Great Speakers are not born

ENDORSEMENTS

"George Kops is one of the outstanding coaches in this business. You should read his book—Great Speakers Aren’t Born captures the real essence of the presentation process. A good read."

—William Miller

President, Otis NAO

A unique process for developing your presentation skills.

—Frank Parisi

Vice President Communications, Cowles Media Company

Our way of doing business has been fundamentally changed as a result of work we have done with George Kops. The concepts they have provided for effective communication to our clients and prospects has been extremely effective in our efforts to grow and develop our business.

—Matt Simmons

President, Simmons & Company International

Kops and Worth have packaged the key ingredients for developing presentations your listeners will remember.

—Curt Linke

Vice President Communications, Carrier Corporation

Today, the art of effective communication is critical for business success and is truly the competitive edge.

The right presentation can spell the difference between success and failure in the effort to achieve your goals.

At Focus Communications International, we work with our clients in helping to build your business through better personal communications.

FOREWORD

Perhaps you have had the experience of listening to a very dynamic speaker and thinking: I wish I could speak that effectively. Then, almost immediately, you tell yourself: Oh, that is a gift; I could never be that good!

Well, you can. Scores of managers in my organization have become successful speakers. They found the process not only enjoyable, but also extremely rewarding. Suddenly, they could make better sales presentations; they could run better meetings; and some of them even reported receiving a standing ovation after they finished addressing an audience. Nothing could be more satisfying.

Each of these managers shared several characteristics. At one time, they had lacked confidence in themselves as public speakers and, by their own admission, they often delivered presentations that seemed to fall flat with their audiences. How could they improve?

Each of them participated in the Value Added Communications program, which was given by Focus Communications International to our organization. Managers who used to stand stiffly in front of an audience learned how to inject far more energy into their deliveries by transforming their speaking style. Others learned how to give their talks more focus and how to actively involve their listeners in a presentation, applying techniques that made them much better speakers.

There is no magic to these things. They are practical, common-sense approaches that anyone can apply. But their impact is enormous. Managers who participate in the Focus process experience the satisfaction of making tremendous improvement, an improvement that occurs so rapidly it almost seems like magic. And the more they work and participate in the program, the more they benefit from it.

In Great Speakers Aren’t Born: The Complete Guide to Winning Presentations, the techniques of Value Added Communications are now made easily accessible to everyone. If you read the material in this book, do the practice exercises, and complete the worksheets to prepare for your next presentation, you can become a more successful speaker.

This book takes you on a thoroughly satisfying journey, one that will enable you to reap immediate benefits in both your professional and personal life. By mastering a few oral communications skills, you can express your ideas more effectively, achieve greater influence among your friends and co-workers, and stand out as someone who really does make a difference. All of these goals are well worth achieving.

—Richard Sloan

President

United Technologies Automotive, Europe

DEDICATION

To Ginny, George Ali, Greg, and Karen.

INTRODUCTION

Becoming a Better Speaker

Paraphrasing a well-known aphorism, Great speakers aren’t born, they’re made, this book shows you how to become, if not a great speaker, at least a much better one.

Great Speakers Aren’t Born is based on the state-of-the-art seminars developed by Focus Communications International. We have trained thousands of executives at some of the world’s best known organizations. For more than a decade, these programs have enabled participants to become better professionals, better managers and better leaders.

Today, communications skills are particularly important in charting a course for the employees in your organization or your department. In an age of accelerating change and increasing uncertainty, people are looking for clear direction, and you can provide it. Whether you are shaping a new vision, spearheading an initiative into an untried market, speaking to the media, or simply conducting a business meeting, effective public speaking is frequently the margin of difference between success and failure.

Great Speakers Aren’t Born has two overriding objectives. First, we teach you the presentation skills necessary to becoming a better speaker. Second, the book provides an opportunity for you to practice these skills as you prepare your next presentation. Every chapter contains exercises and worksheets that will carry you through the presentation planning process. You can use these forms to evaluate your current skill level, gather information, develop an outline for your presentation, write a powerful introduction, create visual aids and rehearse your delivery. (Additional copies of the forms are in the Appendix of the book.)

In addition, a number of chapters contain sample talks which may serve as valuable models for your next presentation. Each speech highlights important elements that illustrate the material presented in the chapter.

Great Speakers Aren’t Born opens with a discussion of eight key points to consider as you start to prepare a presentation, including an evaluation of your verbal, visual and vocal skills. In Chapter Two, the book emphasizes the importance of developing a main idea, or central message, that will make a significant impact on your audience. This is the most critical step in developing your talk. Our central message is that improved speaking skills can be learned. What this means is that as you improve your skills, you will be more effective in your professional and personal life. Indeed, your ability to communicate well is your most important asset. All the information you have in your head is of no value to others until you communicate it in an interesting and meaningful fashion.

Chapter Three examines the process of brainstorming ideas and collecting anecdotes and examples to bring them to life for your audience, while Chapter Four presents a variety of organizational patterns that you can use to structure the ideas in your presentation. The next two chapters focus on developing an opening for your talk that hooks the audience. We show how to ensure that the body of your speech is clear and concise, and that it finishes with a powerful closing.

Visual aids can play a significant role in presenting complex information. Chapter Seven looks at various types of visual media, such as overheads, slides, computers, and video, and explains how to create powerful visual aids. The following chapter is devoted to improving your ability to interact with an audience by developing a dialogue with them and conducting effective Q&A sessions. We also discuss how to handle questions asked by the media.

Chapter Nine explains how to infuse energy into your delivery through visual skills, such as eye contact and body language, as well as vocal skills, like the advantages of pauses and the proper level of pacing.

Rehearsing a talk will usually allow you to eliminate any major flaws, and Chapter Ten enables you to evaluate your rehearsal in terms of verbal, vocal and visual skills.

Chapter Eleven contains tips for conquering such problems as stage fright, interruptions, and schedule changes. The final chapter looks at important special topics, such as video-conferencing and voice mail.

Many surveys indicate that most people are not listening to the words being spoken at business meetings. The listeners’ minds are wandering because the speakers have not made their talk interesting and relevant for the audience. Indeed, the speakers often confess they do not know how to make the material engaging. They often feel frustrated because they’re not great natural speakers. They see good speaking as a natural skill, one they do not possess and cannot acquire. As a result, their presentations are significantly less effective than they should be.

Great speakers aren’t born — they are trained. They work to develop their skills and become much better at speaking. You can also improve your skills. But it takes adequate preparation—that is the key to any successful presentation. Underlying all the information in this book is a single line of advice: Do not leave it until the last minute. Give yourself plenty of time to prepare and use all of the steps presented in every chapter.They have not been included on a whim or to make the process of speech making needlessly difficult. They are based on practical experience. They work! Students in Focus Communications seminars have used them repeatedly and reported tremendous success in delivering presentations.

George Kops is the president of Focus Communications International. Kops and the company teach the concepts of Value Added Communications® and how to apply them in a wide variety of speaking situations. Kops has worked with many large clients, including GE, IBM, Glaxo Wellcome, United Technologies and MCI, helping their executives become better speakers. Today, these professionals are successfully utilizing their oral communication skills in sales presentations, acquisition proposals, board of director meetings, media appearances, and in many other settings.

Richard Worth is a professional business writer and author of ten books. He has also produced several hundred video presentations for Fortune 500 corporations. Additionally, Worth presents writing seminars for Focus Communications International.

Chapter 1

Approaching

The Starting Line

HIGHLIGHTS

Remember the 8 key points of successful presentations

Add the 7 Cs to your next talk

Be prepared to work hard at becoming a better speaker

A manager at a large manufacturing plant has been asked to prepare a brief presentation on self-managed work teams. He wants to talk about the success of the teams in his area, which handle purchasing. But at a meeting of all the team leaders, nobody can agree on a simple message that summarizes what they have accomplished.

There’s too much material here, one of them says.

How can we boil it all down? another person asks.

As the meeting adjourned, they still had not come up with any answers. Two weeks went by, the group gathered for another meeting, but there was very little progress. The deadline for the presentation was now only a few days away.

We’ve got to do something! the manager said, pounding the table. But nobody offered any suggestions.

Finally, the manager decided to put a talk together by himself. The evening before the presentation, he burned the midnight oil and wrote out a long, rambling speech, hoping it would make sense.

But, standing in front of his audience the next day, he could barely keep his hands from shaking. He started with what he thought was an amusing story. Unfortunately, no one laughed. And his talk went downhill from there. It was a nightmare.

How many of us have awakened in a cold sweat from a nightmare like the one that overtook this manager? Or, even worse, actually lived it? A manager’s ability to stand up and make a successful presentation can often make the critical difference between success and failure. As one engineer put it: If you are a manager of a group, not only must you get people to work for you effectively, you have to get your thoughts across to the rest of the organization. They need to know what your message is and why your group is important. If you are going to get funded in your area, you have to make presentations to capital appropriations committees. It is just part of the job.

Whether you are trying to create an impact on top management or persuade the members of your staff to embrace your vision, you must communicate effectively. As corporations eliminate layers of hierarchy and empower employees, managers can no longer rely solely on their authority to get anything accomplished. They must be skilled in using the power of words in a variety of situations, from small, informal team meetings to major marketing and sales campaigns. This chapter looks at eight key points to consider as you start to think about your next presentation.

1. Understand the Purpose of Presentations

It is easy to look on the task of preparing a presentation only from your own point of view, as something that I have to do. But unless you are writing in a diary or a journal, every communication that you produce involves an audience. The purpose of your communication is to reach those listeners. In some instances, you may be trying to simply pass along information. But in many other cases, your goal is far more ambitious: It is to persuade them of your point of view. In their book Beyond The Hype, Rediscovering The Essence of Management, Robert Eccles and Nitin Nohria explain that the basic task of managers is to mobilize action by using language creatively. Persuading others to take action