Sully and Hillary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.