« October 2009 | Main | December 2009 »
For my blog today, I'm connecting to a guest blog I posted on 6 Minutes (http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/), a great public speaking blog run by Andrew Dlugan: How to connect with your audience by moving closer. You can find the blog here: http://tinyurl.com/yhqycdm
Enjoy!
10. 2010 already looks to be a better year for conferences than 2009.
9. Pico Pocket Projectors are here.
8. We have a gifted orator in the White House.
7. Flip camcorders are here.
6. Audiences want you to succeed, studies show. Really.
5. 800ceoread is still here.
4. Studies show audiences only remember 10-30 percent of what they hear.
3. Marshall Goldsmith has promised to take all of 2010 off to meditate in an ashram.
2. The Powermat portable wireless recharging mat is here.
1. Tony Robbins has promised to take 2010-11 off to build an ashram out of native woods and natural fabrics and meditate in it on the impermanence of personal achievement.
Ram Charan once was the best-kept secret in the business world. Only the CEOs of companies like GE, Verizon, Novartis, Dupont, Honeywell, KLM, and Bank of America had heard of him. Today, thanks to his speaking, his books, and his articles in BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, and Fortune, which described him as the “most influential consultant alive,” he’s widely known as one of the world’s top management gurus and advisors to CEOs. Forbes pegs him at #13 on its list of the world’s 50 most essential management gurus. His recent book, Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn, came out in December 2, so we have to credit him with a good sense of timing at least.
But how good a speaker is he?
You can see him speaking here to a Fortune writer on what to do in a downturn http://tinyurl.com/y8vla5g:
And here, talking about the 6 building blocks for business success: http://tinyurl.com/yjwkmka (the video quality is poor, but it will give you an idea).Charan speaks with a good deal of authority, but he has the bad habits that all too often seem to come with that authority: he’s not as clear as he thinks he is, he’s unselfconscious to a fault, and he paces through the audience with a disconcerting lack of direction. The non-verbal confusion mirrors the verbal confusion.
Despite all that, he is a very smart man giving solid, commonsense insights into successful business practices. He makes the listener work harder than one should have to, however, because of his lack of discipline as a speaker.
What many speakers frequently forget is that paying attention is both hard work and a great gift. Just ask your teenage children. Speakers owe their attention-paying audiences the discipline to be as clear and as thoughtful about their messages as humanly possible. Not many measure up to this simple, yet essential standard.
Marshall Goldsmith is a professor, consultant, and coach, who talks and writes about leadership. He’s the author of some 24 books, including The Leader of the Future (Jossey-Bass, 1997), perhaps the most popular book on leadership ever written, as well as more recent books like What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (Hyperion, 2007) – ranked the #1 business book by the Wall Street Journal -- and Succession: Are You Ready (Harvard Business Press, 2009). He pioneered the idea of 360-degree feedback, and Fast Company has named him America’s pre-eminent executive coach.
But how good a speaker is he?
It’s a surprisingly difficult question. Goldsmith is a mixture of good and bad habits, and he gets good and bad effects as a result. You can see him speaking here at Google: http://tinyurl.com/yka4hua in 2007.
His good points? He’s funny, direct, articulate, fast-paced and he delivers home truths in rapid-fire succession.
His bad habits? He’s arrogant, dismissive of the audience, laughs at his own jokes, and constantly points his finger at the audience like an admonishing parent while he paces relentless back and forth – scolding the audience for doing things wrong, when he should be including the audience in his circle instead.
In the end, you know he’s right about a lot of things, but you’re cross at him for being right, because he’s delivered his message in such an arrogant way. A curious performance from a self-described Buddhist who gives all his information away for free and donates a lot of his fees to charity. I’m a fan, but you have to be prepared to take a lot of grief to be a Marshall Goldsmith fan.
Michael Porter is a University Professor at Harvard, one of the founders of the Monitor Group, the author of several of the most significant books on competition and competitive advantage, including On Competition, Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage – and the guy who taught the world how to optimize a supply chain.
He’s on anyone’s list as one of the more important business thinkers of the last couple of decades.
But how good a speaker is he?
You can see him speaking here, http://tinyurl.com/67p94g, on his famous
five competitive forces that shape strategy. Here, he’s talking with Charlie Rose on America’s
competitive strategy: http://tinyurl.com/yfw8q5l. And here’s his speaker page: http://tinyurl.com/yecm4sr.
Porter appears quite relaxed and conversational in his
manner on first blush. But his
hands give him away. They’re all
over the place, waving, clutching themselves, coming together under his chin in
a prayerful position as he decries America’s crumbling competitive
advantage. Altogether, there’s too
much motion from Porter; his gestures become distracting after a few
minutes. It’s too bad, because
he’s smart and articulate, and there’s no reason why he couldn’t learn to
simplify his gestural conversation just a little. Taking that step would give him much more authority and gravitas -- and he'd be easier to watch.
Then you notice his voice. It’s nasal, and that becomes tiresome after five or ten
minutes. The research suggests
that nasal voices do not wear well on listeners, and Michael Porter, with all
his erudition, is a case in point.
Again, it’s simply too bad, because nasal voices are easily rendered
more resonant with a little discipline and practice. Porter needs to get to work.
The management guru Gary Hamel has had more Harvard Business Review articles reprinted more often than anyone else - 15 and counting. He’s a visiting professor at the London Business School, the founder of a new venture called MLab, which seeks to “accelerate the evolution of management knowledge and practice,” the author of several seminal books on management, including The Future of Management, Competing for the Future, and Leading the Revolution (which unfortunately recommended Enron) -- and the inventor of the idea of core competencies. The Wall Street Journal recently said he was the world’s most influential business thinker.
In short, he’s one of the top biz gurus. But how good a speaker is Gary Hamel?
You can see him here, http://tinyurl.com/2vypya, speaking to Fortune management innovation, and here, at something called the leadership summit 2009: http://tinyurl.com/y9kgwbj.
Gary is all energy. He’s probably the best ranter in the top ten business speakers. But he lacks polish. The effect is of a rather over-earnest high school social studies teacher shouting to keep students’ attention and afraid that he’s about to lose them. The performance is initially arresting, but it grows wearisome after a bit. Hamel has two levels, loud and not loud. That soon becomes annoying. And his diction is so mushy as to be inarticulate at times when he throws the end of a sentence away.
He leaps around the stage, pacing back and forth, in his desire to get the message across. But he’d be much better served by developing some nuances, some variety in his delivery, and some purpose to his wanderings.
And yet, when he says, for companies today, it’s “not about efficiency, it’s about irrelevancy” he’s so right that it’s scary. Hamel is hard to watch for long periods of time, but ignore him at your peril. He may have been wrong abut Enron, but he’s right about the need for businesses to innovate or die.
Philip Kotler is a marketing consultant and a professor of
marketing at the Kellogg School at Northwestern University in Chicago. He’s probably the world’s most
influential thinker on strategic marketing. He’s on any number of top ten lists of important business
gurus. He’s written more than 40
books, including some of the basic textbooks in the marketing field, such as Marketing
Management (http://tinyurl.com/y9kjxo3) and Principles
of Marketing (http://tinyurl.com/ya293jw).
Here he is talking about the brand called you: http://tinyurl.com/kp66nh. Here’s his speaker video: http://tinyurl.com/yfyc7tb. And here he is speaking at the London Business Forum: http://tinyurl.com/599hvs.
What these videos show is a ponderous speaker very much in
the old-fashioned academic style, long on substance and short on style. Not very entertaining, very
straightforward, and a little behind the times. But sincere, completely authoritative and obviously smart.
The London Business Forum video reveals in addition a
speaker who has never completely mastered the choreography of the stage: he wanders back and forth with that
irritating absence of thought and excess of adrenaline that has caused many a
nervous talker to get happy feet.
This behavior is also very typical of the professor who is thinking as
he goes, with only a general outline in his head about where he might end
up. A tenured professor can get
away with it, but that doesn’t make it right.
Kotler will give you the basics; go to someone else for
pizzazz.
Richard Branson may well be the world’s most famous entrepreneur. He got his start selling records out of the trunk of his car – or ‘boot’, since he’s English. Today, some 360 companies later, he’s the Chairman of Virgin Group, and has innovated or even overturned more industries than most of us have heard of, including space flight.
But how good a speaker is he?
You can see Branson here:http://tinyurl.com/d6qxjf. He’s talking with Arianna Huffington about his wealth and other matters.
Also check out his interview with TED’s Chris Anderson here: http://tinyurl.com/l99z8k.Branson is not a good public speaker; he’s halting, shy, and labored. (Indeed, he typically avoids stand-alone public speaking and instead does interviews or shows video.) But he’s also charming, thoughtful, and very, very smart. If you bear with the awkwardness, the results are worth it. Branson is one of those rare individuals who has figured out how to do exactly what he wants to do and be incredibly successful at it – all the while apparently having loads of fun. Most of us can learn from him.
The most extraordinary attribute of the man – at least in public – is his humility. He comes across as genuinely humble in his interviews, even going so far as to physically hunch over in order not to dominate his interlocutor. That makes him the opposite of the alpha male – the omega male, perhaps? – and it works very well for him. He’ll probably never be a captivating speaker. But he does exude plenty of charisma, and leadership is something he learned how to ace at an early age.
Paul Krugman shows up as number 3 on Forbes' most influential management gurus list (http://tinyurl.com/ygc6mb4). He’s a brilliant economist, winner of the Nobel Prize for his work on international trade, prolific writer of books, and blogger for the New York Times. What kind of speaker is he?
You can see him here:
http://tinyurl.com/yhbz7ak (on
the stimulus ) and here: http://tinyurl.com/5d9g3y (his Nobel Prize
acceptance speech) as well as here: http://tinyurl.com/y8pjrjh
talking on the Colbert Report, and to Google on the economic crisis.
Krugman is one of those people who is so brilliant that he
can’t finish a sentence. He
constantly interrupts himself with new ideas and half-finished thoughts. His mind is racing far ahead of his
words, and the result is that clarity and syntax are the victims. He’s often quite hard to follow because
of this fractured kind of speaking.
And what about his delivery? He’s nasal, and his voice tends to go up into his nose and get more so when he gets excited. That tendency, coupled with body language that lacks authority, and you have someone who in person doesn’t live up to the advance billing.
With work, he could improve both his syntax and his delivery, but my guess is he’s too busy being brilliant to make the effort.
Who is the world’s most influential business thinker? According to Forbes (http://tinyurl.com/ygc6mb4), it’s C. K. Prahalad, Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan, and author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (http://tinyurl.com/yghrz9s), Competing for the Future, and other books.
What kind of a speaker is he? You can see him here, talking about innovation: http://tinyurl.com/yz93neg; here, talking
about sustainability: http://tinyurl.com/yk2bmq2;
here, talking about The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: http://www.thinkers50.com/video/32;
and here, talking about whether or not globalization is good or bad for the
poor: http://tinyurl.com/yfscn5w.
I particularly recommend the last link, a talk he gave at
the Aspen Institute in 2007. It’s vintage
Prahalad. Aside from a tendency to
use slightly too dense, under-designed slides in support of his talk, Prahalad
is an extraordinary presence. He
had enormous gravitas, a remarkable comfort level in front of an audience, and
a natural way of talking that many business speakers could learn from.
His talks make no concessions to the ill-informed or the
casual listener. They are
thoughtful and demanding. He’s no
superficial entertainer. Take on
Prahalad if you’re prepared to pay close attention, work hard, and maybe even
take notes. He comes across like a tough professor lecturing to students – which is of course exactly what he
is and what he is doing much of the time.
He does have a dry sense of humor that he indulges in occasionally, but
don’t look for constant laughs in a Prahalad talk. He’s more comfortable with wry comments and the occasional
chuckle.
In an era when much of our business thinking is ‘dumbed’
down for mass consumption, Prahalad is a one-man argument for high standards. You can actually learn from him.
I've revised my blog from yesterday to reflect President Obama's remarks today at the Fort Hood memorial service:
President Obama addressed the mourners at Ford Hood today at the memorial service for the fallen (http://tinyurl.com/y8l4uyj). The President’s comments demonstrate both the opportunities and the pitfalls of this sort of leadership speech, and bear comparison to President Reagan’s much-quoted remarks on the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986 (http://tinyurl.com/yzsv4dl), not to mention Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Pericles’ funeral oration on the death of Greek soldiers during the first year of the Peloponnesian War.
We expect leaders to speak on tragic occasions like this one. Their comments should comfort us and let us know that the deaths of the fallen have not gone unnoticed. There are certain demands of the genre and the occasion; it is the job of the leader to say something about the larger significance of the cause upon which the fallen were engaged. The leader should further address some specific audiences: the relatives of the dead, who have special reason to mourn, and perhaps other groups who are particularly affected.
Primarily, we look to the leader to give us some sense of continuity, reassuring us that the cause, and life, will go on. In the presence of death, then, we look to our leaders to help us find resilience and endurance – to re-orient us toward life, even as we grieve for the dead.
How do President Obama’s comments compare to the great examples of the genre provided by presidents Reagan and Lincoln, as well as the Ancient Greeks?
Not well, unfortunately, though his remarks of today were more thoughtful and better suited to the occasion than his earlier remarks on the day of the tragedy itself (http://tinyurl.com/ybjjqpf).
Reagan’s eulogy is a brief masterpiece; Lincoln’s an even briefer, even more magnificent piece of prose. Both earlier presidents’ speeches – but especially Reagan’s – commiserate with the mourners. Both speeches acknowledge the role of the fallen in the larger cause. Both speeches point the way forward, making the argument that the dead have not died in vain because the cause goes on. And both speeches help their audiences rededicate themselves to the larger purpose involved, whether it is the exploration of space, or the creation of a more perfect union. In this re-dedication, the two speeches echo Pericles’ oration, which argues passionately for his listeners’ continued allegiance to the city-state Athens and its role in the world as a beacon of freedom.
In short, the earlier presidents’ speeches speak from both the head and the heart.
Obama’s speech makes similar arguments, but nonetheless there is something lacking. His delivery is precise and cool; he seems to instinctively avoid the emotional. But that is exactly what we need from a leader at a time of tragedy: a sense that the leader suffers along with us even as he points the way forward.
Reagan, on the other hand, evinces sympathy, compassion, and comfort in equal measure, his eyebrows drawn together, his head tipped slightly to one side, and his voice full of concern.
Reagan’s speech mentions the fallen astronauts by name. He addresses the families of the dead directly, and takes time further to speak to the schoolchildren who were watching the Challenger flight because a teacher was on board. And he makes an eloquent case that space exploration will go on. Similarly, Lincoln makes the case that Gettysburg’s fallen have not died in vain because the living will take up their cause and soldier on.
Obama does link the deaths of the soldiers at Fort Hood to the larger cause of keeping America safe. His text borrows from Reagan’s by mentioning the fallen by name, and indeed goes one step further, giving brief details of each person’s biography. It’s a nice touch. But almost immediately, he goes on to make the political argument for deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan, tying it to 9/11. We sense that he’s got more on his mind that simply those fallen heroes, and it’s the wrong time to be reminded of this:
These are trying times for our country. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the same extremists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans continue to endanger America, our allies, and innocent Afghans and Pakistanis. In Iraq, we are working to bring a war to a successful end, as there are still those who would deny the Iraqi people the future that Americans and Iraqis have sacrificed so much for.
In times of great mourning, we look to our leaders to find the meaning that allows us to go on. But we also need our leaders to grieve with us, simply, for the lives that have been lost. Leaders must lead both with head and heart if we are to follow them into an uncertain future.
The recent tragedy at Fort Hood prompted President Obama to modify previously scheduled comments to a Native American group in order to comment on the horrific shootings (http://tinyurl.com/yjg4pyz). The President’s comments demonstrate both the opportunities and the pitfalls of this sort of leadership speech, and bear comparison to President Reagan’s much-quoted speech on the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986 (http://tinyurl.com/yzsv4dl), not to mention Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Pericles’ funeral oration on the death of Greek soldiers during the first year of the Peloponnesian War.
We expect leaders to speak on tragic occasions like this one. Their comments should comfort us and let us know that the deaths of the fallen have not gone unnoticed. There are certain demands of the genre and the occasion; it is the job of the leader to say something about the larger significance of the cause upon which the fallen were engaged. The leader should further address some specific audiences: the relatives of the dead, who have special reason to mourn, and perhaps other groups who are particularly affected.
Primarily, we look to the leader to give us some sense of continuity, reassuring us that the cause, and life, will go on. In the presence of death, then, we look to our leaders to help us find resilience and endurance – to re-orient us toward life.
How did President Obama’s comments compare to the great examples of the genre provided by presidents Reagan and Lincoln, as well as the Ancient Greeks?
Not well, unfortunately. Reagan canceled his State of the Union address to speak solely about the Challenger disaster. Obama squeezed his comments in the end of a speech on other matters. The choice of the latter to continue with his other business diminishes the sense of occasion.
Reagan’s eulogy is a brief masterpiece; Lincoln’s an even briefer, even more magnificent piece of prose. Both earlier presidents’ speeches acknowledge the role of the fallen in the larger cause. Both speeches point the way forward, making the argument that the dead have not died in vain because the cause goes on. And both speeches help their audiences rededicate themselves to the larger purpose involved, whether it is the exploration of space, or the creation of a more perfect union. In this re-dedication, the two speeches echo Pericles’ oration, which argues passionately for his listeners’ continued allegiance to the city-state Athens and its role in the world as a beacon of freedom.
Obama’s speech, on the other hand, is primarily tactical. He talks about getting to the bottom of the mystery of the shooting, and the involvement of various governmental bodies in that pursuit. He does note that the soldiers who died are heroes in service to their country, but the comment is brief and perfunctory and does nothing to specify either the particular mission of the soldiers in question or particular groups affected beyond the obvious, the families of the fallen.
His delivery is flat and distracted, as if his attention was split between the audience in front of him and the events at Fort Hood. Reagan, on the other hand, is completely focused, evincing sympathy, compassion, and comfort in equal measure, his eyebrows drawn together, his head tipped slightly to one side, and his voice full of concern.
Reagan’s speech mentions the fallen astronauts by name. He addresses the families of the dead directly, and takes time further to speak to the schoolchildren who were watching the Challenger flight because a teacher was on board. And he makes an eloquent case that space exploration will go on:
I’ve always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute. We’ll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews, and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.
Similarly, Lincoln makes the case that Gettysburg’s fallen have not died in vain because the living will take up their cause and soldier on:
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated (this ground), far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
In times of great mourning, we look to our leaders to find the meaning that allows us to go on. President Obama should call upon all his eloquence and help the families of Fort Hood – and the nation – deal with this most recent tragedy with words and demeanor more suited to the occasion.
For my blog today, I'm linking to a Duct Tape Marketing podcast I did with John Jantsch, who's a fun, smart guy. Take a listen here: http://tinyurl.com/yaahcld.
What is the single most powerful way to increase your persuasive connection with an audience – and your charisma at the same time?
Listening.
When you listen with your whole body, using your intuition or unconscious to read the emotions of those with whom you’re communicating, the result is a connection with the other people in the room that they experience as engaging, fascinating, and indeed charismatic.
Why is this the case? Why should focusing on someone else’s emotional state add to your charisma? Technically, the outward focus that you must adopt will contribute to your stillness, which, when it is combined with energy, is charismatic. More than that, as you establish and maintain a connection with the others in the room, they will experience this as a heightened interest in you.
This is the kind of magic that candidate Bill Clinton exhibited on the campaign trail during his two runs for the White House. He would establish strong eye contact with a questioner and, holding his whole body still as he focused on the person, raise his eyebrows, open his eyes, and nod. All the while, he’d be moving as close as he could to the questioner. The effect was powerful, partly because of Clinton’s technical mastery of all the details of gesture but mostly because of the quality of his listening. The strength of the bond that he would establish with one questioner would, by proxy, be felt by all of the people in the room.
That’s charisma.
Think of it this way. Your job as a persuasive leader communicating with an individual or group of people is most often to move them to some kind of action. To do that, you have to change their minds. You’re taking them, in effect, from point A to point B. That movement is not only intellectual but also, and more fundamentally, emotional. So your job as a listener is to figure out what your audience’s emotional state is at the beginning of your communication and then monitor the progress of that emotional state as you move them on the journey to action.
To put it as simply as possible, where are they emotionally when you first meet with them, and where are they when you’re done? If you’ve been persuasive, you’ve moved them from passive acceptance of the current condition, or anger at it, or frustration with it, to a refocused energy about changing it. The act of listening to your audience, whether of one or one thousand, is monitoring that progress from passive to active, from why to how, from emotion turned inward to emotion turned outward.
What you’ll find when you do the work of listening hard to the people you communicate with is that you will quickly become more attuned to others’ emotional states and they will soon become more enthralled with you. They will welcome you showing up because you will be the leader who pays the most attention to them, and that commodity is as scarce as platinum in this information-saturated but emotionally distant age.
I began my first book, Working the Room, with the line, “The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.” Since that book came out in 2003, many people have asked me, can a speech really change the world?
I always answer, yes, of course a speech can change the world. Think of President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address and how it launched the Peace Corps, or his speech about putting a man on the moon, which put several men on the moon, or Martin Luther King, Jr’s speeches that brought about a change in race relations in the United States, and led ultimately to the election of President Obama.
But my answer really should be, every speech changes the world. Every time. Even the more mundane ones. Successful speeches move people to action, inspiring them to commit to new goals, activities, and ideas.
And speeches that fail? They change the world by their very awfulness – their failure. A bad speech is a huge opportunity lost. Audiences come into speeches full of hope, wanting to be inspired, moved, changed in some way. To squander that hope is to commit an act of murder – a little murder, to be sure, but murder nonetheless.
The VP of sales who fails to rev up the sales force. The CEO who fails to get the executive team behind him. The CFO who fails to persuade people to work harder than ever to achieve those financial goals. Each of these failures has changed the world, because an opportunity was lost, a modest hope was killed, a vision was dissipated.
The next time you’re giving a speech and you’re tempted to wing it, or to give it less than your best, remember that the power of collective human energy is immense, and to waste an opportunity in front of an audience is to change the world – in a particularly sad way.
* * *
If one of the your speeches has changed the world for the better, think about entering it in the Cicero Speechwriting Awards. It’s a chance at getting some recognition for your efforts: http://www.cicerospeechwritingawards.com/. The deadline is in January, so you’ve got plenty of time. Good luck!
