Chapter 4 continued…
The 7 deadly habits
As you start attending presentations and paying closer attention in meetings and one-on-one interactions with people, you will begin to notice how information is communicated (or not), not just the information itself. And you will no doubt see at least some of the “7 deadly habits” in others and in yourself as you start critically evaluating your own presentation style. The “7 deadlies” are habits that speakers aren’t aware of that completely undermine the audience’s ability to pay attention. If you spot these in your practice videotapes, or if you get wind of them in feedback from your audiences, strike without mercy to destroy them. You owe it to your message and to your future audiences to rid yourself of these undead menaces from beyond the grave … er, bad habits.
1) The “uh” and the “ummm”
“So, ummm, what I’d, uh, like to, uh, talk about today is, uh, the weekly finance figures and, ummm, and how they, ummm, how they impact the, uh, monthly projections.”
No, really. People do talk this way. If you don’t believe me, read it out loud and it won’t sound quite so outlandish.
It is human nature to sprinkle speech with these fillers when we get nervous, and the amount added usually increases along with nervous energy. They are crutches that we add to fill what we perceive is an awkward silence while we remember what to say next or try to deflect a question for which we aren’t prepared.
But look, conversation has pauses, and at its best public speaking is a conversation with each and every member of your audience. You aren’t ever going to be prepared for every question. There will be a pause as you figure out the best way to handle the question. Recognize these things as natural features of communication, not as flaws to be painted over. If you’ve just got to use a filler, use a reasonable one like this one suggested by a friend with a long career speaking in front of students: “That’s an excellent question, Thank you for sharing it with us.”
When you catch yourself using fillers, just pause and take a deep breath right at the point you had planned to say “ummm” or “uh” for the fortieth time in a row. The pause might seem awkward to you, but, believe me, your audience will silently thank you for not pelting them with another nonsense filler. If you do this every time you feel the urge to “uh” or “ummm” the extra deep breathing and time to gather your wits will result in a sense of calm and relaxed control. After that, you won’t need to, uh, “ummm” anymore.
2) The jingle
My dad is a jingler. More when I was younger than now, but I can remember going with him to Christmas parties or functions that weren’t meant to be “fun only” affairs and him nearly constantly jingling whatever was in his pocket at the time (it sounded to me like $80 in nickels).
Looking back on it I realize that he was probably just uncomfortable, which I can relate to now, since I still have all the social grace of a gawky 13-year-old. At the time, however, I wondered how anyone could pay attention to what he was saying.
For most people speaking in front of an audience is pretty much the most uncomfortable thing they’ll do in their professional or personal lives. And all this discomfort makes for some prime pocket-jingling opportunities.
If you are a jingler, and you know who you are, empty your pockets. Do not carry keys, change, or RAM chips in your pockets. No chapstick, no lipstick. Nothing. I mean it. And don’t cheat by putting things in your coat pocket “just in case.” Do what I do, and have the suit guy at the department store leave your coat pockets sewn shut—it preserves the drape, anyway.
Your audience will thank you, and your message will have one less thing to compete with for your audience’s attention.
3) Cup talking, face stroking, and the adjustment
If you aren’t a jingler, then you might fit into this category. Happily, I fit into both categories so I have a long list of habits for which I have to be constantly on the lookout.
When I speak in front of larger groups, for whatever reason, my throat goes dry pretty quickly. I know this about myself, and so I usually have a cup or bottle of something on the podium for when things start to seize up. Early on, however, I formed a bad habit: cup talking. I would usually take a drink at a pause in the presentation, for example following an audience question. Then, intent upon answering the question and not paying attention to the cup, I’d start talking before the cup was away from my mouth, muffling the first part of the answer. I realized I was doing this because I had planted some feedback buddies in the audience, and they let me in on the bad news. This is a fairly easy thing to fix, but you have to know it’s happening.
The same kind of problem happens when you are constantly stroking your chin/check/neck or adjusting your tie/jacket/microphone. At worst, the audience cannot hear all of what you are saying because your hands block your mouth. At best all this movement will distract them slightly from you message. These habits are especially destructive if you are wearing a microphone; you won’t be able to hear any noise at all as you adjust your tie, but the audience will be deafened by a rustling cacophony of silk.
So, follow that really good bit of advice your parents would give you on long summer road trips: keep your hands to yourself. Adjust, primp, and preen before you get on stage. After that, let it go. Just don’t channel all that fidgety energy into your pockets, or you’ll become a jingler and have a new habit to kick.
4) Appearing alive, but not too much so
While most of us fall in the middle of the expressiveness range in a public setting, we all need to be aware of the dangers that lie at the two extremes.
On the one end is the speaker who stands rooted to one spot, hands white-knuckle clenched on either side of a lectern, evidently battling each word out of his mouth through an expenditure of self control that would make Saint Francis look like a lush. Think of Ben Stein’s character from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (anyone…anyone…).
On the other end is hopped-up-on-speed-guy. He doesn’t stand still for a second and is really Really REALLY excited about every single word he has to say.
Yikes. I’ve seen them both, and once or twice I’ve probably been both. As with most things in life, the key to deciding how animated you need to be is to search for moderation.
Both extremes are very distracting. In both cases, the audience will focus on the novelty of the behavior patterns of the strange creature—one that looks human but clearly is not—at the front of the room. Your message won’t just get lost; it won’t even make it in the door.
Move around a little. Move your arms some. Raise and lower your voice to emphasize key points. In other words, act like you are having a normal conversation. Your audience will respond in kind, and without any abnormal behavior to focus on, they’ll be forced to focus on your message. You can (and should) still be passionate about your topic, but keep it under control and express that passion only to the degree appropriate for the venue in which you are speaking. If it’s genuine passion, and if your expression is appropriate, your audience will connect even more deeply with the message.
I find two things that help me here. First, I make sure that I always have a wireless remote for my presentation. You can buy these nifty little USB devices now that work on Windows and Mac computers with no configuration for only $20 or $30. When you arrive at your speaking destination just plug the USB key into the presentation computer, and you’re ready to roam. The remote lets me wander around a little without having to orbit in an unnatural pattern that returns me to the spacebar every minute to advance to the next slide.
The second thing I do that helps my level of animation appear more relaxed is that I, well, relax. I do this by getting into the room or lecture hall in which I’ll be speaking before anyone arrives and I get comfortable. I walk around and imagine the audience in their seats. I sit in some seats, and see what the audience will be seeing. After this I always feel much more at home, and this familiarity with the space translates into a much lower level of bad nervous energy during the talk.
5) The block
Another habit that can be killed (or at least given a serious taunting) by getting comfortable with your speaking space ahead of time is the block.
You’ve seen the block. It happens when a speaker puts up a slide and then promptly stands in front of it. The block is most commonly spotted in the wild when an overhead projector is being used, but there is no technology that’s completely immune from the block. So your speaking skills are going to have to compensate.
While you are working your way around the room, study the projection system. Is it rear projection? If so, you won’t have to worry about casting shadows over your slides, but you will still have to worry about staying out of the line of sight. This is another reason it’s good to roam around at least a little. A slight pattern that moves from one side of the speaker’s area (whether it’s a podium or stage or whatever) to the other will make sure that everyone in the audience will have an unobstructed view of each slide at some point. For ceiling-mounted projectors, make sure you know where the throw is, and either stay out of it, or move through it in your orbiting so that you aren’t constantly blocking the screen. Depending upon where the projector is in relation to you and the screen, even a petite first-year student can block the whole screen with shadow. For overhead projectors, practice loading the transparencies onto the bed of the projector from several angles and sides. Pick the one that keeps you out of the light most of the time.
If you beat the block, the audience will not notice. If you don’t beat it, it’s all they’ll notice.
6) The sprint
You’re really nervous. You’ve rehearsed your talk a million times, and even taped some of the practice sessions. You’ve had good feedback, and worked on crushing a couple habits.
Then it’s show time and you turn an hour’s worth of material into a 20-minute stream of information concentrate, thank the audience for their time, and bolt out the door. What happened?
Too much of a good thing. The key here is that you rehearsed a million times. You actually rehearsed so much that you memorized a script, and once the time came to recite that script, you went to town. Without having to be slowed down by thinking about what to say next, you forget about your audience, you lose track of the signals they are sending you, and you just plow from topic to topic until the last “Discussion” slide. There isn’t any discussion, of course, because no one followed what you said.
Do not rehearse too much. The first big problem this causes for your message is that your tendency is to run as fast as you can through the script, and your message will become completely lost. Assuming that you can control your speed, however, there is still another problem. Your content will be stale. Part of that magic connection you’re trying to forge with your audience results from the immediacy, the freshness, of the communication that is happening. This grows from the bond formed between two people or groups of people that are exploring an issue together and trying to come to mutual understanding. If you are “turned off” on the inside and simply reciting a script, then your audience will turn off too.
7) Communing with nature
When you are speaking to a group you are supposed to be having a conversation with that group. Think back on your conversations today. I’ll bet you a Guinness that most of them had one thing in common: you were talking to your conversational partner. As in facing him or her. Making eye contact. Not facing the opposite direction, not looking at notes, not staring out the window.
The rules don’t change when you are the only one standing, and everyone else is listening to you. Talk to your audience. Don’t talk to the screen. Don’t talk to your note cards. Don’t talk to your coffee. Look your audience in the eye and talk directly to them.
Don’t commune with nature, commune with your audience.
What should your presentation look like?
Well, that depends, but there are universals, and I’ll talk about some of them here.
There are also some excellent resources in print and on the web that you can refer to for a wealth of in-depth expert information on this topic. My advice to you is that you read several of these resources along with any guidelines or templates that your organization mandates you follow, and start putting together a style that works for you and your situation.
You will recall from the chapter on writing that I contend that neatness counts in any documentation you produce. In the case of the written word your document may be the only window your readers have into the sort of person you are and the kind of work you produce. In this case, neatness (or lack of it) can open or close your audiences’ minds before they even read the first word.
Likewise, make sure that whatever you are presenting, whether it’s slides or film or drawings, looks polished and professional. Unlike with written documents, you are (usually) present with your presentation, and so your audience will have more than one source of information about you and your competence from which to draw, so neatness isn’t of such singular significance. Still, a sloppy presentation will undermine your credibility beyond a point from which you will likely be able to recover totally, no matter how engaging your personal style. Also presentations, especially good ones, tend to grow legs and walk away from you as they are shared by e-mail and the web with people who may never see you actually give the presentation, so make it look as good as possible.
Slides
I am going to assume here that your presentation will involve slides of some sort. I realize that not all presentations in all disciplines do, but in technology fields the slide seems to be the rule, not the exception.
In the Bad Old Days, slides were pretty difficult to create and, because of the cost and effort involved, professionals in graphics departments were often enlisted to make sure the material looked good the first time and was as reusable as possible. The end result was a consistent look and feel for a corporation’s slides, and slides that were fairly high quality overall as they had been reviewed or even created by someone with actual training in the graphic arts.
Nowadays any monkey with a keyboard and PowerPoint can (and does) create his or her own slides. I’m all for the democratizing power of technology, but PowerPoint is not a Good Thing.
Actually, PowerPoint isn’t to blame. It is a tool, and like any tool can be used for good or ill. Unfortunately, people are variously lazy, uninformed, uneducated, or uninterested in what goes into making a good presentation, and PowerPoint does nothing to restrain the havoc that bad decisions have caused on presentations around the world.
As an example, I recently attended a Government briefing on some real groundbreaking information technology research. The speakers were the best of the best in IT, all from high-powered institutions. Nothing but the sharpest technical talent this country has to offer was at the podium. Yet I have never seen slides worse than the ones I saw at that meeting.
The presentations were slide after slide of prose in PowerPoint bullet form, peppered with really low resolution clip art that had almost nothing to do with the text on the slide. Following this meeting I resolved to be a part of ridding the universe of the great evil of bad slides. And so I decided to take the Steve Jobs approach to slides.
If you’ve never seen a Steve Jobs presentation, go to the Apple Web site and check out the Apple Events section on the QuickTime pages. Here you’ll find one or more of Steve’s presentations from various conferences and industry events. Ignore the technology that he’s talking about, and look at his slides. They are strongly graphic. Wherever possible, Steve uses an image (such as the United Kingdom flag) rather than text to make a point. When he sees the flag on the screen, he knows to talk about the launch of the iTunes Music Store in the UK. When text is needed, he only uses a few key words in major bullets and almost never uses sub bullets. Visually the graphics are all chosen because of the points they support and they relate to each other in the same style (in other words, he doesn’t mix a sketched drawing with a highly polished photograph with clip art—he keeps to one visual style). And he uses a simple gray background, no logos, and no goofy colors or fonts in his templates.
Now, undoubtedly some of this polished zip and zing happens because Steve has an army of minions to do his bidding creating specialized graphics and templates for him. The rest of us aren’t so lucky. And you very likely will have some horrific slide template handed to you filled with low-res corporate icons and lots of visual junk. Until you are in charge you’ll have to live with this, but do take charge of the things you can control. When you are selecting images, make sure they are all of the same style (sketched or photographic, color or black and white). Pick a font that is readable on whatever computer and projection system you are using (and test it out ahead of time!). Don’t mix a lot of fonts. Don’t mix a lot of colors.
And don’t put a lot of text on your slides. You don’t want your audience reading your slides, you want them paying attention to you. And you don’t want to read slides to the audience because that doesn’t create good communication. Your audience will not remember more than 5% of your text. We just aren’t optimized for remembering words. What we are optimized for, and what they will remember, are images. If you can give your audience a set of images that tell your story, then those images will stick with them much longer than what you say or whatever text you put on your slides.
As an example of what I mean, consider a briefing to mid-level management on the results of a usability study you recently completed on a piece of software that your company sells. You’ve found that the software is really difficult to get familiar with, and your presentation recommends a user-interface overhaul to address this problem. Instead of a bunch of text bullets that say your product is creating obstacles to new users getting up and running with your software, put a single image of a man struggling to run uphill, or a climber working her way up a mountain. This poor soul is your user. Show her or him to your audience, and then back up that image with some key points as you are speaking that explain and justify it. When you get to the section that will detail some of the user-interface changes your group is recommending, don’t introduce the topic with a series of dry text slides. Show them an image that conveys your goal: for example, a runner headed downhill, or kids sliding down a slide. Then, again, provide a few key bullets that back up and explain your image. A series of well-chosen images will be much more effective in getting your message into the hearts and minds of your audience than straight text will ever be.
As a comment specifically related to PowerPoint, do not use the default templates and the default clipart. At least at the time of this writing, the default templates are simply not well designed. The colors and graphics are often superfluous, poor quality, or both. The fonts chosen are often completely incompatible with the graphics-rendering capabilities of the computers and projectors displaying the presentations (for example, serif fonts at smaller point sizes become jaggy and broken looking in most presentations thanks to the poor rendering capabilities of Windows XP and earlier versions). Most of the available clip art is nothing short of awful. And if these reasons aren’t enough for you, you shouldn’t use the default templates because everyone else is. You aren’t everyone else. You and your company are different. Look different. Any time you spend with a few graphics and presentation design books or classes will be well spent as you craft your own template, or tweak someone else’s. Even something as simple as moving from Times New Roman to a sans serif more appropriate for low quality projectors, a font like Arial or Helvetica, can dramatically improve the visual quality of your slides.
Just in the past year, 2004, there has been a lot of movement by companies like Microsoft and others to address these shortcomings of their products. I hope that some day speakers won’t have to fight poor default design choices by their software in addition to their own bad habits when putting together and delivering a presentation. Until that time, however, you are going to have to be the glue that pulls it all together.
Tipping is appreciated
“Theory and big ideas. Don’t you have any tips I can start using right now?” Why yes, I do. Thanks for asking.
Hyperventilate your way to a successful talk
Everyone is nervous before a performance (see the next tip). But if you find your nervousness might distract you from being effective, do what I do: hyperventilate. A series of six or seven really short breaths will starve your brain of a little oxygen, and give you a slightly “buzzed” feeling. It only lasts for a few seconds, but if you time the breaths with the beginning of your talk those seconds can be just enough to get you over getting started, which can be the hardest part of all.
After twelve years of giving talks, tours, and presentations, I still do this. It works.
Nervous energy gives you the edge
Giving a public talk or presentation is a performance. Even seasoned actors will tell you that they get butterflies every time they go out on stage. The difference between successful performers and those who are crippled by this fear is attitude. If your attitude is that being nervous is a sign of inadequacy on your part, then you will curse yourself for being nervous and try to bury the feeling. Nervous energy is like nuclear waste. You can bury it for a while, but it generally just makes a bad problem worse.
Instead of shunning the feelings, embrace them. Tell yourself that this nervous energy is going to give you that little extra kick you need to stay fresh, focused, and connected with the audience. I actually only get concerned when I’m not nervous. To me this is a sign that I’m too comfortable with my material, and I’m about to give a lifeless presentation to my audience. Hey, if Carly Simon still gets butterflies before every performance, it’s good enough for me (substitute your performer of choice if you aren’t a Carly Simon fan).
Run a preflight check
A group of pastors were at a retreat being given by their church organization, and the featured speaker at the event was an internationally known evangelist. This was a man so dynamic and charismatic that he was frequently called to give counsel to presidents and world leaders in times of crisis.
At the conclusion of his presentation the audience was asking the evangelist questions. One of the pastors asked “You frequently speak to audiences of 10,000 or more when you appear in stadiums, and millions see you on TV. You are so charismatic and effective, and you always connect with your audience. Can you share a tip with us? What is the last thing you do before you come out on stage?” The pastor asking the question expected to hear something like “I review my notes” or “I pray before going on stage.” Instead the evangelist replied, “I check my fly.”
In order to connect with your audience you have to be confident, channeling your nervous energy to good use in focusing on your audience, watching for signs of feedback from them, and staying on message. In fact, you have to do about a dozen things all at once to create and sustain that deep connection you are seeking with your audience over which communication happens. You can’t manage all this multitasking if you are worried about whether you hair is sticking up in back or that lump in your teeth is part of the salad you had for lunch.
So, before you head up to the front, duck into the restroom and check yourself out. Check your teeth, your hair, your makeup (if any), and make sure your shirt is tucked in. Make sure it’s all perfect, and then forget about it so you can concentrate on your audience and they can concentrate on you (and not the toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe).
Get some armor
I’m not crazy about drawing analogies between public speaking and medieval battles, but this one works OK.
Before medieval warriors went into battle, they spent a lot of time and money making sure they were properly outfitted with mail and swords and shields and such. Some of this effort was practical: the more steel plates between you and the bad guy, the higher your chances of showing up for ale after the battle. But take a look at medieval armor, and you’ll see that it wasn’t all about protection. Some of the armor is very fancy with lots of gold flourishes and feathers. Some is meant to be intimidating, all done in black with spikes and dragons. To some extent it is clear that a warrior’s armor conveyed who he was—a man to be feared in battle—and could even help him to win a battle by striking fear into his enemies and giving him a little boost of confidence.
You probably won’t benefit too much from having a flaming dragon emblazoned on your handbag, but you can get the warrior’s lift of confidence by investing in some presentation armor. My armor is a fairly expensive suit jacket. When I put that jacket on I know that I have on the most expensive and best-looking coat in the room. Sort of a “power tie” for the new millennium, and it gives me a little unconscious confidence kick.
What gives you your confidence kick? A $100 tie? A new suit? A pair of Italian loafers? A Hermes scarf? A Louis Vutton valise? A lucky charm? A fresh haircut?
Whatever it is, having it can make a real difference in the confidence that you project and in your comfort in front of the audience. Get yourself some armor.
Empty your pockets
We already talked about the why of this tip in the deadly habit of jingling. Empty your pockets before you get up to speak. This tip has the added advantage of improving the drape of your clothes—no extra weight to tug at your jacket and bulge your pants. I don’t even carry my wallet when I’m speaking.
Drinking on the job
Make sure you know before you get up to speak whether you, like me, are likely to run dry. I invariably dry up about 10 minutes into any presentation, which is why I always have a bottle of water around to sip from. If you are in the same boat, make arrangements ahead of time to have a refreshing beverage at the podium or area in which you’ll be speaking before the action begins. It will be one less thing for you to fuss about as you are working your way up to the front, and that will help keep everything moving on time. Also, hard candy helps some people with dry mouth.
Notes
When you start reading books and attending classes on effective ways to give presentations, you’ll run into the idea of notes. Some authors advocate them. Some don’t. Some do, but only in certain formats (like 3×5 cards).
I am in favor of doing whatever it takes to enable myself to connect with the audience and communicate my message to them. At this particular point in my life, this usually means that I work without a net: no notes. I find that having notes adds an extra layer of stuff I have to keep track of in my consciousness. I have enough going on trying to connect to the audience and adapt to their spoken and unspoken feedback that I don’t want to have to worry about making sure I’m on the right note card or hit all the points on a given card. Also, if I have to use cards it’s usually a sign that I don’t understand the material well enough to be talking about it or that I am trying to cover too much material in one talk and I need to step back and reevaluate.
All of this works well for me and the kinds of presentations I usually give. My approach may not work at all for you, so you should adapt to fit your style and your goals. If having a set of notes puts you at ease and you can manage them without distraction, then you should use them. Likewise if you are giving a process talk or covering regulatory information where you have to be sure that you completely cover a set of prescribed points on a given topic, then notes may be absolutely necessary for you.
Just be sure, if you are going to use notes, that they are only notes and that they’re easy to manage. It is a short step from having note cards to writing down everything you want to say and thence to reading your script to the audience at presentation time. Do not fall into this trap.
Your notes should be limited to keywords and phrases only, just enough to make sure you stay on track. Your notes need to be easy to manage. Don’t head up to the podium with a sheaf of papers that are going to get out of order or dropped five minutes into the talk. Keep your notes small enough to manage without distracting you or your audience, and create them in a way that prevents you from dropping them and creating a scene. Ideally they should fit into your pocket and be few enough in number so that they can be quickly reordered if (when) you do drop them.
Becoming outstanding: The particulars of private speaking
Many books on communication and leadership will stop with writing and giving presentations to large groups of people. These activities are a big part of the story, but they are only part of the story. When people list the things they think they aren’t good at, or that could benefit from a little tuning, writing and public speaking make the list, but everyday communication, the one-on-one that happens in the privacy of an office or cubicle, does not. In terms of time actually spent, though, by far the lion’s share of your output and interactions as a leader will be spent interacting with an individual or a very small group of individuals.
This isn’t public speaking. It is usually informal, doesn’t involve slides, doesn’t involve large groups of people and often doesn’t involve sweeping plans or broad visions for the future. For lack of a better term, then, this is private speaking. This is the interaction you have with coworkers, managers, and staff that shapes and defines the “how” of how you get things done.
You can find good information on managing and improving your private communications on the Web and in books and seminars, if you know where to look. Look for books on communications in the self-improvement or business sections of your bookstore. Also check out books on management technique, as they often have sections on motivating individuals that offer good tips on effective interpersonal interactions.
Interacting on purpose
Every interaction is potentially important, but you won’t recognize which ones are and which ones aren’t until you learn to treat your private interactions with the same degree of care that you treat your public interactions. Spend a little time before each interaction to be sure you know what you want to accomplish—what your message is—and how the other person is likely to respond. Armed with this planning you can then decide whether it’s safe to proceed or whether you need to spend more time getting ready. This approach will lead to a uniquely powerful style of interacting with others. I call it interacting on purpose, and adopting this style will set you apart as an enlightened leader.
Even though it is contrary to the way most of us think, private speaking is a skill to be developed and improved. With the exception of purely social interactions, all private speaking shares the central goal of public speaking: communicating a message for others to act upon. The size of the group is smaller, but your small group messages can benefit just as much as the public ones from the application of a little thought and discipline.
The first step in improving your private speaking is identifying what it is that you are trying to accomplish. For example, you might stop by your boss’s office to get his or her opinion on a new direction for your project. The primary purpose is to get feedback before deviating from the planned course of action. But you might also have a secondary purpose of demonstrating to your boss that you are actively working on the project and contributing innovative thinking. You will be most effective in your private interactions if you identify all of your purposes—primary and secondary—ahead of time, and come up with a strategy that gets them all accomplished. Not doing this may mean that you meet one of your goals, but not the others, or that you may meet one at the expense of the others.
In the example above if you ran the new idea by your boss, but didn’t identify it as a new idea, you run the risk of your boss thinking that you were just stopping by on a gratuitous social mission to review a plan that was already decided upon. Your boss is a busy person, and she probably is doing more than one project at a time. If she doesn’t realize or remember that what you are proposing is new she might be irritated that you are “wasting” her time reviewing something that was already decided upon, she wouldn’t have a chance to evaluate the idea as a change in direction, and she wouldn’t associate your visit with a demonstration of innovative thinking and initiative. In short, you wouldn’t accomplish any of your goals and you run the risk of being branded as an ineffective communicator.
Private communications need planning. But this kind of thinking is not very common. Part of the reason for this is that familiarity breeds inattention: every day, for most of our lives, we engage in private speaking. We talk to people one on one all the time, and we become unaware of the need to prepare. But if you want to succeed—that is, if you want to communicate your message—you absolutely must prepare. In the sections that follow, I’ll review some of the techniques that have worked for me as I work to refine my own private-speaking skills. Some of these may be overkill for some low-intensity interactions, so let your conscience be your guide, and only do as much work ahead of time as necessary.
Difficult Conversations
Before I get into general techniques for preparing to have effective private communications, I want to briefly touch on the topic of difficult conversations.
Undoubtedly at least some of the private interactions you are going to have as a leader are going to be in the category of a difficult conversation. A conversation is often labeled as difficult when there is conflict, or anticipated conflict, between the ways two people perceive a given situation. For example, when you have to tell a coworker that she is not doing her part, or when someone has done something that has affected you cruelly and you need to tell him.
Preparation helps, but it isn’t a magic bullet for a difficult conversation. No matter how much work you do ahead of time you eventually must start the conversation and risk damaging your relationship with the other person. What can help you get through this is to concentrate on why you are having the conversation and understand what the possible outcomes—and their impact—are likely to be.
If you are about to tell a coworker or employee that his or her work really isn’t up to par, then focus on your end goal: improving the work product, contribution to the company, and the eventual security of the job. After you deliver the news, be prepared to offer a plan to help the person improve. Even though feelings and self-images will be bruised, having a plan for improvement will help make things better in the end.
Likewise if you are confronting someone who has acted thoughtlessly in a way that has injured you, focus on what you are trying to accomplish. If you truly care about the person who has injured you, your end goal is probably to improve the relationship and restore it to a healthy footing. Even though what you are about to say will be difficult, and a heated exchange may develop, it will help if you stay focused on why you are making the effort in the first place. On the other hand, it may be that the person in question is not someone you are close to, but the insult was public and subordinated the chain of command. In this case you are trying to restore order and authority, and it doesn’t really matter if you or the other person is uncomfortable as there isn’t a relationship to protect.
Something else that can guide you safely through your difficult conversations is to remember that it is impossible to know for sure someone else’s motivation for doing anything until they tell you. You cannot, for example, know that an underperforming employee is striking back at you for not giving him a raise unless he has told you this is the case. So don’t start a conversation from this point of view. Do start it from the point of view of what you know: lately the employee’s work product is not of the quality that you have come to expect from him, and you’d like to understand why and how you can help. It may be that he is striking back, but you don’t know that until he tells you, so don’t assume this is the case.
I cannot tell you how often I run into this personally in my private interactions, and it’s something I learned the hard way to pay attention to up front. At the beginning of my tenure in senior leadership I had several employees who committed serious infractions of our organization’s security policy. These were violations of really basic regulations, and I assumed that the infractions were committed as a willful disregard for the rules. Every time I made this assumption and meted out an appropriately harsh punishment, I later learned that there really was another dimension to the story. The facts—violation of regulation—were the same, but the motivations were far from what I imagined them to be. And in every case I ended up eating crow and retracting my harsh punishment in favor of something more in line with the complex circumstances.
No matter what you think you know about another person’s motivations, don’t act until you know you know. You’ll never be sorry if you take the time to explore the why first.
Getting Ready
Before an important private interaction I always take a little time to sketch out in my mind how things are going to go. How will I open the conversation? How will she respond? Which responses are most likely, and how will I deal with each of them?
For most interactions this takes up just a few minutes before the start of the conversation, and I don’t do anything formal or on paper. But if the conversation is really important and the stakes, whether for me or the other person, are really high, I take the time to do some formal preparation. The most effective way I’ve found for preparing for an important conversation is to create a mind map.
I’ve talked about mind maps before, and they can be a surprisingly effective tool for organizing a strategy for a conversation. I usually start out by mapping what I’d like to accomplish, and what the conflicts in the interaction are likely to be (if any). For example, if I’m delivering news about a poor customer review to the staff member responsible for working with that customer, then my goal is to improve performance in the future, and the conflicts are likely to center around the quality of performance or why “the customer is seeing things the wrong way.”
Then I create a branch (you can visualize a mind map as a tree with branches) for my opening line—this is often the most difficult for me when it comes time for the actual conversation, so I usually plan it ahead of time. Once I have it written down I can check it for perspective: does it assume that I understand the motivations of my employee (bad idea), or have I started by identifying the facts at the root of the problem (neutral ground from which to start mutual exploration)?
Once I have the opening line sketched out and sanitized, I create subbranches for each of the possible responses for the employee, and sketch out my response to each. I don’t carry this too far—I’m not writing a screenplay after all—but I do carry it far enough that I’m sure I have the major bases covered. For example, two possible responses in this situation are: “Really? That surprises me. I thought we had an excellent rapport and that I met her needs” and “This is totally her fault. She was difficult to deal with from the beginning and she’s lucky I helped her at all.” What’s important is not that I get the words right, but that I capture the sentiment of the employee’s response and know how I am going to respond so that I steer the conversation in the most productive direction possible.
Consider another setting. Imagine that your goal is to sell your plan for getting the new product to market to your boss’s boss. You have a good plan, possibly the best plan, and you are the right person to execute it. You do some preparation ahead of time and know how you are going to pitch your plan and how you are going to address technical questions. Then she asks a really hard question: “The last time you had a project you were ten weeks late. Why should I trust you with this responsibility now?” If you aren’t prepared to answer this question, your only alternative will be to mumble a few words about how you’ve changed and skulk in shame to the door.
It is important at this stage to be honest with yourself and to be imaginative in preparing for the possible responses from your conversation partner to your message. If your partner responds in a way that you are completely unprepared for and you start to founder and lose control of the conversation, then your message will be lost and not recovered without considerable follow-on effort on your part. Try to anticipate the questions, and know how you are going to respond to every possible response. Then you can dodge, parry, or thrust with confidence while staying on message in your private communication.
Practice
In rare situations, the process of preparation and of creating mind maps isn’t enough. Either the stakes (for you or your conversation partner) are so high that I’m not comfortable even having the conversation, or the conflict is likely to be so intense that I don’t want to begin.
What can help here is to actually rehearse the conversation. Grab someone you trust, your wife, a mentor, or a close colleague, and talk through the scenario with them. Review your mind map with your mentors, and ask them to look for flaws in your thinking or blind spots in your understanding of your communication partner’s likely responses. You might even ask them to role-play with you and work through a mock conversation. If you are going to do this, make sure to include at least one “very worst case” scenario. In this scenario your partner gives the absolute worst (most combative, most confused, and so on) responses to your statements. Once you’ve worked through the worst case, everything else will probably seem a little easier.
When I find myself in these situations, I rely on my wife to help me rehearse them. Besides being extremely perceptive about my blind spots, she is also an analytical person by nature, and often sees sides to the issues I’m trying to deal with that I haven’t considered. You can also find some help in books such as Lifescripts, which I’ve mentioned before. This book analyses some commonly encountered tough situations (asking for a raise, heading off potential client problems, and so on) and presents actual scripts for how the conversation might proceed. The authors consider a variety of ways to help you start the conversation, and provide options for you depending on several responses that you might receive. It’s come in pretty handy when I was faced with sticky situations and unsure how to proceed.
Don’t go in empty-handed; bring solutions
There is a lot to cover about private speaking, and I have provided only the broadest outlines to get you thinking in the right direction. The rest of the effort is up to you. But I do want to add one thing to what I’ve already said.
Whenever you are interacting with someone and there is conflict, make sure your primary goal is to improve the situation. In other words, don’t start your private speaking with the goal of identifying a problem; any leader wannabe can do that. Simply identifying problems—highlighting what won’t work—marks you as a negative person (even if you’re right) that people will eventually not want to work with, and it creates new problems for the person or people with whom you are communicating.
Set yourself apart by following up problem identification with a suggested course of action. Your suggestion may not always be taken, but I guarantee that whomever you are interacting with will respond to the effort you’ve shown in identifying a possible solution. And identifying a solution shifts the conversation from one of fault and blame to one that looks forward to an improved situation.
