Lots of entertainment industry mavens have noticed the drop in Idol ratings over the past few years.  The finale is tonight and the question in the air is “American Idol – does anyone still care?”

But that’s the wrong question.  What’s wrong with American Idol is that it’s not telling its story in the right way.   It’s got storyline confusion. 

Readers of this blog will know that there are only a few basic, powerful stories you can tell, and the most fundamental is the Quest.  American Idol sets off with its contestants on a Quest to survive elimination and win first the Golden Ticket to Hollywood and then, of course, the top prize, becoming the Idol. 

So far so good.  But the problem comes with the end of the road.  The show has been around long enough that it has become all too obvious that winning American Idol is no guarantee of becoming a pop star.  All too many of the winners have fizzled rather than dominated the pop charts. 

American Idol is a false quest and we all know it.  The show can’t deliver on its implicit promise.   The record shows that winning American Idol doesn’t mean all that much.  

Contrast that flawed ending with the Hunger Games.  At first, Katniss is on a simple quest to survive the games, but the stakes keep getting raised, and soon she must figure out a way to win the survival of 2 people, herself, and the other contestant with whom she may be falling in love.  And of course, as readers of the trilogy already know, she ultimately figures out a way not only to cheat that fate, but to win something far bigger and more important, an end to the wicked Games themselves.   Her true quest is revealed and the world she lives in is transformed.    

The implications for American Idol and its contestants are clear.  The show needs to figure out a way to make its ending a real, complete Quest.  Perhaps the winner gets a million dollars and a house in the Valley?  Killing off the losers is probably out.     

And if you’re a contestant on American Idol?  The smart move is to pull a Katniss and refuse to play along (after you’ve gotten to, say, the top 3 or so).  Pull out and focus on the real quest – to take the wicked, corrupt music scene by storm.  It’s not about getting to Hollywood.  It’s about having a real career in a very, very tough business by dint of your talent and determination to survive – and staying authentic no matter what.  That’s a quest everyone can love.   

Real quests always end with a celebration with your friends, one that marks the completion of a difficult journey.  Winning American Idol these days is more like attending your college graduation – it’s all too clear the fun is over and it’s time to get to work. 

 

Since I reviewed Kate Middleton’s first public speech, it seems only fair to check out another world leader’s maiden attempt at public communication.  Kim Jon-un, the 29-year-old dictator of North Korea, addressed one of his country frequent military shows yesterday.  The occasion was surprising because it may signal a shift in, at least, PR from that unfortunate little country.  Kim Jon-un’s predecessor enjoyed 17 years as supreme leader, and only spoke in public once.  The new one apparently plans to set a different pace, since he’s only been in charge for a few months and he’s already tied his father. 

The differences between the two speakers are instructive.  Kim needs the practice.  Where Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, was winsome and appealing, Kim, the dictator, was monotonous and rarely looked up from his text.  Where Kate connected with her audience on the subject of missing her husband, Kim never seemed to connect with his audience at all.  He even made the classic mistake of breaking his flow as he turned the page of his text.  He shifted nervously from one foot to the other at several points during the speech.  The only point at which he looked even a little animated was the end, when he waggled a forefinger at the audience as he uttered his last words.  

The audience applauded wildly when he was done, but then he can have those who don’t applaud wildly killed, so that may not signal much beyond a desire not to be slaughtered for lack of enthusiasm.  I recommended that Kate use a teleprompter until she gets a little more practiced.  I would even more strongly recommend a teleprompter to Kim Jong-un, in order to bring his head up out of the text and to give the illusion that he is speaking to the audience in front of him. 

It’s wonderful to think that even a speaker who can bump off his audience gets nervous.  That should provide comfort to adrenaline-filled public speakers everywhere.   The video below will give you a glimpse of Kim’s first nervous speech and a chance to glory in the realization absolute power isn't absolute -- it doesn't include control over butterflies. 

 

 

Authenticity is hard because it is hard to be open and honest about ourselves, warts and all.

Authenticity is hard because sometimes we want to hide our own less-than-perfect traits from ourselves.

Authenticity is hard because other people may seize on our weaknesses as proof of our unworthiness, rather than our humanity.

Authenticity is hard because we think what makes us human is our uniqueness, but it’s really our commonalities. 

Authenticity is hard because we can lose track of our essence in daily compromises, accommodations, and dealings. 

Authenticity is hard because most of us are growing into ourselves.

Authenticity is hard because we think it’s all about being, but it’s really all about doing. 

Authenticity is essential because it’s the only way to do good work.

Authenticity is essential because our children need to learn it from us.

Authenticity is essential because without it there is no core.

Authenticity is essential because if we open up about our weaknesses other people won’t bother. 

Authenticity is essential because it’s how we grow into ourselves

Authenticity is essential because otherwise we’ll compromise once too often and lose our way for good. 

Authenticity is essential because life is too short for anything else.

What happens when your words and body language don’t match?  Audiences believe the body language every time.  But they don’t consciously take the two apart.  Our minds are constructed to infer intent from our unconscious reading of other people’s body language.  That’s for obvious survival reasons.  In other words, if someone starts walking toward me, it’s important for my survival to be able to decode his intent very quickly, and act on it, in case he appears to mean to do me harm. 

Our unconscious minds are very good at reading the intent of the people who come within our sphere of awareness.  And when they’re talking at us, we unconsciously compare words and body language.  When they’re aligned, we get the communication.  When they’re not aligned, we believe the body language.

Which brings me to Ed Miliband.  He’s the English Labor Party’s current leader, and they’re out of power now (ever since Gordon Brown turned out to be such an unpopular follow-up to Tony Blair).   He’s been licking his wounds for a while, since David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, took over in a clumsy shared power arrangement.  But now Miliband has delivered a major policy speech all about how a new Labor Party has got it figured out and is ready to change.

That’s a message that should be delivered with optimism and energy.  And that’s what Miliband’s words are presumably trying to convey.  But his body language, specifically his face, is angry and sneering.  He evinces micro-expressions –fleeting sneers and scowls – that are clearly at odds with his message. 

The result?  He got pasted in the press for not being charismatic or convincing.  A wonderful example of what happens when your emotions – and therefore your body language – are at odds with your message.  Miliband would have done his party better service by keeping his mouth shut – or straightening out his emotions before he spoke. 

What was he really feeling?  We have no way of knowing.  He could have been unhappy with anything from David Cameron to his commute to the amount of starch in his shirt collar.  Doesn’t matter.  What matters is that he showed up with inconsistent verbal and non-verbal ‘conversations’.     

It’s a great lesson for all leaders who are preparing to communicate an important message.  Get clear on your emotions as well as your message.  And make sure they’re consistent.  Otherwise, you’ll do a Miliband, and you’ll do yourself and your organization no good. 

 

This year is already shaping up to be a fabulous year for communications mavens.  We have the quadrennial follies of the American presidential election.  We have Europe flailing its way through a debt crisis, with the heat of words rather than the light of action likely to keep us entertained for months.  We have the infection of democracy spreading from the Arab world to Russia and perhaps even China.  With all this going on, and lots more no one can anticipate, what are the communications trends for 2012?

1.  The public discourse is only going to get uglier.  Thanks to the aforementioned political season, Republicans are going to go even more negative, and the Democrats even whinier.  The US, just like Russia, the Arab world, and the Middle East, desperately needs statesmen and women who are willing to reach past invective and extremism to compromise and practical solutions to real problems.  But it won’t happen this year. 

2.  If you can’t say it in a video, don’t bother.  I’ve been predicting the transition from a print-based culture to an image-based culture for some time now.  In 2012, even the most troglodyte of communicators will realize that we’re no longer primarily reachable via the news release, the headline, and the story.  Now it’s the 1-minute video spot that holds sway.  YouTube has won.  Even Twitter is going to go visual.  You’ll see. 

3.  If you can’t say it in 8 seconds, don’t bother.   The other trend I’ve been talking about for a couple of years might be called the short-attention-span effect.  We are so over-stimulated and the demands on our attentions so many that you’ve got to make it short or our eyes cross and you lose us.  The interesting exception to this rule is the Harry Potter Variant– if you can provide us an escape through immersion into someplace that we prefer, you’ve got us.  In tough times, escape keeps looking better and better.  But if you’re not providing epic escape into better worlds, keep your message short.  Shorter than you can imagine.  Shorter than you can possibly believe.  No, even shorter than you’re thinking right now.   

4.  Facts don’t matter anymore; stories do.   As a storyteller, I love the ascendancy of the story as more and more people recognize that they have to tell them in order to really engage their audiences.  As a responsible storyteller, I’m a little worried about the vanishing regard for truth, especially in our public servants.  For example, illegal immigration is way, way down since 2008, but you wouldn’t know it from our politicians who continue to beat that dead horse.  We’ve got real problems, people – we shouldn’t keep attacking the mythical ones! 

5.  Finally, 2012 is the year that hope won’t die and anger won’t triumph.  As angry as people are, they won’t stay angry forever.  And as negative as the mood seems right now – especially in America – it won’t stay negative forever.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that come spring 2012, we’ll begin to see the tiny green shoots of the hope plant growing once again.  It’s part of the natural yin and yang of national mood.  It never stays the same, and it has been really, really negative for some time now. 

So welcome to 2012.  And remember that no matter what the year, authenticity, integrity, and transparency still make for great communications every time.  Here’s to your renaissance, growth, break out, or whatever you’re hoping for this year. 

Once again, my fellow communication coaches Decker Communications have published a “10 best and worst communicators for 2011,” and the list is fascinating both for those it includes and those it doesn’t, as well as what it says about us and where we are as a nation.  Most of the 10 worst are there because they deceived the public in some way, or broke trust with their constituents.  Most of the 10 best are there because they are perceived to be authentic, and valuable, members of society. 

So I celebrate 7 of Decker’s top 10:  Steve Jobs (of course), Howard Schultz (OK), Chris Anderson (of TED, absolutely), Virginia Rometty (sure), Lady Gaga (why not?), Warren Buffet (please, no scandal), and Christine Lagarde (what a relief).   But what about Hillary Clinton, who has done a consistently solid and forthright job as Secretary of State – always a nearly impossible assignment?  Or Jon Stewart, who has single-handedly kept the liberal point of view alive and funny?

And I join with Decker in throwing gratuitous mud at 9 of the 10 worst:  Anthony Weiner (of course), Bryan Harrison and Bill Stover of Solyndra (sure), Charlie Sheen (no question), the Murdochs (yes), Rick Perry (certainly), Brian Moynihan (OK), Greg Mortenson (sadly), the Commissioners (of the NBA, NFL, and MLB, yup), and Leo Apotheker (OK).  But what about Herman Cain, who taught us anew that deception and stonewalling don’t work, ever?  Or Mitt Romney, who has yet to give us an authentic moment on the campaign trail?  Or Newt Gingrich, who is a brilliant communicator, but doesn’t know when to stop?   

What’s more interesting to me is what the list tells us about ourselves and our concerns.  So, without further ado, are Morgan’s Reflections on the Best and Worst Lists of 2011.

It’s a time for authenticity, even if it’s angry authenticity.  When will our leaders learn that faking it just doesn’t cut it any more?  It’s obvious, of course, in the political world, where political futures get decided in a heartbeat because the politician in question fails to be authentic when it counts.  But it’s also clear in the business world, where authenticity has a clear and powerful effect on the proverbial bottom line – for good, with someone like Steve Jobs, or for ill, with someone like Leo Apotheker.  That's why I wrote about authenticity in Trust Me -- it's real, and real important. 

Transparency is the only option.  Get used to it.  Of course, we communication professionals have been saying it forever, but leaders continue to stonewall in the face of accusations of every conceivable kind.  If Dominique Strauss-Kahn didn’t seal the deal, Herman Cain must have done.  Someone saw.  Someone remembers.  Someone has already posted it on YouTube, for heaven’s sake.  Come clean!

You get one chance to make an impression.  Once again, this is even more true now, thanks to the attention deficit we all operate under.  We’ll give you one shot, if you have a fascinating story to tell, but don’t expect us to take the time to listen to a second one.  Once your “narrative” is established in the public mind, it’s all the labors of Hercules combined to shift that narrative.  Herman Cain is now and forever the womanizer.  Rick Perry is now and forever the brain freeze guy.  And so on. 

Sex and violence still sell.  It’s difficult to overstate how base, and how polarized, our public discourse has become.  We pay attention to the Republicans for their tawdry scandals and accusations.  We vent our fury at President Obama for not single-handedly improving the economy, when that’s really up to the thousands of business decisions made by us and our business leaders every day.  And we miss, therefore, the hundreds of heroes that daily do wonderful work, help people everywhere, and change the world for the better. 

The really interesting communications are going on outside the US.  While we’re busy whining about the economy and our political leaders’ embarrassing missteps and inability to get along, the rest of the world is forging ahead in some wonderful and terrifying ways.  Aung San Suu Kyi, The Arab Spring, Gaddafi, Putin and the decline of Russia, Angela Merkel, and the indefatigable Sarkozy, David Cameron, the British Pillsbury Doughboy – the real communication excitement, both good and bad, wasn’t here in the US in 2011, it was elsewhere in the world.  We’d better stop complaining and start doing once again what we do best – invention, optimism, and open-handedness.

Here’s to a communications recovery in 2012!

I’m fascinated by politicians like Herman Cain and Rick Perry who hang in there – along with their most loyal staff and supporters – long after everyone in the outside world can see that they’re dead in the water.  Why the difference in perspective?  Of course, a huge piece of it is simply the momentum that a candidacy has, and the desire of the candidate and the people close to him, having gone this far, to hang in there and not give up. 

But there’s something deeper going here.  We’re experiencing different realities because our perception of public figures like Cain and Perry largely come from television and the Internet, whereas the insiders get their impressions from having seen him in person or having worked with him. 

We’re hard-wired to ‘read’ – unconsciously – a person who comes within our personal orbit.  We develop a sense of what that person is like.  We trust them, or not, depending on the unconscious cues we get.  And so a relationship that is formed in person has some strength, and may well survive a disappointment or two.  If someone we know and love behaves like an idiot, we say to ourselves, “he was having a bad day,” or “she was off her game.”  We attribute the screw up to circumstances, and not character.

Online, it’s different.  Trust is much more fragile, because it hasn’t been reinforced by those unconscious face-to-face cues.  So when someone that we know virtually misbehaves or does something apparently stupid, we’re far more ready to write them off as a lost cause.  We attribute the screw up to character, not circumstances. 

So when you’re thinking about the relationships you form online, with your suppliers, your customers, your fan base, and so on, think about how fragile they are.  If you screw something up, expect a much more brutal, instant reaction from all those online people than you get from your face-to-face colleagues.  They’re deciding that your character is flawed.  Your mother will give you the benefit of a bad day. 

BTW, if Cain quits tonight, it will be another triumph of the virtual over the real.  Because more and more, it's the virtual that matters.

10.  Toastmasters.  The volunteer organization that will give you the chance to learn the craft of public speaking in a relatively safe space, at little or no cost. 

9.  William Safire’s Lend Me Your Ears.   Still the best collection of great speeches, and a must-have resource for any serious public speaker. 

8.  TED.com.  It’s getting hard to remember, but before TED it was actually difficult to see a new speaker in action easily online.  Now they’re out there – almost all of them, all the time. 

7.  Flipcams.  Buy 2, record yourself speaking with one, and record the audience with the other.  You’ll get deep insight into how you’re coming across.

6.  Phil Davison, Internet sensation.  Technically, Phil delivered his speech just over a year ago, but I’m still really, really thankful. 

5.  The iPad.   You can show videos, slides, and even use your iPad as a white board with a growing array of apps.  So much less to carry on the road!

4.  Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte.   The best designers and thinkers about great slide presentations out there.  Presentation Zen and Slide:ology (and their other books) should be on your bookshelf, dogeared. 

3.  Herman Caine.   Did we need another perfect example of how not to handle a media firestorm?  And yet, companies and campaigns still don’t get it right.   Apparently, we needed this guy.  Transparency, people!

2.  Mirror neurons.  These nifty little brain cells make us an empathetic species.  Without them, we would not be able to share a laugh, get excited together about an opportunity – or change the world with a speech. 

1.  Rick Perry’s “Oops.”  A 52-second flub that gives hope to the rest of us, imperfect speakers always trying to improve our craft. 

It’s Friday and almost Thanksgiving here in the US, and so it seems like a good time to put my storyteller-speaker coach’s hat on, kick back, and take on a few of the current issues in the news. 

Great stories, like great speeches, present compelling problems to the audience.  The catch is that in the end the audience always wants a solution.  Stories that continue to grab audiences’ attentions generation after generation – like Romeo and Juliet – do both brilliantly.   (SPOILER ALERT) Will the star-crossed lovers find a way to happiness?  That’s the problem.  The answer is a tragic one – in attempting to work out their problem, they kill themselves, dying in each other’s arms.  So the answer to the question is no, and the solution to the problem is an unhappy one – but no less compelling because of that. 

Audiences demand a solution that matches the problem from the speaker – and news audiences ultimately demand the same from their stories.  The Libyan conflict was over for everyone except the Libyans once Gaddafi was caught and killed.  Now it’s on to a new story and a new problem – can the former rebels establish a working government?  That’s much less dramatic and compelling a story (for the rest of the world) so Libya has dropped way down on the global news meter. 

To finish the Penn State abuse scandal, the University or the Governor or somebody needs to conduct a highly visible, rigorous investigation, hang everyone involved out to dry, and clean house.  Otherwise, it will haunt State College for years, in the same way that the Catholic Church has been unable to shake its sex abuse scandal because it has never really come clean about it in a way that matches the problem. 

Occupy Wall Street has presented a compelling problem to the world – economic inequality – but it has gone on long enough that people are asking for a solution.  As long as none is forthcoming, we can’t move through the story.  And because we have limited capacity for juggling news stories in our heads, OWS is risking losing the public’s attention altogether.  Stories that are further down on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will take over.   At the base of Maslow’s hierarchy are physiological needs and safety issues, and so sex, disasters and wars always trump people camping out in urban parks.  Unless the OWS folks give us some solutions to debate, we’re going to move on. 

A different kind of issue bedevils the Mitt Romney campaign.  He can’t compete right now with the personal sagas of Caine and Perry self-destructing.  Newt will of course be next – he has self-destruction written all over him – and so Mitt is going to stay out of the news for a while.  Of course, he’s hoping to be the last Republican standing, the only sensible one in the bunch, but as a story and a problem, that’s not very compelling. 

He’ll have better luck once he’s through the primaries, because the story of America’s economic suffering is compelling, especially to voting Americans, and he can ride it a long way.  Nonetheless, ultimately people are going to demand a solution to that one, and if it were an easy one to solve, we would have done it already.  If Romney presents the usual Republican shibboleths – less government regulation, lower taxes, cutting the budget – thoughtful voters are going to realize that those solutions, while fine in themselves, don’t match the problem.  Sure government regulation is irritating, but a recent study found that only a tiny percentage of businesses actually cite it as a real problem.  We’d all like lower taxes, but somehow those Republican plans always end up cutting taxes for the rich, not the middle class and the poor – like 9-9-9.  And cutting the budget, while essential in the long run, is only going to hurt the economy in the short run.  Doesn’t anyone remember that Herbert Hoover tried that at the beginning of the Great Depression and made it worse as a result?  Voters are inattentive, but not stupid.  Politicians should take heed. 

To be evenhanded politically, here’s a few words on President Obama’s rhetorical problems:  no story at all.     

Finally, there’s the NBA.  I personally am a basketball fanatic, and a huge fan of my hometown Celtics, but the problem here – a 50% or a 51% percent split? – is so far from compelling that this story is never going to be more than an afterthought.  At the end of the news day, Penn State sex scandals, economic woes, and mayhem around the world are going to crowd out the woes of “billionaires trying to stick it to millionaires” as someone so aptly put it.  The NBA needs a much better story to tell, and a much more compelling problem. 

Hope you enjoyed the rant.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. 

Readers of this blog will recognize the name David Meerman Scott – he’s a bestselling author and successful speaker and a client – and will be interested to know that he’s done it again.  He’s pointed the way forward in the publishing industry by putting out an e-book, on Amazon and iTunes, and published by Wiley.  Here’s the news flash:  there is no paper form of this book.  It’s electronic only, yet published by a major publisher. 

The book is Newsjacking:  How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage.  David introduces the idea of “the second paragraph” in a news story, and the opportunity to generate free media for yourself, or your company, or your idea by injecting yourself into that second paragraph.

How do you do it?  The first paragraph is the who-what-why-where-when facts of the story, and those are easy to get (for journalists) and involve the basics of the breaking news, whatever it is.  The second paragraph then goes deeper into the background of the story, and that’s where your opportunity comes in, according to David.  That’s where you add your expertise, your products, your insight, your take. 

For example, when the Chilean miners were finally rescued, they were widely photographed the instant they emerged from the ground wearing Oakley sunglasses.  Journalists noticed, and commented on the brilliant, simple bit of product placement around the world.  Oakley sunglasses thus newsjacked the biggest news story of the week, probably the month, and maybe the year.  By one estimate, the company generated $41 million worth of free publicity for the price of 33 pairs of their sunglasses. 

David’s point is that anyone can do this if they move fast enough, catch the right news item, and have something interesting to offer for paragraph two.  As he notes, there’s nothing wrong with paid advertising, but free marketing is a whole lot less expensive, and often more far-reaching. 

The concept is worth studying for anyone who runs a business, or seeks promotion of their products, ideas, or services.  And David’s embrace of the e-book format is a gamble on one possible future of the book business.  Stay tuned. 

 

Like many Americans, I was riveted by debater Rick Perry’s apparent brain freeze, as he attempted to talk about the three cabinet departments he would kill if elected president.  As a speech coach, I sympathize, having seen clients do the same thing many times – and done it myself. 

What I recommend is having a minimal set of notes as a safety net so that if your mind does go blank, you’ve got something to fall back on.  Knowing that the safety net is there will usually help the brain relax and therefore avoid the problem in the first place.  The presidential debaters get paper and pens; Rick should scribble down a few key ideas to help him relax and get through those endless Republican debates with no more flubs.    

What really happened to Perry?  We’ve all been there, when a combination of stress, fatigue, and lack of focus makes us forget that name, that date, or that trivia question.  Adrenaline plays havoc with our normal waking mind, and in an effort to keep us alive, shuts down many of our ordinary cranial activities.  We’re focused on getting ready to escape danger, not calmly detailing lists of 3 items. 

That fight-or-flight response is something we’ve evolved to help us in crises; unfortunately the modern era is full of moments that invoke the adrenaline response but aren’t really suited to actual fighting or fleeing.  (Neither of those two options was available to Rick on TV.)  The result can be embarrassing – but usually not as embarrassing as Perry’s because the stakes are not as high. 

Perry and his handlers came back gamely with an appearance on Letterman designed to push us all to laugh the whole thing off.  Unfortunately, the net result will be to laugh the whole Rick Perry campaign off in the long run. 

Here’s the truth.  Perry’s campaign is over.  He just doesn’t know it yet.  

Why?  Two reasons.  First, this whole episode feeds the developing Perry narrative, that he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.  That will kill his campaign no matter how much we are willing to laugh at a specific mistake, or how amusing the comeback attempt. 

Second, most people’s perception of the presidency is that it’s serious business.  You can’t self-deprecate your way to the White House.  When it comes to pulling the voting lever, Americans opt for someone they think can actually handle the job. 

But the Perry kerfuffle does raise a larger question:  are debates a good way to test the mettle of a presidential candidate?  After all, once you’re in the White House, it’s not about remembering stuff moment to moment – you’ve got aides for that. 

I think the short answer is that, as Winston Churchill said of democracies, they’re the worst possible system – except for all the others.  Highly imperfect, debates are nonetheless the only glimpse most of us get of presidential candidates in something approaching a real, unscripted moment.  Hence their fascination – and the importance of moments like Rick Perry’s. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate America needs a new story – badly.  The old story was that loyalty was rewarded.  You worked for the company for years, sacrificed family time, put in long hours, and subordinated your dreams to the company’s.  In exchange, the company gave you lifetime employment, and a decent retirement. 

Well, as you all know, that story went away a long time ago.  Layoffs, company implosions, and economic dire straits put paid to all that.  No lifetime employment, no retirement, not even many jobs – they're all gone.

Corporate America needs a new story.   Stories like this work in the background; they influence employee and customer attitudes, and they shape personal and corporate histories over the long term.  You ignore them at your personal and corporate peril. 

What are the current raw data for the new story?  Not good.  On the one hand,  we read that corporate fat cats get huge payoffs, no matter if the company is suffering.  On the other hand, layoffs abound, and if you’re lucky enough not to get laid off, then you’re working ridiculous hours with less and less support from the company.  “Give me 20 percent more next year with 20 percent less budget,” is the cry from the boss as he heads to the golf links.  Stories are emotional, and the current emotions are angry and bitter.   

The reality underlying these data points is that the middle class American lifestyle has been taking a huge hit over the past decade (and longer), while the very rich have been getting richer – much richer.   If you believe the media today, there are only two career paths left – flipping burgers at minimum wage, or becoming a billionaire by starting up a new Internet company whose products go viral. 

That’s not a good story, and we all need good stories to live by.  A huge part of America’s malaise at the moment – the anger from the left and the right – has to do with that sense that our hold on the middle class is slipping.  The one side blames government and the other side blames Wall Street – but they’re reacting to the same sense that the opportunity that American once promised is vanishing like bipartisanship in DC. 

Corporate America had better come up with a new story, one that gives us back our hope, and one that changes the view of Wall Street that it’s all about greed and self-interest.  Why should we care about working for a big business today?  What’s the quest that we’re on?  Where is the purpose, the excitement, the adventure, and where, oh where is the reward? 

Until corporate America can find a new story to tell, one that is as compelling as the old one was, trust is going to be fragile, loyalty is going to be flimsy, and attitudes are going to be grumpy.  And if you don’t think all of that goes directly to the bottom line, then you need to wake up to the reality of an economy of choice, fickle customers, and marketplaces that come and go in a matter of months. 

Corporate America needs a new story to tell. 

This is the 4th podcast in my series based on Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  In this podcast I discuss open content -- the rhetorical rules for an open communication.  In looking at these essential conditions for successful communication, I discuss why the debt limit talks are failing as currently undertaken.  The podcast is just under 6 minutes - enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 4

 

 

President Obama gave an interview to conservative Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly before the Super Bowl last night, and the interview was more revealing of O'Reilly than the President.

O'Reilly began with an emotional thank you to the President for the government's help in protecting a couple of newspeople that "got roughed up in Cairo."  That was as friendly as O'Reilly got, until the final thank you.  From there it was on to Mubarak and Egypt and the President and the commentator were off and running. 

O'Reilly's questions were often statements and those included too many cheap shots like, "Right. He's done the bad things," about Mubarak's partnership with the US.  Of course, that partnership has gone on for 30 years, through both Republican and Democratic presidents, and for O'Reilly to begin criticizing Mubarak now is simply too easy.  Now that all eyes are focused on Egypt, O'Reilly is impatient for its dictator to go.  Man the barricades, and then we'll talk, Bill.

Moreover, first he said, "But the longer he (Mubarak) stays in, the more people are going to die."  A heartbeat later, it was "I'm just worried that he might go off the reservation."  You can't have it both ways, Bill. 

Next up was the health care debate, and here a pattern was set of O'Reilly throwing a question-statement at the President and not allowing him to answer, but rather interrupting him before he'd finished and then getting the last word in before moving on to the next topic.  The result was that O'Reilly looked defensive and tense, as if he were afraid he was not up to sparring with the President.  The President, on the other hand, was relaxed and handled O'Reilly with ease and assurance. 

O'Reilly's body language was oddly off-kilter as well.  He was leaning to one side, as if off-balance, and his mouth was set in a lop-sided half-smile, half-sneer which increased the sense that he was not a happy camper.  In contrast, President Obama was slouched comfortably in his chair, he smiled often, and his demeanor was easy. 

The President even invited O'Reilly to the Super Bowl party at the White House, and O'Reilly's response was a suprisingly ungracious "I don't want to ruin the party for you guys."  I don't know about you, but where I was brought up, when someone invites you to a party, you either accept or decline with thanks. 

What did you think about the interview?  Is O'Reilly usually so easily thrown off by an interviewee?  Why is it so difficult for him to sustain a real argument as opposed to just hurling verbal brickbats?  And where did he learn his manners? 

Today, for my blog, I'm linking to a piece I just published on HBR.org, taking lessons from President Obama's State of the Union address last Tuesday for chief executives and how they can improve on the President's approach:  http://bit.ly/gCLMPn.  Enjoy!

What should POTUS say during his SOTU?  Washington is a city of acronyms, so that sentence actually makes sense inside the DC beltway.   And that hits at the heart of the problem of every State of the Union (SOTU) address since George Washington first reported to Congress on January 8, 1790:  they’re insider laundry lists. 

Washington’s report was precisely such a list of America’s accomplishments in the year just finished, as well items done and not done by the Senate and the House, addressed specifically to them.  For example, Washington was pleased to see that North Carolina had approved the Constitution, but concerned that Congress get to work on several items, including military pay, a proper diplomatic corps, and this:  “the terms on which foreigners may be admitted to the rights of citizens should be speedily ascertained by a uniform rule of naturalization.” 

Come to think of it, Washington’s still waiting for that one. 

Presidents since television was invented have continued with the laundry list even though television as a medium is singularly unreceptive to long lists – and the nation-wide audience mostly uninterested. 

It’s a huge waste of an enormous opportunity.  Unfortunately, all signs are that POTUS will once again delivery a laundry-list SOTU, leaving the larger TV audience alternately bored and mystified. 

Here’s what he should do instead.  President Obama created an enormously successful narrative for his election campaign – remember hope and change? Yes, we can?  -- suggesting to the American people that it was time to renew their essential optimism and begin to go in a new direction from the Bush years. 

What’s happened since then has been dissected differently by partisans in both parties, but few would disagree with the idea that the optimistic story has gotten lost in the reality of governing during a very difficult couple of years in American – and world – history. 

So President Obama should begin a new, optimistic narrative line that allows Americans to hope once again.  He can’t literally do hope and change; that option was forever killed by Governor Palin’s mocking “how’s that hopey-changey thing working for ya?”  He needs a new story, one that will show us the way out of the thicket of despair we’re in and help us find our way to happier terrain.  He needs to address the issues that everyone is worried about – jobs, the deficit, taxes, the economy – without resorting to a laundry list of proposed programs that will be forgotten soon after the Republicans' response.   And he needs to show us how he can lead us through those issues to re-establish our confidence and America’s greatness. 

It’s a leader’s job to hold out a vision to unite people and create enthusiastic followers. This is a difficult time for many Americans, and we need a leader to point America in a new direction, one that renews us, strengthens us for the journey, and gives us hope.  But I’m afraid President Obama will do what every president has done since Washington and give us a laundry-list SOTU instead.  Too bad – it’s a waste of a fantastic TV audience. 

Two nights ago, President Obama did something extraordinary.  He gave the best speech of his presidency to date.  He rose above the politics of the day and asked us all to do the same.  And he gave a healing sermon-like talk that was truly dedicated to the victims of the Tucson massacre, that celebrated their lives and uniqueness, and that reminded us all of the best that is in us even as we were contemplating the worst.  

Commentators from the left and the right have praised the speech with near-unanimity, so what the President asked for – a healing of the political discourse – he actually got, at least in the immediate response.  Let’s hope the trend continues. 

It prompts me to ask the question – could we in fact transform our public discourse to make it more civil?  What would that look like?  Would it be any less effective?  Would it trample on our free speech? 

I think the mistake that we have made in the United States is to confuse free speech with license.  In order not to constrict the former, we have settled on the latter.  But that’s a simplistic and literal way to think about free speech.  The Founding Fathers were bent on preserving the right to debate politically charged issues when they enshrined “the freedom of speech, or of the press,” in the First Amendment, not the license to utter obscene rants or to call elected officials liars without proof. 

I think what we need is not to lower our standards for what passes for discourse but rather to raise them.   The Internet gives everyone a voice, and that is a good thing – up to a point.  I certainly don’t think we should go back to the days when three TV networks, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and a handful of other media outlets controlled the political discourse.  But if political leaders, bloggers, and pundits on left and right began insisting on elevating the national conversation, it would happen – and no one’s right to free speech would be affected. 

We can all do our bit.  Don’t read, promulgate, or write pieces that promote unmitigated hate.  Avoid the obscene rants and the lunatic fringe.  Have a working assumption that just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they’re immoral or insane.  And take the time to listen -- as honestly and respectfully as you want to be listened to in turn -- to all the other voices that make up our unruly, difficult democracy. 

And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us. 

That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. 

Imagine -- imagine for a moment, here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that some day she, too, might play a part in shaping her nation’s future.  She had been elected to her student council.  She saw public service as something exciting and hopeful.  She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model.  She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want to live up to her expectations.   I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it.  I want America to be as good as she imagined it.   All of us -– we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations. 

One last item to tick off the list for last year before I get fully up to speed in 2011:  who were the best communicators in 2010 – and why?  I’m inspired by a list of the best and worst put out by Decker Communications.  Their list includes many that I agree with, but because it also includes some partisan political choices (really, there were no good Democratic communicators in 2010? Not one?), I’m not going to address it specifically.  Instead, I’m going to talk about what makes a great public communicator and what lessons we can learn from those 2010 examples.  So here goes:  my top 5 communications lessons from 2010.

(1) Anger is a powerful, attractive emotion – but use it with caution. 

The political season brought many good and bad communicators to the fore, but a consistent winner was the Angry Anti-Washington politician.  It worked as long as the candidate was smart, focused, and not simply about anger (Scott Brown).  When the candidate was dumb, unfocused, or crazy, it didn’t work (Christine O’Donnell).  Voters are not stupid, and elections are both won and lost, something that the winners usually forget.  For example, Scott Brown won the by-election in Massachusetts not only because he was an effective communicator, but also because his opponent, Martha Coakley, was ineffective, and managed to insult not only Massachusetts voters, but also Red Sox fans, something you don’t do in the Bay State. 

(2) To manage a tricky situation, you need to show you care by showing how you feel.  

The BP oil spill in the Gulf provided a wonderful object lesson in how to do it, and how not to do it.  The infamous Tony Hayward, who wanted his life back, got it, but not in the way he wanted, because he appeared to be responding (ineptly) moment to moment with indifference or distance.  By contrast, Admiral Thad Allen provided a no-nonsense, steady persona that seemed real and recognizable.  We could understand his emotions, and we respected them, where Hayward’s seemed disengaged and more than a little baffling. 

(3) To hold the public’s interest for long, you need a strong narrative. 

By far the best story in 2010 was the rescue of the Chilean miners.  The President of Chile, Sebastian Pinera, put together an extraordinary communications experience for the rest of the world.  We collectively held our breaths for the 35 days, uncertain of the outcome, and then celebrated with the entire country when the rescue finally came.  Pinera made it all happen, and he committed to a full media presence before he knew that the result would be a happy one. 

(4) When you’re in the hot seat, nothing less than complete transparency will do. 

It’s astonishing to me that organizations and individuals still try to hoodwink the public in this era of full disclosure.  For every company trying to get away with something, there is a whistle blower.  For every individual trying to hide something, there is a chauffeur, or maid, or ex-love that will dish the dirt.  For every organization trying to conceal a sordid deal, there’s YouTube.  Tiger Woods found this out, as did countless companies trying to hide mistreatment, malfeasance, or misadventure. 

(5) If you’re not ready for prime time, get out of the way and let someone else do the job.  

It might have been possible once for hardy amateurs to withstand public scrutiny, but the scrum is simply too vicious today for people who aren’t ready or who don’t have the ability to think fast enough on their feet to survive a press grilling.  Most of us aren’t as good as we think we are, but some of us are just not up to the 21st century game, and we should have the sense to let someone else do it.  Of course, Tony Hayward is the poster child for PR incompetence at the highest level, but so is Harry Reid and (to hand out equal treatment to both parties) Bobby Jindal. 

A calendar year is an arbitrary deadline and communication is never-ending; nevertheless it’s helpful to take stock of the kind of year in communications we’ve just had and look ahead to what we can expect in 2011.  I see five trends that will each undergo shifts in 2011.

In 2011, we’ll rediscover hope

The economic black swan of 2008 both created and crystallized a current of anger in the public discourse that politicians were very quick to seize upon, reducing the level of communications, especially in the United States, to a new low of invective, recrimination, and sheer hostility.  The President was called a liar as he delivered the State of the Union address in January, and things went downhill from there. 

Just as quickly as this bubble of anger has blown up, it will pop as the economy improves.  It’s the nature of humans – and especially Americans – to be optimistic, and we will re-discover our optimism as our bank balances and job prospects improve.   In sum:  Anger will lose its currency, and a little frothy optimism will replace it. 

In 2011, we’ll stop reading and start watching

Of course this trend is as old as video games and – yes – television – but several trends had to converge before we could decisively predict the ascendance of the visual over the verbal.  And let’s put one myth to bed right now:  there is no evidence that there are three kinds of learners, visual, oral, and kinesthetic.  We’re all primarily visual learners.  And we all use all three kinds of learning.  But it has been too hard for most of us to make movies and send video love notes hitherto.  Now, with the widespread use of flip cams, phone cams, and cams everywhere else, there’s nothing stopping us from all becoming the visual learners we were meant to be. 

In 2011, we’ll fall in love again  -- with a politician

Along with our increasing hope, we’re going to find a new political figure that will show us the positive path we all crave, and we’ll make him or her our new media darling.  This will of course only become possible with the rise of the stock market, and retirees’ – and near-retirees’ – portfolios, but that’s coming in early Spring.  

What this suggests is that politicians who can get something done – and communicate what they have done effectively – will be the new media stars. 

In 2011, business will finally reject Mr. Spock and embrace Captain Kirk

Business people have struggled with the Mr. Spock theory of emotions for years – that emotions are messy and logic is a superior way of reasoning and communicating.  In 2011, finally, businesses will embrace the message in recent brain research – that emotion is actually what makes decision-making and memory possible, and begin to emote like Captain Kirk of Star Trek – who never found himself in a situation he couldn’t emote his way out of.  We’re going to see a tide of weeping and exultations engulf boardrooms and corporate spokespeople – and that’s a good thing, on the whole. 

In 2011, we’ll replace the long-winded with the nano-communication

So information-saturated and attention-deprived are we as a culture that Twitter will begin to seem endless in 2011.  The pressure will be on to reduce corporate communications – and indeed communications of all kinds – to haiku-like proportions.  Increasingly, the short form will triumph, whether it’s in corporate reports, tombstones, or even legal briefs.  Newspapers will become shorter than the web pages that have replaced them.  The Supreme Court will begin to curtail its opinions.  If you can’t say it fast, no one will listen in 2011.  I’d better stop there.  

Here in Massachusetts, we have a gubernatorial race that is an object lesson for students of public speaking everywhere.  The two top candidates (out of 4), Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker, both suffer from a common – but curable – malady of public speakers:  nasal voices.  Research over the years indicates that people dislike nasal voices more than any other kind of voice, so I can’t wait to see how will voters respond to this double-barreled insult to their ears on voting day.   

You can hear (and see) them here:

(You get a contrast with a less nasal voice, because Tim Cahill, who is a distant third in the polls, speaks second in the clip and is quite resonant.) 

If you do any public speaking as part of your job, the two frontrunners are wonderful examples of how not to do it – at least in terms of voices.  You can learn from their (bad) example. 

What causes a nasal voice and what can be done about it?  There are two issues:  timbre and pitch. 

When you create sound with your voice, you’re basically pushing air through your vocal chords, causing them to vibrate.  If you draw in and out only a little air through your nose, your voice will sound nasal.   If you draw in more air through your lungs, by expanding your belly and supporting the inrush of air with your abdominal muscles, expanding your diaphragm, then you get a much more resonant sound on your out breath, and one that is more pleasing to your fellow human beings. 

In the case of both Patrick and Baker, barring some sort of physical problem they haven’t revealed, they’re drawing too much air in through their noses and not supporting enough with their abdominals.  The result is that annoying nasal sound that has made this campaign seem inordinately long to voters in Massachusetts. 

It’s a problem many of us have to fight against, because so much of our days is spent sitting at desks hunched over computers.  That posture makes it hard to breathe deeply with the abdominals and diaphragm, and leads to nasal-sounding voices.  Patrick and Baker are typical of the era. 

Historically, politics favored nasal voices because the one good thing about them is that they carry.  They can be heard.  So in the era before amplification, nasal voices could carry a political message to the far corners of the outside gatherings (where the term “stump speech” came from) that were the norm. 

Today, we have radio, TV, and amplification, and the era prefers the more resonant. 

Which of the two candidates is worse?  It’s a close call, but Baker’s voice is a little worse than Patrick’s, and for the second issue that can bedevil voices:  pitch. 

Every voice has a natural resonance point.  Here’s how to determine yours.  Go to a keyboard.  Find the highest note you can comfortably hum, and the lowest.  For most people, those notes are about 2 octaves apart, or about 16 notes.  Your natural resonance point is ¼ of the way up from the bottom of this range, or 4 white notes if your range is indeed 2 octaves (16 divided by 4 = 4). 

In Patrick’s case, he seems to be speaking at roughly his natural resonance point.  This mitigates the nasal quality of his voice somewhat.  But Baker’s voice is clearly pitched too high.  So his voice combines a nasal tone with high pitch and the result is a whine.  Again, this high, nasal voice would have been an asset running against Calvin Coolidge or Abraham Lincoln, but in the 21st Century, it’s a distinct disadvantage. 

Unless Baker is tone deaf, there’s no reason why he can’t test himself to find his vocal range and maximum resonance point.  He can then slowly lower his usual speaking pitch to that note.  And both candidates can learn to support their voices with good breathing technique.  A side benefit to the candidates is that they would find that their voices wouldn’t tire as quickly.   More importantly, perhaps, the voters of Massachusetts would be far happier listening to them speak. 

You can benefit from these two examples of how not to do it by testing to find your own natural resonance point, and ensuring that your voice is pitched most of the time on or around that note.  You’re going to go higher in pitch to indicate excitement, passion, or anger, and lower to increase your authority and conviction.  But when you’re conversing comfortably, you should be at or near your resonance point most of the time.  That gives your voice a pleasing, confident quality – and it also protects your vocal chords from damage. 

Once again, I'm focusing on an extraordinary thinker and scientist, V. S. Ramachandran.  His work in neurology has helped patients with phantom limb pain, a particularly cruel affliction for people who have lost an arm or a leg.  What's more, his ingenious solution for phantom limb pain cost all of three dollars.

He has also brought clarity and insight to a number of other curious brain diseases, including the very rare syndrome where a patient believes his or her mother to be an imposter.  V. S. is one of those rare thinkers that sees old problems in new ways, thereby transforming a field of inquiry.  Further, he has the extraordinary ability to explain his insights clearly and memorably to the average person. 

Here he is on people who can't recognize their mothers, phantom limb pain, and other mental mysteries like synesthesia:

 

 

As a speaker, Ramachandran' s humor and passion carry conviction and make him memorable.  It's interesting to note that his posture is a pronounced "head" posture -- meaning that, seen from the side, he leads with his head.  That's typical of intellectuals and others who have a lot on their minds.  And, it's a posture that more and more people adopt these days because of hours of work in front of a computer.  But, unfortunately, it's not a posture that people instinctively trust.  We read it unconsciously as timid, downcast, subservient, or self-effacing.  In V. S.'s case, it comes partly from the relative position of the audience (below him, off the stage) and partly from all the thinking going on.  But regardless of where it comes from, it has a negative effect on the audience. 

Instead, when you're giving a speech, or simply trying to make a good impression, keep your chin up and your shoulders back a little, like a soldier without the tension.  Standing up straight will create unconscious feelings of trust in your audience.  We instinctively lower our heads and pitch them forward when we know ourselves to be in the presence of someone we consider our superior.  It's that unconscious self-abasement that you want to avoid. 

In Ramachandran's case, the effect is mitigated for his immediate audience by the raised stage.  And his extraordinary rhetorical skills further engage his audience rather than putting it off.  But imagine how powerful his speaking would be if he could get himself out of that head posture! 

In 1996, when Bill Clinton was running for president for the second time, and Tony Blair was the opposition leader in Great Britain, getting ready for the election that was to make him Prime Minister, Blair made a trip to the White House to meet with Clinton.  At the end of the meeting, when the press was invited in, one of the British papers asked Clinton, “Do you hope that you’re sitting next to the next Prime Minister of the UK?” 

It was a tricky question, designed to force the President to insult one of the two UK political parties.  Clinton, without missing a beat, said, “I just hope he’s sitting next to the next President of the United States.” 

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair relayed that story during an extraordinary conversation between the two political leaders that you can watch here: http://bit.ly/ac2eTv.  Regardless of your opinion of their politics, it’s inarguable that these two men have had highly successful and (mostly) praiseworthy post-office careers.  Clinton has formed the Clinton Global Initiative, and Blair has his Faith Foundation, his work in the Middle East and Africa, and a very lucrative public speaking career. 

I recommend the video highly, even though it’s long, for public speakers, because these are two masters of communications talking about how they see the world now and doing some ex post facto justification of their own political careers.  It’s fascinating stuff, and it’s impressive to watch. 

Blair defers to Clinton, but subtly, because the former President is the alpha dog today as he was when Blair was accused of being his poodle, and the UK press lambasted him for being too deferential to Clinton and the US.  It’s not an issue that matters much in the US.  Most Americans are so US-centric that their attitude is – if they ever think about it – “well, of course the Prime Minister defers to the President.” 

Dominance aside, both men are comfortable, articulate, and effective communicators.  Blair says “actually” too much, and Clinton looks tired and practically swallows the mike, but otherwise the two commit no gaffes and have interesting things to say about peace negotiations, the Middle East, technology and the coming generation, and the shape of the 21st century.  Blair tells better stories, and Clinton has the more probing analysis of political trends, but both men demonstrate an extraordinary grasp of the current state of the world and an ability to articulate that vision. 

Both men are hopeful about the Middle East because, they believe, societal changes will push the Arab leaders in the region to make a real accommodation with Israel.  We can only hope that they are still as smart about politics as they are gifted communicators. 

I’m taking a day off from the discussion of the Public Words Speaker Forum 2010 to talk about President Obama’s Oil Speech.  The speech illustrated both the extent and the limitations of the presidential forum, and it’s worth study in both its rhetorical and non-verbal aspects. 



The speech divided broadly into 3 parts:  first, the spill and the immediate reaction.  Second, the recovery and compensation.  Third, the longer term and the overall energy challenge.  These 3 parts were followed by a curiously weak conclusion invoking prayer to get through the damage that the most massive oil rig explosion and leak in history is wreaking. 

Overall, the speech was well-written and reasonably well delivered, as we have come to expect from President Obama, a gifted communicator.  But something is missing from President Obama that candidate Obama had in plenty:  confidence, energy, enthusiasm. 

We’ve come not to expect passion from this president, but if ever there was a moment for a leader to get angry, or fired up, this was that moment.  This speech was simply too buttoned-down for the occasion. 

Obama was at his most passionate only during a couple of passages in the speech – and they were the wrong places.  First, when he said, “for decades, we’ve talked and talked,” his voice rose and we saw a touch of impatience.  It’s a curious moment to get worked up about considering that we’re watching the most destructive oil spill in history dump barrels of crude and gas into the Gulf minute by minute on a live cam.  Second, a minute later in the speech, as Obama talked about alternative energy solutions, he said, “people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows,” and gave the closest approximation to spontaneous animation in his voice and gestures seen in the entire speech.  Again, a curious moment to become enthusiastic, but perhaps it tells us something about the priorities of this president. 

In truth, the speech reads better than it sounds or looks.  By sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, President Obama meant to convey the gravity of the situation.  But the effect on a speech about something that all of us feel as viscerally as we do – especially, I imagine, people in the Gulf states – was to undercut it.  The president should have been standing, where he could have released his energy and used his full posture and natural confidence to maximum effect.  (See David Meerman Scott’s blog – great idea, David!) 

The problems with the gestures in this speech were caused by the President’s sitting position and the camera, which framed the President with his hands showing above the desk.  What he did was keep his gestures small, describing little circles with his hands and then putting them back down on the desk.  So while his voice was telling us about commitments to stay as long as necessary and put the Gulf and everyone’s lives back together, his hands were saying, “little effort, no big deal, won’t last long.” 

For once President Obama’s body language seriously undermined his speech.  And he’s still using the ‘remote control’ gesture that I’ve talked about before.  This gesture is weak and conveys nothing to the audience and he should forbid it from his gestural vocabulary. 

We have a cool, competent President trying to cope with a chaotic situation.  In moments of high drama, we want our Commander in Chief to match the moment with some passion.  This Oval Office speech was not enough.  Is it the President’s job to clean up this mess that BP has made?  Obviously not, but if he’s going to take charge of the oversight of the recovery, then he has to take charge in a convincing way. 

For my blog today I'm linking to an article I wrote just published on Forbes.com all about why everyone gets PR wrong.  Beware the narrative!  Enjoy:  http://tinyurl.com/ybj92tc

 

Great speechmaking is rare, and recent great speechmaking (in this soundbite-driven age) is rarer still.  All the more reason to celebrate, then, President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.  This speech is an instant masterpiece. 

Obama’s genius comes in his willingness to speak the unvarnished truth in three primary ways.

First, he confronts directly the controversies surrounding his award.  Obama says:

In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize - Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela - my accomplishments are slight.

He then continues with the most serious complaint:

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries - including Norway - in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Note how deftly he deals with the issue even as he confronts it directly. 

These questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease - the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

This discussion leads President Obama into a defense of the principle of the just war – war that is fought by rules, respects the rights of civilians, is waged in self-defense, and uses proportional force. 

 

Obama uses the idea of a just war to review and justify America’s role as the sole superpower: 

Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.

From that justification, the President turns to his concept of a just peace.  That’s a neat rhetorical turn, and allows him to propose three tenets in support of it.  First, the world must develop alternatives to violence “that are tough enough to change behavior.”  Second, the just peace must be based on “the inherent rights and dignity of every individual.”  And third, a just peace must “encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.” 

 

After that, and a blunt rejection of terrorism and violence in the name of religion, Obama closes with some of the most stirring rhetoric we’ve heard from him to date:

So let us reach for the world that ought to be - that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he's outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace.

Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.

Let us live by their example.

With this speech, President Obama shows that he can hold his own among the great voices of the modern era.  This is indeed public rhetoric of the finest kind.   

 

 

 

 

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

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. 

 

 

 

 

Last night, President Obama proved that he is still the master of rhetoric we saw during the campaign by delivering his first unambiguously excellent speech since those halcyon days on the stump. 

 

His weakest moment was at the beginning.  He began with a risky opening, risky because he nearly changed the subject before he’d properly started.  He brought up a topic as difficult and as contentious for Americans as health care – the economy:

 

When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse.

As any American who is still looking for work or a way to pay their bills will tell you, we are by no means out of the woods. A full and vibrant recovery is many months away. And I will not let up until those Americans who seek jobs can find them; until those businesses that seek capital and credit can thrive; until all responsible homeowners can stay in their homes. That is our ultimate goal. ….

But before the President and his audience wandered into another speech altogether, he provided an elegant transition to the real topic of the evening:

But we did not come here just to clean up crises. We came to build a future. So tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future - and that is the issue of health care.

The line cleverly appealed to the American can-do spirit, and brought us to the point – health care in America is a difficult subject, and one that has been difficult for a long time:

I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way. A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session. Our collective failure to meet this challenge - year after year, decade after decade - has led us to a breaking point.

A very nice appeal to the history of the Congress, and the bi-partisan nature of the long effort, this was the real beginning of the speech and a brilliant way to open the debate.  It put us on notice that the task is a difficult one.

Then the President delved deep into the problem:

We are the only advanced democracy on Earth - the only wealthy nation - that allows such hardships (caused by lack of insurance) for millions of its people. There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two-year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone.

But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem of the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today.

Health care has become a contentious subject, and what’s the best way to deal with contention?  By treating serious alternatives with respect. 

We know we must reform this system. The question is how.

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches.

The President then went on to detail at some length his solution, contrasting it with a variety of the other proposals, saying, “Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan….”

And he closed with an emotional appeal to the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s memory and our own collective will as a country:

I understand how difficult this health care debate has been. I know that many in this country are deeply skeptical that government is looking out for them. I understand that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road - to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term.

But that's not what the moment calls for. That's not what we came here to do. We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it's hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history's test.

Because that is who we are. That is our calling. That is our character.

One good speech rarely ends discussion and there is still much legislative work to be done.  But the President accomplished as much as an address of this kind can, and his remarks deserve to be treated with the dignity and respect he showed all the other serious participants in the health care debate.  It was an excellent speech.  

 

President Obama took on a tough challenge when he decided to speak to K – 12 students across the country for twenty minutes today on the subject of working hard, setting goals, and staying in school to achieve them.  The age range alone is daunting enough; to say something relevant to 12^th graders, he risked terrifying the Kindergarteners.  If he talked to the Kindergarteners mano a mano, then the 12^th graders would be bored out of their already cynical minds.  School assemblies are notorious of old – a time for the deadbeats in the back of the room to snicker and hurl spitballs at each other and the girls in front of them. 

None of this makes for a particularly promising set of conditions for public speaking.  But then there was the political fallout in advance of the talk – Obama’s political foes, led by a particularly egregious specimen from Florida, decided that the best thing to do was to accuse the President of socialism even before they had seen the speech.  As a result, parents and school administrators around the country scrambled to protect their children against communist mental infiltration or worse, vowing to keep the children home and safe, presumably watching television with its mindless commercials, murder, mayhem, and sexual innuendo. 

If I were still in school, I would find the example set by the adults more alarming than anything that the President could actually say.

But what about the actual speech?  Was it worth the fuss?  What did the President say and how did he say it?

He began by talking about his own early schooling – and it was early in a couple of senses of the word.  For his early schooling in Indonesia, he couldn’t afford the private schools most Americans went to, so instead his mother taught him – at 4:30 every morning. 

From these unprepossessing beginnings, President-to-be Obama suffered other setbacks: 

My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. 

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. 

From there, the speech becomes anodyne boilerplate urging all students to stay in school, work hard, and be all they can be.  The President even holds up the example of 3 students who had it much tougher than most and yet still managed to succeed: 

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall. 

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

All credit to these estimable people; nonetheless the section reminded me of when my grandmother used to tell me that other people had it much worse, so I shouldn’t complain.  I never knew what to say.  I felt vaguely resentful of those people, and I still wanted to complain.  Maybe today’s youth are more emotionally mature; if not, Jazmin, Adoni, and Shantell are in for some hazing. 

Overall, the speech lacks punch and originality.  It lacks stories, real stories that take listeners somewhere and inspire them emotionally rather than preaching at them.  I’d give it a ‘B’.  President Obama should get full credit for doing the speech at all, and his opponents should let up on this one.  It won’t turn anyone into a socialist. 

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. 

I’m struck by the very different recent public appearances of Sarah Palin and Judge Sonia Sotomayor, because they illustrate – in two extreme ways – the importance of openness – and clarity of intent – in public speaking.  You can see samples of their respective video records here:  (Sotomayor) http://tinyurl.com/ksfrov and here:  (Palin) http://tinyurl.com/kjnxlb. 

Leaving aside political opinions for a minute, both women are effective public speakers who have drawn both praise and opprobrium from opposite sides of the political spectrum.  They are both able to communicate effectively with their supporters and people on their side of the divide. 

That’s in part because they meet the first test of a public speaker:  being open.  I say a good deal more about this in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, but here I’ll just encourage you to watch their faces.  Both are great nodders, both smile readily, using their eyes and eyebrows to signal openness to their audiences.  Openness is largely established with non-verbal facial (and hand) gestures, and both women accomplish this task well. 

It’s in clarity of intent that the two differ.  Judge Sotomayor makes her intent perfectly clear – to both her supporters and opponents.  She intends to be confirmed.  She will answer every question as thoroughly as she can according to the bizarre rules established over the years for (successful) Supreme Court nominees – without actually giving anything away.  She will radiate judicial calm and restraint.  As a result, she reinforces her bond with her supporters and gives her opponents very little to attack her with.  She may even win some Republicans over to her side. 

Governor Palin, in her resignation speech at a hastily called press conference on the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend, was completely opaque about her intent.  As a result, she further alienated her opponents and lost a good many of her supporters.  If you’re going to quit a job to which you’ve been elected, like a governorship, you have to have a really good – and clear – reason.  Palin’s assortment of suggested causes for stepping down were unconvincing and contradictory.  Without clarity of intent, we don’t understand her motives, and when we don’t understand someone’s motives, we can’t sympathize with them. 

Openness and clarity of intent need to go together for effective speechmaking. 

One of the most pernicious concepts widely circulated about listening is in the otherwise admirable book Blink. Malcolm Gladwell introduces the idea of what he calls ‘thin-slicing’ as a way of talking about how a very small sample can stand for a whole host of evidence under specific circumstances and conditions. Unfortunately, he equates the thin-slicing idea with the expert’s ability to instantly size up, for example, an ancient statue as real or fake because of a myriad clues unconsciously weighed, evaluated, and sorted.

Here is what Gladwell wrote:

In September of 1983, an art dealer by the name of Gianfranco Becchina approached the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. He had in his possession, he said, a marble statue dating from the sixth century b.c. It was what is known as a kouros — a sculpture of a nude male youth standing with his left leg forward and his arms at his side. There are only about two hundred kouroi in existence, and most have been recovered badly damaged . . . . But this one was almost perfectly preserved . . . . It was an extraordinary find. Becchina’s asking price was just under $10 million.  The Getty moved cautiously. It . . . began a thorough investigation. . . .A geologist from the University of California. . .spent two days examining the surface of the statue with a high-resolution stereomicroscope . . . . [He]concluded . . . the statue was old. It wasn’t some contemporary fake . . . .The kouros, however, had a problem. It didn’t look right. The first to point this out was an Italian art historian named Federico Zeri . . . . He found himself staring at the sculpture’s fingernails. In a way he couldn’t immediately articulate, they seemed wrong to him. Other experts weighed in, and the statue was finally judged a fake. The Getty was embarrassed, and the art world has a great story to tell.

What does this have to do with listening? The idea has lodged in the public mind that somehow we can all be expert thin-slicers based on a quick look, a brief listen, a glancing moment of attention. But Gladwell has confused our ability to make snap (because unconscious) nonverbal judgments about the intent of people and the danger quotient of situations we’re thrown in with an expert’s ability, when her learning is profound, to size up something quickly. The result has been that too many people now say, “Just let me thin-slice this.”

The only thing we’re doing there is getting a quick read on our impression of the other person’s intent. We are pretty good at it, but we can certainly be wrong, and it is most emphatically not the same as expertise in a field like art history.  They’re two completely different activities.

The former is almost entirely unconscious and instant, whereas the latter is primarily conscious but drawing on an unconscious sifting of the physical evidence brought to the conscious mind.  And it often is a slow process, where something niggles at the back of the mind for days before the expert is able to become fully aware of what is going on. That is what in fact happens to several of the experts in Gladwell’s fake masterpiece story.  They take weeks to figure out why the statue doesn’t seem real to them or to piece together their analysis, impressions, and unconscious deciphering.

My point is this: we can’t listen to other people by thin-slicing them. Listening takes time. When it is done right, it is primarily an emotional activity and only secondarily intellectual.

Emotions take time to express, be heard, be validated, and so on.  To listen well and deeply to another person, you must quiet your own two conversations, and let your verbal and your nonverbal channels attend to what’s being said to you. Listen with your whole body.

Every communication is two conversations, the content and the body language.  When the two are aligned, a speaker can be powerful – even charismatic.  When they are not aligned, the audience believes the non-verbal every time.  How well did President Obama’s Cairo University speech yesterday measure up in this regard?

Obama’s elegant and sweeping rhetoric talked about openness, listening, and peace.  What did his second conversation talk about?  Caution, restraint, and an unwillingness to risk very much.  This was not an emotional performance.  It was a careful, measured one. 

Let’s take the second conversation apart.  President Obama has the posture of a leader.  He strode out to the podium with the confident and upright posture of someone in command.  His wave to the audience was that of a leader acknowledging the many. 

As he began to speak, Obama folded and unfolded his hands in a constrained, protective manner on the podium.  It’s one of the few ways he betrays a little nervousness, typically at the beginnings of his speeches. 

To set against that, his posture continued to be upright and confident, and as he started the speech, he nodded repeatedly, acknowledging the crowd and building agreement with them. 

The President has great stillness in his body; this is charismatic and signals confidence, because it’s at once poised and yet relaxed enough to show that his nerves haven’t got the better of him.  (Contrast this with all the lesser public speakers you've seen who repeatedly shift their weight from one foot to the other.)  He is a practiced and expert public speaker.  It’s just that he can’t quite figure out what to do with his hands. 

While he occasionally got the gesture right -- as for example when he talked about the overlap in views between Muslim and Christian he overlapped his hands quite naturally – most of the time, he used his characteristic and prissy thumb-and-forefinger gesture.  This gesture is less admonishing than the raised forefinger, but it retains something of that off-putting feeling, and it is not one in the natural human retinue.  It looks calculated and fake.  For example, when he called for people around the world to “say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts,” he used the thumb and forefinger instead of a more natural, open gesture that would have matched the words. 

The President repeated this pattern throughout the speech.  His non-verbal conversation was careful and half-closed even when his words were open.  Later, when he spoke of the “interests we all share as human beings” being “far more powerful than those that drive us apart,” he gestured as if he was holding something about the size of a loaf of bread in his hands.  Apparently, those shared interests are not very big.   

Similarly, when he talked about “equal justice” for everyone, his hands came back to the ‘parade rest’ folded position on the podium.  The hand gesture in that way spoke of a very carefully parsed out justice rather than a broad vision. 

The conversation of his hands was most natural when he said, “America doesn’t presume to know what is best for everyone.”  His open hand swept out across his chest in a gesture that unequivocally dismissed the presumption. 

At the close of the speech, when Obama said that “America respects all voices,” he used again the admonishing forefinger, suggesting that he was looking for a quid pro quo of respect back. 

President Obama is an extraordinarily polished, powerful, and persuasive speaker.  His posture, confident voice, and command of pacing together mean a highly accomplished delivery.  But he has still not figured out a natural set of gestures to go with his soaring rhetoric.  Overall, he radiates confidence and dignity.  Now he needs to figure out a set of gestures for his hands that is equally effective.

The reactions to President Obama's Cairo University speech are falling along predictable fault lines in the Middle East: http://bit.ly/pETKy.  But for more dispassionate observers, how did the speech go?  You can check out the text and video here: http://tinyurl.com/oz48ly. 

Opening with a greeting of peace, assalaamu alaykum, President Obama told the assembled Cairo audience that he had come to seek a new beginning:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles - principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

The speech went on to follow the classic problem-solution format of a persuasive speech.  Obama stated the problem in honest and forthright terms:

We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world - tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust.

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

His solution for this tension is the new beginning he calls for, as well as specific progress on 7 issues that contribute to the tension:  extremism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear weapons, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, and economic development. 

This is elegant rhetoric indeed, and to the extent that good speech-making can open a door, or start a new dialogue, or re-set expectations, President Obama’s talk today should accomplish all those worthy goals.  

A note on his body language.  President Obama still has not figured out a natural set of gestures to go with his sweeping, well-delivered words.  His posture radiates confidence and dignity.  Now he needs to figure out a gestural rhetoric that is equally effective. 

Obama closed with a broad call for peace, repeating his theme of a new beginning: 

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you.

Peace-loving people around the world can only agree.  Now the hard work of practical steps, real commitments, and compromise needs to begin. 

How do you argue your side of an emotional, contentious issue in a way that doesn’t further divide people?  President Obama’s recent speech on “Protecting Our Security and Our Values” delivered at the National Archives on May 21, 2009, was an example of a well-argued speech that unfortunately will only inflame the debate further. 

The speech is a clearly-constructed brief on what the Obama Administration has done to keep America safe – and how it has diverged from the previous administration’s attempts to do exactly the same thing.  However you feel about the politics of the matter, if Obama was hoping to still the debate, here’s where he went wrong:

After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era — that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out.

Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that — too often — our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us — Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens — fell silent.

In other words, we went off course.

Whether you agree or disagree with the analysis, you have to believe that this does not describe what the previous administration thought it was doing.  So, from the point of view of the other side, you can only feel that Obama has distorted your position.  And when you feel that your position has been distorted, you dig in, you don’t come around. 

What should Obama have done differently?  If you want bring the other side in, then you have to give its arguments full scope and credence.  You can’t ascribe haste, fear, and the trimming of facts and evidence to them, even if you believe that to be the case.  You can’t accuse them of setting aside their principles.  You have to argue the other side’s case on its own merits. 

Then, and only then, you can give your own position.  To forestall criticism and avoid inflaming a debate further, understand and be ready to give the other side’s position.  Fairly.  First.  And forthrightly. 

Saying he’s “pleased but not satisfied,” President Obama presided over his 3rd prime-time press conference last night, marking the first 100 days of his presidency (http://tinyurl.com/ceaerq).  I’ll leave the politics to others to dissect; how is he doing as a public speaker?

Overall, Obama continues to grow in mastery.  However, he’s a very different speaker in governing than he was campaigning.  Obama the campaigner was dynamic, uplifting, charismatic.  Obama the President is serious, thorough, thoughtful, authoritative, and even a little dull.  Clearly, for him, governing is serious business, and the days of the fun and adrenaline of the campaign are long gone.

How quickly he has settled into the role of President!  If the press conference is any indication, Obama is completely comfortable in the role.  His voice, posture, and gestures are indicative of a man who stepped into the Oval Office ready to govern.  His legal training and intelligence show in every answer.  Look at his answer to a question about Pakistan’s nuclear security:

I'm confident that we can make sure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure. Primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands. We've got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think that they're immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan. I'm more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don't seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people.

And so as a consequence, it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the loyalty of their people. So we need to help Pakistan help Pakistanis. And I think that there's a recognition increasingly on the part of both the civilian government there and the army that that is their biggest weakness.

Here, he manages both to reassure and yet warn the public and Pakistan at the same time.  It’s a careful, thoughtful answer that doesn’t leave much room for follow up questions – there are few chinks in his armor. 

Throughout the news conference, Obama ranges authoritatively over swine flu, world events, the economy, politics – everything that the press dishes out, Obama easily fields and responds to decisively.  In fact, compared to the last President, the balance of power with the press has shifted enormously.  Where Bush was combative, and occasionally flat-footed, Obama is confident and assured.  Even when Ed Henry tries to catch the President out on the difficult issue of abortion, Obama is more than equal to the task, giving a long, articulate, and carefully worded answer. 

This is a press that treats the new president with deference.  Obama is clearly the authority in the room. What he lacks in sparkle, he more than makes up in presidential heft. He is a master of the genre.

Working with senior executives I get a lot of opportunities to see the communications mistakes that CEOs and top leaders make – over and over again.  Here are the three I witness on a regular basis.

1.  They live in the bubble and think it’s the universe.  Leaders at the top are surrounded by assistants, V-Ps and SVPs, security – all the human apparatus of success.  That apparatus is tuned to its leaders’ needs – recognizing them, satisfying them, anticipating them.  The result is that a bubble is created, inevitably, that is very pleasant to live in and easily mistaken for the entire cosmos.  It breeds a kind of self-centeredness even in the most humble of people.  And in terms of communications, it pushes leaders into believing that everyone is interested in the same things they are interested in, and focused on the same issues and challenges that they are focusing on.  As a result, leaders have to work hard to re-imagine the world from other perspectives in order to communicate well with them. 

2.  They mistake numbers for vision.  As soon as you get below the level of a company where the options are fabulous and the handshakes are golden, people need something to motivate them beyond their salaries.  Most people need to believe that the work they’re doing helps society in some way.  CEOs and other leaders have already made the translation of worth into the next quarter’s profit margins, because they live with those numbers everyday, but most employees don’t.  Leaders need to translate the numbers they understand into the language of purpose that the rest of the world understands. 

3.  They think information is persuasion – and they don’t do enough of either. Once again, because leaders have already accepted the argument that what they’re doing is worthwhile, they don’t need to hear the reasoning behind the company’s plan going forward.  But their employees, and certainly the public at large, are not as deeply invested in the company’s logic, and so they need more than just information.  They need to know why.  It’s not enough for a CEO to inform the employees about a new venture.  The leader also needs to tell the employees why the new venture is worth the effort. 

Top executives too often communicate too little.  When they do communicate, they expect their employees and the world to pay breathless attention.  They need to remember that information is not persuasion, that numbers are not vision, and that the bubble is not where most people live. 

Most people would say that President Obama and former President Bush are two very different personalities.  Approval for each is split largely on party lines, their policies are virtually opposites in many ways, and the one is famously gifted as a communicator, while the other is not. 

And yet there is one way in which the two leaders are very much alike.  Both are possessed with enormous self-confidence.  Indeed, many commentators wrote of former President Bush that his confidence was so absolute that it prevented him from seeing other sides to issues.  These commentators faulted him for a lack of self-reflection.  When he was asked at a press conference to discuss a mistake he had made, President Bush was famously unable to come up with any. 

Few of those same commentators would make similar comments about President Obama.  He has already admitted to mistakes during his short tenure in office.  And he is widely credited with being open to considering ideas from all parts of the political spectrum. 

But Obama oozes self-confidence even while he appears to be more open-minded than his predecessor.  And commentators today commend that self-confidence, arguing that we need a strong leader to take us through these difficult economic times. 

Why is self-confidence suddenly an asset for President Obama when it was widely considered to be a liability for President Bush?  Is there any difference between the two leaders’ self-confidence?  How can we understand the apparent about-face in the reaction of the general population to confidence in their leader?

The answer to these questions lies in both men’s non-verbal communication.  When President Bush presided at a press conference, for example, his self-confidence was undercut by his hunched shoulders, his halting answers, his querulous tone, and his defensive posture.  His self-confidence seemed to be at odds, therefore, with his non-verbal ‘conversation’ with the audience.   When we see this kind of internal tension, we tend to assume that there is something inauthentic going on. 

President Obama, on the other hand, has self-consistent body language.  His self-confidence is supported by his erect posture, his ready smile, and his confident tone.  The package appears to be authentic.  He appears to be a person who is comfortable in his own skin. 

Regardless of your political views, the two men are a case study in self-confidence and authenticity.  You can’t succeed with the former unless you have the latter.  I talk much more about this tension in my new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

 

Why was Governor Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama on Tuesday night so bad?  Both the content and the delivery were, in plain words, awful.  Here it is on YouTube:  http://tinyurl.com/art66e.  But don’t watch it, unless you want to know how not to speak on television, how not to construct a logical presentation, and how not to quote your father when talking to the American people.  There are a myriad better ways to spend 12 minutes of your life than watching Governor Jindal. 

Jindal began with a nod to President Obama’s election as the first African-American president and all that that signifies, but he went on so long that it became patronizing.  He told an inane story about hurricane Katrina, and used that as a way to talk about the Republican idea that Americans don’t need government to help them solve their problems.  “Americans can do anything,” he said, quote his father.  He repeated this quote a half-dozen times during the remainder of the speech, sounding more and more like Gomer Pyle and less and less like a credible future presidential candidate. 

Of course, the (Republican) government’s response to Katrina was criminally bad, but Jindal was talking out of both sides of his mouth, because he and his state government were busy spending billions of Federal taxpayers’ money on rebuilding New Orleans even as he spoke.  

He then went on to say that Republicans want everyone to have access to affordable health care, but that government is not the solution.  This is an argument based on a non sequitur, and one that simply sidesteps several critical issues.  For example, private enterprise has built the jury-rigged, outrageously expensive solution we have today.  We’ve tried it.  It has brought us to our current impasse, with even the insurers themselves now calling for the Federal government to help find a remedy. 

And Jindal simply ignores the inconvenient fact that President Obama’s proposed solution does involve the insurers rather than relying exclusively on the Federal government.  No one is proposing that the government is the answer.  But government has to play a role, because private enterprise has proven itself unable to come up with a solution despite having years to do so, enormous public pressure to improve, and real – and often criminal – examples of how they have failed in their own self-described mission to protect Americans against the financial impact of catastrophic illnesses.  

Jindal then talked about spending and the economic mess we’re in.  He called for less government spending, echoing President Hoover, who cut spending at the beginning of the Depression, thus ensuring that it would last longer and cut much deeper than it otherwise would have.  Thank goodness he’s not in charge of anything except Louisiana.  I see that he's taking all but about one percent of the Federal bailout money coming to his state. 

What about his delivery?  His smile was insincere; it didn’t reach his eyes, which were focused relentlessly on the camera and thus on us, the hapless viewers.  He read the teleprompter in an un-authoritative, sing-song voice that lacked conviction, energy, and interest.  His vocal tones were constantly rising, further undercutting his authority.  His gestures were out of synch with his words, making him look fake.  (I talk more about this in Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.)  Finally, he tipped his head slightly to one side, in what I call the Mr. Rogers gesture, making him look even less authoritative.  The combination gave the effect of a small boy delivering the Republican response.  It was childish in the bad sense of the word.  Not a good night for Governor Jindal or the Republicans.