Ineffable Quality: When I sit in the audience for certain events—plays, concerts, talks—I can feel the difference between a performer who makes me think, “Oh, wow! That is a great performer! What a virtuoso!” and a performer pulls me into the music, the story, who makes me feel part of something bigger. One performer awes me while another touches me. One singer elicits a gasp, “What a voice!” The next envelopes me in the beauty of the music. I marvel at one speaker and see things differently when the next has left the stage. This quality of communication can happen in many realms. A favorite story of my father’s was a description of a man passionately weeping…Read on

In grad school at Smith School for Social Work, we spent time thinking deeply about our own experiences, beliefs, histories, psyches, so that we would not project them onto our clinical clients, but would own them and see our clients more clearly. By knowing ourselves, we can better help others. Good boundaries come from knowing what is our issue and what is our client’s issue. We can gain clarity about our own intentions and boundaries by asking the simple question…Read on.

Last week I wrote about high and low intentions for those in public service. For those of us who are not in public service, our intentions may not be so aspirational, but the rule of thumb still guides us: intentions that are FOR others are high intentions; those intentions that boomerang the attention back onto ourselves are low intentions. Imagine we are interviewing for a job. Or hoping to make a sale. It might be tempting to choose a LOW intention: To get the job; To make the sale; To make them like me; To impress…Read on.

In last week’s post, Persuading a National Audience, I talked about the communication skills of great leaders. One hallmark of great leaders is that their overarching intention or purpose benefits others, mostly those with the least power. These are what I call, “high intentions,” as opposed to intentions that benefit the speaker, which I call “low intentions.” For public leaders, examples of high intentions are: “To give hope,” “To help,” “To support,” “To elevate,” “To shine the light on.” Examples of low intentions are: “To control,” “To convince,” To extract,”…Read on.

Great leaders compel others to struggle together towards a shared vision.

Great leaders work for the good of others; mostly, for those who have the least power.

Therefore, great leaders must be great communicators.

Politicians and those in the public eye often have a team of advisors who prepare them for debates, press conferences, media interviews, and speeches. These advisors focus on things like strategy, speech writing, and talking points. When I work on such a team, my job is to make sure that the speaker’s message is congruent with the speaker’s delivery. I focus on how the content is performed through expression, gesture, body-language, and voice.

Any of you following this blog know that my work with clients is not prescriptive; rather, our work focuses on freeing the speaker to be their full selves—alive, powerful, at ease, appropriate, and riveting. Rather than using a list of rules (“stand like this,” “don’t do that,” “lean in here”), we work towards…Read on

Recently I was on a Zoom call with the inimitable, indomitable, inordinately prolific Tom Peters(!). I joined the Zoom link in time to see Tom’s ceiling, desk, windows, a bookshelf, all flying by as he carried his iPad to the desk. Then I heard, “I’m setting up Ruth.” I had no idea what that might mean until I saw his Ruth Bader Ginsburg bobble-head bobble into view. His colleague, Shelley, said, “Tom, I can see Ruth. Can you move her out of frame?” Tom then propped up his iPad horizontally, placed Ruth on the right, just beyond the camera lens and out of view. Why? Read on.

If I can survive it, so can you.

Too many years ago, I was in a wonderful play, The Other Place by Sharr White. I loved this play and the woman I had the honor to portray. She is a scientist who studies early onset dementia. And, unbeknownst to her, she suffers from early onset dementia.

For this role I was on stage for 90 minutes, an unreliable narrator hoping to find her long lost daughter. The other actors disappear into the audience when not on stage. My words trigger the next scene. Or not.

In previews, I lost my way…Read on

This morning I took my dog on a walk in the woods. A place I’d never been. At some point I realized I was lost. I went around a bend, hoping to see a familiar landmark, but found a whole new path. I knew exactly what I needed to do next: panic. My heart started racing. My voice went up an octave, “It’s OK, Harpo, we’ll make it home…” My eyes darted here and there. I started running through the wet, tick-infested poison ivy. Rounding the corner, I came across a big log to sit on with a sign reading, “Breathe. Listen.” I stopped. Looked around for the wood nymph, Puck, playing games with me. Then, I laughed and followed Puck’s wise advice. I sat down. I took a deep, fresh breath. I listened. I heard the wind. A bird. And then soft voices. And a car. Aha! That way!

This is exactly what I say to clients when they get lost on stage.

Breathe. Listen. The way home will become apparent.

This is what I practice with my clients:…Read on.

Sometimes we have a long, complicated and precise speech, are reading from a book or long quote, or are an on-air journalist or voice-over artist, and want to find a way to make this reading sound vital and extemporaneous. In these cases, I use a “Reader’s Copy” like the one pictured in this photo and the “Taking it off the page” technique illustrated in this video. Otherwise, reading from a text can sound read, sound memorized, because it has the even tempo, lulling us to sleep, rather than waking us up to listen. This is why I prefer talks that are deeply “known” vs. talks that are memorized. Conversational speech has a variety of stops and starts, ups and downs, fast and slow, loud and soft. When we must read or memorize, we work to bring that variety into the delivery.

READER’S COPY

This photo is an example of a Reader’s Copy. I made up all of the symbols because they are clear to me. There are no rules, just use what is clear to you. You can use any way of formatting the text as long as it works for you. As you can see in the photo, generally, I use all caps, bold, italics, parentheses, and mark breaths, pauses, and transitions with backslashes or lines.

Here is what I use for clarity:

//=PAUSE/BREATHE for Transitions, BOLD=EMPHASIZE, hit…Read on.

Shhh…I do NOT tell my speakers there will be safety nets. I do not offer “confidence monitors” or a podium upon which to place pages of text. And yet sometimes, as we near our performance date, it becomes clear that a safety net is required in order to be fully present on stage.

My marvelous acting teacher, Alice Spivak , was called a “dialogue coach” for many famous actors, singers, models, and comedians. She would be on set or in rehearsal and give coaching from the side. One of her clients, the great Diahann Carroll, took on the role of Dr. Livingstone in John Pielmeier’s play Agnes of God on Broadway. For the first weeks, Alice sat in the front row with a copy of the script on her lap. If ever Ms. Carroll lost her way, Alice would tilt up her head, her face mirroring Dr. Livingstone’s emotion, and mouth the words with exaggerated clarity, a safety net lovingly unfurled over the orchestra pit. A seasoned and professional performer knows to ask for support when it is the best choice for the performance and therefore, for the audience.

Susan McCulley has coached many of our speakers at the Charlottesville TEDx. Her background as a writer, editor, artist, and mindful movement instructor give her the skills to support speakers along the way from crafting the text, to embodying the talk. One of her speakers took the very demanding risk of memorizing the entire 18-minute text. The speaker held notes twisting tightly in her hands, but knew she would not…Read on.

Many speakers come to me with a written text that they plan and hope to memorize. The first thing I do is take away the script and ask them to give me the talk right then and there without notes. Off the top of their head. I want to break up that love affair with their text as soon as possible. A memorized talk can be a barrier between the speaker and audience; the speaker’s focus remains on themselves and their text, remembering or forgetting certain lines and phrases. We then begin the work of deconstructing the talk back to what inspired it, reconnecting with its purpose and rhythms to get the speaker back to a sense of aliveness in delivery.

Exceptions to the Rule

Once in a great while, there are talks which invite or even demand word-for-word memorization. These talks are crafted, each word chosen, phrase-by-phrase, the words creating a melody. Maybe the speaker is a poet or spoken-word performer. Maybe the speaker is a writer who knows that the truest way to share what they’ve found, seen, felt, is with this exact language, punctuation, and orchestration; the exact word is the only word.

In these rare cases, the speaker spends weeks, hours, days, reciting until… Read on.

Talks that are memorized sound memorized. Talks that are “winged” sound winged. How do we find the balance so that our talks are both structured and free?

When we speak in public, we strive for a balance that allows for both form and freedom. Both ingredients are vital in any art; finding that balance allows for expression that captures our audience, magnetizes them, “speaks” to them intellectually, emotionally, and takes them on a journey. Without that balance we are left with extremes: talks that are measured, polished, perfected and controlled, or talks that are unprepared, rambling, and incoherent. The rigid talks leave the audience cold, unmoved, and perhaps bored, while the raw, ad-libbed talks leave us baffled and maybe even angry to have given the gift of our attention to someone who does not respect our time.

In my work with clients, I make a distinction between ‘memorizing’ and ‘knowing.’ And I use both.

“Memorizing” means…Read on.

Many of my clients are afraid of emotions. They worry that their talk, presentation, or challenging interaction, will be hijacked by emotion. They fear that they will be derailed, humiliated, and that their reputation may never recover. This is especially true of women, who may have internalized the message that they need to be “more like men,” i.e. less emotional. The fear is that emotional vulnerability is a sign of weakness.

What actors know is that:

*Emotions are simply the by-products of actions (intentions).

*Emotions only have the power to derail us when we try…Read on

In case you missed this live show last week, here is a link to my interview with the warm, wise, and wonderful Lynsie McKeown on her Voice America radio show, Women Thriving Unapologetically. In which we talk about…Read on.

My father, Warren Bennis, believed that great leaders are made, not born. And I believe that great speakers are made, not born. Great speakers are practicing skills and techniques, whether they learned them from acting teachers, by watching others, or through play as a child (and adult!).

Dad was a wonderful speaker. Here are a few of the things I learned from him about public speaking…Read on.

Fractals are ever-repeating shapes we find in nature, from trees and snails, to venous systems and plumes of smoke. Similarly, most every talk falls into a simple and universal structure. Plays also follow this pattern. No matter the length, no matter the purpose, most talks fall easily into the exact form we all learned in high school: Intro, three parts or Acts, Conclusion.

When clients first present a talk for me, I take notes, looking for this pattern. It’s very helpful for the speaker to know exactly what the three big chunks are in order to focus the text and learn the talk. It helps to see the form for pacing, emphasis, and arc. Read on…

Gymnasts know how to end a routine. Look at the phenomenal, Simone Biles. She embodies finality. Everything about her, even in stillness, says a proud, “The End.”

Just as we open a talk in silence, we end a talk in silence. We wait. Just wait. We take in the audience. We breathe in this moment. Silently, we thank them for coming on this journey.

We might want to scoot right off the stage—sometimes we even roll our eyes and run, panicked, into the wings! Please do not do this. If we do, we have undermined everything that came before. No matter how uncomfortable, just stop speaking and breathe. For how long, you ask? I imagine a bass tone piano note, “booooooom!” And wait until the sound is completely absorbed by the room.

As I said last week in How to Begin a Talk, I ask that speakers craft and memorize both their opening and closing lines. (I’ll cover how to work with the rest of the talk next week.)

If we do not know our opening and closing lines, we might meander in and sputter out at the end. Having clean, crafted, beautiful opening and closing lines gives us an anchor. Read on…

SILENCE and BREATH The very first thing we do, before we speak, is to look out at the beautiful view and take a lovely, deep breath. Let it linger. Make sure our eyes capture every face, vista, sigh, mood. Just breathe it all in. It may feel like a million years, but that opening moment of breath and silence before we speak, is vital.

Then, only when the audience is with us, do we speak our first, beautifully crafted and memorized opening line.

A few years ago I was in rehearsal for a play and the Artistic Director reminded me that, “The audience doesn’t catch the first minute or so of any play. They are turning off their phones, checking out the program, unwrapping cough drops.”

But! That just can’t be so! The first line of any play, book, article, poem, is crafted to launch the entire experience! And this play, The Other Place by Sharr White, about a scientist who studies early-onset dementia and who finds herself with early-onset dementia, demanded that the first line be heard: “The first glimmer of it came on a Friday.” THE FIRST GLIMMER OF IT CAME ON A FRIDAY! Wow!

Opening night, I entered the stage, found my light, and I waited. I wanted to make sure everyone was with me. I wanted to make sure they caught that shimmering and meaningful line.

It’s like tossing someone a ball—we make eye contact and make sure they are with us before we let go.

There are so many reasons for that silence, that breath…Read on.

Konstantin Stanislavski, the theater director who gave actors, “The Method,” knew that in real life, people don’t just face each other, lock eyes, and take turns speaking. In real life, we are doing something—eating a meal, shelling peas, walking the dog—and life happens. In fact, he referred to his method as, “The Method of Physical Action.” In his work with the great playwright Anton Chekhov, the characters are given quotidien tasks as the dialogue unfolds—they clean guns, play cards, stoke fires, dance.

When we give ourselves something to do with our hands—a prop, an action (aside from a slide clicker or microphone)—we free ourselves to be more relaxed and present. Lewis Miller, the innovator of the Flower Flash and extraordinary floral event designer, spends his days elbow deep in stems, leaves, and perfumed blossoms. In his TEDx Talk, we brought in…Read on.

It’s easy to leave our audience behind when we slide through important words: names, places, acronyms, jargon, terms of art, foreign words.

Instead, I invite you to savor these words. Let them land. Enjoy them. Even if everyone knows the name, or we assume they do (“Kim Kardashian”), we need to slow down and deliver it with love (KIM KAHRDASHEEEAN). The same applies to names of places…Read on.