Jonathan's blog

Too many Speakers violate how their audience members think about the past vs. the future.
Public Speaking pitfall: Most speakers I watch (even on youtube) keep getting their "time" references completely wrong for audiences.
When on stage or otherwise in front of groups, you MUST *rewire* how you reference past vs. future, so that your audience connects with your messages more effectively, and internalizes how and when to take appropriate actions in the future.

This isn't just a "good idea" -- it's critical if they're going to adopt & absorb your message.  They're not behind you; they're facing you.  So the normal, natural internal time references that work for you personally, will NOT work for them when they're in the audience. You have to rewire it so that your time references correctly mark out past topics/descriptions towards their left (your right), and future references marked out towards their right side (your left).

If you mess this up... you can count on instant rejection of your suggestions!  And remember, without those feedback loops from live training, you're unlikely to know when you're unconsciously doing it badly!

Solutions are easy to find, though.  I train speakers how to choose the better form of time references, far past the clunky stage, all the way into comfortable habits, in my 5-day speakers course ("Speaking Ingeniously").  Easy peasy!
 
Author: Jonathan Altfeld

Deductive vs. Inductive Course Design == Failure vs. Success.

If I hear about yet another training course whose structure was obviously designed as a result of deductive reasoning (i.e. an "outline-based" syllabus), I think I might just retch a little. When will enough people realize learning _always_ happens more deeply and effectively, when educational experiences are designed inductively (i.e. backwards, from a "results frame" back to the "arrival frame")?

Outlines are deductive.  You begin with a need in mind to cover a certain amount of content and then flesh it out, see how much you can cram in and how to structure it.  This is an awful way to learn.

Skills and experiential capabilities are Inductive.  You aim to help people achieve a certain result or depth of skill.  So you design backwards from that.  This is a completely different approach to learning, and while it does INITIALLY result in an outline... if the trainer is worth their salt, they know that they may need to reorder or redesign the plan on the fly once they meet their students.  When the result is more important than the plan, as I believe it should almost always be, then any outline becomes a distraction for the students.

If you're a Speaker, have you ever had to answer the question "Please Provide Us an Outline?"  Or, do you personally tend to ask that?

This question comes from a mindset about education that does not take into account the vast majority of recent research into more effective and accelerated learning. 

In my field, many trainers consider the desire to lean on the crutch of an outline as an impoverished mindset.  Administrators need outlines.  Government regulators need outlines.  The fastest learners seek gifted trainers who can provide unique learning experiences.

My first response to any question seeking an outline is "Can I ask... Why do you need the outline?"

And then I mention a listing program: "is it because you believe that's the best way to evaluate a trainer's offering? Or because your boss, the decision maker, has asked you for it from everyone you're considering hiring? Or because of some other reason? The reason I'm asking you is... if you're the decision maker, I promise you that I know my own strengths and weaknesses, and also those of my competitors... and I know that in my field, an outline of what I'm going to cover is one of the worst possible criteria for evaluating the future success of a training program like what I offer." And then I hold up an outline anyway, just in case they demand it.

And I also say, before I hand over an outline, "If I show you this outline, I want you to know that IF I see a need to adjust my training on the fly to help your team achieve the stated objectives... then this outline becomes irrelevant. I'd throw it out. I promise you, that an inflexible reliance on a printed outline at the expense of the primary outcomes... is a sign of a deeply unqualified and inflexible trainer. So my ultimate question to you is, would you prefer an outline? Or better yet -- a list of specific outcomes I know I can and will achieve for your team, from a trainer with a history of successful results and extensive testimonials?"

I consider this approach an "acid test."  I do this because I genuinely want to know if the people that are considering hiring me have even an ounce of appreciation for the depth or levels at which I train.  The most progressive and interesting employers will recognize my total commitment to maximizing results, and welcome my refusal to blindly rely on an outline that in every case would have been written before I walked into the training room and met my students in-person, and learned of their unique strengths and weaknesses, and group dynamics.

But the companies that drop the need for an outline and are happy to accept a list of specific outcomes in its place, are the ones for whom I get most excited about training.

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

Planning on taking a Speakers course?  Keep this in mind:
Negative reinforcement does NOT work!

Many speakers training groups/courses have training methods that are riddled throughout with negative reinforcement techniques.  For example, if a speaker happens to utter "ahhh" or "ummm", then a trainer or assistant makes a loud buzzing sound, or a beep sound, or flashes signs as a way of telling them... "Stop that! That's a bad behavior!"

Negative reinforcement is the perfect recipe for lowering a speaker's confidence and self-esteem.  When training speakers, I prefer to ignore unwanted habits initially, so as not to interrupt a speaker's natural flow.  Then, after a presentation is over, I'll celebrate the best things I liked about what they did, then offer a brief mention of something that could be eliminated or phased out, followed finally by a method or two that I know will help them achieve changes in an optimal direction.  Finally, I'll end my feedback by directing their attention towards something they probably hadn't yet thought of doing.  The vast majority of that feedback is positive and constructive.

More importantly, I'm not flagrantly interrupting their ability to flow while trying to nurture the very same.  Why is this important?  Because negative reinforcement makes it harder to stay on track with your thinking while on stage (it creates anticipation for pattern-interrupts, which hinders internal accessing patterns).

If you don't yet believe me 100% on this, read the wonderful book "Don't Shoot the Dog" by Karen Pryor, and then consider the implications of using negative reinforcement, in light of the above book, and in light of how NLP anchoring works. Negative reinforcement for training speakers actually trains dysfunctional speaking patterns.

How come so many speakers courses aren't at least 80% positive re-inforcement-based?

This mystifies me, it really does.

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

It's a very common concern for speakers, being fearful of losing track of one's train of thought while training or speaking.

And that fear or concern is justifiable. When you're on stage, you need to be at the top of your game. Clear minded. Clear spoken. Analytical but pragmatic. Effective. Strategic. And flexible... very, very flexible.

Losing your train of thought potentially makes your mind seem haphazard, not in control. Worse, the avoidance of this often creates more worry, concern, and anxiety.

However, breathe easy! This can actually be eliminated (or at least, highly diminished)!

To solve this, use (1) compelling values-based headlines, and (2) emotional-state-chaining.

For values-based headlines, study the use of headlines in marketing as a way of building curiosity for the right reasons (and no, not cheesy newspaper headlines!).

For emotional state chaining, you can study how famous speakers like Anthony Robbins move audiences (though he doesn't actually train that skill, himself). You can also learn this from my "Automatic Yes" CD-set.

The pair of these strategies is absolutely amazing for speakers. And for those people who want the fastest possible route to getting good at solving this challenge, I teach these skills in depth at my version of a trainers' training -- my "Speaking Ingeniously" course.

Once you get really good at headlines & emotional-state-chaining, then... you may forget a particular point, or a particular way of expressing a point, but... if you keep in mind (1) your headline, and (2) the larger emotional chain, you'll always be able to recover where you're at in the chain. And that leads to more fluid presentations, less lost trains of thought, and more action from your audiences!

This particular success strategy is truly a 'thing of beauty', and more importantly, it eliminates unwanted anxiety or stress for speakers, when your process on stage becomes "Fault Tolerant!" Enjoy!

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

Here's Why I Like Training 15 People Max -- and not 1500+!

I'd far rather coach 15 people at a time, maximum, to become gifted presenters, than share my best secrets en-masse to 100's of people. (Though some of my courses accept up to 30 people, my speakers course accepts 15 maximum).

The 1st format guarantees major results in terms of integrated new skills, for every single participant. That rocks!

The 2nd format guarantees students can be complacent dissociated learners who may or may not take anything away with them. I want nothing to do with that. (This is one of the big reasons I haven't offered "CEU's" to students. Some people who need CEU's will take almost any course that fits their schedule and budget just to meet their requirements. Some view courses that help them meet their CEU requirements as an unfortunate necessity, rather than a privilege and an unprecedented opportunity to learn and become more gifted. Granted, some of those seeking CEU's will be motivated students. But by not offering them, I have found that everyone who attends my courses comes entirely for the fun & the deep skills they'll get from attending, not to mention the likelihood of some major personal and professional breakthroughs. You can be assured of meeting some amazing people at my courses, all of whom, literally ALL of whom, are deeply motivated to get blazingly good at these skills! I simply don't see complacent students at my courses. Ever. And for me, that makes my work a joy!

It is true that in the second format (i.e., training 1500+ students at a time), an occasional gem of a student will learn and retain a lot, but will still have next to no functional skills in place by the end, if they haven't been building the new skills into their behavior, every day of a course, with constant feedback.

There is no joy for me in the largest audiences. But when I can work with a small group of accelerated learners and committed speakers, every one of them will have tackled their biggest "Achilles Heels," and learned a profoundly effective model for presenting, in 5 days or less. That's inspiring work!

Here's an example of NLP Anchoring demonstrated and explained in a primetime cable entertainment show.
I just randomly saw a few scenes from the latest episode of "Leverage" (starring Timothy Hutton), entitled "The Reunion Job."
I was surprised to catch the following scene:
One of the main characters had caused another to repeatedly refill her teacup whenever she wanted. When she was asked how she'd gotten him to pour her tea repeatedly, she said (possibly paraphrasing here):

"Neuro Linguistic Programming. Some sugar... [...] and then a few strategic taps on the arm... [...]".

NLP insiders will simply recognize this as describing how one might set an anchor, for later firing off.
Granted, this was an oversimplified example, as real artistry with anchoring requires more nuances and variables, but... it wasn't badly portrayed, and that counts!

First of all, let's define Synesthesia: An automatic link from one sense to another. (i.e., Visual-->Auditory, etc).

I actually wrote this post back in 1999 on an NLP mailing list. Someone asked the question "Is Synesthesia Good or Bad?" Here's my reply:

*Chuckle* Good or bad in what context?

We know that child prodigies & geniuses are highly synesthetic, meaning that its beyond "automatic" and more into real-time awareness of the connections between the senses... i.e. seeing the notes while feeling a symphony as you hear it, etc.

I'm not a child prodigy and genius isn't a word that makes much sense to me in "identity" terms. I do value the pursuit of increased excellence, increased intelligence, & improved results. Becoming more synesthetic, I believe, can lead to this. My experience of this is connected with the training environment; both as a training attendee and as a trainer. I believe I became dramatically more synesthetic during my own practitioner & master practitioner trainings (as a student) in Summer of 1997. And I directly connect this with more accelerated learning & higher achievement.

Certainly everyone is synesthetic to some degree or other. Some have thorough & rapid access to synesthetic pathways. With some people, if you get them to jump from one rep system into another, they may experience a light or momentarily deep trance state (a TDS). Some people emerge from their transderivational search successfully having acquired the new sensory info, and some people occasionally don't.

It's rare I can't get someone to feel what a tone feels like, or to hear what a given picture sounds like. Sometimes, I choose not to take steps to make it vivid enough and strong enough for people to "jump the synesthesia gap" and get access to it. What is more common is a big difference in the "amount of time" required to translate from one rep system into another. To me, automatic doesn't necessarily mean "fast." Instant access may be "unconsciously automatic" and 10 seconds may be "unconsciously automatic."

Within whatever seminar title I'm training, at a process level, I strive to train behavioral flexibility, more rapid & conscious & unconscious synesthesia, accelerated learning, faster access to great states of fun & pleasure, and a sense of rhythm at multiple levels. I don't necessarily mean musical rhythm here. I mean a sense of flow.

And one of the biggies with "behavioral flexibility" is that a lot of people experience "stuck states" at some time or other in their lives. And with some people, that's most of the time(!). And it can be extremely useful to denominalize their experiences & get them flowing. In a training context, as well as a therapeutic context (I assume), it's useful to start with well-formed outcomes, set positive directions, & then calibrate them to ensure that their breaking of stuck-states is a useful outcome. It usually is, and sometimes brings up a variety of experiences. (and for the therapists reading this, not always positive ones).

On a better note, there are several great by-products of training such as more behavioral flexibility, state-flexibility & increased synesthesia. This helps people, if they ever experience "stuck-states" in life, to break out of those "stuck-states" much more rapidly than they otherwise would have.

It doesn't really matter whether it's conscious or not. If they're in a stuck-state, they'll probably have deep time-distortion for the amount of time they're not aware they're stuck. People who attend trainings often find themselves breaking their own stuck states faster & faster in real life, coming up with more creative solutions on their own, after the training. And they may find themselves being more productive, more content, perhaps "magically" able to close more sales (even if they're not doing anything differently WITHIN each sale, they're unaware they're spending less time "stuck" & more time closing).

Damn! You mean the results of that generalized training transferred to this specific area of my life? *LOL* I wonder why.

Some people chalk this up to "installation." Some to "unconscious learning." Some understand that whatever it is, its the result of the PROCESS of investing oneself into developing greater access to these neurological resources. They're already there ready to be mined. It can be done in a training. And it can be done on your own; but remember, when you're doing it on your own, you're only taking in material within or very close to your own map. You're unlikely to try things that seem completely irrelevant. At a training, sometimes the most irrelevant exercises provide the most expansive experiences!

When you read reviews its quite common to hear things like "I found myself doing things differently or more intuitively afterwards." These are amongst the results that seem to be most desirable & measurable by most attendees who write reviews. How do we know this? Because that's what they were sorting for; that's what they wrote in their review; that's what they thought we ought to hear.

Bottom line: Greater synesthesia can help people to go "meta" at or shortly after the moment they experience stuck-states & find ways of breaking or shifting out of those states. And greater synesthesia can help people to automatically shift their behaviors *generatively* in unanticipated situations (as opposed to *programmatically* as a result of using something like the SWISH pattern in NLP).

And yes, of course, you can learn to increase your synesthesia on your own without acquiring training! My experience simply tells me its faster & more pervasive when we enlist a coach, mentor, or trainer.

I rarely advertise or post much in the realm of 'energy' related topics. But since NLP courses are often attended by people interested in all manner of alternative things, I'm occasionally asked about this one. "Can you see auras?"

And in my case, I definitely see them, and can teach anyone to see them in minutes. Easy Peasy. What I don't see well are colors. Occasionally, if the background is really neutral, and the colors are supposedly really strong, then I pick them up as weak colors. Color distinctions have to be what most aura readers would describe as dramatic, for me to see any color at all.

I can also feel auras, sometimes barely, sometimes amazingly well, when/if my Kinesthetics are in a heightened awareness state. This is most of the time, but not after meals. Feldenkrais found himself and his students experienced the same drain in kinesthetic self-awareness and lowered K acuity during digestion, so I'm in reasonable company there.

Here's a simple, less-esoteric way of understanding & teaching auras. Just my opinion here:

We are all electrochemical beings. Our nervous systems are electric. All electric currents are surrounded by a magnetic field. Magnetic fields affect the alignment of molecules and particles in the air. When particles in the air align differently, LIGHT passes through those 'modified' spaces differently than it passes through space not modified by those magnetic fields. We see that light reflecting differently off of 'affected particles' in the air.

I see auras, quite simply, as a change in the quality of light, passing through the air inside our human magnetic fields. There is no vaccuum inside that space -- there is air, with dust, with ions, with various particles.... and that air appears different to us through that field.

How I train people to see auras:

What I do is... I have a person stand against a flat background. I have everyone I'm teaching the skill to -- stand in front of them, staring at their nose for ~1 minute. Then, I have the person against the background step to the side, but have everyone else continue to stare at where the person's nose WAS, before they step aside.

What everyone can then see, is an outline of a person around where the person used to be. That's the retinal imprint of the contrasting image.

However, in our peripheral vision, as we continue to stare at the location where the person used to be, we can still see a retinal imprint AROUND the person off to the side. That is the aura. And most people ignore auras even though they're seeing them already, because they look a lot like the retinal imprint we get when we dart our eyes around a person's face (making their "outline" against the background bigger than their body/head).

So my contention is, everyone sees auras already, all the time. The trick is to get people to create a finer set of distinctions between the actual aura, and an actual retinal imprint (since they often look the same in our eyes), and then get them to stop ignoring the actual aura.

And hey, I could also be wrong. :)

I strongly encourage people to time-limit their identity statements like the above "I am an ISTF."

Better phrasing might include "Recently I was measured as an 'ISTF'." Or "Several years ago I received an 'ISTF' measurement on the Myers-Briggs, and don't know if I'd be the same or different today. Etc.

I believe that taking on such identity statements is one causal element of what leads either to inflexible behavior, or to difficulty with change, OR to diminished self-awareness during & after personality changes occur -- i.e., personality change may still occur, but one's accuracy with self-knowledge deteriorates, holding on to old "test scores" as current indicators, when they may not be valid anymore as time goes by.

I have taken the Myers-Briggs test six times, and gotten six very different readings. The Myers-Briggs test is, IMHO, a reading of your present-tense-only behavioral traits along ONLY four metaprograms. The four they chose to measure are:

• Introvert <--> Extrovert
• iNtuitive <--> Sensing
• Thinking <--> Feeling
• Perceiving <--> Judging

I suggest to ALL of you that if you can effectively try on a different map/model of the world -- inclusive of the unique beliefs & values & outcomes of those different models -- then you WILL get different readings.

Also as you grow, learn, & change in life, subsequent Myers-Briggs tests may very well produce different readings from prior readings. It is only a snapshot of the present moment in the present context, and given that in NLP we teach & measure a lot more than four metaprograms, I personally think the Myers-Briggs test is an impoverished measurement producing certainly useful information which is still less useful than acquiring EVEN MORE information would be.

When meeting people anew, rather than knowing their Myers-Briggs score, I'd much rather know the present-tense answers to where they are on these metaprogram scales (not to mention many others that are also useful):

• Towards <--> Away-from   (Motivation Direction)
• Proactive <--> Reactive   (Leadership behavior vs. Problem-Solver?)
• High Chunk Thinker <--> Low Chunk Thinker (Engineer or Visionary;  Chunk Size)
• Chunk Up? <--> Chunk Down? <--> Chunk Lateral (Chunk Direction tendency)
• Procedures <--> Options  (Productivity Process Preference)
• Sorts by Self <--> Sorts by Others (Frame of Reference - Internal vs External?)
• Difference <--> Sameness <--> Sameness w/ Diff <--> Diff w/ Sameness (Patterns of Agreement &/or Disagreement)
• Visual <--> Auditory <--> Kino (Primary sensory system)
• Introvert <--> Extrovert   (Attention orientation)
• Sorts by People / Things / Dates / Faces / Emotions / Time  (Sorting Methods)
• Abundance <--> Scarcity  (Generosity vs Miser behavior, & Abundance/Scarcity patterns)
• Towards Pos or Neg Necessity <--> Towards Pos or Neg Possibility (Modal Operators & sequences)
• Direct Communication <--> Indirect Communication  (Influence Style)
• And others...

Now I can identify some of these nonverbally just by observing people's behavior. For others, I require some time listening to how they speak. Or I require some time conversing with them & cataloguing their responses.

The hardest thing to do initially when learning how to elicit peoples' metaprograms-- was learning how to DISCARD these measurements as less-than-accurate, in any other context other than the one in which they had been elicited, or even in the same context if a lot of time had gone by since they'd been elicited. In other words, I'd initially hoped to rely on the information in every other context, or for "too long" into the future. But eventually one gets good enough at doing this quickly & easily, and the desire to 'save time/effort' and rely on old information becomes less relevant & attractive.

an earlier version of this post first appeared in one of Jamie Smart's newsletters back in 2005.

For more than a decade, I've been recognized as an expert on voice development, both amongst Neuro-Linguistic Programmers, and outside of that domain as well. With my audio program "Finding Your Irresistible Voice" being my most popular home-study resource, it's no wonder my customers and students have asked for additional material in this area, to help them improve their voice even further.

I've also had the opportunity to run multiple "Irresistible Voice" NLP workshops, in NYC, in Melbourne Australia, London UK, San Francisco, and elsewhere... and the pleasure and privilege of extensively coaching at least 1000 different people (students and coaching clients included) on improving the quality of their voices, not to mention offering thousands of people quick & targeted suggestions for vocal improvement, based on whatever I was hearing them do & say while they spoke with me briefly or during teleconferences. It's one of the most common interests I experience, both at my own events and when I visit other trainers' courses.

In short, without doing anything intentional to get to this point, I now have ample additional experience and knowledge working with vocal improvement, far beyond the level I was at, at the time when I first produced the "Irresistible Voice" CDs back in 1998.

Back in 2005, I attended an Influence course given by Kenrick Cleveland down in Miami Beach as a guest. While there, I was asked to spend 30 minutes working with Kenrick's student group to train them on the value of improving their tonality and resonance. So I spent 15 minutes training a range of techniques, and then worked individually with a handful of "voice-challenged" participants. I asked the audience members who thought they could use some vocal improvement, and from the group that responded, I hand-picked 4 specific people who I felt could improve the most, in a very short period of time. My intuition was sorting for poor posture, poor breathing patterns, poor voicebox timing, excessive speed and muscular interruptions, etc.

I ended up doing what I would call "rapid voice interventions" to show what we could do with each person -- by offering exercises & suggestions that each person could do to uniquely improve their voice. In each case, the "diagnoses" were different, the "treatments" were different, but the results & "prognoses" the same: the "problem" voices were replaced by warm, resonant voices, getting a round of applause for every example.

No one is beyond help -- anyone can (and most people should) improve their voice. ESPECIALLY people interested in NLP and/or Hypnosis.

In fact, one of the guys that had the most fun with (and says he got the most from) my mini-workshop was a fellow with an absolutely World-Class voice (in my opinion). He said he had gotten coaching from another audio program author, and that author told him his biggest problem with his voice -- was that he (the person asking for voice coaching) didn't like his own voice enough, and he'd get the best results -- by just "getting over it" (i.e., getting past his own dislike, since other people loved his voice!). I told him I thought it was great advice, and we both ended the conversation agreeing that no matter how great we get our voices to sound, each of us can always find areas of improvement.

My own biggest area of continuous voice improvement is a really tough call for me -- it's my slightly nasal sound, which comes from my deviated septom. I could have the nasal surgery to get past that, but... I've heard some horror stories about people who've done the surgery and then had additional sinus problems for years afterwards. So I work my butt off to improve & continually refine other qualities of my voice, which overshadow the slightly nasal quality it sometimes has.

So, to get your mouth watering for further development, here's a couple of ideas for each of you to explore when improving your voice.

Stand up when you're talking on the phone.

Smile when you speak to people. It engages FAR better tonality.

Breathe deep using your belly. If your rib cage is expanding measurably, you're not using your belly. Breathe in, belly goes out. Breathe out, belly comes back in.

Drink -only- water. Juice, Coffee, caffeine, sugar -- all will help constrict your vocal cords, and diminish your voice. A lot more than you think it does. Fact, not Fiction. Besides, drinking more/only water is much healthier for you anyway, as if that wasn't reason enough to forego the rest.

If you have to speak for long periods of time, use a Glycerin Spray on the back of your throat. A speaker's little-known mastery tip! Keeps the throat moist. Great stuff!

Imagine your vocal tract as though the space inside it were solid. Look for the tight, angular, constricted spots. Change or open up your posture to loosen and open up those constricted areas. Create a larger, more open wind-instrument in your vocal tract. Move/rock your body back & forth, until that more open posture feels more natural/comfortable.

Learn to speak using a metronome. Practice different rhythms until it's absolutely second nature to synchronize with different rhythms presented to you.

Learn as many different accents as you can. The nuances you'll develop with shifting your vocal qualities -- will make you world-class at mirroring other people's voices.

These are just a few good additional suggestions. I have so many more -- even better than the above -- and -- these should keep you going for a while! Feel free to email me & tell me how these go for you!