Speakership – the Art of Oration, the Science of Influence

The art of oration, the science of inﬂuence Matt Church Sacha Coburn & Col Fink Published by Thought Leaders Publishing Thought Leaders Publishing Suite 8, Rear 510 Sydney Road Balgowlah NSW 2093 Copyright © Matt Church, Sacha Coburn and Col Fink, 2015 First published in 2015 Matt Church, Sacha Coburn and Col Fink assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. ISBN: 978 0 9775724 8 9 Design & typesetting by Michael Fink Contents About the authors i Manifesto 1 Speakership is leadership 9 Shifting gears 33 Navigation 53 Principle 1 Command the context 57 Principle 2 Unpack your genius 75 Principle 3 Design time capsules 103 Principle 4 Amplify your self 125 Principle 5 Entertain the crowd 137 Principle 6 Work the room 153 Principle 7 Choose your state 167 Principle 8 Expand your awareness 179 Principle 9 Get out of the way 187 But first, begin 197 About the authors About the authors Matt Church mattchurch.com Matt Church is one of Australia’s most enduring and successful motivational speakers. He has been named Speaker of the Year and Edu- cator of the Year by the National Speakers Association, and named in the top ten motivational speakers world-wide. He is generous with his knowledge and is the mentor behind many of the world’s leading non-fiction business authors and professional speakers. Matt lives in Sydney, Australia and continues to write, speak and teach the art of oration through various programs for aspiring leaders. In 2001 he founded an international education business, Thought Leaders Global, dedicated to helping clever people be commercially smart. He is the chairman of the business and spends his time developing curriculum and inspiring great thinking and great conversations. Col Fink colfink.com Col Fink spent his childhood as a professional actor and his early career as a stage musician, so he has always felt at home in the spot- light. A mechanical engineer with a masters degree in marketing and data analytics, Col lives at the interface of art and science. After turn- ing his hobby into a career by building a tribe of followers worldwide in a niche sport (kart racing), he became obsessed with the creation and curation of powerful and successful tribes and cultures. His role as the Chief Engagement Officer of Thought Leaders Global i Speakership allows him to pursue that goal enthusiastically, assisting others build cultures that inspire; in professional, sporting and not-for-profit environments. He speaks regularly about the strategic design and curation of culture, and teaches leadership skills to enable the reali- sation of cultural aspirations. Sacha Coburn sachacoburn.com Sacha Coburn is a New Zealand based speaker who combines her love of coaching other leaders to speakership mastery with active involvement in leading her own company, Coffee Culture. Sacha heads up the franchise division and walks her talk every day deliver- ing messages that matter. As a conference speaker, Sacha specialises in keynotes and workshops that focus on fearlessness, and leadership from the inside out. She is loved as much for her vulnerability and humour as her hard hitting ‘reality check’ messages about what it takes to succeed. As a training consultant Sacha has spent over 20 years coaching and developing people and teams. Her obsession with unlocking the latent potential within everyone to be a capti- vating public speaker has transformed the way thousands of people stand and deliver. ii Manifesto Manifesto ‘Speakership is leadership. Every time you speak in public, you are auditioning for a leadership position’ — James C Humes, US Presidential speechwriter Speakership — the art of oration and the science of influence — is the new leadership imperative. Whether you want to increase your leadership credentials to grow your career; or build your communication skills as the head of your business to motivate staff and compel your clients; or deliver keynotes from stage to make public speaking your profession, this book was written for you. We believe that speakership is the missing link between strategy and execution, between wanting to have people do something and inspiring them to take action. This book is a map for leaders who want to harness the power of presentations to influence their pro- jects, their ideas, and their tribe. In this book you will find; • the reasons to get great at speaking; • the roadmap to achieving it; • the frameworks and exercises required, and; • a path to incredible personal growth. It’s a book we hope will provoke you into action. Too many people with so much to offer flirt with the idea of spreading great 1 Speakership ideas through powerful speaking, and then are overcome with the enormity of the task. Daunted by the lift that is required to get good at leadership speaking. We hope to inspire and encourage you to do more. Our great hope is that after reading this book, you feel prepared to stretch and challenge yourself, and to think more deeply about the leverage you can gain by being a leader who speaks. At the same time you will leave a lasting positive impact on the people around you and the world at large. Communication has become one of the most puzzling para- doxes of our time. We live in a world that is hyper-connected; more plugged in, tuned in, turned on than ever before. Everything we need to know is just a swipe away on a mobile device the size of your hand that has more computing power than NASA used to put two men on the moon in 1969! Want to know the temperature in Brazil right now? The price of corn in Maine? How about finding an old friend from high school? Most likely they are just a google search away. The world has irrevocably shrunk. And yet, social scientists tell us that more and more people feel isolated and disconnected from their communities. They feel over- worked, underpaid, misunderstood, and alone. Despite the capabil- ity to be ‘in touch’ twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, many people are disengaged and disillusioned. Business leaders know the struggle to engage and empower a workforce that clocks in, then checks out. The irony is that our ability to communicate is most likely the single biggest contributor to the success of mankind. The capacity for speech marked our key strategic advantage over the rest of the animal kingdom. Each generation was able to learn from the lessons of their forebears, giving them a head start on survival that led to humans becoming the dominant predator in almost every ecosys- tem on the planet. And yet, word of mouth wasn’t scalable. It was a cumbersome one-to-one, or one-to-few process that was limited by the amount of information that could be reliably transferred from 2 Manifesto one single mind to another. The pace of innovation and development was inexorably slow. The evolution of the written word was the catalyst for an enor- mous shift in human potential. Suddenly a single author could disseminate their ideas widely, and each reader was free to create, innovate, and develop ideas built on the work of generations of scholars and inventors who had gone before. A literate person could learn by early adulthood what had previously taken a whole lifetime to learn, and then devote the rest of their lives to exploring and expanding a body of knowledge. About 110,000 generations passed between our ancestors who used stone tools, and those who learnt to control fire. Another 20,000 generations lived and died before the Sumerians developed reading and writing. Just 250 generations later, an evolutionary blink after the invention of literacy, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. The pace of human development is accelerating at an exponential rate. It’s sobering to imagine what might be achieved within just 5 or 10 generations of the birth of the internet. Colonies on other planets, renewable energy sources providing almost unlimited power at low cost; possibly even the development of medical science to the point where humans can choose not to die. The nature of the society we live in is radically changing. Easy access to information has transformed the world and continues to enable progress at lightning speed. With history recording the successes and failures of every field of human endeavour, we are no longer limited by the amount of information that can be remem- bered and passed on by word of mouth. The internet makes it easier than ever before to test and discard bad ideas. We are living in exciting times! And yet, many of our organisations are crippled by indecision, lack of leadership, and lack of clear direction and vision. This trickles down to an employee base that seems unmotivated, disinterested and transient. To say we have a crisis of engagement is to understate the problem. 3 Speakership The challenge faced by many organisations is the uncertainty and complexity of their commercial reality. They’re developing 5 year strategic plans when even the best data analysis doesn’t have sufficient predictive power to show us what the changing landscape will look like. We can make educated decisions for the next 12- 36 months, but beyond that? Anything could happen, and most proba- bly will. Executives are juggling the tightrope of expensive risk-tak- ing with the potential pain of missing the boat on the next big thing.

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