Speaking Advice from SNL

In this week's New Yorker, Tina Fey recounts nine "Lessons from Late Night" - what she learned from working with Lorne Michaels.

Lesson #7 is "Never cut to a closed door." Tina writes:

Lorne said this once in exasperation...the director had cut to a door a moment too soon, before the actor entered, and in that moment Lorne felt we had "lost the audience"...Lorne would have preferred that the camera cut follow the sound of the actor knocking on the door. Which is to say that the sketch should lead the cutting pattern, which is to say that content should dictate style.



From the Green Room: Let your message and your content dictate your speaking style. Most delivery problems stem from a lack of clarity about the content. If you are 100 percent clear on what you are trying to say, your delivery will flow much more naturally and the your audience will stay engaged.

Find Your Green Room Trigger

In this week's New Yorker, Alex Ross writes about Marlboro Music, an elite summer music program at Marlboro college in Vermont "where artists could forget about commerce and escape into a purely musical realm."

The summer seems to give the musicians a formative and utopian musical experience that carries them through the year:

"One musician after another says the same thing: from September to May, when they sit down to play in an antiseptic postwar performing arts center after an hour or two of rehearsal, they close their eyes and think of Marlboro."

Take a moment and think of a memory, an experience, a place where you felt in the zone. It could be a moment from childhood or an experience you had this week; an athletic or artistic or travel experience - just a moment when you were at your best and everything seemed to click.

Think of a word, a mantra, a motion that represents that experience for you and use it each time before you get up to speak.

I call this the Green Room Trigger. For the musicians in Ross's piece, their summer at Marlboro is that trigger - a memory that enables them to feel present and in the zone - even at potentially disheartening and unfulfilling moments.

From the Green Room: Find your Green Room Trigger - a word, mantra or motion that takes you back to a moment in your life where you were fully present. Then use this trigger before you get up to speak. Over time, this exercise will help you get in zone and be at your best each time you speak.