CEO, BooherResearch.com Author of Communicate Like A Leader, Creating Personal Presence, What MORE Can I Say?
CEO, BooherResearch.com Author of Communicate Like A Leader, Creating Personal Presence, What MORE Can I Say?
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
Many professional speakers have a talk in search of an audience and then wonder why their listeners don’t find what they say relevant! The preparation is exactly backward. This process is particularly true of executives—both before and after they leave their corporate positions.
Having coached executives for three decades, I routinely see the process: Someone lower in the bowels of the organization puts together the first deck of slides for audience A and purpose A. Another speaker grabs that deck, tweaks it, and uses it for audience B/purpose B. The deck gets tweaked again and passed on up the ladder until it reaches the executive, who needs it for audience G/purpose G.
Advertisement
When executives resign, retire, or otherwise move on and hit the speaking circuit more frequently, chances are even greater that they design the one-size-fits-all speech and rarely change their prep methods or delivery style.
Few succeed. But those who do, gain celebrity status and command hefty fees. Let me suggest a few tips to make the results more satisfying:
Public Speaking for Executives: 5 Tips
Analyze Your Audience Before You Build Your Speech
What is their primary interest in listening to you? What do they already know about your topic? (Don’t tell them that!) What don’t they know that you can tell them? That’s sacred ground.
Speak With Your Audience—Not At Them
Think of your speech as a conversation, not a performance. Find a few people (5-7 will do) located in different parts of the room, make strong eye contact with them, and direct your comments to them as if in a meaningful, one-on-one conversation. You’ll find that almost everyone in the audience feels as though you’re talking with them individually.
Advertisement
Random, sustained eye contact around the room to individuals compels people to “tune in” as if you were having a private conversation. Glancing at the group as a whole, on the other hand, creates distance and provides the feeling of anonymity.
Don’t Confuse Laid Back With Boring
Executives often fear intimidating others by an impressive title. So in an attempt to be approachable, they “dial it back” with informality. Their reasoning is sound, but their manner misses the mark. That is, you should “dial back” displays of arrogance and find commonalities with the audience. But never “dial back” your energy or enthusiasm for the topic.
Engage Your Audience With Interaction
Interaction doesn’t equate to having people do back rubs, shout slogans, or lip-sync. Engaging your audience can mean telling stories with which people can identify, using illustrations or exercises that engage all their senses, asking rhetorical questions, using “you” rather than “I” phrasing, polling the audience for their opinion, telling hero stories about audience members, and so forth.
Go Big or Go Home
The final reason executives bomb on stage in their management meetings, industry conferences, or shareholders meetings is weak delivery. No matter how impressive your title, how positive your earnings report, or intriguing your research, you can still bore audiences. They’ll leave shaking their heads: “The information was great—if you could stay awake long enough to hear it!”
Telling a great story with little or no thought about how to set it up, shape it, phrase it, and land it can kill it. Likewise, with your entire speech: Delivering a speech without shaping your message, and making it memorable and actionable can be far less effective than simply sending an email.
Advertisement
Your choice: Go prepared or go home.
Want to increase your executive presence? Click here for a checklist of characteristics: http://bit.ly/2oGPsKm
Our 2024 Coverage Needs You
It's Another Trump-Biden Showdown — And We Need Your Help
The Future Of Democracy Is At Stake
Our 2024 Coverage Needs You
Your Loyalty Means The World To Us
As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.
Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.
The 2024 election is heating up, and women's rights, health care, voting rights, and the very future of democracy are all at stake. Donald Trump will face Joe Biden in the most consequential vote of our time. And HuffPost will be there, covering every twist and turn. America's future hangs in the balance. Would you consider contributing to support our journalism and keep it free for all during this critical season?
HuffPost believes news should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for it. We rely on readers like you to help fund our work. Any contribution you can make — even as little as $2 — goes directly toward supporting the impactful journalism that we will continue to produce this year. Thank you for being part of our story.
It's official: Donald Trump will face Joe Biden this fall in the presidential election. As we face the most consequential presidential election of our time, HuffPost is committed to bringing you up-to-date, accurate news about the 2024 race. While other outlets have retreated behind paywalls, you can trust our news will stay free.
But we can't do it without your help. Reader funding is one of the key ways we support our newsroom. Would you consider making a donation to help fund our news during this critical time? Your contributions are vital to supporting a free press.
As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.
Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.
Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?
Dear HuffPost Reader
Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. If circumstances have changed since you last contributed, we hope you'll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.