Harnessing AI and Behavioral Insights for More Effective Communication

Tim: 0:06

Welcome to Speaking with Confidence, a podcast that’s here to help you unlock the power of effective public speaking. I’m your host, tim Newman, and I’m excited to take you on a journey to become a better public speaker. If you are like most people, just the thought of speaking in front of a crowd or talking during an important meeting can trigger all kinds of anxiety. Trust me, I know what that’s like. I gave my first speech as a senior in college. I was so nervous that as soon as I got to the front of the room and opened my mouth to speak, I threw up. I have learned a lot since then, and I’m here to help others overcome their fear of messing up or sounding stupid. You wouldn’t write a love letter to someone and start with adding to whom it would concern, would you? Why would I even ask that question? Well, believe it or not, it is directly related to public speaking and understanding your audience. What about karaoke? How does that relate to public speaking? Do you know what is meant by a poor man’s teleprompter? How about a full frontal nudity? When it comes to public speaking, peter George explains it all, and you’ll pick up many great lines, insights and practical tips from him as we talk about public speaking in this episode of the podcast.

Tim: 1:15

Peter is an award-winning author and wrote the book the Captivating Public Speaker. He spent more than 35 years training at conferences and other events in more than 50 countries. He talks about overcoming a speech impediment, being an introvert and simply not wanting to communicate with others. He is practical, engaging and funny. Peter talks about the emotional components of public speaking Making connections and building strong foundations to ensure your messages leave lasting impressions. So make sure you like, subscribe and share, and share the Speaking with Confidence podcast with all your friends. Then listen to the entire episode for a variety of suggestions to help you communicate effectively with any audience you encounter. The conversation is engaging and chock-full of relevant information that will transform your understanding of what it takes to be an effective public speaker. I’d tell you more, but, to be honest, you’ll enjoy it more if you just listen for yourself. Our next guest believes that everyone should be able to confidently share their knowledge and experience.

Tim: 2:14

As a public speaking coach, he specializes in helping professional speakers, authors, consultants and executives be calm, confident and credible every time they speak, and executives be calm, confident and credible every time they speak. Throughout his childhood, he dealt with a lisp and a stutter. Consequently, he grew up shy and introverted, avoiding communication with others as much as possible. When he got into the business world, he quickly realized that his lack of presentation skills kept him at a disadvantage. So first he tried to improve his skills with self-study, but that took too long and he missed the feedback a coach would provide. Then he went for group training. That was amazing, but he wanted to be an even better public speaker, so he got personal training and now credits his public speaking coaches for much of his business success. Years he has helped professionals from around the corner to those in Fortune 100 companies developing to speakers who understand how to craft and deliver presentations that engage, persuade and inspire, ultimately helping them increase their impact, influence and income. For 36 years he has been speaking and training at conferences and other events in more than 50 countries. His subject you guessed it is public speaking. He has an award-winning book, the Captivating Public Speaker how to Engage, impact and Inspire your Audience Every Time, and it’s available on Amazon and his website, petergeorgepublicspeakingcom. His greatest enjoyment in his business is when his clients develop extraordinary presentation skills and, if not more so, create a level of confidence they didn’t know they could achieve.

Tim: 3:48

So please welcome Peter George to the show. Peter, thanks for spending some time with us today.

Tim: 3:52

Tim, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. No worries, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a while. We spoke offline about a week or so ago and it’s great when you can connect with somebody who really kind of has the same kind of mindset and understands the importance of some of the same principles and you can kind of bounce ideas off each other like we did. Yeah, I enjoyed our conversation and I came to the same conclusion that we look at things very similarly, and that’s always nice that you can get that confirmation. But you can also bring new things to the table. Yeah, and you know some of the things to the table. Yeah, and you know some of the things that you said really kind of hit a little bit differently, Like the whole idea of the difference between showing up and throwing up.

Tim: 4:32

You know, I obviously have an issue with throwing up, but the way that you explain the difference is a little bit differently. So please tell our audience what you mean by the difference between showing up and throwing up. Well, a lot of us do just that we show up to speak and we throw up information on people, and it’s all information. The problem is well, let me ask you this Tim, you’ve been around for a little bit, like I have, yeah, and I’m sure I’m willing to bet you’ve been to a meeting or two where you thought I’ll never get that hour back in my life. It was a complete waste of time. Yes, yes, okay, I think we’ve all been there way too many times, way too many times, right? And that’s because people show up and throw up.

Tim: 5:15

We have this meeting, we have this conference event, whatever it might be it could be any size event and the speaker just comes and drops information on people event and the speaker just comes and drops information on people. If that’s the case, the speaker could have sent that in an email, attach a PDF, we’re done Right and get information much more easily that way. What a speaker. In my estimation, what a speaker needs to do is not inform people, but transform people. So when you show up to speak, you have a job to do and that’s serving your audience. It’s not speaking, it’s not providing information, it’s transforming your audience. Otherwise, why did we even have this occasion If they’re going to leave the same way as they came in with a little more knowledge again, you could have sent that to them by email. I think it’s really important that we do understand that the audience at least from my perspective, that’s what’s most important, right, that’s why we’re there is to again not to just share information, but for them to get the information that they need to go and be successful with it, right, exactly. You know, it’s funny.

Tim: 6:31

I was going to name my book originally and the working title was originally it’s all about the audience. But it was someone who has had six or seven bestselling books who said to me no one’s going to buy a book about someone else, it’s got to be about them. Like, well, that’s a good point. You know what that’s a? That’s a really good point. That’s a really good point. So, saying it’s about the audience, that’s a. They’re not going to see that as helping them. But that throughout my book is a running theme of. It’s not about us as speakers. We’re nothing but vehicles and it’s about the audience, what they’re taking away, what they’re going to do with that information, those emotions, everything you provide and share with them. What are they going to do with that? How are they going to be different than when they walked in that room.

Tim: 7:14

I tell people all the time right now, especially my students. When I ask them what their process is when they’ve got to give a presentation or whatever, the first thing they tell me is they open up PowerPoint. I said if that’s the first thing you’re doing, your base of it is going to be flawed. The first thing that you should think about is who is your audience? Who are you speaking to? And I tell them you know when they’re in my class, that I am not the audience, right? Your classmates and your peers are the audience. You shouldn’t even really think about me even being there, because you’re there for your classmates and your peers and it’s hard for you know. It actually was hard for me to figure that out. You know, for the longest time as well. I’m sure you’ve given a presentation where you walk off and you said I’m not even sure what I was doing up there because I didn’t get any. There was no interaction, there was no positive feedback. Sure, and I think a lot of that comes from we don’t know who our audience is.

Tim: 8:09

To be able to craft that message to begin with. Yeah, there’s an old saying about when you don’t know your audience. It’s the equivalent of writing a love letter, entitling it to whom it may concern. That’s a good one. One of the odds is going to resonate. It may concern, that’s a good one. What are the odds it’s going to resonate with that person that reads it? Exactly, exactly.

Tim: 8:27

So we have to know what they’re looking for, what they want out of this, what they need out of this, how we want to strike them emotionally. Many of us don’t give any thought to that emotional side of a presentation and they say well, you know, we’re here talking about research. Yes, but confidence is an emotion. So do you want them to be confident that they can go out and accomplish this that’s never been accomplished before? Do you want them to have a confidence in you so they understand that, since they have confidence in you, they can have confidence in what you’re sharing with them? What emotion Do you want them to leave? Happy, do you want them? I’ve been to or worked with people who have to light a fire under people’s butts, who aren’t hitting quota or whatever it might be, and they want that emotion of your job’s on the line. You should be a little nervous at the end of this. So how are we going to strike an emotional chord? What do we want them to go? Do that call to action Right? Think differently, do something differently, get something started Right.

Tim: 9:33

A lot of us don’t give thoughts to this and, unfortunately, that all powerful conclusion that actually gets people to go do things we often end with well, that’s my time, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go. Thanks so much, right, and it’s not that you know it’s. Would you like to drop 12, 15 bucks for a movie that just kind of tails off at the end? It’s like well, you know, that’s what we got Exactly. Wish we had time to come up with a better ending for you. That’s a really good analogy. I watched something with my wife on Netflix. It was about two weeks ago, you know. We stayed up way past her bedtime and we both, at the end, looked at each other and said that’s really how they’re going to end it Never again. And but it’s funny, it’s that’s, but that’s that’s. You’re exactly right. You get the same things happening in in in presentations, right?

Tim: 10:20

So you grew up with a lisp and a stutter. I did Tell us about that. What was that like and how did you overcome that? Because that had to have been very, very difficult growing up there and trying to communicate with people. Well, in some ways it was difficult, in some ways it wasn’t, and I’ll explain. But I wasn’t trying to communicate, that was the key. I refused to try to communicate.

Tim: 10:45

So I grew up in Providence, rhode Island, and I still live in Rhode Island now, and so it was the inner city, if you will, in the sixties. And growing up in a city, when you have a lisp and a stutter, you’re bound to get picked on. The thing was I didn’t. I loved to play sports and I became pretty proficient in two of the three I’ve got to mention, but I played baseball, football and hockey. So I was playing sports year round and as you became good in sports, you didn’t get picked on. So I had two incentives for really getting better in sports. One was I loved sports. Two was it kept me from getting picked on. So, as much as I know, kids with stutters and a lot of impediments, whether these speech impediments or otherwise, get picked on and that’s very unfortunate and I wish that wouldn’t happen to them, but I was very fortunate and didn’t experience that.

Tim: 11:34

However, how I got over it was I had a therapist. I think she was a therapist. All I know is every Tuesday at eight o’clock in the morning, I had to be in this little small office where this woman who I refer to as Cruella because she was the meanest woman I ever met in my life would make me stand up for an hour. I couldn’t sit and repeat after her and say all these terrible tongue twisters and rhymes, this and that, and she beat them into me Now and I would stay there. I hated Mondays because Monday night made me think of I have to get up in the morning and go through this. So for a year I stood in that room every Tuesday morning, crying as I was saying these things. I was in the fourth grade. I worked on those till high school came around and by the time high school came around, my lisp and my stutter were all but gone and under certain circumstances they’ll still rear their ugly heads to this day. But for the most part they were all but gone.

Tim: 12:31

The problem was, as you read in my intro, I didn’t want to communicate with people, even though I was more able to at this point I’d gotten too used to not communicating with people. I wouldn’t answer questions in school by teachers. I told them I’ll stare you down. You ask me, I’ll just look right back at you. I’m not going to answer. I’ll show you my work before and after class. I’ll come after school and show you that I did my homework. Just don’t call on me. So that’s how I went through school.

Tim: 13:02

It was kind of odd because you couldn’t communicate other than with my closest friends, right and family, but you couldn’t communicate with a lot of people and you know you don’t seem very social and that’s that’s the case. It seems to me that there’s there’s some of that going on today for people that don’t you know, have you know lisp and stutters. For people that don’t you know, have you know Lispen, stutters that they, they lack self-confidence in class and just sit there when you call them and don’t answer, don’t raise their hand. You don’t have, don’t share their thoughts or their ideas or what. Have you Right?

Tim: 13:37

Well, if you think about it here here, I was in high school playing three sports and I started from the time and each one from the time I was a sophomore. So you could be on the varsity team and I should have had all the confidence in the world. I was a decent student and I had no confidence. When it came to school or being with other people, I had no confidence whatsoever. And to this day is again as you read, I am an introvert. I am still shy. People, people say, but you go out and speak to thousands of people, yep, it’s all an act. You know, that’s what I do business-wise, but when it’s me, I I’m married to a second wife and she teases me and says I don’t know how you ever got two wives. The fact that you had one was amazing. The fact that you had two is Right, can’t, can’t understand it. But you know what Most people really are introverts.

Tim: 14:28

I think it’s learned behavior to to put ourselves out there, to be successful in in whatever, whatever it is that we’re successful at. Because if you think about all the business leaders, they’re not all extroverts, they can’t possibly be. There are some, there are obviously there are some, but they can’t all be extroverts and I really think that you know a lot of them are more introverted anyway. And then they hire people, hire good people to be able to do the things that they don’t want to do or can’t do very well. Yeah, there’s a lot of musicians, actors, you name it who are in the limelight, if you will, who are introverts and shy. And again, just like I said, you know this is an act.

Tim: 15:12

For me, this is the different persona. It’s a business persona, right, but when it comes to me personally, I’m just totally different, and there’s a lot of that out there. I think I’m kind of the same way. I stand up and I talk for a living as an educator and some of the other things I do. I have to be customer facing, but when I’m not doing that, I would just much rather stand up and shake out your arms and do this as an introvert.

Tim: 15:48

I’m like, no, this is the last thing I want to do in a room of a thousand people, right, I wouldn’t want to do this at home, with tourists there, and you want me to do it in front of a thousand people while they’re doing it too? Don’t care, that’s just not me. Yeah, that’s how, that’s how that’s always going to get me going, right, right? So you do have to know your audience and you can assume, before you do any research, that just because of the split in life of percentages of extroverts and introverts, you’re going to have a significant number of introverts in your audience, absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, for those of who are listening, please don’t do those exercise things.

Tim: 16:27

We introverts would rather just melt on the floor, exactly, do you think that public speaking is, you know, people’s number one fear? No, and I’m being a little facetious here. First of all, there have been studies done and those studies often put it around seventh after snakes and clowns and spiders. Yeah, the clowns one throws me off there. Oh no, I’m petrified of clowns, really. So snakes and heights for me are great Clowns. No, clowns and spiders If there’s a spider. My wife’s petrified of spiders too. So if there’s a spider in the house, we think that’s a signal to move. Okay, so if there’s a spider in the house, we think that’s a signal to move.

Tim: 17:06

But as far as fears go, again, stick with me being and forgive me for being a little facetious, but if you’re in a metal tube 30,000 feet up in the air and that metal tube starts to dive towards the earth, you’d give anything to be on a stage instead. Absolutely. Someone’s got a gun to your head in a dark alley. You’d much rather be at the end of a conference table talking to 10, 12 people and presenting Right. So I still believe, when it comes to it, death is a bigger fear. It’s just that we don’t face death on a daily basis Most of us don’t and we can think about yeah, I could have to speak tomorrow if my boss tells me to, right. Yeah, I spoke with somebody recently and we kind of had this conversation and he brought up a really good point. It’s not public speaking that people are afraid of, because if you go to the grocery store or if you go to a restaurant, you’re speaking in public, you’re talking, you’re communicating. It’s more.

Tim: 18:04

The whole idea is the fear of being judged 100%. Where’s the fear of our own expectations of ourselves? I agree. I agree. When we do that, first of all, we often put up expectations that are not going to be met. We worry about being perfect in front of our coworkers. Our peers, especially Bosses, don’t seem to bother us as much as our peers do, because the peers are the ones that we work with on a daily basis and we shoot for perfection.

Tim: 18:37

But it’s not about perfection, it’s about connection. It’s about connecting with that audience. And the way I look at it is Tim, if you fell overboard, you and I are out on a boat fishing, say, and this is a decent sized boat and you’re down on the other side of the boat in the water struggling to stay alive. And I threw you a life ring, the standard old life ring. Would you care how I threw it, how my form was? Not one bit. Just get out there. And get out there quick. Yep, just save me, give me that life ring. Right?

Tim: 19:11

It can be that lackadaisical, that analogy, when you’re speaking, but you don’t have to be perfect. You’re there to serve. You’re not there to be a tremendous speaker. You’re there to be a proficient speaker, but you don’t have to be tremendous. You’re there to serve the audience. And if you’re serving the audience, you know who they are, you know what they’re looking for, you know how you’re going to present. You’re presenting on both the conscious and the unconscious levels, so they’re getting both of those satisfied. If you’re doing that, then don’t worry about being perfect, don’t worry about being judged. Now, if you don’t rehearse, you should worry about being judged. I think that’s also something that is completely forgotten with young professionals is you don’t just put it together and you’re ready to go. There’s the research, there’s the practice, there’s the having somebody else you know, listen and evaluate and help you to get to something that’s going to be good for public consumption, right, exactly. You know I learned it this way. Well, this is great.

Tim: 20:13

Since you’re a professor, would you expect your students to hand in the first draft of a paper? Absolutely not, right, and most of them wouldn’t do it. They’d at least go over it a few times, hopefully. Right, right, would you again? You’re at a school. You probably publish things every now and again. Yep, would you hand in something you want published unedited? Absolutely not, absolutely not. Most of us wouldn’t.

Tim: 20:42

Then why do we go speak in front of people and not rehearse it? We give them the first draft. To me, that’s disrespectful. You’re coming here to take something away. You’re giving me your time, your respect, right? Yet I don’t give you any respect because I didn’t rehearse. I’m giving you my first draft, I’m practicing on your time, exactly.

Tim: 21:06

And a lot of people say well, you know, I don’t mind getting up in front of people and I know what I’m talking about. That may be well and good, but Yep, well, tim, the Japanese have a word for when you don’t mind getting up in front of people and you know what you want to say. Do you know what that word is? No Karaoke. So how good is karaoke? It’s the worst. It’s the worst. Unless your audience has had three shots in a beer, you’re probably not that good. Some people are. Some people can go out and just do a great job. Most of us are not going to do a great job. Well, fun that it is Right. Well done. So.

Tim: 21:45

Just the fact that you know what you’re talking about doesn’t mean you know how to communicate with people. It doesn’t mean you know how to communicate on a conscious level and an unconscious level. It means you know what you’re talking about, but that’s when phones come out. That’s when the cough of death when you hear people start coughing, it becomes contagious comes out. Because they’re bored, they’re lost, they’re thinking about what they have to do when they leave there. They’re thinking about what they have to do when they leave there. They’re thinking about what they have to buy at the store. Their minds are anywhere but there.

Tim: 22:17

And then we get up there and go see, I knew it was going to be bad. It’s a good thing. I didn’t spend time practicing. However They’ve got it all wrong. You get it backwards.

Tim: 22:27

Would you drop $500, or probably closer to $1,000 now to sit in the front row at a Broadway show, a popular Broadway show, to watch a show where the actors didn’t rehearse? Absolutely not. No, it would be terrible. They know it would be terrible. They wouldn’t come out on stage and do that, right? That’s called improv. That’s a totally different thing, and there’s a reason. Improv does not cost what a Broadway play costs. Exactly so, and I love improv. It’s just not the same animal, right, would? I’m a Yankees fan, so would I be expected to drop the foolish money that you have to pay to go to a Yankees game in New York to watch a team that didn’t practice together? Nope, I was a huge Derek Jeter fan. Here’s a guy that hit 310. For those of you who don’t know baseball, that means you’re a very, very good hitter.

Tim: 23:15

What did Derek Jeter do every day? Took batting practice. He’d been doing that since he was eight years old, yet every day he took batting practice. What do they do right before the game? They take batting practice, fielding practice. These are the best 700 baseball players in the world playing Major League Baseball, and every single one of them practices every day.

Tim: 23:42

Here in New England we had this football player. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. I don’t know if you follow football or not. His name was Tom Brady. He was okay. Yeah, he was all right. What did he do every day? Practice mondays. They take mondays off, but other than that, he practiced. My guess is he’s still practiced. My guess is he still goes out. You know he’s been retired. Now this is this is first year retirement. Second year uh, going into the second. Yeah, my guess is he still goes out every day and throws the ball. Yeah, my guess is he’s. Well, I know he still goes to gym and he exercises and works out and does drills every day and he’s not even playing anymore. No, no, it’s what you do.

Tim: 24:23

When you want to be good at something, you practice. So do you have to make it a second vocation? No, not unless you want to be a professional speaker. But when you’re going to do a presentation and you’re going to be up there with all eyes on you, you want to look good, but, more importantly, you want to serve the people who are listening to you. Right, absolutely.

Tim: 24:41

You brought up a concept earlier. It’s about connection, and you know, it seems to me that we’ve lost you, and I grew up before cell phones and if you wanted to talk to somebody, you actually had to pick up the phone and call them, right. And if they weren’t there, so this is really. I mean, I remember not even having an answer machine, right, so and if they weren’t there, you had to call back and so you had. You actually had to make an effort to connect with somebody. Seems to me that making connections is a lost art true connections In many ways it is, and we connect in many different ways. I was on a podcast yesterday where they said what are some ways to connect?

Tim: 25:24

And a simple, very, very simple way to connect is ask a question. As human beings, we generally answer questions, whether it’s an actual question or a rhetorical question. If you ask a question and pause long enough to give people time to answer it, a lot are in their heads. You’re connected. Yeah, tell stories, you’re connected. Science shows that if I’m telling a story and my certain parts of my brain are firing off and lighting up during that story because I’m enthused about it and I can see it in my head and I’m getting excited, if I can communicate with you to the point where you’re listening, you’re really there with me, your brain is firing and lighting up in the same spots and if you’re on quote unquote, the edge of your seat with anticipation to my story, your brain’s actually firing off before mine is. So that’s what we want. That’s connection. That’s getting people with. I’m with you, keep going. This is awesome. That’s connecting with people.

Tim: 26:25

And it’s so simple not necessarily easy, but it’s very simple. The the rules here are not in depth, right, right, they’re fairly easy to follow. I think a lot of young people think connection is we’re friends on facebook or you know, I follow you on twitter, but there’s there. There isn’t that true interpersonal connection. And no, we call those connections right. How? How many connections do you have on LinkedIn, linkedin, right? Yeah, I’ve got about 10. I’ve got I don’t know, 7,000 or 8,000 followers, but I have about 10 real connections, and I think that’s important to understand because it does transfer over when we’re speaking public or we’re presenting, whether it’s on a stage, or we’re in a business meeting or a sales call or what have you. The better connections we make, the more successful we’re going to be.

Tim: 27:21

It’ll always be people to people, right, always, always. No matter what devices are in between us, it’ll always be people to people between us. It’ll always be people to people and and in some ways, other than it’s ubiquitous cell phones and texting and the like. We’ve always had that, or we’ve had it for for a good amount of uh of time throughout civilization. Whether it was writing, you weren’t connecting in person, you were using a device to connect piece of paper and a pen, but so we had that. But there was, to your point, still much more interpersonal connect, connection, true connections, where we’re speaking with people face to face much more often in the past and we learned some things without even knowing we were learning them right, absolutely, and that’s a that’s a problem. To that point, that’s a problem that exists with any of us.

Tim: 28:13

We hear I have to do a presentation, and that in our heads. When we said we told Peter, you got to do this presentation, I start thinking differently than having a conversation. I have to include slides. Well, first of all. No, you don’t, and I have to do this and I have to have a conversation. The people might not be able to speak up on the other side, but still, if you frame it as a conversation, as opposed to whatever this presentation idea is in your head, you’re much more apt to connect with those people than you are with this presentation thing and I have to have all these slides and I have to have I don’t know how to do slides and I’ll just copy this what I saw the last time, which bored me to tears. I’ll do the same as that, because it’s the one I’ve seen last. When you go through all these ideas, no, just have a conversation with people.

Tim: 29:07

One of the things I also think is really important is admitting that we’re wrong or that we made a mistake. Yes, as I’ve gotten older, I used to say, you know, when I’d give an assignment, a presentation, you have to use some form of technology. You have to, you have to. And I’ve gotten to the point where now we thought about that you don’t really have to. Maybe I was doing students before disservice, forcing them into doing that and they say kind of pigeonholing them into presentation as opposed to conversation.

Tim: 29:37

I was having this conversation about this topic with someone not too long ago and she said no, my boss said if you’re doing a presentation, you have to have slides. And I said what type of relationship? Can you be a little cocky with your boss? And she said yeah, we have a great relationship. I said go back and ask him to tell you three great speeches. I said one that’ll probably come up is Martin Luther King. Probably, depending on age, winston Churchill. Now, that was long before I was around, but still you learn about Winston Churchill’s speeches during World War II and maybe and possibly Kennedy’s inaugural address. Just take those, for example. I said then ask him what were the slides like during those three presentations? That’s a good one, that’s a good one. Gettysburg address yes, no slides, no PowerPoint. Yeah, what was PowerPoint like? I know it was in its infancy, but what was PowerPoint like then?

Tim: 30:32

Can we use slides when they’re supporting our point, the point that’s being made at that moment? That we bring that slide up, sure, we can. And if it serves to make it more impactful, yes. But if I’m using it just as a poor person’s teleprompter to remind me what to say or, god forbid, there’s words on there that I’m going to just read, read, oh God, then no, you don’t need slides, nor should you have them. And when a slide that you just use doesn’t pertain to your next point and you don’t have a slide for that next point, just go to a black slide. A slide should support what you’re saying at that moment, not distract from it, which unfortunately many do, which would support it. Right, when you agree to do a presentation, what’s your process from the time you agree until you know you step on stage or in front of that group? But what’s your process?

Tim: 31:22

The first thing I want to do is know who I’m speaking to. We spoke about this before. You have to know while you’re speaking. So if I’m hired to speak at a conference, say, I want to know what the meeting planners anticipated result is what they’re trying to achieve. I want to know whoever owns that meeting, whether it’s the CEO of the corporation or a senior vice president who’s in charge of that meeting, who hired the meeting plan. I want to know what they want out of this. They’re my first two audience, not the most important audiences, but I have to satisfy them as well. And then there’s the main audience, the one we always think about. I will ask that senior vice president or the meeting planner or both. Who can I interview that will be in that audience that day?

Tim: 32:10

I want the champions who are saying this is going to be a great topic. I want to learn about public speaking. This is going to be fantastic. I want the guys who go great Another consultant coming in to talk to us about stuff that we don’t care about. I want to talk to them too, not to change their minds. I just want to know why they feel that way. I want to know what departments are going to be. I want to know what departments are going to be If I have marketing, finance and IT.

Tim: 32:34

Those are three mindsets that don’t look at the world the same way, right? So I have to speak to all three of them. So when I tell a story, I have to be able to say what that means to you marketers is this. And you finance people might look at it this way and have this takeaway. And IT people this is probably what you’re going to take away from it, and those are going to be three different takeaways. You have to know that. Otherwise, I’m a marketer by education. If I just went and said these are my people, the marketers, You’ve got two-thirds of the audience. And those finance and IT people, they’re from a different planet. Right, I’m married to a finance person. We come from different places, and if I just went out and spoke to the marketers, I’d lose two-thirds of my audience and I probably wouldn’t be invited back by that meeting planner or the senior vice president, I wouldn’t get a gig there. So I want to know about that audience. I want to know what they need to know from the company’s standpoint or the teacher’s standpoint, if I’m speaking to schools, high schools, I want to know all these different things that might go on. But they say you need to talk about this.

Tim: 33:46

But, tim, let me ask you this who’s your favorite musician? Tim McGraw, all right, good one, all right. So let’s say you’re going to, you and your wife are going to go to a Tim McGraw concert. Again, these people ask ridiculous prices now. Oh yeah, hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, to sit up front. And you say here are my favorite song. I can’t wait till he plays A, b and C. Great anticipation and the concert starts and you’re all psyched. Then the concert’s over and he didn’t play. He didn’t play that song, your favorite songs, and you dropped all this money, didn’t really get to hear what you wanted to hear. You’re going to be happy on the way home. No, I’m an Eric Clapton fanatic. I’ve been since I was a little kid. I’ve been to several dozen of his concerts. If he doesn’t play Layla and the poor guy’s been playing Layla for more than 50 years. If he doesn’t play Layla, either the original version or the slow blues version, there is going to be chaos in that arena, right, right, and very disappointed people.

Tim: 34:49

Musicians want us to hear what’s new, so we buy their records, download their stuff. We want to also hear the standards, the hits, right. So there’s what we need to hear from their point of view. And then there’s what we also want to hear when you’re speaking. It’s what they need to hear. And then what questions from what you say are they naturally going to have? It’s not really difficult to figure that out. So that’s what they’re going to want to know as well. You have to present on both levels.

Tim: 35:19

Back to the emotional thing. Once I start figuring that out and I’ve spoken to people, I figure out okay, how do I want them to be emotionally? What feelings do I want them to have? Again, it could just be confidence, right, but it could be. You know, I’ve got to get this done right away. I’ve got to light a fire under their butt. I’ve got to do something to well, what is that that’s going to help me really serve them? So it’s really that foundation, as I like to ask my clients, or when I’m speaking.

Tim: 35:49

Could we go out into the parking lot and build a house? A lot of people say no, but of course we could. What’s going to stop us? It’s a perfectly good ground, nice flat parking lot. Why can’t we build a house? We can, but three months, six months later, doors aren’t going to close correctly, windows aren’t going to open, walls are going to crack, pipes are going to crack. The house won’t live very long. What do we need? We need a solid foundation. If you want to deliver a presentation that resonates with a specific audience and serves them, you need a solid foundation. That foundation is the research on that audience. Everything comes from that, the foundation piece. I think if people could truly understand that, that’s something that would really change their whole mind and perspective when communicating with others.

Tim: 36:44

When I have new clients and they’re going to do a talk whether they’re professional speakers or aspiring professional speakers or business people who just need to talk every now and then present every now and then. Sometimes for the newer clients, I’ll get calls saying I’ve got this presentation. I have to do what should be my focus and my answer is how do I know? How do I know Right? And they’re like well, I don’t know, it could be this, it could be this. I don’t know it could be this, it could be this. I don’t know which one to do it on. What should I do? And I’m like you already know this answer. We’ve already talked about it. It’s the first thing we ever talk about.

Tim: 37:18

Go ask the listeners, they’ll give you the answer. We’re making this too difficult when we say, oh, what slides do? I have computer that I could do a PowerPoint presentation, which means you’re going to let random slides decide what you’re going to say to an audience, right? No, go ask the audience, they’ll tell you the answers, every answer you need to know. They’ll give it to you, right, then? Now you’ve got the foundation.

Tim: 37:43

Now you just have to start building, building it right, and then also understand going back to another point that when people start looking in their phones, you have to understand that that people’s attention spans are about five minutes, three to five minutes, yes, if you’re not connecting with them and touching them and re-energizing and re-engaging them off of that every three to five minutes, if you’ve got a 25 minute talk, you’ve you wasted probably 20 minutes. Yeah, you can do that Once you have their attention, which you need to do before you ever get up in front of the room or before you ever open your mouth on stage. You have to have their attention then. Then you have to have their attention with the first words out of your mouth, their engagement, and then it’s yours to lose. And if you lose it, good luck getting it back. It’s a difficult thing to lose and if you lose it, good luck getting it back. It’s a difficult thing to do.

Tim: 38:32

But when people say I look out and I see that I might be losing them, what do I do? Ask a question. Again, we’re human beings and human beings answer questions. Ask a question, give them something to do. That’s why you’ll hear speakers say write this down or imagine this, and it becomes like Simon says, and they’ll listen to what you’re saying and they’ll do it for the most part, unless you’ve totally lost them or they’re just mad at the world because it’s a bad day for them, they’ll do what you ask them to do and they’ll re-engage.

Tim: 39:03

Now you can’t just keep doing that. You have to have information or whatever your content is that actually serves them, right. But once you do that, once you have their attention so you can serve it to them, man, it just doesn’t get any better. And you can see all of this just by watching your audience. There is a conversation going on, whether they’re speaking or not, yeah, and and you know, that’s the other piece that I also think is lost is you have to, as when you’re up there, you, you have to be able to judge is the talk going well or not? Are they engaged or not? Are we connected or not? Am I reaching them or not? And if I’m not pivoting and changing and maybe going a different direction to engage them, to connect with them?

Tim: 39:47

When I was first speaking again, I’ve been speaking for more than 30 years. When I was first speaking yeah, I’ve been speaking for more than 30 years when I was first speaking, I wanted to be perfect. Well, somewhere along the line I realized if there’s anybody in the world who can’t be perfect, it’s me, and I’ve made every mistake. I’ve had everything you can imagine go wrong with me on stage, and you know, first of all, those things become your best stories later in life. No one wants to hear when it went well, right, they all want to hear when it went badly. When you screw up, right, yep, and I’ve done it.

Tim: 40:18

So when you realize that you’re not going to be perfect, I’ve lost my place. I mean, I have my signature talk. Now that gets customized for every audience, but it’s virtually the same talk and I still get lost every now and then. It’s just what your brain does to you, right? So it used to be. I would be there feeling like three minutes of silence is going by, even though it’s only been eight seconds, and my brain would rush and I always think of it as a roulette wheel that keeps going. The ball never drops.

Tim: 40:48

Now, if that happens to me, I look out in the audience and say where was I? Just, like you would say to a friend, right, what was I saying exactly? And they’ll laugh because it’s like well, you know, you’re up here doing well, and now you’re like where was I? Again, what I expected to be perfect, god bless you if someone, if you are, tend to think no one is, but if they are good for them. But even when you do that, you become relatable. Right, you’re not relatable. You’re not just the, the guy up on the stage, you’re, you know you’re. You’re just a normal, normal guy, normal human being. Right, you’re vulnerable, it’s. You’re relatable, you know, I, with some of the things that have gone wrong over the years. Some were my own fault, some weren’t.

Tim: 41:31

I was speaking in I can’t remember if it was Dallas or Chicago somewhere in the middle of the country and the fire alarm went off twice. One when I first got up there to speak. I hadn’t even said a word and the fire alarm goes off. We all get back in, the fire alarm goes off again False alarm both times. But I had 60 minutes. By the time we got back from the second one and actually sat down, there were eight minutes left. Oh, here we go. And my thought is what do I do with these eight minutes? And my first thought is when we were going out of the building. The second time is I can’t believe this is happening to me. Why is it going to happen to me? I know I’m still going to get paid, but you know they’re not going to see how wonderful I am. All this stuff and all this. You know what was me stuff? And I thought I still have to get back there and do a job. So in those eight minutes I just made fun of it and said had you heard me speak, you would have heard these three points. Didn’t elaborate at all, you would have heard these three points and your takeaway would be, and I spent the last five minutes on the takeaway. That’s what they were there for anyway. Right Was the takeaway. So yeah, there were things that would have helped them present more effectively that they would have heard, but the takeaway was the big one. That was one, and another one I like to make fun of is couple, but another one is I spoke in London 90 minutes with my zipper.

Tim: 42:52

There we go now. I check my zipper like 15 times before I go on stage but and I was in a navy blue suit with a beautiful brand new crisp white shirt. So every time I turned a certain way, the fly on my pants would gape open and behind it is this bright white shirt and the spotlight would hit the bright white shirt. I had no idea it was down.

Tim: 43:16

An associate in England, actually the person who got me the gig. He and I went to the bar afterwards and he says you know your zipper’s down. And I looked at him and said please tell me it wasn’t down for the presentation. He started laughing. Yeah, we’re not four-year-olds, it’s a zipper down Big deal presentation. He started laughing. Yeah, isn’t it. We’re not four-year-olds, it’s a zipper down, big deal, right. But he said peter I. I said, how bad was it? He goes and he said the same thing. But you know, we’re adults because it’s not a big deal. However, when that spotlight would hit that white shirt encased by your navy blue zipper, your pants, or he said you couldn’t help, but look at that spot, you just couldn’t and I’m like like I died a thousand deaths.

Tim: 43:54

And then, after what’s one of my favorite stories, now later in life, right, speaking for 90 minutes in England with my zipper down, and that becomes not only a good story but a funny story, but something that you can use to show that it’s not the end of the world. You don’t have to roll off stage, you still continue to go on and give the presentation that you’re going to be giving, right, you know again, if you just go with a service mindset and you really want to serve people and you prep for it and you follow through and you do the best you can, if you’ve done all that, it’s going to be what it’s going to be and that should be a good thing, but things will go wrong. I spoke in Birmingham, alabama, and, believe me, I’m not picking on their accents because I, as you can tell, I have an accent or an Island accent. So I joke that I spoke for an hour, including 15 minutes of Q and A, and they had no idea what I was saying. I had no idea what they were asking and we got along famously. We had a great time and we had great. I think we spent more time making fun of each other’s accents in a very friendly way about.

Tim: 45:03

Could you say that again? Could you say it more slowly, peter? Could you actually put an R in that, and so we can understand what you’re saying? And so that stuff happens. But that’s the stuff you remember. That’s the stuff you know. If it was bad, that’s the stuff you laugh at later in life. What’s the question that you, as a coach, what’s the question that you get asked most often?

Tim: 45:23

What do I do with my hands? Ricky Bobby, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that movie. No, I haven’t it. Ever seen that movie? No, I haven’t. It’s a Will Ferrell movie, racing, you know, spoof, and he goes being interviewed for the first time his hands. I’m not sure what to do with my hands.

Tim: 45:37

I tell people what do you normally do with your hands when you talk and I know I don’t look at my last name’s, george, but my real last name is Giosa, and so I’m Italian and I grew up in an Italian household and everybody’s like we use our hands, we can’t talk. You tie our hands together, we can’t talk, it just stops. Well, most of us use our hands when we speak, so, other than flailing your hands around, what you would normally do is perfectly sufficient. Perfectly sufficient. Now, there are some things you could do at certain times that would help support what you’re saying, but illustrating something. If something was small, you can hold your hands close together. Large, hold your hands wide apart, but you don’t have to do that. Just do what you would normally do.

Tim: 46:22

We communicate, and this is one of the unconscious things. People are usually curious when I say the unconscious level. We communicate with our hands. We communicated with our hands long before there was spoken language, and that has never left us through evolution. So that’s why it’s not good to put your hands in your pockets when you’re speaking or behind your back.

Tim: 46:43

People want to see your hands and so use them as you normally would. It’s as simple as that I’m. I talk with me a lot. Yeah, why not? If? Think of think if you were watching I don’t know a sitcom on television tonight and none of the actors moved their hands, it would look so odd it would.

Tim: 47:04

We, we are so used to using our hands when we speak. I, I pace when I’m on the phone, whether I’m in my office, whether I’m in my living room, I pace back and forth. But what I also do, I will use my AirPods while I’m on the phone. My hands are moving and that’s most of us. We know the other person can’t even see us and we’re still moving our hands. Your brain wants to move your hands because it’s a communication tool. So use your hands as you normally would and start right off. When I see people I’m really self-conscious about my hands. I said then move them when your mouth opens for the first time during your presentation. Move your hands and you’ll be much more comfortable throughout. I think that’s a great piece of advice.

Tim: 47:51

You know, a lot of times you know they want to stand behind the lectern stiff as a board and think that they look natural when you know I don’t know, really don’t know anybody who truly just is stiff as a board when when they’re talking conversation. No, I spoke to I don’t know, it was about a thousand college students a couple of years ago and I spoke right after someone else and we were in a hotel function and I looked at how she was presenting and she was nervous. It wasn’t a professional speak. She did a fine job but she got behind that lectern that thing most people call a podium, that lectern, that lectern, that thing most people call a podium, that lectern and I’m glad you actually said lectern, not podium. And she to back to my point, she held onto that thing like she was going down with a Titanic and she white knuckled the whole bit. Just, she stood behind it, never moved and never lost her grip. Get away from that thing. Dip For anybody listening, if they have one, unless they have the mic on a gooseneck and it’s taped there and you can’t take it away from that lectern, then you have to be at it. But other than that, if you can get away from that thing, get away from it.

Tim: 49:02

We communicate. We want as much body contact between us and our audience. Tim, if you and I met at a networking event, say like a I don’t know a chamber networking event, and I came up to you and we start talking. We’re the customary two and a half three feet apart and I pulled a chair over and put it in between us. You’re a bit odd, right? You don’t put furniture between people you’re speaking with, right, unless you have to if you’re across a desk or a table. Okay, right, unless you have to if you’re across a desk or a table. Okay. But why put a piece of this chunky furniture where it’s? The old fashioned rectangular ones or the more modern acrylic ones? Why do that? Why have a piece of furniture between you and the audience other than you’re trying to make sure you’re hidden as much as possible, right, which is not a good option. Right, I think it makes people feel safe, but then it doesn’t truly have that connection which it comes back to, right. And then we say, you know, I didn’t feel connected to the people and we look at it this way of boy, it’s a good thing I had that lectern to stand behind, you know. So, yeah, you want it.

Tim: 50:10

Presenting is a full contact sport, absolutely, it really is what our hands are doing, what our bodies are doing. We want, as I tell my clients, full frontal nudity. We want to be open. We don’t want our hands across our chest or our waist. We want to be open and you want them to be open. The more open we are when people they say how do I present from a chair Around a conference room table that type of thing? Sit up on the first half of the chair, sit up straight and open your hands a little on top of the table conference room table. Don’t have them in front of, first of all, don’t have them underneath the table. Second of all, don’t have them on the table in your hands. Class, spread them. You want your chest wide, open and wide being a key word here. You want your shoulders back just a little bit. When we sit in the back of a chair, like most of us normally would do, that’s made to round our shoulders, help us relax, which means our chest isn’t open, we don’t breathe as well, we can’t inhale as much. All these things go wrong. You want a broad chest. You want to connect your chest, your torso, with your listeners. You want that connection with them, the key word back to you have to connect with your audience.

Tim: 51:32

Right now we’re I don’t know about you, but I’m actually sitting in a desk type thing and my hands are are open and what, when I generally, when I do these interviews on the podcast, I’m actually standing up. You know, I’ve got a stand-up desk and I I stand up and I can move a little bit. Usually sitting down and talking to me is it’s almost like death. Yeah, you know, like I said, cheers are very good at what they’re there for, right to help us relax, but they curl in our shoulders. If we’re sitting back, our hands can’t move as well. So even if you have to sit up at a conference room table or a desk or anything sitting in the first half of the table, your butt becomes a fulcrum. Now, yeah, you can pivot any way you want. You can use your hands. Your feet are flat on the floor. They tell your body what, how to move, they guide you and that’s interactive from a seated position. But I’m standing now as we speak because I feel better speaking on a podcast being interviewed standing up than I than I do sitting down. I don’t think I think as well, probably probably no difference whatsoever, but as far as my comfort goes, I feel I’m, I think, better standing up, right, and then going back to how we, how we open this.

Tim: 52:33

Uh, in these meetings that we’re generally at. We’re generally sitting down leaning back in the chair because we already know. We already know what’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to waste an hour of our lives. So why even bother to try and have that connection? Because it’s just, it’s just just about normal.

Tim: 52:49

Yeah, a lot of people will talk about active listening. You know that’s that’s been a key, key word buzzword for years now. Active listening. Well, that’s not just listening to what people are actually saying and not thinking about how you’re going to respond. Yet To me, active listening is how you make them feel Right. So now, if most of us are kicking back in the chair, we have the chairs leaning back and our legs crossed and arms crossed across our chest. Most speakers are going to be uncomfortable with that. If we sit up a little and we lean in not a buzzword, but we lean in they’re going to feel more comfortable with us. And let me tell you, if there’s anybody I’m answering to someone who’s going to hire me, whether it’s a meeting planner, vice president, a principal someone’s going to hire me to speak. I try to make them as comfortable as can be. I lean forward, I look in their eyes and I practice active listening.

Tim: 53:45

Body language goes along with active listening, as well as your ears and your mind. Exactly, body language is so incredibly important and again, I think it’s something that’s not thought about or talked about enough. No, that’s back to the unconscious level, and if I don’t, I would. What I like to tell people is everything I learned about public speaking I learned from my mother. My mother barely graduated, she’s from nowhere, maine, she’s a country girl. So she barely graduated from high school. Yet she was very good with her household, running the household for the family, and she would tell my brother and I the things you always hear stand up straight when you’re talking to people, welcome, look them in the eye. Keep your hands out of your pockets. If you’re going to say something, say it with conviction. Say it loud enough so people can hear you. So I say all I had to do was listen to my mom and and I had public speaking on the basis for his basis down right. So body language, most of that’s body language.

Tim: 54:50

When you’re speaking to people, look them in the eye. A lot of people say, no, you’re going to be uncomfortable, look over their heads. Well, if you and I were, let’s go back to a networking thing and you and I are at that networking thing and I spend the whole time looking over your head. You would be uncomfortable, like this guy won’t look me in the eye. It’s the same thing whether we’re two feet away or 20 feet away. If you’re not looking at people, they don’t know why. Your hands in your pocket, on an unconscious level, signal that you’re hiding something Exactly. So now it might be you’re hiding that you’re terribly nervous, but you’re still hiding something you don’t. The unconscious means they’re not thinking about it. All they know is it doesn’t feel right. You’re right, and you don’t want people leaving saying you know that guy Peter seemed to know what he was talking about, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t comfortable with him.

Tim: 55:40

So I know we want to bring in a public speaking coach for our employees. Let’s look for another one, right? You don’t want to go down that road, you really don’t. You want to make them feel comfortable. Do everything you can, plus, whether you’re looking them in the eye or reading their body language.

Tim: 55:57

If I look out into the audience and not everybody, but a lot of people have their head cocked to the side like a dog who can’t understand their owner’s words I lost them and I want to know where I lost them. And I straight out asked them where did I lose you? I can tell I lost you. Where did I lose you? What’s what’s confusing you? Right, and I might say something that I normally don’t say that way, and it confused people, whatever it might be, but I get to see that because of their body line, right? So what do you say? One more question you, when you let. One more question. Let’s just say you’re giving a talk in a conference room and you’re around the conference table and connect with people.

Tim: 56:51

In a small situation like a conference room, you can shake everybody’s hands. But even if I’m speaking on stage, I try to get to the main entrance before anybody lines up and I shake their hand on the way in Connection matters. So if you get high, how you doing, but if you can’t, there have been times I’ve shown up later than the other people for whatever reason. They might’ve been in there doing something else ahead of time. Yeah, you go around, shake their hand, say hi, Anything, you can make the connection before you even start. A lot of the anxiety that you’re going to have is already going to go away because they’re going to feel like, not that they know you, but that there is some connection there. Yeah, it’s just so important. It’s just so important Any little bit helps, right? If you do that and then you use active connecting while you’re speaking, looking them in the eye, do all these different little techniques that will boost connection, then you just keep that rolling. Much easier to just keep ticking the wheel Right and keep it rolling than going from full stops each time.

Tim: 58:08

So, peter, where can our listeners find you? Petergeorgepublicspeakingcom? Nice and easy. I’ll make sure I put that in the show notes and the name of your book again, the Captivating Public Speaker, and they can buy that on your website. If they click, they can go to my website and just click on the button. It will take them right to Amazon. Awesome, very good. Well, peter, thank you so much for taking some time with us today. I really appreciate it. You know, as we open this up, it’s always good to talk to somebody who you know. We think along the same lines, but some of the ways that you say things it’s a little bit differently, and I really do appreciate that. I appreciate you having me. Thanks so much, and we’ll talk to you soon, take care.

Tim: 58:50

Okay, let’s take a few minutes to reflect on our conversation with Peter George and the items he covered about public speaking. There was so much to unpack from this episode From understanding your audience, researching your content, covering expected outcomes and practicing your presentation. We covered it all. Some of the biggest takeaways surround the importance of connecting with your audience, whether it’s through providing relevant information that meets the audience’s needs or making sure you understand what the people that hired you want you to cover.

Tim: 59:17

You need to connect with the people you’re with. How do you do that best? Think about all the things that you probably learned from your mother Stand up straight, look people in the eye. Speak with conviction. Engage in conversation with people instead of talking at them. Monitor both your body language and the body language of your audience members. Keep a service mindset in place, where you remember that it’s not about you as a speaker, but about what your audience is getting out of your presentation. This means giving them your best work and not your first draft, which, in turn, means you should be practicing your presentation in advance of delivering it to them. In an overall sense, focus on learning as much as you can about the people you’re serving. Take the time to identify the content you’re sharing with them, put it together in a way that engages them and deliver it in the most conversational and authentic way possible.

Tim: 1:00:04

Conversation with Peter throughout this episode was both enjoyable and incredibly insightful. His sense of humor, honesty and ability to relate resulted in a wide array of practical tips and actionable items to help transform the way we think about presentations and public speaking. I can’t thank him enough for sharing his time with me and the Speaking With Confidence community. I encourage you all to read his book and follow him as you communicate your journey to master the art of effective communication. Please make sure you visit the Speaking with Confidence website and join our growing community. Sign up for special updates regarding the August 1st launch of the Formula for Public Speaking. Also, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any episodes. You can download, like and share the podcast with friends. Always remember your voice has the power to change the world. We’ll talk to you next time, take care, thank you.