Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers - By James C. Humes
Date read: 2016-06-12How strongly I recommend it: 8/10
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Good advice on how to be a better public speaker and develop more stage presence. Good for those just starting out with improving their public speaking skills and helpful reminders for more seasoned presenters.
Contents:
- THE POWER PAUSE
- THE POWER OPENER
- FIND YOUR MESSAGE
- THE POWER BRIEF
- THE USE OF QUOTES
- CITATIONS
- HUMOR
- SPEAKING BEST PRACTICES
- VISUAL AIDS
- APPEARANCE/ATTITUDE
- DONATIONS/FUNDRAISING
My Notes
Power Pause: stage some silence before you speak.
If someone in your audience asks you a question, pause while you absorb the question and put your thoughts into words.
Before you speak, frame your reply in your mind - in a sentence with a subject and predicate.
When answering questions, think of the Power Pause as the seat belt you strap on before you drive, as a safety measure to prevent rambling slips. Before you answer, take time to look directly into the eyes of your questioner and hold his/her gaze a beat.
Men as well as women, whether short or tall, can gain stature through strategic silence.
Before you speak, try to lock your eyes on each of your soon-to-be listeners. Force yourself before you begin your presentation to say in your own mind each word of your opening sentence.
Make your Power Pause your silent preparation before any presentation you make.
Power Opener: the prime time of any talk or presentation you give is during your opening words. It's an attention grabber and an audience awakened. Begin your talk with a bang.
Begin with an ear-catching line.
You can also open with a personal anecdote that either tugs at your audience's heartstrings or tickles their funny bones.
If you have dramatic news to impart or a startling fact to reveal, try opening with it.
Praise in the beginning of a talk sounds like flattery, whereas the same praise wedged into the middle of the speech comes off as sincerity (Example: "And speaking of leadership, no one exemplifies it more than Mayor Flaherty, who...").
If you want to sound like a leader, start strongly.
Power Point: whether you are going to a breakfast meeting with a potential investor, making a sales talk, or delivering a product presentation, you need to first come up with the key message.
Great orator Cato: "Find the message first and the words will follow."
Churchill emphasized how important it is to zero in on the purpose of your message.
You need private thinking to figure out your Power Point first.
Stop, Think, and Plan the Power Point.
First think what they wanted their audience to do and then build around that action.
Speech is like a symphony. It may have three movements but must have have one dominant melody.
First, decide whom you are trying to reach.
Once you pinpoint your objective, everything you say will be directed toward that result.
Make figuring out your "bottom-line purpose" your first priority.
Power Brief: less is more & brief is memorable.
Leadership sometimes means surprising your audience. If they are settling into their seats anticipating a twenty or thirty-minute speech, astonish them by speaking for only five minutes.
Long speeches can seem like reading a book without punctuation.
Look for that occasion when a Power Brief can trigger the audience's laughter, and then leave on that high triumphant note.
If your audience is all set for the typical twenty-minute address, astonish them with a one-minute anecdote that encapsulates your message.
The exceptional is often doing the unexpected.
Whether you're honing your waistline or your message, remember that you don't have to eat all that's given to you.
It is the insecure who feel they must spend every bit of time allotted to them to embellish their record; the self-assured don't have to.
Power Brief is a short statement that can be used to replace a speech. Such an abbreviated message is memorable.
Be brief by digesting and processing what others say, searching for consensus or a theme that neatly wraps up what most are saying, and then framing the gist of the discussion into one question.
Power Quote: don't refer to any author with whom you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable quoting.
"General Rule": The name should be recognizable and the quotations brief.
One exception exists to the "General Rule": If you frame and stage a quote from an unknown, it can be effective.
Speech is theater. So dig up one apt quotation and frame it with props.
What could be more unexpected than quoting one's political opponent to support your own ideas? By the way, this is called "cross-quote."
A quotation in the middle of a talk is like a baseball's pitcher's change of pace.
Dramatize and emphasize your quote to make it a Power Quote.
Use only one quotation per speech.
File away only quotations from those who are famous, whose observations are crisp and memorable, or whose words strike a ringing echo of agreement in your mind.
Power Stat: Some statistics are cited precisely and up front to obtain immediate credibility; others are framed more roundly to be remembered by the audience.
Listeners can be as skeptical of numbers cited as they are of advertising claims.
3 R's of numbers: Reduce, Round, and Relate:
The more specific the figures, the more convincing they seem to be having the exact figure in writing conveys that you've done your research and have the facts at hand without relying on memory.
Power Wit: A joke told for its own sake - without much relevance to the speech that follows - insults the audience. Instead, sneak an amusing story into the middle of the talk, when it is sure to provide some sort of comic relief.
Follow the three R's of presenting humor - make it Realistic, make it Relevant, and don't Read it.
Leaders don't begin speeches with stale old jokes, but they do spice up their talks humorous anecdotes.
Churchill once observed, "Anecdotes are the toys of history.
To be a good storyteller, you have to put the experience in your own words.
When you find a story that fits the purpose of your speech, adopt it. It is now your story, something that happened to you or a friend of yours.
Tell as though from your own experience rather than read a humorous anecdote or story for your speech text.
If you try to read a humorous story word by word, you'll die at the podium.
The humorous story can be the way to launch a brief two-minute talk, and can also be an effective way to end a talk.
Parables give pictures to abstractions.
Look back on your own experiences. Everyone's life is a storehouse of stories.
When you share a bit of yourself with others, you win their trust and affection, and they will more readily buy into what you are promoting.
If you have any point to put across, find a way to picture it in a story or parable.
Never, never, never let words come out of your mouth when your eyes are looking down.
When you are looking down while speaking, you are disconnecting the current of your words to your listeners. You must be looking at your listeners when you are talking to them.
See - Stop - Say technique: Look down and take an imaginary "snapshot" of the words you see. Bring your head back up and pause. Then, while looking at a lamp or other object at the far end of the room as if it was a listener, say, or "conversationalize," what you have just memorized. Then look down again to see the next chunk of words, bring your head back up and pause, then speak.
Pauses are what make a speech sound conversational. When you pause, you sound sincere, as if you're trying to come up with the right words to express your thoughts.
If speech is prose, the phrase-by-phrase technique can transform it into poetry.
For any talk, little or long, take your typed speech and space it out in bite-size phrases.
When you come to a comma, cut the line off!
If your subject is followed by its predicate, don't separate them.
When a preposition is succeeded by its object, don't dissect the two!
Never end a line with "a" or "the."
When you see a period, make sure to call a halt.
Churchill believed that in remarks directed to the ear, a semicolon was verboten - whereas a dash fit the rhythm of a speech or talk, making it more conversational.
The layout lets the key words and phrases leap out at you. You don't have to be glued to the text.
Change your format to Churchill's. Lay out your lines like a leader, and you'll sound like one.
There is a secret to coining a Power Line: CREAM: Contrast, Rhyme, Echo, Alliteration, Metaphor.
Examples:
Rhyme:
Verifiers as well as speech writers often turn to the "Rhyming Nine" - AME, AIR, ITE, AKE, OW, AY, ATE, EEM, AIN - for coining "zinger" lines.
Remember you need only one for a talk. Make it one that defines the problem or reinforces the solution.
Echo is the repetition of a word or a phrase. Example: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. CEOs as well as politicians create memorable lines through the echo technique.
Three ways to work the echo ploy:
The echo line that etches deepest in the memory is also the hardest to craft. That is the "phrase reversal." Example: Eat to live, don't live to eat.
Alliteration example: Vary the pose and vary the pitch and don't forget the pause.
All you need is a $5.95 Oxford Essential Thesaurus.
Metaphor example: A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.
Sometimes the familiar, everyday routines - household chores, shopping trips, or gardening tasks - suggest apt analogies.
Sometimes the rightly phrased question packs the electric brightness and power of a lightning strike. Home the thrust of your argument into one Power Question.
A question forces the listener to react whereas a declarative sentence does not.
In cross-examination of witnesses, an iron-clad rule is to never ask a question if you are not sure of the answer.
Sometimes rhetorical questions are posed as a speech device to motivate listeners to get involved.
Keep it to a single line, and a keep it simple.
In any talk or presentation, you may want to stress or emphasize one word Churchill would introduce compelling or unusual words with a deliberate stuttering pause.
Pregnant pauses can turn even familiar words or phrases into compelling communications.
Limit yourself to one "impact" word per talk or statement.
Passive voice is when the true subject - the doer of the action - either is not in the sentence at all or is relegated to object of a preposition.
"WHAB" can help you find words that are overused as passive: We're, Have, Had, Are, Is, Be, been.
The active voice provides force to your speech, whereas with the passive voice sounds spineless and deadens your delivery.
Power Button phrase is your highlighter pen, illuminating the Power Line sentence that follows. Example: The secret in hotel management is simple. It can be summed up this way: [pause] the science of business...
Limit yourself to one power button in each talk, and then use it only to spotlight a zinger line that you want to leave a burning hole in your listeners' ears.
Power Closer: the ending is the last impression the speaker leaves with an audience.
Appeal to their emotions: Pride, hope, love & fear.
Every time you open your mouth, your capability as a leader is judged.
Leaders know they can't turn their voice over to visuals.
A series of pictures is no substitute for the personal beliefs and experiences of the speaker.
Any talk or presentation should be the oral projection of your personality, experiences, and ideas.
If you aim to be a leader, let your slides be a prop, not a crutch.
Visual aids should be used to reinforce, not replace the speech.
If you have to spend a lot of time explaining the slide or exhibit, don't use it in your talk or presentation.
Think of a visual aid as a magazine advertisement. If the picture is not self-explanatory and can't be summed up quickly in a simple, catchy tag line, don't trot it out.
Thinking of introductory comments to each slide is easier than preparing a proper presentation using slides for dramatic emphasis. Visual displays should not be your security blanket, but rather a handkerchief to pull out of your sleeve.
A slide makers a great appetizer or dessert, but not the whole meal.
Sometimes gestures say more than words.
A gesture may be a signal from the soul that words cannot convey.
Bill Clinton survived and prevailed because of his superb skills of projecting sincerity and commitment. He did this not with what he said but with how he said it.
Concentrate on just one gesture for a meeting or talk.
Silent signals can register even louder than speech.
Leadership sometimes demands more than verbiage. It requires visible acts.
Power Presence: Clothes make a statement. The selection of garment should not be casual or by chance.
You should have your own "star suit" to properly dress for such an occasion.
Adopt a style that suits you - and that people will identify with you. But avoid experimenting with that signature style the way Hillary Clinton trotted out new hairdos. Keep your style simple but the same.
Your shoes must be shined, your suit must be pressed, and your fingernails must be cleaned.
Invest in the classic white shirt.
Understatement is the secret of Power Presence.
Surprise your audience. Leaders don't always follow the script. They make moves that live in the memories of their listeners.
To communicate a point, Lincoln and Churchill would, if the situation demanded it, literally crawl on their knees. They were in afraid of risking their image. They dared to be different in their approach.
Persuasion: Franklin formula for fund-raising: Defiance, Design, Donation, Duel:
When you talk with your prospective investor again, don't talk about money at first. Ask how she see the idea - how she envisions such a project.