Have you contracted with someone to author or ghostwrite your book who can’t articulate your nuances? Have you worked with people who produce draft after draft of a print or online feature that misses your message points? And have you collaborated with individuals who fail to meet deadlines again and again?

And do you have nervous fits when you need to deliver a presentation? Would you rather run and hide? Don’t know how to achieve your best presentation voice?  Don’t know how to move while you present? Don’t know what visuals would best accompany your delivery?

If you’ve answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, take heart. You’ve arrived at the right resource at the right time.

Questions like these point to a basic frustration — the inability to get to done. Getting to done is the ability to articulate what you want and need to convey to your publics. To bring writing and presentation projects to a fitting conclusion with expression that keeps your readers and listeners engaged. Without hassle and delay. But with plenty of energy.

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Hank Walshak. I’ve been writing for and coaching corporate executives  and helping them get to done for more than 20 years. You name it. I write it. From books, website copy, blogs, print and online features, and annual reports to white papers, video scripts, and sales letters. Plus, I coach executives to bring out their best deliveries to their audiences.

Whatever the project, I hit the message points just right and articulate the fine points on target and on deadline.

Please accept my welcome to browse here for a while. If you see a way for me to assist you, don’t hesitate to contact me. Together, we’ll get to done.

Hank Walshak

Who can forget Simon and Garfunkel’s lyrical masterpiece? Listening to this song recently, I thought about how silence relates to effective presentations.

Silence means many things to different people. But when you’re presenting, silence in the form the pause is your friend.

When I coach executives on their presentations, I often find they have a difficult time mastering the art of the pause. They may be good at talking and filling air time, but using silence to build in pauses escapes many. We’re great at filling space with words, but not as adept at using the other side of the coin – periodic silence in the form of the pause — to recapture audience attention.

Talking without pauses is like writing sentences without punctuation. If we leave out the commas, periods, and dashes, words on the page become a jumbled mass, and we don’t know where the separations and transitions should come in. When I listen to presenters talk straight through their presentations, it’s like listening to an orchestra play a piece with no lulls in the score simply to reach the end of the composition.

Consider these tips for building in pauses in your next presentation:

Think of the pause as a pattern break. A well placed pause can be as effective as a change of position during your presentation. Consider that the members of your audience are always going somewhere else in their heads as they listen to, and observe, you. Strategic pauses enable you to re-anchor their attention on you and what you’re saying.

Pause before you begin and before you introduce a key word or concept. At the beginning of your presentation, pause for about five seconds to survey audience members and establish eye contact with them. Nothing rivets audience attention more strongly than standing before them momentarily in silence when they expect you to say something right away. When you pause instead of starting right away, you bring them to what I call the brink of attention.

Pause before and after stating a major point. This gives your audience time to catch up and to take in your point. If you state a major point and then immediately move on, it can seem not like a major point at all, because you haven’t verbally isolated the point from the rest of your running narrative.

Pause just before making a transition in your presentation. In this way, your pause becomes a way for you to regain audience attention. Your pause helps to bring them back to the brink of attention once again.

The next time you prepare a presentation, take a moment to think of silence as your old friend who can help you gather and regather audience attention as you speak.

In my speaking coaching with executives, I find that they are often surprised when I show them how diaphragm breathing can help to allay presentation anxiety and preserve their vocal quality. 

Actually, babies know how to breathe this way naturally. If you look at a baby sleeping on its back, you’ll see its little belly going up and down – a good example of diaphragm breathing.

Diaphragm breathing helps to manage anxiety because it slows our breathing apparatus and our physical and mental systems.  When we get nervous, stress rises in the body, and breathing moves up into the higher chest. We tend to hyperventilate and may breathe up to 18 or 24 times a minute. The voice lightens and we can easily run out of breath when speaking.

In contrast, diaphragm breathing relaxes us, and we breathe normally, about eight to ten times a minute. This slows our systems down, helps to keep the voice in its normal tone and range, and gives us the breath we need to project properly when presenting.

Here are two ways to learn and to practice diaphragm, breathing:

Two-Hand Method

Sit upright and at ease in a chair and place one hand on the lower abdomen. Keep the small finger of this hand about one inch above the navel. Place your upper hand on the upper chest.

Visualize yourself breathing down into a pipe through your nose and into a baloon in your lower abdomen. Breathe normally and allow the baloon to inflate as you gently let your breath to enter your lower abdomen. Count as you breathe — “one” as you inhale and “two” as you exhale. Count up to ten in this way. Then, repeat the process as often as needed.

Two Book Method

Lie down on the floor on your back. Place a small, paperback book on your lower abdomen and another paperback book on your upper chest. Breathe naturally and count your breaths as you let air in to move the book you’ve placed on your lower abdomen.

As you breathe from your diaphragm, the book on your lower abdomen will rise and fall. The book on your chest will remain still.

Practice these two breathing exercises until your diaphragm breathing becomes as natural as breathing itself. As you do, you’ll find that you can breathe from the diaphragm while presenting. And you’ll breathe your way to anxiety-free presentations. 

Oh my god! Sitting down to make a presentation? You’ve got to be kidding me. I know, I know. As a rule, I recommend standing up, because standing makes you taller and enhances your stature. But there may be times when standing to present may be out of place, say at a sit down business meeting.  What to do then?

In that case, you still have your upper body to move in various ways. You have your arms to move. You can use different facial expressions. And equally important, you have your voice. When sitting to make a presentation, modulating your voice to fit your presentation is just as important sitting as when you stand to present.

Because your motor movements are restricted when sitting — you can’t walk around — your voice and how you modulate it takes on even greater importance. As always, stable sameness is never your friend when you’re presenting. This holds true whether you’re standing to present or sitting down.

Jonathan Darman’s cover story “Spitzer in Exile” in the April 20, 2009 issue of Newsweek caught my eye the other day while I was in Barnes & Noble sipping a decaf Cafe Mocha. Quite a challenge Darman took on to profile a man in the throes of revisiting his life amid the scandal.

At one point, Darman asked Spitzer if he, Spitzer, had read any of the theories about why he was so reckless with Ashley Dupre. Up to then, the interview had been fairly on track. But then Spitzer is quoted in part, “…The human mind does, and permits people to do things that they rationally know are wrong, outrageous … We succumb to temptations that we know are wrong and foolish when we do it and then in hindsight we say, ‘How could I have?’”

Nice side stepping through three different subjects .. the human mind, people, we. Instead of saying, “My mind permitted me to do something I rationally knew was wrong, outrageous … I succumbed to temptations I knew were wrong and foolish when I did it and then in hindsight, I said, ‘How could I have.’”

Why, when asked a direct question about the theories regarding his venture with a prostitute, did Spitzer move into talking about the human mind, people, and using the editorial “we”? Was it to respond to the question? Was it to admit his own guilt? Was it the politician’s way of answering a question without answering a question? Hard to tell. Perhaps all of these.

That’s what ambiguity in language does. It makes it difficult to ascertain clarity relying on someone’s verbals, what we might know in our guts and in our hearts. Or that we think we know. Ambiguity sure can breed cloudiness in the mental apparatus. And in the brain work of those, like Spitzer, who have a way of answering questions with an ersatz, ambiguous answer.

Well, what do I think of Spitzer’s response? My guess, is that it emerged as his out-and- out avoidance of dealing with a painful issue directly. Verbal ambiguity in this instance seemed better suited to this professional politician than coming up with the shield of “no comment.”  Or maybe, the man just hasn’t come to grips with his own moral vacuum.

Whatever you think of President Obama’s politics, the man has honed his oratorical qualities to a sparkling finish. When he approaches the lectern, he walks at a steady pace that bespeaks confidence. At the lectern, he stands straight and poised, a factor that adds to his perceived stature and 6 1/2-foot height.

His maintains steady eye contact with his audiences that reflects straight forward candor that’s hard to match. And he breathes from the diaphragm. This gives him the air he needs to finish his sentences on a strong note.

He uses the politician’s gesturing of emphasizing points with the tips of his forefinger and thumb together to emphasize certain points. This may prompt some to consider him apodictic, but I don’t mind it.

Please let me know what you think.