Why public speaking skills can give you the upper hand in your professional life – Stuart Fedderson

Transcription:

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Welcome back, and thanks so much for joining us on the show, Stewart.

Stuart Fedderson:
Of course, Jim, it’s always great to be here.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Great. A lot of people, like I said, including myself, was just starting out and I was terrified of getting either on a stage or at a podium, or even getting up in front of six or seven people and saying, “Okay, Jim, you’re on, talk to us.” And I think so many other people share that same fear. And you say that your goal is to help coach in this area and then have others gain the upper hand in their personal and professional life. How is it that public speaking skills can help accomplish them succeeding in sales?

Stuart Fedderson:
You know what Jim, first of all, before I jump into the answer, you’re not alone, as far as public speaking fear. I think all of us have that, its human nature. It’s a human nature to be a little nervous or a lot nervous when getting in front of a group. In fact, I myself, suffer or struggled with public speaking fear. And one of the reasons why I started my firm, was to tell people there’s hope.

Stuart Fedderson:
But to answer your question, one of the biggest reasons why public speaking can give you and others, the upper hand, in their professional life is it sets them apart as a master communicator. And I’m telling you right now, Jim, public speaking and communication is no longer an optional skill in the workplace. It is very much needed, especially now that we’re in our virtual world. We have to amplify our public speaking, public and virtual speaking and communication. I’m telling you, we have to gain that skill in order to really make ourselves stand out at work. For example, Warren Buffet, I base a lot of that mission of giving others the upper hand through public speaking, off of what he said to a group of college students one time. He said that public speaking, that mastering the skill of public speaking will constitute 50% of your career value.

Stuart Fedderson:
Honestly, based off of that, your technical skills, will get you in the door or get you the interview, but it’s your soft skills, it’s your communication and your public speaking skills, that will get you the job. And when you get that job, it’s those communication and public speaking skills that will get you to promotion. A lot of my clients, especially the one on one clients, Jim, are interested in that. They’re like, “Stewart, talk to me about how I cannot only overcome my fear, but also make myself stand out as a credible public speaker and communicator.”

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. And it takes time. It takes time for practice. It takes time to create good content and then obviously you want to practice on that content as many times as you can, so that when you deliver it, you’re comfortable with it. That’s first and foremost, one of the keys to delivering a great speech.

Stuart Fedderson:
Yes. How do I put this? You have to get comfortable with the uncomfortable, is what I tell my clients. If you want to become a master communicator, you have to step outside your comfort zone and put yourself in front of people, otherwise you’re not going to be able to overcome that fear. I also say that when it comes to public speaking, you’re going to make a lot of missteps. I’m telling you, Jim, when I created my firm and as I was doing my research to build my curriculum, I myself went through numerous public speaking bombshells, in Toastmasters, and at work, in order to learn what worked and what didn’t work, when it came to public speaking. Absolutely, you have to constantly hammer at that craft and be willing to put yourself outside of your comfort zone.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. What are some of the tips that you can share with our audience that they need to focus on in delivering a good speech or a good presentation?

Stuart Fedderson:
Absolutely. I think number one, Jim, is something called individuality. Individuality is a speaker’s authentic sense of self. It’s bringing your whole self into the presentation and into the situation or interview. When we have a good grasp on our individuality, what happens, is confidence and charisma, will naturally happen. You just have to have a good grasp on who you are as an individual and not be afraid to be yourself. That is the number one thing I tell speakers is, don’t try to paint this picture of one of your favorite speakers, be yourself.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right. Don’t get up and try to be Tony Robbins, just get up and be Stuart Fedderson when you’re presenting.

Stuart Fedderson:
Absolutely. And bring your individuality. And what I mean by that is, share stories from your life, talk, share-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Connect with the audience.

Stuart Fedderson:
Share stories. Yeah. Connect with the audience. I think one of the greatest things, Jim, that’s a part of your individuality, is sharing those personal stories and being vulnerable. When we’re vulnerable, something amazing happens. It’s called human connection, something we all are desperately in need of right now, in our virtual world. And individuality, vulnerability, sharing personal stories, is the best way to connect with people in a presentation, I’m telling you.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. Just if you think about it and for the audience members that are listening, just think about the last time you witnessed a great presentation, all of those things were present. Before they even got into the content, the speaker connected with the audience on a more of a personal type level and shared what motivates them, what their why is, in business and such, and then they get into their presentation, because now they know that they’ve got buy in from the audience, right?

Stuart Fedderson:
Absolutely. I think so many audience, audience is out there, Jim, are bored out of their minds. The majority of presentations, I hate to say it are incredibly text heavy, slide heavy, statistics and graphs and everything heavy, when all they really need in order for the statistics and graphs and all of that technical stuff to sink in, is a personal touch. And it’s your individuality, personal stories and vulnerability, that you need to essentially wrap all of those things in presenting and that’s my secret, really, honestly-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And a lot of people really think that as you’re speaking right now, they’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, that’s the last thing that I would think you’d want to do once you get up in front of an audience is to show vulnerabilities or to share stories about yourself. Who cares about me? Who cares about my story?” The whole audience does. They want to know who you are and what you’re made of before you ever get into the good content that you’re going to present, right?

Stuart Fedderson:
Absolutely. Think about the greatest speakers out there in our world. They’re the greatest speakers because they showed their humanness.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.

Stuart Fedderson:
And their humanness made them influential.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And in a lot of cases, those great speakers, the Tony Robbins of the world and Brendon Burchard and so many others that come to mind, they’ll tell you what motivated them into putting the content together that you’re about to hear. And often, it’s because of their own personal experiences in life, till that point, you know what I mean? You’ve got immediate buy in. You’re like, “Okay, this person is walking the walk because they’ve gone through an addiction, or they’ve gone through bankruptcy or they tried 14 businesses and they failed until they found the one that succeeded, and this is why it succeeded.” And then the audience says, “Oh, okay, this person has got a lot of experience in this area and I can relate to them. Okay now, start your presentation now that we know why we should listen to you, show us the good stuff.” Right?

Stuart Fedderson:
Yeah. You nailed it. It’s all about inspiring trust. And the key to inspiring trust is credibility, so they’re really all interconnected. So it’s like, “Okay, if I want to inspire trust, I need to exude some credibility. In order for me to exude some credibility, I need to share my experience behind what this whole presentation is about. Instead of coming up here and saying 95% of so and so, and this is why 10% did,” you got to be able to say, “Hey, when I was young, I had no idea what root cause analysis was and this is the way I learned about root cause analysis, was from my father.” There’s just a whole thing you can bring to the table when presenting and that’s my secret sauce really is, bring your personal, your whole authentic self, and then everything will cascade, trust-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Well, talk to us about that-

Stuart Fedderson:
Credibility.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
The firm is called The Fedderson Formula. What is the formula for public speaking success and how did you come up with it?

Stuart Fedderson:
The formula is, I get so pumped about this, Jim, the formula is simple and it’s confidence + charisma = credibility. I’m going to say that again. So it’s confidence + charisma = credibility. How did I come up with this? I started in high school. In high school. I had and still struggle, with social anxiety. It’s something I still struggle with. In fact, standing up in front of this camera right now, my palms are sweating. I’m fidgeting a little bit. Why? Because, I still struggle with that social anxiety. What I did is I made it a mission to learn how to cope with it. I went out there, Jim, and I just started doing a lot of research in high school. I kept what I called an awesomeness research journal with all of my public speaking secrets.

Stuart Fedderson:
I did research on the greatest public speakers of our time. And when I got to my graduate program, I was doing a lot of presentations. I was part of my Toastmasters Club in the universities I attended and I realized something and it was this, I had all of these awesome public speaking skills documented in this research journal, but there was no structure to it. What I did is I started another case study of my own, and I used it as my graduate program final project. I did case studies. I did surveys. I observed presentations.

Stuart Fedderson:
For an entire year and a half, I gathered all of this information and what happened is I took all of those skills and I tied them into, what’s now known as The Fedderson Formula, which is confidence, under confidence, there’s a whole set of public speaking skills, like body language and eye contact and your posture, your vocal usage, all of those things contribute to confidence, plus charisma, which is smiling. How many people you see in presentations with smiling, not smiling with a monotone voice like this, it’s just very boring.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. Even laughter.

Stuart Fedderson:
You got to bring charisma. You got to crack jokes. You have to bring humor. All of those skills are under my charisma element. And then all of those things, when you combine them into a comprehensive hole, create credibility or basically the ability to inspire trust, and in that, is The Fedderson Formula. That’s how it came to be.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And you’ll work with clients, large and small. For people that want to conquer this area and get out and speak more and feel much more comfortable in front of a group while they’re public speaking, that’s what you specialize in, right?

Stuart Fedderson:
Absolutely. Obviously I’ve presented to groups of 600 or more, also I do one on one coaching and I also do small groups of less than 10, really depends on their needs. Recently, I had a client that just wanted to prepare for an up and coming presentation. There were six of them and they said, “Hey, we really want to soup up and really optimize our public speaking skills, but we don’t know where to start.” So they brought me in and I gave them a workshop of their own, customized it to their needs, gauged where they were weak, where they were strong and they did an outstanding job. Yeah, I’ve done workshops for big groups, medium and one on one.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That is fantastic. And you do a good job at it. That’s why we call you in here periodically to share your knowledge about public speaking with our audience, because it’s so vitally important for business owners that are out there. And for entrepreneurs. If you can’t make a good presentation, even though the content might be great, but if you can’t deliver it effectively and have that audience appreciate that content and connect with you as a speaker, and in this case, as an entrepreneur or a business owner, you’re going to be in trouble. Stuart Fedderson, public speaking coach, founder and owner of The Fedderson Formula, check it out online. And I think you’re going to like what you see as we did here at the show. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. We really appreciate it.

Stuart Fedderson:
Absolutely, Jim, always happy to be here.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Great. Thanks.