It takes you.  Buddha himself may serenely focus your mind.  Shakespeare may pen your script, and actor Richard Burton may have coached your speech.  But these gentlemen in all their glory are not enough to drive your presentation home.  Audiences are swayed by people, not style, and it is what they find in you that will change their minds. 

    In her previous articles, “Stand and Deliver - Part I: The Speaker’s Mindset,” Eileen Sinett, Biz4NJ’s Expert on Individual Communications, guided readers through the psychological minefields of making a business presentation.  In  "Part II - Up to the Podium,” she then took us from pen to stage into actually presenting the speech.  Now in Part III, Sinett ventures into that most difficult arena of making one’s speech sparkle.

    One realization which dawns on almost every first-time business speaker is that if he can speak well, he has found his avenue to the top.  More and better presentations provide the sharpest career move, and offer your department the best odds for survival.  Then, if our first-time speaker is really smart, he will discover that he is always making a speech - his every communication flies as a winged messenger, judged by its every recipient.  “My heavens.  I am always onstage.  Daily, hourly, I have this opportunity to convince...Help, Ms. Sinett.  What stage personality should I assume?”

* Your Stage Essence.  “If you could put a tincture of yourself in a bottle, that would be the most convincing, effective speaking persona you could ever employ,” say Sinett.  This goes beyond the hackneyed acting maxim “be yourself.”   Finding your personal tincture is not some airy, Zen exercise.  It is a speaker’s most hard, practical tool, and involves more work than is first thought.

    The tendency is for speakers to narrow their self view to the topic at hand.  “I have been asked to talk about our marketing approach.  I am this firm’s marketing expert.  Simple, that’s who I am.”   The problem, is that this gives the speaker no authentication.  Most people, Americans particularly, are not convinced by rank.  They do not pay attention because of a speaker’s salary or renown.  Present yourself strictly as a marketer, and listeners will quickly assume this is just one marketer’s opinion.

    To increase your audience’s trust, you must give them more of you to believe in.  Ask yourself, says Sinett, what are your many facets - list them: musician, father, whitewater kayakist, Imam at the mosque, and so forth.  “The caveat here, is to avoid listing role models or wishes,” warns Sinett.  “You may want to be Bill Gates, but that’s a craving, not an essence of you.”  It’s fine to model your speech style after role models.  Use GE’s CEO Jack Welch’s exhaustive rewriting of scripts or Johnny Carson’s famed pacing and humor.  But each of these tricks and techniques must must be employed through your speaking essence.

    Another trap is answering the “Who am I ?” question with a list of things we do.  It’s very American to say I am what I do.  But Sinett suggests we need to seek further.  Rather than I saying “I sing in the choir and play piano,” envision one of your facets as a lover of music.  Rather than someone who raises two children, explore the facet of your joyous hours spend with Christopher and Alex.  Rather than someone who leads prayers, see yourself as a devout individual...then ask why.

* Bringing You from In, to Out.   O.K.  So where’s the template?  Sinett says “The one thing that will make your presentation pop and sparkle is breaking away from the affected roles and letting one’s real self flow into the speech.”  Fine.  I am a practical business person.  Give me a “Finding Tincture of Self For Dummies.”

Exercise #1:  Enter the speaking hall when it is empty, stand in your appointed place, but do not deliver.  Relax for a moment.  take in the hall, get the feel.  (If you do not have the luxury of using the actual hall, substitute a large living or conference room, and fill it with a few chairs facing you, and a podium.)  Now, in silence, begin breathing regularly.  Belly breathe - using the diaphragm to push out the tummy, then exhale through the nose.  Face your absent audience.

    Slowly get comfortable.  Realize you are not your shoes or suit;  you are not your shape; not your roles; you are not the sound of your voice. You are (insert name here.)  Who is that person?  Roll that idea around on your mind briefly.  Then ask, what would he like to say to people?  Finally, before you leave this mode, get comfortable with this self.  Let him stand there two full minutes in front of his imaginary audience and say nothing.  Let them see you.  Experience what Sinett terms the white space of speaking: those effective, audience-gathering pauses.  Think of the concert pianist holding his hands briefly above the keys as the hall trembles with anticipation.  He raises them over the keyboard - anticipation heightens - only then...Bam.  When he finally gets to that first chord, the whole audience surges its soul into his performance.  Once you can stand silently, just before speaking, confident in your essence in this white space, you will hold your audience gripped in your palm.

Exercise #2:  The previous exercise, while often effective, is very Eastern.  Many Westerners may want to conduct their self search along more active lines.  Greek and other Western mythology is filled with tales of individuals who while racing or chasing an animal in mid-hunt, collapse in a glade and see the face of the divine.  You do not need a javelin and wild boar.  A simple bicycle, pair of running shoes, or set of oars and row boat will do.  Make it a sport you love.

    Select an area that is quiet and where you can exercise undistracted.  Begin your sport at a normal pace and increasingly take it up a notch.  Eventually with utmost effort, concentration, and flowing rivers of sweat, let you, your self, and your joy wholly encompass your mind.  At a preset place, when the mood is exhaustively right, pull over and collapse into rest.  Again, ask the same questions as in Exercise #1:  Who is this exhilarated, unfettered (insert name here,) right at this moment?  And what does he want to share with people?

Exercise #3.   By far the simplest method.  Recall some of the fun chats you have had with friends over the past.  Think particularly of those times when you have held court, recounting some tale or opinion to buddies who have really seemed interested.  Now, don’t concentrate so much on the style, but the person you envision delivering this story.  What is this speaker like?  What’s at his core?  Why do you think his listeners accept and trust him?
Hint: they don’t trust you merely because they have known you 20 years.  What lies within you that makes them retain that longtime friendship and relation of trust?

    “People give the best speeches of their lives sitting with their friends every day,” says Sinett.  “The layers peel back, they are truly themselves, and that makes them the best speakers possible.”

* Can Your True Self Bomb?  One would be hard pressed to find any common thread among successful speakers, beyond confident self-belief.  The thundering tones of President Teddy Roosevelt rang with no more trust and feeling of truth than the quiet, sincere flowing phrases of Jimmy Carter.  No one ever doubted for a moment that both these gentlemen believed to the core every word they uttered.

    It’s not even a matter of message.  Opposing Presidential candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas both traveled together on the campaign trail.  Douglas’ stalwart stentorian arguments ran exactly counter to those of the jesting, more laconic Old Abe.  But listeners doubted neither person’s personal passion.  Even Adolf Hitler privately admitted it was more the essence he conveyed than his actual words which won millions to his destructive empire.

    Obviously, a good speaker will craft his message to his audience.  The tincture of self will automatically come through.  It does not demand lengthy tangents into your enjoyment of parenting or violin playing.  These facets will come naturally come to light.  “Again, it goes back to aunthetication,” explains Sinett.  “Your words will be aimed to touch a specific audience.  But in each case you are the light behind it.  The more you let that shine,
the more credence, and effect your speaking has.”  Biz4


Eileen Sinett has been coaching corporate leaders to speak long before the business community saw it as a necessity.  The eldest of seven children, Sinett grew up the daughter of an ever-inventive and successful entrepreneur.  “Trucks were always in the driveway from his trucking firm, or canteens and camping gear in the garage from his Army surplus business.  My father always had some new business starting up,” Sinett recalls.
        Leaving this stimulating home environment, Sinett attended Emerson College, earning a bachelor’s in speech pathology and audiology, followed by a masters in speech correction from Kean College.  This clinical background led her to work first at Roosevelt hospital, then the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.  She soon became UMDNJ’s director of communication services, training a staff of pathology students.
        In 1979, Sinett left to found Comprehensive Communication Services.  “Originally, my first clients were those with speech disabilities, and parochial school parents, interested in their children’s elocution.  But somewhere in the early 1980’s, business people began coming in,” she says.  At first they wanted to loose accents or just speak grammatically.  Then it was as if the whole business world awoke to the advantage of effective communication.  Today, Sinett mentors executives and teams from such clients as Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Company, Novo Nordisk, Mathematica Policy Research, as well as several politicians and professionals.