Public Speaking

The foundation of all delivery. Standing with stillness and centered posture — pure presence with no unconscious fidgeting. Exercise: hold trainer state for 2 minutes while a partner points at any movement.

Connecting presence to real delivery. Deliver your story, metaphor, or content while maintaining trainer state — no hand motions, just voice and presence.

Why: Shaw said 'the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.' Before you can move an audience, you have to meet them where they are. What: The core rapport skills applied to the speaker context — matching and mirroring physiology, vocal quality (tone, tempo, timbre, volume), and words (representational systems: VAK+Ad). The Birdwhistell 7-38-55 rule. The three channels of rapport. Four indicators that rapport has been established. Pacing and leading — the definitive test. How: Exercise: pairs practice building rapport using each channel individually — body language only, then voice only, then words only. Then combine all three. What If: What if every conversation you had this week started with rapport instead of content?

Prerequisite: Trainer State

Using tone, volume, pace, and pitch shifts intentionally to anchor specific states or concepts in the audience. Layer vocal anchors on top of trainer state delivery.

Selecting and repeating key words or phrases that become associated with specific states or concepts. Layer on top of vocal anchors with 2-3 key phrases.

Teaching the Milton Model patterns — artfully vague language, embedded commands, presuppositions, and hypnotic language patterns. Demo exercises: practice identifying and using each pattern in pairs. Session focuses on learning and drilling the patterns themselves.

Applying Milton Model patterns to your actual presentation delivery. Rewrite your Why sections using Milton patterns for emotional impact. Practice delivering content with embedded commands, presuppositions, and artfully vague language woven naturally into your speech.

Prerequisite: Milton Model Part 1

Specific, purposeful gestures from the Satir categories that communicate congruently with your verbal message. Adding the visual channel back intentionally after practicing without it.

Using physical locations on stage to anchor different states, concepts, or resources. Map anchor points and deliver your full presentation using all previous layers plus intentional stage movement.

Before we break your delivery, we install the recovery mechanism. The New Orleans Flexibility Drill — rapidly shifting between anchored states on command — is applied specifically to the speaker context. Each speaker anchors the states they need on stage: confidence, calm, presence, humor, authority. Then they drill shifting between them instantly. The result is state agility — the ability to access any resourceful state in seconds. This is the setup for what comes next.

Prerequisite: New Orleans Flexibility Drill (NLP Prac)

Every speaker's worst fears, made real in a safe room. People side-talking about you. A group laughing while you're being serious. A heckler bursting out mid-sentence. Technology dying. Someone standing up and walking out. An audience member on their phone, loudly. A hostile question designed to rattle you. Each scenario is staged deliberately — and here's what happens: the chaos triggers your resource anchors automatically. The disruption itself becomes the firing mechanism for your most resourceful state. You don't need to prevent chaos — the chaos is what activates your resources.

Prerequisite: Resource Anchoring for Speakers

Most speakers fear the one person who disagrees — the heckler, the arms-crossed skeptic, the hostile question. This session reframes the entire relationship: stop speaking to the one who resists and start speaking to the many who need what you have. Exercises: deliver your content to a room where planted 'hecklers' try to pull your focus, while partners in the audience signal when your attention drifts from the people who are with you. The bulletproof speaker isn't the one who wins every argument — it's the one who never loses the room.

Prerequisite: The Worst Thing That Can Happen to You

The final exercise of the speaking course. After surviving the worst, we flip it — now everything goes right. The audience is locked in. People are nodding. Someone tears up at exactly the right moment. A spontaneous laugh lands perfectly. Eye contact that tells you they get it. Standing ovation energy. This is their full presentation delivered with every layer in place — and at the same time, it's a KAV (Kinesthetic-Auditory-Visual) sequencing drill for charisma. The speaker practices moving through feeling, voice, and visual channels in sequence — the pattern that creates magnetic presence. We don't leave speakers in the negative IR from the chaos drill. This exercise installs the positive one: the felt experience of everything clicking, charisma flowing through all channels, delivered from the same stage where everything just fell apart. Critical instruction: stay in trainer state and receive it. Don't deflect, don't rush, don't laugh it off — stand in your presence and let the positive experience land in your body.

Prerequisite: The Worst Thing That Can Happen to You

Why: You learned rapport 1-on-1. You survived the worst thing that can happen. Now the question becomes: how do you build rapport with an entire room at once? A group isn't just a collection of individuals — it has its own energy, its own state, its own rhythm. What: Group rapport is a different skill from 1-on-1 rapport. Core concepts: reading the room's state (group calibration), matching the group's energy level before leading it, eye contact patterns (the sweep, the land, the triangle), inclusive language that makes everyone feel spoken to, spatial pacing (using the whole stage to connect with all sections), voice projection as group matching (volume and tempo that match the room's size and energy). The shift from pacing one person to pacing a collective state. How to recover group rapport when you've lost the room — the re-pace. How: Exercise: each speaker delivers a 3-5 minute segment to a group of 6-8. Half the group is instructed to be engaged, half disengaged. The speaker must build rapport with the whole room — not just the friendly faces. Partners give feedback on eye contact distribution, energy matching, and whether they felt individually connected to. Second round: the whole group starts disengaged and the speaker must pace and lead the entire room from low energy to high engagement. What If: What if you could walk into any room — 5 people or 500 — and have them feel like you were speaking directly to each of them?

Prerequisite: Rapport + Bulletproofing block

Universal framework for organizing any presentation: Why (motivation), What (content), How (exercise), What If (integration). Every topic goes through this cycle. Meta-tool taught separately then applied immediately.

What metaphors are and why they work — how the unconscious mind processes stories differently from direct instruction. Jeane's methodology for using metaphors effectively in training and coaching. Types of metaphors: simple, complex, and isomorphic.

How to come up with metaphors — identifying the structure of the problem or concept, finding parallel structures in other domains, and crafting a story that maps cleanly. Exercise: create a metaphor for an NLP concept and deliver it to the group.

Advanced metaphor technique — opening multiple stories, embedding suggestions or teaching points within the nested structure, and closing loops in reverse order. How nested metaphors bypass conscious resistance and install learnings at a deeper level.

Prerequisite: Introduction to Metaphors

Why: The first 60 seconds determine whether the audience leans in or checks out. Most speakers open with 'Hi, my name is...' or 'Today I'm going to talk about...' — and they've already lost the room. A great opening isn't an introduction. It's an interruption of the audience's current state and the installation of a new one. What: The toolkit of speech openings — each one is a different tool for a different context, and a great speaker has all of them available. (1) The story open — drop them into the middle of a scene with no preamble. Start with action, dialogue, or sensory detail. (2) The question open — ask a question that forces the audience to think, feel, or raise their hand. (3) The bold statement open — say something unexpected, provocative, or counterintuitive that creates a gap they need you to close. (4) The statistic open — a single number that reframes their understanding of the topic. (5) The silence open — stand in trainer state, say nothing, let the room settle into you before you say a word. (6) The callback open — reference something that just happened in the room, the event, or the moment. (7) The 'imagine' open — take them into a future or hypothetical state using Milton Model language. How each opening maps to 4-MAT: most openings belong in the WHY phase — they're motivation tools. Match the opening to the emotional state you need the audience in before you teach. How: Exercise: each speaker takes the same 3-minute content piece and delivers it with 3 different openings. Group evaluates: which opening created the most engagement? Which matched the content best? Then: each speaker designs and delivers their signature opening for their own material. See handout for the complete opening types reference. What If: What if you never had to wonder how to start again — because you had 7 tools in your pocket and you just picked the right one for the room?

Prerequisite: 4-MAT System + Metaphors block