Hollywood Technique: Think it. Feel it. Speak it.

Want to make a deep, emotional impact on your audience? My friend and colleague, Bob Roitblat is a professional speaker and actor.  He lends us another Hollywood technique for better professional speaking. This one is: Think it. Feel it. Speak it.

Think it. Feel it. Speak it.
by Bob Roitblat

Whether you’re an actor, business presenter or professional speaker, you can rehearse gestures. You can rehearse movement. You can rehearse the words that come out of your mouth. But only genuine emotions drive your message. And genuine emotions only come from genuine thoughts.

How do you make this happen on command? You start with real thoughts appropriate for the situation. These lead to feeling real emotions. And those emotions drive your actions and shape the way you speak.

Let’s use a movie scene as an example. You’re cast as the hostage being held at gunpoint during a bank robbery. How do you deliver a realistic performance, even when you’ve never personally been in this situation?

You revive a particular frightening memory from your own past and act your part in the emotional space of the fear you once felt. Let’s say you recall how you felt when, before you knew how to swim, you were thrown into the lake by your mean, older brother. You overlay emotions from your real life to help you express real fear when you’re playing the part of someone fearful.

Rather than avoiding your fear-inducing recollection, you use the painful memory to induce genuine emotions and achieve realism. Moviegoers and audience members won’t know what really caused you to be so fearful. They’ll only see, hear and feel your genuine emotion.

Think it. Feel it. Speak it. also works with positive emotion. Trying to fire up the sales team to blast through their goal? Think of a specific moment when you far exceeded your goal—any goal—and let those feelings influence what you say and how you say it.

Recalling the thoughts that drive your own story is easier. You were there. As long as you’ve put emotional distance and not just time between now and then, you can use your actual thoughts. If it’s still too painful to revisit the beast’s belly, it’s too soon to use that story.

Are you using someone else’s story to make a point, or telling your story through someone else’s eyes? Recall an appropriate, specific event from your past and let it add just the right patina to what you’re saying. Power up your emphatic pauses, too, by filling your mind with well-suited thoughts.

To have the greatest impact on your audience, remember the last time you had a great impact on anyone and Think it, Feel it, Speak it.

Speaker, trainer, consultant Bob Roitblat is also an actor, producer, and director, having appeared in more than 60 movies and television shows. As a speaker, he uses his experience as a competitive sailor to draw parallels between building and leading a winning yacht racing team and building and leading a winning business. He helps audiences develop business skills that are effective whether the seas are calm or storms are raging. He is the founder of Mainsail Consulting Group.

Thank you Bob Roitblat!

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