Dental Bun Podcast
Embrace the sassy, classy and messy bits of dentistry with the perfect blend of life and work wisdom.
Dental Bun Podcast
Diving Deep into the world of Dental Speaking with Katherine Eitel Belt
Ever ponder the impact of a well-delivered presentation in the dental world? Katherine Eitel Belt, a certified speaking professional who is known in the dental world as the unscripted communication coach, joins me, Janiece, to unravel the intricacies of public speaking and its profound effects on dental careers and practice growth. With Katherine's expertise, we embark on a journey through the nuances of crafting speeches that resonate and training sessions that transform. Our conversation is a treasure trove of insights on how to captivate an audience, whether you're leading your dental team or inspiring peers with innovative ideas.
This episode is chock-full of actionable advice for dental professionals looking to sharpen their communication blades. Katherine shares a game-changer: the 'bookshelf method,' a structured approach to prevent your audience from drowning in information overload. We also dissect the anatomy of an engaging opening and the persuasive power of storytelling—essential tools for those who aim to lead and inspire. Katherine and I tackle the universal jitters of public speaking head-on, offering strategies to transform trepidation into confidence in any setting, from the stage to working with your patients' chairside.
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Welcome to the Dental Bun podcast. My name is Janice and I am your host. Today we're diving deep into the world of dental speaking and my guest today is Catherine Eitel Belt. She is a certified speaking professional and in dentistry she's known as Dentistry's unscripted communication coach. Ms Catherine Eitel Belt has had many accolades in the world of dentistry and she has had the honor of coaching me.
Janiece:Just kidding, I have had the pleasure of learning from Catherine and she has helped my speaking career immensely, and as a dental study club owner, I get to see up-and-coming speakers and seasoned speakers in my industry and watch them have the poison grace that they bring to the stage, whether it's via a web course or on stage, and, unbeknownst to most people. A lot of the people that have had coaches coach them to be the great speakers that they are. They have actually hired Catherine to help them get to that level, to be able to attack the stage with confidence and grace. So thank you so much, catherine, for joining me today, to be able to fill the space with knowledge for all of my audience and to be able to give me more knowledge in my industry. So thank you so much for being a guest today.
Katherine:Well, I am thrilled to be your first guest. I am honored beyond words. That is so much fun, so much fun. So congratulations on this is a big effort, and I'm so glad that you're starting with this topic. It's one of my favorites and I can't wait to dig in, can't?
Janiece:wait, yeah. So the very first question that most people ask me as a dental study club owner is how can professionals use speaking presentation skills to grow their practice and their careers? So for me, I started to get into speaking. I want to say I had been in dentistry for about 16 years and I knew that I had so much knowledge inside of me and I wanted to share that with others, and so that's how I got connected with you.
Katherine:Yeah, yeah, you know Warren. Someone asked Warren Buffett once if he had to name one professional skill that, above all the others, was the most important for someone who wanted to have a lifelong successful career, and he said presentation and public speaking skills. That was his number one professional skill recommendation and I concur. I think whether you are a practice owner, you are a clinician, you are a hygienist, you are a front office administrator, office manager, at some point you're going to have to stand up before your team and run a meeting, present an idea, rally your team around an initiative. You're going to need to bring clarity to an idea or a request and you're going to want to do it in a way that inspires those people to take a step toward that request or toward that idea. And that is presentation. That's what that is.
Katherine:And then there are people who are interested not in building a business, necessarily, but maybe they've mastered some passion within our industry. They love lasers, they love sleep dentistry, they're really good at implants or whatever the thing is the skill or the you know the piece of our work that most it lights them up and they want to share what they have discovered, what they have mastered, what they have expertise in with other, like professionals. So there are so many opportunities to be able to have almost really for lack of a better word a side gig to be able to practice what you're doing in dentistry but have a side gig of sharing your passion and what you're really good at. You might be an administrator that is has become excellent at convincing patients to go forward with their treatment, better than other administrators who really struggle with that conversation with patients. There is a whole world of administrators that are dying to kind of find the secret to how to do that better. So it really doesn't matter what the thing is. If you can learn a few simple tools so that when you present to a group your ideas, that they land with clarity and inspiration, you will. You will really have fun with that sort of side gig of sharing your passion.
Katherine:And then, lastly, there are some of us who really want to build a business or or just become a full-time professional speaker as a business and of course that requires some expertise. So whether you're standing up before a team at a departmental meeting or you're on the board of directors and you need to make the case for something, whether you are a clinician or professional and you want this. You want to share your knowledge, or whether you want to make a living speaking. The skills are the same, and that's why I think this is a worthy conversation. I'll tell you that this is a tight employment market, as you well know, janice, and one of the skills in interviews that people are really looking for are good communicators, people who can get their ideas across quickly, clearly and motivationally, and so when you have mastered that ability to communicate at that level, it will drive your career faster and further than someone who doesn't.
Janiece:Well, I just I love that you bring that up because, as a study club owner, when someone asks me, how can I, you know, be a speaker for you, janice, there's two things that are going through my mind. Number one do they have any experience? Well, actually three. Number one is do you really, do you have a course or is it just an idea, right? Number two is you know what, what's the experience that you're bringing to the table, and is it something that I'm going to have you do, either on a webinar or in person? And then, of course, the last thing is is how are you going to engage my audience? Because if you're on online, it's a lot more difficult to keep people engaged and not multitask and to kind of drop off, as it is to be sitting in front of a speaker and listening to them and seeing how they engage.
Janiece:And so, as a meeting planner for myself, those are things that I know now, being that I'm a speaker and I actually hire speakers that these are things that we are looking for. We're looking for a presence, we're looking for engagement, we're looking for someone that can carry, you know, one, two, possibly three hours throughout, you know, throughout the event for maybe 10 people, 50 people, a thousand people, and it's a craft and it needs to be developed and it's exciting to hear that. You know there's both sides of the the table with that, you know, with influence, whether you're influencing your team or if you're really wanting to be serious about going into speaking. In the speaking world. There's other things other than what you're trying your, your topic, your topic.
Janiece:There's much more than that, it's true that is so true this is something that I didn't think of when I first started about being a speaker is how can I quickly organize my thoughts? And when I came to you, I was entertaining the idea of just going into to starting speaking. I didn't understand what a speaker did and I had all this education behind me. I had, you know, 16 years of working in the industry and I'm like I've, I've got stuff I've got to say, I've got to get this out and I'm like I could totally be a speaker. I can get on stage, I can razzle, dazzle and people pay attention to me because I'm in front of people and I've, and I felt like what I have to say was enough.
Janiece:Then I started visiting with you and I'm just diarrheaing all this material. It's just flooding. The floodgates have opened. I'm trying to tell you all this stuff, I'm not organized. I think I'm organized and I don't realize that there is a finesse to creating a course that is either and you told me, this is a flyover, or are you working on mastery, and I didn't understand that. I was just like gonna just, you know, talk and talk and talk and talk about constantly different things.
Janiece:It was just, I was so naive, coming into that space and, looking back, I can I can laugh about it, but I know that there are others that either haven't, there are others that are thinking about speaking, that are probably in the same boat that I was, or speakers now that currently don't really understand what their job is as a speaker and they're still just throwing all this material out that they really need to niche down and get that clarity. And for you, when I met with you, that is something that I learned as a speaker and that was invaluable. Invaluable because I had to be able to really cut it down, and that was the most that has is still the most difficult thing to do when you're creating a course. And so the question, of course, is is there an easy way to quickly organize our thoughts and ideas to help people like me that that you know, that are starting out with just so much knowledge in there?
Katherine:yeah. Well, there is an easy way to organize our thoughts and ideas, and that's so comforting to know if you know a simple framework, even if you're asked like. Not too long ago, I was asked on the fly to deliver part of a eulogy, one. A person who was supposed to deliver it could not, and so I was asked if, in a few moments, I would be willing to come to the front and deliver part of the eulogy, and this was someone who was very influential in my life and I cared very much about. So, of course, I wanted to do a good job, but I didn't have a long lot, a lot of time to prepare, and so I was so grateful to have this little framework that I knew that I could count on to throw my thoughts in there, have them organize themselves and be able to deliver something that I was proud of. That would do this person honor. So I do think it's important that we have a structure that will help us organize our thoughts.
Katherine:Now, most of the time we're going to give a presentation, we are going to have time to plan, but I want to first before, and I'll give you quickly what that framework is, and I'm also going to give your audience listeners a free download that will explain the framework and they can sit, sit with it and and look at it, and it'll be really helpful. But I want to preface this with what you alluded to earlier, janice, and that was there are a set of questions, three questions, that I always ask speakers to answer before they ever start putting a presentation together, before they ever open up PowerPoint on their computer. It's a waste of time to do that until you answer these questions. One of the questions is why am I doing this presentation? What is it? What is the outcome I want at the end of this presentation? And there are a million different answers to that and there are really no wrong answers to that. But getting clarity around what you want as an outcome from the speech will help you make good choices, because we can't put everything we know. We all suffer from information overload, like we we, we suffer from this phenomenon of knowing too well, too much about our, so much about our subject that we could talk for weeks, but we don't have that kind of time with our audience, and so knowing what you want is super important. It will help you make choices.
Katherine:The second question is what does the person hiring me to do this want, and that's where the question you the, the piece you alluded to earlier is this a speech? Is this is, in my mind, a speech, regardless of what the meeting planner calls it. A speech for me that I'm building is something that's going to illuminate and a fresh perspective, or it's going to introduce a new idea and maybe around an old topic, but it'll be a fresh look at an at a topic. That's all the speech is supposed to do kind of inspire people to maybe want to take an action toward it, whereas a training is actually going to deliver some level of mastery of my topic. So I could, for example, do a speech on becoming a good speaker. That's what we're doing right now.
Katherine:This is giving some fresh perspective, some new ways of looking at this, some new, maybe a couple of new little tools to think about, but all we're going to do is just give you a look at them. Hopefully, if it resonates with you, you'll want to take a step. If you had asked me, denise, as the meeting planner, as the podcast host, if you'd asked me to deliver this in a way that people could turn around and actually feel confident doing it, that would be a training. The difference is, if I'm putting together a training, I have to have room in the presentation for people to work on it. I have to have room in the presentation for them to practice some things or make decisions about things or do some of the work, whereas in a speech I'm not promising mastery, I'm only promising this illumination of an idea. So it's important to know what you're building and you know that by knowing the outcome, that the person hiring you or the person sponsoring you Maybe your boss has asked you as a hygienist to stand up and talk about a new way we're going to chart something, or a new way that we're going to talk to patients about, maybe some new technology or some new advances that were in dentistry that we're going to talk to them about. If your owner wants you to stand up at a team meeting and educate the team on this, then it would be important to know does your boss want you to create mastery so that the people can leave this meeting and have that conversation with patients, or do they just want us to look at the idea, because that will help you know what you're putting together? So that's super important. The third question, just to complete the circle is what do we suspect our audience members are wanting to gain from this? And there's lots of different ways to know that, but that's an important piece of the puzzle as well. So to get back to the original question, which was how do we quickly organize our thoughts?
Katherine:I use something I call the bookshelf method, and so if you think of a shelf and some books and two bookends and you were going to, your job was to make a pretty bookshelf on the wall, of course you would take those four elements and you would put the shelf on first. So the shelf represents what is the bottom line, main idea of this presentation. What is if someone said at the end of it hey, what was that presentation about? You know someone that wasn't there? In one or two sentences, what is the explanation? What is the through line of your presentation? So you've got to be clear about that first. Then the second thing you do is you put the books on the shelf. So the books are the containers for your content, and I subscribe to the belief that you can't have more than five on any shelf.
Katherine:Meaning, let's say, I'm going to do a presentation for a day, like you and I are talking about something I'm going to do for you. That may be an entire morning, three or four hours or an entire day. So if I'm going to be speaking or training for an entire day, I still will only have five books main containers, main sections of my speech. But, given more time, I'll have chapters, I might have sub chapters and so there, and all the books might not be the same size. One book might be really 15 minutes, really short, really easy. The next book might be an hour and it might have three chapters in it. So this is the outline of the presentation. But if you get more than five of those main sections, people get lost and I think you're pushing it at five. So less is more here.
Katherine:The best speech I ever heard I heard 26 years ago. 26 years ago I heard a speech delivered at the National Speakers Association. I was a brand new speaker. I was in a sea of several thousand professional speakers at the National Convention. This man was the key noter, so you can imagine how good he was. He's the key noter of that convention and for 45 minutes he delivered a keynote address that had one book on the shelf and 26 years later, I can remember what that speech was about. I can remember how he made me laugh, how he made me cry, how he made me think, how he made me. I remember the decision that I made and I could I could tell you that it was one of the best speeches I ever heard. Now, if we deliver to speech tomorrow to our team, to a study group, to anyone, and 26 years from now, someone said I remember a speech and I can tell you what that speech was about and I can tell you the decision that I was inspired to make because of it, wouldn't that be worth doing? So it just shows you that a 45 minute speech, with one book on that shelf, delivered from several different perspectives, drove that point home. And that's what creates influence is clarity and inspiration.
Katherine:I subscribe that there are only two things communicators have to do in any communication, and that is create clarity about your point. And you don't do that when you confuse people, and you can you fire hose them with information. So you you whittle it down to a key point or two or three that you're going to drive home. Really well, and it's much better to have people leave with clarity on a few things than confusion on a lot Right. So that's the goal. And then the second thing we have to do create is inspiration. So you could be clear, but not very inspirational, and so the combination of both of those creates a beautiful speech and a beautiful communication, even one to one. So so that's so important. So those are the books, they are the containers for your information. Then, and only then, do you figure out how you're going to open your speech and that book in.
Katherine:That opening book in is where you decide am I going to start with a story? Am I going to start with a statistic? Am I going to start with a rhetorical question? Am I going to play a video right out of the shoot? Will I start with a, an audience exercise? I say that it's important that that opening is bold, it's attention grabbing and it foreshadows what's coming on the bookshelf. So you can see why we can't decide how to open the speech until we know what's on the shelf, because we need the opening of the speech to foreshadow what's coming. But that's what you, that's how you develop your opening book in, and then the final component is a closing book in, and the closing is where you tie a bow on the information you've presented. You do a high flyover of the points, you give people a call to action so they know what step they could take if they want to, very clearly, and then you leave them with a dose of hope and inspiration at the, at the very end. That a clear bookshelf, a clear through line, clear sections and components, well organized and not very many, and then a strong opening book in and a strong closing book in. That is what creates an amazing speech.
Katherine:And that simple four step structure is what I instantly threw together for my little on the spot eulogy that I had to do. I thought what is the main point I want this group to know about my friend? What do I want them to take away about my friend that we are honoring today? And what are two or three examples that I can think of where he lived that out? And then what is an opening story that I could start with that would foreshadow the kind of person I want to show that he was. And then how can I wrap it up? Well, at the end, and knowing that framework allowed me to deliver on the spot a really great eulogy. So I think that little formula is think of a bookshelf, the shelf, the books and the two bookends and you will have a complete picture.
Janiece:That stuff is magic. I'm telling you. It changed my life as a new speaker. It is vital that someone has some form of framework when they start coming in to the speaking world. There was something that you touched base on in what you were speaking on, and it was when you were talking about team leaders and how they have to inspire their team. And I think for me.
Janiece:I have such great empathy for dentists or hygienists or assistants who take that role, because it is hard to engage and inspire a team that you work side by side with every day. You want to be able to influence them towards a particular. Either it's something new that you're bringing on that maybe they're not happy about, or maybe it's something that may be a pivot that the company may be doing, or it's just making sure that everyone is in good spirits and continuing to make the workspace good to be in and having those communication skills to be solid so that they know that you're not wavering in what you're trying to convey is so important. That brings us to my second, the next question is how do we inspire and align our team or audience? Because sometimes, at least for me, when you know it's your peers, it's a little harder to engage with you, because sometimes you even get a little bit of battle back Sure sure?
Katherine:well, one of the things we talk about in our speakers training course is how to handle pushback from an audience. How do you handle when someone disagrees with you or they're, they're, they're being disruptive, or you know any number, and sometimes it's not a person, sometimes it can just be a disruption, like I've given a speech where the fire alarm went off three times in my speech and we have to leave the building and come back and reset, and you know all kinds of your technology and you know your slideshow won't work or the videos don't play, or you know. And so if you're a, if you're a, if you're a professional speaker, you have to be ready to deliver your speech with nothing. There's just no other way. You won't survive if you can't do that. But even as, even if you're not a professional speaker, doing that for a living, but you are standing up before your team on a regular basis and trying to inspire them to. You know, rally around this new initiative is super important to know this point. People do things for their own reasons, not for ours, and so really good professional presenters understand that.
Katherine:As early on in my presentation, I want the audience to tap into something that frustrates them in relation to my content. So, for example, I teach a lot of leadership and management skills and I do my opening, I have an opening story and I do a little housekeeping and then I quickly move into an exercise where we have some fun together as a group. But then I ask a question and they have to answer it with a partner. What is one thing you believe is an important characteristic in terms of great leadership? For example, I say think about a great leader in your own life. I think that it might have been a pastor or a teacher or a family member or someone you worked with, someone who, when you think of the greatest leaders in your life so far, that person's face comes to mind, and I want you to ask yourself what is a trait or a characteristic that they possess that causes you to think of them that way? And I want you to talk to your partner about it, and so nobody ever has any trouble with that. They instantly start talking about integrity or patience or clarity or non-judgment or whatever the thing is, and they talk about it. Then they get a new partner, and then the next question is what is a challenge or a frustration you currently have around the leadership within the company you work or within the department that you work in. What is a frustration? That if you could get an answer for that challenge today, this time would be worth it to you. And so they don't have any trouble with that question.
Katherine:People love to talk about what they don't like or what is bothering them, and so they talk and talk and talk about that. And then I take some volunteers. I take some volunteers to share what those challenges, some of the challenges they heard or that they may have contributed, and what that does. I'm rarely surprised. I'm rarely ever. I've been doing this so long that I there's kind of a top five that almost every audience will give me. So I'm rarely surprised. So I don't really need to do it for me.
Katherine:But the reason I'm doing it is I want them to get attached to something they want, so that then when I go to present my information, they will see it as the avenue or the method to get them what they want, not for me to get what I want them to do. Do you see the difference? And so if you're presenting to your team, you know if you're an administrator, saying, hey, we're going to bring care credit into our practice and I want to talk about what it is and why this is a good thing for us. And you could want it and you could want it to work, and you could get in there and think my job is to tell them this is how it's going to be and these are the buttons to push and this is what we say and this is why it's important and this is why they need to do it. It would be so much better, so much easier If, first you highlighted the frustrations that they're all having around not getting patients to move forward with their treatment. What is affecting their absolute individual days and job performances when patients don't go forward with treatment? Or that maybe we haven't presented it well and nobody's taking advantage of it? So now, when you go to present your information, now they're tying it to them getting something, and what we want as humans always boils down to one of these things we want something to be easier, we want something to go away, we want something to start, we want to make more money, we want to get more time, more time off, more benefits. We want something, and it's usually a top five or six things, and so if you can show me how it makes my job easier, how it gets rid of something that frustrates me, how it makes me more money or saves me time or gets me more time and freedom, then I'm in. But if you don't show me that, then I'm not likely to listen with the same ears as if I believed it would. And so that's how you create.
Katherine:Inspiration is number one. You have to show up excited and enthusiastic about it. But don't let that drive you to becoming a lecturer, because people don't want to do it for your reasons, selfishly. They want to do it for theirs. And if you can get them to tap into that and there's lots of tricks and tips, and you know we could go on for days about that but if you, if you want to be better at this, learn some of those, learn a few of those and and lock your audience into oh, now I'm interested if it'll do that. You know if it'll do that, catherine. Well then, now you've got my attention and I know that's my job to do early on in my program.
Janiece:Well, it's also like when, when you talk about that me being, you know, an employee mindset, I'm going All right, yeah, if I can make my job easier and maybe I don't have to do something that I don't want to do, or you can tell me how to do it better so that I can accept it, then I'm like, All right, I'm on board. So, with that being said, that'll take us to our next question, and that's the story telling and story selling, because I think that's where we're kind of heading into how we deliver. What it is that, whether, like you said, what's a boss trying to deliver something that they need from their, their staff, or, you know, a speaker speaking on stage delivering a message that they want to take action at.
Katherine:And story telling and story selling are key talents for a professional. The reason is that we think in pictures and we are influenced. Since the beginning of time, since the cavemen, we have been influenced by story. Storytelling is one of the oldest tools of influence, so it taps into a primal type of conversation. And it's so funny when I put stories into my programs even it's usually wedged in between information. Or I'm teaching a system or something and I wedge a story here and there in into it.
Katherine:You can, you can almost see the attention span. They say we have about 10 to 20 minutes of people paying attention where they can retain the information. Now they can pay attention for about 90 minutes, but until people just start wiggling out of their seats. But they can pay attention with retention for only about 20 minutes. So you can watch it as a speaker. After about 20 minutes of delivering data right, delivering proof, delivering statistics, delivering clinical information After about 20 minutes people's attention starts to wane. It's a. It's nothing to do with the presenter, it's it's everything to do with the human being and how the brain works. So if I insert a story or an activity or anything right there, I grabbed their attention back if they were gravitating toward their phones. I now have their full attention because the brain goes oh, something's different, she switched the, she switched the mechanism and now she's regained my interest. So storytelling is a super fun way for a presenter to engage their audience. It's not the only way. There are many, many ways, but it is one sure way. So your question what's the difference between storytelling and storytelling? It's a. It's a subtle difference. Storytelling is just what we know. It's it's using a story to in in the speaking world, we use stories to create a tie between what people know or currently experience in their life and what we want them to know. So it's often like a metaphor or an analogy.
Katherine:If I was just coaching a speaker and they are a wellness, they're in charge of a wellness initiative within a very large company and he needed to present to a board who was considering investing a sizable amount of funds into this program. It's a transportation company and this gentleman was running the wellness program within this corporation and he wanted more money for the program, and so this presentation was important and he was immediately jumping into the statistics and into the you know all the and he was going to show a model of what wellness was, and, and so he shows me his slide and he has a. It almost looks like a wheel and at the hub of the wheel was a, was a really well person, a person who had great physical, emotional, spiritual wellness. And shooting off from that hub were all the, all the components of wellness. So our physical health, our emotional health, our sleep, you know all the pieces of it, and our movement and exercise and all of those things. And he gets right into the statistics.
Katherine:And I stopped him and I said you know, I'm curious, what's the point you want me to take away from this slide? And he said well, I want them to take away, from the way that if any one of these pieces isn't strong, it compromises the whole and if, if there are more than one that is non existent or compromised, it will collapse. The well being of the person will ultimately collapse. And so we're driving our trains, driving our buses. This company cares about less accidents, less mistakes, less turnover of employees because they're worn out. You know, under high stress situations they need to make quick decisions, sometimes in high stress situations, and so wellness matters, their ability to give attention quickly to the right decisions matters. And he said I want them to know that it's not just their skills, but it involves all of these pieces.
Katherine:And I said so what else in your life have you ever been exposed to, or or had experience with that? If one piece of it was missing or weak, the whole structure was weak. And he said I want you to know that for a minute. And he said well, I was just playing a Jenga game with my 10 year old and I said bingo. So what I want you to do is, before you show the slide, I want you to ask the board Do they? Have they ever played a game or watched a child play at the game of Jenga? And your first slide will be a Jenga tower with all those little pieces, all those little wooden pieces. I want you to show a slide where two or three of those pieces are now out and I want you to say to them if you've ever seen this game, you know that the game is. The way to win. The game is to not not be the person who, you know, pulls the last straw that causes the whole thing to collapse.
Katherine:When we talk about wellness today, it's like we're talking about the Jenga game of wellness, the Jenga game of our employees. Our employees have eight components that make up their Jenga game of wellness. If one of those pieces is removed from the whole, the whole is compromised. They will not make quick decisions on that train. They will not feel confident and clear in their jobs. I want to show you what the eight pieces of their Jenga game is and my proposal for how to help shore those up so that every person working in this company is fit for the job.
Katherine:That storytelling has become a way for people to understand his model and the impact that his model has on the whole. That's where it's so valuable. It doesn't have to take long and I didn't do it as well as we ended up crafting. That was very helpful to come, but it gave us an idea that we could then craft into this very beautiful presentation. But that's what you're looking for. What else is my concept like and how can I bring that into? We're saying what do you already know in your life that I can show you that what I'm getting ready to present is just like that. It's just like that familiar place.
Katherine:There's actually some neuroscience to show. It's very recent neuroscience I just was reading the report about it that shows that actually in the neurons in the brain we tend to discard information a phone number, someone's name, any information. We discard it very quickly If we don't instantly attach it to something we already know, something that's already important to us. But if we instantly attach it to something we already know or is already important to us, we will retain it. That's good for presenters to know. That that's how the human brain works.
Katherine:The difference between storytelling is just telling a story to illuminate something. But when you move into storytelling, I'll have all the clinicians and administrators think about this. You could tell a patient they need an implant and you could show them how the implant will improve their life and all the statistics around an implant and how we do an implant and how it's great for them, and you could show them their x-rays and you could do all of those things we do. Or you could tell them a story about someone just like them that you helped two months ago, that had a very similar situation, very similar challenges, very similar frustrations and had a very similar treatment plan. They decided to move forward with it and this is what they enjoy today. This is what they told you they enjoy today and you believe that they could have the same results and you really, really want that for them.
Katherine:What you've done is you've pre-heated the oven for them to hear what you're getting ready through the lens of this story. You can do the same with the consequences of a patient who didn't move forward, the consequences of someone who you presented a similar treatment plan, similar frustrations, and they did chose not to move forward. And here's where they are today, and you don't want that for them, and so you're encouraging them to make a difference. That is what we refer to as story selling. We're using, instead of only selling with the facts, we're selling with a story as well. It's a much kinder, gentler way to get into the sales cycle. When you're promoting something, good speakers will create a story of success or failure, or both, where they can help their participants to hear it through the lens of that story, super, super important.
Janiece:I love that you bring in the clinical aspect of it, because I don't really think people that are like I never want to speak, that's not something that I'd like to do, but they speak and communicate with their patients every day and influence them towards making decisions, towards their health. Sometimes people, even just as a clinician, can be better at doing that. They don't realize, and sometimes they do realize that some of the topics that they want to talk about, they do have a little bit of fear or maybe they're not confident in the topic to where they can maybe discuss it with the patient. That brings that fear and that recluses them back as a clinician to not be able to move them forward to saying yes or no to a treatment. But that also is what we do as speakers when we're speaking to an audience.
Janiece:It doesn't matter if you're speaking to a person or you're speaking to a group of people. The communication style of someone, in the end you're wanting someone to do something, whether it's saying yes to a treatment plan or implementing a new idea that you have for them. When you look at speakers, sometimes that can be fearful, whether it's fearful of speaking up in front of a big audience or the fear of just communicating with that person in a confident fashion. And so what would you? How do we help those people I mean, which is everyone honestly to gain that confidence and not have that fear, whether they're attacking the stage or just being that professional in the clinical chair?
Katherine:Yeah, well, it's one of the number one fears still to this day. It has been for decades. When they do those surveys of what are people most fear, it still makes the top five and that's the fear of public speaking. And I contend and I've had lots of speakers, coaches, brilliant speaker coaches in my life and that have been super helpful for me and I've heard from many of them strategies like things you guys have probably heard. You know, take some deep breaths before you go on and you know, maybe do some jumping jacks outside the room before you go on. Get rid of some of that energy and that adrenaline get. You know, go take the stairs instead of the escalator. You know, and you know, do some meditation in the morning. I've heard all of these things and I've tried all those things and they it's, and they can be helpful, no doubt about it.
Katherine:But I did not have a breakthrough in my nerves, in those pesky little butterflies and sometimes they're not so little that we get before we take the front of the room. Now, the front of the room for a professional speaker is a stage, it's a platform, the front of the room for someone on a dental team or any team work professional team might be standing up at a company meeting or a board meeting. The front of the room with a patient is chair side right. So front of the room means you have the floor and you have an idea that you would like the other person or people to adopt and to get get in line with, and so, if if you've taken the front of the room many times, we will get a feeling of fear and anxiety. So here's the breakthrough I had when I began to study how the adult brain makes sustainable change and I actually have a certification in adult learning and so in that work I learned what parts of the brain, what the functions of parts of the brain are, and the amygdala, which we all have heard of, in the center sort of lower center of our brain, is our primal, is the primal piece of our brain. It is the part of our brain that determines if we're safe and if it views or senses we are not safe, either emotionally or physically, it will pump adrenaline, and the reason it pumps adrenaline is fight or spider, fight, fight, flight or freeze, and some who say fawn. It pumps adrenaline and cortisol, and the reason it does that is it wants us to run from the threat or fight the threat and win. It gives us some very quick, higher intellectual capacity to make a quick decision. It gives us a quick boost of physical strength. That's why a mom can lift a car off of her baby, right that she couldn't do a normal circumstances, but she can do it then because she gets this boost.
Katherine:Now the thing with if we, if we pumped that level of adrenaline for an extended period of time, we'd be dead, we'd have a heart attack, right, but for short bursts that we need to run from an enemy, it serves us, but it doesn't serve us well on the stage. The reason we get the pump of adrenaline and if you the symptoms are sweaty palms, upset stomach, dry mouth, a racing heart, sweats all of that is a symptom of adrenaline. If you get those, it's the sign that your mind is perceiving that audience as a threat. That's the only reason it would pump out adrenaline and you would have those symptoms. Those are symptoms. And so I say the deep breathing, the taking the stairs, the doing the jumping jacks are just addressing the symptoms. They're not addressing the root cause of the symptoms.
Katherine:The root cause of the symptom is that we, our brain, our amygdala, without us even knowing, we're not even conscious of it, but our amygdala says oh, you are standing up, or getting ready to stand up, in front of a body of judgment and they are gonna judge you and they likely won't be kind. And all of a sudden your brain starts saying are they gonna laugh at my jokes? Are they gonna believe what I'm saying? Do they think I'm credible? Are they gonna get on board with this? Are they gonna push back? Are they gonna think I'm stupid, right? And are they gonna think that I'm boring? All of those worries are because we're, we see that group as a body of judgment. So the only way, I believe, to manage those nerves is to practice recontextualizing that audience and what what that body is, because they are going to judge us. They are going to judge us, but they are also hoping against hope that you are getting ready to use their precious time, the time they're giving you in a meeting, the time they're giving you in a speech, the time they're giving you for an hour in your chair. They are hoping against hope. You are going to give them a breakthrough. You're gonna make something easier in their life, something better in their life. You're gonna give them hope You're gonna give them a skill they didn't have before, something.
Katherine:And when we see the need, that is in that audience, relative to our content, when we focus on the need, it moves us from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex. And the prefrontal cortex, its job is executive function, decision-making, empathy. So, janice, if you tripped in front of me today, my amygdala is not going to react. My prefrontal cortex is going to react. My prefrontal cortex says, oh my gosh, janice fell, how can I help her? I instantly release, I feel empathy and I process that in the prefrontal cortex. And so what? The prefrontal cortex, unlike the amygdala, what it releases is serotonin, dopamine, all of these calming chemicals into our bloodstream, especially relative to cortisol and adrenaline. It releases that. It releases the ability to make solid decisions, to calm down, to think clearly and to show empathy and to speak from empathy. So which is better, on the stage or the front of the room? Is it better to come from empathy and executive function, or is it better to come from this sort of hyper vigilance and run or fight the threat? And so that's what we want to engage.
Katherine:So that takes a little practice. That means when you're thinking and preparing for your meeting and your presentation. You're imagining your audience and you're quantifying their needs. So, for example, if I'm delivering, sometimes I speak on unscripted telephone skills. So the frustration in my audiences typically is they're frustrated with the question are you on my plan? Because they don't know how to answer that well. They're frustrated with price shoppers. They don't quite know how to answer that well, because basically they've not been given good training. And thirdly, they don't want to be given that training by being handed a script, because it feels really disconnected from the actual conversation and it doesn't feel genuine and authentic.
Katherine:So, knowing that pain point I focus on when I'm getting ready to take the stage and I feel the butterflies. That's my sign that I've got it wrong. I've got the frame wrong, I've got the wrong set of glasses on. And I take those glasses, I say I bless it. I say thank you for telling me what I'm. You know what I'm doing. Let me get those glasses off and let me put the other glasses on. That say yes, they probably will judge me because they don't know me yet.
Katherine:But what is their pain? And I remind myself they're frustrated, they want to do better, they want to convert more callers, they want to answer the price question in a very highly professional way and they want to get those people in their appointment book and and I have some solutions that may surprise them and I have some ways that I know have helped other people. So my job is to ease their pain. My job is to put a bandage on the wound. My job is to put some ointment on the cut right and help them feel better about it. And when I think about that, it's like seeing Janice trip, it's like empathy. I feel empathy for them and I feel, and I remind myself in that space I'm not here to perform. I'm not a trained monkey to perform to get their applause. I've come to contribute. I've come to ease their pain.
Katherine:And if I can ease a few people's pain in this audience and have them go oh, I never thought of it that way or I never saw it that way that feels so much better. I don't need a script. I can do really well without a script and I can get better results Then I've eased their pain. And when I focus on that, the butterflies go away Maybe not completely. It's like whatever you're eating, 100 people means nothing to me. I can do that all day long because that's become my norm.
Katherine:It used to freak me out. Before that was my norm 100 people. I was like I couldn't sleep the night before. Now it's 1,000. I get asked to do a big keynote and I'm like, oh OK, I don't do those very often and so I get asked to do one and now I feel the butterflies again. So it's kind of a moving target, depending on what you've gotten accustomed to. But I think it's a really good thing to think about and I would caution people not to focus on the symptoms as much as the root cause. How can you focus on contributing solutions to their pain points rather than performing on that stage and you'll do better.
Janiece:Fear drives so many different reactions from people, so it's such a if not anything. When someone maybe goes into hiring a speaking coach to really calm that down is a blessing, because then you can just kind of relax and move forward with what you're paid to do.
Katherine:And be you and be you. Show up really vibrant and confident.
Janiece:So, being that you've been in the industry for so long and with me, with the study club, I get to see, like I said, I get to see the new speakers that start to speak in the industry, and then, of course, the seasoned speakers, and so you come from there's different areas of expertise and the ability for them to engage in a room. But what are things that makes a great speaker and maybe what can make them better? Because I still feel, even though some people are seasoned, they may not realize certain things that they do on stage could be buttoned up, or maybe it's something that it's a habit that's so hard for all speakers and you just kind of it's one of those things that you have to work at to continue to be the best speaker that you can be while you're on stage.
Katherine:Yeah, I mean just to co. I would say it boils down to this Organize your content, learn to organize your content well and there are lots of great speakers, coaches we do it at Lion Speak and I love to help speakers do that but find a good coach that you really resonate with and you really trust and like, and let them help you first organize your content, get your message clear and organize it well so that you feel really solid in it. Then, once you've done that, then add some color to the black and white. So color is learn to tell a good story, learn to find good stories.
Katherine:I've had people say I don't really have any good stories and I say, well, I disagree. If you're living on the planet, if you have children, if you have dogs, if you sat at a Thanksgiving table with a crazy family, yeah. If you work, if you drive on the freeway, you have stories we're not talking about. You were paralyzed from the neck down and you learned how to live your life better. Those are amazing stories when we hear those motivational speakers. But you don't have to have a catastrophe in your life to tell really poignant good stories. They can be everyday things that relate. So learn where they are and how to tell them, and they also don't have to be your stories. Now, I don't mean to suggest you take someone else's story, but what I mean is you can get great stories from history, fables, movies. There are lots of places where we can get relevant stories to use, and it's kind of nice when we mix it up. Some are our stories, some are George Washington stories. There's lots of. It's nice to have a variety. So I would learn that.
Katherine:The next thing. Then I would move to how do you physically present the speech and how do you handle yourself at the front of the room, meaning, what do you do with your body? What do you do with your feet To stop the pacing, the incessant pacing that shows the audience you're nervous and you're not centered. So how do you move on purpose? And what do you do with your hands? What do you do with your eyes? How do you connect with that audience in a way that shows that you're centered, you're confident, you're glad to be there? So learn how to manage your body.
Katherine:But I find that if we try to manage our body but we don't know our speech very well, it's too much. It's just too much to think about at one time. And so once you get your speech solid, then you can say, ok, now let me deliver the speech and start to think about what my body is doing. So we coach that second. And then, lastly, we work on how do you practice? What are some practice strategies? How do you then incorporate technology? How do you make sure that you can do this without the technology if it fails? And how do you manage the room dynamics? How do you manage someone that pushes back in the room Is a disruption in your room? How do you professionally handle that without getting rattled? So those are later, but I think those are the basic containers of the skills that you would need to do really well from the front of the room.
Janiece:The biggest question that I get. Through my study club and speaking with peers and maybe they're entertaining the thought about becoming a speaker and they're just like I'm interested in that. I just don't know where to start. Like I know I have all this good information and it's something that I think I want to try to do in this phase in their career. It's like where do they begin? And I always struggle answering that question because everyone's journey is different.
Janiece:I was fortunate enough to have a peer that was already successful in the speaking world and she took me under her wing. I was actually helping her with digital media and helping her with that. And then, next thing, you know, I told her I'm wanting to get into speaking and she's like, oh, you got it. And she kind of helped me move through that process and of course, like I said, for me that was a blessing that I had someone to guide me. But when you have someone that doesn't have easy access to someone that's already in the industry, kind of knows the ins and outs or even just those little nuggets of wisdom, where do those people start in the speaking industry? Yeah, Sure.
Katherine:So I think, first of all, I just want to use this opportunity to encourage dental professionals.
Katherine:If you are passionate about something to do with our profession, or even just in life, speaking is a great way to share that passion, and our industry needs you. There's a lot of speakers and I'm in this category that are getting into our 60s and 70s and we are in the last third of our career. We're going to be at some point exiting this work and it is opening up a big gap and need for really good speakers in our industry that know how to deliver really well-constructed content that's easy to digest and easy to understand and that is given in an inspirational and entertaining way. And so if you have a passion, I'm telling you you can learn to present it and have fun with it, and I would encourage you to consider it. So if you're interested in that, and especially if you're interested in either A getting better in front of your team and raising your own worth and value and compensation within your own company, then this would be a skill to learn. And if you are interested in a side gig or a full-time job as a speaker in our industry, then I would suggest a couple of things Within dentistry.
Katherine:There are a couple of organizations that can really help you with building the business of speaking. You need a few things. You need a speaker's package. You need a speech that is well-titled, has a synopsis, has learning objectives that our dental organizations can accept and give credit CE credit for. Those are very specific, and you need an outline and a way to present it to study clubs or associations or whoever you're going to speak for. They're going to need it in a certain format. You will likely at some point need a demo video where they can get a snippet at least of you at the front of the room so that they can see that you have a good presence and that you have a good message. And you will need some recommendations, some places where you have spoken before. So there are a couple of organizations that can help you with that. One is the Dental Speaker, which is run by my good friend, vanessa Emerson, and she not only helps speakers put together their speakers packet and a speaker's web page or website, but she also helps with the business of speaking. So I think that's a great place to start. She has an annual conference that you can go to and learn about the business of speaking. She also has a showcase every few years where you can actually present, for, I think, 10 minutes in front of some meeting planners so they can get a look at you and your topic.
Katherine:There's another organization called the Speaking Consulting Network, and we refer to it as SCN, and the Speaking Consulting Network is similar, though it is an association that helps speakers get started and learn the craft of speaking in our industry, and similarly, they have a speaking competition that I've judged before and I often help speakers prepare for, and it's a TED style talk that you do, again in front of the group, in front of a panel of judges and in front of meeting planners, and those are great ways. Also, there is a group that is called not smiles at sea, it is drawing a blank. Oh, the Dental Festival, and they have a piece of the Dental Festival that is just for speakers. It's called Dentistry's Got Talent and Dentistry's Got Talent, again, you have, I believe, 10 minutes maybe it's 12, in front of a group, but the cool thing about those competitions is that you get a video, whether you win the competition or get in the finals. You get a video of it that you can use to create a demo video, and there often are meeting planners in the room. You don't have to win the competitions to get the meeting planners' attention, and so I always love those organizations. So I would think those would be places to start.
Katherine:Coaching is a great place. I mean, I do coaching through LionSpeak. Our website is lionspeaknet I know it'll be in your show notes. And then there are other certainly other speakers. The National Speakers Association is a great place also to. You can attend their conferences as a non-member. It's a little bit more expensive, but you can attend as a non-member and get in there and start to learn the craft. Now, they're not specific to dental, but they are really good at helping speakers that want to be seriously good speakers. That's what they're about, and they actually have local chapters around the country. You don't have to join the national organization to belong to one of the local chapters, so that's another great place to learn. So I think those are some good places to begin If you want some speaking experience and you are not maybe ready to join a competition or enter a competition. One really good place are local study clubs. Local study clubs well, sometimes, yes, just like you, janice will give people a chance to try on.
Katherine:I remember early in my career I spoke for little to nothing because my goal was just to get some stage time.
Katherine:My goal was just to work out, work out my nerves, work out my content, see what the audience would respond to and get some time at the front of the room. And I think there are. I remember I became good friends with my Henry Shine Rib in the area where I lived and he said you know what, if you want, every month we take a Friday morning and we bring in a speaker for about an hour and we invite some of our clients, some of our customers, to come in if they're interested in that topic and we foot the bill. Now we can't pay you, but if you wanna come over for an hour and talk about a topic that you're passionate about, we would give you that time. And so you know I got some stage time and I got my feet wet in it and got confidence. So I think you know anything like that that you can get up in front of a small group and work it out is always a good. It's always a good way.
Janiece:I know that when you're new to the industry of or, I guess really the idea of speaking, having a place to start and even just to get information is really great for anyone. As far as being a speaker in the dental world and you being a coach for you, what is your takeaway from the industry? I know you said you are in the last third of your speaking career. What do you hope for the future speakers? What would you like to see the speaking world become? Because right now we're we sit in courses. I've been a hygienist. This year we'll make 20 years as a hygienist in May.
Katherine:Congratulations.
Janiece:Thank you. And every year, every licensing period, I have to do 20 to 30 hours of CE. That's a lot of hours in classroom setting, listening to speakers, and when you talk about that one speaker that you remember from 20 plus years ago, I still have to kind of go through that and go. I don't know yet. I definitely have had speakers that have encouraged me to take action and remind me about things that I need to do, but I have yet to come across the one that it resonates with me where I'm like that's sticking with me for the rest of my life. I haven't come across that speaker just yet.
Katherine:Yeah, what I see is the industry is massively shifting under our feet and I think it's because we've had a big generational change. The boomers are out, some of the millennials are out and starting to retire, and the Gen X, y and Zers and I know there's even a new one coming online make up the majority of our marketplace right now in terms of learners, in terms of people attend like you attending these and they want something different than the boomers wanted. They learn differently, they have different styles of learning and therefore we need different styles of presenting. So here's what I hope I hope that the speakers of the future will understand that they have to make their presentations an experience. It cannot just we have, especially in this industry. We have the curse of knowledge. It's the curse of knowledge and our subjects are often technical.
Katherine:So I do some work. My primary work is in dentistry and healthcare, but I do a little work in the architectural and commercial building just a little and also in veterinary field, and those brains are the same as dentists and hygienists and they're perfectly placed in those industries. The brain of a dentist and hygienist or a dental clinician is the same brain of an architect and the same brain of an engineer. They love fine detail, they see fine detail, they want to be perfect and it's important that they are accurate. Like who do you want in your mouth? You want a perfectionist in your mouth, right? Someone who's not satisfied with good enough. They want it to be right and so that's so beautiful.
Katherine:As a clinician, as a presenter, you have to be careful. I've had clinicians that I've coached that say my audiences are, this is a serious topic and they're serious learners and they are not going to play and they are not interested in stories and they are not interested in activities. And I know they are not correct in that Every human is influenced by well-told and well-placed stories. I'm not talking about filling your whole speech with that, but I am saying that, strategically placed and well-delivered, it will make you a better presenter and it will especially in these types of audiences that have learned. These are digital natives. They have learned this way. Learning has been an experience from day one and if we don't learn how to do that, we're going to lose this audience, and the ones that get that are going to gain this audience and so being. They want genuine presenters that are having a conversation with them from the stage. They don't want presenters. They won't tolerate presenters anymore that read their slides to them. If you are reading your slides to an audience, you will not be asked back that. There's just a different demand. They want the experience.
Katherine:So how do you make the subject come alive? That's what will be the future of and I see it already shifting. I mean, we see the conventions are, the attendance is down. When the attendance is down, the vendors are pulling out. When the vendors pull out, they're not paying good speakers, and when they don't get good speakers, the attendance is even lower. It's a vicious cycle. So you see now associations starting to rethink the model. How do we I mean, that's where SmileCon came from Is the ADA going? If we don't change this, we are not gonna exist in that old model, and so I don't know if they've gotten it right just yet, but kudos to them for attempting to at least change the format, because it's evident that that's what's required. So I think speakers need to know that, even when they are a serious clinical speaker, engaging the audience, finding ways to make their clinical information come alive in 5D is what is going to make them shoot them to the top.
Janiece:I'm. This whole like episode has just been crazy knowledge, Like so many nuggets of wisdom for the entry level speaker and then the seasoned speaker. I'm so thankful that you are my first guest on the Dundle.
Janiece:Box. We're so excited to be able to encourage people to take that leap if it's something that they're interested in, and then, of course, encourage the leader of a group or the clinician to be able to gain that confidence in the clinical chair, in front of their staff, to deliver a message and feel wonderful about doing it. So, catherine, I'm just I thank you so much for being a guest for me today. I really do appreciate it. You're so welcome.
Katherine:And I wanna offer make an offer to your audience. We do have a video training program that's on demand and when you purchase it, you purchase access for a year. Your whole team can watch it, and it goes over all the things we talked about here in much more detail how to use the bookshelf to put your speech together. We give examples, we show you how to move your body on stage, we talk about how to handle pushback from the audience. It's a complete program on video in little, small chapters that you can watch at your own pace. So that is a great resource.
Katherine:So I'll send the link for that. If you're interested, you can go to lionspeaknet that's L-I-O-N-S-P-A-E-A-Knet and slash speaking, dash skills, and you will find all the information there. But I'd also like I'll put in the show notes a link and a QR code to some free resources. I have written an article about the bookshelf. I also have some storytelling resources where people can go to get ideas for stories. So there's a whole little group of resources that I'd love to offer for free to your listeners, and so I'll make sure that you have that link and, like I said, you can go to the website and check out the speakers program. It'd be a great way to get started, if you're thinking about it.
Janiece:Thank you so much, Katherine. I really do appreciate you being my very first guest. Thank you for having me.