welcome to new beginnings with karen dell and i am so pleased to have joining me today eileen the net who is president and founder of speaking that connects and we're going to have a very enjoyable conversation about a very new program that she is launching an april call for points of connection eileen it is so great to have you here it's so great to be here karen thank you yes so tell us a little bit about this new program that you're launching how did you get the concept i've been in business for over three decades doing what i do which is presentation coaching and training and all of a sudden it was an aha moment i realized i had a model and speaking that connect has been around for a while but it's all integrated and for points of connection with the the birth of that a ha moment and what it was really a realization that all the pieces all the elements of what i had been doing for so long now came together as a methodology or as a an approach and that's what four points of connection is it's an approach to presentation excellence and so what are the four points tell us that ok so i realize that in my work people have concerns in these four areas and the connections to owning their message so what is their connection to the message the connection to their audience the connection to their physical self and how they deliver and most importantly the connection to their inner landscape or how they feel or what they think about what they're now going to do so it's inner self outer self audience and messaging that's wonderful so who are the targeted people that you are looking for to take this training most of my audience as a business to business professional or professional so they could be entrepreneurs or they could be companies that have teams of marketing professionals i t professionals it really doesn't matter what the discipline is it matters that people speak in front of groups with strength of character feeling comfortable in their own bodies and targeting their message for a particular audience now i want to explore because you're talking about the inner side and as an executive coach i also pocus on the inner side so you sit comfortable in their own bodies and you know they have to kind of go in where talk a little bit about why that's important you couldn't learn all the outside in skills and then not know whether you're good or comfortable in front of a group i know i have had clients who have medicaid on beta blockers because things id of speaking is so extreme for them that they need to get a pharmaceutical the the problem is that they don't know that they even deliver a great job because they have dissociated they've kind of pulled away from the experience and that's such a shame to me so it's important to not only connect with your audience but connect to yourself so you can have the realisation of whatever that experience was whether it was your best or so so job it's important to be there to be in that moment otherwise you're kind of an empty shell or kind of like a robot so the technique to get comfortable and go inward woody would be without sharing secrets but you know give give the audience an idea of how you make that connection because i agree that if you're just you know kind of going through the motions kind of robotic without making the connection i would think that the audience would also feel as you said pulling back and disassociated so how do you make people feel the feeling of of what they're delivered ok so there are a couple different things but most of them have to do with breathing and being quiet so i have a lot of little exercises that b but start with saying nothing and just scanning what's going on for oneself i think a lot of times people think they have to do a great job they haven't started from the beginning of just kind of empty white space i think i've shared this with you before that in school we spend a lot of time learning to read and write and margins on  page are very you know part of that process i think when it comes to speaking we totally forget that there is there are margins there is space that supports words and giving people permission to be silent just like that can turn around someone who's very anxious or uncomfortable speaking so it's learning through some coaching around silence around scanning one's breath about not speaking that helps people to go inside and feel more of who they are doesn't mean they're always comfortable where but it does mean that they're present who they are and if you're in a safe  supportive coach you can move a person from strong terror to a little fear to not some bad and eventually to this is fun i  fascinated to hear that because it's interesting that silence understanding i understand the root of the breathing because that helps to anxiety and stress done well you know good reading helps to do that but i'm also intrigued to hear that silence helps improve speaking it almost sounds like an oxymoron but it isn't but i mean you know you're saying that use use the full space understand it get comfortable and then speak and there is power in silence as you know as a coach sometimes you a question or a statement to someone and they have to be silent to kind of think of their response and in sales you always learn that when you are going for back forth kind of negotiating the first person who speaks loses so there is you know that's where silence is used in a powerful way but you're also talking about using silence in a powerful way to be introspect trying to eliminate the chatter of the mind and the inner world of self doubt self criticism and sometimes the breath is of it is the natural antidote to stress but just giving your monkey mind chatter mind something to do like count your breath or to scan your inhalation an excellent is a kind of meditative process of getting grounded in who where you are who you are in this now moment and even if it's uncomfortable it's the now and that's a good place to begin versus being dissociated and not knowing what you even said right and i have had clients say well i was told i did a great job but i don't even know what i said and that's not what i want for clients right and it's hard i would think to repeat you know that kind of stellar performance when you're disassociated from what you said and there's i don't know i mean i would imagine there's not as much passion in the delivery  when you dissociated generally not but once in a while you get someone who is dynamic but they still don't know what they said or how it sounded so part of them isn't there yeah and that could get you so far but i don't think ultimately that's what any speaker really wants so the quiet exercises  can start very easily with looking at an object and not saying anything and then look at a person and not say anything which is a very more difficult situation absolutely and then too i mean so conversationally one on one we have no problem with that and some people may not have a problem with that but then you have three people in the room and you don't know what to do with your eyes and the anxiety starts so there are tools besides better are paired with silence which is that inner self a sense of self value and comfort and ok miss that go with the outer self so meaning how do you look at a group of people when you're speaking there's a different way to do that than in a conversation but it borrows from one on one conversation yeah now i don't know if this is true but i've heard advice given not for you that when you're giving a speech and you're a little nervous imagine everyone else's neck it yeah i have heard it too and i always say if i were to imagine people in the room in my audience were naked that would be a big distraction for me but i would not want to of the matter is you got to get present with the audience and often the exercises that i use have to do with standing insi and looking to a set of eyes and moving to another set of eyes not saying a word and sometimes that is even more difficult absolutely for many so that the turnaround is let me talk right rather talk this is horribly painful yeah but for some people it's actually very much her mission to i can stand up here and not say anything ok it's freeing it can be freeing yeah yeah depending on the person's background and what their mind is saying to them yeah i know you talked also about the you know quieting the chatter and the may not have said this but what i was imagining is you know you have a little little me on the shoulder maybe speaking positively in than another will be on the other shows with me speaking negatively which i would imagine people who are concerned about speaking have that it could be that noise or some other noise how is it silence that you encourage to quiet that or do you have other techniques so the man doesn't have it quite this way but  enough back burner the negativity most people don't have the little positive chickadee on their shoulder or saying you can do it you can do it most of the people or away i'm going to fail i'm not good at this and that just perpetuates that negative speaking profile so i just say eliminate everything just focus on your breath just focus on listening to the silence in the room look at out it's stopping some people say well should affirmations be part of my practice such as i am a good public speaker or i mean audience's attention i cetera so that can work for many people it's not one of my tools  because i feel it's not a truth it's an affirmation and maybe that will move some people but some people feel that's not my truth so what i say is you're allowed to be fearful and acknowledge any kind of feeling i feel nervous i feel afraid i feel juvenile i feel i'm happy about this that's all your truth but you what you can't do is link that to a projection and an affirmation is a little bit of a projection so i feel fearful i know i'm going to fail at this you care to stop it i feel fair fearful you could put the affirmation i hear this public speaking situation and i want to to do a great job i prefer to go in that direction than saying i'm a great public speaker affirmations  r saying it as if you want it if you you've attained it attained it right where i think a feeling and a want feels were truthful for me and so that's what i use with my clients you know i like that because you're not negating the feeling you're embracing the feeling working with the acknowledging it and then building from there which  you know you talked about and i hadn't thought of this because i am not usually fearful of public speaking so for me i don't medicate but i would imagine people who do again they're not connecting with the feeling they're suppressing the feely and we are all depends on what you're delivering obviously but if you're delivering something where you need to have some passion in the delivery somewhere motion i think with all the technology we have now and videos and you tube and all of that we have a more sophisticated audience they're looking for something more you know we have reality shows where people you know do things that maybe professional actors would you know would have done so i would think that being medicated and speaking is kind of opposing yeah sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't so you could have a great performance and that person is out to lunch on the inside and it's a great performance so sometimes it does impact an audience who has the passion may not be there because the medication has told you away from that path but i've also seen it where people who take those kinds of beta blocker saying oh my heart relaxes i can be myself now i can do what i need to do and they go but i am here to say that if you feel some disappointment in oneself because you feel dependent then there are options in terms of coaching and training and some people might have needed for their own reasons to facilitate calm through pharmaceutical once and never try again to perform without it and it becomes i must have this in order to be ok if i'm standing in front of a group speaking and i think there is there is  there in that can be troublesome that i don't know the word that i was exactly writing for right but that can make you vulnerable to a dependency not the drug but on the belief right that the only way i can do this is if it comes from the outside right and obviously as a coach and we're both coaches yes and no i don't think so exactly you can learn how to trust from the inside absolutely absolutely so with this training you have coming up tell us a little bit about what people will get from it great so for points of connection it has two formats in april though it's a four session class two hours each session their week apart so for wednesday nights in april and then in may it's a saturday intensive so about the same amount of hours of training but some people like to stretch it over time and some people like to immerse what people will get will be similar get a planning temple and that helps you to design your presentation in a more efficient left to right brain merge which really facilitates the process so you don't have to spend thirty hours planning a presentation you can actually get your skeletal presentation plan question yourself about your audience so how many people will be there what's the structure of the room have i ever seen any of these people before are they more men were they more women is it diverse ethnicity wise culture wise hierarchy wise so it's a tool as a checklist to kind of so for flat about who is this audience and i feel about this audience and what do i think they need to know on a mine is the messaging well that's great that's great and then if one someone wants to work with you individually beyond that that's available it is and it will be at a pro rated rate folk would you know if someone is interested in the aids the four session or the full day program and they want to continue they'll be a special offering there oh that's great so you know you talked about you realize that these were methods that you put together these four points of connection what has been some of the biggest surprises the you've seen  surprises that you've seen in working with individuals so recently i was working with a team that was doing a stage production but also some live streaming with teleprompter and teleprompters of course are scripts so even having the technology that the it's voice activated which allows the technology to keep up with you i found that people read as if it were a piece of paper in front of them and it slowing down the process to just ask people to listen as if they were in the audience to what they're reading i mean it was it was like they grounded into themselves the speed shifted but the kind of presence you know integrated so we said  just reading jack ran over the candle stick they really integrated in their motion with the words and it only required that they put their ears to their voice so it's kind of multitasking but if you know your message really well minute obviously if you're reading it and you've practiced it before you know that message it's not a joke you know it's not a linear thing so i think one of the big surprises was the feedback in a very short time that just listening to myself reading made a difference in how i felt i was coming across as well as it slowed me them there was a guy i was working with in my office and he was passionate oh so passionate about his talk and he didn't read his slides and he had a lot of information but his passion was actually it was blocking his message there it was too much energy it was too much body language and soon it wasn't about telling him to curtail the body language but i directed his eye contact differently because when you don't look at anything you can talk faster t since this was a coaching session i didn't have an audience in the room we had to simulate an audience through objects and chairs and just changing the way he looked and ta change the amount of extra hand movement and the extra body language that wasn't so effective was more distracting so his passion was there but it needs to be reined in and targeted right to individual tell us you know what's your new beginning or you know the remainder of twenty eighteen my new beginning i'm not sure what you mean by that four points of connection is now a methodology and an approach and i'd love it to be recognised as a brand of speaking that connects and i lean sanat and that companies would take a look at it and maybe bring me in for a lunch and learn or maybe to work with one of their senior leaders and their teams so i think it's not presentation skills are fundamental presentations go even though there are fundamental presentation skills that's a part of it but that's not the main target you know i think it's it entered gratian of like i said i'm what you say how you say it how it's delivered and  how it's received and i do think one of the key things people will be overlook is that you may be nervous as a speaker but you're not their own you know it's not about you it's about your message and getting it through to your audience so i talk about mutual satisfaction it's kind of like sex it's nice to satisfy him or her and vice