Speak Like a Leader

By Bob Berkowitz (www.bobberkowitz.com),
Principal at The Dilenschneider Group

When you give a speech, you have an opportunity to get your audience to see their world differently. This as an opportunity to influence them and get them to take action. These points are designed to help you become a more powerful, persuasive and confident speaker.

• Take a stand.
  Start with a provocative statement or challenging question. Grab their attention by presenting thoughtful analysis, perspective or judgment. If it’s the same old, same old, you’ll lose them and good luck trying to get them back. Don’t waste their time telling them how happy you are to be back in Chicago or saying nice things about the person that introduced you. Nobody cares.

• Make it clear why this is in their interest to listen to you.
  Your speech has to answer their unasked question: why should I care? What are their needs, dreams, desires, fears and anxieties? Give them something to think about. What action would you like them to take as a result of what you are saying?

• Be interesting.
  A friend of mine is a minister and she asked me how she could liven up her sermons. She thought about peppering her homilies with jokes. She’s a brilliant and wonderful person, but funny she is not. I reminded her that her flock comes to church to be enlightened, to learn something, to see how they can live their lives in a more meaningful and spiritual way. Jokes are great if you’re really funny. More than likely, you are not. Stick to what you know and why it’s important to them. Also, put some passion into your presentation. Glazing eye disease is the chief symptom of lack-luster speech syndrome.

• Tell meaningful stories and evoke real feelings.
  Stories connect you to the imagination of the people you are speaking to. The audience can envision what you are talking about. The image of the story lasts far longer than the words they’ve heard.Get them to feel something. For example, do you remember the night Barack Obama was elected President? I don’t recall a word he said that night in Lincoln Park in Chicago, but I’ll never forget how I felt.

• Keep it short.
  The Gettysburg address is only 256 words. I’m not saying that your speech should be that brief, but much longer than 20 minutes or so, you might start losing your crowd. Audiences have the attention span of a three year old.

• Don’t read your speech word for word.
  Don’t memorize it either. A speech is something you should know, feel and understand. Talk to your audience, connect with them and don’t lecture them. There maybe places in your speech where you might have to click on a PowerPoint slide. Fine, you could be precise about that. But the rest of it should come from heart as much as your mind.

• And speaking of PowerPoint…
  …PowerPoint is a magnificent tool that can help enliven and illustrate your speech. A well executed slide can bring to life the points you are trying to make. PowerPoint fails when each slide is laden with too many points, charts and figures. Audiences can either listen to you or read the thirty lines on a slide. Get professional help. They can make your PowerPoint presentation add feeling, meaning and substance to your address.

Bob Berkowitz is a communications consultant and persuasion coach for The Dilenschneider Group. He is a former White House Correspondent for CNN and was reporter for ABC News and NBC News. He also hosted a talk show for CNBC. You can also find Bob on LinkedIn.

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