Rodrigo:

Would you like to be more confident, credible and clear? In today’s episode, we are hosting Glenn van Zutpen, an international journalist and communications expert with more than 30 years of experience and he has coached thousands of people. You will learn how to be an impactful communicator, which will cover why so many people have public speaking anxiety, how to stop using crutch words such as so and the key steps for creating more powerful presentations.

 

But before we start, I have a small favour to ask you. We want to make this channel bigger, with more value to you. If you are enjoying our videos, please hit the subscribe button.

 

So, there are some studies that say that around 70 % of people, they feel anxiety about public speaking. Why do you think that happens?

 

Glenn:

Some of that is cultural, some of that is technical, cultural. Let me give that to you first. We live in Asia. I’ve been in Asia for 30 years. I’ve seen through my own children who have gone through the local system is one that is not favourable necessarily toward self-expression. So many people across Asia, I don’t want to just say Asians because that doesn’t do justice, but I will for the sake of this conversation. If you look across Southeast Asia, for example, and the educational system or even up and through North Asia, it’s very much the teacher is boss, the teacher tells the students what they need to learn, the students learn what it is they need to learn, and they give it back to the teacher. There is not a lot of space for self -expression there. Even to the point where my kids would come home with a test and they maybe got the test answer, one of them marked wrong.

And I look at it and I would say, but that answer is right. And they say, yeah, it’s right. But I didn’t describe it the right way. I didn’t describe how I got the answer the right way. Could be for math, could be a written question. So, they marked off for it, not giving it the right way.

So, what does this do for someone’s self -expression? It limits it. It teaches somebody that I cannot express myself. I have to do what’s given to me and give it back. That’s the first thing. So that’s the cultural element that I think makes it difficult.

Technical skills are needed to know how to present information. People have to, in advance, think about what they’re going to say, how they’re going to say it, who their audience is, those types of things.

 

Rodrigo:

That’s very, very interesting. What is like, so a lot of people be afraid of public speaking. What are normally the thoughts that people have or the negative thoughts or the beliefs that make people feel like fear about public speaking?

 

Glenn:

I’m going to say something to your many, many fans, viewers and watchers. I’m going to look right at the camera and I’m going to say, it’s not enough to be a good talker. You have to be a strategic talker. And this is a point that I find many people don’t truly think about or maybe appreciate just how important that is. We cannot go through any kind of communication exercise, whether it’s our interview here or a media interview or an executive who’s giving a town hall meeting for his troops or a lower-level staff going in to talk to the boss about the raise in salary or the time off that they want, whatever it is, we have to think about that in advance. We have to think about the communication environment that we’re in, who we’re talking to, what we want to say.

Practice is always a good thing to do. You and I had a discussion before we had this interview today about what we would talk about. To be honest with you, I’m at a stage where I don’t necessarily need as much practice as I used to because I’m used to doing this. But for many people, they don’t practice enough. And to get rid of some of that trepidation, I would say that most speakers need to think in advance, practice in advance, consider the fact that they need to be strategic in how they talk and not just a good talker.

 

Rodrigo:

I really like that about being strategic. And then it’s about practicing and getting better at that skill. And you coach many people. What you see as a pattern, what is the main challenge in terms of communication?

 

Glenn:

In the 16 years that I’ve been coaching, we’ve done a rough calculation of coming up on 3 ,000 people, 2 ,700 or so people that I’ve coached in that time, a lot.

Sometimes one -on -one, sometimes one to many. Men, women, younger, older, C -suite, emerging leaders. For the experienced speaker, the biggest challenge for them is they know too much. Not surprisingly, if you know too much, you say too much. If you say too much, you run the risk of getting off topic, of perhaps boring people or confusing people, etc. For the experienced speaker, usually C -suite speakers, that tends to be their biggest challenge. For the emerging leaders, the biggest challenge is practice, strategy, structure, and how they’re going to talk. We see generationally between baby boomers and then younger millennials and now Gen Zs. There are very different ways of communicating based on how they grew up. A lot of times there’s a disconnect if one generation is trying to talk to another generation, either talking up or talking down to the generation. We have to think about those things as well. That’s part of the culture, part of the generational shift in communication. By the way, that was the same with my generation talking to my parents’ or grandparents’ generation. It always occurs. It always happens from generation to generation.

 

Rodrigo:

That brings to the point that you were telling about being strategic, about understanding who’s your audience, and then craft the message strategically. But there’s something that you mentioned, which is very interesting, and I would like to go deep, which is I was there. I was also an executive. When I was trying to say the message, there was so much in my mind. How do I know what is the right amount of information to share?

 

Glenn:

Think of it this way. One, you can get coaching. You can have somebody help you figure out what your keynote speech should be at the conference or what you should say as a panellist or what you should say at the town hall meeting or to your client or to your boss. You can get some coaching in maybe a colleague or a professional coach like myself or somebody else. There are many coaches out there. That would be one way to do it. The other way, if that’s not possible, is to sit down and first think about the topic you want to discuss.

Rodrigo wants to come to me today to ask for a salary raise. You’ve been working hard for years. You deserve it, et cetera. Then the second thing you’re going to have to think about is who I am. I’m the boss. I’m cost conscious. I am older than you by 20 years. I am notoriously cheap, whatever those factors are about the person that you are speaking to, in this case me. A simple exercise that’s repeatable every time you’re going to talk to somebody is this.

Ask yourself three questions before you talk to somebody as you are preparing to talk to them. One, first of all, who is that audience? How much does that person or audience, if it’s more than one person, know about me, you, the speaker? Have we never met? Do we know each other very well, et cetera? Second, relating to the topic, how much does that audience, that person, that stakeholder already know about the topic? Third, what are their pain points? What are their sensitivities around the topic? All of a sudden, if you do those three simple questions, you can assemble a strategic communication plan for yourself that makes sense and achieves your goal, which is action on the part of the person you’re talking to.

 

Rodrigo:

What I like about that is that sometimes we put too much focus on ourselves, what we know, and those questions ask, it’s about the other person, everything about the other person, then it’s more focused that information. It’s not about what you know, but what the person needs to know.

 

Glenn:

As you know, I have a radio show on Money FM every week. I get dozens of pitches from public relations firms and individuals every day because they want to have their person, topic, their whatever on my radio show. 95 % of them is what I would call a push message. We have a new product, we have a new service, we have a new this, that, the other, and they’re trying to push that on me. Please talk about this. Please have us on to talk about that. 5 % of the time, or maybe a little bit less, the intelligent PR person says, hey, Glenn, I’ve listened to your show. I’ve done a little bit of research. I know that your audience is 30- to 60-year-old, Singaporean and expat, men and women, businesspeople. My topic today, ex -topic, I believe they will find very interesting because of these three reasons, one, two, three. And my spokesperson, who is this CEO or whatever person, would be very good because they can really connect with that audience and they’ve worked in the region, et cetera, et cetera. That’s the pitch that I take. That’s the pitch that I call back or email back and say, yeah, let’s do an interview.

90 % of them, I can’t tell you, I immediately hit delete. I don’t even look at them because I can tell. If it starts, dear news person, dear news editor, dear editor and or journalist and or, it’s so generic. All these pitches are generic. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of time. So, the way that you reach out to a person, if you’re trying to connect with them is absolutely important to your point. You can’t just push your information.

You have to look and see what the audience wants and give them what they need.

 

Rodrigo:

So, people don’t care about what you do. They care about what can you get with what the person has to offer, right?

 

Glenn:

What does every audience care about, Rodrigo? Themselves. Every audience in us right now, they care about themselves and that’s okay. They’re watching you, listening to you week in, week out, all the great guests you have because they want to learn something. They want to get better themselves, improvement in themselves somehow. Every audience is like that no matter where you are. If it’s an audience of one or an audience of 500 at a conference. They paid money to go to that conference in that case to learn something, to network, to engage as a speaker, we should respect that and try to give them some of what they want because that’s what everybody just wants, something for themselves.

That’s okay. Just understand it and give them what they want.

 

Rodrigo:

It makes it easy. And also, that shifts the pressure from yourself. It’s not about yourself. It’s about the other person.

I really, really like that, Glenn. So, for our audience, they are growth seekers. They want to help others. They want to create impact in the world and for that they need to be better communicators. What are the steps that someone can take in order to create more powerful presentations?

 

Glenn:

Great question. Number one, understand the topic that you need to discuss. Number two, think very deeply about your audience and what your audience needs or wants to hear about that topic. Number three, go back to that topic and blend and self -edit the items that would be necessary for that audience to hear about the topic.

Number four, think about how you want to structure your comments. What types of words you want to use? What’s the generation that you’re talking to? Is it a more casual conversation? Is it a more formal presentation? What is it that you need to do to get them to understand? And then five, practice. Practice that presentation. Practice understanding how you are going to present the information.

 

Rodrigo:

So that’s when we are about to go to the stage. And then what are some of the techniques that you use once you are on the stage in order to engage with the live audience?

 

Glenn:

That’s a very first off, we have to understand what is the nature of the communication? Is it a Q &A session, a town hall kind of thing? Is it just a keynote speech where you are pushing out a message that’s hopefully relevant to your audience based on what we’ve talked about?

Is it a panel discussion where you’re going to have three or four people with you and there’s interplay? Kind of depends on which of those facets we’re in. Is it a client meeting in a boardroom table with clients across the table and you and your colleagues on the other side and you’re giving a presentation? We have to appreciate that there are differences in big room, small room, and also what type of communication that you’re giving.

Generally speaking, first off, figure out how you can connect with the audience. And I’m assuming that you’ve already done your homework on the audience. You know who they are, basically what they want, what you’re going to give to them. That’s of value. But how do you connect with them? Eye contact, question moments where you do check -ins with them. After the first part of your presentation, hey, does that make sense? Am I in the right track here? Ask a couple of quick questions. They might just nod yes or hopefully not give you a blank stare,

but is there, am I okay going this direction? You can ask them things like that to get their buy -in and to get understanding if they’re okay with what you’re doing. That I think is really important. Those are some simple things. Don’t just, speakers need to not think of themselves as just this monolithic entity, but you have to think of yourself as a human, like talking to human beings. That’s what we all want.

And then you think about word choice, the language you’re going to use. Yes, we need to be formal, but we also need to be human. Culture, respect, are there elements in there? You should be addressing one person primarily and not the others because of the cultural dynamic. If you’re in a place like Japan or if you’re in a place like other, you need to know who the power is in the room and you need to make sure that they are the first ones you address. You might address others as well, but they have to be the focus, those sorts of things.

 

Rodrigo:

And if you have a crowd, which is a bit more tough, or maybe even like they don’t resonate so much with what you’re saying, how do you handle a tough crowd?

 

Glenn:

If we’re in a situation where the crowd does not resonate with what we’re saying, we have to ask, how did I get here? Why am I even talking to this crowd?

Hopefully, as a professional speaker or communicator, somebody should understand the audience that they’re going to be in front of before they even get in front of them. There are plenty of good reasons and there’s plenty of times when people should reject an opportunity to speak because it’s just not the right audience. Or what you or I have to say or your listeners and viewers have to say isn’t going to be appropriate or necessary or valued by that audience.

So, take that first step first. Why am I talking to this group? Who is this group? And if it’s a conference, you can ask the organizer or whomever. Then the next step would be once you’re in front of them, if you thought you were in the right place at the right time, sometimes you can just go ahead and reach out to the audience themselves and say, okay, look, I feel like we’re not connecting here. I feel like I’m not connecting with you. Put it on yourself. What can we do next? What are you guys interested in? Pick a person.

Say, what do you think? Somebody who seems engaged. We’re on the right track here. What should we do next? That would be one way to handle it. It’s not always a perfect science. There’s a lot of different tricks you can use like that. Sometimes in a very loud room, what I will do is, and I always do this at the beginning of my group, I go up, if I’m on a stage or in front of a group, I go to the front after I’ve been introduced or something,

I stand there and I stop. I just pause, especially if everyone’s talking or on their phones or whatever, and I will just sit there, stand there for 30 seconds, 40 seconds. Think about it. Count to 40 right now and imagine yourself silent in front of a big room. That was only 10 seconds. It was only a quarter of the time. What happens is the audience will naturally quiet itself because they see someone standing up in front of them, small room or big room, and they’re just standing there looking, and they’re not saying anything, and people get very curious as to why that person isn’t saying anything. This takes a great deal of confidence on the part of the speaker to do that. You have to be okay with just standing there. You’ve picked your spot wherever that is, on the stage or in the room, and you are owning that space, that’s your space, and you are just going to wait until they quiet down, and then you’re just going to thank them. Thanks for your attention. Let’s talk today about X and just go on. Power of the pause.

This is something I learned 40 years ago. My first job, I was still a university student, and I had a part -time job at a radio station. It was a radio station that had about 200 ,000 listeners in the Midwest, in Illinois and Iowa. It was a huge radio station. It was a college work study because I was working my way through school. I had the Friday night and Saturday night shift. The shift nobody else wanted, of course, comes to the student. But my mentor, my teachers at the station were awesome. They were career radio guys. They knew how to speak, but more importantly, they taught me that not speaking is generally where magic happens. Power of the pause. The pause. Being silent. Saying something really important and then stopping. Again, this is a skill that many people don’t appreciate. If you listen to radio today, especially in Singapore, everyone blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, nonstop talking. They never stop.

I asked somebody about this, and he said, oh, well, at the radio broadcasting schools in Singapore, they teach you, you should always be talking. That is 1000 % wrong. You shouldn’t. You should strategically use pauses to interest your audience, to make them think, to give them a moment to think and soak up what you’ve just said, to get their attention. Those pauses whether you’re using it in front of an audience or on radio or TV or during our conversation today, magic.

 

Rodrigo:

You know, Glenn, I think pause and silence is one of the most underrated tools about communication. I totally agree. And something else, I mean, also in this line. So, for me, when I started this show at the beginning, when I started watching after recording an episode, I was saying so many crutch words, so many so. And I was really surprised about that. And now when I start watching many people, I see this is very, very, very common. So, the question is, why this happens? And what is something simple that I can do in order to help me to fix this?

 

Glenn:

We often call those crutch words or I call them verbal pauses. Rather than just pausing silently, you fill the space with an um, an ah, a son, a well, I think that, something along those lines. A word that has no intrinsic value or doesn’t add to the discussion, but it fills a silence. When I’m coaching, I can see this right away in people. If they have a challenge like this,

I usually ask them, say, anybody here, we talk about verbal pauses and I bring out a list of them. And anybody here have these? And most people say, yeah, I say so a lot or whatever the word is. So, we play a little game throughout the course of the session. Maybe it’s, maybe it’s a couple of hours, maybe it’s a half day, maybe it’s a full day. I say, every time I hear you start a sentence with so, um, ah, whatever, I’m going to raise my hand, make you stop and make you start again.

Sometimes we do this on video as well. We’re doing video training and we play it back, excuse me. And they don’t realize until they watch themselves and hear themselves how much they say it. But it’s a great training tool. Just raise our hand. We often use these words to link sentences or ideas. That’s okay. Something, something, and this, or something, so I did this. So, then I did that. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about starting phrases, starting sentences, starting concepts with one of these words. So, um, now let’s talk about communication. I get so in, I’m in there rather than now let’s talk about communication, which is more clear, which is more concise. The second one, obviously, we want to get rid of those filler words. They don’t do us any good. Every language has them. And by the way, we were speaking English, obviously, every language has its own particular challenges.

We see this across, across Asia and the many cultures and languages we have here, but there are similarities. Pause words, for example, or filler words are one of them that many languages have that don’t do anybody any good. Instead, we want to, and our exercise that we do with, with our customers, our clients, you’re going to say something. Rodrigo, tell me about your job. And then I pause you.

And then you’re going to start without a verbal pause. Rodrigo, tell me about your job.

 

Rodrigo:

So, my job…

 

Glenn:

No, you started with so. Right. One good way to do this, if somebody asks you a question is to rephrase the question as the answer.

Rodrigo, what is your job?

 

Rodrigo:

My job is to help people.

 

Glenn:

Boom. Our annual report had some very interesting statistics. What was the most interesting statistic that you saw in the report?

 

Rodrigo:

The report was very complete and had a lot of useful information.

 

Glenn:

Exactly. We can start, if we have a challenge with those verbal pauses, those crutch words, just pause, count yourself, one, two, three, four, or it’s the same as if you inhale and exhale.

And that also releases any tension if you have some, right? Don’t make it too obvious, but just an inhale, exhale after somebody asks you the question, that’ll be about three or four seconds. And then you start, you can rephrase the question, or you can just start with the answer, either way.

 

Rodrigo:

We just had a live coach. So, thank you for coaching me on this topic. I’m going to be… Pause. For me, boom. For me, it helped a lot to be aware about it. And now it’s about being more comfortable with silence, with pauses. And that helps a lot. Thank you so much.

 

Glenn:

You’re welcome. Can I add one element to this, which is executive presence?

Many times, we think of executive presence as only the C -suite, or the MD, or somebody very high up in the organization. Anyone from the new hire, the fresh grad, all the way up to the middle manager, all the way up to the C -suite, can start developing their executive presence, that presence that they have in the eyes of others in the organization. That is a good thing to start early. And good,

strong, strategic communication is absolutely one of the foundational elements of building good executive presence. If you can communicate well, clearly give people the information they need and meetings, somebody worth promoting later on, it is absolutely essential, especially in the current age in which we live, the communication age.

 

Rodrigo:

What is one small action that people can take that will help them in this journey and to become a better presenter?

 

Glenn:

Self -awareness and coaching on LinkedIn, on any of the online portals where you can find information, the multi, you know, the massive online communication portals, Lynda .com or Khan Academy, or there are a million different presentation skills type courses.

If you’re not able to afford a private coach or coaching sessions from your company, which by the way, many big companies will invest and have a training academy of some sort and offer those courses. But if you can’t afford those courses, get online, get on any one of these other ones. They’re often very cheap a few dollars, $5, $10 practice. And then use your phone to record yourself, video yourself, play it back. Or if you are a person that does interviews, play those back. Many people don’t want to watch them because it’s uncomfortable for us to see ourselves on TV, on video, or to listen on radio. That is where the learning happens. As uncomfortable as it may feel to see ourselves or hear ourselves. That’s what we do. You and I did a pre -call about this today. I had you send me the video of it on Zoom. And I have a new AI diagnostic training tool that was developed in the US that I’m taking advantage of. I ran it through that and watched myself and looked at the transcript of what we talked about.

Trying to make myself better because I have challenges like everybody else. I get lazy. I forget to do the things I’m telling you that everybody should do. And I went through that. I saw my pause words, my crutch words. I saw my repetitive words. I saw the words that I used over and over again that didn’t have impact. So, I was able to coach myself in that way.

But it was only because I watched the video again. We all need to do that.

 

Rodrigo:

You know, I’m curious that you’re more than 30 years in this area. What was the something that you did that allowed you to go to the next level as a communicator in your presentations?

 

Glenn:

Practice. Practice and repetition. The more you communicate, the better you get at it if you are following some of the steps we discussed today.

The more you get out there and think about your audience and try to give them content that’s good for them, the more you can host or MC events. Maybe it’s something local for your city, your town, your religious organization, your business organization, whatever it is, always offer. Maybe you go to Toastmasters or go to one of these speaking groups that there are many of them throughout the world.

Practice, practice, practice. But as you’re practicing, reach out to others who may be around you who are watching you, whether it’s colleagues or people at Toastmasters or whatever, and ask for feedback. There are so many groups out there that will give you feedback. And without that, we make the same mistakes time and again with decent feedback from people we respect. We will absolutely get better.

 

Rodrigo:

I really like, so if I go back, if I’m more strategic about my communication and then I become more self -aware about myself and then I practice, that will allow us to go to another level, right? Yeah. So good. Well, so much to unpack in this conversation. It’s so, so good. We’re coming to the end.

I would like to ask you, for sure, people ask you a lot of questions, but what is one question that no one has asked you before and you would love to answer?

 

Glenn:

What was one of the most fun days of my life? You want to know what it is?

 

Rodrigo:

Yes!

 

Glenn:

I went skydiving in Japan about 30 years ago or more. And a friend of mine was a skydive instructor.

He was from the US and he was doing skydiving instruction in Japan. He was going to be leaving Japan soon to go back repatriate to the US. He and I had talked about for a year, like, hey, want to come skydiving? I’m like, sure, yeah. Whatever. He goes, no, really, I’m leaving in a week. If you want to do it this weekend is your last opportunity. So, I said, sure, let’s do it. You know, lots of bravado, right? And it was going to be a tandem jump where you jump with another person so you don’t have to go through a whole course, right? We went out to the airstrip and I started to get more nervous, you know, as I was getting closer and closer to the airstrip and we got there and then we go through a brief instruction tutorial, things like that. He said to me, he goes, look, you know, the day is packed. I’ve got all of these people that have already signed up. I have to get them done first. So, you’re going to have to go after they, if there’s time. So basically, I had to wait all day. And in front of me was almost exclusively young Japanese office ladies, right? So, 20 something office ladies that were, you know, just petite and not who you would think about as being skydivers, right? They all went up and they all did it. And as the day wore on, because I’m sitting there for hours, I’m starting to get more nervous. Like, do I really want to do this? Like part of me was, I kind of hope there isn’t time for me, so I have a legitimate excuse not to do this. Anyway, finally, last flight of the day goes, I got a space for you. Like, darn it. So, okay, so I go up. It was in the fall. I think I want to say maybe October. And it was that beautiful afternoon light that you get in the fall a little bit further north in a cool climate like Japan was. The colours, leaves were changing in the trees. So, we got in the plane and when you get in these planes, you don’t just gently go up. They do a corkscrew up to get as high, as fast as possible. And they leave the door open. There’s a huge door on the side of the plane. They leave it open and it gets cold.

We got up to about 13 ,000 feet and then it was time to jump, right? As we’re going down, finally we pulled the chute and then it’s perfectly silent, right? Because you’re going to speed of the air with the parachute. So, it’s deadly calm. And as we’re coming down, Mount Fuji was in the background

with the sun setting just behind Mount Fuji, coming lower and the beautiful fall colours. And I was like, this is one of the best days. At that point, it was the best day of my life. But I got married since then and had kids. So, I have to add those in. It was just so amazing. It was so amazing. I don’t talk about it very often. I’m not asked about it very often. But I got to tell you that is one of those seminal moments in your life where you can overcome a fear that you had.

And I don’t want to make too much of a comparison to public speaking, but you can overcome a lot of fears if you’re pushed a little bit to do it. If you don’t have an exit door to get out, like if it’s your time is now, you can succeed. You can go forward and you can be excited by it, exhilarated by it and hopefully learn something new and have a great experience.

And I certainly hope that for all of the people watching and listening to this, that if they have challenges with public speaking and if they’re not confident, that they have an experience like that where they get pushed maybe a little bit beyond their comfort zone. And then they can reap the rewards of starting a new phase of self -confidence and being confident, credible and clear.

 

Rodrigo:

What a wonderful way to finish our conversation. I think we didn’t touch in this conversation about storytelling, maybe another episode, but it was such a nice way to end with a nice story and it was nice to see how you shared a story. I was living, I was there. So, Glenn, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming and to share so much value for our audience.

 

Glenn:

Rodrigo, thank you and such a great thing you’re doing with this series, Something Bigger and I wish you great success and many more amazing interviews with folks.

Thank you.

 

Rodrigo:

Thank you.