Opening an Effective Talk- Lee Glickstein

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Marla Message 1 of 1 , Oct 10, 2006
Hey ProTrack buds,
Was on a GREAT teleclass today on opening an effective talk with whatLee
calls relational presence. Check out his website... pdf link andarticle below.
He has a process for developing relational presence... would love tohave a
practice buddy. Any takers? ... here is the link to the articlefor this practice...
"Five and Five" -- Home Study Program
in Relational Presence-
http://www.speakingcircles.com/Programs/Intro/HomeStudyRP.html
Speakers Guide
Opening an Effective Talk-
http://www.speakingcircles.com/Articles/GuideOpeningEffTalk.pdf
WEBSITE: http://www.speakingcircles.com
Speakers Guide
Opening an Effective Talk

By Lee Glickstein and Doreen Hamilton, PhD.
Authentic speaking is about being with your audience in a real way. Its
about sharing yourself fully. Its about
starting with the focus on your audience and letting yourself be inspired by
your listeners. Rather than "Let
me tell you about" you are extending the invitation, "Come with me on a
journey to the heart of our shared
humanness."
When you do establish the relationship and earn the privilege to share your
information and your message, it
must come from what you know most deeply in your heart and soul"from
what we call your essential
knowing.
In this report we discuss the nature of essential knowing and how to access
it. We then provide a structure for
bringing that knowing into the opening of an authentic talk.
Essential Knowing
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Essential Knowing
While many experienced speakers shape their talks out of the latest version
of their ever refining body of
knowledge, they sometimes leave out the human interest of how they came,
often through turbulence, into
what they know. When they incorporate stories from their lives to make
teaching points, they may keep
reusing the same polished vignettes. And aspiring speakers often emulate
this conventional standard by
embellishing and crafting turning point stories from their lives.
This approach may create energetic presentations, but to the extent that a
speaker may hide behind the craft, it
distances him or her from the hearts and souls of their listeners.
A talk thriving with life and electricity derives its content from the "essential
knowing" of the speaker.
Essential knowing is the raw wisdom the speaker earned working with
challenges within and in their
circumstances. That wisdom may now be expressed authentically in the
moment rather than recited.
What makes a speaker accessible to the audience, and ultimately
irresistible, is a willingness to share some
aspect of what it took to get here. Listeners recognize the truth when it is
shared, and they can find the place
within themselves that resonates with that truth.
Weaving the strands of essential knowing into a talk is beyond an intellectual
activity.
What sometimes helps is getting essential listening from an individual or
group. This is a quality of
listening that allows words to arise at their own pace from silent stillness.
Moments from ones life, some
long-forgotten, emerge and can be woven into stories with meanings and
messages. These are not necessarily
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the dramatic signature stories common to professional speakers. Rather,
they are the earthy, conversational
vignettes that make a talk come alive with humanity and engagement.
First step from here is to collect an array of moments to explore. These
moments will deliver you to the
source of your essential knowing, and guidance in structuring a masterful
opening and the body of an
effective talk is available in writings, teleclasses, coaching consults and in-
person programs.
Defining Life Moments
I suggest you start your talk at a defining moment in your life that can be told
in two minutes or less. It may
be part of a larger story that fills out later in the talk. The defining moment
leads to a learning for you, then
transitions into a teaching: what you are there to share with them today.
An effective talk is built on the solid foundation of several life moments, each
of which moves briskly from
story to learning (meaning of the story) to teaching (message of the story).
We each have thousands of life moments (many of them defining moments),
small and large, archived in our
psyche, but they are often just below consciousness. When we allow relaxed
time to recall them, more and
more come to consciousness, sometimes in a flood of memories. Some have
found that keeping a "Life
Moments" journal is helpful. Others have had great results accessing such
moments through the eyes of a
listening partner or group. When you gaze at a willing listener without making
effort to remember, a life
moment will inevitably come through. There is a tendency to evaluate certain
moments that come to mind as
insignificant, or with no relevant learning or teaching attached to it. Dont!
Just write an identifying phrase for
it so youll remember it, and move on. When you allow the (seemingly) less
significant moments to surface
and be heard (at least by ourself), other promising ones tend to follow. And
those "less significant" ones often
unpack a wallop, once the learning and teaching is listened out.
Any moment has value. All are connected at the source. One moment
unfolds into another if you remain open
and aware. The discovery of the meaning of a moment is a transformational
process as we let ourselves be led
to the aha! How? By listening to the connection; by just saying (or thinking),
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to the aha! How? By listening to the connection; by just saying (or thinking),
"And what this means is " or
"What I learned is " or "Why Im telling you this is" or "Why this is
important is" or "My message to
you is.." Its like opening up a channel and the answer arrives.
The story of a moment can unravel into many layers, many messages.
Meaning exists in all things and in all
time. A moment is a timeless universe. A moment lives because we pay
attention to it. In everyday life our
moments may become missed opportunities for connection with ourselves,
others, and the divine, unless we
pay respectful attention to them.
To remain open to the moment calls for an attitude of curiosity -- a surrender
to the not knowing. An
expansive I dont know" is the threshold into possibilities. What you
know now is not what you will know in
the next moment, the ever changing, open now.
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Freshness, aliveness, life juice flows when you stand in the not knowing and
invite meaning into existence"
your personal meaning"and discover its relevance to the lives of others. This
is the heart and soul of
transformational speaking.
How does a personal moment become a universal shared experience? In the
deep well of human experience,
tragedy and exaltation are mingled: birth, death, loss, change, celebration.
Being human means that we are all
of that deep well. Tapping into our own experience takes us down and into the
deeper shared well of
humanity.
Our lives are a string of moments. We dont have to have signature stories
or life-threatening experiences to
pass on a meaningful message. Do you find yourself comparing your
moments with the signature stories"
that professional speakers often tell? Do you find yourself searching for
episodes in your life with big
meaning that supports your information and message? Do you dismiss the
simple moment that comes to
mind? Your power is packed within those moments, and the gift you have for
the listening world depends on
unpacking the meaning from those moments. When you allow such moments
from different times in your life
to surface and be collected, they build on each other and resonate into
patterns that become the fabric of
future talks and programs.
As you develop the knack of accessing life moments from your past, you can
begin practicing moving from
story to learning to teaching (either in your journal or into the eyes of
supportive listeners). You will find your
natural capacity to take any point in time and flow it out concisely into a
complete cycle of learning within
two or three minutes, in the moment, without preparing.
This is the ultimate confidence and authority that a conscious speaker brings
to a group. And into ones life.
For when you can access the meaning and the message of any moment from
the past, you can do it for
moments that comes up NOW. For an authentic leader, a day can be seen
as a series of defining moments,
each with a learning and a teaching. When you come from this place, every
"now" has the significance it
deserves, and every situation you experience and every person you meet is
your teacher.
At one of our Voice Your Vision retreats we were sitting at the table for our
Sunday lunch, a raucous
occasion marked by spontaneous singing and stories. One of our participants
looking pained, and another
asked if she was okay. The response was tears as she told us how she was
seeing the others as great speakers
and herself as not. The group allowed her words and feelings to land and have
space. I then asked her if shed
be willing to tell this story as a life moment? She took a deep breath, and
said: "Two minutes ago I was sitting
at this table feeling like a failure." Noticing our expansive listening, she took a
full breath. Then, within two
minutes, she connected this experience with patterns in her past, realized
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minutes, she connected this experience with patterns in her past, realized
the truth of the moment,
remembered who she was, and spun out a message from the story that we
could each apply to our own selfesteem
challenges.
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The Authentic Opening
Chapter 11 of Be Heard Now! Tap Into Your Inner Speaker and Communicate
With Ease, discusses the
elements of an authentic opening, and Chapter 12 covers the structure of the
talk.
The 4-5 minute opening suggested here allows us to ease into a relationship
with our listeners and bring them
together as a group.
The first task is to select a defining life moment from to open with, one that
invites your listeners to join you
on a journey.
You make that invitation irresistible right from the start by paying special
attention to the (1) silent beginning,
(2) the opening sentence of the story, and (3) reliving the story of that
moment.
1. The silent beginning
The silence between the end of the applause (or when you take your place up
front if it is not an applause
situation) and your first words is key in the audience getting to know you.
You cannot get that opportunity
back once you start to speak. You can make that room a better place
instantly when you are willing to come to
a complete rest ("start from stop") and notice some of them and let them
notice you. Hold your words until
real listening has been established in the room. When you take the time to
let your feet sink deeply into the
earth, they will feel the ground under them too.
This is the time when it is clear that you are also listening, not just speaking.
When they realize you are truly
there with them and for them, a subtle and powerful energy shift happens in
the room. As you model what
paying real attention looks and feels like, they find themselves listening
deeply before you have said a word!
But to do this, you must be willing and capable of standing in stillness.
This meeting place of two worlds, yours and theirs, is where you gently join.
This is the beginning of a
relationship, where you communicate that they are included, welcomed in,
invited to co-create an experience
together.
The authentic communication event you want to share with them can only
happen if the listeners are tuned in,
and you have to tune into them first. They may be sitting there with
expectations, hopes, prejudices and
judgments, but instead of meeting them at that superficial edge of evaluation,
you enter into the wide open
NOW. When you master this revolutionary act of listening to your audience
with your being, you are able to
transform the narrower energy of intellect into their willingness to join you.
This is where you and they make an unspoken agreement; that something
real is about to happen, that you are
including them in the journey, that their presence has weight. You are coming
into real time with them, the
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pace at which people genuinely get to know each other. You have
communicated that you are not in a hurry,
that just being together is what matters first.
This expanding moment together reveals yourself with no mask or pretense.
Stripped of words, gestures, and
tendencies to perform, you stand in Relational Presence, which opens people
around you to where life grabs
them, rips them apart, breaks them into pieces, and carries them into a new
now where wholeness is possible.
Start with at least one deep breath, which takes about five seconds in and five
seconds out. That may seem
like such a long time, but short of that you are rushing the relationship.
How do you develop the capacity to take this deep rest at what has
conventionally been the most stressful
moment in a talk, the moment your inner critic might be screaming "Start
strong! Open with confidence!
What are they thinking if Im not talking?!" The Speaking Circle process
is the basic exercise in developing
your capacity for such public peacefulness. Come to a professionally
facilitated program, or see the Free
Home Study Course link on the website for the tools to form your own Local
Study Group.
2. The opening sentence
People are paying rapt attention. The first words you say give them a place to
gather in real time as a
community. These words concisely and precisely establish a scene and may
include time and place and
situation. You want to speak conversationally into the listening eyes of one
listener, with no drama, mystery
or attempt to get laughs. Just the facts. Then you come to another complete
stop while the audience registers
the point and place in time and gathers right there. This requires at least
another deep breath.
There is a deeper significance of drawing people to a time and place together.
When we bring an entire
audience to a private moment, we give them more then a peek"we transport
them into an instant in our lives.
Time travel lives! This is way beyond identifying with you ("Oh yes, Ive
been there, too.") Without thinking
about it, they have joined you in that moment. It is now a shared moment
they are experiencing with you.
A solid opening sentence delivered into the listening evokes a clear mental
picture such that the listeners are
drawn to hear more about. You might even notice them move a bit toward the
edge of their chairs.
Heres a sample moment, to give you a sense of how much information is
just right: "I was lying on the
sidewalk, my bicycle tangled between my legs and my 10 year old son
started to cry."
3. Reliving the story of that moment
Bring yourself and your listeners to that moment as you share the rest of the
story in no more than two
minutes. Any longer than that is too much information for this time in the talk
since you havent yet let them
know the agenda and the promise. Let the truth speak for itself simply,
without added drama or
embellishment. You want to let your listeners have their own experience, not
transfix them with your
experience. Be clear and concise, with no misdirection or glibness. Be real
about what happened as it occurs
to you in this moment.
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4. Meaning and message of the moment
When the story ends (and knowing where to end the story is another
sensitivity you will learn in time) you
take another full breath, followed by a concise statement (two or three
sentences) of what you learned in that
experience that informed or inspired your path and brings you here today in
all your passion to share your
topic.
5. Agenda
Outline how you are going to proceed with this, usually in three sentences
conforming to the three sections of
the body of the talk as discussed in Chapter 12 of Be Heard Now!).
These sentences summarize (1) awareness of the PROBLEM/pain/suffering
you are addressing, (2) the
transformational POINT OF VIEW/new thinking/Aha!) you are offering, and (3)
PLAN OF ACTION you are
suggesting.
6. Promise -- Whats in it for them?
In one sentence, make the strongest promise that you expect to deliver. Then
take a full breath.
7. Collect agreement
Collect their agreement that they are in the right room and are willing to take
the journey with you. You may
ask, Are you ready? or Would this be helpful? At this point you can
expect a sea of faces nodding yes,
yes, we are with you! Notice this.
Your opening has a finite ending to separate it from the body of your talk. You
have provided crystal clarity
have provided crystal clarity
on who you are, why you are here, what are we going to do today, and
whats in it for us, which are the four
elements they need to know to give you their undivided listening.
The entire opening should be no more than five minutes and is actually a
closing, since it closes your listeners
on being with you body, mind and soul. That provides that ground into which
your message and/or
information can now flow to them.
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