For my blog today, I'm linking to an interview I did this week with Thomas Clifford, filmmaker and Fast Company expert blogger on how to use the principles I talk about in creating and appearing in film and video: http://tinyurl.com/mehdhr
Enjoy!
It’s always dangerous to take on an icon, but here we go. Jim Collins has written a new book, How the Mighty Fall, and he’s on camera talking about it: http://tinyurl.com/rymn9m
Collins is the Marcus Welby of the business world. He looks and sounds the part of the sage business adviser. And the first thing that has to be said about him is that he is a consummate, technically near-perfect speaker – at least on camera and on the small screen. That doesn’t always translate to the large stage, of course – and vice-versa.
On screen, then, he’s got wonderful pacing – talking quickly, but every now and then slowing down markedly on a key point to emphasize it. His voice is authoritative, his gestures passionate. This is one smart, articulate guy.
It’s the message that’s the problem. Good to Great purported to identify the characteristics that made a company great, and the recommendations in it at least were actionable. The issue was that the companies identified as such soon fell off the lofty perch Collins had put them on.
That made How the Mighty Fall inevitable, I suppose. But the problem is that the five stages here are not actionable points in the life of an organization. Instead, they’re moral judgments. From ‘hubris born of success’ to the ‘undisciplined pursuit of more’ to the ‘denial of risk and peril’ to ‘grasping for salvation’ and finally ‘capitulation to irrelevance or death’, these so-called stages are actually moral states lifted from the religious classic Pilgrim’s Progress. The title gives away the plot, in this case.
I won’t get any thanks for saying so, but Collins is a preacher talking sin, not a business thinker showing us how to revivify ailing companies or an ailing economy.
Most people would say that President Obama and former President Bush are two very different personalities. Approval for each is split largely on party lines, their policies are virtually opposites in many ways, and the one is famously gifted as a communicator, while the other is not.
And yet there is one way in which the two leaders are very much alike. Both are possessed with enormous self-confidence. Indeed, many commentators wrote of former President Bush that his confidence was so absolute that it prevented him from seeing other sides to issues. These commentators faulted him for a lack of self-reflection. When he was asked at a press conference to discuss a mistake he had made, President Bush was famously unable to come up with any.
Few of those same commentators would make similar comments about President Obama. He has already admitted to mistakes during his short tenure in office. And he is widely credited with being open to considering ideas from all parts of the political spectrum.
But Obama oozes self-confidence even while he appears to be more open-minded than his predecessor. And commentators today commend that self-confidence, arguing that we need a strong leader to take us through these difficult economic times.
Why is self-confidence suddenly an asset for President Obama when it was widely considered to be a liability for President Bush? Is there any difference between the two leaders’ self-confidence? How can we understand the apparent about-face in the reaction of the general population to confidence in their leader?
The answer to these questions lies in both men’s non-verbal communication. When President Bush presided at a press conference, for example, his self-confidence was undercut by his hunched shoulders, his halting answers, his querulous tone, and his defensive posture. His self-confidence seemed to be at odds, therefore, with his non-verbal ‘conversation’ with the audience. When we see this kind of internal tension, we tend to assume that there is something inauthentic going on.
President Obama, on the other hand, has self-consistent body language. His self-confidence is supported by his erect posture, his ready smile, and his confident tone. The package appears to be authentic. He appears to be a person who is comfortable in his own skin.
Regardless of your political views, the two men are a case study in self-confidence and authenticity. You can’t succeed with the former unless you have the latter. I talk much more about this tension in my new book, Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.
Why was Governor Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama on Tuesday night so bad? Both the content and the delivery were, in plain words, awful. Here it is on YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/art66e. But don’t watch it, unless you want to know how not to speak on television, how not to construct a logical presentation, and how not to quote your father when talking to the American people. There are a myriad better ways to spend 12 minutes of your life than watching Governor Jindal.
Jindal began with a nod to President Obama’s election as the first African-American president and all that that signifies, but he went on so long that it became patronizing. He told an inane story about hurricane Katrina, and used that as a way to talk about the Republican idea that Americans don’t need government to help them solve their problems. “Americans can do anything,” he said, quote his father. He repeated this quote a half-dozen times during the remainder of the speech, sounding more and more like Gomer Pyle and less and less like a credible future presidential candidate.
Of course, the (Republican) government’s response to Katrina was criminally bad, but Jindal was talking out of both sides of his mouth, because he and his state government were busy spending billions of Federal taxpayers’ money on rebuilding New Orleans even as he spoke.
He then went on to say that Republicans want everyone to have access to affordable health care, but that government is not the solution. This is an argument based on a non sequitur, and one that simply sidesteps several critical issues. For example, private enterprise has built the jury-rigged, outrageously expensive solution we have today. We’ve tried it. It has brought us to our current impasse, with even the insurers themselves now calling for the Federal government to help find a remedy.
And Jindal simply ignores the inconvenient fact that President Obama’s proposed solution does involve the insurers rather than relying exclusively on the Federal government. No one is proposing that the government is the answer. But government has to play a role, because private enterprise has proven itself unable to come up with a solution despite having years to do so, enormous public pressure to improve, and real – and often criminal – examples of how they have failed in their own self-described mission to protect Americans against the financial impact of catastrophic illnesses.
Jindal then talked about spending and the economic mess we’re in. He called for less government spending, echoing President Hoover, who cut spending at the beginning of the Depression, thus ensuring that it would last longer and cut much deeper than it otherwise would have. Thank goodness he’s not in charge of anything except Louisiana. I see that he's taking all but about one percent of the Federal bailout money coming to his state.
What about his delivery? His smile was insincere; it didn’t reach his eyes, which were focused relentlessly on the camera and thus on us, the hapless viewers. He read the teleprompter in an un-authoritative, sing-song voice that lacked conviction, energy, and interest. His vocal tones were constantly rising, further undercutting his authority. His gestures were out of synch with his words, making him look fake. (I talk more about this in Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.) Finally, he tipped his head slightly to one side, in what I call the Mr. Rogers gesture, making him look even less authoritative. The combination gave the effect of a small boy delivering the Republican response. It was childish in the bad sense of the word. Not a good night for Governor Jindal or the Republicans.
President Obama forgot something during his first prime-time press conference last night: hope. His remarks were a stark reminder of Mario Cuomo’s line that ‘you campaign in poetry (but) you govern in prose’:
I took a trip to Elkhart, Indiana, today. Elkhart is a place that has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America. In one year, the unemployment rate went from 4.7 percent to 15.3 percent. Companies that have sustained this community for years are shedding jobs at an alarming speed, and the people who've lost them have no idea what to do or who to turn to.
They can't pay their bills. They've stopped spending money. And because they've stopped spending money, more businesses have been forced to lay off more workers. In fact, local TV stations have started running public service announcements to tell people where to find food banks, even as the food banks don't have enough to meet the demand.
As we speak, similar scenes are playing out in cities and towns across America.
Gone is the uplifting rhetoric of the campaign. President Obama is giving us a cold dose of reality. Will we be able to accept it? President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave Americans good cheer and large measures of hope during the Depression. President John F. Kennedy gave us wit and style when we were scared to death about nuclear Armageddon in the early 60s. And President Reagan gave us his sunny optimism during the stagflation of the early 80s.
President Obama needs to remember that we elected him to be honest with us, yes, but also to take us in a new direction, to eschew the politics of fear that have dominated the last 8 years, and to bring us hope.
We know the situation is dire. We don’t need caveats like this one:
. . .The plan's not perfect. No plan is. I can't tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hoped, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis, as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans.
That’s misplaced confidence. We need a sense from our president as to how the crisis will end, not how it could get worse. We like our reality in an admixture with a smile.
What was extraordinary about President Obama’s first press conference was how easily he wore the mantle of president, a mantle that the previous holder of the office never put on comfortably in 8 years. Obama is every inch a world leader. Already!
But he also needs to remember that the great presidents find hope even in the darkest times, and point the way forward for a nation that looks to them for leadership:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address was delivered at the lowest point in our nation's history. And yet it showed the way forward with grace and wisdom. That's what we look for in a leader when things are bleak.
Never defend yourself in public against things that you haven’t been accused of; you’ll simply raise more questions than you forestall. President Bush gave a classic demonstration of this faux pas near the end of his last news conference. (http://tinyurl.com/79uqck)
Here’s a transcript of the moment. It came when a reporter asked the President about when President-elect Obama would feel the full weight of the office. The President was calm talking about the Oval Office and Obama’s family. But then the bitterness came out when he suddenly went on a rant about self-pity:
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, that's a great question. He'll -- he will feel the effects the minute he walks in the Oval Office. At least, that's when I felt. I don't know when he's going -- he may feel it the minute he's -- gets sworn in. And the minute I got sworn in, I started thinking about the speech. (Laughter.) And so -- but he's a better speech-maker than me, so he'll be able to -- he'll be able to -- I don't know how he's going to feel. All I know is he's going to feel it. There will be a moment when he feels it.
I have never felt isolated and I don't think he will. One reason he won't feel isolated is because he's got a fabulous family and he cares a lot about his family. That's evident from my discussions with him. He'll be -- he's a 45-second commute away from a great wife and two little girls that love him dearly.
I believe this -- the phrase "burdens of the office" is overstated. You know, it's kind of like, why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It's just -- it's pathetic, isn't it, self-pity. And I don't believe that President-Elect Obama will be full of self-pity. He will find -- you know, your -- the people that don't like you, the critics, they're pretty predictable. Sometimes the biggest disappointments will come from your so-called friends. And there will be disappointments, I promise you. He'll be disappointed. On the other hand, the job is so exciting and so profound that the disappointments will be clearly, you know, a minor irritant compared to the –
At this point a reporter mercifully broke in with another question, and the moment passed.
The transcript doesn’t do justice to the oddness of the moment, because it’s all in the body language. Watch the video. Bush’s anger suddenly leaks through, as he bashes self-pity. But no one had asked him about it, and so we wonder why he’s suddenly attacking that emotion. Is it something he’s wrestling with himself? We don’t know, but it’s the most memorable part of the news conference, and a great reminder not to defend yourself against attacks that haven’t yet come your way.
What do you say when you have to make your point in two minutes? A community board in Maryland decreed everyone who appeared before it had to limit their remarks to two minutes. That’s not much time for your particular burning issue. And it’s not unusual. In our time-starved age, everyone wants you to make your point as quickly as possible. Interviews on CNN rarely go more than a minute or two. Commercials get Tivo’ed and thus compressed further than their already brief format. And the fashion in books is to write shorter and shorter.
Two minutes is approximately 250 words at normal speaking rates, though, and you can say a surprising amount in 250 words. Here’s a good way to think about it.
First of all, decide what your one-sentence headline is. “Leaf blowers make too much noise and they should be forbidden in our community.” It should take the form of a need or a problem you want to meet or solve.
Then, deliver three supporting points. Point one: “First, I’ve tested them at over 120 decibels. That’s as loud as a plane at the end of a runway. Last I checked, we’re not living near a runway. Should we be subjected to that much noise?’
Point two: ‘Second, they don’t really clean up leaves. They just move them around. Often, that means the neighbor’s yard. So they really just move the problem down the road.”
Point three: “And finally, they’re hazardous. Last year, an employee of a landscaping firm was injured when a leaf-blower blew some leaf matter into his eyes. He couldn’t see, and he tripped over a rock, injuring his leg.”
And then repeat the headline: “So that’s why I believe that leaf blowers should be forbidden in our community.”
And close by asking for the appropriate action your headline and supporting points lead to: “Please join me in banning leaf blowers from the fair town of Quietville. Thank you.”
There you go. Problem solved in two minutes. Provided everyone goes along with you.
Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma is just out from Jossey-Bass. Get your copy here:
http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Steps-Authenticity-Charisma/dp/0470404353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229113611&sr=1-1
The once and future Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is a plain-speaking Kansan with more than a quarter-century in the CIA to his credit. What effect has that had on his public speaking?
We can still hear his Kansas roots in his nasal voice, that flat Midwestern twang that manages to be nasal and growly at the same time, because he’s busy speaking at the low end of his vocal register in an effort, no doubt, to out-John-Wayne the other alpha males in the room.
It’s too bad, because with some breathing and placement exercises, Gates could actually have a pleasant voice. But of all things we dislike the nasal tone. The only positive side to it is that it perhaps kept his nomination hearings short, since the Senators would have been more than usually anxious to hear themselves speak rather than the nominee.
A fascinating study was undertaken a few years back on the vocal tones that people emit that are below the range of human hearing. It’s not clear why we emit these tones, but we do, and the really interesting thing about them is that we synchronize them with each other. And we do that in very specific ways. We line our low-frequency tones up with the tones of the most authoritative person in the room, and we do this within the first several minutes. It’s as if, when we meet, we immediately use unconscious means to sort out the hierarchy of the pack, by (inaudible) growling.
That makes me wonder if people like Gates tend to force their voices lower (unconsciously) in an effort to win this low-frequency battle and be the dominant player in the room.
In any case, Gates is subjecting his vocal chords to long-term damage with this verbal treatment. And it’s a shame, because lurking behind all those growls is a pleasance baritone or even tenor voice. He should take voice lessons and learn to sing. Maybe once he's wound down the Iraq war?
Why don’t we warm to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi? Her story is one of those improbable only-in-America tales of achieving the 3rd most powerful position in the country as a grandmother after 15 years in the House working her way up through the ranks.
And yet, unlike Senator Clinton, she hasn’t claimed the woman-as-victim mantle when it suited her. She’s just done her job, strong always and partisan when needed. What’s to complain about?
The issue with Representative Pelosi is the mis-match between the upper and lower parts of her face. When she smiles, at least in public, it doesn’t extend to her eyes. Her mouth smiles almost continually at times, and yet the eyes aren’t taking part. She should give up the fakery, and pick some important moments to be genuine.
Maybe it’s inevitable – the insincere smile – in Washington DC, where there’s an adder under every rock waiting to bite you. But it doesn’t help Pelosi’s authenticity. She’s always got her game face on, and it’s an unconvincing one. She should take lessons from President-elect Obama, who’s 1000-megawatt smile is authentic, warming his whole face.
Beyond the mask of the face, Pelosi is in the unenviable position of wielding considerable power without seeming to be able to do much with it. She’s always in the position of going on television to denounce something the Bush administration is doing, or trying to do, so even among her supporters she begins to look like all she does is complain.
She presided over the 2006 election-day rout of the Republicans, promising to end the war in Iraq, and then made no obvious progress on that promise. Of course, we might well wonder how she was going to do it, given that President Bush was commander-in-chief, but then she shouldn’t have promised results if she knew none were going to be forthcoming.
The Speaker needs to take a lesson from the Obamas, and start living with -- and demonstrating -- more authenticity. It should show up in her game face, and it should show up in the match between rhetoric and accomplishment.
What’s extraordinary about President-elect Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s interview on 60 minutes is how comfortable they look with their respective roles. Aside from an annoying tendency to tip his head to one side like Mr. Rogers, Barack already has the gravitas and authority that his predecessor never had. He sounds and looks presidential. Michelle similarly manages to look dignified and yet relaxed at the same time.
I would hazard a guess that she’s more keenly aware of what the two of them are about to give up than Barack is, but that’s just my hunch. Virtually all semblance of a normal life goes away when you move inside the Presidential Bubble, by all accounts, but we can estimate the loss only because the two seem real to begin with. So many other presidential couples exhibit a weird tension that comes, I’m guessing, from too little time spent on the things that really matter in a relationship.
But the truly extraordinary achievement of the ’60 Minutes’ interview and the other glimpses we’ve seen of President-elect Obama is the way in which he’s leaped into the role as if he was born to play it.
No gaffes, no clumsiness, no mixed messages. This is a guy who’s inner life is consistent with his outer achievement. His body language betrays no leakage of doubt, qualm, or panic.
In particular, he’s got two non-verbal signals going that radiate confidence and decisiveness – exactly what we need at this time of national financial ruin. First, he nods as he makes his points. Nodding builds agreement. It works unconsciously for the most part on viewers; often they find themselves nodding back. And then you’re hooked, because your mind thinks, I must agree with him because I’m nodding and I don’t do that for no reason.
Second, Obama uses the authoritative arc in his voice. I’ve written about this before, but basically it means that your voice comes down in pitch at the end of the phrase, sentence, or thought. The alternative is the annoying habit many people today have of saying everything as if it were a question. The result of using the authoritative arc? You sound like you know what you’re talking about. You sound certain. You close off debate. If you watch the interview carefully, you’ll see that the interviewer had precious few follow-up questions to pursue some of the statements that Barack made. That’s because he left no room for doubt.
He hasn’t had a chance to do anything yet, really, but the atmospherics are good. This is a guy who was born to be president.
For the partisans on both sides, post-debate analysis is all about spin. But nonetheless, I’m going to try to give a fairly evenhanded reaction to what I saw in terms of the alignment of the two conversations, the verbal (content) and the non-verbal (body language). I’ve been waiting until the passions cooled a little on the Palin-Biden debate, just because people are so unreasonable on that subject. So here goes. SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to say tough things about all four candidates. DON’T READ THIS if you’re a hopeless partisan who sees criticism of your candidate as unpatriotic or worse.
Joe Biden – on the plus side, he had good command of the facts, he appeared to take the debate seriously, and he was respectful to his opponent. On the negative side, he kept his hand in his pocket too much, and when he registered passion (or at least pique) his voice went high and nasal, and stayed that way too long. When you keep a hand in a pocket, we wonder what you’re hiding, and when your voice goes nasal, we find it irritating. He needs to support with good breathing when he takes his voice higher, and keep his hands where we can see them. NO WHINING, JOE!
Sarah Palin – on the plus side, she appeared relaxed, after quite a bit of initial nervousness. She has impressive poise for someone who has just been thrust onto the national scene. That poise served her very well during her speech at the Republican convention; less well with Katie Couric because you could tell when she was trying to bull her way through an answer. It would have been better to admit that she didn’t know. She’s allowed; she’s only been ‘at this for five weeks’.
In terms of content, she stuck to her prepared answers on taxes and energy, regardless of the questions. Sometimes that worked, but often her bridging was weak and it was blatantly obvious she wasn’t answering the question. Audiences don’t like people who don’t respond to the question; bridging is an important art and skill and she needs more practice.
Her folksiness either grated on you, or you loved it. All the shout-outs, the you betchas, and the say-it-ain’t-so-Joes – that either made you believe she was just like you, or it made your skin crawl. Her winking and condescension toward Biden would have been outrageous if their gender roles were reversed; I found it off-putting. But her main problem was an inconsistency in the two conversations – she smiled when she was actually angry. That makes us not trust her. DON’T SMILE WHEN YOU’RE ANGRY, SARAH!
John McCain – on the plus side, McCain sounded best when he was talking about his service to his country. Then, his voice has the right timbre and gravitas. On the negative side, when he was criticizing Obama, his voice went high and nasal, like Biden’s, and sounded condescending. As a result, he was irritating. If you watched the audience reaction meters on CNN, you saw that happening in real time. Whenever he went negative, the dials went down, as much because his voice was irritating as anything else.
But McCain’s main problem was happy feet, when he was talking, and when he was listening. Once again, audiences look for alignment of the two conversations. When they are not aligned, we believe the non-verbal. So, when McCain says that he’s got the experience, a steady hand, and can handle our scary economic problems, but his feet are wandering all over the stage, we believe the feet. Unconsciously, we think he’s wandering, mentally, just like he is physically. PLANT YOUR FEET, JOHN!
McCain's wandering around when Obama was answering just looked rude.
Barack Obama -- the best debater of the four in terms of clarity, logic, and coherence of his answers. He planted his feet when he addressed his audience, and so we believe that he has the mental solidity a president needs. Obama’s problem is that when he tries to display passion, his voice goes up, but the rest of him stays cool. He pinches his thumb and forefinger together when he’s making a point, regardless of how he feels about it, and the result is that he appears too passionless. LOSE THE PRISSY GESTURE, BARACK! Obama needs to let us see some real temper, or we’re going to think he’s aloof, and we won’t trust him. We need to see that he’s got some skin in the game.
The transformation of public discourse into something haiku-esque has been brought about by the advent of television and the 24-hour news cycle. News stations like CNN are so desperately afraid of losing you to the channel-changer that they pack "the most news" into shorter and shorter time frames. That puts a premium on talking heads who are able to deliver 8 - 12 second sound 'bites' that don't sound completely idiotic about the very complex issues of the day.
Example. What to do about Iraq? The Republicans dominated that debate for far too long by persuading the country that the Democrats were talking about 'cutting and running' -- something no honorable person easily sees themselves doing. As a result, we stayed and stayed, and created a situation that commentators in the Arab world can now say with a straight face is worse than Saddam. We became the villains, worldwide. We spent a trillion dollars and hocked our country to the Chinese. We created a generation of Arab youth dedicated to wiping us out. But we didn't cut and run.
See the power of sound bites?
But if you're going to be on television, you need to practice reducing the complex issues you think about every day to these hopelessly inadequate 8-second bites. Otherwise, you risk looking pompous or irrelevant. Television has reduced our attention spans to that of the goldfish, and as a result, our policies are about as subtle as fish bait.
Ok, enough complaining. How do you work with sound bites? You can say something in 8 seconds. It needs to be colorful, pithy, and present clear opposites. It's best if you draw on widely current images or expressions to help people get quickly what you're talking about: "George Bush's foreign policy team has all the brain power of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears combined." "In Iraq, we've lurched from one disaster to another. The current government is the gang that couldn't shoot straight."
If you know you've got a TV appearance coming up, distill what you want to say into 5 phrases or sentences, none longer than 8 seconds. Then, practice working them into any question you're asked. Get a colleague to pepper you with questions so you get used to the practice of "bridging" from the question to your bite. It's all about the practice. For how to do it, watch the political candidates change the subject as they're asked question after question.
It's not real discourse, or policy discussion. It's black and white. But it catches your attention. And, unfortunately, it is the way the media runs the world today.
So you've got a TV appearance coming up. Don't panic. You'll live through it. More people will see you than ever before in your life, but not the whole planet. There will be people -- even in your home town -- who won't see you. You will live through it.
Lots of books have been written on prepping for TV, so rather than try to be exhaustive, I'll just go over a couple of things that you MUST remember.
First, the press is not your friend. That's so important, I'll repeat it: the press is not your friend. Don't confide in the press unless you want to see it on page one, or on the evening news. Assume nothing is off the record or off camera.
Second, know what you want to say, practice it, and then say it when the camera's rolling. Think in terms of 8-second sound bites. It's not a time to go into a lot of detail. You'll just look like you're evading the question. The TV camera is the most impatient medium going. You've got to be quick. Even on PBS. Have about 5 points to make and then make them no matter what the questions. 'Bridge' from the question to your answer.
Third, get someone with fashion sense to advise you. The visuals are all-important on TV. Dress like you mean it, at the level to which you're aspiring. The person interviewing you will most likely be wearing a smart suit, and have had a haircut recently. Don't look worse than him or her.
Fourth, watch newscasters with the sound off to see how they talk. What you'll see may surprise you. They move their heads around a lot, because typically they're shot from the shoulders up, or sitting at a table from the waist up. That means that all the interest normally provided by human motion has to be compressed into the head, shoulders, and perhaps hands. Don't go crazy; don't make yourself look foolish. But put a little more energy into your conversation than you normally might. As Marshall McLuhan famously observed, television is a cool medium. It craves heat -- and it's up to you to provide it.
