by Beth Levine | Sep 15, 2015 | Just Mouthing Off, preparing for a presentation
I have it all set up. The camera guy is looking through the lens of his TV studio camera, which is set on a tripod and fixed on the two chairs that face each other. The big-screen monitor for watching instant replays is next to the two chairs. The young NBA player walks into the room after practice. He has showered and dressed in his team sweats, and while everyone else has gone home for the afternoon, he has agreed to submit to some one-on-one media training in advance of what promises to be a busy season on the floor. He’s barely a man in chronological age, but he’s physically huge, at just under seven feet tall. We shake hands; he sits down. I ask him if he’s ready to begin. He says he is.
The camera is rolling. I hand him an ordinary toothbrush. He looks at me, perplexed, clearly thinking, This is not what I agreed to do for the next two hours.
I ask him only a few questions about the toothbrush: What is that? What do you do with it? Do you like it? How often do you use it? What do you like about it?
He answers haltingly and offers simple, one-word responses.
Then we’re done with the exercise. We watch the instant replay of his “toothbrush interview,” and finally I explain the method behind my madness.
I do the toothbrush exercise with many of my clients, both athletes and executives. It is a defining and memorable exercise, and it is always totally unexpected . . . but not always well received, at least initially. After all, what does a toothbrush have to do with sports or, for that matter, with communicating?
Nothing. But it has everything to do with being able to think about your audience, be yourself, be nice, get to the point, and be prepared for all of the above.
The lesson of the toothbrush exercise is that no matter how mundane, obvious, or self-explanatory the questions or issues are, you need to be prepared at all times to address your audience in a positive, sincere, and robust manner. And there’s nothing more mundane, obvious, or self-explanatory to have to talk about than a toothbrush.
[Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Sep 1, 2015 | Just Mouthing Off, preparing for a presentation, public speaking
I view communication as the everyday currency of business; it’s how we get things done. Our success is ultimately determined by interactions with employees, customers, communities, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders. And while most organizations and executives have a mission statement, and many articulate a set of core values—for how they conduct their business or treat each other and their customers—most overlook standards, goals, or guidelines for communicating. Communication is actually the channel for executing a company’s mission, its values, and its expectations for excellence, accountability y, productivity and efficiency. How else could these be realized?
A recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications finds a causal link between communication effectiveness and economic performance. “Companies that align communication with the corporate mission and strategy score significantly better not only on ‘soft’ measures such as image and awareness but also on ‘hard’ economic measures, especially on relative market success in the industry.” In sum, the more effective a company is at communicating—internally and externally—the greater the company’s general performance. Perhaps most telling, the Journal found that companies whose executives support improving communication, and recognize its economic value, performed better than companies without supportive leadership.
Similarly, Cheryl Snapp Conner, @CherylSnapp, recently wrote in Forbes about a new study that finds a connection between a CEO’s presentation skills and the pricing of an IPO. Executives that have a confident and commanding presence actually increase the value of their companies’ IPOs.
A lot of people, including Cheryl Connor, found this pretty amazing – myself included. But it confirmed for me what I have been saying for a long time: that a focus on communication adds value to a company. And I do not mean just some amorphous value of customer and employee goodwill, but actual performance value. Like these two studies show, companies and executives that value and are skilled at communication perform better financially.
[Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Aug 18, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
Most ambitious, achieving professionals already have a measure of confidence, charisma, and presence that got them to where they are and that will carry them through a trip to the podium. Nonetheless, how you comport and present yourself at the podium is pretty critical.
Here are 4 simple best practices tips that can enhance your delivery:
- Use your voice.
Modulate your tone as a way of changing things up for the audience. Attention spans are short and demand regular stimulus changes. Try to speak louder, softer, faster, or slower as appropriate for different portions of your presentation. And pause. Pauses are good; your audience needs time to digest your ideas.
- Use the room.
If there’s a podium, try to get out from behind it. And, if possible, move around the room. That, too, will stimulate attention, changing the scene a bit and keeping the audience alert. However . . .
- Don’t pace, and be aware of any fidgety habits.
Remember what your third-grade teacher told you
the first time you stood up to give a book report: Stand up straight. Don’t jingle or play with things in your pockets. Don’t fuss with your hair. We all want to hear what you have to say.
- Make eye contact.
That’s huge. And not just with one friendly face. Try to cover as many faces and as much of the room as you can. Do not be put off (and I hear this all the time) by that “one guy in the front who was glaring at me the whole time.” One man’s glare is another man’s look of concentration. You never know, so don’t be distracted by one face. Just keep on looking at everyone.
[Excerpted from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Jul 14, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, quote
“Students of public speaking continually ask, ‘How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?’
Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer’s wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by? How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines?
Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle and be ‘half scared to death.’ There are a great many ‘wetless’ bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.”
– Dale Carnegie, The Art of Public Speaking
by Beth Levine | Jun 30, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
I was reminded yesterday by @TanyaRivero on @WSJLive that it’s wedding season, which means lots of toasts are being delivered. Best Man toasts. Maid of Honor toasts. Father of the Bride toasts. You name it!
The way I see it, toasts fall under the category of highly personal speeches – a category that includes not just toasts, but eulogies, graduation and retirement sendoffs and the like. These kinds of speeches are often touching and/or funny, yet they also provide the perfect storm for audience-centricity to implode; the topic is limited to a couple or person, the speaker was chosen for their special relationship to the couple or person, and the audience is made up of people who also have their own special relationships with the couple or person.
Sounds like the perfect storm for perfection not disaster, right? Wrong. Apart from the notorious toast flops that include revealing long-held secrets or telling inappropriate stories, there’s another potentially damaging dynamic that happens when the speaker isn’t careful. And that is, they make the audience feel badly. By taking the opportunity to share personal stories, sometimes to excess or even exclusively, the toaster can make the audience feel left out or less important to the people being toasted. It ends up feeling exclusive and not inclusive to the audience.
By contrast, a speaker who embraces the principle of audience-centricity during a toast or other highly personal speech might talk about the qualities or experiences that everyone in the room knows about and can appreciate or laugh at; they might share lessons learned from the couple or person being toasted that everyone can related to; or they might take a bigger picture view of the occasion and talk only about the couple or the person and not even include their own personal connection.
The audience-centric speaker in the case of a wedding toast or other highly personal speech opens the tent wide so that everyone in attendance feels connected and feels like they could have toasted the couple or person with that very same speech.
by Beth Levine | Jun 16, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
Nothing informs the future of business communication quite like the need for brevity in meetings and presentations.
Brevity is not simply about using less time or saying less, it’s about being efficient with your communications. It’s about identifying the meaningful, meaty parts of your content and delivering those without unnecessary fluff, background or side points.
Brevity requires you to prepare, prioritize, and package your material. Prioritizing is the key here.
A couple of #Brevity tips:
- Serve dessert first: If you have a takeaway or call to action, don’t save it for the end, deliver it up front (the ultimate priority!). It helps set context and expectations, which are important for holding onto audience attention.
- Go modular: Build your presentation in chunks rather than in a narrative so you can remain adaptable. You might be reading your audience and want to jump to only the most important chunks (prioritizing again!), or your time might be cut short unexpectedly. Chunks leave you prepared and nimble.
- Know your big fish and little fish: Within those presentation chunks, know your main points or big fish (this requires you to … yep, prioritize your material) and your supporting information or little fish. Big fish come first. Leading or inundating with lots of little fish, or too much information, is overwhelming to both speaker and audience.
Even if attention spans were infinite, which we know they’re not, brevity is more efficient, which is valued and appreciated in any workplace!
