Women Rise Up

When we all saw Ann Romney and Michelle Obama and so many other successful women take the stage to speak at this year’s political conventions, it made me hopeful for my daughter in college.  Women are the majority gender in this country but have often taken a place backstage at these quadrennial party gatherings, rather than taking center stage as the headliners.

It wasn’t just the GOP candidate’s wife and the First Lady though.  We saw women cabinet secretaries (past and current), senators, representatives, governors, mayors and mothers and daughters.  All were as eloquent as their male counterparts – some even wiped the floor with their male colleagues in terms of speaking skill.  I don’t say that with surprise.  I say it in a sense of “what took us so long to see it?”

In my job, I have the privilege of coaching successful business people across title, culture, geography and gender.  For male and female clients, their speaking success is about projecting poise, presence and power on whatever stage they occupy. It’s all about connecting with their audiences intellectually, physically and emotionally.  It’s being an “all-in” speaker – communicating from your head, your heart and your gut.

We saw a lot of that “all-in” speaking at both conventions – even from women whose only official title is “mother”.  None did it better than Michelle Obama.  Here’s some of what I saw her do:

She used self-disclosure to bring us into her world
She wrapped her thoughts in shared human experience
She dressed her ideas in the audience’s everyday reality
She spoke with controlled passion in a conversational way
She stood up straight and projected physical strength
She built a human bridge to her audience’s heart

Whether their preferred role model is Ann Romney or Michelle Obama or Susana Martinez or Tammy Duckworth, young women and girls had a lot of great public examples to emulate on these nights.  They can start though by emulating their mother/heroes, as many of these women did.  Those mothers struggled, in their own way, to crack the glass ceiling of prejudice.

As a man and a father, I offer one piece of advice to all those daughters. Don’t keep cracking your head against the glass ceiling.  I'm told it hurts.

Save your heads – kick the door down instead.

Soon it will be two men up on stage at their party conventions – praising their dad/heroes – and their candidate/wives – and their brave daughters.

Private Equity Personality

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 the 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

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

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 to 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

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

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

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 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 3000 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 - brisk for matter-of-fact information and 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 can fall into the 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."

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.