Nick Morgan - Public Speaking Advice and Commentary

Three Big Myths of Executive Public Speaking

For my blog today, I'm linking to an article I just wrote for Forbes.com on the 3 big myths of executive public speaking:  I should start with a joke, too much rehearsal is bad for me, and I want to go right to Q n A.  Here's the full article:  http://tinyurl.com/y9q4lkh

How much emotion is too much in public speaking?

How much emotion is too much in public speaking?  That’s the question the following video raised for me.  It’s Daniel Beaty, poet and actor, delivering the powerful story he calls, “Knock, Knock”:  http://tinyurl.com/ykul7c7. 

Beaty’s emotional pitch is exactly right for his subject, but what about more conventional settings and business-oriented topics?  How much is too much? 

Over my two decades of coaching I have developed two answers for this conundrum.  But first an observation.  In the vast majority of business speeches, there’s too little passion, not too much.  Far too many business audiences have been lulled to sleep by the droning messages of executives, professional speakers, and former sports stars brought in to tell the employees something about reaching for the gold. 

Here’s the first answer.  If you understand the audience and the occasion, there’s always a right emotional pitch to be found.  It’s called tact, and it’s focused on the audience and the occasion, not on your – the speaker’s – feelings.  When in doubt, go for restraint rather than shock value, but you really shouldn’t be in doubt if you have done your homework and understand the people in the room, their hopes and fears, and what’s at stake for them.  And seeing a speaker break down in tears unexpectedly can have great shock value, but seeing someone hold back the tears is almost always profoundly moving. 

And the second answer?  On those rare occasions when the speaker can combine a deep understanding of the situation with real passion for a subject, giving vent to strong emotion can be electrifying and can change the world.  Watch the ending of Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech to see what I mean:  http://tinyurl.com/y4acg5.  There are times when profound anger, sorrow, joy, or delight can lift us up as one and point us to a better world.  Those are the moments – as a lifetime student of public speaking – that I live for. 

 

 

 

 

How good a speaker is Eric Schmidt?

As CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt needs little introduction.  And before his current world-shaking job, he was CTO of Sun Microsystems, where he led Java development, and CEO of Novell.  He was also on the Board of Apple before he resigned to avoid conflicts of interest between Apple and Google.  Clearly, he’s a big deal in the rarified world of high-tech giants. 

But how good a speaker is he?

You can see him delivering a commencement speech to Carnegie Mellon here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiYwUde3wNo.  And you can see him talking to CIOs courtesy of Gartner here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHxub_yQfig. 

Eric’s a highly self-assured and competent speaker.  He projects a sense of ease, which is the single most important thing you can do to improve your overall connection with the audience – it’s just not easy to accomplish.  To be sure, he commits all the mistakes of someone who has not made public speaking proficiency a high priority – he looks down at his speaking notes before he finishes the previous sentence, he uses fake gestures, and his gestures happen too late in the intent-gesture-think-speak sequence that people employ when they’re being natural.  To name a few.  But overall, he’s quite comfortable with his speaking, and that’s unusual for a business speaker. 

Of course, his commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon was a collection of the usual clichés, but they were delivered with geniality and aplomb, and who remembers those commencement speeches anyway?  Overall, Eric is good enough to get by, and better than many. 

 

How good a speaker is Jack Welch?

Jack Welch is probably the most famous CEO in the world – still, despite having been retired from GE since 2001.  His reign there was controversial – some called him Neutron Jack for reducing GE’s head count from over 400,00 to less than 300,000 in his first five years as CEO.  In 2000, he was named ‘manager of the century’ by Fortune.  His first book, Jack: Straight from the Gut, was a NYTimes #1 bestseller, and he continues to advise and offer opinions on the business issues of the day, including displaying skepticism about global warming and other environmental issues while saying that companies have to embrace ‘green’ business because the customers want it. 

But how good a speaker is he?

You can see him here talking about how people are his products:  http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/260/.  Also here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaXO9Uab6K0, at the 2009 Global Business Forum. 

Jack is an energetic, intelligent speaker.  He’s at his best responding to questions, and he does so with real thoughtfulness and candor.  That said, he comes across as a bit of a bully with a nasal, harsh voice that grates on the ear and a tendency to think his answers are more startling and original than they are.  He’s a real Yankee – the kind that says ‘chaaaage’, not ‘charge’ and  ‘staaaat’, not ‘start’. 

Jack is fine in small doses, and when he’s well focused.  But he would pall over the longer haul of an hour-long speech.  Catch him on the Q n A. 

 

How to connect with your audience by moving closer

For my blog today, I'm connecting to a guest blog I posted on 6 Minutes (http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/), a great public speaking blog run by Andrew Dlugan:  How to connect with your audience by moving closer.  You can find the blog here:  http://tinyurl.com/yhqycdm

Enjoy!

How good a speaker is Ram Charan?

Ram Charan once was the best-kept secret in the business world.  Only the CEOs of companies like GE, Verizon, Novartis, Dupont, Honeywell, KLM, and Bank of America had heard of him.  Today, thanks to his speaking, his books, and his articles in BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, and Fortune, which described him as the “most influential consultant alive,” he’s widely known as one of the world’s top management gurus and advisors to CEOs.  Forbes pegs him at #13 on its list of the world’s 50 most essential management gurus.  His recent book, Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn, came out in December 2008, so we have to credit him with a good sense of timing at least. 

But how good a speaker is he?

You can see him speaking here to a Fortune writer on what to do in a downturn:  http://tinyurl.com/y8vla5g; and here, talking about the 6 building blocks for business success:  http://tinyurl.com/yjwkmka (the video quality is poor, but it will give you an idea).  Charan speaks with a good deal of authority, but he has the bad habits that all too often seem to come with that authority:  he’s not as clear as he thinks he is, he’s unselfconscious to a fault, and he paces through the audience with a disconcerting lack of direction.  The non-verbal confusion mirrors the verbal confusion. 

Despite all that, he is a very smart man giving solid, commonsense insights into successful business practices.  He makes the listener work harder than one should have to, however, because of his lack of discipline as a speaker. 

What many speakers frequently forget is that paying attention is both hard work and a great gift.  Just ask your teenage children.  Speakers owe their attention-paying audiences the discipline to be as clear and as thoughtful about their messages as humanly possible.  Not many measure up to this simple, yet essential standard. 

 

How good a speaker is Marshall Goldsmith?

Marshall Goldsmith is a professor, consultant, and coach, who talks and writes about leadership.  He’s the author of some 24 books, including The Leader of the Future (Jossey-Bass, 1997), perhaps the most popular book on leadership ever written, as well as more recent books like What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (Hyperion, 2007) – ranked the #1 business book by the Wall Street Journal  -- and Succession:  Are You Ready (Harvard Business Press, 2009).  He pioneered the idea of 360-degree feedback, and Fast Company has named him America’s pre-eminent executive coach. 

But how good a speaker is he?

It’s a surprisingly difficult question.  Goldsmith is a mixture of good and bad habits, and he gets good and bad effects as a result.  You can see him speaking here at Google: http://tinyurl.com/yka4hua in 2007.

His good points?  He’s funny, direct, articulate, fast-paced and he delivers home truths in rapid-fire succession. 

His bad habits?  He’s arrogant, dismissive of the audience, laughs at his own jokes, and constantly points his finger at the audience like an admonishing parent while he paces relentless back and forth – scolding the audience for doing things wrong, when he should be including the audience in his circle instead. 

In the end, you know he’s right about a lot of things, but you’re cross at him for being right, because he’s delivered his message in such an arrogant way.  A curious performance from a self-described Buddhist who gives all his information away for free and donates a lot of his fees to charity.  I’m a fan, but you have to be prepared to take a lot of grief to be a Marshall Goldsmith fan.  

 

How good a speaker is Michael Porter?

Michael Porter is a University Professor at Harvard, one of the founders of the Monitor Group, the author of several of the most significant books on competition and competitive advantage, including On Competition, Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage – and the guy who taught the world how to optimize a supply chain. 

He’s on anyone’s list as one of the more important business thinkers of the last couple of decades. 

But how good a speaker is he?

You can see him speaking here, http://tinyurl.com/67p94g, on his famous five competitive forces that shape strategy.  Here, he’s talking with Charlie Rose on America’s competitive strategy: http://tinyurl.com/yfw8q5l.  And here’s his speaker page: http://tinyurl.com/yecm4sr. 

Porter appears quite relaxed and conversational in his manner on first blush.  But his hands give him away.  They’re all over the place, waving, clutching themselves, coming together under his chin in a prayerful position as he decries America’s crumbling competitive advantage.  Altogether, there’s too much motion from Porter; his gestures become distracting after a few minutes.  It’s too bad, because he’s smart and articulate, and there’s no reason why he couldn’t learn to simplify his gestural conversation just a little.  Taking that step would give him much more authority and gravitas -- and he'd be easier to watch. 

Then you notice his voice.  It’s nasal, and that becomes tiresome after five or ten minutes.  The research suggests that nasal voices do not wear well on listeners, and Michael Porter, with all his erudition, is a case in point.  Again, it’s simply too bad, because nasal voices are easily rendered more resonant with a little discipline and practice.  Porter needs to get to work. 

How good a speaker is Gary Hamel?

The management guru Gary Hamel has had more Harvard Business Review articles reprinted more often than anyone else - 15 and counting.  He’s a visiting professor at the London Business School, the founder of a new venture called MLab, which seeks to “accelerate the evolution of management knowledge and practice,” the author of several seminal books on management, including The Future of Management, Competing for the Future, and Leading the Revolution (which unfortunately recommended Enron) -- and the inventor of the idea of core competencies.  The Wall Street Journal recently said he was the world’s most influential business thinker. 

In short, he’s one of the top biz gurus.  But how good a speaker is Gary Hamel?

You can see him here, http://tinyurl.com/2vypya, speaking to Fortune management innovation, and here, at something called the leadership summit 2009:  http://tinyurl.com/y9kgwbj.

Gary is all energy.  He’s probably the best ranter in the top ten business speakers.  But he lacks polish.  The effect is of a rather over-earnest high school social studies teacher shouting to keep students’ attention and afraid that he’s about to lose them.  The performance is initially arresting, but it grows wearisome after a bit.  Hamel has two levels, loud and not loud.  That soon becomes annoying.  And his diction is so mushy as to be inarticulate at times when he throws the end of a sentence away.

He leaps around the stage, pacing back and forth, in his desire to get the message across.  But he’d be much better served by developing some nuances, some variety in his delivery, and some purpose to his wanderings. 

And yet, when he says, for companies today, it’s “not about efficiency, it’s about irrelevancy” he’s so right that it’s scary.  Hamel is hard to watch for long periods of time, but ignore him at your peril.  He may have been wrong abut Enron, but he’s right about the need for businesses to innovate or die. 

How good a speaker is Philip Kotler?

Philip Kotler is a marketing consultant and a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School at Northwestern University in Chicago.  He’s probably the world’s most influential thinker on strategic marketing.  He’s on any number of top ten lists of important business gurus.  He’s written more than 40 books, including some of the basic textbooks in the marketing field, such as Marketing Management (http://tinyurl.com/y9kjxo3) and Principles of Marketing (http://tinyurl.com/ya293jw).

 

Here he is talking about the brand called you: http://tinyurl.com/kp66nh.  Here’s his speaker video: http://tinyurl.com/yfyc7tb.  And here he is speaking at the London Business Forum: http://tinyurl.com/599hvs. 

 

What these videos show is a ponderous speaker very much in the old-fashioned academic style, long on substance and short on style.  Not very entertaining, very straightforward, and a little behind the times.  But sincere, completely authoritative and obviously smart. 

 

The London Business Forum video reveals in addition a speaker who has never completely mastered the choreography of the stage:  he wanders back and forth with that irritating absence of thought and excess of adrenaline that has caused many a nervous talker to get happy feet.  This behavior is also very typical of the professor who is thinking as he goes, with only a general outline in his head about where he might end up.  A tenured professor can get away with it, but that doesn’t make it right. 

 

Kotler will give you the basics; go to someone else for pizzazz. 

 

 

Richard Branson – how good a public speaker is he?

  

Richard Branson may well be the world’s most famous entrepreneur.  He got his start selling records out of the trunk of his car – or ‘boot’, since he’s English.  Today, some 360 companies later, he’s the Chairman of Virgin Group, and has innovated or even overturned more industries than most of us have heard of, including space flight. 

But how good a speaker is he?

You can see Branson here:  http://tinyurl.com/d6qxjf.  He’s talking with Arianna Huffington about his wealth and other matters.  Also check out his interview with TED’s Chris Anderson here:  http://tinyurl.com/l99z8k.

Branson is not a good public speaker; he’s halting, shy, and labored.  (Indeed, he typically avoids stand-alone public speaking and instead does interviews or shows video.)  But he’s also charming, thoughtful, and very, very smart.  If you bear with the awkwardness, the results are worth it.  Branson is one of those rare individuals who has figured out how to do exactly what he wants to do and be incredibly successful at it – all the while apparently having loads of fun.  Most of us can learn from him. 

The most extraordinary attribute of the man – at least in public – is his humility.  He comes across as genuinely humble in his interviews, even going so far as to physically hunch over in order not to dominate his interlocutor.  That makes him the opposite of the alpha male – the omega male, perhaps? – and it works very well for him.  He’ll probably never be a captivating speaker.  But he does exude plenty of charisma, and leadership is something he learned how to ace at an early age. 

How good a speaker is Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman?

Paul Krugman shows up as number 3 on Forbes' most influential management gurus list (http://tinyurl.com/ygc6mb4).  He’s a brilliant economist, winner of the Nobel Prize for his work on international trade, prolific writer of books, and blogger for the New York Times.   What kind of speaker is he?

 

You can see him here:  http://tinyurl.com/yhbz7ak (on the stimulus ) and here:  http://tinyurl.com/5d9g3y (his Nobel Prize acceptance speech) as well as here: http://tinyurl.com/y8pjrjh talking on the Colbert Report, and to Google on the economic crisis. 

 

Krugman is one of those people who is so brilliant that he can’t finish a sentence.  He constantly interrupts himself with new ideas and half-finished thoughts.  His mind is racing far ahead of his words, and the result is that clarity and syntax are the victims.  He’s often quite hard to follow because of this fractured kind of speaking.

 

And what about his delivery?  He’s nasal, and his voice tends to go up into his nose and get more so when he gets excited.  That tendency, coupled with body language that lacks authority, and you have someone who in person doesn’t live up to the advance billing. 

 

With work, he could improve both his syntax and his delivery, but my guess is he’s too busy being brilliant to make the effort. 

 

 

 

C K Prahalad - the world's most influential business thinker?

Who is the world’s most influential business thinker?  According to Forbes (http://tinyurl.com/ygc6mb4), it’s C. K. Prahalad, Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan, and author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (http://tinyurl.com/yghrz9s), Competing for the Future, and other books. 

 

What kind of a speaker is he?  You can see him here, talking about innovation: http://tinyurl.com/yz93neg; here, talking about sustainability: http://tinyurl.com/yk2bmq2; here, talking about The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: http://www.thinkers50.com/video/32; and here, talking about whether or not globalization is good or bad for the poor: http://tinyurl.com/yfscn5w. 

 

I particularly recommend the last link, a talk he gave at the Aspen Institute in 2007.  It’s vintage Prahalad.  Aside from a tendency to use slightly too dense, under-designed slides in support of his talk, Prahalad is an extraordinary presence.  He had enormous gravitas, a remarkable comfort level in front of an audience, and a natural way of talking that many business speakers could learn from. 

 

His talks make no concessions to the ill-informed or the casual listener.  They are thoughtful and demanding.  He’s no superficial entertainer.  Take on Prahalad if you’re prepared to pay close attention, work hard, and maybe even take notes.  He comes across like a tough professor lecturing to students – which is of course exactly what he is and what he is doing much of the time.  He does have a dry sense of humor that he indulges in occasionally, but don’t look for constant laughs in a Prahalad talk.  He’s more comfortable with wry comments and the occasional chuckle. 

 

In an era when much of our business thinking is ‘dumbed’ down for mass consumption, Prahalad is a one-man argument for high standards.  You can actually learn from him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What should a leader say in times of tragedy? - Part 2

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.   

 

 

 

 

 

What should a leader say in times of tragedy?

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. 

 

 

 

 

Podcast with Duct Tape Marketing on Authenticity and Trust

For my blog today, I'm linking to a Duct Tape Marketing podcast I did with John Jantsch, who's a fun, smart guy.  Take a listen here:  http://tinyurl.com/yaahcld. 

The single most powerful way to increase your charisma--and audience connection

What is the single most powerful way to increase your persuasive connection with an audience – and your charisma at the same time?

 

Listening. 

 

When you listen with your whole body, using your intuition or unconscious to read the emotions of those with whom you’re communicating, the result is a connection with the other people in the room that they experience as engaging, fascinating, and indeed charismatic.

 

Why is this the case? Why should focusing on someone else’s emotional state add to your charisma? Technically, the outward focus that you must adopt will contribute to your stillness, which, when it is combined with energy, is charismatic.  More than that, as you establish and maintain a connection with the others in the room, they will experience this as a heightened interest in you.

 

This is the kind of magic that candidate Bill Clinton exhibited on the campaign trail during his two runs for the White House. He would establish strong eye contact with a questioner and, holding his whole body still as he focused on the person, raise his eyebrows, open his eyes, and nod. All the while, he’d be moving as close as he could to the questioner. The effect was powerful, partly because of Clinton’s technical mastery of all the details of gesture but mostly because of the quality of his listening. The strength of the bond that he would establish with one questioner would, by proxy, be felt by all of the people in the room.

 

That’s charisma.

 

Think of it this way. Your job as a persuasive leader communicating with an individual or group of people is most often to move them to some kind of action. To do that, you have to change their minds. You’re taking them, in effect, from point A to point B. That movement is not only intellectual but also, and more fundamentally, emotional. So your job as a listener is to figure out what your audience’s emotional state is at the beginning of your communication and then monitor the progress of that emotional state as you move them on the journey to action.

 

To put it as simply as possible, where are they emotionally when you first meet with them, and where are they when you’re done? If you’ve been persuasive, you’ve moved them from passive acceptance of the current condition, or anger at it, or frustration with it, to a refocused energy about changing it. The act of listening to your audience, whether of one or one thousand, is monitoring that progress from passive to active, from why to how, from emotion turned inward to emotion turned outward.

 

What you’ll find when you do the work of listening hard to the people you communicate with is that you will quickly become more attuned to others’ emotional states and they will soon become more enthralled with you. They will welcome you showing up because you will be the leader who pays the most attention to them, and that commodity is as scarce as platinum in this information-saturated but emotionally distant age.

How good a speaker is Steve Jobs?

Steve Jobs has a near-mythical reputation in the presentation world as someone who has regularly wowed audiences over the years with his new product announcements at Macworld.  But just how good a public speaker is he really?  You can see highlights from the last 10 years of Macworld presentations here:  http://tinyurl.com/9qszxv.  I’ll probably get grumbles from Jobs’ fans for saying this, but he’s a good, not a great, speaker. 

 

To be sure, in business the bar is set very low, and of course Jobs is a better presenter than Bill Gates, but what you see when you review the decade-long run of new product announcements is someone who is never fully comfortable in his skin.  At the beginning of his run, he’s a classic geek – introverted, full of rough edges, intense, and passionate.  His public speaking clumsiness is offset by his passion, but he goes on too much about the bits and bytes – he a geek talking geek-speak.  It’s all about him and his products.  As time goes on, he matures as a speaker, opens up a little, and starts to relate to the audience a bit more strongly. 

 

In fact, his best performance is after his liver transplant.  He’s simpler and more direct, and it helps.  Your first aim as a speaker should never be to amaze the audience, but rather to take them on a journey that’s relevant to them.  If they get amazed along the way, great, but that’s not job one.  If you focus solely on that, you go for the presenting bells and whistles at the expense of substance, inevitably. 

 

From start to finish, Jobs’ best moments come when he waxes passionate about some cool new Apple product.  That’s when the subject, person, and audience meet most happily.  Technically, he’s still wandering around the stage a little too much, and he’s still using his hands to protect himself rather than connect with the audience, but the passion covers those public speaking sins pretty well.    

 

What can you learn from watching Steve Jobs?  Passion is the essence of good public speaking, but it doesn’t hurt to learn the craft as well. 

Put your unconscious mind to work to become a better public speaker

We’ve evolved to have some extraordinary skills.  Chief among them is a whole battery of brain cells and autonomic functions that focus almost exclusively on keeping us alive.  All mostly unconscious and incredibly efficient.  

 

That’s a good thing.

 

Unfortunately, not so good for public speaking.  Because the famous ‘fight or flight’ adrenaline response is marvelous for evading saber-tooth tigers, but not so marvelous when it goes into overdrive in response to an audience.  The (conscious) symptoms are uncomfortable, and unless you learn how to manage them, they may cause you to do something weird in front of that audience, like pace relentlessly back and forth in an effort to dispel the excess energy you’re feeling. 

 

So here are a couple of things to do to make that unconscious mind work for you in the modern world. 

 

First, redefine the uncomfortable symptoms as good things that signal that you’re enjoying the hyper-vigilance that comes from adrenaline.  Racing heart?  Clammy palms?  Sweaty all over?  Tell yourself all those symptoms are helping you do better. 

 

OK, that doesn’t help a whole lot, unless you’re very persuasive.  Second thing to do:  breathe slowly and deeply from the belly.  Three deep breaths should help. 

 

Third, and most important in the long run:  start talking to your unconscious.  The good news is that you can train it to work for you.  This kind of work is well understood by Olympic athletes, who spend a lot of time visualizing success, because they know that otherwise their unconscious minds will betray them by presenting an alternative (what if you don’t make it over the bar?). 

 

So when you’re about to fall asleep, start talking to that unconscious mind, telling it how wonderful a speaker you are, how good it feels to be standing in front of a crowd sharing your wisdom, and what fun it’s all going to be.  Then visualize the happy occasion.  Just like an Olympic pole-vaulter visualizing leaping gracefully over the bar. 

 

If you do this properly and thoroughly over a period of several weeks, you will find that your public speaking performance improves enormously and those jitters become far more enjoyable or go away entirely.  I talk about this in more detail in Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, but here it’s enough to say that you should try it, especially if you think that your nerves are getting in the way of a great performance. 

Are they committed to you? Did you close the sale? Decoding Body Language, Pt 8

For the final blog in this series, I'm focusing on commitment.  This is the moment that you close the sale, ink the deal, get the job, get the 'go ahead'.  It's a crucial moment, and it's essential to be able to spot it so that you don't do the wrong thing at the crucial moment. 

What does it look like? 

When people are committed, they lean in to you.  They are open, sometimes subservient, always sincere, and usually well aligned.  It begins with the eyes: they’re open wide, and focused on you. The face is similarly open. Most of all, it will be close to yours. Closing the sale is all about closing the distance. It’s why car sales reps constantly shake your hand. They’re trying their hardest to build commitment, and they know that the mind follows the body.

 

The torso is open and closer to you than it is if not committed.  There is no opposing chatter from the hands and arms, legs and feet. The person or persons may well be mirroring you if it’s possible in the circumstances.

 

The act of commitment often is signaled with a change in body language, indicating a decision has been made. Look for it — the yea or nay. At that point, put your unconscious mind into high gear. Ask yourself, Is this person committed? You’ll be able to tell very quickly if you see all the positive affect I’ve described — or its opposite.

 

Most of all, you’ll feel comfortable. Commitment is a positive statement, and because we’re social creatures, we humans like to achieve it. We’re uncomfortable when it doesn’t exist.  So you can detect it by the general sense of comfort that you get when it happens. That’s your unconscious telling you, Yes, it’s all good. They’re going along with this!

 

In essence, commitment is a kind of connection, and one that makes us feel good. You’ll know it when you see it, if you work with your subconscious. When it’s not there, people express their discomfort with all sorts of agitation, discordant body language, and attempts to leave.

 

Of course, some cultures cover these awkward moments with an excess of agreement, positive body language, and superficial attempts at commitment. When Westerners first do business in Asia, for example, they often find themselves misreading the Asian politeness and desire to save face for commitment. This is one instance when unconscious expertise can let you down.  The studies show that the basic body language is initially the same around the world, but it can quickly be covered with culturally determined body language nanoseconds later.  Without a lot of practice, the differences can be hard to spot. 

 

This is not the place for an extended discussion of cultural differences, but there are a number of excellent references on the subject.  It’s best to take cultures on one by one, when you’re going to visit another country, rather than trying to learn them all at once. Precisely because the body language we send out is deeply conditioned by our upbringings, when it isn’t biological, it’s hard to change.

In the end, basic authenticity is the same around the world.  As I discuss in more depth in Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, we humans are a social, empathetic species, and we crave the basic connection with others that comes from authenticity.  All successful communication begins there. 

Personal power and body language - part 7 in decoding body language

The story of power in a room is written in space and height.  It’s not very different from what pack dogs do, in fact. Look for the alpha dog. He or she will be the highest person in the room if at all possible. It’s why kings and queens have had thrones on daises since they began ruling others.

 

I used to ask CEOs I worked with to test this out by convening a meeting at a large conference table with the CEO highly visible in the middle. CEOs typically take the middle of the table, and sometimes the head, to express their power anyway.  Next, I instructed the CEO to sit tall in her seat at the start, but then to gradually sink down in the chair by sliding forward,very, very slowly.  Imperceptibly, in fact, to the conscious mind.  The result? Those in the room who wanted to express their subservience to the CEO unconsciously sank lower and lower in order not to upstage the boss. CEOs have reported to me that they’ve barely been able to contain their laughter as they’ve watched everyone at the table slide slowly toward the floor.

 

A truly hilarious instance of this took place when Richard Branson, the Virgin companies tycoon, was giving a speech at a conference at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.  Branson is not a comfortable public speaker, so his clever staff had arranged for first a video, then a brief speech by Branson, and finally a question-and-answer session with a local TV personality in order to fill up the time as painlessly as possible for Branson.

 

When it came to the question-and-answer session, Branson, an unassuming man, sat in a relaxed way in his chair.  The interviewer, not wishing to be higher than Branson, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Branson mirrored this behavior, but put his head a little lower than the interviewer’s.  Soon the two hapless public figures were crouched with their heads nearly between their knees, trying to carry on a serious conversation.  It was like watching a game of CEO limbo. 

 

Finally, the interviewer could stand it no longer and stood up, saying to the audience, “Let’s take some questions from you now.” There was an audible groan of relief from the audience, who had been made uncomfortable by this ridiculous display of humility without consciously understanding what was going on. Neither did Branson or the interviewer.

 

Powerful people also take up more space: they splay their legs out, or their arms, or hog more space in the room. It’s why important people get bigger hotel rooms than lesser folk, and it’s why tall people are statistically more likely to rise higher in their professions than shorter people. The alpha dog strikes again.

 

Powerful people employ a host of subtler signals of their dominance, from interrupting lesser mortals to talking more, to indulging in longer pauses. They make more eye contact, or less, depending on their choice. In fact, they dominate the eye contact and the physical touch — all the ballet of the second conversation. It’s why it takes training to meet Queen Elizabeth, and when you leave, you apparently have to back out of the room. All of that is simply to express her authority over the rest of us.

 

Powerful people may withdraw physically from a conversation, controlling its tempo and showing their power with this ability. I’ve seen people in a meeting lean back and put their hands behind their head in order to express their superiority over the rest of the room. It’s arrogant but effective.

 

Power in nonverbal display is all about controlling your own behavior and that of others. Once again, this is something that your unconscious is exquisitely attuned to. You will immediately know when you are in the presence of someone who believes she is powerful because of all the signals I’ve described, all of which you are unconsciously aware. 

Using body language to persuade others - Decoding body language, part 6

How do you tell whether someone is on your side or not?  The basic body language to look for to determine whether people are allied to you or opposed is overall physical stance -- their orientation.  This makes for entertaining people watching. Once you’re on to this aspect of behavior, you’ll find it’s easy to pick up.

 

Quite simply, people who are in agreement tend to mirror one another’s behavior. One will lead, and the other will follow.  This is especially easy to tell when there are three people present, and you want to figure out who’s on your side and who isn’t. Look for the one who has the same basic body orientation as you. For a test, move and see if the other person follows suit in the next thirty seconds.

 

Spouses, partners, and lovers usually mirror one another’s physical orientation when they’re together or with others and they’re in basic agreement. It’s interesting to watch couples for signs of mirroring — and its opposite. You can often detect trouble in the relationship before the couple is aware of it.

 

What happens in mirroring is more profound than just agreement or even connection, however. Because persuasion is an emotional as well as an intellectual activity, it comes from deep within the brain. When we agree with someone, we do so with our whole bodies. You can use this to drive agreement and create persuasion. Adopt a posture, and watch for others to adopt it. Once they have, change it slightly. If the others go along, you’re well on your way to persuading the room.

 

Your control of the body language in the room will both create and test the strength of your persuasion (or lack thereof).  The reason is that people’s bodies tell them what they’re thinking, not the other way around. It’s counterintuitive but true. Our minds basically say to ourselves, I’m aligned physically with this person, so I must agree with her.  That’s because we don’t like to think of ourselves as acting with no reason.

 

You must use this control of the physical orientation of other people with sophistication and subtlety. It must be combined with a series of steps that include other kinds of consensus building. It won’t work merely to come into a room, adopt a physical position, and expect everyone else to adopt your intellectual position too.

 

First, build agreement by adopting their positions, dealing with their concerns, and generally building on your openness to them and their openness to you. Do this work carefully while you’re talking through the issues important to the situation.  What you’re doing is aligning your two conversations and using both of them to persuade the others in the room. It takes considerable practice to do this with subtlety and effectiveness, but once you master it, you’ll find that your ability to persuade others will increase enormously.

 

How to tell if someone you love is lying

 

The best way to get a handle on the difficult question of spotting a lie is with your unconscious mind. Look at the whole face and torso, and ask yourself, Sincere or insincere? Then let your subconscious go to work. It’s very good at picking up whether the whole picture adds up to a consistent expression. For example, is the mouth set in a smile but the eyes are cold?  Insincere. Are the eyes fixed on you with beguiling stillness but the hands are nervously intertwining?  Insincere.

 

The next most important place to look after the face is the orientation of the head. Most of us, when we lie, turn our head away or tip it up or down so as to move it away from the other person. That's why you don’t want to focus too much on specific gestures, but rather let your unconscious mind pick up on the general situation.  If you look too much at the eyes, for example, you may miss the fact that the head is turned down and to one side. So again, ask yourself, Is this person sincere or insincere? And then take in the whole person. You’ll be able to tell most of the time.

 

Generally you’ll be able to pick up on the attitude of the other person right away, especially if it’s a loved one or someone you know well. I had a cancer scare a while back, a condition that turned out fortunately to be benign, but the morning that I came back from the doctor, my wife instantly asked me when I walked in the door, “What’s the matter?” She knew something was wrong because my whole body radiated concern.

 

So look for that overall feeling you get when you pose the question to your unconscious mind.  It's the most reliable way to tell. 

For those of you who are detail-oriented, you'll want to know some of the specific 'tells' anyway.  Beyond the eyes and face, look for the torso to be turned away (lying) or toward you (truth).  See if there are defensive gestures from the hands and arms and signs of agitation from the hands and fingers. And look for contradictory behavior from the legs and feet. If your spouse says, “No, everything’s fine,” but his feet are oriented strangely or his legs are awkwardly crossed away from you, those are signs to check into his story further.

 

Also listen for signs of strain in the voice. If the voice is carefully controlled or a little higher pitched than usual, the person may be attempting to conceal something.  The world’s best expert on lying, Paul Ekman, has found that people who are lying slow down (in an effort to control) their voice and even their facial gestures and other mannerisms. But ordinary people can also rush to get through an awkward-feeling moment. So the main thing to look for is variation from the norm, which you should know well. 

Spotting a liar in a group of strangers is a completely different exercise.  Ekman has made a career out of detecting micro-expressions that signal concealed underlying emotions.  But it's an imprecise science (unlike on the fun but inaccurate TV show, 'Lie to Me') because without much more detail, you don't know why the person is concealing the emotion.  Is it fear?  Rage?  Excitement?  To understand that, you have to get to know the person better, and that takes time. 

How to decode other people's body language - 4: gestures

What can hand gestures tell us about openness?  Not those obvious one like the peace signal, or the middle finger.  Those are known as 'emblems'.  No, the ones we all make when we talk -- the apparently meaningless accompaniment to speech, as we wave our hands to think of a word, or emphasize a point. 

These gestures signal intent all the time.  When people reach toward us with open gestures, for example, they’re usually signaling openness. Only rarely is it something else, like a left hook to the jaw. An embrace, the ultimate open gesture, is a combination of open hand gestures and open torso.

 

Openness can be read in the hand itself as well. What is it doing? Is it clenched or nervously kneading the other hand? Is it twitchy or attempting to conceal itself in a pocket?  Hands speak an endless and fascinating language; they are marvelous little weathervanes to the state of the soul within and its intents. If you make a practice of watching other people’s hands, you’ll learn about the state of their nerves, their defensiveness, their confidence, their anger, their happiness, their sorrow, their interest or boredom, in addition to their openness or lack thereof.

 

Many books on body language purport to give specific meanings of specific gestures, but this is a fool’s game. Each gesture can have a multitude of meanings. We cross our arms, to pick a simple example, because we’re defensive, to be sure, but also because we’re tired, we’re cold, or we want to hide an expanding belly.

 

If you’re looking for the answer to a specific question, then you can put that unconscious expertise to work for you.  Ask yourself, Is this person open or closed toward me? Then start looking for the clues that you need to make a determination.

 

The best way to do this is to pose the question to your subconscious mind first. Ask yourself at the beginning of the conversation, Open or closed? and wait for your intuition about the matter to become clear. Once you have a sense of the situation, you can start looking consciously for clues to confirm or negate your initial reading.

 

Suppose you’re at a job interview, and you want to know what your chances of success are. The first question you might want to consider is whether you are even in the running.  In other words, is this a real interview or a courtesy interview? So begin the interview asking yourself, Is this person open or closed to me? If the answer comes back closed, then you can be reasonably sure that someone else already has the job.

 

If the person seems open, you can turn on your energy and charm. You may want to be on the lookout for a change in that reading. What if the interviewer has been open for, say, the first forty-five minutes of the interview and then suddenly starts to send out closed signals? It might be time to change tactics or cut the interview short.

 

Has the interviewer made up her mind in the negative, or is she simply signaling that the time is up? You may want to ask some specific process questions (out loud) to see, such as, “What’s the next step? How will you go about making a decision?” Then the question to ask your unconscious mind is, Open or closed? If the answer is given in a closed way, you probably won’t get the job. If the body language at that point is open, you are still in the running. A bolder question in that same situation might be to ask, “How do I stack up against the other applicants?” Be prepared for both an answer you like and one you may not like!

 

Because adults become more or less adept in controlling their faces and upper bodies, it’s worth looking at the legs and feet for interesting counter signals. Often someone has composed his or her face in a friendly greeting, but the legs and feet (and the torso too) may tell a different story. The legs may be crossed away from you, signaling a closed orientation, or the torso may be twisted away, or the other person may simply increase the distance, even slightly, between the two of you.

More about all of this in Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

How to decode other people's body language - 3: Openness

In this third part of my series on decoding body language, I'm continuing with openness signals  from the face, head and torso. 

Flaring nostrils are the stuff of romance novels and books about horses. Nevertheless, there may be truth to the descriptions connecting sexual attraction to this part of the face, especially if research about pheromones and attraction turns out to be true.

 

It is certainly the case that a wrinkled nose can indicate disgust, or at the very least disgust at a bad smell. Extreme facial gestures like these are hard to miss and easily brought to the conscious. It is the subtler ones you should be more concerned about. By the time someone gets to the point of wrinkling his nose, he’s probably already told you how he feels or is just about to do so.

 

The mouth is capable of a thousand variations on the basic retinue of smile, frown, surprise, fear, and so on. In simple terms, look for the smile. That’s the universally understood sign of approval from others, and thus people who are smiling are more likely to be open to you than people who are neutral or frowning. But of course people can smile for other reasons; once again context is important to be able to distinguish a rigid, unhappy, or false smile from a relaxed, natural one that is welcoming and open.

 

Think about the whole face for a moment. How we orient our heads toward each other in space is extraordinarily revealing of our degree of openness toward one another.  I recently saw a news clip of two politicians meeting. The one was a presidential candidate, the other a potential endorsement the candidate was eagerly courting. The clip was brief, but as the two sat in side-by-side chairs, the potential endorser’s head was tipped back and away from the candidate. My take was that there would be no good news that night. 

 

As it turned out, the news came the next day, and the endorsement was not forthcoming; the vote went to the other candidate. In that case, the head told the story.

 

We move our heads away and out of the plane of the other person, either up or down, when we’re thinking or withdrawing in some way — from anger, fear, or a host of other possible negative emotions.  Once the person is done thinking, watch where the head goes. If the person makes strong eye contact and turns her head back toward yours, the answer is yes. Otherwise the answer may be no.

 

If the other person is a spouse or close friend, the underlying message may be something like, “I still love you, but the answer’s no this one time.”  In that case, the head may signal yes to the loved one in order to stress that the other person doesn’t want to change the underlying relationship, just signal an answer in the current discussion.

 

For the torso, nearness and direction signal degrees of openness. Fundamentally, the closer and more directly oriented the other’s torso is toward you, the more open that person is, and the farther away and more turned away from you, the more closed.

Next time I'll wrap up the discussion of openness with a discussion of hand gestures.  More on all of this in Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

How to read other people's body language-2: Openness and its opposite

The first possibility to check about others’ intentions is the most basic one -- their degree of openness (or its opposite). It's the most basic, because if people are open to each other, communication can begin.  If they are not, nothing good can happen.   

With a little practice, you should be able to size people up very quickly along these lines on an almost automatic basis.  Don't look for an instant read, however -- what people call 'thin slicing' these days.  In practice, it takes some time to establish a baseline of behavior with each new person you meet. The point is not to be able to perform this task instantly, but to be able to size someone up within a few minutes, with high reliability, in terms of whether this person is open to you.

 Let’s begin with the face. First, notice the forehead. Is it wrinkled or smooth? For most of us, our habitual attitude is expressed in our foreheads, especially after about age 30. The more wrinkles and the deeper they are, the more habitually open a person is likely to be.

 That's because a characteristic gesture of the open person is to raise the eyebrows, wrinkling the forehead, when looking for a response. Over the years, if you spend a good deal of time openly inviting response, you’ll get forehead wrinkles.  There are fakers, but on the whole the forehead is a reliable sign of overall orientation.  That does not mean that a person will be open or closed in any particular instance, but it does give you a sense of his or her general receptivity.

 Beyond the forehead, notice the mobility of the eyebrows.  How often and far do they move? People tend to raise their eyebrows when they’re interacting with others: looking for a response, asking a question, taking you in, and so on. So the amount and distance of motion are indicators of a general level of openness, and in the specific instance, when the eyebrows are up, openness to your input in the moment. Again, the movement may be in response to a question that the person has asked you, but it’s openness nonetheless.

 Now go down to the eyes themselves. Are they narrowed or wide open? You need to establish a baseline of how the person behaves in fairly neutral situations. That will give you an idea of whether the particular case is one of openness. Generally people open their eyes wider when they are interested in something or someone and close them when they are not, or are actively suspicious or wary of events, people, or actions.

Because people are so active with their eyes, you need to be careful to rule out environmental reasons. Is a bright light shining in the person’s face? That may account for narrowed eyes. It may not be because you’ve just offered the person a used car at an unbeatable price.  If you can, look at the pupils. How open or shut are they? Openness indicates interest, attraction, and arousal; the opposite indicates the reverse. Of course, the general level of lighting in the environment also affects the pupils, so you need to establish a norm.

I'll continue with the rest of the face and body in the next blog.  I go into much more detail about this in my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

How to decode other people's body language - 1

We are all unconscious experts in reading other people’s intentions toward us.  We learned these skills in the woolly mammoth era because our lives depended on them, and the unconscious mind works must faster than the conscious mind.

But we are not very good at making this unconscious awareness conscious.

We can react with blinding speed, literally before we can think consciously, to duck a punch that some drunken lout throws in our direction, or to hop out of the way of an oncoming object.

 

That’s a good thing; it’s unconscious, and it works. But we are far less adept in general at noting consciously what everyone else in a meeting is really thinking, say, or evaluating who the chief ringleaders are in the party that’s against your plan for expansion, for example.

 

Yet those intentions are there to see. In the body language.  The problem is that, far from too little information about what others are intending, you actually get too much. People are constantly shifting, twitching, looking up, down, and sideways, raising their eyebrows, narrowing their eyes, scratching their noses. What does it all mean? How can you possibly monitor all of it in a room of ten people, or many more, and do so in time to react appropriately?

 

You can’t. It is too much information, too fast, and there is too much chaff intermixed with the wheat. Is Jane stroking her chin because she’s pondering your proposal? Or is she merely scratching an itchy chin as surreptitiously as she can? Is Jack folding his arms because he’s resisting your best attempts to talk the whole group into changing direction, or is he merely cold?

 

You can make yourself crazy trying to consciously monitor the constantly changing body signals of a roomful of people to little avail, because by the time you sort it all out, the conversation has moved on. Meanwhile, you haven’t been attending to the content of the conversation as closely as you probably need to.

 

Is there a way around this dilemma of needing to monitor gigabytes of streaming data about people’s intentions consciously and rapidly, while at the same paying close attention to the content of the conversations? There is. If, rather than monitoring the data generally, you look for confirmation of your own hypotheses about intention, then you can speed up and narrow the stream of information you need to take in.

 

So the real question is this: If you want to become a conscious expert in reading other people’s unconscious expression of their intent, how do you form hypotheses about that expression and confirm or reject them? The answer is to restrict your possible hypotheses to a few that you’ve identified before your meeting, conversation, or presentation. Then you can pose the single question to your subconscious mind and use that unconscious expertise we all have to give you a clear, reliable answer.

 

In the next 7 posts, I’ll discuss some useful ways to think about what other people intend:

 

Open — closed

Sincere — insincere

Allied — opposed

Powerful — subservient

Committed — uncommitted

 

You can, of course, add your own for specific situations that these don’t cover, but you’ll find that these work with a great percentage of human interactions where you need to monitor body language in detail.

 

I’ll examine each continuum in turn. The idea is to spend some time thinking about the nonverbal conversation in an upcoming interaction — an important one — and choose the continuum that most closely fits what you’re worried about or interested in, or represents the crux of the issue between you and the others involved.

Then, as I'll discuss, you let the power of your unconscious mind go to work and -- as if by magic -- you'll get a quick, accurate reading of what others are intending.  It takes a little practice, but it will change the way you 'read' others and it will improve your communications ability. 

Let's call it informed intuition.  I discuss it at much greater length in my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

The Ten Commandments of Public Speaking

I did an article years ago on the Ten Commandments of Public Speaking, and it’s time to update it.  Here goes:

 

 

I.  Thou shall know that a speech is for the audience, not the speaker.

 

II.  Thou shall not dump information on the audience; thou shall rather seek to persuade.

 

III. Thou shall consider the (twenty-two minute) attention span of the audience and keep it holy.

 

IV.  Thou shall not begin thy speech with a joke. 

 

V.  Thou shall remember that an invitation to speak is not a license to speak in a monotone.

 

VI.  Thou shall not wander the stage aimlessly but rather plant thy feet.

 

VII.  Thou shall not use more than one Power Point slide for every 3 minutes of talk.

 

VIII.  Thou shall use no more than ten words in at least 24 point type on thy Power Point slides.

 

IX.  Thou shall not end every declarative sentence as if it were a question, with a rising tone?

 

X.  Thou shall not exceed thy allotted time.

 

Is your voice right for public speaking?

Do you have the right voice for public speaking?  Many women push their voices too high, and men push them too low.  The result is that the voice lacks authority in the first instance and resonance in the second.  Neither one is good for public speaking. 

 

To find the right basic pitch for your voice, get to a keyboard.  Hunt for the lowest note you can comfortably match, and the highest.  That’s a range of typically 2 octaves, or about 16 white notes.  Then, walk your fingers up a quarter of the way from the bottom.  If your range is 2 octaves, that would be 4 notes (16 divided by 4 equals 4).  That pitch is your maximum resonance point.  You should be talking at that level much of the time, going higher to indicate passion, and lower to indicate certainty and authority. 

 

Once you’ve found your pitch, work on breathing.  Good public speaking voices have resonance, presence, and authority.  Resonance comes from proper breathing – with the belly, not the shoulders.  As you breathe in, expand the stomach, like an eye dropper.  Then, tense the stomach muscles and let the air trickle out as you speak.  Don't move your shoulders.

 

Presence comes from a touch of the nasal in the voice, but not too much.  Many of us have voices that are overly nasal, because we spend so much of our time hunched over computers, shoulders slumped, not breathing properly.  Try this.  Put your hands along your nose, and make a sound like a sheep bleating.  You should feel the nasal passages vibrating if you’re doing it right.  That’s a nasal-sounding voice.  Now, breathe from the belly, lose 95 percent of the nasal, and you’re ready to go.  Just a touch of the nasal gives your voice carrying quality, so that it can be heard clearly before an audience. 

 

Finally, authority comes from pitching an arc with your voice that starts at your correct pitch, goes up slightly during the phrase or sentence, and comes down again at the end.  Many people today say everything as if it were a question?  With their tone rising at the end of every sentence?  The result is maddening, and lacking any authority?  Don't do it!

 

For more information about the care and feeding of a great public speaking voice, go to my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

Are you as good a speaker as a 5th grader?

How many of you, on any given Monday morning, would rather go to the dentist than prepare and deliver a speech?  I daresay it’s a high percentage.  And why is that?  It’s because most of us find public speaking difficult – anxiety-producing, stressful, and high-risk.  Yet every now and then a 5^th grader comes along and makes it look easy.  Dalton Sherman is worth watching, because he’s amazingly good, especially for a 5^th grader, and because his verbal and non-verbal skills put many grownups to shame. 

 

Watch Dalton give the keynote to the Dallas Independent School Districts 2008 Back to School pep rally -- in front of 20000 teachers.  He’ll teach you a thing or two about public speaking.  Specifically notice how well he pauses, waiting for the audience.  Notice how he moves on a thought, toward the audience.  And notice how he works the entire audience, from one side of the stage to the other – even though it’s ‘in the round’.  Most grown-up public speakers don’t do as well in any of those areas. 

 

Here’s Dalton strutting his stuff:  http://tinyurl.com/lbfvzf

 

Of course Dalton lacks some subtleties and nuances that an older person might get out of the material.  But for 10 years old, he’s a phenomenon.  And he doesn't use a single Power Point slide. 

 

 

 

Getting ready to give a speech: 5 Essential Steps

I’m giving a speech tonight on my favorite topic, “The Two Conversations,” so I’m spending the day getting prepared.  What do you do the day of a speech to get ready?  Following are five steps to ramping up for your big moment. 

 

1.  Go over your speech several times.  This is a speech I’ve given before – for the most part – so it’s one I’ve rehearsed thoroughly.  Now, I’m looking through my notes, focusing on the parts where I’m less than perfect and trying to get all of it in my head. 

 

2.  Have a light workout.  You want some adrenaline during the speech so that you can do your best, but not too much.  Exercising beforehand is a great way to get rid of some of the adrenaline so that it doesn’t come out during the speech in ‘happy feet’ or some other distracting way.  Don’t run a marathon – you want to unload some of the adrenaline, not lay yourself out cold.  I’ve just come back from some easy stretching and lifting.  I’m saving the aerobics for the speech itself. 

 

3.  Breathe.  Breathing is a little thing to most of us most of the time, but it accomplishes so much.  It grounds us, focuses us, makes our voice nice to listen to, and – oh, by the way – keeps us alive.  When you’re in adrenaline mode – i.e., nervous before a speech – you’re likely to take shallow breaths.  This autonomic response is not most effective for delivering a sonorous, elegant, grounded speech.  So force yourself to breathe.  Slowly, deeply, throughout the day.

 

4.  Engage in positive self-talk.  All of us have moments of self-doubt, and adrenaline magnifies those fears into mountains of worry.  Instead of climbing, cut the mental chatter with positive self-talk.  “I know the material.  I don’t have to be perfect, just show up and do my best.  I’m going to be fine.”  Whatever your fear is, take the positive side.  Mine is going blank – forgetting what I’m about to say, a holdover from my acting days, so I’m saying to myself, “I know the material, I am clear-headed and feeling good.  I’m going to remember everything.” 

 

5.  Get to the room early and get comfortable in it.  I can’t stress this one enough.  You don’t want last-minute surprises.  So get there early, check out the room, and find your beginning spot.  Run over the speech in your mind in the space, figuring out where you’re going to stand, move, and so on.  Be present in the moment!

 

By the way, the speech is on the Harvard campus, at the Kennedy School, Taubman Building, NYE – B, and it’s open to the public.  If you’re in the area, and have a free evening, drop by to hear the talk – it begins at 6:30. 

Great Contemporary Business Speakers - 5: Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki epitomizes Silicon Valley cool – he’s a former Apple employee, now a venture capitalist.  He’s written books on entrepreneurship that eschew grand theories in favor of practical advice:  The Art of the Start (http://tinyurl.com/kqozzl) and Reality Check (http://tinyurl.com/nosjt4).  I recommend both highly if you’re an entrepreneur or you have those cravings.  Wearing my own entrepreneur’s hat for a moment, as the President of Public Words Inc, a communications company, I can vouch for the good advice in Guy’s writings. 

 

You can see Guy speak here: http://tinyurl.com/nbbnsv.  Guy is warm, unpretentious, straightforward and funny.  He warms up slowly in this particular speech, but once he’s cranking, he’s got the audience, he’s dishing out insight after insight, and cracking jokes as he goes.  It’s a great performance. 

 

In that speech, Kawasaki makes one minor mistake that I urge you to avoid.  He draws attention to the speech itself by giving a brief rant on how so many CEO speeches ‘suck’.  Not only that, he says, but sometimes you don’t know how long they’re going to go on – making the whole experience much worse.  So, Guy concludes, I’m going to let you know where we are in my speech at all times, so at least if you think I suck, you’ll know for how long. 

 

Funny, and self-deprecating, yes, but it also sends your audience down the road toward thinking about whether or not they like your speech rather than just paying attention to it.  Now, Guy gets the audience back with some well-timed, well-delivered jokes after that, but why take the chance?  Don’t tell your audience it might not like you.  Don’t tell your audience that you’re sick.  Don’t tell your audience members that if they weren’t here they could be watching Monday Night Football.  Don’t do any of that unless you’ve got an overwhelming reason to start your audience thinking about all the ways it could decide to check out, dislike you, or wish it were somewhere else. 

 

 

Great Contemporary Business Speakers – 4: Seth Godin

No list of great contemporary business speakers would be complete without Seth Godin.  You can see him here, talking about marketing to Google a few years ago: http://tinyurl.com/nswcwx.  

 

Seth has an extraordinary ability to take complex topics and break them down, explain them clearly, and make them appear simple.  That’s the essence of great marketing, and it’s why so many of Seth’s books have been bestsellers, from The Purple Cow http://tinyurl.com/m3scm8 to Tribes http://tinyurl.com/nltgt9. 

 

As a speaker, Seth has the persona of an approachable, down-to-earth academic, very smart and savvy.  He’s a gifted teacher, in short, and his strength is the strength of all such individuals – a passion for transmitting his clear understanding of a topic into the minds of his listeners.  A classic example is his talk on TED about how to market in an era of too many choices:  figure out who cares and offer them something remarkable – i.e. a purple cow.  http://tinyurl.com/aeuaf9.  The talk is from 2003 and feels a bit dated in our current economic moment, but the ideas are still as powerful as ever.  They’ll come back when the market does.  In the meantime, check out Seth’s blog, which is brilliantly shaped for modern readers on the go (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/).  It always limits itself to one idea, makes the point quickly, and moves on.  Many blogs, and speakers, could benefit from Godin’s economy, simplicity, and style. 

Great contemporary business speakers - 2: Jim Collins

Jim Collins, author most famously of Good to Great and Built to Last, doesn’t speak in public all that often, but when he does, he’s worth hearing.  He’s a brilliant, charismatic speaker, because he embodies the 2 secrets of charisma:  focus and passion.  Most people think that charisma is something that’s innate, something you’re born with, as if there were charismatic babies. 

 

Well, guess what?  All babies are charismatic.  So the question you should be asking is how do adults reconnect with the charisma of their youth?  And the answer is:  find your focus and unleash your passion.  As Jim Collins does.  Let’s look at each one a little more. 

 

First of all, you have to have a relentless focus on what mattes to you.  That means not thinking about a thousand things at once, like most of us do.  That means, when you’re getting up to speak, that you’re all there, not half there and half somewhere else, like at the bar at the end of the day having a drink to celebrate surviving your speech. 

 

Focus gets you there, in front of the audience.  Passion takes you home.  You have to care more about your subject than anything else – and anyone else.  Collins spends, oh, six years studying his topics, researching them, and working on the next book.  The results?  They prove the point.  In fact, I don’t agree with many of the things that Collins says, but that doesn’t take a jot away from his charisma. 

 

Collins perfectly demonstrates that charisma is learned, not innate, and it comes from focus and passion: http://tinyurl.com/lg2scw.  And btw, here’s one of his ideas I do agree with:  http://tinyurl.com/ldze58. 

 

I talk a lot more about what charisma is and how to achieve it here:  Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  At heart what's important is finding your focus and passion.   

 

 

Great contemporary business speakers - 1: Tim Sanders

This is the first blog in a series about great contemporary business speakers.  I often get asked who my favorites are, so here goes. 

 

I’m starting with a certifiable rock star of the business speaking circuit:  Tim Sanders.  Check him out at http://tinyurl.com/bxn4lt telling a story about Timberland from his new book, Saving the World at Work (http://bit.ly/relaunch).

 

Tim’s the author of two very successful previous books:  Love is the Killer App, and The Likeability Factor, and he’s an amazing speaker with tons of energy, enthusiasm, and, well, likeability. 

 

What makes Tim a good speaker?  First, he’s passionate about his subject, which is putting love back into any workplace where it’s lacking.  That means taking care of your workers, taking care of your community, and taking care of the environment.

 

Second, he’s good at working a room.  He’s all about the audience.  This quality doesn’t show up as well on the tiny screen, so try to catch Tim in person.  He has that charisma that comes from a genuine focus on the audience and a real concern for how his listeners are doing. 

 

Finally, Tim’s a consummate professional.  He’s always prepared, always on time, always ready to connect with each new audience.  His follow-up is stellar, too.  He often maintains connections with people from his audiences for years afterwards, helping them with specific issues and responding to their questions and needs.  That’s real customer service, and it’s something that few other speakers do as well. 

 

While you’re checking Tim out, buy his new book.  Tim launched it last year just before the financial meltdown, and the result was that – very unfairly – his book got buried in the news of AIG and the rest.  Then concern about the environment and doing good went away – temporarily – while we all obsessed about the economy. 

 

So he’s re-launching the book now, since we’re slowly working our way back to recovery, and we are starting to think about the environment and other planetary needs once again. 

 

Great message, great speaker – Tim Sanders. 

 

 

5 Ways to Connect with a Large Audience

I often get asked about differences between large and small audiences.  How do you connect with the large audience?  Most speakers are reasonably comfortable in front of smaller audiences, but there’s something intimidating about the bright lights, huge stage, and row upon row of audience members all looking up at you waiting for you to be scintillating.  How do you pull that off?

 

On the whole, the same techniques work in front of large audiences as well as in front of small ones.  You’re still leading the audience on a decision-making journey, you’re still connecting with them on both intellectual and emotional levels, and you’re still telling stories.  That said, there are some crucial differences.

 

1.  Large audiences want to laugh.   If you’re a natural ham, this is the time to let it out.  Large audiences want to indulge in big group laughs.  You can still, of course, be serious, but give large audiences the opportunity for a guffaw or two.  They will reward you many times over with energy back.  If you want a standing ovation at the end, finish on an inspiring, serious note.  “Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry” said the old vaudevillian, and the words are still true today.  First go for the laugh, then the tears. 

 

2.  Large audiences need more time.  It takes longer for the sound of your voice to get to all the ears in a larger audience.  You have to slow down your tempo so that your message gets through.  You can’t be as complex or as rapid-fire with groups over 300 as you can with audiences of less than 100. 

 

3.  Large audiences demand and give back more energy.  As the physicists have noted, energy is conserved.  With a speech to a thousand people, that means that you have to crank up the energy double for every additional 100 people.  You have to be louder, with higher highs and lower lows, and stronger in all ways.  When you move, move faster, with more purpose and intention. Note that you can still go quiet, and that can be very effective, but it has to be strong – full of emotion, not just quiet. 

 

4.  Large audiences need simplicity.  When you get in front of really large audiences, some of the nuances and shadings need to be edited out.  The subtleties of the message will be lost on the 100^th row, so make it easy on yourself and the audience by anticipating that and keeping your overall presentation simple. 

 

5.  Large audiences need to be active, not passive.  All audiences want to give something back to a successful speaker, but especially large audiences.  That’s why politicians indulge in call and response chanting so often at the end of their rallies.  “Yes we can!” is a great recent example of a way a great political orator allowed his audiences to join in. 

 

5 ways to handle a hostile audience

Many speakers understand one of the great truths of public speaking:  the audience is on your side.  At least, to begin with.  The audience wants you to succeed.  That’s the good news.  They’ve voted with their feet, sat down in uncomfortable chairs, and are waiting for you to wow them.  They want success, because it means they won’t have wasted their time.  To begin with, an audience is yours to please.  Only if you let it down repeatedly will it start to get ornery. 

 

But what about those rare audiences that really do want you to fail?  From the start?  The opposing camps, the hostile factions, the competitive parts of your universe?  How do you survive a hostile audience?

 

Following are some tips for getting through when the audience is nasty.

 

1.  Talk to the positive people in the room

 

This is counter-intuitive, but important, because if you can establish a positive relationship with a few people in the room, that positive feeling will ripple across the crowd.  We have these things called mirror neurons in our brains that give us essentially the same experience as we see the people around us having.  So if we see someone reacting positively, we will too.

 

2.  Confront the negative ideas in the room

 

If there are some obvious and big objections to what you’re saying, respectfully and thoughtfully talk them through, first presenting the opposing idea fairly and then saying why you disagree.  Most often, people with opposing points of view are disarmed simply by being recognized – fairly.

 

3.  Disarm the hostility with humor

 

The trick is not to be defensive.  Self-deprecating humor works well when you don’t overdo it and when you have some authority to deprecate.  Don’t take yourself and the situation too seriously; allow the humor of the situation to bubble to the surface.  If you're not good with humor, come armed with a slide of a cartoon or comic that comments on the situation. 

 

4.  Align yourself physically with the dissenters

 

This is the most counter-intuitive advice I give.  Sometimes, when you have a heckler, or a faction that is not supportive, and not giving up, the best way to handle the person or persons is to go into the crowd and stand alongside them.  This technique is disarming because it shows great confidence and openness to move toward people who are not your supporters.  Any discomfort you feel will be more than outweighed by the kudos you get from the crowd.

 

5.  Open the floor to Q and A – but save the last 5 minutes for your closing

 

A common mistake speakers make is to take Q and A at the end, closing on the last audience question.  But doing so means that you’re at the mercy of the last question and questioner.  Instead, save 5 minutes and hold your best rhetoric for the end.  People tend to remember the last words they hear, so make them your own. 

I talk more about all these techniques in my new book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, published in January. 

 

How do you connect with your audience? Part III

Third of three blogs on connecting with your audience.

 

What other ways are there to make the connection between people stronger? 

 

You can increase the connection with people by making eye contact and using facial gestures, most notably raised eyebrows, to ask for a response.  You can also signal your intent with your posture. Remember that people are unconsciously sizing you up all the time: reading your intent and figuring out important things like whether you are friend or foe. They derive a huge part of that intent from your posture.

 

Once again, this is something that I’ve demonstrated many times to audiences in talks on communications. You can try it yourself. Begin by noticing how people stand from the side, as if you were cutting a two-dimensional slice from top to bottom. You’ll see that people stand in one of three ways primarily. There’s a fourth, but it’s rare, and a combination of two of the others.

 

First, some people stand with their head leading, keeping it forward from the perpendicular. We read this posture as submissive, intellectual, uncertain, or deferential. Try it yourself by standing up straight, at attention, like a soldier.  Imagine that a string tied to the top of your head is pulling it up as high and straight as it will go. Then pitch your head forward and round your shoulders as you do so. That’s the head posture. You will notice that you begin to feel submissive, deferential, and uncertain if you adopt this posture near someone else.  It’s ingrained and affects your thinking inevitably and the thinking of everyone around you.

 

The second posture leads with the pelvis. Rock stars and teenagers adopt this posture all the time. Begin in the upright posture again, and then pitch your pelvis forward (it may help to play a little air guitar at the same time). This posture is highly sexual and will provoke a sexual reaction in the people you communicate with in this way.

 

I once worked with a high-powered consultant who had recently been promoted within her firm to take on the most important clients. She had a series of boardroom meetings with big companies, and they did not go well.  I was called in to advise her, and we role-played the meetings. It became instantly clear why she was not commanding the respect of the boards she was dealing with: she was standing in a highly pelvic posture. The result was that the board was seeing her as a sexual object, not a high-powered consultant. Interestingly, she was completely unaware of her posture. I videotaped her performance, and she could instantly see what was wrong.  She changed her posture, and her consulting work improved immediately. Sometimes solutions are simple.

 

The third, and best, posture if you’re trying to communicate authentically with people and build their trust is the heart posture. Adopting the upright posture again, with your head held high (imagining the string once more). Now throw your shoulders back even a little more, but try not to make them tense with the effort and don’t raise them up. Relax your shoulders down and back, and keep your head and neck high. Roll the small of your back forward, and tuck your stomach in.

 

That’s the heart posture, and it is the one that trustworthy people adopt unconsciously and the one that other people trust. If you use this posture, people more easily connect with you. They will be inclined to open up to you and let you in.

 

That’s how you make connection possible with audiences.  Posture and nearness.

I talk much more about connecting with your audience in my new book:  Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

 

(The fourth posture is a combination of the first two:  a pushed forward head and pelvis. It’s the posture of a self-conscious, sexualized teenager or an intellectual rocker. Don’t try it at home or anywhere else.)

 

 

 

 

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

Second of 3 blogs on connecting with your audience.

Everything significant in communication between people happens in personal or intimate space.  That’s the most important thing to remember about connection.  But there’s more.  There has been a historical change in this regard with the advent of television. What was once social or public between people now is personal.  In other words, seeing newscasters, celebrities, and politicians in our living rooms and bedrooms for all these years has created an expectation that we can have personal conversations with everyone who matters to us.

 

The head-and-shoulders framing of people on TV gives the appearance of that personal space closeness to us, and we’ve gotten used to it.  Your goal as a communicator is to make sure of a couple of things. First, you’re in the personal space of the person you’re communicating with when you’re saying the most important things, asking for what you really want, or closing the sale. Second, whenever you’re attempting to communicate with someone, you’re closing the distance between you rather than increasing it.

 

I see people move away from audiences all the time when they’re giving a speech for reasons of nerves, or self-protection, or something else. The result is that the second conversation says to the audience, “This is not important; you don’t need to pay attention,”  even while the poor speaker is trying to make some point he or she believes is  important.

 

In this instance, then, the two conversations are not supporting one another, and the audience believes the second every time.  So to connect nonverbally, you need to move toward people and use the four zones of space to make it personal.

 

When you want to cool the relationship down or punctuate your communication, say, by signaling that you’re changing the subject, you can move away at that point. That move will demonstrate more eloquently than anything you can say that a change has happened.

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

First of 3 blogs on connecting with your audience.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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