Nick Morgan, Public Words

John McCain's hand, redux....

I've had a number of comments on my recent posts on commencement speeches and John McCain's wandering hand.  So I'd thought I'd continue the discussion here. 

People have sent me some great commencement speeches, analyses of them, and links to video.  It prompts a comment right from the start:  being a member of the audience and reading a speech are two very different things.  An audience member is part of the performance art that is a speech.  Readers come after the sparks have flown; they're late to the discussion. 

The reason is, of course, that delivery is just as important to speechmaking as content.  The non-verbal conversation, as I've talked about before, is just as crucial to comprehension and success as the verbal.  You have to get both right.

And the non-verbal conversation is what everyone was bloviating about when John McCain's hand went wandering.  What did he mean?  Why did he pause so long?  What was up with that hand?

The crucial point here is that it's a mistake to try to read specific meanings into hand gestures, or body language in general, as if it were a secret code.  We are all unconscious experts in understanding body language at the emotional level, but most of us are poor at consciously decoding non-verbal communication.

Hence, I labeled my analysis of what John meant as speculation.  Only someone very close to John, and used to his gestures, would be a good analyst of what he meant.  Perhaps his wife understood immediately, but the rest of us are much better off just reading the emotion he was conveying, not intellectually trying to decode something more specific.  Let your gut tell you what the other person is feeling, and don't try to analyze gesture too consciously, and you'll be more accurate more of the time.  McCain was flummoxed, clearly, but more than that is difficult to be precise about.

We are already expert readers of body language, as long as we let that part of the brain that's good at it do its work.  It's when we try to consciously decode gesture as if it were a system of precise signals that we get into trouble.

 

John McCain's Hand

You take your eyes off the political scene and go on vacation and what happens?  John McCain's hand becomes news -- a gift to those who study non-verbal communications, and a lesson in the limits of body language 'reading'. 

What was the fuss about?  McCain was asked an embarrassing question about why many health insurance policies cover Viagra and not contraceptives.  He hesitated for 8 seconds before giving a fumbling answer.  While he was hesitating, his hand shot up to his mouth and covered it.

What did the hand signify?  Not, as the commentary has suggested, that he was trying to keep himself from lying.  Children do that, not adults, and especially not adults as comfortable with evasion as seasoned politicians.  And that's the wrong way to think about hand gestures.  They usually don't convey specific meanings like that; rather, they spring from emotion. 

What happened in that moment was that John McCain had a strong emotional reaction to the question.  We put our hands to our faces when we are thinking, and to cover our mouths when we're shocked or appalled.  John was shocked or appalled by the question, and then he started thinking.  The whole process took 8 seconds, which suggests he was quite flummoxed. 

Why was he appalled?  That's where it gets interesting, and body language along can't tell us.  We need to know something about the man.  Was he appalled because he's a prude?  Unlikely; he's a former Marine.  Was he shocked because he was afraid his use of Viagra was going to become news?  Possible, but that's sheer speculation.  Was he appalled because it was a 'gotcha' question and there was no good answer immediately in sight?  Most likely. 

All body language can tell us is that McCain had an emotional reaction strong enough to last 8 seconds.  That's significant, because 6 seconds is the average length of time people in conversation or discussion will let a silence lapse (try it yourself).  That means that his emotions were stronger than average.  Or perhaps that he was just tired and slow on the draw.  It's a great lesson in the insights and limitations of reading body language.   

How to give a short speech

I often get asked about short speeches, and off-the-cuff remarks.  How do you do them well?  What are the pitfalls to avoid?  It can be surprisingly hard to say something interesting in a very short time, and to avoid running on at the mouth and saying too much.  What's the happy medium, and how do you think about it?

First, I would distinguish between responding to a question, or making a statement of less than a minute or two, and making a short speech of, say, 5 to 7 minutes.  Time constraints necessarily make them two different genres.

The minute speech is best handled as follows.  Decide what you're going to say, take a deep breath, and then give the headline.  "I don't think that mice should be allowed in the Vatican."  Then go on to give up to 3 supporting reasons, depending on your thinking and the time allowed.  Hygiene, worry about the destruction of precious manuscripts, and the eek factor during prayers.  Finally, finish off with a repetition of the headline:  "So that's why I think that mice should be banned from the Vatican."

When you've got more than 3 but less than 7 minutes, think in terms of problem-solution.  If you have a great story to begin the problem section, then do so, but don't allow it to take over the problem section entirely.  You need to spend half of your allotted time discussing the problem in as much detail as you can (which is not much).  Heretical mice are running amok throughout the Vatican.  This deplorable plague has led to illness, destruction of some of the Vatican's most precious artifacts, and the discomfort of many visitors and residents....About half way through your total time, switch to the solution and buttress that with as much logic and passion as you can muster.  I recommend beginning with an excommunication, followed by mice traps, poison, and the playing of Barry Manilow recordings in the basement.... 

That's really all there is to it.  Keep it simple.  If you want to conclude by describing the benefits of your solution, then go ahead, in a sentence or two. 

Repetition and simplicity will help you keep your remarks organized and under control, and will help your listeners follow you. 

Body Language -- 9

For my last post in this series on body language, I'm going to try to turn your thinking on its head.  If you're like most of us, you think about body language as follows.  I'm pretty much in charge of my body.  I direct it, from the control tower in my head.  I tell it what to do.  'Make coffee' I say, and it goes through the motions. "Now drink it' I say, and it obliges.  Sure, there are activities like breathing that I let it handle on its own, but that's mostly low-level stuff I don't think much about.  In short, I live in my body, my brain rules it, and that's the deal. 

But actually it's much more complicated than that.  In certain realms, like the realm of emotion, and relationship, and personal safety, just to pick three, your body literally thinks faster than your conscious mind, and rules the roost accordingly. 

In other words, the older, lower part of your brain, the one beneath the cerebral cortex, 'thinks' non-verbally.  And it thinks faster than your conscious cerebral cortex.  So many of those things that you do, like hugging your spouse when you see her at the end of a long day, you do because you've had an emotional/physical thought first, and a conscious 'Nice to see you, honey' thought only afterward.  The body is in charge, in some significant areas of human expression. 

Why should public speakers care about this?  Because what I've found in working with a thousand speakers over the years is that what your body does under adrenaline, your mind begins to think.  So, for example (and this is important), if you're one of those people who tends to freeze under stress, the kind of speaker that stands in one place, speaks in a monotone, and gestures minimally if at all, then gradually your conscious thought will become more and more restricted as well.  You will experience the phenomenon I've seen again and again where the speaker becomes verbally limited, getting tied up in word knots and using the same few words over and over again.  Or, you'll miss an obvious answer to a question, or forget to give an important part of your speech. 

The body rules.  Especially under adrenaline.  It's just trying to keep you alive.  So pay attention to it.  What can you do about this phenomenon?  If you find yourself getting stuck in some way, climb out of the rut!  Force yourself to move, to change the subject.  Announce a short break, or walk to the back of the room, or ask the audience to stretch with you.  Anything that's not illegal, immoral, or fattening and that gets you doing something different.  You'll find that your conscious mind and your verbal facility will come to life once again when you do.

Body Language -- 8

The voice is an oft-neglected part of body language.  I mean the tone of voice, its pitch, and everything else you do with it. 

Let's look at the basics.  Voices need both resonance and presence.  Resonance is the quality of the voice that makes it pleasant to listen to, and it's created by good breathing and support of the air in the lungs.  In an earlier blog I talked about good 'belly breathing'; both singers and yoga practitioners know how to breathe this way.  Basically, you take air into your belly, by expanding it, not into your shoulders by lifting them up, which is the way most people breathe.  That actually makes your lung capacity smaller and gives you less resonance.  Instead, take the air in (your belly should expand out) and then tense the diaphragmatic muscles below your rib cage to hold the air.  Let it trickle out as you speak, and you'll have good resonance.  A good choir director or yoga instructor can give you a more thorough course in proper breathing than is possible in a blog.  If you breathe properly, your voice should stay strong and clear throughout a day of speaking.  If you're one of those whose voice gets tired, or hoarse, or weak, then you're not breathing and supporting properly.   

Presence is the opposite quality -- it's the timbre of the voice that allows it to be heard.  Basically, you need to have a little bit of your voice coming from the nasal area.  That creates presence.  Put your fingers on either side of your nose and relax your mouth.  Now, make a noise like a cow.  If you can feel vibration in the nasal passages, that's presence.  Too much presence and you sound like a dentist's drill and no one wants to listen to you.  Just the right amount and you will be heard. 

After that, voices need what I call the authoritative arc.  Listen to Martin Luther King, Jr speaking.  His voice rises up in the middle of the sentence, and then comes down toward the end, almost as if he were singing.  That's authoritative.  Too many people today say everything as if it were a question?  They let their voices rise in pitch at the end of the sentence?  That confuses people?  Because we lose the semantic difference between a question and a statement?  Don't do it!

After that, you need variety.  Loud and soft, fast and slow, rising and falling in pitch, dramatic pauses -- the voice is an amazing instrument for meaning, persuasion, and emotion.  Don't neglect it.

Body Language -- 7

'Make eye contact' is the simplest piece of advice that coaches in this field can give.  It's so simple -- why would you imagine you could get away with not looking at your audience? -- that it's hard to believe people both need and give this advice, for money.

But is there anything more to it?  I was watching a U-Tube clip of Tom Cruise in a dull moment the other day and I realized that there are some important subtleties to making eye contact.  Tom was talking to Oprah about jumping on couches, Katie, Suri, and scientology, and other such weird issues, and he was making eye contact with Oprah, across his own couch. 

But his eyes were narrowed to (nearly) slits, and the effect was that he radiated distrust.  And so, we don't trust him. 

The first sophisticated rule of eye contact, then, is that if you're going to make eye contact, you have to do it with your eyes wide open.  Not shut, or almost shut.  If the lights are bright, or you're near-sighted, tough.  Learn to compensate.  It's so basic to our reading of you, that you'd be better off wearing dark glasses if you're going to squint. 

The second sophisticated rule of eye contact is that you actually have to make eye contact.  With individuals.  For up to 30 seconds.  You can't look over the heads of the crowd (a lot of speakers do this when they're too nervous to look at the audience), and you can't dart your eyes around nervously like a lizard's tongue.  Imagine you're having a conversation with people -- better yet have a conversation with individuals in the audience -- and look at them fixedly-but-not-too-fixedly, just like you would in a real conversation. 

The third sophisticated rule of eye contact is that you should be monitoring the extent to which your audience is making eye contact with you.  It's a simple way to guage interest in the talk.  If 80 percent of them are focused on you, you're OK.  If 80 percent (or even 40 percent) are focused elsewhere, you're in trouble.

Eye contact, like other aspects of human communication, can potentially convey many meanings.  Make eye contact, to be sure, but be careful that you're doing it right.   

Body Language -- 6

Let's talk about zones.  Not getting in the zone.  I'll blog on that at a later date.  No, this time I mean the distances between people.  We each have 4 zones of space that we maintain between us.  The first zone is the public zone, and it's 12 feet or more.  Stuff that happens in that zone we tend not to take personally and thus it's not very interesting to us.  Between 12 feet and 4 feet is the social zone.  That's more interesting, and it's the distance at which we make cocktail party chatter and check out potential dates and that sort of thing.  Warmer than public space, but still cool.

From 4 feet to 1.5 feet is personal space.  Here's where it gets interesting.  As soon as you're in my personal space, I'm paying close attention.  You might be dangerous, so I'll keep a close eye on you.  You might even be friendly, in which case I can be more or less open depending on how friendly I want to be in return. 

From 1.5 feet to 0 is intimate space.  In this zone, we're both committed.  If we're talking about public speaking -- any public occasion, really -- don't go here.  Both parties will feel very uncomfortable.  It's why Americans and English travelers feel so awkward in Asia and some parts of the Mediterranean.  Cultures there still have the 4 zones, but they're compressed.  So someone else's personal space feels like my intimate space. 

Back to public speaking.  Use the 4 zones wisely and you can greatly increase your zip as a presenter.  People today are information-overloaded and it's hard to get their attention.  So you need to get in their personal space if you're really going to grab them (intellectually).  Not their intimate space, their personal space.  Then, you and the other person will feel like you're having a conversation, which is the norm for paying attention in our casual modern culture. 

Use the 4 zones, but especially the personal one, for great public speaking. 

Body Language -- 5

What should you be thinking about during a speech in terms of your body language?  There's a lot to do -- you have to stand straight, act energetic, focus on the audience, remember your speech, keep your finger out of your ear, and so on.  What are the main points to pay attention to?

You need to know your speech cold, or you won't be able to do anything but struggle through.  The ability to do more than survive depends on knowing the speech so well that you have some extra RAM to devote to all the other things you and the audience are supposed to be doing.

If you do know your speech, then the first place to put your focus is on you.  Is your body language consistent with your message?  In other words, if you're asking the assembled multitudes to work harder, stay later, and bring in more customers in order to meet a stretch goal for the 3rd Q, then do you look like someone who is already doing that?  How is your posture?  Is it straight and heart-oriented?  If you're slouching, don't expect your audience to respond to your plea.  You don't look like you're ready to, so why should they?

Then think about your body language in relation to the audience.  Are you looking at them, more specifically, selected individuals within the audience in about 30-second bursts?  Is your face animated, energetic, and interested?  Once again, if you're not having a fabulous time and showing it, don't expect the audience to respond. 

Then get in that audience and give a brief bit of your speech to one audience member, in the front right part of the audience.  Once you've done that, go back left.  Then front left, and then back right.  Imagine you're having a conversation with each one in turn.  Audiences will take the invididual to be a proxy for the whole, and everyone will feel like (to a slightly lesser extent) they had an individual conversation with you.  They'll remember the speech as personal, engaging, real, authentic, and so on.

The way to give a memorable speech is to know it cold so that you can attend to the second conversation, the non-verbal one, that you're having with the audience.  That attention will bring your speech to life for the audience. 

Body Language -- 4

Yesterday I promised to talk about the second of the the two things you should be doing before you start a speech.  The first was breathing -- deeply -- and the second is getting what actors call the 'offstage beat'. 

What is the offstage beat and why do you need it as a public speaker?  Actors divide their scripts up into beats, basically short sections of the script when they're feeling one emotion or have one thing they're trying to accomplish -- an 'objective' in actor-speak.  So, in Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo has exchanged insults with Tybalt and starts duelling with him, the beat might be something like, 'I'm angry at Tybalt and want to kill him (despite my promise to Juliet not to duel with members of her family)'. 

The offstage beat is the emotion and objective you go on stage with.  The idea is that a character doesn't just spring into life when he or she starts uttering lines, but comes from somewhere, wanting something, doing something, and so on.  When an actor comes on stage with something already going on, she is much more interesting to watch than if she's just making an entrance in order to start speaking.  Look for it the next time you're in the theatre.  You'll be able to tell actors that come on with an offstage beat, and ones (if there are any) that don't.  The difference is absolute. 

So as a speaker, you'll be much more interesting for the audience if you start with an offstage beat.  While you're breathing, before the speech, then, get an objective and an emotion into your head.  It might  be something like, 'I can't wait to tell these people about my special soap and I'm thrilled to the max to see them.' 

The other advantage to this activity, besides making you a far more interesting speaker right out of the box is that you will spend less time making yourself nervous, which is otherwise the offstage beat you will have.  The difference is absolute.  A speaker with an offstage beat comes on focused, ready, energetic, and interesting.  A speaker without one comes on. . . nervous.  Not a pretty sight.

Body Language -- 3

What are you doing in those last few moments before you begin a speech?  Most people are just getting nervous.  Or more nervous.  They're thinking about all the things that can go wrong, and all the ways in which they might screw up.  They're worrying about being judged by the audience -- and found lacking.  In other words, they're sabatoging themselves. 

Is there a better way to spend those last few moments?  There is.  There are a couple of things you should be doing rather than picturing disaster. 

First, you should be taking a couple of big 'belly breaths'.  Deep breathing (as opposed to hyperventilating) will calm and ground you, and over a period of time, with practice, will become a physical act you do that will tell you 'this is going to be a success'. 

How do you breathe in this way?  Imagine your body is an eye dropper, with the bulb as your stomach.  Inflate your stomach (expand it) as you breathe IN.  Then, tense your diaphragmatic muscles (the ones over your stomach and under your rib cage -- the ones you'd tense if someone punched you in the stomach) and hold the air in for a few seconds.  Longer if you can.  Then, slowly let the air out, pushing your (tensed) stomach in as you do. 

Don't move your shoulders during this procedure; the shoulders should not be involved.  When you're full of adrenaline, and panicky, you'll tend to breathe from your upper chest, taking in shallow breaths, using your shoulders.  The result is to increase your feelings of panic.  You must breathe DEEP breaths, from the BELLY.

By the way.  Those Taoist sages who live to be 100?  They take 100 deep, belly breaths per day, religiously.   

I'll talk about the other thing you should be doing in tomorrow's blog.    

Body Language -- 2

You can win over or lose your audience in the first 30 seconds of your appearance in front of them with your body language.  Really. 

How do you accomplish this feat -- or avoid this disaster? 

You've seen speakers who bound on the stage with lots of energy, and no doubt seen speakers also who creep onto the stage with the opposite -- low energy and lots weighing them down.  Which did you look forward to more? 

So it's important to smile, move quickly (but not so quickly as to fall or injure yourself) and look as eager as you can.  But there's more to it than that.

The real secret lies in your posture.  There are 3 ways to stand (and a fourth that's a combination of 1 and 2) and only one of them is effective. 

Think of how you look from the side, as if a straight line were being drawn through your head down to your toes.  If you've got good posture, like your mother used to tell you to have, then the balls of your feet, your pelvis, and your shoulders and head all will line up on that vertical slice.

Some people, however, project their head forward.  In fact, most people who spend a lot of time at the computer do this; the computer work rounds their shoulders and pushes their head forward.  We call this the 'head posture', sensibly enough.  It signals subservience, humility, and deference to the audience.  Great for the Dalai Lama, who has a terrific head posture, but not so good for the rest of us who don't need (or want) to be as professionally humble. 

Others project their pelvis forward.  (Imagine yourself playing air guitar without the air guitar.)  This posture, which is highly sexualized, is typical of teenagers and pop stars.  Again, not so good for speakers.  You don't want the audience thinking of you primarily as a sex object.  Really.

The third possible posture is the straight up, lead-with-the-heart posture.  Imagine a soldier, seen from the side, but relaxed across the shoulders rather than rigid.  That's the heart posture, and it radiates trust, authority, and confidence -- all the attributes you as a speaker want. 

(The fourth is a combination of head and pelvis, a kind of question mark.  Most typical, again, of teenagers, who are both self-conscious and sexualized.  Or intellectual rockers.  Not good for speakers.) 

So bound on the stage, and look happy.  But more importantly, watch your posture.  It will signal to the audience who you are, whether you intend it to or not. 

 

Body Language -- 1

The question I get asked most often about body language is, "What do I do with my hands?"  My answer, when there's a video screen handy, is to show a clip of Leo Buscaglia speaking.  Leo was a wonderful public speaker on the subject of relationships (he wrote a bestseller back in the day called something like Love 101) and he gestured beautifully with his hands.  In fact, his hands virtually told the whole story; you can just about get the speech from his gestures if you turn the sound off. 

The point is not that everyone can learn to gesture like Leo, but that you've got a much wider range of expressive options that you perhaps realize.  Most people hold their elbows close in to their sides protectively and wave their hands from the elbows on down.  I call this the 'Penguin Gesture', and it's not very expressive.  It signals to the audience that you're nervous, or feeling exposed, or shy. 

What I've noticed is that when someone gestures like this for a whole speech, they tend to stand in one place, and gesture less with the face as well.  In other words, the whole 'second conversation' of body language shuts down.  The result?  Slow-motion panic for the speaker and boredom for the audience. 

Don't get trapped by limiting your hands to a tiny retinue of gestures.  Gesture from the shoulder, using the whole arm.  Talk with your hands, to the extent that you can do it tactfully and appropriately for who you are.

And one more thing.  Keep your gestures open.  Don't fold your hands in front of your chest, or crotch, or put them behind your back.  All of these are defensive gestures and will not inspire trust with your audience.  Keep your gestures open and reaching toward the audience.

Think Leo, not penguin. 

Body Language and the Democratic Debate

What can the non-verbal communications from Senators Obama and Clinton tell us about the debate last night? 

Overall, they performed well.  They are two consummate professionals who waited respectfully while the other was talking, said their own bits with minimal fuss, and generally played nice.  They were trying hard to get along, and mostly they did.  Their non-verbal cues suggest that Obama is a big-picture thinker, impatient with details, and Clinton is a manager who loves to get down in the weeds of policy.  Of course, their verbal messages say that too.    

But there were a few revealing moments.  When Senator Obama responded to the question about a "dream team" of the two of them as President and Veep, Senator Clinton listened hard, turning directly toward him for the first and only time that evening.  When he refused to rule out the idea of the joint ticket, saying it was premature and presumptuous, she visibly relaxed, then moved toward him very slightly as he continued to answer.

Conclusion:  the Clinton camp HAS thought about asking Obama to be the V-P, and it's still on the table.  Depending, of course, on how things go.  You heard it here first.

When the debate was finished, Obama stood up and helped Clinton with her chair.  Depending on your perspective, this was either a) a nice, gentlemanly thing to do; b) a calculated, sexist put-down; or c)an unscripted attempt to take charge. 

The only moment during the debate when Clinton showed real passion was on the immigration issue.  She decried a Republican bill to criminalize any attempt to help an illegal alien in passionate terms:  "That would have criminalized Jesus Christ and the Good Samaritan." 

Conclusion:  She's really hot about helping those less fortunate, and working through the system.  She's a true product of her church and the system.   

The eyes have it

The most common piece of advice from the speech coaches of the world, and one of the most unobjectionable, is "make eye contact."

Is there any more to it than that? 

Some folks advise looking over the heads of the crowd, into space, as a way of coping with nervousness.  This is very bad advice, on two levels.  First of all, the crowd knows you're not looking at them, which translates into "not interested."  We look at things we're interested in -- it is that simple.  So look at the audience.  Second, it doesn't get you over your nervousness, because the audience remains mysterious.  If you look at one person in the crowd, and then another, you'll gradually realize that it's just a collection of individuals -- and you have no problem talking to individuals, right?

So you need to look into the eyes of the audience.  How do you do that?  How long do you look?  If you're falling in love, then forever isn't long enough.  For any other kind of moment, don't dart around with your eyes, because that telegraphs nervousness and insincerity.  Look at people as if you were talking to them -- up to thirty seconds if you're expecting a response, or getting a response or even hoping for a response.  Just as you would in normal conversation, keeping in mind that there are a thousand other people in the audience who want attention too.

Finally, give some thought to how your eyes look.  If you're nearsighted, for example, but not wearing your glasses for reasons of vanity, then beware the squint.  If there are bright lights shining on you, also beware the squint.  Narrowed eyes indicate suspicion, and your audience won't like that much.  Try to keep your eyes open.  Michael Caine, the famous actor, trained himself early in his career not to blink when the camera was on him.  He figured that his eyes were forty feet across in close up (on the big screen) and blinking was like turning the lights out.  We tend to blink rapidly when we're nervous, and Caine quickly got a reputation for cool which may have something to do with his not blinking at all. 

To make good eye contact, look at individuals as if you were talking to them in conversation, and keep your eyes open.  Think Michael Caine. 

What to wear?

What to wear is the inevitable question we get asked once the speaker is prepped and is starting to think about packing for the big event. 

It's a surprisingly complicated question, because so many events these days are 'business casual' or just plain casual.  So what does the speaker do?  Show up in a suit and tie, and risk looking like a pompous bore, or show up in jeans and a t-shirt and look hopelessly declasse for the main stage?

The best advice I've ever heard comes from Steve Martin in Leap of Faith, a movie all public speakers should watch for the 3-minute sermon Steve preaches early in the movie when his evangelical bus rolls into a small town somewhere in the west.  That sermon is a graduate school lesson in good (and bad) public speaking, done as a satire on sermonizing. 

But Steve's advice, just before he goes out to wow the crowd and get them to reach for their wallets, is "Always look better than they do, kid," as he's choosing his tie for the night. 

As a rule of thumb, that one will not get you into trouble, and it may keep you out of it.  Always dress a little better than your audience and they will respect you in your role as the speaker. 

If the crowd is business casual, wear a jacket or suit, and perhaps a tie (if you're a guy).  Women should wear a suit or something equally smart.  If the speech is going to be projected onto giant screens for those who sit near the sides or the back, then avoid patterned or striped clothes that could create annoying moire effects on screen.  Go for solids that flatter you, but watch the temptation to go for a black or dark blue suit if the stage background is going to be equally dark.  You'll disappear. 

It's an opportunity to overpack and feel good about it.  Take a couple of options, and check out the stage when you arrive, if you haven't already.  Again, that great-looking navy blue suit may render you invisible against the dark blue stage, so bring along something that is lighter and brighter just in case.

Be careful of buying a new suit in an aspirational size and discovering that you can't move in it, or you can't raise your arms without embarrassing yourself.  The clothes you wear on stage should help, not hinder your image, comfort, style, and coolness factor -- all at once. 

Most of all, you should wear something you feel fabulous in.  People stand and walk differently when they feel good about their clothes, and that's really the look you want.  You want to look like you feel like a million bucks. 

Please be upstanding

Many clients ask me if they can present sitting down.  It's a natural question -- it feels more collegial, and less exposed, to sit down around the table like everyone else.  And isn't it a good thing to be collegial?  Doesn't it send out a nice message about what kind of person you are?

The answer is, unfortunately, not always.  Standing up while others are sitting automatically bestows some authority on the standee.  And there are times when it's important to claim that authority, just as there are times when it's OK to be collegial.  Just be aware that when you sit down, you are first and foremost saying, 'I'm one of you.'  Don't 'say' it unless you mean it. 

Of course we don't like arrogant, pushy people who claim authority that's not their own.  But we also don't like people who pretend to be humble foks when in fact they're running the show.  Both are annoying, and poor leadership.

Stand when you are leading a charge.  If you are addressing the troops in order to present a new plan or direction, the decision has already been made, and you want to bring the people along with you, then stand.  Sitting in that sort of situation is a form of non-verbal lying.  Sitting is for discussion. 

Stand when you are announcing a decision (after hearing a variety of opinions).  Let's say you've listened to your team discuss some options and you've arrived at a decision.  That's a good time to stand, to show that discussion is over and action is at hand. 

Stand when your expertise is called upon.  If you're the expert in the room, then you should stand to deliver your expertise.  Sit down when you're done, and the others can have their day too. 

Know when to sit, and when to stand.  It does make a difference.  We all give provisional respect to those stand up to make their points; after that it's up to you to earn continuing respect with the quality of the decision, the announcement, or the expertise. 

Is rehearsal important?

Is rehearsal important?  Odd that I should even have to pose the question, but a surprising number of the people we've worked with over the years have tried to wiggle out of rehearsing even important speeches. 

Speakers want to deliver charismatic, assured, memorable performances.  Some of them say they want to 'wing it', because thinking too hard about it or preparing too much will make them stale or boring. 

Don't believe it, and don't credit that urge in yourself if it comes up.  It's just avoidance.  It's the fear talking.  And more importantly, it's wrong.

In order to achieve the apparently effortless, natural-looking performance a great stage actor delivers, he or she rehearses for six weeks, give or take, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it has become part of not only the intellectual memory, but also the sense memory.  Professional actors rehearse all day for six weeks.  You should rehearse, at an absolute minimum, three times. 

Every speech -- every communication -- is two conversations, I like to say.  One is verbal, the content, and the other is non-verbal, the body language.  You need to practice both.  They must be aligned for the speech to be successful.  It takes time (and rehearsal) for the non-verbal, especially, to become easy and natural-looking.  You can't just 'think' the non-verbal side of things precisely because it's not primarily an intellectual act -- it's a pre-intellectual one.  Different parts of the brain are involved than the frontal lobe, where the intellect is busy. 

I can always tell an under-rehearsed speech not only because the speaker may fumble the words, or the transitions, but because the non-verbal side of the speech looks awkward. 

Audiences will forgive the occasional verbal slip, but if you look like you don't know what you're doing, they'll write you off as a loser every time.

Rehearse.  Please.  For all of us. 

How Power Point Killed Public Speaking

The origins of the use of Power Point were solidly grounded in good intentions.  Remember slides?  People put pictures on them, or graphs -- visual aids.  They were intended to act as accompaniments to lectures and presentations. 

The whole idea was that the speaker would talk for a while, and then occasionally show a slide that illustrated a point with a picture or a striking image, or made a set of numbers clear with a bar graph or a pie chart. 

Slides were time-consuming to create, and difficult to change.  So most people used them sparingly.  I once saw a speech by a National Geographic photographer that included a hundred slides, but each one was a uniquely wonderful picture he had culled from thousands, literally.  He was entitled. 

Then came Power Point.  People soon got the hang of creating slides; they were easy to make using this software, and easy to change. 

And somewhere along the line, Power Point ‘decks’ ceased being illustrative information to accompany talks.  They became speaker outlines. 

Now we have the dreaded phenomenon we have all lived through (barely) in which we watch in horrified fascination as a speaker plods through every word on slide after slide with 20 lines or more of text on them.  We wonder, as our consciousness slowly ebbs, ‘will he read every word, or will he occasionally vary the words slightly?’

And we have the Power Point Triangle of Death, where the speaker moves to the screen to point out some illegible word, drifts back to his computer, while mumbling something about the next slide, only to come to the third point of the triangle floating somewhere uneasily in between his screen position and his computer position. 

None of these moves has anything to do with the audience, communicating with whom is after all the purpose of the talk, isn’t it? 

Thus, Power Point, in the hands of most business speakers, commits the fatal sin of at once making the speaker and his talk irrelevant to the audience. 

If you’re a Power Point abuser – and more than one slide every 5 minutes qualifies you – then don’t bother to gather the audience together.  Just email them your ‘deck’ and save everyone a lot of bother. 

How to announce you're running on YouTube

Fred Thompson tried too hard; Mark Warner didn't try hard enough.  The problem with those canned little announcements on You Tube seems to be that the wanna-be candidates feel self-conscious and so their performances are stiff and awkward. 

Where Fred looked like a bobble-headed doll, Mark Warner looks like he was coached "just to be himself."  The result is a low-key, deeply non-energetic performance with a half-smile or two and not much passion. 

It's not a natural thing, to have bright lights shone upon you, and cue cards held up, and to say the same words over and over again until someone decides your performance is OK.  It's not easy to do; but these guys make it look harder than it has to be.

So, if you find yourself taping for You Tube, keep a couple of things in mind.  First of all, you want to look like you're having a real conversation.  So put someone just behind the camera and talk to them.  If you do that, you lose that vague, not-quite-present feeling that Mark Warner had, because he was presumably talking to a glowing red dot. 

Second, don't try to get haiku up on the screen.  Of course you need to think about what you should say, and even script it, but when the time comes, throw the script away, talk to the real person for, say, 25 minutes, with the camera rolling, and then take your best 3.5 minutes from that.  Think about how much more lively and interesting the movie out-takes usually are compared to the performances -- that's the feeling you want to achieve.  Nearly human. 

Third, put your butt against the back of the chair and sit up straight.  Then have that conversation like you're excited about what you're doing!  Mark Warner's shoulders were slumped, his affect was flat, and his facial expressions were muted.  He's trying to run for Senate, for heaven's sake.  It's going to take a whole lotta time, people, and enthusiasm.  Give us a little more at the get-go. 

Most people aren't good actors -- most actors aren't good actors -- and this stuff is hard to make sound real.  But keeping a few rules in mind will make it a little easier. 

Reject the Urge for Self-Protection

When you stand up to speak, you're risking something.  You can fail to engage the crowd, you can make a fool of yourself, you can attempt too little or too much and miss the mark.  While the risk is almost always greater in your own mind that in reality, it is a risk.

Naturally enough, that's what's on most people's minds at the moment they begin to speak.  They're thinking to themselves, "Why did I agree to do this?  It could all go horribly wrong!  People are going to think I'm an idiot!" or something along those lines.

The result of that emotional self-talk is a series of behaviors which, alas, tends to increase the likelihood that precisely the feared result will occur.  People who fear failure in speaking are defensive, and that defensiveness shows up in a variety of ways, all bad.  They may pace nervously -- the familiar 'happy feet' of some speakers.  They may clutch and un-clutch their hands in front of their stomachs.  They may cross their arms, hide their hands behind their backs, or keep their arms firmly fixed to their sides, only waving their forearms, in a characteristic gesture of many business speakers that I call the 'Penguin flap'. 

All of these gestures, and others besides, signal nervousness to the audience.  But more than that, they signal that the speaker is trying to protect himself.  The speaker, in fact, is shutting off part of herself from the audience. 

And there's the rub.  The whole point of presentations, from the audience's point of view, is to see the speaker whole, to gain insight into this person who has the authority to stand up and speak to an assembly of fellow humans.  If the audience sense that the person is holding back, its judgment is that the speaker is ultimately dishonest, and so can't be trusted.

That's not of course (usually) what the speaker intends, but that's the tough luck of public speaking.  The good news is that the audience desperately wants the speaker to succeed, and so is willing to grant the speaker a lot of nervous, self-protective leeway in the first few minutes before giving up entirely and writing the presentation off as a bad job. 

If you're speaking, then, try to begin right away avoiding self-protection.  Get over yourself and your nerves.  Put your focus on the audience.  Be open to the audience.  If you can manage that, they will carry you and give you back far more energy that you put out.  The irony is that the best way to protect yourself in public speaking is to give up any thought of self-protection at all. 

Strange Micro-expressions

Everyone gives a little bit of their true feelings away – especially if their true feelings are at odds with what they’re saying – in fleeting micro-expressions that last less than a second and are often missed by those watching. 

Fred Thompson’s YouTube announcement that he’s about to announce is a fascinating case in point.  The script is unexceptional – all about unity and muscle:

On the next president’s watch, our country will make decisions that will affect our lives and our families far into the future. We can’t allow ourselves to become a weaker, less prosperous and more divided nation. Today, as before, the fate of millions across the world depends on the unity and resolve of the American people.

OK, there’s not much there, especially after making us wait so long for the big day. 

But what’s interesting are Fred’s micro-expressions.  He’s got the concerned, open wrinkled forehead.  He ducks his head a lot, like Ronald Reagan did so effectively on TV in his day – except that Fred does it a little too much.  He looks like Fred Bobblehead Doll Thompson.  And then, at the end of each phrase, he pulls the corners of his mouth down in an expression of disgust – as if he is aghast at something that he’s thinking about.

What is it?  The script?  His candidacy?  The terrible state of American politics and our standing in the world?  Tell us, Fred – you’re running for President.  You should tell us the truth, right?

September 5, 2007