CHAPTER 6
Powerful Communication Is A Physical Act
I speak two languages, Body and English. 24
(MAE WEST)
When I attend live performances of theatre, dance or music, my favourite place to be is right up close and personal. I love seeing the human being and the performer. In the business world, the best and most engaging presenters and speakers are those who come out from behind the PowerPoint, who take time to breathe, to look, to see, to pause, and to think. They are in the moment. They are with their audience. Compelling, effective communicators make great things happen.
I find it amusing that communication is often still referred to as a ‘soft skill’. For my money, great communication requires a high level of fitness. The ‘job’ of great communication is to connect, create engagement, build relationships and fuel productivity. The job is to articulate something of value. The job is to create a space for ideas to flourish – a space for buy-in and positive results. The job is to make your words, feelings, energy and passion reach others. Soft skill?
Building relationships with your clients, building trust and motivation with your team, selling an idea or a product, putting yourself forward for a promotion, stepping into a challenging transition, creating a vision or rejuvenating key messages that may have gone unexamined for a while – all these things require an investment in how you say what you say (as much as in what you say).
When you do that – when you invest in how you say what you say – people take notice and want to listen. It ignites their confidence and commitment. More than that, it inspires them – and everyone works with a clearer sense of purpose, feels more motivated and steps into a bigger self when they feel inspired.
Let’s unpack the how you say what you say so you can start inspiring yourself and others right now!
The 3 Cs of preparation
Being the professional you are, with experience, credibility, expertise and accountability, you likely put a lot of effort into preparing your content for key presentations, pitches, meetings and speeches. You’ve got slide decks and handouts and notes. You’ve done the research, or your trusted assistant or communications team has, and you’ve put together a draft script.
At some point, though, you need to shift from preparing your content to preparing yourself, and by that I mean your personal connection to what you’re talking about.
Preparing yourself is so important that I hope you’ll start doing the personal preparation first and the content preparation second. You’ll be amazed by how much this pays off. I call this preparation the ‘3 Cs’. It opens the valve for fresh, stimulating content that will land with your audience.
THE 3 Cs EXERCISE
First C: Connect to yourself
Second C: Connect to your content
Third C: Connect to your environment (your audience and space)
Do your 3 Cs aloud. This way, you’ll get immediate feedback on what you’re experiencing:
Flow, clarity, traction
or
Blockage, generalisations, vagueness
By working aloud, you’ll hear the sound of your voice and will feel the energy in your body. You’ll remember your content quickly and take ownership of it. Preparing your 3 Cs is the foundation from which you can build your performance.
True voice
When is the last time you heard your own voice? Many women admit that when they hear a recording of their voice, they feel disappointed. They say things such as ‘Is that what I sound like? My voice sounds so quiet’; ‘It sounds more nasal than the way I hear it’; and ‘Oh, I talk so fast! But it feels like I’m going really slowly’.
Surprising, isn’t it? You use your voice as your primary instrument for communication, for speaking up, presenting, pitching, participating in meetings and engaging in all manner of conversations – virtual and in person – and yet it’s unfamiliar to you. Perhaps what you’re really saying is that it’s uninspiring to you.
If this is your experience, it could be because when you walk into the office, you step into your default zone – that mindset, body and voice you habitually slip into that’s shaped by your organisational culture. These cultures have their own language, jargon and invisible rules that say, ‘This is the way we do things around here.’
Let’s leave the office for a moment and go into your other life, the one you leave outside the door when you get to work (but which you’ll stop doing from now on, right?).
When you read a fairy tale to a child at bedtime, do you rush through it? Do you speak in bullet-point format? Do you stay in one tone, one gear and one key throughout? No! You instinctively put on different voices for the different characters, slow down and create magic and suspense, speak loudly and softly, etc.
When you’re finished reading, do you run out of the room as fast as you can? No! You say, ‘The end.’ You let your story settle on the child and then you say, ‘Goodnight.’
When you call your dog from across a field, you whistle and use your special ‘dog-calling voice’, right? When you watch a live sports event, you probably shout and cheer a lot. And what about those moments of hysterical, cathartic laughter with a friend? Or singing in the shower? Letting rip while driving and listening to your favourite track? What about those moments you insist that your partner listen as you read a passage from the newspaper out loud with righteous indignation or amazement (‘You’ve got to hear this!’). Oh, and let’s not forget that domestic argument (yes, that same old argument again!).
Wow! What a wide-ranging, dynamic, expressive, contoured voice you have, don’t you agree? So what happens when you walk through the door of your workplace? Why the big gag over your mouth? That dynamic voice of yours gets damped down, flattened and rushed. You’re surfing the monotone airwaves rather than tuning into your bright personal bandwidth.
Please stop this vocal laziness right now .
Your voice is your gateway to your presence, your signature style and your capacity to influence those around you. How do you hear yourself? How do you want to be heard?
It’s time to invest in your voice to lift those words off the page, bring them to life and create meaning. Legend has it that the great French chanteuse, Edith Piaf, talked about being able to sing a phone book and make it sound good; and so can you! And the great news is you don’t need a battery of voice training. You’ve got everything you need to influence, convince and inspire with your voice. How? One word: intention .
Intention directs expression
When you have a clear intention regarding what you want to say and why you want to say it, the how aligns accordingly. Your body, voice, energy, breath, belief and expressiveness rally around you.
Energy author Eileen McDargh says, ‘When you lose your “why” you lose your “way”.’ 25 When you remind yourself what really matters to you in your messages, you’ll get a surge of confidence, ease and flow. From there, you’ll understand what emotional tone you want to project to your audience (the how) because you’ll be clear about your objectives (the what). Clarifying your intention is your driver and your traction. Are you talking to your audience in order to:
Jen had a particularly important engagement. She was going to talk to her whole division to celebrate the success of a project, express appreciation for everyone’s outstanding work and share the news that they had won a prestigious new contract.
Once Jen clarified for herself that her key message was about ‘building on success’, she knew she needed to ‘uplift, inspire and motivate’. With her emotional and energetic intention clear, Jen had a mandate for her voice: be positive and enthusiastic.
On her personal energy scale, Jen knew she had to hit the 8 to 10 range, so she ramped up accordingly. As she smiled to convey appreciation and celebration, her voice automatically projected warmth and energy.
To ‘model’ her uplifting message further, she stood taller (no rocking back or standing in a twisted pretzel) and held the group in her sight line with a more open stance. This heightened posture also had a positive impact on her voice projection. As well, she made sure to make genuine eye contact with her audience, to take time to really see them, signalling, ‘I like it here with you’.
By clarifying her intentions for this talk (‘I want to appreciate, celebrate and motivate’), Jen, not a natural extrovert or bravura performer, was able to make conscious choices about her body language, voice and energy that significantly shifted her performance out of her default to a more inspirational zone. In terms of her energy wardrobe, Jen shed her grey T-shirt and dressed for the part.
Paula had to have a ‘critical conversation’ – she had to say no to a request and give some strong pushback to her boss about why. She had to clarify for herself that her message had two parts: one part was about the pushback itself (‘This is what I can’t do’) and the other part was about maintaining a good, trust-based relationship with her boss (‘This is what I can do’).
Emotionally and energetically, Paula clarified her intention: to be unapologetic and firm and also positive and explorative. Paula knew she had to ground herself, take her time and be honest and real.
Rushing and sounding tentative or negative were the pitfalls she had to avoid. To model respectful pushback rather than jumping through hoops, Paula knew she had to invest in relaxation, clarity and gravitas.
As you can see, these two scenarios required different kinds of voices, expressions and energy. They were both authentic ‘performances’ that considered a palette of possibilities, which became available as soon as Jen and Paula clarified their intentions. Remember, intention directs expression .
Setting clear intentions regarding what you’re talking about and why you’re talking about it will reveal the feeling and energy you need to invest. This will send a powerful message to your intuitive body and voice to express itself accordingly. So listen up, and once more with feeling!
Warm up the instrument
Singers and musicians warm up with scales. Dancers and athletes stretch their muscles. As all great performers and athletes know, you have to warm up the instrument. Skipping warm-ups results in lacklustre performances. It’s as simple as that.
Remember, you are an executive athlete! Did you really think you could go in cold? Communication is a physical act. It involves your body, voice, breath, energy and belief. It requires your full presence. It demands clear intentions and getting into the right state. You need to tune up before you turn up !
The great news is, it’s really easy. Deep breaths, stretching tall with your arms overhead, running in place, reading or speaking a few lines of something inspirational out loud at increasing volume and clapping vigorously (your own standing ovation!) are all fast and effective ways to warm yourself up, raise your energy levels, enhance your articulation and put you into a positive state.
It really is that simple. Enjoy creating your own warm-ups. Do something; do anything! But from this day forward, do not go into that important communication moment cold.
WARM UP EXERCISES
You are audience and performer
Think of the last time you went to the theatre, the cinema, a concert, a dance performance or any other event where you were in the role of audience. Were you spellbound? Enthralled? Amused? Confused? Nodding off? Did you arrive at the event exhausted but obliged to attend? Were you looking forward to it?
When we’re in the role of audience, inside or outside the workplace, we are first and foremost human beings, carrying our circumstances with us. There is no such thing as a generalised ‘them’ – ie ‘the audience’, ‘one big block’, or, to use the phobic boardroom term, ‘the enemy’. We audiences are human beings who have come from somewhere to get here, to the event. As audience, we have committed time and effort. We want to be engaged and inspired! We want the performer to succeed.
All of us are playing either the role of audience or the role of performer. We speak or we listen. We view or we do. We want to give something or we want to get something. That’s the contract.
Think again about yourself when you’re in the role of audience. Which performers inspire you and what are some of their qualities? Perhaps:
These are some of the qualities we notice when we’re in the role of audience. So steal them and steal well! Make the very things that inspire you about others part of your authentic way of performing.
Take the spotlight off you and your anxieties (‘Will I remember all my points?’; ‘I wish I’d had more time to prepare’) and mentally put the spotlight on your audience. In other words, it’s not about you, it’s about them! Be interested in them. See them. Appreciate them. Be real with them. Play the role of hostess at a dinner party and look after them. Don’t lobotomise your content into data! Information downloads don’t cut it. Think ‘perform’ not ‘inform’ .
Boardroom tables are performance spaces
Oh habits! Habits! Why does the act of sitting around a boardroom table give you permission to collapse, withdraw, become smaller, shrink your visibility and make less impact with your voice? I know you don’t intend to, and I know you know better. But it happens time and again. Consider these two scenarios.
  1. You’re rushing from meeting to meeting and not taking that precious, critical breathing space to clear your brain, clarify your intention and refresh your energy for your next environment. Instead of taking a moment to prepare yourself consciously, you throw yourself into the room, launch into ‘organise-as-you-go’ mode and get through as best you can.
  2. At the beginning of a meeting you’re mindful of your body language, attentiveness and engagement, but as it progresses, you gradually forget and lapse into the habitual zone of less-than-full-investment of your presence. Things start to slip as you start multitasking, or mentally withdrawing, or not speaking up and forfeiting your moment or idea (which someone else takes over).
Please remember that a boardroom table is a stage. You just happen to be sitting down .
Imagine the table under a spotlight on a stage. Go big and theatrical with me for a moment. Stand back and see the scene as if watching a movie. What choices for impact do you have?
The boardroom table – ie the meeting-room environment – is likely to be your most frequently inhabited performance space. I’ll say that again. You probably spend more time in the meeting-room environment than anywhere else in your day. If this is true, then it’s the environment you need to enliven for yourself and for others as much as possible.
Starting right now, change your boardroom environment from being an energy drainer to an energy booster. Wear every piece from your energy wardrobe. Enjoy making choices for impact and start tracking the results.
Beginnings
In every presentation course I’ve ever led, and I mean every one, the big barrier is this: beginnings. The beginnings of most talks or presentations are pretty dull, agreed?
Imagine speaking to your audience as if they were one person and you were shaking hands with them. In a positive, meaningful encounter with another person, you wouldn’t snatch your hand away instantly after a handshake. You would make eye contact and hold the moment as you exchanged greetings. Speaking to your audience is like that handshake: turn up, be real, be interested and connect.
Let’s explore these beginnings a little further. Here’s a scenario you might have experienced yourself: Everyone is seated around a table. At one end of the room is a flip chart or a PowerPoint set-up. Perhaps you’re up first. Perhaps you’re number six up to speak. Whatever your slot, it’s your moment. You’re on!
There’s silence as you get out of your chair and walk to your spot. You just want to get this over with, and your body language is a dead giveaway.
You are in the throes of your death walk – that zone of complete disconnect from yourself, your environment and your audience. During the death walk, whether it’s one foot or ten yards, you’re temporarily ‘offline’, in a bubble of paralysis or self-absorption.
Suddenly, as if controlled by a master puppeteer in an alternate universe, you snap into ‘presentation mode’, starting with the usual box-ticking niceties (while avoiding direct eye contact) or clichéd conventions (eg ‘tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them’). That moment of disconnect, feeling the glare of the spotlight on you, makes for very heavy lifting!
About two minutes in, you’re warming up and hitting a respectable stride. But in stage time, two minutes is a long time. You need to be warmed up from the start. You need to be present, real and engaged from the start.
Ever do the ‘hook’ test when deciding which book to read on your holiday? Out of your three possible choices, you read the first paragraph in each and whichever book hooks you in that first paragraph wins. That’s your holiday reading sorted! It works the same way with television programmes or films. How long do you give that Season 1, Episode 1 before you either commit or continue surfing?
Presentations need to hook from the start too. You need to be warmed up to yourself, to your subject and to your audience from the start, connected from the start. In the theatre, actors warm up offstage. Frequently they begin their scenes in the wings and come on stage animated, full of life and already ‘in’ the story.
To avoid the death walk, start from where you are ! Yes. Your presentation starts from where you’re sitting. Your seat is your launch pad. You’re already there, at the table, in contact with everyone around you, seeing them and hearing them. Use all this environmental ‘data’ to be in the moment. Use the chair as your base from which to get grounded and from which to lift off.
Choose your moment. It’s your show. Own it. Now rise from the chair with intention and start speaking. All that connection, that ease, that conscious choice is with you, and it’s reassuring for your audience. We’re hooked from the start because you’ve started! No dead space, no fillers, no artificial switch into presentation mode.
ENERGETIC LAUNCH EXERCISE
Try this ABA sequence as a practice tool:
A:
Begin speaking your presentation in your chair at the table. Look at the people around the table as you begin (I know you’re trying this alone, so use your imagination).
B:
Gradually get to your feet – keep speaking – start walking – keep speaking – and arrive at your desired spot – keep speaking. The walk itself will force you to breathe and change your energy.
A:
As you wrap up your presentation, walk back to your chair and sit down but stay energised and connected with your audience around the table.
Using the ABA format will keep you connected to your audience, will help you feel at ease and real in the moment, and will loosen you up.
Even if you don’t do this in your actual presentations, it’s a great practice tool for giving you natural momentum and flow.
The scintillation of distillation
When I was an academic supervising PhD students, I often struggled to understand what their theses were. In their quest to contribute to ‘original knowledge’, the students opted for complexity over clarity. So I introduced a method in my supervision which required the radical distillation of each thesis into a sentence or two, max. My belief was that if they couldn’t describe their research in a sentence or two, they didn’t have a thesis.
I still subscribe to this idea, and nowhere is it more brilliantly applied than in show biz. According to Broadway lore, the musical Fiddler on the Roof , which opened in 1964 and went on to become the longest-running show in history, went through countless drafts among the show’s creative team. In a game-changing meeting, the choreographer-director Jerome Robbins asked the team again and again and again what the show was really about. Finally, the lyricist Sheldon Harnick blurted out, ‘It’s about tradition.’ The rest is history. 26
Now think of movies – the dark dramas, the adventures of heroes, the twist-a-minute thrillers, the moral dilemmas, and the romantic comedies. Their promotional blurbs are only a sentence and yet they grab the heart of the story. For example, ‘A gripping coming-of-age tale about three boys who witness a murder and vow their silence.’ See what I mean?
Radical distillation is one of the best tools in the toolkit for getting right to the heart of what you’re talking about.
RADICAL DISTILLATION EXERCISE
Nothing is more scintillating for an audience than bold, clear simplicity, which gives them access to your ideas and invites them on board.
Get to the point
Recently, while working on puzzles with my three-year-old granddaughter in Vancouver, I spent too long sorting the pieces into piles. As a result, my granddaughter wandered off, her puzzle enthusiasm fizzled out and her focus already elsewhere. And who could blame her? She wanted to make a puzzle but it took too long to get to the good bit!
It’s the same for presentations. You need to turbocharge those beginnings, get stuck in and get to the point! Cease and desist from convoluted conventions, endless framing and lengthy introductions. Create an energetic launch and get to the good stuff as soon as possible.
There are no rules, just conscious decisions
I once attended a talk in an auditorium designed for two hundred or more people, but at which only two people turned up, including me.
Astonishingly, the presenter stuck to his script and to his rehearsed delivery style, geared towards a full auditorium. Setting aside the possibility that the talk was being recorded and therefore it was necessary to perform it as originally planned, it was very awkward to witness a ‘big house’ formal lecture to an audience of two!
I would have preferred it by far had the speaker sat on the edge of the stage, torn up the script and changed gear completely. I’ll bet you can think of a presentation or pitch where someone stayed on script no matter what. Presentation training, with its often stilted playbook, has a lot to answer for. ‘Rules’ such as ‘Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them’ and ‘Touch the tips of your fingers together in front of you to show gravitas’ should be banished!
The only rule you ever need to know is called ‘Make it a conscious decision’.
Slick, pat, rehearsed performances that stick to the script and the delivery style no matter what are not alive. They’re all about ‘getting the job done’ and nothing about taking care of your audience. These kinds of performances may convey critical information, but they’ll leave audiences cold.
Flexibility, adaptability, thinking on your feet and making conscious decisions in the moment are key to connecting with your audience, keeping it real and authentic and landing your messages. In the words of the late, great choreographer Pina Bausch, ‘I’m not interested in how people move, but what moves them.’ 27
The best practice tool to achieve this skill in no time is to put your script and slides to one side and ad-lib.
Remember, if it’s a conscious choice, it’s the right choice.
Endings
According to music lore Bo Diddley once said, ‘I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I’m about to get.’ Marvellous! I urge you all to use this as your mantra before speaking to an audience.
In presentation and public-speaking workshops, I often set the following challenge for participants: ‘At the end of your delivery, stay put and look at your audience while they applaud.’ Given the pain evident in their facial expressions and body language, you would be forgiven for thinking that the participants were literally having their feet held to the flame.
Applause, like compliments, praise or positive feedback, seems to be another one of those gifts that gets routinely dodged and dropped to the ground rather than received with appreciation. Let’s take a moment to reframe this shoddy, habitual attitude.
The end of a presentation (cue applause or appreciative, thoughtful silence) is the beginning of a relationship with your audience. Applause doesn’t just signal ‘thank you’ – applause is also real energy created in the human connection that’s been forged. Now the next conversations can truly begin, from that connection, and your objectives in showing up and presenting can manifest.
The ‘Thank you for coming’ at the start and the ‘Thank you for listening’ at the end are bookends that show you value your audience. Their applause, in turn, shows they value you.
Keep these reframes in mind while I describe the shocking behaviours I witness more often than not when speakers are finishing a performance:
How insulting! Did you ever consider the effect of this disappearing act on your audience? And what if you pulled this stunt when your audience was giving you the gift of applause? Shame on you, dodging that gift of appreciation and attention!
So hold your horses. Stay right where you are and let’s try this once more with feeling: Breathe, stand still, look at your audience, wait a beat… OK. Now you can let go of that metaphorical handshake. But oh! There you go again, rushing off and disconnecting just because you’ve finished speaking. Stay in the now. Keep the connection with your audience. Now is not the time for a post-mortem. Keep the energy of the environment alive – you, your audience, the ideas, the listening. Be that good host of your own dinner party and take care of your guests, the audience. Everything should signal ‘Welcome to this meeting ground’.
COACH IN YOUR POCKET POINTERS