(By Jeff McHugh) In preparing for your show, you might gather content, brainstorm ideas, write, prep guests, and compile audio.
Do you ever prepare your head, heart, and soul?
Years ago, Beyonce created an alter-ego named Sasha Fierce. I met Beyonce once. She is quiet, intelligent, and somewhat shy. Beyonce imagined Sasha Fierce as a more confident, superpower version of her true self.
Beyonce says once she puts on those stilettos and struts on stage, Sasha Fierce “appears” and “my posture and the way I walk and speak is different.” In the same way, what you think and feel as you speak to a microphone is powerfully yet invisibly transmitted to the audience.
At Own The Room seminars, public speakers learn that mirror neurons inside the brain emulate the emotions of others, whether they are on a movie screen, on a podcast, or in-person. Ever cry at a movie? That’s why.
Science proves that audiences will feel what you feel and will do what you do. This is why laughter is so infectious. It is also why anger, hate, and fear are sometimes used to influence others.
Another study proves that when you think other people will like you, they are in fact more likely to like you.
Managers influence their teams with thoughts and emotions too. A leadership instructor at Wake Forest University once told me, “You must manage internally before attempting to manage others.”
You can harness this power. As part of your preparation, consider what is in your heart and in your mind and how your feelings will create that reaction in the audience.
Jeff McHugh is a member of the team at the Randy Lane Company.
Besides her innate talent and spectacular genes, “Sasha Fierce” has paid every last one of her dues
She has done her 10,000 hours under the guidance of the best teachers and coaches in the business.
She has also been trained to adjust and manipulate her internal experience to further her attitudes and, thus, her performances. Indeed, Ms. Knowles is supremely skilled.
On-air radio talent, on the other hand, have been sputtering along for decades without participating in any training or worthwhile coaching of any lasting value.
Plus they have less time and opportunities to practice anything they might have picked up along the way.
Attitude adjustments, while probably helpful, will not take the place of skills.
And unless coaches are knowledgeable enough to teach the specifics – the mechanics – of such adjustments, there are few advantages in the advice.