situation is real. For actors, it’s all about actions; for actors, actions speak much louder than words.
To prepare, actors create “acting objectives”. These are actions that lie underneath the words – actions they plan to take toward their listeners. This helps actors to be motivated to speak the words that the playwright or screenwriter wrote, and speak them truthfully, authentically, and conversationally.
In rehearsal and performance, actors pursue their acting objectives as if their lives depended on it. This helps the audience believe that the actor and the character are one and the same: that the actor IS the character.
This applies to you when you speak for business for two important reasons:
You want your business listeners to believe something: to believe that you have solutions to their problems, for example. The more rigorously you pursue your actions (your acting objectives), the more completely your audience will believe: believe that you and your message are one and the same; believe that you are your message.
Whenever you are speaking for business, when you make listeners believe, they are very likely to overlook minor shortcomings or mistakes you might make.
Throughout my acting career, and as a professional speaker, I have occasionally neglected to rehearse with the use of acting objectives. Invariably, whenever I have neglected to use this technique, I lost the acting job or failed to engage my business listeners.
Your business speaking/presentations will never be perfect; there will always be something to improve upon and something that you might consider to have been slightly “negative” in your “performance”. Without the use of acting objectives in your preparation, you significantly reduce your ability to make business listeners believe. When that happens, your listeners have little to focus on BUT the negative.
Once you have helped your business listeners believe, you’ve won them over to your side. After that, they will forgive you almost anything!
Would you like your business listeners to be drawn IN when you speak? Would you like them to feel eager to hear what you’re going to say next?
If your answer is YES, you need the power of the pause. Successful business speakers, like good actors, always consider pacing when they are going to speak. The tempo of your spoken word has a strong impact on your listeners and directly influences their level of engagement and influences the way you are perceived. Your pauses are key.
Even the smartest and best listeners need a moment to process a spoken idea. When you listeners can see you, they need time to interpret meaning from a broad palette: your visual delivery, as well as vocal delivery. Your pauses can give them the time they need.
A University of Michigan study revealed that when speakers never paused, they had the lowest success rate in getting listeners to do what they wanted them to do. And the great British actor, Sir John Gielgud, famously said that, when acting Shakespeare, the pauses are the most important moments of the speech! He knew that pauses can be captivating.
Help your business listeners receive the full impact of your message by giving them the gift of time. Pause briefly after each complete thought, to let it “land”. Don’t be in a rush to go on to your next idea. Another benefit of the pause is that it gives you time to get a reading on your listener’s understanding and engagement level. During the pause, breathe deeply and maintain eye contact.
During the pause, your listeners will usually be wondering why you’ve paused and wondering what you’re going to say next. So, your pauses increase listener curiosity and engagement level, and they make you more compelling.
Without the pauses, your listeners may feel overwhelmed by an unmanageable amount of input. They may lose some of your meaning; they may even tune you out.
When you give your listeners time to process each thought, you are respecting their needs, communicating that your message has value, and drawing them IN.
Would you like your business listeners to feel compelled to listen to you? Would you like them to hang onto every word you say?
Here is a tip I learned from one of my acting teachers, the late Mira Rostova, who was also coach to the great film actor Montgomery Clift. This will help you become a more compelling speaker and is Part 2 of my Series called Engage Your Listeners by Allowing Your Ideas to Land When you Speak.
One of the most common mistakes speakers make is to stress too many words within one spoken idea. Speakers who do this are usually attempting to be clear, but the result is often a delivery that sounds unfocused or pedantic; it can even sound condescending.
While every word that you speak “counts” and should be understood by the listener, take time to consider WHICH of your words should receive focus. The more words you stress within one phrase or sentence, the more you lose focus and clarity. Mira Rostova used to say, “go for the point; go for the point!”
To prepare for any business presentation, include the following three strategies:
Review your notes and identify the focus words of each complete thought. Be very discriminating as you choose your focus words. Find creative ways to add depth and an interesting perspective to your ideas by choosing to placing stress in unexpected moments. This will add an element of surprise in your delivery and will help you engage your listeners.
Underline the focus words of each complete thought. Then, internalize your content; don’t memorize it.
As you rehearse aloud, stress only the focus words of each complete thought. Keep those focus words at the forefront of your mind, and pursue them energetically as you speak.
Rehearsing this way will drive your ideas with power. And the paradox is this: when you become more selective about which words to stress, you’ll help your listeners hang on to every word you speak!
Maria’s program, “Enhance Your Leadership Presence with Acting Improvisation”: Learn how to enhance your leadershippresence by using improvisationand storytelling techniques to transform your communication skills. You will learn how to land new business by making deeper interpersonal connections, building trust, speaking with authenticity, and engaging your listeners. You’ll learn how to address the changing needs of your current clients by expanding your creativity and spontaneity. Discover how you can project a spirit of collaboration and convince prospects that you can and will help them solve their business problems!
One way that successful speakers engage their listeners is by pacing effectively and allowing each idea to “land” before going on to the next idea. This helps listeners understand fully and gives variety to the delivery. I recommend a rehearsal exercise based on one that I learned from the Academy-Award-winning actress, Olympia Dukakis.
Today, I’ll present the first step in this process: Think in thought groups, rather than thinking in words. This will help your pacing become organic, authentic, and compelling.
Research tell us that people don’t think in words; we think and listen in complete thoughts. Match the way you speak with the way your listeners listen! Apply my adaptation of Olympia’s technique, which was originally created to help actors internalize the sections and emotions of a scene. I have adapted Olympia’s technique for business speakers, so that you will develop greater sensitivity to your listeners and more consistently pause, tune in, and allow each idea to “land” before you go on to the next idea.
Begin rehearsal for any business talk with a simple exercise:
Set out a few chairs, as you would for the game musical chairs. Begin by sitting in one of them.
As you rehearse aloud, move to a different chair each time you complete a thought. Speak each complete idea from a difference chair.
Repeat this exercise until your mind and your body have internalized the moments when each complete thought has ended and the next one is about to begin.
This simple exercise will increase your awareness of your thought groups. It will help you become more sensitive to your listeners and be better able to pause, tune in to the listeners, and allow each idea to “land” before going on to the next idea.
You listeners will understand more fully and be more fully engaged!
If you prepare your business presentation by memorizing, you will probably end up sounding “canned” — the quickest way to get prospects, clients, and other business listeners to tune you out. To avoid this problem, do what the best actors do: internalize, don’t memorize.
Most actors try to avoid rote memorization of a script, because memorization has a tendency to block the most important part (and the most connective part) of speaking: our communication actions that lie beneath the words. Effective rehearsal is the rehearsal of communication actions/”objectives” (rather than the words themselves), in order to sound conversational and authentic at every moment.
When I played Amanda in The Glass Menagerie last summer, I was working with a young actor who tried to memorize lines by associating them with his blocking (i.e., where he sat, stood, and moved on stage). The director changed the blocking many times during our rehearsal process: of course, the actor then had difficulty remembering his lines! He was then forced to learn lines with a different strategy: he began to internalize his lines by associating them with his underlying actions/objectives. This allowed him to not only remember his lines perfectly, but to sound conversational, authentic, and believable. His lines and physical behavior created a unified, seamless whole.
Business speakers, whether using notes or not, should internalize (not memorize) your content. You need a strategy to help you become deeply connected to your message, so that listeners will believe that you are fully committed and that you and your message are “one”.
Do the following: divide your notes for a talk into “beats” (individual topics that are smaller than your overall message). For each beat, choose a communication action directed toward the listeners. As you rehearse aloud, focus on the underlying communication action of each beat; keep it at the forefront of your mind, and pursue it energetically.
You will be better able to remember your content fully; you won’t have to worry about “memorizing” anything. Your voice and body language will support your words, turning your content and demeanor into one organic, unified, and seamless message.
When you rehearse this way, you’ll never have to worry about “over-rehearsing”, because your rehearsal will never produce a “canned” delivery. Instead, your rehearsal will help you speak with authenticity and maximum impact.
In my last blog, I provided two strategies for successful business speaking that are rooted in theater techniques that I used while I was rehearsing and performing the role of Amanda in The Glass Menagerie this past summer.
Here is another technique you can use in business to enhance your confidence when you are about to make a presentation: know your venue and become adaptable to the space, so that you can speak comfortably in a range of situations.
Our set for The Glass Menagerie depicted a tenement apartment in St. Louis during the late 1930’s. Right before one performance, the stagehands had placed a heavy chair in the wrong spot on stage. I had been directed to sit on the arm of the chair all the way stage right, at an angle facing away from my scene partner. With the chair in its incorrect spot, my sitting on the chair that way would block half the audience from any view of the action. I had previously thought of various other options for my stage movement, so I was able to improvise a solution during that performance. Under the new circumstances, I stood in the stage area far right of the chair, to open up the view for whole audience.
Business speakers, too, should be ready to improvise physically when necessary.
Whether your business presentation or conversation takes place in an office, conference room, boardroom, or convention hall, visit the space in advance whenever possible.
Notice what is in the space and how it might help or hinder your ability to communicate. Request what you do want and do not want to be “in your space”. Then, assume that the space may not be just as you wish, and look for ways to improvise, if necessary. Determine Choice B and Choice C for where you will be and where you will move, so that you can be ready to adapt.
During your advance visit, do a brief “walk-through” or “sit-through” of your talk. Experiment with a variety of other spots for you to stand, sit, or move. This will help you improvise gracefully (and give your audience a full experience) whenever you face challenges with the physical setup of the room.
Preparing for uncertainty in this way will give you a wonderful sense of security and the confidence that your message will have impact for your audience, even when your venue is not ideal!
I recently played the role of Amanda Wingfield in the play, “The Glass Menagerie” and was reminded that so much of the rehearsal process for a play should be used by business people who want to make a dynamic impact when they speak. Here are two tips that can help enhance your credibility during business meetings, presentations, sales calls, and more.
Engage With Vocal Variety: Our director was confident that we actors would have no problem making ourselves heard by audience members in the last row of the theater. Knowing that there were some intimate, “lower volume” scenes in the play, she took the extra precaution of planting an assistant at various spots in the last row to listen, so that we actors could be told of any moments when we could not be heard adequately. Business speakers/presenters who are not using a microphone can benefit from a similar strategy, to help you use a range of vocal dynamics (sound volume) to engage your listeners. Do the following: Arrive at your speaking venue/meeting room early; arrange to have someone listen as you speak parts of your talk, and be sure to speak any sections where you will choose to use a lower volume than usual (perhaps for dramatic effect). Use your sound assistant’s feedback to guide you on your volume levels, so that you can use a range of vocal dynamics with the confidence that you will always be heard. This range of dynamics is key to listener engagement.
Feel and Look Like Your Message: As we rehearsed “The Glass Menagerie”, I naturally wanted to immerse myself in the character and the setting as quickly and thoroughly as possible. One way that I do this when rehearsing a play is to wear rehearsal clothes that give me the same (or similar) feeling as the costume(s) in performance will. This helps me feel/appear to be “one” with the character, so that the audience will perceive no difference between “Maria” and (in the case of this particular play) “Amanda”. As a business speaker/presenter, your rehearsal process can help you become “one” with your content, so that every nuance of your delivery will project and support one, seamless message. Try the following as you rehearse. Consider the nature of your message, who your listeners are, and how they dress. Allow this information to help you plan what you will wear. When rehearsing, wear those clothes or even just one or two pieces from that outfit (shoes, blouses, and jackets are particularly useful for giving you the right feeling). Become conscious of the way your clothing affects your feelings about yourself and your demeanor, and make any necessary adjustments in clothing. This will help you feel and project the image you desire.
Use these strategies from the theater, and watch your prospects, clients, and other business listeners become increasingly engaged when you speak!
Today, I’ll share more about how you can project spontaneity and authenticity in your elevator speech by rehearsing with the actor’s technique called “Endowment”. Here is a summary of the steps:
Step 1: Choose a person from your real life in who has qualities that help you feelliked, trusted, and respected when you speak with him or her.Step 2: Choose a spot to place your focus, and imagine your business listener, right there in front of you.Step 3: Endow your imaginary listener with these same qualities that help you feel liked, trusted, and respected. As you say your elevator speech aloud, speak AS IF you were in conversation with the person from your life.
Here are some additional guidelines for the Endowment process.
1. It’s very important to be flooded with positive feelings as you rehearse this, so choosing the “right” person to feed your imagination is key. Experiment with the technique of Endowment by imagining various people from your life, in order to discover which one person most effectively triggers your expression of warmth and relaxation when you are speaking.
2. Never tell anyone the identity of the person you have chosen to “use” for this process. Keeping it a secret will increase the power that the Endowment technique will have on your demeanor and delivery.
3. The technique of endowment may be challenging at first, so rehearse aloud as often as possible. Over time, rehearsal of the endowment process will help you focus your mind in a very useful way. It will help you create an emotional environment for yourself: to project authenticity and spontaneity when you’re networking and meeting with prospects and clients.
Using the Endowment technique has a secondary benefit: it will keep your mind so focused on the task at hand, that you’ll have very little emotional availability to be nervous or self-conscious.
This is a way to use rehearsal strategically: it will prepare your for a spontaneous and authentic presentation of yourself and your business message.
