TJ’s Insights

I would rather speak in a room that is too cold or too hot than have to speak or train in front of a group of people sitting behind tables. Why? Because chances are that audience members will be sending text messages and reading email on their phone if they can hide their actions under a table. I ask that tables be removed from rooms where I am speaking and training. If tables are still there when I show up, then I physically remove them or push them to the back of the room myself.

According to a new book, “The Female Mind”, women speak 20,000 words per day on average, while men speak only 7,000 words per day. The book is written by a female psychiatrist in Paris, Dr Luan Brizendine, who considers herself a feminist. According to Brizendine, women’s brains are programmed differently than men’s. Where women have positive chemical reactions associated with talking that are analogous to how men feel on heroin!

I don’t know about that. But I have noticed the following:

1. Most presentation trainers in the world are women
2. Most media trainers in the world are women

There are four types of feedback you can receive from an audience as a speaker.

1 – No feedback at all—people dash out of the room and avert their eyes so as not to connect with you. You bombed!

2 – Audience members come up to you afterwards and say, “You did a great job. You were fantastic. You looked and sounded great!” Unfortunately, this also means you bombed. People are being nice to you because they are afraid you are depressed about how awful you did. Or they are buttering you up because they want a promotion or for you to hire their brother-in-law.

From 1995 to 2005, cautious politicians like New York Governor (then Attorney General) Elliot Spitzer were renowned for saying “never put into print what you can communicate in person” or over the phone. And never communicate anything, certainly not a negative message, by email. All of this made sense because anything in print was easy for journalists to get a hold of, analyze, critique and attack.

For public figures, that time period will now seem like the “good old days.”

These days, everyone is trying to add video to their websites, from major corporations to solo practitioners with a home-based consulting practice, to first-time authors. Here are some dos and don’ts to keep in mind.

Don’t::

1. Try to memorize a script—you will sound canned and phony.
2. Use a Teleprompter—you will look like an idiot unless you practice for hours and hours. It’s just not worth it.
3. Use cue cards. Again, you will look and sound horrible.
4. Try to talk right to the camera like you are a news anchor.
5. Script out all of your questions in advance.

No matter how well you conduct yourself while leading a teleseminar, there is always the chance that the experience is ruined for your listeners because of how your participants behave. The biggest problem is with background noise, call-waiting beeps, dogs barking, and fuzzy cell-phone reception. You can ask participants to mute their phones during the call, but many often forget to do so or are flummoxed on the procedure.

“Go jump in a lake!”

“Go play in traffic!”

We’ve all been told these things at some point growing up. Those of us who made it to adulthood learned not to take these expressions literally. At some point we learn to translate these expressions to “this person is annoyed with us.”

Many business and political leaders like to think of themselves as “straight shooters.” If you ask them a specific question, they will give you a specific answer. At first brush, this seems like a good thing. But as a practical matter, this gets experts, leaders and spokespeople into trouble when they are in the news media.

Are you looking for an easy, stress-free way of becoming a better speaker? Then offer yourself as a stand-in presenter to meeting planners and coordinators. We’ve all been to meetings or conferences where the speaker is stuck in traffic, held up at an airport, got sick, or just plain forgot to show up. If you are the meeting planner, nothing makes you more anxious or creates more tension than a speaker not showing up, regardless of the reason.

Many executives in the public light rely on public relations experts to steer them through interviews which will be documented for all to read. Different PR people subscribe to different tactics when guiding clients through interviews. Some believe it is their job to literally coach their clients throughout the actual interview process. In my opinion, the PR person’s job is to get the spokesperson to the point where it is practically impossible for anything but the message to come out of his or her mouth, regardless of who asks questions and when or where they were asked.

Presenting on a teleseminar, especially if you are the only presenter, it is often the hardest form of public speaking. Here are the challenges in comparison to a live speech in front of a real audience:

1 – You can’t see your audience, so you can’t get read their faces or eyes.

2 – It’s harder for your audience to ask you questions.

3 – Your audience can not see your facial expression or body language

4 – You can’t communicate with visuals, slides or video (yes you can with webinars, but not on a pure teleseminar).