At the Fortune Builders' Ignite event at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, I had the pleasure of hearing from Robert O'Neill, the accepted killer of Osama Bin Ladan. A few movies have been made about him and his team, and he wrote a book on the events of the raid: The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior
.There's a common activity I see on stage that I feel needs to be addressed and nipped off at the ankles.
I call it "The Pace."
This is that habit that many — arguably most — speakers have of pacing back and forth across the stage. Many folks, such as executives, coaches, and sales people can deliver a sense of authority and magnitude even as they pace. It seems like there's nothing really wrong with this, right? As long as the rest of the delivery works?
The ancient Greeks came up with a framework to define how speeches are to be written, consisting of five canons: Inventio, Disposito, Elocutio, Memoria, Actio.