Nick Morgan, Public Words

How do you connect with your audience? -- Part I

First of 3 blogs on connecting with your audience.

 All speakers wish to connect with their audiences.  What is the most powerful way to do that?  Every communication is two conversations – content and body language.  Body language is where connection happens. 

 

So how do you connect with an audience through body language?  Not surprisingly, perhaps, connection is first and foremost about closeness.

 

We all unconsciously measure the distance between ourselves and everyone else for obvious reasons of self-protection first and interest second.  Here’s how it works.  Twelve feet or more is public space, the coolest connection between people. Between twelve feet and four feet is social space, a little warmer than public space but still cool.

 

Four feet to a foot and a half is personal space, and now things are beginning to get interesting for us. A foot and a half to zero is intimate space, and we willingly let only people we trust highly or are very fond of in this space.

 

These spaces vary a bit from culture to culture; Mediterranean and Asian cultures tend to shrink the distances, and Western cultures expand them. But all of us have the four zones.

 

Try them out yourself. Walk down the street in a small town, and note when you make eye contact with approaching strangers and when they make eye contact with you. You will find that it is always astonishingly close to twelve feet. I assume this is because at that distance, we can still do something about a danger that presents itself; any closer and we might not have time to react.

 

Now try the move into the personal zone with someone. You’ll see that you keep your eyes, at minimum, on each other, and usually you’ll change your entire physical orientation when someone moves into your personal space.  Interest and energy increase. Your heart rate increases slightly. It’s personal, and you’re connected.

 

If you move into someone’s intimate space, a new level of tension arises, unless of course you are already intimate with that person—a spouse, a very close friend, a parent, or a child.  If you’re not intimate, the closeness will feel uncomfortable for both of you, and typically one or the other of the two people will try to draw back into safer personal space.

 

I’ve demonstrated this phenomenon many times to audiences I’ve lectured to about communication, and it usually gets a laugh because of the discomfort everyone feels.  Once I was talking about the zones with a small group of executives, and I moved into the intimate space of one of the women in the room as I was talking. She responded by giving me a solid right hook to the chest!

 

She apologized afterward, but of course she was simply responding with instinctive appropriateness because I had violated her intimate zone.  Once we all recovered, this incident made the point very well to everyone in the room about how important it is to understand the four zones and how deeply people are conditioned to maintain them. No doubt they developed in prehistoric times as a matter of life and death.

 

We’ve all seen drill sergeants in movies who put their face an inch or two from the hapless inductee and say in stentorian tones that ‘he’s a maggot’.  The point here is that the inductee is not allowed to maintain his intimate space; he’s being broken down in order to be built up again as a Marine, for example. Partly it’s just good theater, but it also violates a real sense of self-protection and so is destabilizing and humiliating for the inductee. These zones are powerful reminders that we are animals who carefully guard our physical and psychic integrity and protect ourselves unconsciously at all times.

 

So how do you use these zones to increase the connectedness with the person or persons you’re trying to communicate with?  Here’s the essential point:  Everything significant in communication between people happens in personal space or intimate space.

 

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Don't forget to breathe!

At the CIO conference I spoke to this week, I was preceded and followed by CIOs on the agenda.  I was (secretly) delighted; CIOs are, to be blunt, not known for their charisma.  Thinking very selfishly, I figured that it could only help me look good if the CIOs were highly technical, dry, and by their very presence liable to induce professional envy into the hearts of the audience. 

 

Then I learned that I was to be preceded by the CIO from JetBlue, who was giving away airline seats.  And followed by the CIO of Google, who was….the CIO of Google. 

 

So much for advantage to the communications expert.  I couldn’t afford to give away free tix and Public Words Inc is never going to be as big as Google.  Ever. 

 

In the event, I’m big enough to admit that I’m small enough to have watched the two speeches with a very critical eye.  What were they doing wrong, I wondered, that I could avoid and perhaps even slyly refer to (at least as far as the JetBlue guy) in my talk?

 

And what actually happened really surprised me.  Neither of these two worthy gentlemen were breathing.  At least not properly.  It’s a common problem among speakers today, because so few get any technical training, and we spend so much of our time sitting – in front of computers, on airplanes, on sofas in front of the TV, and so on. 

 

It’s very difficult to breathe properly while sitting, especially if you’re slouched.  So you tend to breathe shallow, brief breaths that keep you alive but that do nothing for your voice. 

 

And that bad habit spills over to speaking, an activity that demands good breathing if your voice is not going to betray you.

 

What can go wrong?  Your voice can lack strength, and thus authority.  It can become too nasal (something everyone loathes).  And it can become too gravelly.  Americans in general have a tendency to speak from the back of the throat, trying to sound like the Marlboro Man, I suppose.  This tendency compounds the gravel problem that can come from not breathing deeply.  The JetBlue speaker’s voice lacked authority and the Google speaker’s voice was too gravelly. 

 

How do you combat the problem?  Get up from the computer, now!  Breathe deeply in by expanding your belly like an eyedropper, tensing your diaphragmatic muscles, and pushing the air slowly out your mouth using those stomach muscles.  Your shoulders should not move.  If you do this right, you should be able to breathe out (while talking) for a good 30 -45 seconds.  And your voice will have ample authority and resonance, and be a delight to listen to. 

How to cut: giving a 3-hour speech in 45 minutes

I spoke this week at a conference of CIOs, talking about authentic communications.  It’s a new version of a speech I’ve given before, but it was time to update it to take into account the latest brain research I talk about in my new book, Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma – and to take my own medicine. 

 

I’m most comfortable in the seminar format, as a former academic, and I like to have 3 or more hours, a video camera, and lots of interaction.  Now, the structure of a seminar is necessarily different from a keynote speech of an hour or less.  You have to involve the audience more, so that they don’t go crazy with passivity.  And you’re better served to divide the time up into a series of mini-speeches in terms of structure, each with its own beginning, middle and end. 

 

But here I was giving a keynote speech – 45 minutes plus a few questions.  I had to figure out what to jettison, and how to apply my own advice about structure to a format with necessarily less interaction.  There simply isn’t time to prepare for, videotape and play back audience mini-speeches during the course of 45 minutes and still say something of substance.  You can – and should – have audience interaction, but it can’t go on that long. 

 

Moreover, while I’m all for audience volunteers, my group was somewhere between 200 and 250, and it was not going to work for the rest of the audience if I spent a third of my time with one or two representative extroverts. 

 

The first thing I did was think about what my elevator speech was.  If I could focus all that brain research and communications work into one point, I was on the road to developing a focused 45-minute talk.

 

So, I settled on the following:  Audiences today will not be moved to action unless your presentations are authentic, and I will show you how to achieve that authenticity, based on the latest communications and brain research.

 

That could probably be improved, but time was tight and it was good enough to go on.  Then, I had to figure out what the problem was that the audience had for which my material was the solution.  That was easy enough; the conference organizer and I had already worked that out.  The CIOs were all deeply involved in change programs, given the economy and the fast-changing world of IT, and they wanted to know how to make change work.  My answer was that authentic appeals to their employees would work; inauthentic ones would not.

 

That meant that I had to spend the first half of the talk, roughly, laying out the problem of inauthentic communications.  I used a number of humorous videos to show what inauthentic communications looked like, and I began with a quick set of three questions for the audience, and a story of authentic communications to get things rolling. 

 

Then, the second half of the speech was all about how to do it right, with lots of group audience participation.  I had to compress both sections greatly from my seminar format, focusing on a severely limited set of examples, but that was good discipline. 

 

The result?  I kept a close eye on timing, and felt briefly like James Bond as I uttered my last sentence and said “thank you” just as the giant red digital clock on the monitor counted down to zero.  Nothing exploded, the audience applauded nicely, and it all went accordingly to plan. 

 

There’s real satisfaction in delivering a keynote speech to plan.  Thanks to the CIO Magazine conference group for providing the opportunity.  And thanks to the CIOs for being a great audience.  A 45-minute speech is all about focus.  From the elevator speech to the closing seconds, keep your eye on the prize:  getting one point across as clearly as possible.

 

 

Shaking hands? Watch the other hand....

 

I sent out a tweet yesterday noting that when you shake someone’s hand you can learn a good deal about him or her by watching the other hand – the unshaken one.  The response was perhaps not surprising – everyone wanted specifics.  One very concerned gentleman wanted to know how you could possibly shake hands, make eye contact, and also watch the other hand – no doubt while remembering the person’s name at the same time. 

 

It’s a lot to do, sure.  But no, it’s not impossible.  Grab the person’s hand, give it a firm squeeze (but not too firm) and look him/her in the eye.  For about 2 or 3 seconds.  Then, check out the other hand.  A quick glance should suffice.  Let’s not make this too difficult.  It’s not.

 

What can you learn from the other hand?  A surprising amount.  It can either be closed or open, hidden or visible.  Look for the more extreme forms of behavior for more significant clues.  And remember that all body language is multi-determined, so it needs to be checked against other sources of information, other impressions, and subsequent messages given and taken. 

 

An open hand is good; a clenched hand may be a warning sign of some tension, or a hidden agenda.  If the other hand is hidden, that may be a sign of concealment of some issue or feeling – or it may just indicate shyness.  Again, you need to check any hints you get against other sources of information about the person. 

 

The most neutral position – and the one you should adopt yourself if you want to show up in the best possible light – is open, relaxed, and at your side.  If you want to be particularly welcoming, point your palm toward the other person, while keeping your hand open, relaxed and at your side.  Sound complicated?  It’s not; try it.  It’s surprisingly easy to make automatic. 

 

The point is that your hands talk, as does your whole body, even while you’re engaged in routine behavior like shaking someone’s hand.  Keep an eye out for tell-tale clues away from the shaking hand, and you’ll be surprised at how often you learn something interesting. I talk more about this in my new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, for those who want to become more expert in reading others' body language. 

 

 

 

 

What is charisma? And how can you increase your own?

What is charisma?  How can you increase your own?  Most people think that charisma is something magical that people like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have and the rest of us don’t.  But it’s actually much simpler than that – and something you can control.  

 

Charisma is two things:  authenticity (and by that I mean something quite specific) and attitude -- the passionate expression of emotion. 

 

Most of us don’t radiate a lot of charisma because we’re either not authentically present, right there, in the moment, or because we’re not expressing much in the way of emotion.  We either are split in focus – nervous, thinking about something else, distracted – or we’re bottled up – afraid to show what we really feel. 

 

We tend to put actors high on the charisma list because they’re so good at expressing emotion.  They work on making the emotions very true, even though the circumstances are usually made up. 

 

So how do you increase your own charisma?  First, increase your authenticity.  And that means being absolutely aligned in what you say and how you say it – content and body language.  You can’t be authentic if those two modes of expression are not aligned.

 

Second, increase your passion.  Focus in yourself on how you feel about the moment, the people you’re with, the situation you’re in, and then express that (see #1).

 

Working on these two steps will create a virtuous cycle that will increase your charisma quotient as you get more and more practiced at expressing emotion authentically.

 

I talk about this in more detail in my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  And I’m hoping to land a panel at SXSW 2010 to talk about it.  Please click on the link and buy the book, or if you’re planning to attend SXSW, vote for the panel.

5 tips for conducting a successful audio conference

I frequently get asked about how to make audio conferences, conference calls, webinars, and the like more interesting.  Apparently, a lot of people spend a lot of time on the phone, with a computer as distraction in the background.  The question is how can you make this form of organizational communication fun and successful?  Thanks to Patrick Hart from Ottawa for most recently posing the question and inspiring this blog. 

 

The first thing to note is that the people on the other end of the phone are getting less information than they would if you were all together in person.  That makes the format inherently less interesting than an in-person meeting.  So it’s an uphill battle to keep people’s attention, check whether or not they’re still listening, and generally keep in touch. 

 

That said, here are some ways to keep everyone’s pulse racing. 

 

1.  Stand up and smile when you talk.  Standing up gives you more energy, and smiling warms up your vocal tone.  When you sit down for long periods of time, you tend not to breathe properly and you get lethargic.  Fight that by standing up. 

 

2.  Make the audio conference as interactive as possible.  Conversations are interesting; listening to one person drone on for hours is not.  If one person is doing a lot of talking, break at least every 10 minutes to go around all the participating sites and get feedback, questions, and so on.  Announce in advance that you will do this, so that people aren’t surprised. 

 

3.  Instead of a talk, make it an interview.   If you’ve got a speaker scheduled, then consider employing the interview format rather than just having one person talk.  The give and take of an interview is inherently interesting, especially if there are differing points of view. 

 

4.  Be clear and present about the logistics, timing and duration.  I’m not a big fan of agenda slides for in-person talks, but the aural equivalent is very helpful on a conference call.  Announce how long you’re going to run, announce frequently where you are, how long until questions, who’s talking, who’s on the phone, and so on.  All of that helps create a more intimate feel, which would happen more or less automatically when everyone’s together in the room, but doesn’t on the phone without help. 

 

5.  Use emotion-laden words when you’re trying to communicate something important.  Normally, we decode the intent, emotion, and attitudes of the speaker through body language and to a lesser extent through tone of voice.  On the phone, you only get tone of voice, and it’s not very good at that, because the fidelity of telephones is notoriously bad.  So you have to work hard in telling people how you feel; they won’t necessarily pick it up from your body language.  Use words that label your emotions so that no one is in doubt how you feel. 

What should Steve Ballmer say?

For my blog today, I'm linking to a guest blog I did for Vince Thompson of Smart Planet.  Thanks to Vince for suggesting the post, and here's the link:  http://tinyurl.com/ntwfhp. 

Podcast on Communications and body language

For my blog today, I'm linking to a podcast I did recently with Trip Allen of Egyii, a Singapore-based consultancy (http://www.egyii.com).  Enjoy!  http://tinyurl.com/lsr6bg