An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Frame your message from the audience’s point of view. Here’s what I mean.

At some point in our lives, many of us will have to give a talk to a large group of people. What does it take to be a highly effective public speaker? How can you improve your public speaking skills? How can you overcome a fear of speaking in public? What does it take to give a very interesting and engaging public talk? In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker” we are talking to successful and effective public speakers to share insights and stories from their experience. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Carol Lempert.

Carol Lempert started her career as a stage and film actress. She now runs a boutique training and consultancy firm that helps supercharge corporate leader’s executive presence — and their careers — with the performance secrets actors use to light up the screen.

Currently, she and her team run in-person and virtual training programs for Fortune 500 companies on public speaking, selling with stories, personal branding, executive presence, and resiliency.

Fun fact: (shhh, don’t tell her mother) rather than a cup of joe for breakfast, Carol has been known to start her day with a cup of Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

I’m a lower middle-class Jewish kid from the ‘burbs who is the oldest of three. My brother Sheldon would tell you I was a classic bossy big sister. Which just goes to show I took my responsibilities as first born seriously. My dad was a plasterer and later a dry-wall repairman. My mom was, as she likes to say, a housewife.

Music and performing were everything to me as a kid. I loved to sing. I spent every Saturday afternoon watching Shirley Temple and Judy Garland movies. By the time I was nineteen, I was driving all over Metro Detroit performing in dinner theatres and musicals.

Both of my parents were children of immigrants. They enjoyed my performing, but insisted I have, “something to fall back on.” Education was very important to them.

I was the first kid in my family to go to college. I studied psychology, and theatre and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Wayne State University.

After that I worked as a professional actor for many, many years.

Now I teach executives how to increase their executive presence by teaching them the skills actors use to have great stage and screen presence. This, of course, includes helping them write and deliver killer presentations.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

I’m doing what I’m doing today because of my brother Sheldon. One of the skills I teach speakers is to tell stories, so here’s the story.

One day Sheldon phones me up and says, “Sis, get over here. Now!” So, of course I drive right over to his house. When I get there, I discover that his best friend, Lance, is in the washroom throwing up.

I’m like, Call 911.

Turns out Lance had just started a job at one of the big five accounting firms. He had been identified as a high-potential employee — only he didn’t know it.

Seven months into the job he was tapped on the shoulder and told to prepare a presentation about his current project. The audience for his presentation? The big boss. Lance had two weeks’ time.

Lance had never given a presentation in his life. Not even in college. The request sent him into a panic. He called Sheldon for help.

Now, my brother Sheldon had gone into the family business with my dad and was a contractor too. His whole life revolved around fixing things.

When it came to helping Lance, he thought, “I don’t know how to fix a problem like this, but my sister is an actress. She’ll know. A presentation to the big boss must be like going to an audition.”

He was right.

I helped Lance prepare for his presentation and it went better than either of us expected. Lance won a promotion.

That felt great. I did my brother’s friend a favor and I thought that was that.

Then, three months later I get a call from another guy. He tells me he got my name from Lance and asks for my help in getting a promotion too!

That was when I realized my acting skills could help people outside the theatre.

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Of course. It happened recently. Out of the blue I got a call from a woman who had been a participant in one of my Executive Presence workshops eight years ago. She had just been hired as Chief Operating Officer at a large agency and realized her team needed some professional development.

It was lovely reconnecting with her.

During our conversation she stopped me midsentence and said: “Hold on, I have to go get my Carol Lempert book.”

I had no idea what she was talking about — because I haven’t yet published a book.

She came back to the Zoom call and showed me a little black journal with my name on it. Turns out she’s been following me on LinkedIN and receiving my newsletter for years. She created her own little Collected Wisdom of Carol Lempert notebook!

I was of course unbelievably flattered.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

My most embarrassing mistake — which is funny now but wasn’t at the time — was a wardrobe malfunction.

I was invited to speak at an event for three hundred people. The client hired a professional crew to videotape the entire conference.

During my onboarding call with the tech team I learned the backdrop of the stage was going to be blue curtains. My usual ‘go to’ outfit is blue. I knew from my film acting career if I wore a blue pantsuit in front of a blue background, I’d look like a floating head in the video.

So I went out and bought a new outfit.

Since I already have a few pantsuits in my closet, I decided to buy a dress. I went with something I thought looked sophisticated. A wool dress with an asymmetrical neckline.

For your male readers who have never thought about the ins and outs of wearing a wool dress, this is the kind of material that requires a silk slip underneath.

Fast forward.

I’m on stage in the middle of my talk and I hear a snap. The waist band of my slip had given out. I feel it sliding down my hips. I know if I move another inch it will fall to my ankles in front of the entire audience.

At that exact moment, one of the clients comes on stage to shake my hand. This requires me to walk stage left to greet him. I try waddling over, in a vain attempt to keep my slip above my knees, but next thing I know it falls to the ground.

Making matters worse, as I bend over to pick up the slip, my bra strap falls off my shoulder and is now fully visible through the asymmetrical neckline of my new wool sophisticated dress.

All of this captured on video!

Lesson learned: It’s not enough to rehearse your speech, you have to rehearse every aspect of the performance.

As an actor I should have known better.

There is a special rehearsal all theatres do before opening night called a ‘Tech Rehearsal’. This is when we put the technical elements of the play together. The lights, the sound, and of course, the wardrobe.

I now encourage all of my clients to ‘tech’ their talks.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m indebted to a wonderful woman named Louise Cohen. Over twenty-five years ago — not long after I helped my brother’s friend Lance with his work presentation — Louise interviewed me for the role of Job Finding Club Facilitator (JFC).

All JFCs are administered through local colleges and community groups. Louise’s organization had submitted an RFP to host the program, but their funding didn’t come through and they had to withdraw from the bid.

In the meantime, she had secured a spot at the JFC Train-the-Trainer program.

Even though her organization lost the ability to bid on the contract, she’d already paid for the seat at the training. She gifted me this seat. She was hoping her organization would win another contract in the future and I’d be trained and ready to go.

Unfortunately, they never did.

Because of Louise’s generosity I now had this special certification which enabled me to apply as a facilitator at other clubs. I eventually got hired by George Brown College in Toronto.

I taught at George Brown College for four years. I started out facilitating at the Job Finding Club and ended up running sessions on presentations skills for the college’s Job Search Skills program.

Louise and I became friends. We never worked together, but that training gave me a big leg up.

You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging and intimidating. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?

Don’t go it alone. Get a mentor. Join a group like Toastmasters. Or take some classes.

After I left George Brown College to launch my business, I studied with a woman named Judy Carter. She’s published a great book I’d recommend to any budding speaker. It’s called, The Message of You.

The title of her book is quite literal.

Judy says: “Your message is in the first four letters of the word. You can’t spell message without having made a MESS. And it’s the last 3 letters — AGE — that help you distill that message into something meaningful and inspiring for others.”

Your failures are the heart of what is going to inspire an audience. Don’t be daunted by the prospect of failure. Use your failures to propel you forward.

What drives you to get up every day and give your talks? What is the main empowering message that you aim to share with the world?

What drives me is knowing my thoughts and techniques have been helpful to others. Like the woman I told you about earlier who created her own ‘Carol Lempert’ book.

In terms of my message, I help people overcome performance anxiety and increase their executive presence by learning techniques actors use to have great stage and screen presence.

Actors know ‘being present’ is the core of having presence. In fact, the actress Sandra Oh (Killing Eve. Grey’s Anatomy) once said, “…being present is the actor’s main gig.”

The more aware you are of your surroundings, and of other people, the more likely you are to show up as your best self.

In addition to being present, I teach that Executive Presence has three other important dimensions:

  1. What people SEE when they look at you.
  2. What people HEAR when they are in conversation with you.
  3. What people FEEL after they’ve had an interaction with you.

Everyone can learn to get better all of these dimensions.

You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?

I’m building new curriculum all the time. As my client’s needs evolve, my business has to change too.

For example, when the pandemic hit, many companies realized they needed to build organizational resilience, so I created a course called: Building Resilience by Taking Care.

Soon after that other clients realized running meetings over Zoom, or Microsoft Teams, was very different than running them in person. To support them I created a course on how to run effective virtual meetings.

Right now I’m working on a program called: No More Death by PowerPoint. It’s an add on to my program on Executive Presence. Once people improve their presence, they still need to be able to create clear, compelling, and succinct presentations.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Oh! I love telling this story. My biggest “Life Lesson Quote” is from my dad.

I find myself telling a lot of stories about him lately as a way to teach important leadership competencies to clients; especially the competency of shaping team culture by sharing personal values.

My Dad would find it hilarious that I use him to teach a Business School concept. He never attended a leadership development workshop or had a 360-degree review in his life. He was strictly blue collar.

He came home from work every day smelling like a combination of cigarettes, Certs mints, sweat and dry-wall dust. As I mentioned above, he was a contractor. Small jobs in people’s homes. Like renovating a basement or installing crown molding. That kind of thing.

The first time he took me to work with him was the day he shared the life lesson quote.

I was around 10 years old. A lady named Mrs. Greenblatt had a big hole in her living room ceiling because a pipe had burst. My dad (and me!) were going to fix it.

Before we knock on the door to her house my dad puts these pink shower caps over his work boots and makes me do the same. At this point I’m thinking: “This is the best! You get to dress up like a clown when you go to work.” So fun.

Then we unroll the biggest piece of plastic you’ve ever seen onto Mrs. Greenblatt’s living room carpet. After that, in come all of dad’s tools.

At the end of the day, we carry the tools back out to the van, roll up the plastic, take off our clown shoes and drive home.

The next day I hop in the van and ask: “Where are we going today, Daddy?” He replies, “Back to the Greenblatt’s house.”

When we get there, we put the pink shower caps back over our shoes. We roll out the plastic, and we carry all the same HEAVY equipment back into her house.

When we’re finished, I look up at him and I say: Daddy, why didn’t we just leave all of this stuff here if you knew we were going to be coming back? Seems like a lot of extra work for nothing.”

I’ll never forget the look on his face.

He replies, “Carol, Mrs. Greenblatt didn’t just hire us to patch a hole in her ceiling. She hires us to leave her house nicer than we found it. That means every day, not just at the end of the job when we get paid.”

Leave it nicer than you found it. That’s the quote.

I took this to mean, be of service. Go out of your way to make things nice for others. That’s the highest calling in life, no matter what you do for a living.

Ok, thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker?” Please share a story or example for each.

1) Tell Stories

To be a highly effective public speaker you must know how to tell a good story.

Case in point. Your very first question to me today was, “Can you tell us THE STORY of how you grew up?” You asked me that question because you know people love stories.

When I was three years old my favorite bedtime story was The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen. I made my Mom read that story to me hundreds of times. She’d finish the last lines and I’d cry, “Again!”

Ten years later, as a gawky 13-year-old, I clung to the story of The Ugly Duckling.

By then, I wore glasses and braces — when all the other kids were blessed with straight teeth and 20/20 vision. When I looked in the mirror, all I saw was . . . ugly.

The idea I might one day become a beautiful swan got me through most of junior high school.

That’s the power of stories. Their messages give us hope.

I strongly recommend speakers include stories in their presentations because stories:

  • Build common ground with the audience.
  • Validate the speaker’s expertise.
  • Transform a commonly dry topic into one with humor and humanity.
  • Package the message of the speech in a memorable way.

You can open your speech with a story to grab audience attention. Or close your speech with a story to punctuate your main message. Or tell a story to illustrate a point within the body of your talk — but make sure to include some stories!

2) It’s Not About You. It’s About The Audience

My second tip is to frame your message from the audience’s point of view. Here’s what I mean.

Imagine you are a Broadway Producer, and you are promoting a show. What information would you put out to the world?

There are obvious things like the ticket price, the days and start times of the show, and a synopsis of the plot. But what else? What else might the ticket buying public want to know?

This is a question several Broadway shows have not asked themselves. I know because my Mom was in town visiting a few weeks ago and we were looking at different shows to go and see.

Here are some questions we had, but couldn’t find answers to on websites or ticket buying apps:

How long is the show? If you don’t know when the matinee ends, as well as when the matinee starts, how can you make dinner reservations?

The actual address of the building, not just the name of the theatre. If you are a tourist to New York, you won’t know that Second Stage Theatre is located at 305 West 43rd street. How can you order an Uber or a Lyft without an address?

Will there be an intermission? My Mom is 84. At a certain age you need to know when you will be able to visit the washroom.

I share this with your readers because these are the same mistakes, I see presenters make over and over again.

They sit down to write their presentations and only include information from THEIR perspective. They don’t think deeply enough about their audience.

Before you write your next PowerPoint answer the following questions to make sure you are providing information your audience cares about.

What does my audience already know about my topic? Don’t waste time telling them stuff they already know — unless it is to re-interpret the info.

What does my audience NOT know, but they probably don’t care that much about? Again, don’t waste time telling them stuff they won’t be interested in.

What are they curious about? Like my research into buying a ticket to a Broadway show, THIS is the stuff your audience cares about.

What are they worried about? These are the answers your presentation needs to provide.

What do you want them to do after the presentation is over?

A word of caution here. “I want them to understand my topic” isn’t a good enough answer. Once they understand the topic, what should they DO with the information? What decision needs to be made? What are the next steps? Who is responsible?

This preparation will help you create killer presentations. And if you happen to be a Broadway producer, it will help you sell more tickets!

3) Stage Fright Is Selfish

My third tip is a bit provocative. When clients ask me how to overcome stage fright, I share lots of techniques. Things like deep breathing, rehearsal, and visualization.

But the thing that works best is when I tell them their stage fright is selfish.

It signals they are so focused on themselves, and their own reputation, they are ignoring their audience.

Your job as a presenter is to help the people in the room learn something they didn’t know before they got there. Like I said in tip number two, It’s not about you. It’s about them.

You are there to help them.

When you shift your focus off yourself — and onto your audience — you’ll not only lower the level of anxiety you feel, but you’ll also do a better presentation.

4) Recover Gracefully

You will make mistakes. Accept that as a fact.

You’ll forget to say the most important line in your presentation. You’ll drop the clicker. You’ll trip as you enter the stage. Or, like me, your slip will fall off!

None of that will matter if you learn to recover gracefully.

5) Q&A Isn’t a Ping-Pong Match

The best presenters sabotage their success when they are not skilled a handling the question period.

Q&A is an extension of the message. It isn’t a ping-pong game where audiences ‘serve’ questions at a speaker and the speaker ‘hits’ their answer back at their audience trying to score points.

Skilled presenters know how to turn questions into conversation.

The first step is to uncover WHY the person is asking their question in the first place and not just hear the content of the question.

The second step is to be fully present and listen. If you formulate your answer while the audience member is still talking, you will likely miss an important detail.

The most important thing is to take charge of the question period.

Speakers do this when they realize they can ask questions back too. If an audience member’s query is confusing, or too long, or mixes two questions into one, the speaker can ask a question to clarify.

This is what turns dry Q&A into meaningful conversations.

For example, if you are speaking about your vision for the future of your company and someone in the audience asks, “How long will it take to hire fresh talent?” The answer might be, “6 months”

If that’s all you say, you’ve lost the opportunity to create a shared pool of meaning with your audience.

Better to answer the questions and then ask: “What is it about finding fresh talent that is important to you?”

You’ll be surprised what you learn when you start to incorporate this technique.

As you know, many people are terrified of speaking in public. Can you give some of your advice about how to overcome this fear?

Oh, I have a lot to say about stage fright. In addition to what I shared earlier about it being selfish, here are some other techniques I’ve taught to clients.

First, smile.

Smiling is a simple, but powerful way to manage nerves, reduce stress, and look more confident.

Research from Penn State University found a forced smile is equally as effective as a natural one. They also noted that smiling is contagious. When a person smiles, other people will smile back, putting everyone into a more positive mental state. So, when you are feeling jumpy before the big presentation, remember to smile.

Second, breathe.

When anxiety hits, our breathing rate changes. We instinctively start breathing into our upper chest with shallow, rapid breaths. This is the body’s way of preparing itself to deal with real or perceived danger.

By consciously changing your breathing pattern you can interrupt and reverse the symptoms of this Emergency Response.

Instead of breathing into your upper chest with rapid, shallow breaths, deliberately take slow, deep breaths that push oxygen into your lower chest and belly. This kind of breathing will slow the heart rate, decrease blood pressure, soften tight muscles, and create a sense of ease in the body.

Next, harness the power of your mind.

Thoughts are things. What we tell ourselves — what we see in our mind’s eye — becomes our reality.

An Australian psychologist named Alan Richardson performed a remarkable study to prove the power of the visualization. He recruited volunteer students, divided them into three groups and taught them to play basketball. None of them had ever played before.

Group One practiced their free throws with the help of a coach every day for 20 consecutive days.

Group Two was the control group. They did free throws on the first and last days of the study, but they did not engage in any other additional basketball practice.

Group Three also did free throws on day one of the research, but after the first ‘test’ throw, they didn’t touch a basketball again until the end of the study. In between they spent 20 minutes a day visualizing the perfect free throw.

The results?

Group One, the group that practiced every day, improved by 24%. Not surprisingly, Group Two, didn’t improve at all. But Group Three, the group that didn’t practice with a real basketball, but only visualized one, did almost as well as Group One. They improved by 23%.

Our minds are powerful. Use this to your advantage.

Finally, remember, the audience wants you to do well. They don’t want to conclude they have wasted their time. They’re pulling for you to be great — so they can feel great about spending time with you.

You are a person of huge influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I have a talk called: Power Play: Why Everyone Should Take An Acting Class.

Theatre training is incredibly effective in helping people cope with their stage fright, or their boss fright, or their test fright, or their date fright, and even their Imposture Syndrome.

Theatre and Improvisational training hones tools to manage anxiety, as well as provides opportunities to practice deep empathy in a safe environment. When you play a character you step into their shoes.

We’d have a more forgiving world if everyone could learn to step into the shoes of another person and see the world from their perspective.

That’s what actors do and what I wish everyone was more skilled at.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!

What a cool offer. I’d be over the moon to meet and speak with the improviser, comedian, and host Wayne Brady.

First, he’s unbelievably talented and has made me laugh more times than I can count. I’d like to say thank you.

Also, I recently heard him speak on Variety’s Strictly Business podcast. He shared his plans to build a business consulting firm that will teach the tenets of improvisational acting to help coach executives and other leaders.

This marriage of theatre, acting, improv, and business is something I am also passionate about. I’d love to learn more about his plans and if I might be able to help.

So, hellooooo Wayne. If somehow you are reading this — you’ve a fan with common interests!

Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?

The best place is my website:

HERE is a list of my blogs on executive presence and presentation skills that people can read for free.

HERE is where people can sign up for my newsletter.

I’m also on LinkedIn. I post tips on public speaking, storytelling, and resilience every day. Your readers can connect with me HERE

For visual learners you can check out my YouTube page HERE

This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!


Carol Lempert On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recommended Posts