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Public Speaking: Writing Your Audience a PreSCRIPTion

Posted on April 30, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to take more control in delivering your next speech. Reading time: 3:48.

The executive steps up to the microphone, flips open the cover of his prepared text, abruptly closes it and declares: “Today I just want to speak to you from my heart.”

Balderdash!

After all, EVERY speech must be delivered “from the heart” or your audience will walk out on you –figuratively if you’re the boss or literally if you’re not. Their B-S meters are set too high to keep your voice in their ears.

In my experience, executives most often eschew their written speeches for self-serving reasons like these:

1. The executive fears reading a speech makes him look less authoritative.
2. The executive didn’t have time to rehearse the speech.
3. The executive hates being chained down to a script that makes him sound too wooden.
4. The executive is visiting a new venue and isn’t used to the TelePrompTer.
5. The executive KNOWS what he wants to say and besides one idea always leads to another good idea.

That’s why I am often asked to counsel executives who don’t want their scripts to show. I ask them to think of their script as if it were a preSCRIPTion. Think of this preSCRIPTion as a power tool that gives you even more control and authority in “treating” your audiences. Continue reading →

Filed under: Writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Fly the High Untrespassed Sanctity of Space

Posted on April 27, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to spark your imagination to higher horizons. Reading time: 2:53.

Even as a teenager, Albert Einstein climbed to new vantage points and envisioned things that most had never even thought of before . As an energetic 16-year-old, he climbed the 8,000 foot Mount Santis in the Swiss Alps-and gave us all a glimpse of his visionary leadership.

There on top of the mountain, Albert Einstein stood amazed -and almost in a daze at the sparkling rays.

There above the treeline and overlooking the clouds below, Einstein marveled at the brilliant spectacle of light — its purity and precision, its might and majesty- that captured his imagination. “Could you run after a beam of light” he wondered.

That ability to gain a new vantage point, to see farther -and further- ahead is a key leadership skill. Climbing that mountain Continue reading →

Filed under: Perception | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Attitude: E-Quip Yourself With Humor

Posted on April 26, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to sharpen your ability to maintain control of a situation with humor. Reading time: 3:14.

When First Lady Nancy Reagan was criticized for her taste in expensive china and designer clothes, the wife of the President of the United States told reporters that she was not acting like a queen. “After all a tiara would surely muss my hair,” she grinned with her tongue firmly in her cheek.

First Lady Nancy Reagan (left) and Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher walking together while President Ronald Reagan trails behind.

In the 1858 senate race in Illinois, Stephen Douglas called Abe Lincoln a “two-faced man.” Lincoln calmly responded: “If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?”

And when Mohandas Gandhi was asked if he was embarrassed to visit the King of England dressed only in a loin cloth, Gandhi replied “Oh no, the King has on quite enough for both of us.”

Ah, the art of the quip-a powerful leadership tool -that can turn potentially embarrassing situations into amusing distractions and help a leader maintain control more with a hearty laugh than a hardened hand.

To help you sharpen your own wits and enhance your leadership thinking, here are a few quips I’ve collected over the years that leaders have used to humor their audiences in stressful circumstances.

  • A college professor walked into to a lecture hall and found that his students had moved out all the chairs. The professor put down his notes, looked up and said triumphantly: Thank you for that standing ovation, amazing there’s so much interest in my talk tonight that every seat in the house is taken.” Continue reading →

Filed under: Humor | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Yo-Yo Leadership: Pulling Your Own Strings

Posted on April 25, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you preserve and protect your values. Reading time: 2:23.

The six yo-yos flanking the side of the Chief Executive Officer’s desk like so many-colored safety switch buttons, quickly became a conversation piece for every first time visitor.

And whenever he saw that familiar quizzical look, the CEO was only too happy to share the Yo-yo Lore that turned his desk into a toy chest of sorts.

“No, no, no I’m NOT having my second childhood and no I’m not a yo-yo dieter,” he smiled.

“No yo-yos are too important to be used only as toys or as negative reminders of simplistic observations that what goes up must come down and all those variables that go with that kind of thinking.”

The visitor learns that the yo-yo display on his desk was gift from his direct reports. They were intrigued with his concept of principle-centered, values-based leadership that the then new CEO referenced in his first speech to the company.

“The most effective leaders are like a yo-yo,” the CEO declared to surprised looks in his company-wide audience assessing their new leader for the first time.

Leaders by definition, the CEO explained, are always attached to something. They always come with strings attached. Strings of cultural norms and behaviors. Strings of values and truths. Strings that make you, you. Continue reading →

Filed under: Attitude | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Kissing Sleeping Beauty From The Podium

Posted on April 24, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to awake and enlighten your audience at your next speech. Reading time: 4:13.

The next time you deliver a speech think of yourself as Prince or Princess Charming. And think of your audience as Sleeping Beauty (or your Sleeping Significant Other) locked in a 100-year deep sleep. Then you will be even more apt to AWAKEN your audience to your point of view.

Sleeping Beauty Awaken by the Prince

After all, leading public speakers recognize they have to first gain and retain the attention of the audience with a verbal kiss that touches and stirs.

They work at developing their verbal kiss with a focus designed to incite an emotional response from the audience, a verbal kiss designed to flame the audience’s collective hearts to care as deeply as you do about your message. In fact, that verbal kiss is so important that without it, your message will fall on deaf ears.

No wonder the most effective leaders I know work at perfecting their verbal kissing technique well beyond a lip service that only goes through the motions with none of the emotion; beyond a lip service that fails at making “love” with only words that are heard but not felt.

How can you make “love” to your audience with more than words? How can you awaken your audience with a verbal kiss that stirs them into action with feeling ? Try using the 7Ws of Effective Speaking: Continue reading →

Filed under: Public Speaking | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Rollercoaster Riding From The Podium

Posted on April 23, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help your audience better retain the message of your next speech. Reading time: 3:12.

Think of yourself climbing into the driver’s seat the next time you step on a podium or up to a lectern. Now take your audience for a joy ride. Let them feel in the pit of their stomachs just how exhilarated you feel about your subject. Now step on it!

Accelerate to exhilarate. Speed up and then slow down. Accelerate then slow down. Remember your first joy ride? The fun is in the acceleration not just the velocity. So too in effective public speaking. Speed up and slow down. Vary your pitch. Vary your tone. Vary your rate of speech.

Yet too often I hear overly excited leaders with their foot slammed down on the accelerator screaming with the passion of a preacher seemingly for miles. Too much. Then I hear other even more zealous leaders shifting into an even higher gear and rattling off facts like a professional auctioneer. Too fast. But mostly I hear leaders riding the brake, unsure of where they’re going and doling out fact after fact, drip by drip, in a tepid monotone. Too slow.

Pace yourself. Pacing is the key to an effective speech delivery-assuming the content is tailored to the audience’s interests, concerns and needs.

To help me remember the importance of pacing whenever I deliver a speech, I think of taking my audience on a roller coaster ride. I always like the suspenseful build up point by point by point, just like the roller coaster clicks along the tracks as it climbs that first incline, every so slowly and then halts briefly at the top before soaring down the incline. Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

Continue reading →

Filed under: Public Speaking | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Giving Your Staff Room To Grow

Posted on April 20, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you more fully train your staff. Reading time: 2:57.

The five-year old girl and her dad enthusiastically browsed the bicycles in the shop. A red bike caught her eye. She climbed on the bike and looked up at her dad for permission to “ride it just down that street.” She pointed to an aisle in the crowded bicycle store flanked by sparkling two-wheelers of all colors and stripes.

The little girl wobbled a bit riding 25-30 feet in the bicycle store. Her dad caught her just in time as she fell. “I think we better get you some training wheels too,” the dad said.

“No, no, I want to be like the big kids. I don’t want the training wheels.” The little girl’s face grimaced. She fought back a tear or two. “I want to be like the big kids,” she blurted through her sniffles.

They brought the bike home, training wheels and all. But within an hour, the youngster was riding the bike in front of her house. By herself. Without the training wheels.

“Dad, in the store, I was afraid of running into all those other bikes ” she explained her sudden confidence and poised performance, “but outside here I can do it. I can really ride.”

My daughter taught me a leadership lesson that day more than 20 years ago that I still struggle with at times: Give your staff room to grow and get out of their way.

Sometimes I forget to step back and look at the big picture, especially from my staff’s point of view. Sometimes I over-react when I see some of my staff “wobbling” through the workday.

Sometimes, I’m too quick to slap on the “training wheels” when all they really needed was a broader proving ground where they could literally get up to speed. Continue reading →

Filed under: Productivity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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