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Public Speaking Tip from News Anchor Chairs.

You can learn a lot about meeting presence from the chair of a news anchor.  You read that right.  Next time you’re in a news studio, check out the actual chair where the anchor sits.

The chairs are funny things that the viewer never sees but have a big impact on the anchor’s presence. The chairs have no backs. Instead, they are shaped to cup the anchor’s rear end and push him up and forward, so that if he tried to lean back he would fall off the seat. 

The chairs are also set very high, so that the anchors always appear to be relatively tall. In fact, we know one news anchor who is constantly told “You’re a lot shorter in person than on T.V.”  That’s because the chairs are set very high to make her look taller.

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What if Lincoln Used PowerPoint?
His Slides for the Gettysburg Address.

"Hi. I’m Abe Lincoln. My first slide lays out a timeline for our nation.  As you can see reading from left to right, it really all started four score and seven years ago. . . .”

Of course that wouldn’t have done at all.  But if there is any doubt that there is a growing backlash against PowerPoint, you need only look at the proliferation of PowerPoint spoofs on the internet.  A funny one is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm. 

You can also find spoofs of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, www.aaronsw.com/2002/classicPowerpoint.

For the record, Speechworks is not anti-PowerPoint. Visual aids can help your presentation have more impact.   But PowerPoint is certainly overused. 

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The History of the Motivational Speech.

To our mind, there’s nothing much more motivational than John Belushi’s (aka Bluto Blutarski) famous speech at the end of the movie “Animal House” when he is trying to motivate his sad sack fraternity brothers.

"Over? Did you say over? NOTHING is over until WE decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? HELL, NO!"

But that is just one of the many motivational speeches reviewed in a wonderful article by Christopher Hitchens on Forbes.com.  The article entitled, “You Can Do It! A History of the Pep Talk”, can be found at www.forbes.com/fyi/2003/1110/070.html.   

The article starts with great speeches from the Bible and follows the tradition of motivational speaking all the way through the present day.

It’s a long article that doesn’t draw many conclusions about what makes a great motivational speech.  But it does include all the wonderful excerpts from the great speeches that many of us are always trying to remember.

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Public Speaking Tip from Rod Laver.

“The next point – that’s all you must think about.”

Those are the words of tennis legend Rod Laver. 

And while Laver was talking about how to win a tennis match, his words also apply to giving a presentation.  Too often people get flustered by small mistakes when speaking.  Keep moving to the next point, regardless of your errors. Usually your audience won't notice.

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