Ain't that the truth!?

“There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.”

- Dale Carnegie

At the End of the Day …

At the end of the day, you want people to like you. If you’re in sales, you know the likeability factor is huge in making the sale. If you’re in management, the same is true for motivating staff. If you’re a keynote speaker, delivering an address to hundreds, you are still hoping they’ll like you and be moved by your message.

When communicating to others, whether in a formal or informal presentation, we’re striving to connect, to reach people, to engage, and to propel them into action of some kind.

But first they have to like us. It’s that basic, that simple.

I turned to an old classic for guidance on the likeability issue. Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends & Influence People” has been in print for more than 75 years. In it, he identifies “Six Ways to Make People Like You” and here they are:

• 1.     Become genuinely interested in other people.
• 2.     Smile.
• 3.     Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• 4.     Be a good listener.
• 5.     Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
• 6.     Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
• 
  

Rocket science? Nope. Basic, good common sense? Yup.

If I were to get scientific, though, and look for some trending patterns in his list, two items stand out:

First, it’s all about them, it’s not about you! This is SmartMouth’s Rule #1. And I’m pleased (and relieved!) to see that I’m in total alignment on that with Dale Carnegie. People, audiences full of people, an audience of one, all want to know that you have thought about them, that you have considered their interests, that you care about them. They want to be noticed, appreciated, understood.

So even when you are invited to speak because you’re a subject matter expert, or even when you’re at the front of the room because you’re the boss, or even when you’re making a sales call and you’re selling exactly what the customer wants or needs, it’s still all about them. Your challenge is to present your material and incorporate acknowledgements of them, their background, accomplishments, interests, and needs. It’s always all about them.

Second, be real about it. I love how he uses the words “genuinely” and “sincerely” – and he gives “smile” it’s own stand-alone billing. There’s a lot to be said for warmth and sincerity.

For sure, people are able to sniff out a phony in seconds (and I guess they’ve been able to do that for 75 years!). More important, though, people are drawn to warmth and sincerity. It’s just human nature.

It was so interesting to revisit these basics. And actually kind of inspiring. I plan to take these 6 principles to heart and look for ways to be more actively conscious of them in my work with 1:1 clients and with groups.

I hope you too will look at the list again and identify a few principles that will help step up your likeability … and, in turn, step up your effectiveness as a communicator!

Recipe: Message Sandwich

One of the most frequently asked questions I get at the beginning of a Presentation Skills Training workshop is “how can I make my point?”

I like to turn that around and suggest that we explore the question “how can I make my audience remember my point?” (Yes, I’m always suggesting a subtle mindset shift from egocentric thinking and communicating to audience-centric thinking and communicating.)

Enter the Message Sandwich!

First ingredient: the message. For every major idea you need to get across – it may be a section of your presentation or the material you’re sharing at a meeting – there’s an important statement to be made. That statement is a message.

And here’s how to find it …

If you are engaged in some form of persuasion (selling, motivating, influencing), the message will convey the significance or benefit or value of what you’re putting out there. If you are engaged in some form of education (informing, reviewing, updating), the message will be more of a capture statement that summarizes the material.

A shortcut to finding the message is by going straight to your conclusion. Ask yourself, how would I conclude? What would I say to wrap up? What is it about this chunk of material that I would want them to take away? Interestingly, we usually save the best for last.

Yet I’m saying, use the best for first and last.

Your message then becomes the top and the bottom slice of bread – i.e. the statement you use to open and close your point.

What’s in the middle of your sandwich? Information. Background, detail, supporting data and statistics, stories and anecdotes.

All too often we lead with information, tons of it. We build a case and then conclude with the message. So forget about evidence first, conclusion last. Go for the sandwich: conclusion-evidence–conclusion; message–info–message.

Reinforcement of your message is the only hope for your audience’s retention of it. Good luck!

New to C-Suite: CRO

Enter the CRO, Chief Reinforcement Officer, the person charged with reinforcing company messages over and over and over again.

I was with the management team of a heavy industrial company last week. The culture of this company is such that they are super responsible to the point of being obsessed about accountability and safety. And there are tons of examples of how they live their words of accountability and safety. Yet they face a lot of audiences that just don’t like the business they’re in and so they’re often faced with unfriendly interactions. Opposition. It happens. It’s not fun, but it happens.

So, in training some of this company’s top-level spokespeople, it came up that the General Manager calls himself the CRO, the Chief Reinforcement Officer. I laughed initially, but then I decided it was brilliant! Of course, a CRO! A CRO is absolutely necessary in any company – not just in a company that has a lot of critics. In fact, it should be a team; anyone who is a spokesperson for an organization should be on the CRO team.

Unless audiences hear a message over and over and over again, it will never stick. Reinforcement is the key. Actually, reinforcement is the only way. Saying the same word or phrase or sentence over and over and over again. Tedious for spokespeople perhaps, but effective in creating stickiness with audiences.

I think I’ll cover messaging sandwiches next time. Message – Info – Message. Yep, a perfect sandwich.

Smartphones in the Audience?

Have you ever been giving a talk and watched – insulted, helpless, and wondering what to do – as the smartphones start popping out in the audience? Pretty discouraging, isn’t it? Or is it? How can anyone be paying attention while they’re clicking away on their phone? Or can they?

The old school of thought was anything that wasn’t pen to paper on a lined pad with focused eye contact was a distracted audience. However, padfolios are giving way to smartphones and tablets; it’s inevitable, so embrace it. Worst case scenario, the smartphones are coming out because the audience member is checking messages, that’s the worst case. But what if they’re taking notes? Or tweeting the point you just made? It’s really no different from the pad and pen days. Maybe they were taking notes on the pad, or maybe they were drafting a memo they forgot to write the day before. You don’t know what people are doing with their smartphones and tablets, but you really never knew what they were doing with their pads and pens either.

Bottom line is don’t be insulted, don’t feel helpless and, most of all, don’t admonish your audience! Instead, use it to your advantage. The whole reason you are giving a talk is to propagate your ideas, right? So hash-tag it. Give them permission to take it beyond the boardroom or conference room; make them work for you. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. All of them allow you to spread your ideas. So embrace the devices that help do that. And welcome to the 21^st Century.

More on TMI

It seems I’m always railing against information and pushing instead for messages. It’s not that I don’t like information, or that I don’t appreciate its usefulness, it’s just that some people use too much of it. And too often they do that at the expense of their messages, which are the key points that provide the packaging for information.

Presentations that contain data dumps, brain dumps, or simply TMI are tedious, hard to follow, and certainly not memorable. But more important, consider this … information is so widely and quickly available these days that perhaps more focus should be placed on the message anyway. Creating context is more urgent. Conveying value is more urgent. Building connections and relationships are more urgent. Information alone is not urgent. It’s a commodity.

Information plays an important role in a presentation, but it’s a supporting role. If time runs out, your messages – or key points – have the starring role and can save the show!

Lessons from Carlos Danger

At a recent press conference, Anthony Weiner lost all control of reporters and resorted to begging them to listen to him. His 800-pound gorilla was off its leash and it started smashing everything in sight. Anthony just stood there helpless, losing complete control.

Running for mayor of New York, there is no doubt that Weiner has important issues he would like to talk about. Reform that would benefit the middle class, budgets, and maybe even new subway schedules, all were ignored. All because of a gorilla that has twice been national headlines and the butt of late night TV jokes.

Sure he had held a press conference to deal directly with the gorilla already, but like anyone who has poured cream into coffee, you can’t just separate things that easily once they’ve been mixed.

The press wanted to get comments on the more recent exploits of Carlos Danger, Weiner wanted to talk about the issues of his campaign. He was getting more and more agitated with every question, the press loved it. The more the press poked at the 800-pound gorilla, the crazier the whole scene became.

All Weiner had to do was acknowledge the gorilla, be willing to deal with it right up front, so he could then, and only then, redirect the reporters to what he wanted to talk about. Instead, Weiner tried to ignore the 800-pound gorilla, the reporters could see only the 800-pound gorilla, and, in the mess and frustration of all that, the 800-pound gorilla took center stage once again. Not exactly Anthony’s desired result.

If you have a distraction – a well-known issue, an obvious troubling situation, a persistent question – deal with it. First. Upfront. Right off the bat. If you don’t, the gorilla will get loose and destroy everything.

Every Second Counts

NPR recently did a study of how quickly people lose interest in a video if it takes more than a few seconds to load. “What we found was that people were pretty patient for up to two seconds,” said Ramesh Sitaraman, science professor at the University of Massachusetts.

The research showed that viewers begin to abandon video if it does not start up within two seconds. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, each additional second of delay resulted in a 5.8 percent increase in the abandonment rate. In other words, by 10 seconds, half of the viewers had already bolted.

So, what’s our takeaway from this? You’re not the latest season of “Arrested Development” or the music video someone needs to see from their favorite band. You have about two seconds to convince your audience that the content is going to be there.

Tell them right up front what’s coming and why they should pay attention. Let them know it’s going to be worth sitting tight for 15 minutes. Be incredibly clear and deliberate in your opening, and you will have your audience with you the whole time.          

The Black Screen

Ugh … PowerPoint. It isn’t my favorite presentation tool. Apart from the usual complaints about PowerPoint, it’s the use of technology that, for me, can bring with it too many risks. There is one thing that makes it better for me, though – a black screen.

We’ve all waited while a speaker or presenter boots up their PowerPoint right in front of us, right? And we stare at their desktop while we wait. Sometimes it’s a picture of family, or a car, or a random field in Iowa. Desktops can be a window into the soul. Or sometimes they’re just a window into the speaker’s dirty laundry … yuck.

My antidote? I color in an all-black slide and make it Slide #1 for my presentations. That way the projector can be on, the PowerPoint ready to go, but it looks like I haven’t plugged in or booted up yet. I was recently told this is a “brilliant idea” … by the very same woman who “did me a favor” and deleted my black slide.

The backstory is that I recently presented to a group in San Francisco and had sent them my slides ahead of time. However, when I arrived in the room, my logo slide – Slide #2 – was up, and Slide #1 was nowhere to be found. I was calm, but I worried about my slide deck because I knew it wasn’t what I sent over (the logo as an opening slide makes it look like it’s all about me – cardinal sin! – and I would never open that way). Long story short, the woman responsible for the event had assumed the black slide was some sort of mistake and she deleted it for me! We had a good laugh after I explained the method behind my madness …

Bottom line:  You have less than 10 seconds to grab an audience’s attention when you get up to speak or present. Yes, audiences decide in less than 10 seconds if you’re worth listening to, or if you’re going to be just the usual. Don’t squander those precious seconds by fiddling with technology!

Short, Sweet, Simple

Did you know that the Toyota car company was founded by a man with the last name of Toyoda? Why the change? Simplicity. They changed the name because it took fewer brush strokes to render the version that translates to the T.

People like simple things. Colloquialisms not jargon. Short is better than long. Business does better when supply lines are short and simple. Speeches do better when they are easy to understand and to the point.

That’s it, short and to the point.

Today’s Teacher: Comics

You're thinking, "How could comics teach me anything about making a presentation?"

Well, what are comics? I know, there’s a bit of a stigma attached. Kids’ stuff. Or socially awkward guys crowded into small, obscure shops in desolate strip malls. But there actually is a lot in those thin tomes. Comics are stories. They are images with limited text. And, almost magically, they are exactly what their audience wants.

Stories. People read comics because they tell a story that readers can relate to, laugh at, or just ponder. You can do the same thing by using a story; a short, simple, and to-the-point story speaks volumes. Think about how your story fits in with the bigger point or goal of your talk. Hmmm, sort of how one volume of a comic fits in the scheme of the series.

Images. A picture is worth a thousand words. Comics are full of pictures. The author can say less when you can see more. You can reinforce your message by showing them a picture; hand something out, draw on a white board ... PowerPoint if you're desperate.

Audience. This is the most important one. Some people like Spider-Man and his average Joe roots. Some prefer Batman for fighting on behalf of what he is not: average. There are as many reasons to read comics as there are volumes. But every one of those reasons is ultimately because they relate to their specific audience. Knowing your audience will help you tell the right story.

So maybe it is time to think about comics. How does your story drive the message? How do your visuals make your story come alive? And most importantly, who is your audience and what grabs them? 

New Year's Resolution 2013

Lists. 86 the lists. No one remembers all the items from a list. If I could make one New Year's resolution for all my clients for 2013, it would be No More Lists! 

Allow me to play armchair psychologist for a second ... You're dreading the preparation for your next presentation, aren't you? Perhaps you're feeling a bit insecure or defensive, like you need to demonstrate to your audience how knowledgeable or smart you are? Maybe time is running short, you're in a rush to prepare your presentation, and you need some filler that a list or two would provide? Or, you're feeling the urge that if only you could tell your audience absolutely everything you know about your topic, they would be more easily persuaded? Any of these sound familiar?

If you find yourself preparing to use lists, consider it a red flag of warning ... you may be entering a zone of TMI (too much information!). Check yourself. If it's absolutely necessary, use a list. If not, then ditch it, or prioritize so that you share only the most important items. Or, even better, think about the importance of your list and speak more fully to its significance, but not to the list itself!

And 2013 will be a happier year for you and your audiences!