As a business speaker, would you like to learn how to use your voice, to keep your listeners riveted to your message?

Like a good actor, you can use your voice and the power of the surprising pause to command attention and add depth to your business message.  You may be interested to know that the great Shakespearian actor, Sir John Gielgud, said that the pauses are the most important moments of a speech!

Pausing at meaningful and unpredictable moments will enhance your speaking power in three ways:

1
It will create variety in your delivery:  A moment of unexpected silence provides the greatest contrast to a stream of words.
2
It will create suspense:  It teases your listeners for just a moment, making them want to hear more.
3.
It will enhance listener understanding:  A surprising pause, filled with meaning, allows your listeners to observe a difference quality in you and highlights the subtle nuances of meaning within your message.

Watch this video to see and hear my demonstration:

Right now, I’m going to speak an excerpt from a play called Other People’s Money by Jerry Sterner.  The dialogue is spoken by a character who is a CEO of a company.  As I speak,  I’m going to pause in spots that are logical and fairly predictable.  Here I go:

“One day, / when the dollar is weaker or the yen stronger, / or when we finally begin to rebuild the roads, the bridges, the infrastructure of our country, / demand will skyrocket.”

Now, a more interesting and more engaging choice would be to pause in spots that are less predictable; like this:

“One day, / when the dollar/is weaker / or the yen / stronger, / or when we finally begin to rebuild the roads, the bridges, the infrastructure of our country, / demand / will skyrocket.”

Isn’t that more interesting?

As you rehearse and deliver any business talk, take some meaningful pauses at less predictable moments.   Use the power of the surprising pause, and make your delivery truly compelling.

Have you ever made a mistake during a business meeting or conversation: a big mistake that was obvious to everyone?  You don’t have to lose face in situations like these.  Here is a tip that will help you save face.

At one point or another, in your professional life, you may at one time or another, have dropped the balls. You said the most inappropriate thing or your spoken mistake that everyone noticed was a serious one.  These situations present two choices for you.  You can

1:   Pretend that it didn’t happen:  this is never advisable when you are sure that everyone noticed your mistake!

2:   Accept that you dropped the balls and demonstrate humility.

Humility might be an instant and sincere apology. It might be self-deprecating humor.  It might be that you allow others to see you try with your heart and soul to correctly your mistake and maybe even fail to correct it!  Humility means that we accept our right relationship with nature and allow people to see our human-ness.  Because human beings make mistakes and are sometimes wrong — and most everyone we do business with can identify with that.

Humility is a very importance ingredient in successful business speaking.  It’s not a weakness.  It’s actually strategic.  It’s a quality that makes us approachable, more likeable, and more attractive to do business with.

Would you like your business listeners to trust you more?  Would your business improve if you could convince prospects that you will be a true business partner for them?  Would you like to generate more new business and keep more the business you already have? 

If you’re answer is YES, you won’t want to miss my exciting program called “Enhance Your Leadership Presence with Acting Improvisation.”  You’ll learn how to enhance your leadership presence by using acting improvisation, storytelling techniques, and the “yes and” mindset to transform your communication skills. You’ll learn how to generate business by deepening interpersonal connections, speaking with authenticity, building trust, and engaging your listeners. And you’ll learn how to address the changing needs of your existing clients by expanding your creativity and spontaneity. 

I describe this work as “serious fun”. You’ll be engaged in playful, interactive activities:  acting improvisation, theater and imagination games, and mind, body, and voice techniques that will help you project a spirit of collaboration and convince your prospects that you can (and will) help them solve their business problems. 

Let me tell you how acting improvisation will enhance your leadership presence: 

#1:  Whenever you speak for business, your listeners have one over-riding concern: they want to know what’s in it for them.  Acting improvisation addresses this concern.  Early in their training, actors learn that the audience is always asking the question, “Why are you telling me this?”  Acting improvisation teaches that you must answer this question, and answer it in a way that is compelling for your listeners.  This is a skill that every business leader needs!  If you’re not answering this question in a way that is compelling for your listeners, you’re losing business. 

#2:  To generate new business and keep the business you already have, you need to engage your listeners.  Acting improvisation teaches what a message is made of, what needs to happen; it teaches you how to discern when the beginning should be over, when your listeners have had enough of the middle, when it’s time to move on to the ending, and how long that should last, etc. Leaders who use this knowledge and the timing that it develops become truly engaging:  become masters of engagement.  And they have a measurable competitive edge! 

You, too, can become a master of engagement. Acting improvisation will teach you how!  Don’t miss the opportunity to experience this innovative program: you’ll take away powerful techniques to transform your leadership presence.  

Discover how play will enhance the way you work. And get ready for some serious fun!  I look forward to working with you.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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!

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.

How often have you been to a networking event where attendees are talking at other people — talking only about themselves and trying to cram into the conversation as much as they can about their own business, achievements, and successes, etc?

Not only is this unpleasant for the listener, but it is actually counter-productive.

Why are you at the networking event?  To get business?  Make a sale?  Well, not really.  Your goal at networking events should be to begin conversations that lead to relationships.  If that does not happen, there will be no sales.  Period!  Because people buy from people they like.

The most important thing is to let the other person do the talking,  and to listen carefully for ways to help that person achieve his or her goals.   This may sound counter-intuitive, but it is the key to the entire process.  Your goal in networking should be to give before you get.  Giving before you get makes it much more likely that the other person will want to talk with you further (and that’s the best hope for business in the future).  Giving may include

• Introductions
• Business or personal suggestions
• Information
• Invitations
• Volunteering to help with a civic organization or charity the other party feels strongly about or
• A piece of free counsel on a subject of interest to your conversation partner

So, as you network, focus on building relationships:

1. First: Ask questions to find out as much as possible about the other person.
2. Take time to listen to your conversation partners.
3. Offer something useful to each person you talk with.

Follow these steps, and you will be on your way to conversations that begin to build relationships that 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 feel liked, 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.