For every leader, public speaking is about the art of inspiration. (Do you know how to move your audiences to action? Download my free cheat sheet, "Leadership Skills: The 5 Essential Speaking Techniques.")
Yet too many visionaries of business, government, nonprofit services, education, and healthcare fail to embody a key leadership skill: selling their vision while moving an audience to maximum effect when they speak.
Leading is Not Delivering Information
How can this be, since so many leaders seem to be effective speakers? They may in fact be successful in delivering critical information. Yet their speaking appearances don't approach the dynamic leadership skills they exhibit in other areas.
That's because they don't possess a performance persona that matches their other skills. They aren't to blame, however, since our educational system and professional training simply don't teach the skills necessary to speak memorably with high impact in terms of influence.
Like most speakers, that is, too many leaders are comfortable with their vision but at a loss concerning how to convey it powerfully to an audience. They deliver information, rather than reaching the level of performance necessary to genuinely move listeners.
Leaders Need the Skills of Theatrical Performance
One of the greatest of leadership skills is the ability to recognize and be dissatisfied when one's level of performance falls short of an ideal. Anyone who works with leaders understands this. It's a principal reason, in fact, that these leaders have achieved success.
They possess keep expertise in their field and a proven ability to manage both organizations and people. But public speaking is another arena entirely. There, it is performance skills displayed in real time that allow a leader to succeed at the task of influencing listeners. To sell their vision, these leaders (like any speaker) need to turn listeners on.
This simply isn't possible if the leader lacks knowledge, training, and insights into how audiences learn and are persuaded. For this, they need the skill set embodied in theatrical performance—not acting, but a performance persona that can reach and light a fire under one's listeners.
Leaders Need More than a Forceful Personality
Otherwise, they are flying blind, depending upon their skills in messaging and the sheer force of their personality to get the job done. It may work in other areas of their leadership, but it is never enough when they step on stage. The Genard Method, my system of performance-based public speaking training, incorporates the key areas of theatrical performance leaders need to express their vision in ways that reach and move audiences.
These techniques are not new. They have existed for thousands of years, used whenever a performer needs to tap into the deepest needs of audiences and take them where the performance intends that they should go.
Does a leader speaking in public require something different in terms of their own awareness and skills of influence? Of course not.
