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    Present Like a Pro: The Field Guide to Mastering the Art of Business, Professional, and Public Speaking
    Present Like a Pro: The Field Guide to Mastering the Art of Business, Professional, and Public Speaking
    Present Like a Pro: The Field Guide to Mastering the Art of Business, Professional, and Public Speaking
    Ebook181 pages4 hours

    Present Like a Pro: The Field Guide to Mastering the Art of Business, Professional, and Public Speaking

    By Cyndi Maxey and Kevin E. O'Connor

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    About this ebook

    Improve your speaking skills today with this carry-along coach written by two of the top professionals in the field

    Sales calls. Weddings. Business conferences. Weekly meetings. We're all called on to speak in public. Often, professional success and advancement depend on it. Yet many people find the experience draining or terrifying, or remain unsatisfied with their own ability to engage and sway an audience. In Present Like a Pro, you'll learn how to:

    · Solicit useful feedback.
    · Deal with hecklers.
    · Gracefully handle A/V malfunctions.
    · Sell your point through audience participation.
    · Evoke the power of your own life in your talk.
    · And much more!

    Kevin E. O'Connor and Cyndi Maxey have distilled the knowledge they've acquired from more than forty-five years combined of professional speaking into a concise, easy-to-use guide that will help anyone Present Like a Pro!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2007
    ISBN9781429907019
    Present Like a Pro: The Field Guide to Mastering the Art of Business, Professional, and Public Speaking
    Author

    Cyndi Maxey

    CYNDI MAXEY is a communication consultant and speaker who specializes in communication that drives profitable performance. She is co-author of Present Like a Pro. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

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      Book preview

      Present Like a Pro - Cyndi Maxey

      Introduction

      •  I am a terrible presenter.

      •  The audience looked so bored!

      •  I didn’t know how to answer that question; who would have thought he would ask that?

      •  I’m not that funny.

      •  I’m not supposed to memorize my speech? So what will I say?

      •  Maybe you could present instead of me.

      •  As part of your interview for this job, we’d just like you to give us a short presentation.

      •  I hate presenting!

      Join a conversation with anyone who has to present to a group, emcee an awards ceremony, or simply toast the bride, and you will hear protests laced with procrastination, fear, and dread. In spite of living in an increasingly educated, technologically savvy, and media-aware society, most people still hate to prepare and deliver a presentation.

      Why is giving a successful presentation such a challenge? What will empower you to rise to that challenge? The odds appear to work against you. When you present to a group, there is only one shot to impress the audience, leave a lasting impression, and earn the honor to be invited to speak again. If you speak infrequently, this can be a daunting experience. Professional speakers, on the other hand, typically speak from fifty to a hundred fifty times a year; that’s one to three times a week! Even though you don’t experience that much air time, those times you do speak in front of a group are very important.

      An employee we coached once asked: Well, they surely aren’t going to make personnel decisions on my presentation tomorrow . . . are they? Our answer to him and to you? "Yes! They always make personnel decisions when you stand up to speak!" Your presentation is a profile of you!

      View each speaking opportunity as a pro-stretch and use the ideas in these pages to quickly and confidently learn and implement the skills and techniques of the professionals. Many presenters mistakenly believe that once they get this over with they will be in the clear—that the presentation is a necessary evil. What they don’t understand is that their presentations are a stage for their careers. Like it or not, relaxed and confident presenters are seen as more competent, more skilled, and having more promise than their counterparts who are equally skilled and equally bright. When you present well, you become more believable, more convincing, and perceived as a better employee than someone who cannot do as well in front of an audience.

      The good news is you can give great presentations, despite reluctance, low presentation self-esteem, a busy schedule, and a past history of fear or intimidation. You can learn skills that the pros use. How? Think of it this way: You may not be Tiger Woods, but you can learn to play a good game of golf. You may not be a translator for the United Nations, but you can learn enough Spanish or French to enjoy a vacation. In the same way, you can learn to become a more confident presenter.

      In this book, you will not only learn the pros’ secrets, but you will also have a field guide to take along and consult before the presentation. Your field guide is organized in sections that address your most immediate needs—as you determine them. You may start in the middle, the end, or with Aristotle—at the very beginning! It’s up to you. You will discover the added benefits of a personal coach who speaks to you in every chapter. We will immerse you in time-tested tips gathered in From the Pros and real-life learning from people just like you in From the Ranks. Throughout, we’ll answer your burning questions (those questions at the top of your priority need-to-know list) and supply you with easy ways to remember things in Three Ways to . . . summaries. Let this book give you a pro-stretch warm-up on the invigorating road to speaker success. Here are three things you can do to prepare:

      •  Be different. Create what people don’t anticipate. Start with a story they’d never expect. Consider something other than computer visuals to prove a point. Do innovative research—speak to everyone’s administrative assistant before writing the speech. Give the entire speech on a flip chart. Practice in a room without lights! Draw on your natural style. You know what’s interesting about you, your best stories, how you make kids laugh, and what you’re inherently passionate about. Look within and find a difference that will make you memorable.

      •  Be deliberate. Approach this skill in a detailed and devoted way using this book as a field guide. Use it, read and reread chapters, consult this guide moments prior to the presentation, and use it to evaluate what went right and what to improve next time. Like any good field guide, this one should not stay on the shelf, but find a home in your briefcase.

      •  Be determined. Realize that while presenting may be occasional, real success is never an occasional pursuit. This book, while ever encouraging and positive, does not attempt to make great presentations easy: It only makes them attainable. Our goal is for you to systematically work on your needed skills while at the same time polishing existing ones.

      Real growth is based on stretch—the ability to go

      beyond what is comfortable and secure. To pro-stretch

      is to add to your behavioral résumé the skills that

      others see and judge.

      Part I

      Love the Language

      1

      Aristotle Knew the Basics

      •  Power is in the character of the speaker.

      •  Power is in the speech itself.

      •  Power is in the mood of the audience.

      Why should you look forward to your next presentation? Because it’s an absolutely irreplaceable experience! You get back much more than you give—every time you present.

      First, giving a successful presentation is great for your psyche; you feel good when you do well. It even feels good when you try new things and not all go well.

      Second, it is a practical way to move up in your organization or circle of friends and associates. If you are good at presenting, people automatically think you are good at everything you do because they see you as a courageous person with not only high self-esteem but also high act-ability—someone who does things. People give a lot of credence to a speaker; often it’s simply because the speaker is up front and they are not! Standing up and speaking well are keys to your promotability quotient.

      Third, you have personal power when you have command of an audience. To persuade a busy group of people to take notice of your message and to do something about it as a result ranks high on the scale of winning friends and influencing people.

      The presenter’s power is great. In fact, your ability to use that power well was first prescribed in an ancient art form perfected by the Greeks—the art of rhetoric. Some of the most well known philosophy comes from Aristotle (384–322 BC), who believed that people have a natural disposition for the truth and who called rhetoric the ability to see the available means of persuasion on the speaker’s part.

      The available means of persuasion for you are basically three elements: you, the talk, and the audience. That’s it. Everything you do is a carefully concerted blend of these three. Giving a toast to the bride and groom? It’s you, the toast, and the wedding guests. Addressing your new staff? It’s you, your notes, and a group of people who are wondering about you. Selling a key account? It’s you, your notes and visuals, and the three decision makers at the end of the boardroom table.

      The balance of the three elements is key. Aristotle’s view held that character of the speaker, the emotional state of the listener, and the argument itself (the talk) all combine to achieve the persuasion. He said the speaker has three powers: ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos is the power of personal character. Logos is the power of proving a truth through logic. Pathos is the power to stir up emotions in the listener. The best presenters find a way to use all three powers in the right combination: who you are, what you say, and how you say it.

      Your character is in your shared self. The best presenters communicate naturally as real people. They don’t try to be someone they are not. One of our favorite professional speakers, a former penniless immigrant who is now a millionaire, is in demand today as a speaker because of the stories he tells and the many examples he gives of how he amassed his fortune. But he does it with little ego and lots of reverence for his friends, his beliefs, and his business relationships. All this is inherent in his character as he speaks. The audience believes him because of the power of his character.

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