Watch out, TED.  There’s a rival for your viewers’ attentions out there:  the Do Lectures.  The Do Lectures are granola and Birkenstocks where TED is arugula and, I don’t know, Italian loafers.  The Do Lectures happen on a small farm in the little country of Wales, and they’re mostly about sustainable living, but the big idea is that they are talks about people who Do Things, and who might inspire us to Do Things too.  In other words, don’t just sit around staring at your computer like I am right now, and like you are when you read this, but get up, get inspired, and get moving.

A typical example of a very thoughtful and inspiring speech from the Do Lectures is Craig Mod’s talk about how the digital era and the iPad affect books and publishing.  Craig, a publisher and digital savant, begins quite modestly by saying that anyone who tells you where the publishing industry is heading doesn’t know what he is talking about.  And that’s fair warning:  the publishing industry is in ferment right now and no one knows where it will be in even a few years’ time.  

He then goes on to quite lucidly explain what opportunities the digital era is creating in publishing and what you can – and indeed, should, because these are Do Lectures – do about it.  He says that early examples of digital publishing like Encarta asked the wrong question.  Encarta asked “How can we stuff a traditional encyclopedia into a digital format?”  Instead, it should have asked, “How does digital affect the artifact, the book, publishing?” 

And when you ask that question, you get answers like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and Flipboard, where Mod is working now.  It’s a small shift in perspective that yields huge changes in thinking if you’ve got the passion to engage with the combination of digital and books.  Mod is on to something with that question, and every writer, speaker, publisher, and distributor should be asking it of what they’re doing, every day. 

Mod is enthusiastic as a speaker, rather than polished, but he closes with an extraordinary gambit that I have not seen anyone else use quite as well.  He personalizes the talk by directly addressing all the other speakers at the Do Lectures by name, and suggesting to them how they could bring publishing and digital together in their lives.  It’s a bravura performance, and deserves emulation by other speakers who want to make a room small – in a very effective and positive way.  Nice going, Craig. 

 

 

For my third in this series on speakers you should cross town to see, let me introduce you to Jacqueline Novogratz.  Whenever I’m feeling discouraged about the state of the world, or the economy, I put on one of Jacqueline’s TED talks and get inspired again.  Jacqueline is the head of the Acumen Fund, an organization that funds businesses that are making the world a better place and making money at the same time. 

The Acumen Fund practices what Jacqueline calls “patient capitalism.” That means the Fund invests in its companies for 15 years or so, in order to give them a chance to get established and become profitable – and make the world better by finding ways to improve farming, deliver safe drinking water, and provide pollution-free energy to countries around the world. 

It’s an inspiring story, and Novogratz is an inspiring leader.  Her long view of capitalism means that she can say, “what we yearn for as human beings is to be visible to each other,” and you understand what is really guiding her actions and the work of the Acumen Fund. 

Her most recent talk on TED comes from a TEDwomen conference in December 2010, and the standing ovation she gets at the end is richly deserved.  Her stories will move you if you have a heart.  And hang in there to the 14-minute mark, because her story of Ruby, the 6-year old girl from the Civil Rights movement, will show you what courage and grace under extreme pressure looks like. 

Jacqueline comes across as a shy speaker, with some self-protective gestures, but her heartfelt passion overcomes that shyness and connects powerfully with her audience – and will connect with you if you let her in.  I recommend all 5 of her TED talks – and any conference where she’s speaking. 

 

 

I’m back from some travel with the second in my series about speakers worth catching.  If you have speakers you’ve seen recently that inspired you, please send along the names and I’ll see about including them in the series.

On to Doug Keeley.  Doug is the CEO and Chief Storyteller of The Mark of a Leader, a program that brings leadership training to corporations around the world.  He’s also the author of a book of the same name.  Doug combines music and heartwarming stories to inspire these corporate audiences, and I particularly like his riff on the 12 notes. 



Western music uses a 12-notes scale, and Doug asks the audience, why don’t you ever hear musicians complaining that they only have those 12 notes?  It’s a humorous way to talk about leadership, abundance, and getting the job done with what you have.  He has the audience guessing the song and performer with only a few notes as clues, to make the point that if a musician can make a unique mark with only those, then surely a business leader can make a difference with all the resources businesses have. 

It’s fun, and a good way to make the serious point underlying the music and the jokes.  Keeley has a great relaxed conversational style, and he’s very accomplished on the guitar.  The combination makes for a compelling presentation.  The video doesn’t give the entire speech, unfortunately, but enough to give you a taste of it, and to make you wish you were there. 

For my blog today, I'm linking to a new ebook I've just published on Amazon and iTunes:  How to Give a Great Presentation.  Most presenters start with their slides; I explain why that's backwards and how to do it right.  It's a quick read for less than a small cup of coffee, and it just might revolutionize the way you think about preparing a presentation.  Enjoy!

I’m going to start a blog series on current speakers worth watching and begin with Mitch Joel, author of the bestselling Six Pixels of Separation (what a great title!), prolific blogger under the same name, and frequent public speaker on the subject of social media and marketing.   Mitch’s blog is one that I never miss, because he’s always onto the trends and always saying something interesting. 

If you’re new to the web and social media, Six Pixels of Separation should be your first stop.  Mitch explains the basics – and some advanced stuff – in clear, compelling language.  He argues for consistency, adding value, honesty, and speaking like a real human being – and he brings all those essential virtues to his own approach to marketing and the web. 

You can catch Mitch speaking here at a recent social media conference, and he’s worth watching for his speaking style as well as what he’s saying. (It's a 4-part video; I've just linked to part one.  You can catch the rest on YouTube.)  Mitch has a very relaxed, conversational manner, which fits his subject matter and his persona perfectly.  The man and the message work comfortably together.  Note how well he works the room without wandering too much.  He makes it look easy – and of course it isn’t.  The match of the casual, comfortable style along with the message – that he’s a ‘presentist’, not a futurist, works very well. 

For an always-thoughtful take on the new cyber world of marketing, Mitch Joel is your guy. 

 

 

The author and book business is changing rapidly, and the news is not good for a lot of the players.  Fortunately, they can take a note from the music business and change their modus operandi to survive.  So what’s going on? 

Established publishers struggle to get attention for their books through traditional channels, and haven’t learned yet how to use the new social media channels well.  As a result, they take fewer and fewer chances on new ideas, books, and people, instead clinging to established blockbuster names and hoping that those will carry the firm.  And they put fewer and fewer resources into the books they do publish.  Gone are the author tours, the marketing blitzes, the ad placements in glossy magazines.  Authors who want that kind of exposure have to buy it from specialist PR firms or do it themselves. 

The new electronic markets are simultaneously limitless and fragmentary, making it hard to get the word out to people about your new work.  And the pressure is enormous to make your work free to all.  Never mind that you spent years developing your intellectual capital – the world expects you to give it away online. 

These trends make it harder and harder for new authors to get established, and make an honest living.  Some self-publish, and learn hard lessons about marketing and distribution.  Others work for years on brilliant books only to see them vanish without a trace in a huge, impatient marketplace.  Some books are remaindered the week after publication based on slow early sales reports.  How can a little-known author or an unheralded gem of a book get attention? 

The happy faces at the moment are on writers who have well-established followings already.  It’s a winner-take-all book world today.  If you’re a Seth Godin or a Stephen King, this is a good time for you.  You can play traditional publishers off various forms of electronic and self-publishing and keep more of the total book spend.  And you have a wide array of social media at your disposal to announce your latest to a waiting world. 

But what about the rest of the author world?  What can a consultant with a great new book, or an academic author with a wonderful idea, or a novelist with a heartbreakingly beautiful story do to get in print, and sell a few books? 

Authors today need to take a lesson from the music business.  It went through similar ructions beginning roughly a decade ago, and a new model has evolved that makes sense for authors too.  It’s not an easy way to go, but it does mean that you get to keep playing. 

Bands today have learned that they have to do three things simultaneously to survive and prosper.  First of all, they tour regularly.  That’s where most of them make their money.  And that's where they establish strong bonds with their audience.  Then, they sell music and merchandise at gigs, online, and wherever else there is a market.  And finally, they make time for the recording studio. 

Authors need to do the same.  They need to become speakers, going on tour with their stories and ideas the same way a band does.  They need to sell their books at gigs, online, and in traditional bookstores where they can.  And they need to make time to write new stuff. 

To accomplish this new multitasking prestidigitation, authors will need to learn how to create a platform via social media, as well as whatever traditional media approaches they can afford.  And they’ll have to learn the speaking business, which is highly competitive and intolerant of amateurs.  And with all this new work, they’re going to have to keep doing what makes them unique – writing the stories and capturing the ideas only they can wrest from the chaos.  It’s a tough new world, but at least the rock and rollers have shown the way. 

Are you one of the new authors making a living this way?  What have you learned?  What are the tricks of the trade?  How well is it working for you?  Share your news here. 

For my final blog in this series on body language “quick takes,” I’m going to answer the question I get asked most often by interviewers, audiences, and fellow speaking coaches:  how do you show up with authenticity?  And what about the irony of practicing that authenticity?  Doesn’t that mean that any such ‘authenticity’ will be fake? 

Thinking about authenticity in this way mistakes what it is and how it is projected.  Authenticity is genuineness.  The shortcut we use to determine authenticity in the people around us is consistency in message and body language – does this person appear to mean what she says?

And so the irony is that the more you practice being consistent, the more likely you are to show up that way.  When people don’t rehearse, they send out unconscious messages with their bodies that this is the first time I’m doing this.  And the body language cues of first-timers overlap with the cues of people who don’t fully mean what they say.   Both groups tend to engage in self-protective behavior, because they feel exposed.  Both groups telegraph nervousness through agitated body language.  And both groups often restrict their own motion and movement by hiding behind a podium, or finding a safe corner of the stage and getting stuck there.  The result signals to the audience (unconsciously) that the speaker is not relaxed, fluid, and at ease. 

So the way to look authentic is to practice.  Your body must get the muscle memory of standing, walking, and talking in the ways that it will during the real event or occasion.  If it does, then it can show up with some authority and presence, and the audience will interpret that as authenticity, if the (more comfortable) body language does in fact match the message.  And that is the kind of important question that gets answered by rehearsal. 

If you rehearse, you and your body can focus on the moment when you’re actually delivering your message.  And that greatly increases the chances that you’ll show up as authentic. 

For my blog today I'm pointing to a recent article in Success magazine on virtual meetings.  In it, I offer 5 tips for a successful meeting.  Enjoy!  http://bit.ly/nhmOv2

Charisma is not what you think it is.  It’s not a God-given gift that you either have or you don’t.  It’s rather something you can learn, something you can turn on or off at will once you understand how it works. 

Charisma is focused emotion.  Most of us go through our days unfocused and distracted, thinking about all sorts of things, a little upset, or perhaps in a good mood, chuckling at something that happens, or a funny cartoon that someone sends us, worrying about an upcoming meeting, trying to remember something on the to-do list, vexed at the guy in the next cubicle who’s talking too loudly on the phone again, trying to figure out what to have for dinner, and on and on.  That mix of attitude is deeply uncharismatic.

Here’s why.  We humans have evolved to read each other’s emotions quickly and unconsciously, for basic questions like safe or unsafe, friend or foe, fighting or fleeing.  When we see the average mixed-emotion medium-temperature human walk by, we get a quick read and move on, because there’s nothing exciting there. 

On the other hand, when someone comes in the room with focused emotion – excitement, passion, energy, anger, joy – you name it – we instantly start paying attention.  The emotion draws us, unconsciously at first, and then consciously as we try to figure out what’s going on.  It’s a survival thing.   

The way to turn on your charisma is to focus your emotion, before you go into a meeting, or get up to give a speech, or even have an important conversation.  Make it a real emotion relevant to the situation.  Focusing takes some practice; you begin by remembering a time when you naturally felt that way, and recalling that experience as completely, using all 5 senses, as you can.  With that practice you’ll get better and better at turning it on and off.  And with that will come charisma. 

Grown ups learn to conceal their emotions, in the workplace, in social settings, and at home.  There are all sorts of reasons to do so, some good, some bad, but it’s useful to be able to detect concealed emotions underneath a bland exterior whether it’s your boss holding back on a job performance issue or a family member avoiding a fight.  So how do you do it?

Paul Ekman made his life’s work the effort to be able to spot concealed emotions.  His book Telling Lies is a classic in the field.  It turns out to be very difficult to detect lies reliably, but Paul did improve the odds a little with training that he developed for the CIA and the FBI.  And along the way, he discovered something fascinating:  when we’re concealing a strong emotion, we almost always let it out in “micro-expressions,” sudden leakages of the emotion that are expressed in our faces, unbeknownst to ourselves – and mostly to the people around us, for very brief flashes of time – as little as a 24th of a second. 

The good news is that you can train yourself to spot these micro-expressions.  Ekman himself offers training from his website, or you can train yourself by studying facial expressions and identifying the basic ones using simple pictures which you look at for shorter and shorter periods of time. 

With a few weeks of work, you can train yourself to notice the flashes of anger, or disgust, or surprise, or happiness – whatever the emotion is.  We’re unconsciously aware of micro-expressions anyway; the practice allows you to become consciously aware of them.

And here’s another way to get to the same end result – reading concealed emotions.  Practice asking your unconscious what it’s seeing.  That may sound complicated, but it’s not.  Simply pose the question to yourself, when you’re in someone’s company and you want to know how he or she is feeling.  Make it a positive statement: i. e. something like “Is this person angry?” or “Is this person happy?” and then wait for your “gut” to give you the answer.  If you practice waiting for your unconscious to speak to you, it will.  Your unconscious already knows the answer; it’s just a matter of tapping into it.  Most humans are incredibly quick and able when it comes to reading other people’s emotions – but only at the unconscious level.  At the conscious level, all kinds of other thoughts get in the way.  It takes practice, and a quiet conscious mind, to hear your unconscious.  But the effort will repay you with enormously increased emotional intelligence.