The Well-Spoken Woman (33 page)

 

 

 

H
opefully you agree that well-spoken women are awesome and now feel inspired to try something you might not have done before. This book has been about capturing the essence of well-spoken women, from Tina Fey to Ann Richards and Maya Angelou to Melinda Gates, to help you improve your speaking ability. The intent has been to define the characteristics and practices of accomplished presenters to provide you with a practical guide to speaking success. As the case studies have revealed, a well-spoken woman is not simply a charismatic personality, although charisma plays a part. Rather, she dedicates herself to the task of developing a real connection with an audience by bringing her best self to the stage. The concept of the well-spoken woman's Power Persona introduced in
chapter 1
is the guide to your journey of improvement.

WELL-SPOKEN POWER PERSONA

The Power Persona is the totality of a signature style, a synchronized message, and self-assuredness. The Persona is a concept of such paramount importance that you will benefit from meeting three additional amazing women who further illuminate that Persona. Dr. Jane Goodall is a conservationist who has brought the world's attention to the plight of the great apes. Dr. Goodall may be soft-spoken, but her signature style speaks volumes. Elizabeth Warren is a media-savvy financial expert who doesn't pull any punches in her advocacy against unscrupulous banking practices. On TV she delivers memorable sound bites that demystify the complexities of economics. Humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt shared the life lesson that courage is easier than fear. Overcoming stage fright enabled the First Lady to champion the concerns of everyday Americans.

Dr. Jane Goodall: A Singular Individual

Spend an hour listening to Jane Goodall, and it feels like ten minutes have gone by. It is hard to resist the world's most famous primatologist when she returns an audience's welcome applause with the greeting she loves best. It is the one you will hear if you travel with her to the Gombe National Park in Tanzania—the call of the chimpanzee: “Who-ooo, who-oo, who-oo, who-oo, Who-oo, Who-oo, WHOO, WHOO, WHOO, WHOEEH, WHOEEH, WHOEEH, Hello!”
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Goodall emits a big sound that captures the audience by surprise because it emanates from deep within a tiny frame. The petite scientist nails the full range of the ape's cry from the low resonance of the “who-ooo” to the high-pitched screech of the “WHOEEH.” But, what else would you expect from someone who has learned and lived the language of the chimpanzee?

At the age of twenty-three, Goodall traveled alone to East Africa to pursue her passion of studying animals. There was no money for college, so her mother suggested she try to get a job as a secretary on the continent. Anthropologist Louis Leakey gave her a shot at following her dreams when she showed up on his doorstep. After fifty years of research, Goodall says she left the forest to inspire young people to become conservationists. As the researcher travels constantly to talk about the loss of wild places and the lack of clean water and air, she radiates the quiet, reassuring calm of a Zen master. In her soft yet crisp British accent, she explains how her latest endeavor, Roots and Shoots, is mobilizing the next generation to lay down the roots of a strong foundation to solve looming environmental problems. She believes that young people are like fragile shoots with the strength to break through concrete to reach sunlight.

When Goodall speaks about the public awareness campaign, she reinforces her message with simple props that convey her playfulness and seriousness. A fluffy monkey toy adorns the lecterns from which she speaks. In her pockets she carries mementos such as a piece of limestone from the prison on Robbins Island where Nelson Mandela was held captive. The rock reminds her of the resiliency of the human spirit. To close her presentation, she rings a tiny bell. The bell was made from metal salvaged from a defused land mine that was removed from the killing fields in Cambodia.
The bell represents the crumbling of Pol Pot's evil regime. Goodall concludes by expressing her faith in the indomitable spirit of humans to find solutions and in nature's resiliency and ability to bounce back.

Elizabeth Warren: Message Maven

In May 2010,
Time
magazine named Elizabeth Warren along with two other women the “New Sheriffs of Wall Street” for their “willingness to break ranks and challenge the status quo” as they tell “Wall Street how to clean up its act.” Warren, who serves as the special adviser to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), was singled out for her efforts to protect investors and consumers against what she calls the “tricks and traps” that banks hide in credit card agreements and mortgages. According to Warren, the titans of Wall Street have created an “ever more dangerous” economy that has resulted in an unheard number of Americans facing ruin.
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A former Harvard professor specializing in bankruptcy and consumer law, Warren is an unlikely media sensation with her closely cropped blonde hair and sensible turtlenecks. But her laserlike focus on championing the middle class is so powerfully appealing that it led Jon Stewart to good-naturedly tease during a
Daily Show
interview that the way she says things makes him want to “make out” with her even though her husband is waiting backstage. Warren wears her concern for the stability of the economy on her sleeve as she explains that the American middle class has been “hacked at, chipped at, and pulled on for the past thirty years.”
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Born in Oklahoma, Warren says she has worried about money since the time she was a child. In an interview in
Newsweek
, she recalled that “[w]hen she was sick, her mother would weigh her temperature against the amount the family owed the doctor before deciding whether to take her in.”
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It was a debate scholarship that enabled her to attend college, and she then graduated from Rutgers Law School.

The professor discovered her true calling was not in academia but as an advocate during a taping of the
Dr. Phil Show.
In response to a question about a family that was considering putting a second mortgage on their house, she advised against the idea because it would put them at risk for foreclosure. After the program taping concluded, she thought to herself:

I've been doing scholarly work for more than 20 years, and I may have just done more good in the last 90 seconds than I ever accomplished with anything I wrote…. I began to think that instead of writing one more thing to impress other academics or to reassure myself that I'm a serious scholar, I should [focus] on the question of change, of real impact, of how to be helpful.
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Not everyone cheered when Warren's selection to head the CFPB was announced. Verbal barbs were hurled at her, claiming she was unnecessarily biased against Wall Street and would create rules and regulations that would tighten credit and reduce profits. Those who disagree with her vision of protecting the consumer from fraud and abuse should take note. Warren is the rare policy expert who can provide in media sound-bite time a cogent description of the boom-and-bust cycle of the banking system dating back to the time of the Revolutionary War. Her ability to speak plainly and passionately on Dr. Phil's show and before congressional oversight panels bodes well for consumers who seek a financial watchdog.

Eleanor Roosevelt: Freedom Is Exhilarating

Eleanor Roosevelt was a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt; she married a distant cousin, Franklin, who later became president himself. Although born to a life of wealth and privilege, Eleanor had little selfconfidence. In fact, she struggled for decades to find her groove. Orphaned at the age of ten by the passing of her alcoholic father and beautiful society mother, who had expressed disappointment in Eleanor's looks, she was raised by a strict Victorian grandmother. Roosevelt described herself as an extraordinarily timid child crippled by the fear of everything, including public speaking. A reluctant debutante, Roosevelt loved to read and would have preferred to attend college rather than the society balls that were de rigueur for the daughters of New York's upper class.

Even after her marriage and the birth of her children, Eleanor considered herself unworthy and felt homely. In her book
You Learn by Living
, she shared an episode from a Washington dinner party that summed up her feelings of inferiority. Husband Franklin was serving as the assistant secretary
of the navy, a position that required active participation in the busy social scene. At events, people were drawn to Franklin's charms while Eleanor often stood to the side, tongue-tied and self-conscious. On one particularly miserable evening, she concluded that no one would notice if she left. Arriving at the front door of her home, she didn't have a key to get in. Rather than return to the party, she waited outside in the cold for three hours, sitting on the doormat in her evening dress.

Roosevelt was gradually propelled into public life as her husband's profile rose, and she wrote that she ultimately overcame her fears by doing what she didn't think was possible.

In doing it you not only free yourself from some shackling fear but you stretch your mental muscles and gain the freedom that comes with achievement. Every time you meet a crisis and live through it, you make it simple for the next time.
⁶

The ordeal and anguish of public speaking was tackled step-by-step. Her anxiety manifested in “a bad habit of laughing when there was nothing to laugh at.”
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With the help of an aide and vocal coaches, she learned to control her pitch and bit by bit gained confidence. Roosevelt wrote that it took great effort, but she gradually learned that

[c]ourage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just one step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.
⁸

Roosevelt employed the belief that “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
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During the Great Depression, Roosevelt traveled across America to see firsthand the impact and devastation wrought on families. At the time, this type of trip was unheard of for a First Lady, and some considered it unladylike and a betrayal of her class. But Roosevelt wanted to meet unemployed coal miners, factory workers, and destitute farmers so she could report back on the conditions she witnessed to the president. After Franklin died, Eleanor accepted President Truman's invitation to serve as
the lone woman member of the delegation to the newly created United Nations. As the chair of the human rights commission, she helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to ensure the fair and humane treatment of people by their governments.

Biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook wrote: “ER's gifts as a speaker were ultimately the result of her great love for people. Because she cared about the audience, she knew that it mattered to make eye contact directly with everybody in the room.”
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Once she had slain the dragon of fear, Roosevelt grew to be an admired figure respected worldwide for her humanitarian efforts. The woman who didn't like to talk held regular press conferences as First Lady. She stipulated that male reporters were banned from covering the events so that news organizations would need to hire women reporters. Of the thousands and thousands of letters that poured in until the end of her life, some of the most rewarding must have been the ones written by women seeking her guidance on public speaking.

Well-spoken women Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Warren, and Eleanor Roosevelt have demonstrated the right stuff when it comes to speaking out for those without a voice. Propelled by drive and conviction, these women took risks to enlighten the public about the plight of all who inhabit the planet. The naysayers and critics could not sidetrack them from their focus on matters of principle. Such well-spoken women show us the way.

RISING VOICES

Who are the well-spoken voices of the future? Where will they come from? Will they earn graduate degrees, run for office, direct large organizations? The social-media world is providing new venues for women's voices to have influence. Sheryl Sandberg wants to be your “friend” as she holds court in a fabulous red sheath dress for a
Vogue
photo shoot and finesses questions at techie conferences in Silicon Valley. Sandberg, who was hired away from Google to take Facebook to the next level, says her business is “all about people.”
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Without a shred of cyber-geekness, the energetic and approachable Sandberg is taking the lead in addressing the privacy concerns surrounding the largest social-networking site in the cosmos.

Poised beyond her twenty-two years, Katie Spotz calmly explained to Diane Sawyer that crossing the Atlantic Ocean alone in a rowboat taught her to be “patient, open, and accepting of the forces beyond your control.”
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The world's youngest rower to complete the solo voyage raised money for The Blue Planet Run Foundation, a nonprofit whose goal is to bring clean drinking water to the one billion people who lack it. Shortly after the trip, which took 70 days to cross 2,800 miles of open seas from South America to Africa, Spotz was already contemplating her next adventure.