Interview - John Bates

John Bates is an accomplished and engaging speaker who works with high-powered executives and other professional speakers to help them prepare for the stage and enhance their ability to communicate their brilliant ideas successfully based on the science of communication. John’s WHY is to bring out what is awesome inside every high-consciousness leader, so they can have the impact they want to have on the world. He has worked with big companies and organizations such as NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, and many more. In this interview, John is sharing valuable information with you to help you find a great speaker who’s going to perform well on your stage and connect with your audience effectively.

There are two things that make a person successful at speaking: a rarefied experience and a great speech. A lot of event planners look for rarefied experience in speakers but forget about the rest of it. According to John, one without the other is like a restaurant with an amazing view but utterly mediocre food. A newsworthy life experience is one way to get into the speaker world, but it won’t be effective over the years. “If you’ve got a rarefied experience and a great speech, that’s the best of everything.” John also pointed out that the only way to make any kind of impact is if the audience is listening. In order to do that, speakers must have to have a great message and really care about landing that message.

John shares an ancient Greek secret that anybody can use to structure their talks – the Latin words “in medias res” which means “in the middle of things”. Most of us tell a story in chronological order which, for John, is the most boring order to tell the story. This Greek secret suggests that in order for your audience to be interested in your story, you have to start your talk with the most dramatic, exciting, tension-filled part and then go back to the beginning. This way, people are going to lean in and be much more engaged and interested in finding out how the story is going to resolve.

When finding a speaker for an event, John’s advice to event planners is to look at a raw video of their keynote and see how genuinely present and genuinely engaged they are with the audience.  “Is it obvious in their approach that they respect the audience, and they respect the deep responsibility it is to be on stage?” 

Some speakers who have given keynote presentations a number of times think that they don’t need a good speech because they can just wing it. That is not the right approach. John also added that speakers would make more money and change more lives if they had a really well-composed and thoughtfully presented speech.

As a speaker, John takes the stage with a focus on an emotional connection that is necessary for any kind of influential human interaction. “Communicating with humans is not logical, it’s biological.” He talks about insightful vulnerability and emotional credibility which are the two biggest keys to success in communication. Insightful Vulnerability™ is sharing insights into who you are, the messes you have made, and the lessons you learned. Emotional Credibility™ is making a really strong emotional connection with the audience through your stories, rather than validating your professional credibility which is already assumed. John shares that opening events is his highest calling right now because he gets to bring a whole new level of emotional connection and vulnerability, especially in places where there’s a lot more logic and not a whole bunch of emotional intelligence established.

I hope you’ve picked up a lot of valuable information in this amazing interview with John Bates. If you are a professional speaker or an executive leader who is looking to boost your confidence and refine your communication skills to make a difference in the world, visit www.executivespeakingsuccess.com and let John Bates bring out the best in you.