Power Speaking by Achim Nowak

Author:Achim Nowak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allworth
Published: 2011-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

HUMOR IN ACTION

1f you are a speaker with a strongly developed funny bone and a loose lip, here’s a cautionary tale. 1 will never forget a business seminar that 1 conducted in New York for a group of thirty corporate trainers. They had come together from a wide variety of business backgrounds to sharpen their presentation skills. Two of the trainers, as it turned out, moonlighted in the evenings as stand-up comics in the New York City club scene. We laughed with great joy during those three seminar days. Karen was a sales trainer for a renowned German automobile maker, and Phil facilitated courses about medical product information for a health care provider. Both Karen and Phil faced a formidable challenge: How would they put their wildly humorous and inventive instincts in the service of the information their employers had asked them to impart? At what point did they transgress that invisible line where their funny bone actually obscured the message of the presentation?

I found out a year later, when I crossed paths again with Karen: she had successfully fused her comic style with the demands of being a high-end sales trainer, and had, in fact, become one of the most popular sales trainers for this automobile maker. Phil, on the other hand, had left the training field altogether. He had wisely realized that his comic sensibility seemed to be forever at odds with the demands of the training information he had to deliver. His true arena was the comedy club scene in Los Angeles, where he went to seek fame and fortune.

If you have any lingering doubts about the benefit of choosing a light approach, I ask you to contemplate the delivery style of Dr. Jody Spiro. Well into my career as a speaking coach, I decided to go back to graduate school. Part of the jolt of being back in school was the harsh reality of experiencing my graduate school instructors. Many spoke in a monotonous and deadly dull manner, as if being a highly schooled subject-matter expert alone was sufficient effort to spark interest in their captive audience.

Enter Dr. Spiro.

Just as I was giving up on the idea that I might encounter a first-rate presenter at New York University, I enrolled in Dr. Spiro’s course on the nature of International Nongovern-mental Organizations. Now, that is not an inherently sexy or exciting topic. Worse yet, the course was offered Thursday evenings from 8:10 to 9:50. By any university standard, that’s the graveyard shift. Most of Dr. Spiro’s students were working professionals who toiled in underresourced nongovernmental office jobs during the week. By Thursday evening, Dr. Spiro faced a sea of tired bodies and minds as she attempted to interest her students in the finer aspects of the world of international nongovernmental organizations.

This was by far the best class I took in graduate school.

How did Dr. Spiro manage to engage her weary brood? Yes, you guessed it—Dr. Spiro used a light approach to a not inherently light topic. More importantly, she keenly understood her own comic style.

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