Nick Morgan - Public Speaking Advice and Commentary

What do you say when you only have two minutes?

What do you say when you have to make your point in two minutes?  A community board in Maryland decreed everyone who appeared before it had to limit their remarks to two minutes.  That’s not much time for your particular burning issue.  And it’s not unusual.  In our time-starved age, everyone wants you to make your point as quickly as possible.  Interviews on CNN rarely go more than a minute or two.  Commercials get Tivo’ed and thus compressed further than their already brief format.  And the fashion in books is to write shorter and shorter.    

Two minutes is approximately 250 words at normal speaking rates, though, and you can say a surprising amount in 250 words.  Here’s a good way to think about it.

First of all, decide what your one-sentence headline is.  “Leaf blowers make too much noise and they should be forbidden in our community.”  It should take the form of a need or a problem you want to meet or solve.   

Then, deliver three supporting points.  Point one:  “First, I’ve tested them at over 120 decibels.  That’s as loud as a plane at the end of a runway.  Last I checked, we’re not living near a runway.  Should we be subjected to that much noise?’

Point two:  ‘Second, they don’t really clean up leaves.  They just move them around.  Often, that means the neighbor’s yard.  So they really just move the problem down the road.”

Point three:  “And finally, they’re hazardous.  Last year, an employee of a landscaping firm was injured when a leaf-blower blew some leaf matter into his eyes.  He couldn’t see, and he tripped over a rock, injuring his leg.”

And then repeat the headline:  “So that’s why I believe that leaf blowers should be forbidden in our community.” 

And close by asking for the appropriate action your headline and supporting points lead to:  “Please join me in banning leaf blowers from the fair town of Quietville.  Thank you.”

There you go.  Problem solved in two minutes.  Provided everyone goes along with you.

Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma is just out from Jossey-Bass.  Get your copy here:
http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Steps-Authenticity-Charisma/dp/0470404353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229113611&sr=1-1   

The problem with modern business presentations is an ancient one.

When you’re standing up in front of a group of people ready to give a speech, your instincts take over.  Honed over a million years of evolution, your body says to itself, “I’m in danger!  I must be prepared!”  because it was survival of the fittest in the cave person era. 

Your muscles tighten, your brain starts working faster, your breathing becomes shallow, your hands get clammy with heat and perspiration – adrenaline is coursing through your system, readying you for a battle that will never come. 

And that’s the problem.  Your body language signals to the audience in front of you (the audience dressed in modern business clothes, not the cave people) that you’re defensive, ready to fight.  The audience responds with defensiveness of its own.  What’s happening is that both sides of this modern attempt to communicate are being hampered by ancient instincts to fight or flee.

The possibility of open, honest communication breaks down, probably for the duration of the talk, and you haven’t even started yet.  All of this happens in the blink of an eye, unconsciously, before you even have the chance to think about it.  It’s just the bodies in the room communicating with one another. 

Another modern business presentation tanks. 

Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma:  http://tinyurl.com/5pq49q

Trust Me -- Non-verbal Communications -- 5

What’s the difference between authenticity and charisma?  Authenticity you can do alone.  It’s authentic (for someone) to sit out on the screen porch, strum your banjo, and sing sad songs to the moon.  It’s not particularly charismatic – unless you’ve got an enraptured audience of 500 listening in the front yard.  Charisma requires a crowd. 

That’s the simple distinction.  Going into a little more detail, authenticity requires that you show us your heart.  Passion is involved, but so is time; we believe someone to be authentic who has demonstrated consistency over a longer period of time than an instant or two. 

Charisma, on the other hand, is all about the moment, and having an audience.  First of all, it requires an awareness that the audience is aware of you.  Truly charismatic people know that people are looking at them (it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy) and –crucially – they enjoy it. 

And it requires self-awareness, along with an ability to display a range of emotions.  The single biggest deterrent that stops business people from being charismatic is that they believe that showing emotion is weak or wrong.  And so they give us emotional ‘monochromatism’. 

Finally, there’s an element of surprise.  Jack Nicholson is charismatic, in part, because he can emote hilarity at one moment and homicidal rage at another.  You can’t take your eyes off him because you never know what he’s going to do next.

Obviously, for business people, Jack Nicholson’s range is too much of a good thing.  But somewhere between stolid and Jack is the right pitch for business people who want to be more charismatic than a sea sponge. 

I talk about these qualities in lots more detail in Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, just out from Jossey-Bass (http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Steps-Authenticity-Charisma/dp/0470404353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229113611&sr=1-1).  Authenticity and charisma matter enormously today because people are so jaded from all the economic and moral shocks of the past few years, and because celebrity is increasingly the coin of the realm.  Business people can't do business without a solid dose of the former and they can't thrive without at least a little of the latter. 

Trust Me -- Non-verbal Communications -- 4

Somewhere between Enron and Governor Blagojevich, people decided they’d had enough of giant companies that betray their customers, the public and their employees, and public figures who betray their trust.  That’s why we’d rather watch a guy dancing a silly dance in various locales around the world than buy a new car from a company that may not be in business six months from now – even if we really need a new car.

That’s authenticity.  It’s what we crave now. 

It’s what we need now.  We have to be able to trust people, because we can’t take the time or money to hire private investigators to see if everyone we meet is telling the truth. 

Fortunately, we’re very good at getting an unconscious read on people quickly, the ones we meet face to face and talk to.  We’re not very good at consciously trying to read other people’s body language, but we are good at the unconscious work.  And we should trust it.  Our unconscious expertise has been honed over a million years of evolution and survival.  Our instincts have served the species well so far.  There’s every reason to trust them, with a couple of caveats.

The caveats have to do with the contrast between what we evolved to be able to do and what we do now.  Civilization has changed the nature of the games we play very quickly, and we haven’t evolved to read the implicit threat in a business competitor’s eyes, say, as well as we could read the threat in the eyes of the caveperson coming at us with a club. 

The threats and opportunities are subtler, and we have to train our unconscious expertise accordingly.

The good news is that you can invoke your instincts simply by asking yourself questions like, ‘Does that person sitting across the table from me mean to be friend or foe?’  And then wait for a gut feeling for the answer.  Don’t try to intellectualize it too much, because that will interfere with your unconscious expertise.  Let your unconscious go to work. 

I talk much more about these ideas in Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authentic Communication, (http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Steps-Authenticity-Charisma/dp/0470404353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229113611&sr=1-1) just out from Jossey-Bass.

Trust Me -- Non-verbal Communications -- 3

I attended the 800-CEO-READ Pow-Wow last week, in Chicago, and talked with the attendees about storytelling and about the importance of the two conversations – content and body language – to communications.  Among the attendees were some amazing bloggers and tweeters:  David Meerman Scott on social media (http://www.webinknow.com/), Jose Castillo also on social media (http://www.thinkjose.com/) , Kevin Eikenberry (http://www.kevineikenberry.com/blogs/index.asp) Pam Slim (http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/),  Sally Hogshead (http://www.radicalcareering.com/hogblog/),  Mike Moran (http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/index.htm), the Fast Company book reviewer Lucas Conley (http://blog.lucasconley.com/), and of course Todd and Jack themselves (http://800ceoread.com/blog/).  I know I'm missing some great blogs; those were the folks I got to talk with the most. 

The story I told to illustrate the power, especially, of the second conversation – body language – to dominate an exchange between speaker and audience goes back a few years to when I attended a conference at which the Dalai Lama was to speak.

I sat in the audience, very excited, because I had read about the Dalai Lama’s narrow escape from the communists to establish his government in exile in India and had been fired up by the idea of this holy man on the run.   And beyond that, I was fascinated by Buddhism and everything His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama represented.

He was over an hour late, but no one seemed to mind.  The room was wildly overcrowded – it would have seated 50 comfortably, and there were at least 80 of jammed in, digging our elbows into each other’s sides and apologizing as we did so.  The vibe was very peaceful.  And warm.   

Finally, the lights dimmed, and a bent, middle-aged man in saffron robes walked slowly out, and sat down on the floor in the middle of the stage.  And said….nothing.  For one minute, two minutes – three minutes.  He just looked at us. 

And then he laughed, a weird, other-worldly laugh.  He said, “You all look so serious.  I’d better say something really important.”  And laughed again.  The audience was completely transfixed.  He had won us over entirely without saying anything. 

What I realized later was that the speaker and the audience had had a whole conversation silently in that three minutes.  It was a non-verbal, largely unconscious exchange, that was as profound for us as it was silent. 

That inspired me to learn all I could about the power of non-verbal conversation.  What had happened in that room?  What had the Dalai Lama ‘said’?  What had the audience said back?  What had either party heard?  And so on. 

I do know that I saw authenticity and charisma in action that day.  These powerful aspects of human communication happen at a level that comes before speech, and go from speaker to audience and back again faster than words.  If your career or your job depends in any way on authenticity or charisma, then you owe it to yourself to understand the basic of non-verbal communication.  Every communication is two conversations.  Learn to be fully present for both.  (I go into much more detail about these ideas in my new book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. (http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Steps-Authenticity-Charisma/dp/0470404353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229113611&sr=1-1))

Trust Me -- Non-verbal Communications -- 2

More than ever, we demand authenticity of our leaders today.  The ones we haven’t already given up on.  And so of course authenticity is essential in communications. 

What is the latest research telling us about how to understand – and create – authenticity?  Can it in fact be created? 

The next big communications idea from neurological research is that we are unconscious experts in reading each other’s body language.  That was important for survival once, and it’s still essential for day-to-day living. 

The key word is ‘unconscious’.  We’re not very good at reading body language consciously.  It’s too subtle, it happens too fast, and we’re not wired to understand it.  But, at the unconscious level, something marvelous happens.  We don’t just read the body language.  We ascribe intent to it, and we do that in the blink of an eye – literally, before we can form a conscious thought about it. 

That is, we see a hand gesture, and, rather than stopping with that, saying to ourselves, Oh, what an interesting hand gesture, we react unconsciously to the intent:  she must be angry at me.  Then, we may have a conscious thought about it.  Or we may react emotionally, and just get uneasy. 

What that means to communicators is that much of our communication happens unconsciously, instantly, and before conscious thought.  That has important implications for how speakers show up – with authenticity, or not. 

If you show up unprepared, and nervous, the odds are good that your body language will signal that to the other bodies in the room.  People will read you as insincere, unprepared, incompetent, and so on.  The unconscious dialog will already be signaling trouble long before you’re consciously ready to try to make a good impression. 

The unconscious doesn’t make exceptions or give you a break.  It doesn’t think, he’s just probably a little nervous because it’s the beginning of a speech.  It just thinks, Oh-oh.  Trouble ahead.  One of the pack is nervous.  In fact, the one who’s supposed to be the alpha in charge. 

You’ll have failed to seem authentic, the fundamental test of leadership today, before you’ve fairly started.

That’s why it’s so important to prepare adequately for an important speech, meeting, or event.  That’s why it’s so important to be clear about the story you’re telling and your emotional attitude toward it.  That’s why it’s so important to be consistent in what I call the two conversations – content and body language. 

This insight is at the heart of my new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Steps-Authenticity-Charisma/dp/0470404353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229113611&sr=1-1  Authenticity is too important to leave to chance today.  And so is charisma. 

Trust Me -- Non-Verbal Communications

I had that all-too-rare authorial experience late last week:  I got to hold my new book, warm off the presses, in my hands.  It’s probably as close to Nirvana as an author gets.  Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma is out in advance form, and because the Internet has changed everything, it’s already available on Amazon, too.  Here’s a link:  (http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Steps-Authenticity-Charisma/dp/0470404353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229113611&sr=1-1)

I’ve been waiting to blog on the material in the book because Jossey-Bass told me to, but we’re good to go now.  So let’s get started.  I’ve been sitting on these ideas for a while.

There’s a lot of recent neurological research that has implications for perception and communications – and therefore public speaking.  The first idea that is of interest to communicators is that we’re apparently not the rational beings we think we are.  That is, we think that we get an idea in our conscious brains – I’m thirsty – and we direct our bodies to act on that idea – pick up the water bottle and drink. 

But in fact, it turns out that it works like this.  We get an emotion, or an intent – thirst – and that leads to a gesture – reach for bottle.  Then, and only then, we get the conscious thought about it – I’m thirsty; I’ll drink.  After that, we might say something.  So the process is:  intent – gesture – thought – speech. 

We actually spend a fair amount of time explaining to ourselves why we did what we just did.  A good number of our actions are driven by pre-conscious intents, or urges, and only followed nanoseconds later by explanatory thoughts. 

That’s tough for some people to grasp, and it’s counter-intuitive.  What are the implications for public speaking?  Every communication is two conversations, content, and body language.  We can see now that the so-called second conversation is more important than (and prior to) the first in many instances.

That means that we have this whole conversation going on with others (because these pre-conscious gestures are important precisely in interactions with other people) that happen unconsciously, in the blink of an eye, and that dominate how we feel about one another. 

Most of what we call charisma (or not) happens here.  The whole game of communication – well, many of the important bits – is over before you even open your mouth. 

Authenticity?  That’s a non-verbal, unconscious activity, too.  I’ll talk more about that next time. 

Political Leaders of the Day -- 6 -- General Eric Shinseki

President-elect Obama has picked a retired general, Eric Shinseki, as his Secretary of Veterans Affairs.  This is an extraordinarily important and difficult job, and by all accounts Shinseki is well-suited to fill it.  He has a reputation for integrity – he was cashiered by the Bush Administration for speaking out on Iraq – and he is a decorated veteran of Vietnam himself. 

He was Army Chief of Staff from 1999-2003, and is the highest-ranking Asian-American in the armed services. 

What kind of public speaker is he?

A serious one, as you might expect.  His affect is minimal, but he has the gravitas for the job, and the authority.  His voice is nasal, giving it presence, but not monotone, and it also has some resonance, so that it is not unpleasant to listen to in short doses.  He could improve it by supporting better with good belly breathing.  During a long speech, we would begin to find the nasal voice grating, so he should work on balancing his vocal presence and resonance better if he wants to be a successful platform speaker. 

I suspect that, in a job as political and difficult as this one, public perception will be extremely important – nearly as important as actually getting things done.  Of course, the VA is in terrible shape, and urgently needs modernizing, streamlining, and updating.  Most of all, it needs to honor the service of our veterans by treating them with the respect and deference they are due for their sacrifice. 

But the politics of the job will also demand a vocal Secretary who knows how to mobilize public opinion and comment to get things done.  Otherwise the Congress will continue as it has always done, paying lip service and not much else, to our veterans.

That suggests that successful public speaking will be an important part of General Shinseki’s work, and he would be well-advised to increase his charisma quotient.  He can do this by increasing his affect – the tactful display of a range of emotions. 

Charisma comes from two sources, self-awareness, and awareness of the audience.  Shinseki has to show his self-awareness with the strategic use of emotion when it will serve the cause.  Strategic displays of anger, for example, could forward his agenda powerfully if used wisely.  Especially in the halls of Congress.

Awareness of the audience will come when the General settles into the job and shows that he understands the needs and causes of all of the many stakeholders he must deal with.  Can he connect with the ones that he must connect with?

It’s a tall order, the one that General Shinseki must fill.  And a much-abused and neglected segment of our society, our veterans, is depending on him.  

Political Leaders of the Day -- 5 -- Bill Richardson

Bill Richardson, the nominee for Secretary of Commerce, has a long resume full of international diplomatic service and both legislative and executive experience here at home, including, of course, Governor of New Mexico.  He is, certainly, an honorable public servant with an impressive career. Why, then, does he talk like a man who doesn’t expect to be listened to? 

Perhaps he developed the habit when he was running for president, and losing out to Senators Clinton and Obama.  That alone is enough, maybe, to give one an inferiority complex. 

Richardson played baseball as a young man, and there’s an old kerfuffle about whether or not he was drafted for the majors (he wasn’t; he thought he was, he says).  Maybe that set him back a bit in the alpha male stakes.

And he was indirectly involved in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  As Bill Clinton’s U.N. Ambassador, he offered her a job on his staff, which she declined.  There was some suggestion of palming her off, and maybe that’s where the aggrieved air developed.

Whatever the source, Bill Richardson as a speaker combines great ease and comfort at the podium, and a strong natural ability to connect with the audience, with a mild inferiority complex. 

It shows up in his gestures.  He tends to make them quickly, and they disappear just as quickly.  That gives his words an apologetic accompaniment, as if he were throwing the words away along with the gestures.  And what gestures he uses tend to be the staple of Bland Politician Speak – the “remote control” gesture (hand pointing forward with the thumb instead of the pointing finger) and the “It’s as big as a breadbox” gesture (hands on either side of the stomach, raised briefly in the air).  Neither of these are strong, confident gestures. 

Indeed, overall, there’s a kind of blandness about Richardson’s gesture vocabulary which undercuts his message.  My hunch is that he’s been pleasing too many people too long.  He needs to connect with something and feel passionate about it again.  Maybe in his new rule of Secretary of Commerce, he’ll find passion in saving the country’s business infrastructure.  We certainly could use the help.

Political Leaders of the Day -- 4 -- Robert Gates

The once and future Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is a plain-speaking Kansan with more than a quarter-century in the CIA to his credit.  What effect has that had on his public speaking? 

We can still hear his Kansas roots in his nasal voice, that flat Midwestern twang that manages to be nasal and growly at the same time, because he’s busy speaking at the low end of his vocal register in an effort, no doubt, to out-John-Wayne the other alpha males in the room. 

It’s too bad, because with some breathing and placement exercises, Gates could actually have a pleasant voice.  But of all things we dislike the nasal tone.  The only positive side to it is that it perhaps kept his nomination hearings short, since the Senators would have been more than usually anxious to hear themselves speak rather than the nominee.

A fascinating study was undertaken a few years back on the vocal tones that people emit that are below the range of human hearing.  It’s not clear why we emit these tones, but we do, and the really interesting thing about them is that we synchronize them with each other.  And we do that in very specific ways.  We line our low-frequency tones up with the tones of the most authoritative person in the room, and we do this within the first several minutes.  It’s as if, when we meet, we immediately use unconscious means to sort out the hierarchy of the pack, by (inaudible) growling. 

That makes me wonder if people like Gates tend to force their voices lower (unconsciously) in an effort to win this low-frequency battle and be the dominant player in the room. 

In any case, Gates is subjecting his vocal chords to long-term damage with this verbal treatment.  And it’s a shame, because lurking behind all those growls is a pleasance baritone or even tenor voice.  He should take voice lessons and learn to sing.  Maybe once he's wound down the Iraq war?

Political Leaders of the Day -- 3 -- Mitch McConnell

It's official:  the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, is now referred to as the Republican Leader, thanks to Senator Robert Byrd of Virginia, who apparently decreed that the terms “Minority” and “Majority” would no longer be used once he found himself in the minority. 

It suits the Republican Leader just fine.  He’s all about the mask.  He’s one of those classic Southern gentlemen, with a courtly mien and a generous dose of Southern charm – the kind that smile at you, never raise their voices, and slip the knife between your ribs as effortlessly as butter melting on hot grits. 

That tight control over emotional display has some interesting effects on his speaking style and performance.  McConnell has developed a speaking tic, a slight cough that shows up in virtually every phrase.  I suspect he’s acquired it over the years from the habit of swallowing his voice and speaking without adequate breath support.  His voice comes from the bottom of his vocal range, and rarely rises above that (for him) low register.  As a result, it’s pure gravel – like pitchblende being crushed under an old-time miner’s drill. 

The swallowed voice and restricted vocal range limit McConnell’s charisma and emotional expressiveness.  For speakers, the rule is ironclad – you are what you can vocalize.  Someone as vocally restricted as McConnell simply cannot express the emotional range of a speaker like, say, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden.

In a very real sense, it’s the voice of another era and another world – a voice of quiet power and backroom deals.  It’s not a speaking style or instrument for the Internet Era. 

To be sure, with a little daily work, McConnell could learn to support his voice and in time the damage to his vocal chords might well heal.  But I suspect he’s quite happy with his style just as it is:  Southern school, with a hint of old-fashioned politicking sauce on top.  As outdated as it is, it’s still working for him as happily as a red wattle pig in a mud puddle.