Building and Protecting your Reputation |
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Our hallway is full of boxes.
A lorry just arrived from Southampton with a pallet of boxes, each one containing fourteen copies of the revised and updated edition of The Exceptional Speaker. My co-author, Paul du Toit and I are delighted that our year-long update of our "encyclopaedia of speaking" has finally arrived.
The official publication date is Monday March 22nd, and in next week's ezine, I will tell you how you can get your hands on a copy.
Of all the books I've written or contributed to, this is the one of which I am most proud. Paul and I have included everything we could think of about how to deliver sensational speeches, and included a new section on remote speaking. More news next week. |
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It seems almost a decade since I last completed a census form (It is - Ed), so I can't really recall whether this year's form is very different.
I do remember that once upon a time we had someone call at the door to record our details. They were called census enumerators. I think that's the only time the word is ever used, like shrift, which is always short, or skirl, which is only ever associated with bagpipes.
Anyway, our details are now filed away in an electronic government vault, which may be opened by our descendants in a hundred years' time, doing some ancestry research. It's a shame that it won't look like the ones I've been researching from a couple of hundred years ago, written in beautiful copperplate script. It makes even the job of "Chimney sweep" (my great-great grandfather's profession) look glamorous.
By the way, that's him, Henry Stevens in the centre of the photo with his wife Sarah beside him. My grandfather Len Stevens is the boy in front, with my great grandfather Horatio Stevens and his wife Theresa behind. The photo was taken in London in 1894. |
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 | My guest in the Web Radio Show this week is Brooks Williams.
He's an American acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter who has played with many other great musicians as well as having a fantastic solo career. He began releasing music on his own label, Red Guitar Blue Music, in 1989, with an EP called Red Guitar Plays Blue.
He has relocated to England, and currently tours in both the UK and the US. State of the Union, was a collaboration with the British singer-songwriter and one of my future show guests, Boo Hewerdine, that was planned to be recorded in a total of 5 days. They finished in a day and a half.
We talked about many things.
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The MediaMaestros are psychologists Alice Pailhes and Gustav Kuhnat Goldsmiths, University of London. A study they carried out has revealed how techniques used by magicians are used by politicians to persuade us to vote for them.
Magic tricks use powerful tools to control behaviour, say the researchers. The psychologists looked at how tricks create an "illusion of choice", when the audience has no real control.
"A lot of these magic principles show that you can very easily manipulate and influence decisions that people make - and even though they feel free to have made that decision, the magician has pretty much full control," says Dr Kuhn.
Dr Kuhn, part of the Magic Lab research team, says there is growing interest in understanding how magicians' "forcing techniques" can be used to influence behaviour.
He sees politicians increasingly drawing on the tactic of "misdirection", where a magician draws the audience's attention in one direction, with something noisy or spectacular, while the real moves are being made out of sight.
"Even if you know you're being misdirected, the problem is these principles are just incredibly effective and they still have an impact," says Dr Kuhn.
Is this your card?
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The MediaMug is Hiroshi Sasaki, head creative director for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, who announced he will step down over a derogatory suggestion involving a popular female entertainer he made last year to some planning staff members.
Sasaki's announcement came after weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun reported on Wednesday that he proposed last March an idea involving 33-year-old entertainer Naomi Watanabe, who is a plus-sized fashion icon in Japan and abroad, coming down from the sky as a pig as part of the Olympic opening ceremony.
I'm not making that up. He actually said it.
I know, hard to believe, and he's the second high-profile casualty of the Tokyo Games after the sexist remarks made by Games boss Yoshiro Mori, who eventually stepped down in February.
It's almost as though they don't want the games to go ahead. |
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Speaking Tip - Start as you mean to go on |
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There's a saying that runs "how you do anything is how you do everything". There may be some exceptions to that, but as a general rule, I think it's sound. That's why I believe it is so important to begin a speech in exactly the way you intend to deliver all of it. You need to be confident, interesting and entertaining. Alas, some speakers think that they have to break the ice by telling a joke or wittering on about their qualifications and achievements before turning to the topic that people expect to hear.
In my view, you are not only short-changing the audience if you begin with irrelevant detail, but you are also running the risk of losing their interest before you have told them what the speech is about. There are many ways that you can begin a speech with relevant material while keeping the audience engaged. You can make a promise to help them overcome business issues that we all share. You can pose a tricky question that makes them think, and explain how you will show them the answer. You can use humour as long as it is relevant.
In short, your speech opening should:
- Set the tone for the rest of the speech
- Engage the interest of the audience
- Make a promise
- Establish a common interest between you and them
- Move smoothly into the body of the speech
In the fictional West Wing TV show, written by the brilliant Aaron Sorkin, there's a clip that shows exactly how a bad speech opening can be transformed into a good one. If only everyone had speechwriters like this.
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Media Tip - How to deliver a powerful interview |
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Here are five ways to make your media interview a roaring success.
1) Keep your business head on However friendly the interviewer, stay professional. The danger is that you may either fail to deliver your message, or worse still, say something unguarded. Keep your focus at all times.
2) Don't hint or hide bad news If you have bad news to report, get it out of the way early, and put it in perspective. Don't let the journalist drag it out of you.
3) Stay responsible Never speculate, and never make things up. You will be found out, perhaps not in the interview, but at some point. If you're not sure about an answer, say so, and promise to find out. A second interview will then give you another opportunity to deliver a message.
4) Set the boundaries If there's a topic that you are unable to talk about, perhaps for legal reasons or because of privacy issues, mention it before the interview. If you don't have time beforehand, be polite but firm, and say why you can't discuss it.
5) Keep going for goal Deliver your core message at the start, the end and at all points in between. You can use different words, but keep the same theme.
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Social Media Tip - Write a letter to a friend |
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I was browsing a blog the other day, and couldn't help but notice that the same words and phrases cropped up in just about every sentence. It was obviously written by someone who thought that the purpose of blogging was to attract Google, so that more traffic would arrive on their site. Well, that's as maybe (I'm not about to start a debate about search engine optimisation - I know better than that). Looking further down the blog, I noticed that every post was written in a similar fashion, and I quickly lost interest and decided not to visit that site again.
I've never been booked to speak by a search engine, but always by people. It seems to me that engaging content is what brings people back to your blog, and what makes them tell other people about it. Rather than write for Google, I'd much rather write for a person. When I say "person", I mean one individual. Whether or not I know you personally, I address myself to you directly. I may slip up sometimes, but I try to be conversational, and avoid phrases like "as you all know", since there's only one of you reading this.
If and when we meet in person, you will find that I speak in pretty much the same way that I'm speaking to you here. I don't have a writing "style" , and from time to time I make an error with grammar, or spell a word incorrectly that sneaks through the spellcheck. For me, and I hope for you, that's fine. Social media is a conversation, not a great novel or bait for unwary search spiders.
It's easy to write to a person. We used to do it all the time in the old days when we wrote letters. That's all you need to do on social media - write a letter to a friend.
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In the week of St Patrick's Day, our friends Foil Arms and Hog are showing how to make an Irish Fillum. |
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An online or in-person speech to make? I can help.
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The information in this ezine may be freely re-used in any online or offline publication, provided it is accompanied by the following credit line - "This information was written by Alan Stevens, and originally appeared in "The MediaCoach", his free weekly ezine, available at www.mediacoach.co.uk." |
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