Owning Your Stage

Private Equity Personality

2012-01-23T15:13:00.000-08:00

Sunday January 22, David Rubinstein, the head of Carlyle Group was on Fareed Zakaria’s show Global Public Square on CNN. The Carlyle Group is one of the biggest private equity firms in the world.

The subject was private equity, in the context of the recent flogging of Mitt Romney over his salad days at Bain Capital. Whether you love or hate private equity – understand it or think it’s a mystery – Mr. Rubinstein presented a very cogent argument for why private equity makes sense as a business and even helps middle class people who co-invest alongside Mr. Rubinstein and his partners.

Middle class people like teachers, policeman, and other union members can and do co-invest in private equity funds through their own pension funds. They seek the same superior returns that Carlyle Group is seeking.

But this isn’t a post about private equity. It’s about connecting with people. Mitt Romney can’t do it. David Rubinstein can – but he didn’t – at least not on this show.

Mr. Rubinstein presented a collection of facts that assembled his argument for private equity as a good thing. It was rational, logical and well spoken but in my view it didn’t connect with his audience as well as it could have. It would have been great for a business school audience but that wasn’t who he was speaking to – he was speaking to the world.

He could have connected much better if he had woven his private equity story around his dad, a postal service worker in Baltimore who never made over $8,000 a year. He could have said that his father, a middle class worker, might have been one of his unseen partners at the Carlyle Group through a public worker pension fund. He mentioned his dad toward the end of the interview but too late to help much.

I’ve never met David Rubinstein but he’s a terrific talker. Go on You Tube and watch him talk to business school students at University of Maryland last year. He has a quick wit, great stories and owns his stage. He connects with people, regaling them with family stories about growing up middle class in Baltimore, the only child of two parents who never graduated high school. Humble roots for #139 on the Forbes 400 list.

He could have done that on CNN with Fareed and everyday people might have connected with his point and his person. Instead he came off a bit stiff and a touch Romney-like, delivering facts without feelings. He left his personality home.

Bottom line – when talking to real people about real things, be the real you.

Lead with Dad!

Try Stuff Out

2011-12-31T08:35:00.000-08:00

Politicians like Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann and all the way back to JFK, Nixon, Truman, Lincoln and Washington had what is called a Stump Speech.

It’s a series of talks they give over and over on the road in a campaign. They adjust them as they go in all of the primaries and the election – a little tweak in Iowa; a subtle nuance in New Hampshire; a new flourish in Florida; and an extra pinch of passion in California – but it’s basically the same speech.

They even find signature lines along the way. Romney’s “opportunity society” or Obama’s “pass this bill”.

Try that as a leader. Pick small gatherings and try stuff out. Build your own library of repeatable messages about your company. It makes your life easier, not harder.

Politicians are run ragged on the road – so are you. Don’t be creative. Find messages that work and use them over and over and over.

Listen for Lunch

2011-12-31T08:23:00.000-08:00

If you’re the Big Boss at your place, your HR team is likely to arrange small employee roundtables entitled Lunch with Larry or Dinner with Diana. Big Bosses often go to these occasions prepped to empty their gas tank of platitudes, pronouncements, progress and pitfalls for their business.

Switch things around.

Ask participants to come with their one best idea for the business, the company or the culture. Go round the table and ask each person to articulate their idea. Facilitate discussion. Weave the threads. Only talk if you follow up on something they said.

Ask one of them recap the meeting. Then tell them what you think. If you can, pick out one or two ideas to go after in earnest. Enlist participants in giving their ideas life. If someone's idea doesn't get picked up this time, urge them to keep thinking.

It may be the best Big Boss roundtable they (and you) ever had.

Smooth the Seams

2011-12-31T08:10:00.000-08:00

Watch the best conversationalists in your life or business. Can you see and hear the seams of their conversations or does it flow smoothly based on a mutual sharing of information with their counterparty? Usually they make it look effortless. It's not based on inborn ability. It's based on years of practice.

Too many times in business meetings we ask a question and respond immediately and abruptly with our next point. We either don’t follow up with a question to find out more or we don’t share our side of a similar story, observation, conclusion or experience. It’s like watching ping pong being played on the wrong kind of table.

Smooth the seams by drawing the other person out and then giving back. Follow your own curiosity until you reach a point of more natural transition. Relationships in life and business are built on sharing experiences. It helps us connect with people.

The Tuck Rule

2011-12-31T08:01:00.000-08:00

Justin Tuck is a great defensive end for the New York Giants pro football team who has played with a variety of injuries all season. Before a victory against their rivals, the Jets, a sportswriter speculated that Tuck’s coach may have pulled him aside for a talk to remind him to watch his body language. As a leader, he could bring his teammates down if they see him slumping and looking defeated on the sidelines, no matter how he was feeling.

Justin came out with a different look and energy against the Jets and played a key role in leading his team to a much-needed win. I'm sure part of his success was a result of the improvement in his assorted injuries but part of the team's success was a result of getting their leader back.

Leaders are required to be actors at times. Followers feed off their positive or negative energy, especially in times of crisis. As a great salesman said, “people hear what they see”. Make sure your people see (and hear) what you want them to, especially in the big "must win" games in business.

Women and Men

2011-10-05T05:50:00.000-07:00

One of my clients told me about a previous coaching experience she had in her career. The (male) executive coach sat down in the conference room and said to her: "You've been assigned to me because I'm the coach who understands women".

Wow! My first reaction to that outrageous statement was: "how can any man be that arrogant or that stupid?" I've been married for 25 years and still don't understand women. I share that ignorance with approximately 3.5 billion other men on the planet Earth.

What I do know is when it comes to communication, most people tend to focus on what is different about men and women. After coaching 2500+ people in the business world (roughly 65% men and 35% women), I'd like to take another approach. Let's focus on a few things we have in common as communicators:

We talk too fast. Try to pause after big points; punch key words; breathe between sentences and vary your pace - more brisk for matter-of-fact information and more deliberate for critical information.

We listen too fast. Try to listen quietly with less head nodding; use fewer "right, right, rights or sure, sure, sures"; take a silent breath before you respond and occasionally build your point off what the other person said to build a bridge between their point and yours.

We slump in our seats. Try to sit up toward the front of your chair; take up more real estate at the table by freeing up your elbows and aim for an upright neutral posture while speaking.

We lean too much. Try to keep a level head and when making a key point get your hands and arms off the table or chair to gesture with purpose.

We smile at the wrong times. Try to keep an appropriate "mask for the moment". You don't have to look like a prison guard, but avoid smiling while talking about serious things. It diminshes your gravitas.

We breathe weakly. Try to breathe from the belly up, not the neck up. Lie down on the floor at home, put a big heavy book on your stomach and breathe in and out. You will discover your diapraghm - the "bellows in your belly" that powers your voice.

We don't cut to the chase. Try flipping your message on it's head and lead with your conclusion. Your audience will love you for it. It you meander your way to the point, your audience will want to strangle you.

There are many other things we share as female and male communicators, but I'll stop here. If we focus only on gender-specific weaknesses, we fall into a trap of thinking of only gender-specific strengths. We all face the same hurdles and demons as communicators. As Indira Gandhi once said:

"My theory is that men are no more liberated than women."

Especially when it comes to communicating, she was absolutely right!

P.S. If you want to learn from someone who really knows something about gender linguistics, read Deborah Tannen's work.

Reagan's Planned Effortlessness

2011-05-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

We've had 44 presidents so far. Only one is known as the Great Communicator - Ronald Reagan. Some people think that speakers like Reagan were born with charisma.

Turns out he had a little help, from himself.

Watch and listen to Douglas Brinkley, the historian and author of The Reagan Diaries, describe how Reagan would write down observations, thoughts and even jokes on index cards in long hand. He'd keep them in an album and pull them out periodically to help him prepare for occasions and speeches.

http://www.clicker.com/tv/nightly-news/-these-note-cards-were-seminal-for-ronald-reagan-1750458/

You can do it Reagan's way or you can use a little flip camera to create a personal "greatest hits" video album of stories, jokes, or references on your desktop for easy retrieval.

Like Reagan did using pen to paper technology, you build a mental library of great material - all ready for prime time.

If you think great communicators just wing it - think again!

Marking the Moment

2011-05-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

Tonight President Obama marked a pivotal moment in American history - the killing of Osama Bin Laden - with a magnificently understated yet powerful speech. The speech hit every note perfectly and spoke to the gravity of the announcement without arrogance or celebration.

He connected the victory to the heart-wrenching deaths of 3000 Americans and the empty spaces left at their family dinner tables and inside their loved one's hearts. He honored the service of every brave American who had contributed to the war on terror, many of whose names will never be known. He wove a thread between this event and our national pride as Americans - that we will never bow to tyrants or give up the search for the murderers of our citizens.

This was Barack Obama's signature presidential speech.

Lincoln had the Gettyburg Address. FDR had his Pearl Harbor speech. Reagan had his Challenger speech. Kennedy had his Berlin speech. George W. Bush had his address to Congress after 9/11. To that pantheon we must add this speech, not in terms of soaring rhetoric, but in terms of the historic combination of message, moment and man.

Certain speeches make Presidents seem tall and others seem small. This speech highlighted President Obama's ability to switch gears from the levity of the White House Correspondent's Dinner to the seriousness of tonight. He was able to display great humor and trump his detractors deftly, all the while knowing full well what was afoot back in the Situation Room at the White House.

Congratulations Mr. President. You nailed this speech and delivered the message directly into the camera - to all of us.

Connecting with Emotion

2011-01-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

We can learn many lessons from the Tragedy in Tucson. I won't try to enumerate them here. I will leave that to others more eloquent than I and simply join in mourning the loss of so many cherished lives and hopes and dreams.

President Obama's talk at the Arizona memorial service for the shooting victims of this horrific rampage has been widely hailed as "pitch perfect" by pundits and politicians across the spectrum of popular opinion. It worked for a lot of reasons. Above all, I think it worked because the President connected emotionally with the audience at the University of Arizona and with all of us watching on television.

Watch the speech on You Tube. Throughout he personalizes the victims as real people. Then, at 25:30 into the speech, he speaks of Christina, the lovely 9-year old girl who lost her life. For one of the rare times in his presidency, he spoke directly from his heart to our hearts, as a father first, then as a President. You could see the President catch himself, almost as if the enormity of the loss of that extraordinary young life hit him for the first time, as the father of his own 9-year old girl. It was a moment of genuine emotion we've rarely seen him share in public.

He did an excellent job in his speech and properly honored the dead with his measured and magnificent message. His tone was reverent, respectful and restrained.

There was another example of extraordinary communication yesterday on the evening news with Brian Williams of NBC.

It was a brief interview with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. She described visiting her friend, Congresswoman Giffords, in the hospital. She paints a picture for us of the miraculous moment Gabby Giffords opened her eyes for the first time since the shooting.

Go watch and listen to Senator Gillibrand in the link below.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#41065211

This is what I call "all-in speaking". When someone is mentally, physically and emotionally connected with their message to the point where you feel it's coming from their soul. Obviously she was amped up from relating a personal and tremendously emotional experience with a friend she loves who has been enduring a trip to hell and back.

The moment is instructive from a communication perspective. This was Kirsten Gillibrand at her absolute best as a communicator. She owned her stage, her message and herself.

Could she be this good in other communication situations? Absolutely! If she chooses to do so. The same as the rest of us.

It's not about skill - it's about choices. Yesterday Senator Gillibrand did it without trying. Her thoughts just poured out of her. Yet she could also achieve the same emotional connection with the audience by design.

Commit to your message. Own it. If you speak as President Obama and Senator Gillibrand did (from your head, heart and gut), you will connect with any audience, anytime, anywhere, on anything. Take a look and see what you think.

God didn't make the President and the Senator good communicators. They had to earn it. You can too.

Lessons of 2010

2011-01-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

Here are a few things I learned from working with my clients this past year. Maybe they can be of some use to you as you reflect on your own communication style in 2011.

CEOs get nervous. Even more than us since they perceive the fall if they fail as longer and harder than ours. They stop taking risks as speakers - the exact opposite of what they need. Many settle for boring and safe vs. daring and dangerous. I encourage them to take choreographed risks on stage, relax and live a little.
Screw the slides - before they screw you. I see executives agonize over how to speak to slides created by someone else. Create arresting visual formats for (10 or less) slides, then make the information fit the design - not vice versa. If all you do is plow through a 30-slide data dump in front of an auditorium, you've failed yourself and your audience.
Practice with peers. There's no better way to hone your client skills than to practice in front of colleagues and get support, feedback and suggestions. Don't just talk about clients. Role play with colleagues as the clients. You're among really smart people who do what you do. Share client stories, tips, techniques and make each other better.
Master your core stories. There are probably half a dozen core stories that explain your business. First, identify them (philosophy, process, structure, products, brands are all candidates as core stories). Then write them out in 500 words. Then practice out loud till they become second nature. Then have a long and short version - an electric and acoustic version. Then take them on the road and try them out on clients. It builds a masterful mental IPod.
Videotape the "other" you. If you are quiet and reserved, videotape your "inner evangelist" talking about a passion of yours. If loud and expressive, videotape your "inner librarian" whispering in a more understated style about something important. You get to see the other side of your communication self and expand both your verbal and nonverbal versatility.
Connect with your people. Grab a few free minutes and bring someone who works for you into the office and try to draw them out. Focus on finding out as much as you can about how their job is going and how they're doing. You become a better questioner and listener. They will leave feeling you heard and understood them. We all spend too much time talking, when we shoud be listening.

Much more to come in 2011. As you take whatever stage you will communicate from this year, remember my motivational mantra: If You Believe It, You Will Be It.

Project Your Personality

2010-11-30T17:19:00.000-08:00

There's an American football coach by the name of Eric Mangini. He used to coach the New York Jets a few years ago and was fired after a disappointing season. Some of his players called him the Penguin - perhaps referring to his round belly and frosty demeanor. The New York sports press lambasted him regularly for his terse answers and lack of any discernible personality as the team's performance inexorably deteriorated. Many folks thought he was mimicking the equally frosty demeanor of his mentor, a Super Bowl winning coach named Bill Belichick.

This year Mangini came back to New York as coach of the Cleveland Browns to play his old team, the Jets. He made the rounds of all the radio and TV media outlets and did the requisite number of interviews in the week leading up to the game. Low and behold, a different Eric Mangini emerged. He was expansive, expressive, open and approachable.

Many observers attributed the change to his maturation and added experience as a head coach and losing 70 pounds, plus being off the hot seat in the New York . All true. Cleveland has tough winters. New York has tough sports writers.

A funny thing happened though. I listened to three separate interviews and heard him use the same words in each one. I realized a big part of the change was his decision to be different by design. It wasn't that he didn't have a personality in his previous New York incarnation. He simply chose not to show it - perhaps in some vain attempt to project professional power by withholding any clue to the warm engaging person behind the icy and inscrutable facade.

What can we learn from this?

Life's way too short to waste time showing the world a facade. When you are speaking to any kind of audience, you may succeed or fail - just do it as yourself. Not some phoney baloney projection of what you think people want to see or the standard version of what your role requires. Be the real you. A) the world will like you; and B) if they like you, they will listen better.

There's this crazy notion that there are certain "born speaker" people in the world who possess charisma and the rest of us are destined for dullness. I say nonsense!

To me, charisma is all about connecting with your audience and being totally authentic in front of strangers. If you can do that in front of any audience large or small, you got charisma, baby!

So I respectfully submit to you the advice I gave in the very first post in this blog almost two years ago - Unleash the Real You! I've coached over 2000 people now on videotape. When the people I coach decide to switch from their "presentation" selves to their "real" selves; it's pure magic. Try it. We'll love you for it and you won't waste precious energy putting on a false face.

P.S. If Coach Mangini gets fired in Cleveland after the season (very likely) please note two things: 1) He should be more comfortable communicating as his real self for the rest of his life. 2) His old mentor, Bill Belichick, got started on his Super Bowl-winning run in New England after getting unceremoniously fired as the head coach in Cleveland.

Vault Your Vernacular

2010-06-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

Do you have a vault?

Before you answer - what do I mean by a vault?

I mean a shared electronic repository for memorable words, phrases, examples, stories, analogies or anecdotes that your salespeople use when talking to clients about your business and your firm. You have people who go into client meetings and tell killer stories, use sticky examples and analogies, give colorful anecdotes and speak with memorable words and phrases.

The sad part - most of it gets lost in the ozone. They only get shared and re-used within small circles of people inside the firm who have access to that person. All these spoken words are part of the fabric of your culture and corporate vernacular. They need to be preserved. Not simply as oral history, but as shared tools to help people connect with clients and burnish the brand.

I know there are corporate intranets with terabytes of shared information about your company and your business to educate employees. Most of it is about as exciting as an Excel tutorial.

First Step - Create a vault. It should be electronic and able to capture audio, video and text for future reuse.

Second Step - Appoint a vault keeper. Someone with passion for capturing and sharing information and the judgment to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Third Step - Create a secure user interface. It should be a cool webpage where your people can easily upload text, video or audio to the vault.

Fourth Step - Market it. Encourage everyone in your firm who touches clients to upload their best stuff into the vault. They can record it on audio or video or simply send it in as text.

Fifth Step - Share it. Make it securely available to client-facing people any way possible - Webcast, Podcast, I-Phone, I-Pad, NetBook, Blackberry or SmartPhone.

You will give people weapons to re-stock their verbal arsenal and you will make each other better. Your clients will hear consistent messages and your firm's vernacular will become richer, deeper and way more vivid and memorable than it is now.

Get past all the 45 minute data dumps and boring product teach-ins and '"stiff-in-the-studio" informational webcasts. This is better. It's cheap, fast and global.

A couple of caveats about the vault before you start. Make it quick and digestible. Make deposits and withdrawls easy and in this age of techno razzle dazzle - don't make it boring.

Save a few bucks and tap the brains on board. In case you forgot, you tend to hire really smart people.

You Gotta Believe

2010-06-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

Managers transmit information. Leaders transmit belief.

Recently we saw two examples of leaders trying to transmit belief to the American people on TV.

The first was a 60-second BP commercial by its Chairman, Tony Hayward, apologizing on behalf of his company for the Gulf oil spill and pledging to set things right. The second was a 17-minute talk by President Obama from the Oval Office explaining the status of the cleanup efforts and the government's plan to design a strategy to restore the Gulf region.

Normally if you went and compared their skills at persuasive communication, President Obama wins in a walk because he has a well-deserved reputation as a charismatic speaker, whereas Mr. Hayward has a well-deserved reputation as a gaffe machine who makes Joe Biden seem a model of decorum and temperance.

In my view though, both failed.

They both read their comments off a teleprompter and lost any chance at transmitting belief and connecting with the American people on an emotional level. They both hit on how many feet of boom have been laid out, how many ships deployed, how many thousands of volunteers and troops on the ground - a list of facts best recited by someone below their pay grade.

President Obama, perhaps feeling the tug of his lawyer/college professor DNA, gave us a teach-in on the Gulf Oil Spill, repeating information we've been bombarded with 24/7 on cable TV. He sounded like someone getting through a committee update, not a leader transmitting belief and confidence to a severely wounded region and its bewildered, abused and angry citizenry.

Tony Hayward could have been reading from a Hallmark card he picked up at a convenience store for all the impact it had. He had no visceral connection with his words; no emotional intent in his delivery; and a flat lifeless tone that left viewers unconvinced, uninspired and unimpressed.

One might say: "Wait a minute, Reagan used a teleprompter." Quite true, but with a huge difference.

Let's face it, the man knew his way around a camera. Reagan's talk from the Oval Office on the day of the Challenger disaster was a masterpiece of messaging and a model of a leader transmitting belief using a teleprompter. He had two distinct advantages - a terrific speeechwriter, Peggy Noonan, who understood how to combine lean language with soaring imagery, and a lifetime in front of the camera making people believe.

So what's a President or CEO to do? Trash the teleprompters? Fire the speechwriters? Go watch sail boat races or play golf?

No, No, and (duh) No!

They can and should find opportunities to connect on camera or in person with nothing at all. No notes; no teleprompter; no slide deck; no written speech. Just a mental outline of their story and their preparation, confidence and wits.

If it's a video message like a webcast to the people in their company or in the country, make it short. Reagan's Challenger talk was 4:27. Kennedy's famous Ich Bein Ein Berliner speech was 4:42. The Gettysburg Address was 270 words and Martin Luther King's iconic I Have A Dream speech was a little over 10 minutes.

If it's a Hook and Hammer for a Town Hall, do three minutes on either side of the duller-than-dishwater details and farm that part out to some person in your organization who's really good at it. The audience will have no problem recognizing you as the true leader and will see the real you, not the phoney-baloney you, reading bare bullets off a boring slide.

Sure, it's scary. Sure, you might make a mistake or flub a line or make a gaffe. As evidenced in the Obama and Hayward examples though; you can have all the money, power, and technology and even read the darn thing - and still fail.

So as a CEO, what have you got to lose?

You do TV interviews all the time with no notes. You sit on all-star global panels with no notes. You probably did your last wedding toast with no notes. Why not go down to your in-house TV studio if you have one. Fire up the camera. Look into that little red light and just talk. Do it several times until you're convinced that you didn't embarass yourself and then let it fly.

Your colleagues and employees may be thrilled that you pushed past all the boilerplate B.S. and finally talked to them as adults.

Your alternative is to wait until you're playing pinochle out on the front porch at the assisted living facility and you turn to your card buddies and say:

"This is what I would have said back when I was chairman of the board - if it wasn't for those damned lawyers".

Take a shot!

Geithner Gloms Gregory

2010-04-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

The dictionary defines the word glom as "to grab hold of".

That is exactly what happened today on Meet the Press. Secretary Geithner grabbed hold of his interview in a way he hadn't before, even as recently as five months ago.

Forget about whether you're a Democrat or Republican for a moment. I simply offer up Secretary Geithner's growth as a public figure on television as an example of what each of us can accomplish as communicators when we focus on 3 key areas: Message, Mindset and Mechanics.

To Secretary Geithner: You have made tremendous progress in my opinion. Keep up the good work and keep owning your stage.

First, on Message...

Gregory focuses his first question on "too big to fail" and financial reform. Twice he interrupts Geithner and tries to take him off message by saying "but what if they need more money?" and "you'll have to define derivatives." He is trying to get Geithner to dance to his tune - the Meet the Press Polka.

This time though, the Secretary doesn't dance. He keeps coming back to his central theme that "we are going to accomplish two things..." Even after he gives a definition of derivatives and Gregory tries to move on, he interrupts him and brings him back to finish his message "I want to get back to the central thing..." That's where the interview turned. Secretary Geithner signaled calmly yet strongly to Gregory - this is my dance pal, not yours!

Second, on Mindset...

I don't know if the Secretary worked with a coach to prep for this interview, but it seemed that his mindset shifted from his Meet the Press appearance last March.

This time Secretary Geithner looked like an athlete who decided to stop trying so hard. He seemed more relaxed in his approach, slower in his pace and calmer in his presence. He seemed less like a harried executive trying to deflect and defend and much more like a polished lawyer laying out a strong case.

I believe he came in today with the mindset that he would own this stage - and he did. He came to David's MTP home court and made him play Geithner's Game, not Gregory's Game.

Third, on Mechanics...

Take a look at today's MTP clip and one from March 29, 2009.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29943746/

He sits in a neutral upright position vs. hunching over
He speaks slowly and rushes fewer words and phrases
His face looks relaxed and his brow looks less furrowed
He smiles on occasion and his demeanor is much calmer
His head position is much more level, balanced and steady
He uses his lower register to project more vocal strength
He is wearing a standard shirt collar vs. a spread collar

Bottom Line...

Some might argue that Secretary Geithner has simply improved with experience, both in his job at Treasury and in TV interviews. Undoubtedly that's true. Only the Secretary knows how much planning, preparation and deliberate practice he put into this TV appearance or any of the changes I mentioned above.

I'm betting he's put a fair amount of work into these changes. I believe his progress provides a model for all of us from three perspectives related to changing our speaking style:

Change is a process, not a transaction
Change is a matter of choice, not skill
Change helps us play to our strengths

So if you are a CEO, executive, leader, salesperson or regular Jane or Joe, don't fall into thinking that some people are just naturally good at the skill and the rest of us are screwed. Speaking in any kind of a public or private setting is a learned skill. How good or bad we are at utilizing this skill is up to us.

Thanks, Mr. Secretary. You were terrific today.

P.S. Now just stop rushing your saying of the word derivatives. Based on recent news events, you are going to be using it quite often in the coming days.

Practice in Place

2010-02-28T20:28:00.000-08:00

Four years ago, a Fortune senior editor named Geoff Colvin wrote an article called "What It Takes to be Great". It spoke about research supporting the notion of deliberate practice playing a key role in the success of people in sports, business and other professions. His new book is "Talent is Overrated".

I highly recommend you get a copy and pass it around the office. In our jobs, we can get trapped into continuous performance with occasional injections of training interspersed at various points in our careers.

Many think we improve in our careers through apprenticeship, experience, hard work, mentoring, luck and the most prevalent of all learning tools - osmosis. All true. The key though to getting a lot better at your life's work, according to Colvin and the research, is deliberate practice.

I wholeheartedly agree.

What many of us lack in our work lives is a process of deliberate practice to continually raise the level of our game. We are like pitchers who don't warm up in the bullpen or singers who don't rehearse with the band. Performance suffers.

I coach people who talk to clients all the time - to inform, to persuade, or to sell. Rarely do they admit to doing a dress rehearsal before a pitch or role playing client Q&A before a meeting or doing their update to the boss with a colleague first.

Question: Why Not? Answer: No Time! Solution: Make Time!

Easier said than done of course - especially when you're already working too much, sleeping too little, eating too poorly and not finding enough time for the important things in life. So, what can a busy executive or salesperson or banker do to squeeze in some practice?

First off, who can play clients better than us? We see them all the time. Second, when we deliberately practice we discover better ways to frame our case, make a point, or counter an objection. Third, we hear how we verbalize thoughts before the client hears them. In group practice, we may say "God, don't ever say that with this client" or "that was a killer point - make sure you bring that in".

A few suggestions (and remember - everyone is your client - even your boss):

Buy a $20 tape recorder and practice in front of a mirror. Start with 15 minutes twice a week. Throw yourself questions and tape your answers. Tape yourself telling key stories about your business. Tape yourself pitching a prospect. Tape yourself doing introductions at a client dinner. Tape yourself giving an update to an executive committee. Try them over and over until they're ready. Then put them in your mental I-Pod until needed. You will build up an amazing library.

Make business meetings your practice lab. Try out new things there like being a more patient listener; handling a tough question from a boss; being more assertive; trying out new types of questions; projecting more physical or vocal presence; or occasionally taking over the room with a compelling story for two minutes - just to see what that feels like. Let a colleague know what you're doing and ask them for feedback afterwards. You'll get better, quicker.

Grab pizza with colleagues and take over a conference room. Assign client and sales roles to each other and practice the most difficult and challenging questions a client could throw at you - either for a specific meeting or just in general. Or use the session to pitch each other ideas or products to get a feel for how the client might respond to it. You'll make each other better.

Practice phone calls on the phone. If you've got a big call coming up with a client, write a few notes and then speak it to your voicemail. Listen back and then try again. How many times do you have to retape your out of office message to tell people you're at the beach? If you're like the rest of us at least 2 or 3. It may take a few extra minutes, but practice pays off with a smoother call. You'll find your best voice.

Dress rehearse the big stuff. It could be a bake-off for a deal or a Town Hall or a TV interview or a keynote address or an update to the executive team or the board. If it's a team pitch, rehearse with the team. If it's a talk or a speech, rehearse in the actual hall or a close facsimile. If it's a TV interview, get in front of a camera for a mock interview to get used to the environment. Eliminate as much surprise as possible.

We make time in life for what we think is important. Make deliberate practice important! Try to make it organic to your business life. When you do, the real time result for your client or your audience will be "planned effortlessness." You will make it look easy and they'll never see all the practice.

There is one more thing you can do. Hire a Coach! That helps you do "informed" deliberate practice - which is even better.

If you want to truly make a deliberate investment in your business, I know this wonderful fellow named Andy....

Listen, Learn, Lead

2010-01-24T08:51:00.000-08:00

Many successful senior executives approach difficult challenges by using a process called Listen, Learn, Lead. They get in conversations with key players; ask a ton of questions; learn the critical issues facing the business; and then start to lead that business and those players down a new road to success.

In the process, they build up their knowledge base, solidify critical relationships and display credibility because their solutions are grounded in fact and experience rather than presumptions and projections. One might argue that President Obama used the Listen, Learn, Lead approach leading up to the latest troop deployments in Afghanistan. Dick Cheney characterized it as dithering yet his favorite general David Petraeus called the process thorough and necessary.

Which brings me to the heathcare debate and the President's agenda post the recent Massachusetts Massacre. Many are starting to write his political obituary as an ineffective one-term president. That's probably premature. After all, Reagan, Carter and Clinton each had similar job approval ratings at the end of their first year in office. Reagan and Clinton managed to right their ships and sail off to second terms, Reagan in an historic landside. Carter, oh well...

President Obama is now getting advice from all and sundry on how to right his ship. Go pick fights with Wall Street because everybody hates those guys anyway. Ram healthcare through before Scott Brown can park his pickup truck in the Senate garage. Dump healthcare entirely and focus on jobs and the economy.

How about this Mr. President? Try: Listen, Learn, Lead again.

First, to free up some of your time, tell Joe Biden that his sole assignment between now and November is helping businesses create jobs and lower the unemployment rate. Give Joltin' Joe an 8.5% target unemployment number and a blank check to broker fast-track deals with Congress on tax cuts and targeted incentives for business to wake up the economic engine in this country. He'll love the gig and he might make some headway while you hit the road again.

Then, go throw some Tea Parties of your own around the country. Not in all 52 states but three to five in each region of the country between now and Opening Day of the baseball season. Just don't serve tea. Maybe Coke, Pepsi, Burgers and Brats instead. Make it more a talker and tail-gater at the VFW Hall rather than testimonials and tea at the Junior League. No booze. Arguing healthcare and jobs sober is wild enough.

Make each session three hours long for an audience of 150 people with a meet and greet before and a long goodbye and some gladhanding afterwards. Don't pre-select the audience. Make it some kind of fair lottery process to get a ticket and make sure that the screening process to get into the hall is as stringent as possible so we don't have a repeat of some of the security snafus of recent memory. If the Salahis show up, tell them the party's over.

Avoid making it a politically correct audience or an audience of ringers. Let your presence (and the Secret Service) handle the screamers and yellers. Chances are you will end up with strong opinions and a few loud voices, but you may end up with a respectful group of concerned Americans willing to talk.

Bring a prominent Republican and Democrat from each state along with you as your partners. Make the setting in the round with the three of you on stools in the middle. Then you and your partners play facilitator and draw out the audience. Avoid the politician's pattern of making a long self-serving statement followed by a leading question. Try playing reporter for a change.

Neither you nor your partners can advocate for any agenda in the session. Your sole jobs are to listen and learn and walk away with a new or renewed understanding of the voice of the people. Your pledge to the participants at the end of each session is that you and your partners are going to go back to Washington and work on solutions - together. You seal the promise with a handshake at every session.

I know you probably think your administration has been there and done that on this sort of approach, but this time it's different. You and your administration are being viewed broadly now as out of touch. In response you have sent out a legion of fairly ineffective communicators on your team to talk at us - not with us. You are pushing us, not persuading us. You are advocating with agendas, not convincing with arguments. You are leading, without listening.

As a result, an adminstration that was swept into office on a wave of populist change (or so it seemed) is now portrayed as a bunch of paternalistic Ivy League elitists who wouldn't know a boilermaker from a Beaujolais.

I know this may all sound hokey to you but give it a try. In the time it takes Joe Torre to see what kind of team he has on the L.A. Dodgers for the upcoming season, you and your partners from both parties can get a fresh read on where the country's head is on the key issues. You will also call the opposition's bluff by getting them to put some skin into your game for a while.

A few caveats if you take up this challenge:

Televise the entire tour on CSPAN
Drop saying I and My on tour - try using We and Our
You and your partners can only question and listen
Except for Secret Service protection, no entourage
Go on TV and report what you all learned
Attack the (low-hanging fruit) issues you heard on tour
Draft a joint legislative agenda and pursue it together

Most of your advisors would say this Listen, Learn, Lead approach is a waste of time or mere window dressing. Yet, you were elected with a promise to try to change the political dynamic in this country - to get beyond partisan rancor and bring us together. In spite of that pledge, we are mired even deeper in the Advocacy Abyss and drowning in discord.

In business, people of all political stripes find ways to solve incredibly difficult problems in part because they are all committed to a shared purpose - generating profit. In politics, we appear unable (at least at this point in our history) to solve problems together because we have lost the commonality of our cause. We have lost our ability to talk together, to reason together, and to work together. Yet in business, we can. In crises, we can. In communities, we can.

Why not stop being the leader of the people for a few weeks, eat a slice of humble pie and return to being a servant of the people. If you listen and learn, you will lead more effectively because there's a better chance we'll follow you.

Have faith in us. We're the ones who put you in the office you now hold. It's not about you. It's never been about you. It's about us - all of us together. You said it yourself - that what faces us are not Republican or Democrat problems, or liberal or conservative problems - they are American problems.

At tour's end we can all join in a chorus of Yes We Can - and mean it this time.

Transforming Town Halls

2010-01-14T18:18:00.000-08:00

Every year at this time leaders across the world engage in an annual ritual - the Employee Town Hall. For leaders who like doing these talks, it can still be an obligatory chore. For leaders who hate them, it's root canal without novocaine.

If you manage a large organization, the Town Hall may be the only chance all year for some of your people to hear you and interact with you. Why waste the opportunity by doing it the same old way everyone else does it.

Done well, Town Halls make memories with messages that stick. My old boss was so good at them, people would quote his lines back to me a decade later. Detail divers hated them because he didn't sate their need for numbers, charts and graphs. The rank and file loved them because they had an open forum and an empathetic ear for their concerns and needs. He talked with them, not at them. People notice the difference.

Done poorly, employees can't remember the leader's lines an hour later. The leader spends a week or two fretting about every bullet point in their 30-slide data dump and they forget that a Town Hall is not merely an opportunity to transfer information. It's an opportunity to transfer belief. Belief that the goals are the right goals; that the strategy is well-designed and achievable; that the resources are sufficient for success; that the leader cares about all the people in the room; and that management knows what the hell they're doing.

A few tips for leaders to lessen the pain and increase the gain.

Send an email invite with what you'd like to cover
Let them email in questions with no limitations
Answer them as best you can in the Town Hall - and after
Before the day, talk to people at every level to get a pulse
Use ten slides or less. Slides are a crutch. Less is more
Make slides clean and visual - pictures usually beat words
Don't put directs in the front row. It makes you look weak
Start by standing front row center with nothing but a smile
Give a 3-minute 'hook' and state your intent for the day
Go through slides and talk to the meaning of each slide
End by standing front row center to take questions
End with a 3-minute 'hammer' to nail down your theme

A few last thoughts:

Don't make promises you can't keep

Start with realism - end with optimism

Don't hide ugly truths people need to hear

Leaders speak in broad bold themes, not details

Press the flesh - it makes a difference when you do

Rehearse in the actual venue - make it your home court

Praise your people - they're a big reason you have the job

No podium. Stand in front - no notes - just a mike and clicker

Make your Town Hall leader mantra "how can I work the room?"

Don't present - talk and connect. Don't just power through slides

You may not agree with this, but give it a whirl. What you lose is a boring brain dump. What you gain is new connectivity with the people who make you great.

Being Nice

2009-12-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

Today I typed “being nice” into Google and got a page of hits starting with the phrase “being nice gets you nowhere”.

Not very encouraging in a season that features goodness and giving.

I had just coached a young investment banker and remarked to the group that he exuded niceness. Hearing the comment, his colleagues around the table echoed my sentiments saying he was genuinely nice all the time. Not an easy thing to do in the cynical world of high finance.

Then I heard General Stanley McChrystal being interviewed by Charlie Rose on the radio. He was talking about his dad and how he never saw or heard him do a mean thing during his whole childhood. Not an easy thing to do since his dad was an Army man, used to ordering people around.

Then I thought about the pace of our busy lives and how hard it is to be genuinely nice to people all the time. We are always rushing to catch a bus or a cab or a movie or a sale, or to be at a meeting or an interview, or to shop and make dinner, or to answer an email or some other electronic poke or touch.

We always seem to be on the verge of completely losing our sense of calm and manners. As someone who has cursed traffic and standing in lines his whole life, I know whereof I speak. I know I’m not alone. I see plenty of people cursing in their cars and rolling their eyes in the queue just like me.

In this season of magic and wonder when bears dance in tutus on a grand stage at Radio City and lovers gaze at full moons while twirling around Wollman Rink and families put aside their gripes and griefs to share each other’s annual company, let’s remember to be nice – to ourselves and to each other.

You can be nice to yourself. Remind yourself that it was a very tough year, but you survived. Remind yourself that life knocked you down, but you got back up. Remind yourself that you never stopped trying even when you were crying. Pat yourself on the back for never losing faith and be nice to the face in the mirror. It needs some TLC. It got no help from the stimulus package.

You can be nice to the people closest to you. Be nice to the ones who had your back when no one else did. Be nice to the ones who made you great and never got enough credit. Be nice to the ones who gave you strength when you had doubt. Be nice to the ones who gave you hugs when you needed them more than money. Be nice to the ones who gave you love even when you were a jerk.

You can be nice to a stranger - even by opening a door to let someone through or with the wave of the hand to let someone change lanes or with a heartfelt hello or a gracious goodbye.

Our economy can certainly use a massive injection of jobs and renewed confidence and optimism. Our IM/Twitter/TMZ culture could also use a massive injection of manners and courtesy.

Maybe if we start really small now, someday a little kid will type “being nice” into Google 22.0 and the first page will be filled with hits starting with the phrase “being nice gets you everywhere”.

Food for Feedback

2009-11-30T11:08:00.000-08:00

Hopefully you and your boss will get through the dreaded formal review process at your company with your self esteem intact and your temper untested. Here's some advice for next year and the ongoing feedback process that should make every formal review discussion an easy one. You can get a P.H.D. in feedback, but a few simple reminders can help keep you on track all year. There are dozens of tips I know I've left off the lists, so feel free to add your own.

Getting Feedback An old adage – “You don’t ask, you don’t get.” If a boss doesn’t give feedback, shame on them. If you don’t ask for it, shame on you.

Evaluate Yourself – think about your own view first
Pick Your Spots – know when and where to ask each person
Make It Matter – don’t ask on everything, pick key stuff
Get Specific – ask what worked and what to work on
Offer Thanks – courtesy goes a long way in business

Giving Feedback Follow a time honored HR tip – “Feedback should be about a person’s performance or behavior, not about them as a person”. Respect counts.

Be Prepared – avoid ‘shoot from the lip’ feedback
Be Specific – vague feedback gives you nothing to work on
Ditch the Dump Truck – people can change 1 thing, not 12
Focus on Facts – make it personal and you lose credibility
Watch Your Language – substitute “and” for “but”
Refuse to Dance – don’t return emotion with emotion

Receiving Feedback Follow Ken Blanchard’s advice – “Feedback is the breakfast of champions”. Great performers use feedback to raise the level of their game.

Open Your Mind – don’t get stuck in preconceptions
Listen Well – don’t interrupt and play it back for clarity
Write It Down After – what’s the use if you can’t remember
Gauge Its Relevance – to yourself and your role
Do Something With It – if you don’t apply it, don’t ask again

Busy leaders need to constantly challenge themselves to communicate with their people and let them know where they stand. The formal twice-yearly discussion milestones aren't enough and feedback by osmosis doesn't cut it. People need to know when they hit or miss the mark and how they can replicate what's working and work on what's not. Often it's too easy for all of us to get wrapped up in the next deal or transaction and not make time to talk to the people who make us great.

That includes our loved ones back at the ranch. They need it too.

For phone feedback to loved ones, a little Stevie Wonder tip. Start the discussion with "I just called to say I love you..."

Sully and Hillary

2009-10-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

We all remember TV replays of the Miracle on the Hudson flight and the air traffic controller asking Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger "Do you want to divert to Teterboro?"

We probably expected something like, "That's no longer possible, we don't have enough time." Instead we heard a very busy man say a Clint Eastwood-like, "We'll be in the Hudson."

Even in subsequent interviews in the weeks and months following the accident, he didn't exactly open up and dish like Joe Biden or Joy Behar. He remained a man of few words and held his story and thoughts close to the vest.

Now that he's on a tour for his new book, Highest Duty, Captain Sullenberger is starting to open up and take us behind the curtain of what was going on in his head and in the cabin that fateful day.

I mention this to demonstrate a few key points for business leaders going on TV. Go to pbs.org and type sullenberger interview into the search box - then click on the first selection featuring Judy Woodruff - then click on streaming video.

Notice how he sits upright with his back off the chair and his feet firmly planted. Notice how he never rushes, stays calm, gives thoughtful answers and subtly punches words to give his voice life and variety. This is pilot presence in sales mode. He's in a strange new role, yet functions flawlessly.

In the interview, he talks about being prepared. I'll bet you $100 right now that Old Sully didn't just wing the interview (pun intended). He probably practiced and laid out a game plan to execute. He probably even had a pre-interview checklist.

A key lesson for executives going on TV.

Never, never, never go on the tube without being prepared and without having some kind of a game plan to execute.

Sully nailed it - you can too!

Now to the Secretary of State. I was never a big Hillary fan, but like many I've gained a lot of respect for her in her new role. She has won over many a critic on both sides of the aisle and seems to have adapted to her role extremely well - in fact, phenomenally well.

In an interview from Berlin this week on Charlie Rose, we witnessed a masterful communicator at the absolute top of her game. Go to charlierose.com and type Hillary into the search box and take a look at her November 9th appearance. The interview starts after a brief introduction piece.

Witness her calm, thoughtful demeanor and unflappable command of the subject matter as Charlie moves from question to question. She seems physically comfortable in her chair yet sits upright with a level head and a steady strong voice that oozes executive 'gravitas'.

Two more lessons for executives going on TV.

First, if possible, pick an interview format like one of these two where you can give thoughtful answers and develop a few key themes rather than give sound-bite answers. Then put a link to your TV interview on your company's website and market the hell out of it. You get to drive your message - your way.

Second, make sure you have command of your subject by having your team pepper you with tough Q&A before you submit to the interview. This deliberate practice, especially when it's done on videotape, allows you to see what the TV audience will see and hear in your answers.

Watch your nonverbals. Remember, people hear what they see.

One last thing. Both Captain Sullenberger and Secretary Clinton looked great on TV. Do you think they just grabbed some old rag out of the closet at the last minute or actually picked a particular suit and accessories for the occasion? I'm guessing the latter.

Final lesson for executives going on TV.

Find a TV outfit you look great in and hang it in your office just in case you ever have to do an impromptu TV appearance. Keep a backup TV outfit in the closet at home.

When you're on TV, it's all about managing your message and your presence. These two fine people, both fairly new to these roles, provide stellar examples.

P.S. For those who may be offended that I didn't put Secretary Clinton (the lady) first in this blog post, I want you to know that I saved the best for last.

Last Minute Leadership

2009-09-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

It's fall and it's the season for leaders everywhere to start disappearing behind closed doors to prepare for the advancement process, year-end updates, bonuses, performance reviews, making the numbers, going on campus recruiting visits, starting to think about next year and a hundred other things from helping kids with homework to getting flu shots to making ball games and school plays on time.

It's easy to forget about communicating. It's the first thing that gets forgotten and employees notice - especially after a year like this. That's when this cliche rears its ugly head..."in the absence of information, people make up their own"

These days, it's rarely positive. So stay in touch. Keep your finger on the pulse of the people. Be visible. It's fairly simple to stay in touch if you lead 30 people. If it's 300 or 3,000 or 30,000, not so easy.

Try this. Talk to one person a day in your organization for 10 minutes by phone or face to face. Make it someone you don't normally talk to on a regular basis. Maybe pick someone who'll be surprised you called or that you even know who they are. Pick diverse roles and hit every level - from executives to executive assistants to the guard at the front door.

Ask them three open-ended questions - how's your business doing? how's your team doing? and most importantly, how are you doing?

Their business could be making copies or millions. Their team could be 50 people or just themselves. It doesn't matter. What matters is the boss knows who they are, what they're doing and why it's important. And best of all the boss knows their name and cares enough to find out about their life, not just their work.

Then they tell colleagues, "guess who I talked to today?"

I know it's a pain and it sounds hokey and you think you don't have the time, but it works. It's a simple choice - 10 more minutes on the stairmaster or 10 minutes with the people who make you great.

Your choice.

Spreading the Wealth

2009-08-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

Knowledge is an asset which appreciates when shared...

Too often in large organizations the knowledge and expertise of our best people only gets shared with small circles of employees or gets lost in a procession of 'once and gone' learning events. We aren't as good as we could be at capturing, archiving and reusing critical knowledge from our 'stars'.

How do we normally learn in large organizations?

A) we attend multi-day training and eat wraps with strangers
B) we listen to talking heads bloviate about why they're terrific
C) we log onto web-based learning that takes hours to finish
D) we get a wake up call or a kick in the pants from the boss

A, B and C all have value but D can be very effective - it's short, wrapped in colorful commentary, and memorable for life.

The common misconception about corporate learning is that it has to be long to be good. Yet what if you tapped into your best brains and 'pro from Dover' experts and captured their thoughts in bite-sized video learning nuggets for publication and use on your intranet? What if you didn't give it a real fancy name like The Center for Advanced Professional Development?

Try something simple like "How To Do Stuff Around Here".

Examples long and short abound in cyberspace. FT.com has a video B-School on their website where they have professors from University of Chicago and Insead and other leading schools opine on a variety of management and leadership topics. YouTube has something called Expert Village (now E-How) where you can see hundreds of video tutorials like a guy on his apartment webcam teaching you how to play guitar. MIT has 'open courseware'. You can go online for free and see teaching legends like Walter Lewin on a swing in front of his physics class in Cambridge demonstrating a pendulum.

My all-time favorite though is an oldie called Red on Roundball.

Red Auerbach, the legendary basketball coach of the Boston Celtics, gathered the leading NBA stars of his day and filmed them demonstrating key techniques to help kids become better basketball players. Just go on You Tube and watch Red and 'Pistol Pete' Maravich show you the art of passing the basketball. The entire clip is 4:27.

Now, imagine a Red on Roundball-type video series in your shop featuring your best players talking about business basics and simple stuff like how to run a meeting or cold call a prospect or cut NPE costs. Here's an example of a useful topic...

Even top executives get agita when they go before the firm's executive committee or board of directors. What if you had a 4:27 video of your CEO saying, "here are 3 things we like to see in presentations and 3 things that drive us up the wall". Think of the anticipatory anxiety that could be relieved with that tutorial.

If you do these video learning nuggets, a few suggestions:

- Don't put your stars in what I call the "stiff in the studio" setting. Get them in more natural settings where they can just look into the camera and talk.

- Don't restrict 'stars' to the usual suspects. You have talent up and down your organization around the world. What if a 'star' executive assistant in London or Mumbai did a 4:27 tutorial titled "Getting Past the Gatekeeper". Wouldn't your people love to know how to do that when calling clients and prospects?

- Think about asking favorite coaches (like me) to add a clip on a key topic or ask clients to contribute. What if a top client did a clip called "worst sales pitches I've ever sat through and why they stunk". Your salespeople might eat it up.

- Keep them short. Under 10 minutes - maybe under 5. It's not a boring slide show. It's a tip on "how to do stuff around here."

A few reasons why this makes sense.

It's cheap - a few smart employees, a camcorder, a list of 'stars' to film and a set of topics to cover is all you need to get started.

It's global - once it's done, it's out there on your intranet for everyone to use and reuse. Simple repeatable messages from your in-house experts all over the world.

It's yours - you can brand it for your company and best of all, your people are the stars of the show as they get to show off their talent for the whole organization.

The days of the big magilla development experiences are fading because they're too costly, too cumbersome and the learning doesn't always stick past the last cocktail hour with the faculty.

Save a little money and spread the wealth.

Unleash your 'brains on board'.

If you need help email me at andy@speakingvirtually.com

The Advocacy Abyss

2009-08-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

Recently the death of Walter Cronkite helped us look back wistfully at a time when news shows actually tried to report objectively and advocacy was confined to 3-minute segments at the end of a TV news broadcast. Ah, we long for the good old days when our athletes took performance depressing drugs; our comedians cursed off-air; our politicians had affairs under the covers; and our reporters reported actual news, not opinions.

Those days are gone - perhaps forever. If you ever get a chance, rent the movie Network. The Howard Beale show is not some writer's fantasy any longer - it's on every night on the Fox News Network (unfair and imbalanced unless you're a Rushie or a Colterite) or MSNBC (the prison network where murderers and rapists get their time on TV right after the leftist rantings of Keith and Rachel) or CNBC (the resident idiot network where reasonable economic observers mix in with WWF-type hedge fund/option trader whackos and whoever yells the loudest wins).

Today you cannot turn on cable TV or AM radio without witnessing a cacophony of verbal street fights with highly-paid equivalents of the Crips and the Bloods having at each other between commercials for erectile dysfunction drugs and Cash for Clunker deals. We are now witnessing Town Halls on health care reform on TV that resemble the latest Jerry Springer show.

All this is really not new. We Americans have been yelling at each other since the first patriot began ridiculing King George and his hated taxes. It used to be that only the precious few were able to publish their opinions for general consumption. Today everyman/everywoman around the globe is a multimedia self-publisher on Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, and scores of other online vehicles. We are potential reporters-in-the-field for major networks who publish our 1st-hand accounts of disasters replete with cell phone photos - as recently as the helicopter/small plane tragedy this week in the Hudson River in New York.

We are avalanched by advocates. We are overwhelmed by opiners. We are tweeted by twits. The Vox Populi is all around us - every minute of every day. It's loud and getting louder.

Your only recourse is to unlpug whatever device is assaulting your eyes or ears and go read a book.

Yet it doesn't have to be that way. We may never return to the old Uncle Walter days with the tweed suits and the pipes but we can return to the notion of civility in our public discourse. It's all supply and demand of course. If we demand it, the networks may start to supply it.

Don't hold your breath though.

In a world where ultra fighting with mixed marital arts (with lots of blood) is rivaling other mainline sports for popularity on TV here, our society is obviously thirsty for combat of all kinds. ('Our society' is the U.S. I don't presume to talk for other societies. That would be rude.)

It is truly ironic that we have sunk this low because people in the business world with divergent political views nonetheless come together around business issues and solve problems. People in business meetings across the world disagree strongly with each other's views yet somehow the fights stay within the bounds of reasonable discourse. It's probably because there is a high price to be paid for being a corporate 'animal' these days. Yelling and screaming still happens but you might find yourself on the outside looking in if you do it long enough and loud enough.

Can we be civil with each other outside of the work place? Here are a few things we can try.

Understand the other person's point of view. To paraphrase St. Augustine - if you want to convince someone of something first walk over to where they are standing and see what the view looks like from there.
Understand that their reality is different from yours. The Gates v. Cambridge Police fiasco drove that point home. Where we've been and what we've seen and how we've lived has a lot to do with how we think, act and react.
Respect their right to hold their position. That takes patience. In business or politics or marriage or life we stop communciating when we stop respecting each other's right to hold an opinion or position.
Treasure the triumph of joint problem solving. Whether it's putting a man on the moon or doing the family budget, we all lift each other up when we band together to face adversity or meet a challenge.
Stop being so damn certain about everything. Every talk show yeller on TV and radio acts like they have it all figured out. Life is still an unfolding mystery and the only being who has it all figured out is the one we will hopefully meet when this life is over.
Remember that love still beats hate. Remember how you felt when you fell in love for the first time. Exhilarated, giddy and drunk with joy. Now, remember how you felt when you hated for the first time. Not so good, huh?

This is just my opinion. Now the hard part is making it part of your life every day with those you know and love and those you don't know and don't love. I'm going to try it out. Like all the rest of us, I'm a work-in-progress. Just ask my wife.

'Obamatic' Overtalking

2009-07-24T07:08:00.000-07:00

Like many people, I can talk too much at times. My boss once told me, "you're not as concise as you think you are". She was right. So I've taken to strengthening a critical communication skill called...knowing when to shut up.

When you run into an overtalker and you hear them say, "and I'd just like to add..." - run!

Now I'm a huge admirer of President Obama as a communicator. This guy really knows how to talk. His speeches have informed and moved the nation. Even his opponents give him his due as an orator of tremendous skill and accomplishment.

Yet on July 22nd his press conference fell short of my expectations for him as a communicator. Like most Americans, I wanted to know the following about health care reform:

Why are we doing it?
What will I gain or lose?
How are we going to pay for it?

The President is a master of the facts, has great presentation skills and has presence out the wazoo - and he did give us some of those answers. So, what's the beef?

I think the beef is this. His answers got buried under a deluge of detail, parenthetical points and extraneous explanation - so much so that you needed to take notes to get the real points. Unfortunately, we're not reporters, we're people - so many of us forgot our notepads.

I realize you have a background that includes lawyering and professoring Mr. President - two professions guaranteed to put everyone to sleep. So overtalking is expected. You're also extremely intelligent. Like former President Clinton, you have such a command of the facts that you sometimes can't resist telling us just one more thing. There's one big problem with that.

Bombarding us with more and more information doesn't help us understand the issue better and by the time you make your fourth point in an answer, we already forgotten your first.

Here are a few simple suggestions for you Mr. President before your next press conference.

Dump the teleprompter. Even though they moved it to the middle so you can fake talking directly to us, it still makes you seem like you're running on 'Obamatic'. Your advisers probably want to ensure you get it right. Forget getting it right - get it real. This health care reform measure is one of the centerpieces of your presidency. You shouldn't have to read off a screen to explain it to us and if you do, how can you expect us to understand it if you can't explain it without visual aids. You spent 7:53 reading to us.
Give shorter answers. Except for a brief reporter followup "is that your job", your answer to the first question on guidance to Congress was an almost unbroken 7+ minute monologue. That's half as long as President Kennedy's inaugural speech. This isn't a Harvard teach-in. It's an opportunity to connect with the American people on a critical issue between airings of Entertainment Tonight and America's Got Talent. We're used to sound bites and commercials, not PHD dissertations. It has nothing to do with our intelligence, it has everything to do with our attention span in this Twitter/You Tube age.
Don't bury the Hook. You gave a 2-minute preamble about inherited deficits before you got to the question many Americans were asking "what's in this for me"? Later on at 13:04 you said "if someone told you..." and proceeded to make the point that the status quo stinks. At another juncture you talked about the stars being aligned between patients, doctors, hospitals, and big pharma companies to get something done. Out of all of that you could have crafted a quick straight-to-the-point Hook that grabbed our attention and set the table for the press conference, instead of starting out on defense.
Inject some passion. I appreciate the No Drama Obama style that characterizes you and your administration. It's comforting to know that you don't shoot from the lip and you don't make decisions by the seat of your pants. It helps us sleep at night. In this context though, you needed to project some passion. You are not merely transferring information. You are transferring belief. There are some people who think you have no emotions - that you are all cerebral and no visceral. Health care is a visceral issue. Speak from your gut.
Share the burden. Because some in your administration are not very effective communicators, you end up playing the role of Salesperson-In-Chief. Some of the least effective could be much better if they would make a few mechanical changes to their delivery style and engage in some deliberate practice. They can try to escape by saying they're too busy to practice - most busy executives do that. Yet if they could get the health care bill passed by winning a golf match, they'd be out on the driving range at midnight practicing. Don't let them skate.
Use more "We" and "Us". I realize you are understandably the main focus of attention in your first year in office, so I hear a lot of "I" and "My" in your speeches and press conferences. As you constantly remind us though, "this is not about me". Make sure your words match that message.

I offer these suggestions with great respect for how difficult it must be to explain complex issues to an audience of 300 million people. You've done a terrific job so far but even you can raise the level of your game.

Mr. President, I wish you great success working with the Congress on this issue but if you choose to continue giving seven-minute answers, I hope to see you at the next Overtalkers Anonymous meeting. It's covered in your health plan - with a 300-word deductible!

Pull vs. Push

2009-06-17T07:07:00.000-07:00

If Socrates only knew back in Athens that his teachings would be used in the 20th and 21st centuries to train salespople, he would have hired an agent. Socrates - like Sinatra, Elvis, Janis, Marilyn and Picasso - would make the Forbes 400 every year if they were still appearing 'live'.

I confess that I have never taken a Socratic Selling Skills Seminar. Who knows, maybe I should. They even have a Socrates Society at the Aspen Institute. I only know what I see as a communication coach - in myself and others. When we sell - we tend to talk too much, question too haphazardly, listen too little and miss too much.

I too have erred in this regard. Every time I meet someone, it's an opportunity to sell them on what I do for a living. Every time I push information, I kick myself afterwards. Every time I ask a few questions and shut up and listen, I pat myself on the back because I managed to pull information. It helps me target my message to their needs.

First off, we all sell and we're all actors.

We each go out everyday into the world and sell ourselves, our companies, our ideas, our products, our services, our skills, or our points of view.

Like actors, we also make people believe. We are not merely transferring information to the people we talk to, we are transferring belief.

The question is this. How do we do that best, pushing or pulling? I vote pull - with both hands!!

Now, if it's a 'dog and pony' show type meeting like a bakeoff for an investment banking deal, by all means give them the dog and pony by pushing information. If it's not, try the pull approach.

I roleplay client situations with salespeople all the time. I play the client. When we debrief the situation, I usually ask them to turn the message on its head to hear what that sounds like or I ask them to front the whole message with an open ended or high gain question for their prospective client.

Let's say the practice scenario involves a wealthy individual looking for a new money manager. Sound familiar?

What if the person pitching that prospect started with the ending instead of running though their professional resume or the firm's qualifications - namely what the prospect would experience with them as one of their clients and how that experience differs from the client experiences they may have had up to that point?

Could it work? Perhaps. The point is - it's worth trying it out in the practice arena to see what it sounds like and feels like. One of my jobs as a communication coach is to help people challenge their thinking to come up with options. Developing options is a worthwhile pursuit for salespeople or any communicator. It helps you design a better game plan.

I once asked a very successful manager who runs a sales desk how research analysts could make better morning calls when addressing the sales force. He said, "easy - lead with your conclusion". Try it once in a while. It's refreshing. Why take your audience on a long meandering verbal walk through the Forbidden Forest when all they want to know is - does Harry Potter die in the end?

Now finally to the pull vs. push. Isn't that the title of this post?

I also ask the person pitching that prospect to consider asking a question at the outset to draw the prospect out. A short open-ended or high gain question fronted by a simple reporter word - who, what, where, when, why or how. It helps:

uncover previously unknown information
open a door that was otherwise closed
open up a line of inquiry or advocacy
spark an extended conversation
build a human connection

Most importantly, the salesperson can now target all of their well-prepared information to their prospect's needs. They may also get a glimpse 'behind the curtain' into a prospect's motivations, concerns, hopes, fears, and dreams.

Now, does every prospect open up like a gushing guest on Oprah or Dr. Phil? No, of course not. Yet the 'lead with a question' approach can get you much more than you thought you would. Sometimes the prospect opens up an avenue the size of Broadway to drive your points home if you simply ask a question like, "how are you feeling about things?"

Let's say the prospect responds with something like "Well, I haven't been very happy with the performance of my fixed income investments". Some salespeople would jump all over that opening and say "well that's actually one of the reasons why I came here today - our fixed income investments have out-performed in the last year."

What if the salesperson resisted that impulse and simply followed up with "why?"

Perhaps the prospect might respond by saying "because my current investment advisor didn't listen to me." The salesperson could even dig a bit further (as we all do in normal conversation) and say "how could that happen?" The prospect might even open up a bit more and say, "because he's a jackass!"

Now we're getting somewhere. All of a sudden the traffic on Broadway is clearing up bigtime.

Before you sell that prospect on fixed income investments, you now know why. You have a clearer glimpse into the prospect's motivation and you are better enabled to take advantage of the opening and serve the needs of your prospective client.

Bottom line - think of your next conversation - with a prospect, a board of directors, a client, a training class, your children, a group of new hires, or the PTA. What if you framed your entire conversation or talk around a few simple open ended or high gain questions? Isn't that better than going off blind throwing information at them to see what sticks. If they don't want to play along you'll know and you can always revert to the old "I'll be brilliant for 45 minutes and then you get to ask me questions" routine. If they do play along, you get an opening.

REMINDER - KEEP YOUR QUESTIONS OPEN AND SHORT! We tend to get stuck in close ended or leading questions or we overframe open ended questions with all sorts of qualifiers. The best questions in the English language (in my opinion) tend to be only four to eight words (i.e. "what do you think?" or "how did that happen?" or "where do you think it went wrong?") and they always start with who, what, where, when, why or how.

Now some people say that's OK one on one but you can't have a conversation with 200 people in an auditorium. I say, why not?

Many times I'll walk up in front of a room an ask an audience "by a show of hands, how many of you experience some level of nervousness or anxiety before you speak in public?" You will get hands raised on that one - guaranteed. Then I follow up and ask a few individuals, "how do you handle that?" After I get 3 or 4 responses I'll try to find the thread among them and use it to begin my talk. I haven't started a presentation - I've started a conversation - with 50 or 200 or 2000 people. Later on, I can also use this conversation to say "remember what Mary said about using anxiety as an asset..."

I contend (and so do a lot of people who are smarter than I am) that we all prefer to talk first and listen second. Try reversing that order and try not to jump all over the first response you get. Play reporter and follow up. When you are finally prepared to speak, you will be in a much stronger position to target your thoughts and be more helpful to the other person. At the very least, challenge your thinking as you gameplan a sales call or a speech or a talk or an interview or a meeting. Either flip your message on it's head and hear what that sounds like or start the whole deal with a question.

If you go with a question, the royalty checks still go to Socrates. And if you can't find him, find the best salesperson you know. They do this stuff every single day of their lives.

Sonia the Supreme

2009-05-24T17:02:00.000-07:00

For a moment, forget about which political party you belong to; forget whether you're a man or a woman; and forget whether or not you will be supporting Sonia Sotomayor's nomination as the next Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, click on the URL below for a video clip from today's New York Times and join me to celebrate 7 minutes of 'presence personified'. You can move the slider to the beginning of her remarks at 11:35 if you don't have time to hear President Obama's introduction.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/05/26/us/politics/1194840503914/obamas-supreme-court-nominee.html

Here is a woman who came from the humblest of beginnings but who is now being nominated to the highest court in the land. An honor, as she reminded us, beyond her wildest imagination.

What I found particularly striking and instructive for all who are called upon to speak in public was her unassuming yet masterful ownership of an incredibly difficult stage. She confessed to being nervous (and who wouldn't be under the circumstances). In spite of her understandable speaker anxiety though, she talked to the audience calmly and confidently, showing a wonderfully understated command of her message and her emotions.

The good news - Judge Sotomayor provided an outstanding example for the rest of us to follow when we're put on the spot in front of an audience. A few areas to focus on when watching:

She had notes but used them sparingly. I'm guessing they consisted of 'thought triggers' rather than a speech written out in prose. In any case, she spent most of her time up and engaged with her audience.
She had magnificent pace. I never heard her rush and her slow pace lent strength and power to her words. It made her words seem considered, thoughtful and significant.
She punched specific words with her voice and this made them all the more impactful for our ears. She elevated certain words above others making them paramount.
She had a level head and set her feet while speaking. These two factors helped her radiate confidence by focusing her physical energy in the audience's direction.
She wore a simple yet striking outfit using contrasting primary colors to frame our attention on her face.
She spoke from the three places every great speaker talks from - her head, her heart and her soul.
She matched her message to the historic opportunity by speaking about a moment in time where her personal history meshed with the country's.
She projected enormous power, albeit in a very modest way, even though she shared the stage with a man viewed by many as a speaker for the ages.

Some may think that what Judge Sotomayor did today on that stage was easy. I think not. To climb to the pinnacle of success in the blinding spotlight of the White House and the national media and still manage to maintain your calm, your poise and your presence is incredible. Moments like this would make many a man or woman shake with fear and lose their voice, their message and their cool.

The great news - what Judge Sotomayor did as a speaker today on that stage is something we can all do as speakers with a little bit of planning, preparation and practice.

Does being an Appellate Court judge help - absolutely. But don't let that stop you. You can get there (as a public speaker) if you put in the work.

I used to suggest to people that they watch John Roberts in his confirmation hearings in the Senate when he was nominated to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I'm sure I will be watching Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearings as well. They both 'own their stage' and give us all a great model of how to communicate in difficult circumstances while projecting quiet and humble 'here I am' strength.

Judge Sotomayor, you rocked the house! This time it was the White House.

Bravo. Thanks for showing us all how it's done.

P.S. Next time remember to brush that wisp of hair off your face. Your eyes are hugely expressive. We need to see both of them.

Boyle's Law

2009-04-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

The old Boyle's Law had to do with traditional chemistry. The new Boyle's Law has to do with a subject near and dear to the heart of this coach - audience chemistry.

When we speak in public, I think we all long to have presence in front of our audience - to really 'own your stage' as the name of this blog suggests. If you are one of the 46 million people who have seen Susan Boyle on You Tube singing I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables on the TV show Britain's Got Talent, then you saw an object lesson in owning your stage from a woman who was previously known only to the inhabitants of her home town in Scotland. To say that her performance was remarkable is an understatement indeed. It lifted us up like the end of a movie like Rocky or Hoosiers. Many of us erupted like the live audience, cheering for the everywoman we saw on that stage.

So what can we learn from the new Boyle's Law?

First, it's OK to be nervous. Susan appeared nervous backstage but she seemed determined not to let it get to her. She decided to channel her nervousness into performance by proclaiming that she wanted to "rock that audience". Many among us want to make our nervousness and anxiety as public speakers disappear forever. It's a useless effort. We can learn to manage our anxiety and use it to our advantage in front of the audience. I call it 'befriending the butterflies'. A few common sense tips:

Clear your mind, close your eyes, focus on a single point and breathe

Visualize yourself taking the stage or the podium and succeeding famously

Remind yourself that you know what you're doing because you practiced

Know that the audience wants you to succeed - failure is painful for them too

Remind yourself of the first sentence you will utter when you get out there

Remind yourself that no matter what happens you will live to speak another day

Second, it pays to practice. If you think that Susan Boyle took to the stage without knowing how that song would come out, you're dreaming. She had the confidence of a professional knowing she had done the work to prepare and own her material. She had already heard herself sing it and knew what the notes felt like and how she would gesture to the crowd. If you are afraid that practice will make you sound rehearsed, don't worry. The very act of rehearsal makes you sound unrehearsed. The practice gives you confidence to succeed, so put in that effort if you can find the time. If you can't, make the time. It will show on stage.

Third, stand your ground and own your stage. If you saw the video, Susan Boyle had to stand there on TV being ridiculed, laughed at and forced to tell her age to millions. Now I know if she was a lousy singer, we would not be talking about her now. I realize that her talent has a lot to do with her success that night. But her presence was there ahead of her talent. To my mind, she won the day before she had ever sung a note because she had the guts to stand there and hear snickers and laughter directed at her and she didn't flinch. She owned her space and did not relinquish her personal power to the judges or the audience - the magical power of knowing that she belonged there.

There are famous and accomplished people who don't have Susan Boyle's presence. The good news is that they can - if they just would try. The best news about the new Boyle's Law is that all us can stand in front of an audience and look like we belong there. We simply need to befriend our butterflies, practice out loud, and stand our ground in the face of adversity.

Whether singing or speaking, presence counts!

Bravo Susan. You rocked the house!

Postscript to our last post - Larry Summers did it again. On Fox News Sunday (4/26/2009) he appeared again on video feed like the week before on Meet the Press. Chris Wallace never laid a glove on him.

Good show Larry. Keep up the good work!

Beat the Press

2009-04-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

Finally, someone in President Obama's administration nailed an appearance on Meet the Press. It was Larry Summers on today's show (April 19, 2009) on NBC. The host, David Gregory, tried to put forth his very best Tim Russert impression, complete with the usual assortment of 'gotcha' quotes and video clips, but he didn't lay a glove on Summers the whole show.

This is surprising since on a previous MTP appearance, Larry Summers had turned in a less than stellar performance back in January when David Gregory seemed to have the physical and adversarial advantage in that interview and Mr. Summers seemed to be in a prevent defense.

Not this time.

Whether it was him making a few key adjustments between MTP appearances, or taking advice from Secretary Geithner's new speech guru, Michael Sheehan, or simply good luck, Mr. Summers clicked on all cylinders and provided an example for all the President's men and women to follow on the Sunday interview shows. He also served as an example for executives of how even mechanical changes can make meaningful improvements in your communication style, especially on TV.

Let the pundits both right and left argue the content. Here's why I think Mr. Summers delivery choices worked so incredibly well.

First, he looked us in the eye. Due to the fact that Mr. Summers was on satellite video hookup from the Americas summit in Trinidad, he was forced to look straight into the camera. He looked through David Gregory and spoke directly to us - the TV audience. It helped him connect with us in a way he wouldn't have been able to if he were sitting in the studio in Washington looking at David Gregory. This was significant since the last time he was on MTP he looked away almost every time he answered a question. If you want to connect, you have to look at people, especially on the tube.

Note: It didn't hurt to have the flowering bush waving in the breeze behind him. For someone who can occasionally come across as a hardass on TV, it was serendipitous set design and softened his image a bit.

Second, he turned around most of David Gregory's 'gotcha' questions into opportunities to further his own message. A case in point was his answer to a fairly tough question about Paul Krugman's 'depression still lurking' editorial in the paper, which Gregory quoted. Summers first stated that he disagrees with Krugman a lot, yet acknowledged Krugman's "we're not out of the woods yet" point and then explained why everything the President is doing and saying makes sense in light of that point. Whether you agree with the logic of his response or not, it was a classic example of not taking the interviewer's bait and staying on your own message.

Third, when he wanted to emphasize a key point in his answer he would shift gears, slow down and punch his words for effect.

Fourth, for the most part he kept a nice level head. Combined with looking into the camera it gives the television audience a nonverbal sense of strength, forthrightness and transparency.

Fifth, because he was only present in David Gregory's TV studio on a video monitor, it neutralized the physical advantage Gregory has in the studio. He actually had to look up a tiny bit to Larry Summers to ask his questions and due to Mr. Summers aplomb in deflecting the hardest of his questions, at times Mr. Gregory seemed like a student trying to 'stump the prof' in an economics class. He tried and tried again but never did any serious damage to his guest.

Sixth, Mr. Summers kept a nice conversational tone throughout versus his more formal tone the last time he was on Meet the Press. He just talked to us and sounded like a reasonable man making reasonable points. He also spoke in 'human tempo' versus Secretary Geithner's 'trader tempo' which helps us keep up with him and lets his words sink in.

Bottom line, if this was a prize fight it would have gone the distance with no knockdowns but Larry Summers would have walked away with a unanimous decision on all the judges scorecards. It was by far and away his best TV performance in my view and underscores how important it is to make good choices when communicating in an adversarial interview setting.

The Irish Priest

2009-03-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

Six months after 9/11, I was riding the #6 subway train in New York City. I was straphanging. There, straphanging next to me, was a Catholic priest. He looked to be in his early 60's. He had the map of experience on his face. We started talking and it turns out he was an Irish Catholic priest, from Ireland, who was temporarily stationed at a monastery somewhere up the Hudson.

At the time, I was managing a VP leadership development program at a major investment bank. After a bit of conversation, he said, "Well, there seems to be a lot of similarities between what you do for a living and what I do for a living. After all, aren't we both helping people to improve in their lives?"

I didn't know just what to say, so I fell back on my Irish Catholic genes and replied, "Yes Father".

After a little more conversation as we passed stations on our way uptown he said, "All this development stuff you're doin', well it all goes back to the Greek philosophers don't ya know. It's the three great lessons - Know Thyself, Accept Thyself, Overcome Thyself".

I said, "Well Father, after all these years of trying I think I finally have the Knowing Thyself part down and I'm working really hard on the Accepting Thyself part - but that Overcoming Thyself part is a real pain in the ass...."
(almost by reflex, I asked his forgiveness for my language)

He smiled, and in his magnificently understated Irish Catholic priest manner, paused and said, "isn't it though".

We came to our stop and parted company, wishing each other good luck. I guess my lesson from the #6 train was - we're never really done with this development stuff and in this wonderful life that we all share; change is a process, not a transaction.

I'm guessing that Saint Peter might have a little Irish priest in him. We'll all come up to the pearly gates and he'll ask us how we found our lives on Earth and one of us might say:

"Well, it wasn't all that bad, except for the Recession of 09'. That was a real pain in the ass".

Saint Peter will smile, pause and say, "wasn't it though".

The Global Coach

Accents are Beautiful

2009-03-06T12:14:00.000-08:00

The French have a saying, "Vive La Difference". It was coined by a man giving thanks to God for having created women.

Yet when it comes to accents, it seems that everywhere in Corporate America we are shouting "Vive La Boring".

Sometimes it appears that we want to put everyone through a kind of Cultural Cuisinart and have them emerge sounding like a newsreader on CSPAN. Everyone stops being a Rich Roquefort, or a Sharp Cheddar or a Racy Romano and we become American Cheese, with no flavor, aroma or bite. It's bland-by-design.

Managers call coaches like myself and report that they or their clients cannot understand one of the employees because of an accent. They want to send them off for 'accent reduction' or something called 'accent neutralization'.

Now I'm sure these are legitimate corrective measures taken by professionals in the field of speech. I do not mean to denigrate their profession. I want to offer common-sense alternatives from someone who listens to people speak for a living.

#1 - Go buy some French champagne and celebrate your accent. You might even yell "Vive La Difference" while you're doing it. Your accent is part of who you are as a person. It makes you sound distinctive and memorable. We are drawn to listen to you.

#2 - Slow down. Buy a $20 microcassette recorder and a $20 digital metronome. Then set the metronome on it's slowest beat and record yourself reading stories from a newspaper at that slow beat. You are now retraining your ear. Or click here on http://americanrhetoric.com and click on Movie Speeches. Then try to mimic the pace of one of the really slow speeches. A real good one is Billy Bob Thornton's Being Perfect speech as Coach Gaines from the movie Friday Night Lights or Kelly MacDonald's reply to the Prime Minister from the movie The Girl in the Cafe. The best slow speech out at the movies now in my opinion is Philip Seymour Hoffman's sermon on Gossip as Father Flynn in the movie Doubt. The technique is about speaking slower and pausing and breathing. Try it. People will hear you better, even with your accent.

#3 - Vary your voice. If you have a constant high pitch, add in some bass or alto to give your voice more authority. If you have a constant low pitch, add in some tenor or soprano to give your voice more life. In any language or any accent, what kills is sameness. We love to listen to variety, as in a piece of classical music - up and down volume, high and low pitch, fast and slow pace, passionate and peaceful delivery. If your voice always sounds the same, we will lose your personality - and you will lose our attention.

#4 - Move your face. Many people with accents speak with a tight jaw which exacerbates our lack of understanding. Words get swallowed, sylabbles disappear and messages get missed. Whether you're from Ireland or Belarus or Pakistan or Japan or West Texas - if you never move your lips when you talk, people will have a hard time hearing you. Relax your jaw and your facial muscles and engage them when you talk. It may seem strange at first but it allows the air to come up from your diaphragm and escape your lips. Add in some deeper breathing as you talk and all of a sudden a weak voice becomes a lot more powerful - and we hear you better.

#5 - Gesture with purpose. Some people are deathly afraid of being seen as someone who 'talks with their hands'. But there is a simple guideline for gestures. If they have purpose, keep them. If they don't, get rid of them. At times though, punching words with gestures help us hear you better. It's great for phone calls. The counterparty can't see you. You could be standing there in a Speedo doing a Samba while you speak. They don't know. Try it. Not the Speedo and the Samba. Just the purposeful gesturing. It gives your words bite and it acts as a natural speed governor when you sync your gestures to a key word in a sentence, like "assets got crushed".

#6 - Examine your speech. Have a native English speaker listen to an audiotape of your voice and help you to identify missing articles of speech like the or a or English words you may be mispronouncing because you emphasize a different sylabble or sounds that come out differently like a d sound instead of a t or th sound. For example, if a sports talk radio host with a New York accent says the phrase "we'll be back after this" it becomes "we'll be back after dis". If that person retrains their voice with a tape recorder to get used to the th sound, they can eliminate one of the tell-tale signs of a New York accent.

#7 - Be conversational. This is why offshore (and even onshore) call centers make some people upset. People hear a person reading a script. "Of course, I can help you with that problem. May I put you on hold for a brief moment?" If you have a script to adhere to, practice it and internalize it to the point where it sounds conversational. It is doable and people will react to you more favorably and they will hear you better. I once sat next to a 'cold call' salesman for a month. We both had the exact same sales script. People hung up on me but they talked to him and he made hundred of sales. Why? He made the script his own and sounded like he and the person whose name he picked out of a phone book were long lost friends. Disingenous? Perhaps. But he argued that he was simply being friendly and talking to people as people, not as blind prospects. Whatever you think of the strategy, it worked. When we go across cultures, we tend to lose our native personality that exists in our native tongue. I know it's extremely difficult to be yourself when you are simultaneously translating in your head as you speak, but try. When we like you, we listen better.

Even if you only do these 6 things (I'll let you decide on the champagne), I believe colleagues, clients and audiences will begin to hear you better and your boss may stop trying to send you off to have your accent neutered. After all, we're not cats. We're human beings.

OK, enough of this English-Centric approach to communication.

Anyone want to help someone get rid of a Brooklyn accent when speaking Hindi?

The Global Coach

The Geithner Gap

2009-02-22T13:35:00.000-08:00

After Timothy Geithner made his initial speech as Treasury Secretary to the public on his banking plan, the reviews were not kind to say the least. He got panned on content and delivery.

On content, it was the old "where's the beef" argument. The market, the pundits and the public wanted more details on the plan and were left wanting. They expected more - and got less.

On the delivery side, he got horrible reviews as well. Why?

First of all, President Obama must own a teleprompter company because it seems that everyone in his administration has used one for a speech. Secretary Geithner used the left/right teleprompter setup as well and came off like a student reading a book report. In his first opportunity to look the American people in the eye and gain their confidence, he bailed out and read his words off a teleprompter screen. He failed in his first big test as a communicator.

It's a shame too, because it was a pretty easy test. His predecessor, Secretary Paulson, was probably the worst communicator in an administration known for lousy communicators. It's unfortunate because both men seem to be very decent fellows who are smart, savvy, credible, experienced and highly accomplished. They have been communicating in business and govenment for decades.

They should succeed as communicators. Why did they fail?

For the same reason many of us fail as speakers - we don't connect with our audience. With a simple 'prepared but unscripted' leader message at the beginning and end of his talk, looking directly into the camera, Geithner could have transformed his talk, and the public's reaction to it.

He had no Hook at the beginning (to grab the audience) and he had no Hammer at the end (to nail down his message).

He 'presented' to us. He didn't 'talk' to us.

I'm not suggesting that speakers like Geithner should never use a teleprompter. President Reagan did, but he made it look like he wasn't. He made it look like he was speaking directly to you through that television screen.

Why did it work for Reagan, and not for Geithner? Because Reagan knew how to connect with people on television and Geithner doesn't, yet.

Heck, it worked so well for the Great Communicator that it turned my mother into a Reagan Democrat. He made her and millions of other Americans feel better; feel more confident; and feel that things would work out in the end. Emphasis on feel.

Even when he made his 'arms for hostages' confessional from the oval office on television he connected, one human being to another; enough so that many Americans were willing to at least give him the benefit of the doubt, even if they were opposed to him politically. He didn't convince everyone but he connected well enough to keep it from being a total communication disaster. The American people, after all the angst, let it go.

The key is connecting.

Watch President Obama tomorrow night. He's a public speaker for the ages, like Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Reagan. Yet even he can fail to connect with his audience on occasion. In fact, he's fallen so much in love with teleprompters, he runs the risk of coming off android-like - 'Obamatic'.

He is becoming so focused on giving the 'perfect' speech that he's ignoring the emotional connectivity with the American people that helped get him elected in the first place. He succeeded at convincing voters across the country that he was 'one of us' while the opposition pulled out all the stops to convince people of just the opposite. He was able to do it.

That takes connecting.

So on February 24th at 9 PM, President Obama should look directly into the TV camera and simply 'talk' to us - at least at the beginning and definitely at the end. I know he'll be in front of Congress but he only has one audience - us.

He has a challenge not unlike a father or mother sitting down at the kitchen table in the midst of a family crisis, looking into the eyes of their children and saying; "Everything is going to be alright. We'll get through this together".

It's sounds hokey, but Tuesday night that's the whole ballgame right there. He needs to speak fron the head, the heart and the gut. Otherwise it will just be a bare collection of facts to be dissected the next day on CNBC and MSNBC and Fox - and they are going to do that anyway.

So next time you give a speech at a conference or sit across the table from a group of clients or give a talk to your church group, please remember to connect first. Look them in the eye and talk. Don't look down or away and read. Start human and end human. Grab them with a Hook and then hit them with a Hammer.

Connect, Connect, Connect!

The Global Coach

What Did You Say?

2009-01-25T19:07:00.000-08:00

An old joke has two guys sitting in a bar. One guy says, "my wife says I don't listen to her....at least I think that's what she said".

When you think about business meetings, substitute either gender and that joke is not far from the truth.

How many of us really listen in business meetings? How many of us are just waiting to talk?

We sit in meetings listening to someone drone on about a point we don't think is relevant and we know as soon as they shut up we will jump in with an absolutely brilliant point.

Sounds arrogant, but if we plumb the depths of our 'impatient listener' souls, we've all probably done that - more times than we'd care to admit.

So how do you become a better listener? By doing the Bill Clinton head-bob while other people talk, biting your lip and saying "I feel your pain". Nah. A good way to start becoming a better listener is to try the following exercise the next time you're listening to someone talk in a meeting:

Look at the speaker - not eye to eye - eye to face is fine. Just direct your eye focus toward them to the exclusion of everyone else in the room. If they are down at the end of a long table turn your torso toward them as well.
Be physically quiet while the other person speaks. This puts the spotlight on them, where it belongs and makes them the star. A subtle nod once in a while is OK - just make sure that any head movement is subtle and sparse.
If you're going to respond, wait till you think they are finished and then wait an extra beat to make sure they are really finished. Then talk. This is tough, especially when others in the meeting respond so quickly it makes it seem like the start of the Kentucky Derby...and they're off!
Build your response off of something they just said as in, "we reacted the same way as you did to the numbers, with disbelief, but we went back and took another look and here's what we found". This gives the other person tangible evidence that you just listened to them. It can be referred to as 'playing back' or 'reflecting back' what you heard. Whatever you call it - do it. It helps. A lot.

I realize these four tactics are not always doable in a world where the competition for airtime in a meeting is fierce. Think about it though. How many meetings have you been in where the smartest comment was made by someone who waited patiently, then made a 'spot-on' observation that wove all the threads of the meeting together? Often people remember those people and their comments more than the folks who practically leapt out of their seats competing to see how much air they could each suck out of the room.

The key is patience. It is a skill that needs to be strengthened through practice. Here's a simple hokey exercise you can do at home. It will eventually pay off with your clients and your colleagues - I promise. Here it is:

When you go home after a long day, plop down on the couch after dinner with your spouse, partner, family member or close friend and listen to them vent about their horrendous day. Then, see how long you can hold out without...

interrupting
judging
problem solving

To do the exercise justice, try holding out for ten minutes without doing any of the three things above. If the other person runs out of gas in their story, you are only allowed to say "so, what happened then?" - and then resume listening. Then you must recap what you learned to the other person and have them informally grade your comprehension.

It sounds easy, but it isn't. Just ask my wife how well I do at it. She'll probably tell you I'm still learning. When I offer this challenge to most men, they laugh. They know they will go home that night and never hold out for anything close to ten minutes. If you do this exercise it can help you discipline your ear to be patient - and it certainly won't hurt your relationship either.

Bottom Line

The best leaders listen well - the best salespeople listen well - and the best partners listen well. Be one of them. It doesn't take miracles. Just practice.

The Global Coach

Pitching Yourself

2009-01-19T08:27:00.000-08:00

If you enter the words (job interviews) in Amazon you get 30,570 results starting with Winning Job Interviews and Acing the Interview. I don't intend to compete with all that information and the thousands of other sources on the subject. You can surf as well as I can.

I will offer a few practical tips here to help you prepare for the onslaught of job interviews you will face between now and your next role. These tips are based solely on my common sense, my 28 years of experience in the business world and my observations as a communication coach to more than 1500 people. For this blog, I will assume that you are looking for a more senior role, but the tips can be useful for any level job.

Preparation

Read Peter Drucker's article "Managing Oneself" - it will help you focus on your strengths and avoid wasting time on converting weaknesses. You can get it as an electronic download at hbsp.com.

Grab a pad and sit down at the kitchen table. Write a line down the middle. On the left, list your strengths. On the right, list a corresponding real-life example of that strength in action. Keep pushing yourself until you have twenty. Then pare it down to the Top Ten that are relevant to your current job search.

Practice relating your examples (out loud to a mirror or tape recorder) until you can say them in your sleep. Don't worry, the act of rehearsal makes you sound unrehearsed and you don't need to memorize word for word. You're learning to tell your story.

Repeat the process for your weaknesses. On the left, list the weakness. On the right, how you overcame or managed the weakness. Start with five and pare it down to three or less. Then practice as above.

Review your resume. Is it a recitation of function or value? Review it and change it until the person reading it can determine the value you added to each organization and each job.

Review the job you are pursuing. Is it a turnaround situation? Is is a build-it-from-scratch situation? Is it a strong-getting-stronger situation? Make sure you match your interview prep to the reality of the business and the company.

Do due diligence. Write down the name of everyone you know who ever worked with or for the company you are interviewing with. Call them and interview them about the company. What's the culture? Who succeeds there, and why? Who fails there, and why?

Review your wardrobe. Make sure the suit you pick out is one you not only look great in, but you feel great in. Make sure it fits you comfortably. Make sure it fits in with their culture. For women, make sure it frames your face with the right accessories. For men, make sure the tie is tied all the way to the top. For either gender, carry a small cosmetic mirror with you. You can't always hit the restroom before your interview. You always want the advantage of a last minute face check.

Get into the interviewer head. Many interviewers play the interview straight up. Some play games. With the games-players, don't play. Unless they make you a Michael Corleone offer, why would you want to work with them anyway? There are enough jerks in the world and life's too short to spend 12 hours a day with one more. In any case, I think that most interviewers have four common sense questions they want answered: a) Do I like you? b) Will you fit in with our team? c) What do you bring that the other candidates don't? 4) Will you make our business better?

Body Language

Think tall (whether you are or not) and look them in the eye while shaking hands firmly. Visualize yourself entering the room confidently, as if you were already colleagues. Also, remember to heed the words of a legendary salesman, "people hear what they see". If you look like you belong where you are, maybe they'll ask you to stay.

To quote our mothers, Sit Up Straight! They were right. After watching 1500 people on videotape pitching clients and colleagues, I assure you it makes a big difference.

Keep a level head - leaning your head to either side is a weak deferential gesture - avoid it. It can make you look uncertain, questioning, or equivocal.

Be physically quiet while listening. An occasional nod is OK. Keep eye contact (not always eye to eye - more eye to face). If you're physically quiet, it puts the spotlight on the person speaking and you come off as a much more attentive listener. When they sound like they are finished, pause for a second to make sure they've really finished. Then build a response off something they just said. Be a great listener.

Gesture with purpose. Your purpose is to project strength and self-management. If you gesture without purpose, you can appear nervous, jittery or out of control. Tie your gestures to words. Keep them subtle. If they are too big they may seem out of place. Interviews should be conversations, not presentations. You don't need big gestures to make an impact.

Avoid nervous tics. If you clasp your hands together you may start 'washing' them if you get nervous or get a tough question. You could also shift around in your seat, play with your tie, hair, wedding ring or other jewelry. You want to look comfortable and composed.

Practice, practice, practice. If I'm prepping an executive for a media interview. my goal is to make the practice interview harder than the real one. Similar to mock trial for a law student or a hitter swinging a weighted bat in the on-deck circle in baseball. Pick someone you know who can play a tough S.O.B. interviewer and practice with them.

Vocal Presence

Speak slowly. The actor Michael Caine is my godfather of slow speaking. He maintains that powerful people speak slowly because they assume that everyone wants to hear what they have to say, whereas subservient people speak quickly because they think no one wants to hear what they have to say. Slow down - where's the fire?

Emphasize key words. There is usually a key word or two in each sentence that you want to hit a bit harder than the others. If you do, it gives you vocal variety. That's what people like to listen to. We hate monotone, but monotone is a by-product of 'monoenergy'. Apply more energy to specific words and it helps the interviewer listen to you.

Inject a little passion. The one constant in the business world is passion. Every good leader has it and most good leaders look for it. Speak with your head, heart and gut and sound like a person who loves what they do for a living -whether you have a job or not. It goes back to that cliche in sales - "If you don't sound like you care, why should they?"

There are 10,000 other tips you can get from other sources. Consider this a down payment. Remember, Barack Obama has just endured a year-long string of job interviews. He aced some, screwed up a few and was average in some others.

In the end though, he got the job. You will too!

As I always say,

"If you believe it, you will be it.

If you don't, you won't."

Remember, the first interview you have to ace is the one you have with yourself.

The Global Coach

Unleashing the Real You

2009-01-16T08:55:00.000-08:00

Speaking in a business context is commonly called presentation. Whether it’s picking up a telephone, facing off with a client, giving a recruiting talk, appearing on a panel at a conference, reporting to a management committee, updating a board of directors or leading a Town Hall meeting as the chairman of your company – presentation says a lot about us. It tells people whether we have confidence in ourselves, credibility in our profession, command of our subject, conviction in our point of view, and comfort in our own skin.

When it comes to this learned skill, we are all in the same overcrowded boat. It doesn’t matter what position you have or how much money you have or what corporate title you have. As speakers and communicators, we are all subject to the same influences. We all have some of the same strengths, weaknesses and anxieties. This blog is about how we can play to our strengths, minimize our weaknesses and manage our anxieties.

It's also about the choices we make as speakers in the business world – starting with the biggest choice of all. Which character are we going to play when speaking to employees, colleagues, clients and total strangers? Our authentic selves – the person people close to us know, love and respect. Or, will we play a ‘presentation’ version of ourselves, which gets watered-down and over-managed to the point that we are unrecognizable.

We have all seen ourselves or our colleagues in a business speaking situation – wrapped in an invisible presentation straitjacket with our head down in notes or slides. Our real personality gets subsumed by an overarching desire to ‘get it right’ and our authentic self starts to disappear. It’s almost as if we said to ourselves before the talk - “at worst, I’ll be boring, but at least I won’t make a mistake and look or sound foolish in front of my peers”. That fear of failure is what keeps us from showing our authentic selves when speaking. That fear of looking foolish keeps us from succeeding as speakers.

Being an effective speaker involves taking risks. That’s the big problem. If you’re high up in an organization, you want to minimize risks in speaking situations for fear of hurting the brand by saying something incorrect, untoward or just plain stupid. Let’s face it – in a world with a billion self-appointed paparazzi with cell-phone cameras, being careful with your words isn’t such a bad idea. Go ask Howard Dean, or Don Imus, or George Allen, or John Kerry or Prince Harry if they’d like to take back a few words if they could. Say the wrong thing and your words fly around the internet, completely out of context, defining your character for billions of people who have never met you - a tremendously inhibiting factor for speakers, even in the corporate world.

If you’re just starting out in an organization or working your way up, this fear of failure exists too, in a slightly different way. You may want to appear ‘professional’ to your bosses and your clients. We all want to look, act, walk and talk like ‘professionals’. Sometimes in our zeal to do so though, we can overdo it and suppress our personality and natural way of communicating. We can come across as dull, uninteresting and ineffectual, when we are anything but that in real life. As a result, we fail to make an impact in business settings because of our fears – of making a mistake – of looking foolish – or of not looking ‘professional’.

Succumbing to those fears is what makes our true authentic selves disappear. As a result, we don’t connect with our clients or our audiences the way we want to or the way we should.

So what can you do to overcome this obstacle and stop 'presenting' and start 'talking'. Let's take a practical business situation as an example of what you can do:

Let's say you're a CEO (or any senior leader) talking to your employees in a Town Hall setting. You walk up to the podium prepared to wade through a 22-slide, 45-minute brain dump on the 2nd quarter followed by, "any questions", followed by a planted question from the CFO, a canned answer from you, and a stampede to the cocktail party or the car. Ten minutes into your 'book report' the audience would like to shoot themselves and you'd probably like to join them. Here's an alternative:

You walk in the hall. You shake hands with some people you don't know in the first row and thank them for coming (you had pre-placed your direct reports in the back row as observers). As you walk by the lectern, where everyone expects you to stay out of habit or speaker anxiety, you drop off your notes, then you keep walking to the center of the hall, directly in front of the first row. You plant your feet about hip width apart (very important to keep you from wandering) and you give a 3-5 minute leadership message including an icebreaker (if appropriate), some context, a bit of framing, a theme for the talk and your intent for the day as in, "I'd like you all to walk out of here today with..." I call this part - THE HOOK. After you've hooked them, you walk back to the lectern to do your heavy lifting with the slide show.

Instead of reading the slides though, you simply look at some 'alive' faces in the audience (one at a time), frame the main message on each slide, and talk to them about what it means. If the theme is market share, think about taking a step to the side of the podium (with your back-up clip mike already attached) and say "let me tell what I mean by taking market share in this environment". That signals to your audience that it's story time and you rebreak the invisible 4th wall that usually exists between you and the audience. The very same wall you shattered during your leadership message at the outset. It's keep you and your audience connected. Remember, the only medium in the room that matters is your connectivity with your audience. The slides aren't the star - you are! They didn't hire a PowerPoint Pusher, they hired a leader.

Then, when you finally get to the last slide, go back to your leader spot dead center in front of the first row, set your feet again (very important) and give a 3-5 minute leadership wrapup. I call it THE HAMMER. You need to hit the theme again with a sledgehammer and place in their minds the critical ideas you want them thinking about and talking about afterward.

Then, instead of the 'plant' question from Vinny the COO or Mary the CFO, you open your arms with a simple welcoming double open-hand gesture and say "what questions do you have for me"? If you get silence, you whip out a 'prime the pump' question (from the mental inventory you prepared before the talk) and say something like, "what do you think our biggest opportunity is right now?" Like all great leaders, you want to end up your talk by focusing on the future, not the past (all great leaders deal in optimism). That may, or may not, trigger a 20-minute back and forth with your audience. If it does, people will leave the hall feeling they saw the 'real' you. Not the artificial, disconnected, 'slide reader' version of you who showed up last quarter and bored the heck out of everybody.

Best advice - for the rest of your career as a leader, STOP PRESENTING and START TALKING. Occasionally, divorce yourself from the podium. It's a prop, not a crutch. And once, just to feel what it's like to walk the wire with no net, leave the slides on your desk and walk into the room with nothing - and just talk. You may end up liking that style so much that Vinny or Mary will get the duller-than-dishwater slide show delegated to them - where it belongs.

Now, this doesn't just happen. If you try this, you will be breaking 'speaker scar tissue' that has been there for years. It takes planning, preparation and practice. Invest that time once though, and then go succeed in the execution, and every talk after that gets easier as you go along because you now have a process to repeat.

QUICK TIPS

Every talk has one theme - find it before you begin to write
Nail the HOOK and HAMMER and the rest will be easy
Practice out loud - for your spouse, a friend or the family dog
Practice to a mirror - so you can see what they see, or don't see
Practice in the hall - so you can make it your 'home court'
Enjoy yourself when you talk - as your 'real' self - they will too!

The Global Coach