By Christen Madrazo, Executive Speech Coach
Many people suffer from real, biological fear and anxiety when speaking in public. In fact, over three-quarters of Americans say that public speaking is their greatest fear – greater than accidents, diseases, or even snakes! As with most phobias, it is based on a fear of the unknown; but once they learn what works for them and what doesn’t, that fear and anxiety can be greatly alleviated.
It follows, then, that many individuals in high levels of their organizations who are frequently called upon to deliver extremely important information to shareholders in a public setting – also find themselves with debilitating anxiety about giving such presentations. Additionally, such individuals may or may not have any specific training in public speaking. This is understandable, given the amount of time and energy they have to dedicate to rising through the ranks within their companies.
For your convenience, our coaches have Presidential Teleprompters available. These are invaluable tools to instill confidence and relieve the panic of forgetting the copy. We can help choose the one most appropriate for your objective and venue and provide an experienced, professional operator.
Rates:
FULL DAY COACHING – (4 to 8 hours): $1200.00
HALF DAY COACHING – (up to 4 hours): $750.00
PRESIDENTIAL TELEPROMPTER – (per day): $895.00
Watch the YouTube introductory video below to see for yourself how the CICERO system can work for you and your organization:
Speech Coach Basic Formula
The Basics: Make A Good Speech Great
It’s key to be aware that almost all good presentations, such as political speeches, commercials, informative research lectures, etc. can be broken down into the following bare-bones basics of persuasion.
Recognizing these parts of the formula will help you to craft better messages and also to better understand how others’ messages work on you:
Appeal to Logic (Logos): Your appeal to logic should always be the most important (and most prevalent) element of your presentation. This is the actual content – the reason that it’s worth listening to you. Audiences want to hear the facts and they want to learn something (or at least learn to be clearer about whatever it is that you’re sharing). People rarely give their attention to something they already know, nor do they support something that can’t be proven with reason and logic. So, be sure to craft a strong foundation by using the classics: include facts, figures, statistics, specific anecdotes, charts, graphs, cited research etc. Be careful to organize this material in a clear, structured, and interesting way, but first, you simply have to do your homework. Know the facts and the reasons behind your product or material, then figure out the best ways to share them. Nothing convinces people better than the facts – not even pretty power-point fonts!
Appeal to Emotion (Pathos): Your appeal to emotion is your attempt to use the above to make the audience feel something. An audience that’s feeling something is much more likely to pay attention. Even more importantly, though, is the fact that an audience that’s feeling what you want them to feel, is much more likely to believe what you want them to believe. Do you want your audience to feel sympathy in order to support your charity organization? Do you want them to be angered in order to move them to a call-to-action? Do you want them to feel excited or hopeful that this product will work? Do you want them to feel shocked by your new research? Consider what feelings you want your audience to experience and why; then revisit the above and find reasons and logic that would organically elicit such feelings. It’s important that presenters are careful with their appeals to emotion. If taken even the slightest bit too far, an appeal to emotion can feel forced; audiences can tell when your sole attempt is to manipulate how they feel.
As we all know, no one likes to be the subject of manipulation. Instead, you want to share carefully selected information that naturally makes your audience feel a certain way. The key here is that you only embed your appeals to emotion within appeals to reason. Let your carefully selected facts and research bring on the tears or joy – and only sparingly.
Appeal to Ethics (Ethos): Contrary to many beginners’ first assumptions, implementing the appeal to ethics is not about appealing to the moral grounds of your audience. Rather, it’s about YOU—the speaker, the presenter, the face, the company etc. Appeals to ethics sell the credentials of the speaker in order to back-up the content at hand. Presenters are careful to convey this via meticulous, careful, and interesting presentations that communicate something about the presenter. They also embed references to themselves as they deliver their appeal to reason. To do so, a presenter might reference his or her title or how many years he or she has been researching the given subject matter. A company might mention ratings or past track records. While the appeal to ethics is not always explicitly linked to the product or message at hand, it adds to reasons why we should believe and accept the message being put forth as
linked to the face behind that message. Note: Many presenters are asked to write and submit a bio that will be read to the audience. Because this usually occurs right before the presentation, what you write for this will most likely be the audience’s immediate and/or first impression of you. So, be sure to take this bio seriously. It will serve as your first appeal to ethics—before you even take the stage
