I developed RealTime Speaking in response to a question by Mary Delaney, an award-winning interior designer who lives in Melbourne, Australia. In late 2005, Mary came up to me after one of my two-day personal growth workshops and asked, “Can you teach me to speak like you do?” Mary said she was very impressed with my ability to speak without notes, nonstop and confidently for eight hours a day, never being at a loss for words, all the while listening keenly to each participant’s question or comment, mixing humor with profundity, silence with speaking. Hers was a Zen master’s question, thrilling and perplexing at the same time. At first, I didn’t know if I could teach her. I said I would think about it. I knew my speaking and listening style was a product of 30 years of study and practice in personal growth and meditation, of intensely seeking to become more self-aware, more present, more consciously connected to my own depth of being, to others, and to the world of which I am a part. I wasn’t sure if I could transmit all of this easily and quickly.

I went home and reflected on how I spoke. As I jotted down a few ideas and principles, I saw that every time I got up to speak, everything came into play, everything was on the line, everything in me stood with me, ready to be revealed. And in that kind of standing up, in that kind of speaking, I also realized how things I never before consciously knew, or felt, or acknowledged, or said — I saw how all this could and often would come roaring into existence to shatter my status quo, my complacency, my certainties and destroy the hidden hiding places of my happy home. I saw in a flash that my life-long quest for self-realization had always been a fierce longing for self-expression! I understood that if I were to teach Mary what I knew about speaking and listening, I’d have to put everything I was, everything I had experienced and learned, all my insights and epiphanies, all my struggles and fears, all my unrealized desires and dreams, all my forbidden fantasies and dark-side haunts, all my secrets — I’d have to put everything into it and on the line. My way of public speaking, which is always surrounded by a silence in which sudden statements come without warning from somewhere deep within, had always been, and continues to be, a dangerous and yet ultimately life-giving game. In my speaking, I was always sharing me, the me I had been, the me I was in that moment, and the me I was becoming through the alchemy of my speaking in that time and place, and with that audience. I was the message. YOU are the message.

I called Mary a couple weeks later. I invited her to come to a weekend personal coaching intensive. She did.

A few months later, I held my first RealTime Speaking workshop in May 2006, in the Carnegie, Australia home of Ida Lyall. Five people attended the one-day workshop. That was the beginning. Since then, in workshops and personal coaching sessions, I have worked with all kinds of people, including politicians and corporate executives, non-profit managers and musicians, educators and entrepreneurs, professional speakers and business coaches, holistic healers and spiritual teachers, authors and escorts. In my “YOU Are the Message!” workshop, I teach people to speak publicly with credibility, courage, and confidence; and how to make an authentic connection with an audience as a prerequisite for real communication. In the “Speak for Effect!” workshop, I teach people to use my simple and wildly effective clarifying process, The Five Ps, and organizing tool, the RTS Flight Plan. Using these, people are able to create clear, concise, compelling content and messages for any number of different kinds of speaking scenarios: keynotes, lectures, presentations, meetings, workshops.

People come from all walks of life for their own reasons to learn RTS principles and practices. Some people come to learn to speak more freely — as well as to craft clear and concise messages — in order to be better able to sell a product, promote their business, to give talks, to stand in front of media microphones. Some want to be better leaders, and they know their leadership credibility comes from their speaking, from who they are, not from their title, position, or PowerPoint presentation. Some want to be better at teaching or running workshops or meetings. Some want to be better fund-raisers. Some want to be able to say hard things to people close to them, things that are risky because they are so nakedly real and true, and which may rock the boat of complacency. Some want to speak their visions and dreams without fear of failure or rejection. There are as many motivations as people. Of course, when one considers that our success in life depends on our ability to speak and communicate well, it is not surprising that people will sooner or later decide they’d better learn to speak with clarity, credibility, and confidence!

But underneath all these reasons is something else, something equally profound. It is spiritual. It is a longing for integrity of being, for wholeness, for authenticity and truth.

In every workshop, people want to reclaim their lost power of self-expression, they want to heal their wounds of self-doubt and restore their creative vitality from the clutches of repressive self-censoring. They quickly agree with me when I tell them that full and free self-expression is our natural state! People are finding the courage and confidence to speak from their hearts. They are healing themselves of criticism-induced and judgment-inflicted wounds to their creative and expressive inner being. They are discovering a practical enlightenment, a freedom to bring their deepest self, their truest longings and dreams and aspirations out into the light of day. No longer afraid to see and be seen, they now stand in their truth, without hiding, without fear of their own authentic light and presence, speaking with authenticity and vulnerability, in full and honest connection with others.

This is a kind of miracle, I think. Finding their true voice and the confidence to speak with that voice brings each to a state of grace, and in so doing they become a blessing to you and me and to our world. We are all the better for this.

(excerpted from RealTime Speaking: YOU Are the Message!)