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.
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 videoBlog, I shared strategies to help you enhance your credibility and engage your listeners during the conversation that happens after you have delivered your elevator speech.
Here is a strategy to position yourself and your company as experts.
Focus on the human element: talk about who you and your team are as human beings. Your initial, face-to-face conversation with a prospect is the ideal time to be personable — and project authenticity, approachability, and dedication to customer and client service.
Focusing on the human element is very wise, because it changes the focus of the conversation. You are no longer speaking about your products or services; now you’re speaking about the way you and your team care; the way you behave on a human level.
For example, you might say something like this: “We’re people who pay close attention whenever our clients speak.” Or this: “We’re people who are passionate about every assignment.”
This strategy positions you on the same side as your listener. On the other side are
all your competitors who don’t pay close attention to their clients: who put their own interests ahead of those of the client or customer
all your competitors who are not passionate — who view certain projects only as a cash cow.
When you are speaking with people who have had a negative experience purchasing a product or service in your category, they might appreciate your focus on the human element. When you say that you pay close attention to your clients, your listeners might find that refreshing; they might even chuckle. Then you’ll have them engaged, and that’s really the whole point. Because engagement is a very important element in relationship-building.
So, use this strategy. Focus on the human element, and you will be on your way to conversations that position you and your organization as experts and generate more conversation that can lead to sales.
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.
Here is a strategy to help you rehearse the delivery of your elevator speech, to generate interest and begin conversations that lead to sales.
Rehearsal is very important for business speakers, just as it is for actors. Many people mistakenly believe that rehearsing makes you sound “canned” or phony. If that’s what happens when you rehearse, you need strategies for effective rehearsal.
When actors are speaking lines, their job is to make it sound as if they’re making it all up – right there on the spot. So, rehearsal is the preparation to appear completely spontaneous, conversational, and authentic.
Here is a very useful strategy that actors use to rehearse. It’s called “endowment. The task is to “endow” your listeners with qualities that will help you speak with them the way you speak with a friend in conversation.
Rehearse with the following three steps:
Step 1: Think of a person from your own life (past, present; male, female; any age) in whose presence you feel cared for, trusted, and respected.
Step 2: Use the power of imagination before you begin. Choose a spot on the wall to place your focus. In your mind’s eye, “see” that person, right there in front of you.
Step 3: Use what actors call the “magic if”. As you say your elevator speech aloud, speak as if you were in conversation with that person. Take the time to connect with your positive feelings about him or her and allow this emotional connection to impact your tone and demeanor.
The more often you rehearse with the technique of endowment, the easier it will be for you to appear conversational – with spontaneity and authenticity.
Follow these steps, and you will be on your way to delivering your elevator speech in a way that generates interest and begin conversations that lead to sales.
Business listeners respond well to a speaker’s positive energy and lightness of being. As a speaker, you can project this kind of lightness by doing a quick emotional clearing in advance — the way actors do before going on stage.
At least an hour before you have that important business conversation, meeting, or presentation, do the following:
Take your “emotional temperature”. Identify your current emotional state: happy, sad, nervous, excited, disappointed, excited, angry, etc.
Find a private area to release these emotions in a big way, even if it feels exaggerated or “phony” to do so. For example, you can jump for joy, shout, laugh out loud, shed a few tears, if necessary; whatever you need to do to release your emotions, especially the ones that are less pleasant.
Do some deep breathing with long, slow exhalations to a count of ten; then stretch out your arms, legs, back, and shoulders to release your emotions more fully.
If you are having any emotions that will not serve to enhance your speaking delivery, releasing those emotions in advance will decrease the power they have over you and will decrease any negative impact they might have on the way you speak.
You will be more “present” with your listeners and more available to respond to them authentically “in the moment”.
You will be free to use you positive and upbeat energy to engage and inspire your listeners — with a lightness of being that will help put them (and you) at ease.
