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If you are not effectively communicating your ideas…It’s literally costing you your dreams!

Whether you are attending a business networking luncheon, speaking to a group of Sunday school students or attending a one on one business meeting, you are speaking in public. It is something we do everyday.

All our lives we have been speaking in public. However, for most of us we have never been trained. Society expects us to be great speakers without any formal training. All great communicators are committed to learning and growing so they can master the art of public speaking and clear communication.

This fact carries both good and bad news for the student learning the art of public speaking:

First, the BAD news: “The ability to clearly communicate ideas to clients and colleagues is a rare skill, yet one that often makes the difference in whether or not a great concept succeeds.” ~ William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard

Now, for the GOOD news: “Great speakers are not born, they’re trained.” ~ Dale Carnegie

And now for the REALLY GREAT news: To get you moving in the right direction. Here are 7 High Performance Speaking Tips titled “Seven Proven Strategies to Transform Your Presentations.” I created these tips to help you achieve public speaking success.

High Performance Speaking Tip 1: Become a great story teller. Be willing to share your personal stories, as well as “anonymous” client stories. As a result, you’ll be able to support almost any point you want to make and connect with your audience on a heart level. Stories are essential to helping your audience learn from you, follow you and trust you while they are easily absorbing your message.

High Performance Speaking Tip 2: Great writing abilities don’t always lead to an extraordinary presentation. No matter how powerful a speech is written, you won’t know if it really works until you practice it out loud. The ultimate test is when you present it to a live audience and look for their reactions.

High Performance Speaking Tip 3: Treat your audience the way that you would want to be treated. Audience members need to feel like they are appreciated and that their time is valued. The next time you are preparing a presentation, remember to think about what the audience needs and desires first.

High Performance Speaking Tip 4: Every presentation and subcategory of your presentation has a beginning, middle and end. When you are creating your next presentation remember to apply this principle to the overall body of your speech and to every key point you want to make.

High Performance Speaking Tip 5: In the beginning of your presentation, let your audience know exactly what information you are going to share with them. Review the main points you will be covering and why they need this information. When you are done with your presentation, do a quick review by asking the audience “easy to answer” questions. If they can answer them, your points landed. If they can’t answer the questions, your next step is to work on clear communication.

High Performance Speaking Tip 6: You have three to five seconds to grab the attention of your audience. Never start a presentation by asking an audience a question like this “How is everybody today?” Usually you will get one or two individuals that will respond with “Good.” Start your speech with a power packed statement or question that grabs their attention.

High Performance Speaking Tip 7: Individuals often ask me “What do I do with my hands?” The key is to utilize your hands to bring home your points. If it is not natural to you, preplan this in advance. Utilize your hands in your presentation when you want to bring home a point or to accentuate something specific like height, number or size.

During March Madness sports fans affectionately refer to the NCAA Basketball tournament as “bracketology”. It’s a 65 team playoff, over 18 days, single elimination (winner keeps going, loser goes home)…one ultimate winner. I think it’s the best event in sports.
In negotiation, we sometimes pride ourselves on “thinking on our feet” or “winging it.” Don’t fool yourself. There is a better way. It’s called “bracketizing.”

The best chance for Negotiation success comes from what we call “Aggressive Preparation”. In the Humble Confidence Negotiation Workshop we dive into the 6 Stages of Negotiation Preparation. Stage 5 is what we call “bracketizing” our offers. We prepare and bracket 4 offers:

1) The Best (better than expected)
2) The Realistic (what it should be)
3) The Fallback (acceptable range of backup)
4) The Alamo (don’t go there…call a timeout!)

Bracketizing means we project ahead and determine a range of offers. We gain the discipline of staying within the plan, or “bracket”. We never “wing it” or freelance deals at the table. Never.

Now that’s not to mean we’re rigid or “un-creative”. Not at all. But it does mean we control our emotions and don’t get caught up in the euphoria of deal-completion. Sometimes we just want to be done…be careful not to let your desire to finish drive a sub-par outcome.

Bracketizing is just one stage. There are 5 more in “Aggressive Preparation”. We call it “Aggressive” because you have to drive your team and yourself to embrace the process. And remember, 90% of a successful negotiation happens in this stage, before you even get in the room!

As a speaker, I want to know how I am doing. However, I think that asking for and receiving feedback can be one of the hardest parts of working on our skills that exists.

Oftentimes, when we have given a presentation, members of the audience rush up for one of the following reasons:

• To tell us how much they enjoyed and gained from our presentation.
• To ask a question about something we addressed or didn’t address.
• To tell us about a part of our presentation or something we did that they particularly liked or
• To tell us something we did incorrectly, left out or were mistaken about.

All of the above types of feedback are important, not only because they make us feel good or bad, but also because they can show us what areas of our speaking are strong and can be used to our advantage and what areas we need to examine and work on. We must ask ourselves, however, if we can honestly agree with the feedback and then if the suggestions are feasible.

We should never try to change so much that we become uncomfortable or not ourselves. We do need to maintain our uniqueness, even if it “ruffles a few feathers.”

How about the evaluation sheets that audience members are often asked to fill out?

• Other presenters and I have mixed emotions about these kinds of evaluations.
• First of all, let me say that if we receive 100 great evaluations and two that are poor and/or degrading evaluations, we tend to focus on the two (it is human nature).
• I know speakers that throw a whole stack of evaluations in the waste basket without even looking at them. They feel that most of the time, the sheets are destructive and useless.
• My advice is to take what you feel is constructive and worth changing (usually a technique or skill), but forget what attacks you as a person (your character, style or uniqueness).
• I find that if the same comment is repeated often, this is something that I should work on improving.

What are other ways to receive feedback? I often mention Toastmasters. It doesn’t matter what level of speaking we have achieved, we will receive helpful evaluations on a regular basis if we join a Toastmasters club. Every speech we give will have an evaluator assigned. Just be sure to tell him or her what areas to focus on, and how tough you want your evaluation to be. You will also learn a huge amount by doing evaluations yourself. There are also advanced clubs available where you will have the opportunity to work at a more intense level with tougher evaluations.

When should we give feedback? I would never give any kind of critical feedback, unless asked to, and I also hesitate to give feedback to some others who ask for it. These are the people who do not really want to follow any kind of advice and will also take the defensive and argue with you about your feedback. I feel that I am not helping them and am only gaining an enemy for the time and effort expended.