Full Speech Ahead - Public Speaking Column by Milo Shapiro

Public Dynamics: Public speaking skill coaching and presentation skills training in a fun and dynamic format. San Diego public speaking skills training with professional motivational speaker Milo Shapiro. Keynote speeches on public speaking and presentation skills by speaking coach Milo Shapiro via www.PublicDynamics.com. A fun and interactive way to improv your speaking skills with San Diego speech coach Milo Shapiro. Coaching in presentation skills and public speaking skills available. Centrally located to serve downtown, North County, East County, South Bay, La Jolla, Chula Vista, Del Mar, and more. Public speaking help with presentation skills training in a fun and dynamic format. San Diego executive speaking coach Milo Shapiro will make your program more powerful and captivating. The San Diego public speaking coach who will bring out your personal best while giving you solid fundamentals to draw from. Public speaking skills and presentation skills training in a fun and dynamic format. Los Angeles public speaking skills training with professional motivational speaker Milo Shapiro. A fun and interactive way to improv your speaking skills. Coaching in presentation skills and public speaking skills available. Keynote speeches on presentation skills and public speaking by speaking coach Milo Shapiro via www.PublicDynamics.com. Public speaking skills and presentation skills training in a fun and dynamic format. California public speaking skills training with professional motivational speaker Milo Shapiro. A fun and interactive way to improv your speaking skills. Coaching in presentation skills and public speaking skills available. Work on your fear of speaking in public with San Diego speaking coach Milo Shapiro. Get a San Diego speech coach to make you more dynamic, relaxed, and effective. San Diego speaking coach Milo Shapiro eases the fear of speaking with fun exercises and valuable feedback. Work on your stage fright with a speech coach like Milo Shapiro so you'll be confident. Public Dynamics: San Diego speech coach Milo Shapiro eases the fear of speaking with fun exercises and valuable feedback. Public speech and presentation skills training in a fun and dynamic format. San Diego public speech skill training with professional motivational speaker Milo Shapiro. A fun and interactive way to improv your speech skills. Coaching in presentation skills and public speech skills available. Public speech skills and presentation skills training in a fun and dynamic format. San Diego executive speech coach Milo Shapiro will make your program more powerful and captivating. Los Angeles public speech skills training with professional motivational speaker Milo Shapiro. A fun and interactive way to improv your speech skills. Coaching in presentation skills and public speech skills available. Public speech skills and presentation skills training in a fun and dynamic format. California public speech skills training with professional motivational speaker Milo Shapiro. A fun and interactive way to improv your speech skills. Coaching in presentation skills and public speech skills available. Work on your fear of speaking in public with San Diego speech coach Milo Shapiro. Get a San Diego speech coach to make you more dynamic, relaxed, and effective. Work on your stage fright with a speech coach like Milo Shapiro so you'll be confident. Milo Shapiro is also a motivational public speaker with presentations on risk-taking and on public speaking skills.

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Public Speaking Coach Milo Shapiro's column on the
art and business of public speaking

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Column #7: Pacing (part 1)

Q: One of my real struggles is when I'm told to speak for a specific amount of time, like 40 minutes. I'm comfortable outlining and delivering material but I'm terrible at guessing if it’s 30 or 50 minutes there. Ideas?

− J.R., San Diego, CA

To me, this is one of the toughest struggles of putting together a new program. Even with a speech I've done numerous times, many factors can cut into my time of actually speaking, such as audience reaction, delayed start times, technical glitches, an overactive introducer, or speaking differently than I rehearsed. Likewise, if you try to count on such occurrences, that will be the day that none of them happen and you’ll end up short on material.

This is where pacing tools can be your friend. Pacing tools are factors that you can vary to make your program longer or shorter on the fly instead of even trying to get your program to an exact number in advance…and then praying you were right! Let’s look at a few of them:

Q&A: One of the simplest and most common places to pad or cut time is through Q&A. The caution here is that if you save it as your very last moment, you could be stuck with no questions, a deafening silence, and extra time. But if you don’t make it last, you can use it to some degree in conjunction with other pacing tools you have more control over.

Story Length: End on a story that you can tell in its full version or a shortened one. The audience won’t know they got a 2 minute version of a 5 minute story so long as you cover the basics.

In my keynote about speaking skills, I retell my opening story in about 20 seconds to show that I can still get the point across. It lacks any flair and all of the humor and sweetness of the version they first heard, but it quickly demonstrates how one can easily get three or four minutes back.

If you’re on for most of an hour, have a few stories like this in the latter half so you can catch up a bit instead of putting all the cutting on your finale.

There are more techniques than I can fit here, so we’ll continue this topic in my next column.

Milo Shapiro, interactive motivational speaker and
speaking coach/trainer, is the author of
“Public Speaking: Get A’s, Not Zzzzzz’s!”

More on Milo’s coaching & training at www.PublicDynamics.com
and as a speaker/teambuilder at www.MiloShapiro.com

Click to see a free preview and/or buy a copy of
“Public Speaking: Get A’s, Not Zzzzzz’s!”

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A favorite coaching testimonial:

Testimonial from Dr. John Jenrette,
CEO, Sharp Community Medical Group

"I’ve participated in many programs on speaking skills over the years, but this was my first time trying individual executive coaching on the topic − and what a difference! Your working directly with me advanced my knowledge and abilities to a level that group lessons never could.

"The one-on-one approach allowed you to focus solely in areas where I needed development as a CEO speaking to my organization. Together, we determined areas in which growth would benefit me and you tailored exercises directly relevant to programs that I give, setting that growth in motion.

"The most definitive moments of payoff were after you worked with me on specific upcoming programs. Your ability to help me find more powerful words, streamline my ideas more effectively, build stories with strong imagery, and communicate the final speech in a dynamic style is making an impact on my audiences. After my presentation this week, I had two doctors came up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed my presentation. Doctors! A tough bunch to impress!

"I had confided in a colleague that I'd hired a coach. The day after the presentation, he approached me to say he’s seen a noticeable improvement in the quality of both my material and performance. He also said he could see that audience’s attention was decidedly stronger than in the past. "

(Please click to see the whole letter from Mr. Jenrette)

Here's an email from Dr. Jenrette six months later:

Milo,

I am getting great feedback at my most recent talks and lots of questions on how I did this.

Today I presented at the Sharp Leadership conference to tell people how I was a “Learning Leader". I told the story of how I wanted to improve my presentation skills and how I hired a speaking coach with improv skills and demonstrated some of what I learned and gave a hugely successful presentation.

Mike Murphy, the CEO of Sharp HealthCare, told me there are going to be lots of people who want to find out who I worked with and there were lots of congratulations afterward.

Our Director of the Six Sigma team here at Sharp HealthCare texted me (during the meeting!) and he has been looking for a way to improve his team of black belts on presentation skills, facilitating their work groups, etc., but he had not found anything very innovative. He and I talked after the meeting and you'll be hearing from him soon!

Thanks again, Milo and I have a feeling there will be more interest coming from Sharp. Happy to let you know that we're already working on bringing you in to give your keynote "Public Speaking: Get A's, Not Zzzzzz's!" for a larger group so we can gauge interest in more coaching around Sharp. Hope you have time in December for that.

John E. Jenrette MD

John E. Jenrette MD

Chief Executive & Medical Officer

Sharp Community Medical Group