FRANCISCO SARAIVA

This past week we had the privilege of interviewing executive speaking expert, speech coach and author Susan Trivers of www.greatspeakingcoach.com. Susan has conducted different training presentations with regards to presentation and public speaking skills. She has helped hundreds of clients like corporate leaders, business executives and sales speakers come up with fresh ideas for effective presentations with their audience in mind.

According to Susan, “Two principles make the difference between heady success and disappointing silence: Put the Audience First and Be Yourself, Polished.”

Susan has unique approaches in order for speakers to capture their audience, one of which is storytelling. This would mean coming up with a significant or striking learning experience from your life which you could share with your listeners.

In our interview, we asked her if the speaker should try to be as accurate as possible in his personal stories or should he add some imagination, reformulate some “punch lines” or manipulate some facts to achieve maximum audience impact.

Susan replied, “Storytelling, even in speeches given by business speakers to business audiences, is an art form. This allows the speaker to craft the story with dramatic effects. The speaker must select the elements of the story carefully. For example, if the weather has no impact on the action and the outcome, then don’t bother to mention the weather. Or, if there were 5 people at a given time, but only two of them are important to the story, give those two people names and omit the others. You are not a reporter when you’re crafting a story.”

Susan also wants to emphasize that the stories must be true and must be the speaker’s own stories. And why should that be?  She said, “Your own stories have inherent credibility in them and they are always unique because you and your experiences are one-of-a-kind.”

Now, should a professional speaker “act out” his stories?  Should he adapt to the perceived feedback of the audience or should he always be full throttle on his “acting”?

“I think the amount of physicality in a story depends a lot on the story itself and on the comfort level of the person telling it. If a story is about an outdoor adventure, or a sport, or other activity that is clearly physical, more acting would be appropriate. This can be quite small though. For example, I tell a story about how I learned to listen to my audience through my experiences showing my horse in dressage shows. I place my hands in front of me as If I am holding the reins, and I move my body very slightly up and down to suggest the motion of the horse. It’s not much, just enough to evoke an image of me on my horse”, she said.

She further stressed that many years ago she was not very comfortable with the idea of showing a lot of physicality—too self-conscious. Her presentations would not have been better if someone had forced her to do it when she wasn’t ready. So each speaker needs to add as much physicality as they are comfortable with.

“One of the most memorable speakers I ever watched and listened to stood perfectly still in the center of the stage. With quiet emotion and beautiful words, he told his story and every single person listened fully for an hour”, she added.

Susan’s book, “Great Speaker’s Guide to Business Storytelling” talks about different story types. She gave us names of well known speakers that excel in the delivery of these story types. The stories they told stick with the audience years after their speech.

These stories are stories which the audience can relate to, therefore “making your story their story.” In other words, the speaker frames the story in a way that the audience can imagine the events happening to them. Some of these speakers are:

Naomi Rhode http://smarthealth.com/Rhode/

Glenna Salsbury http://www.glennasalsbury.com/

Joe Calloway http://www.joecalloway.com/keynotepresentations.htm

Alan Weiss http://www.summitconsulting.com/

Learn more about Susan’s presentation and speech coaching at her website, www.greatspeakingcoach.com