Cool it, buddy
Several years ago I got involved in an initiative to try to stop a major development in our neighborhood. In preparation for our own presentations to the city commissioners, I attended a commission meeting to watch residents from another neighborhood as they made presentations to fight a similar project. Speaker after speaker came to the microphone and gave passionate talks about how the greedy developers were threatening the unique quality of their cherished way of life. Every single speaker was genuine, heartfelt, and passionate.
Then I looked over to the dais to see how the commissioners were reacting. With the exception of the mayor, who was forcing himself to act interested, they were all tuned out. They had heard so many of these before that they were just weathering the storm until the speakers were done so that they could get on with their decision. (They approved the development.) The strangest effect of all these passionate presentations was that I found myself starting to take the side of the developers!
As a result of that experience, I coached our presenters to tone down their emotions and focus on facts. We made it less about us and more about how the decision would impact the commissioners. We won.
I think of this incident when I read yet another blog post or tweet from presentations coaches telling you that passion is contagious; that passion trumps all else. They tell us that your passion is contagious—as if transfer of belief is dependent on emotional strength.
Passion definitely has its place, and emotional strength can be a tremendous motivating force. I’m not an emotionless robot, and I certainly can get passionate about many things. Yet I would like to show that in many cases it needs to be dialed back, contained, and even used strategically.
Passion is most effective when the audience is already on your side. If they support your idea but need an extra push to approve it or to take action, then let it all hang out. If you’re delivering a pre-game speech before a hockey game against the Russians, let it all hang out. Your passion can be the fuel that ignites theirs and drives action.
But if you’re making a strategic sales presentation or any business proposal to a committee of high level executives—especially if they’re neutral or skeptical—overt passion can push them in the opposite direction and blind you to legitimate objections and opposing points of view.
Passion can backfire because senior level decision makers pride themselves on analytical thinking and hard-headed business judgment. You can debate whether the reality matches the perception, but the point remains that important business decisions require at least the appearance of rationality. A speaker who comes across as too “emotional” will make them suspicious—they will react by looking for reasons to shoot you down; they may even see it as unprofessional. Passion is very one sided, but research has shown that audiences see two-sided arguments as more persuasive. It’s fine to express a deeply-held belief in your position, as long as you give a nod to alternative points of view. Your demonstration of open-mindedness is likely to be reciprocated.
Secondly, even before you get in front of your audience, your passion for your topic can cause you to violate the most important rule of persuasion: outside-in thinking. It can keep you from considering other perspectives, making it difficult to anticipate questions from your audience. What seems self-evident to you may be news to them.
None of this means that showing passion is always wrong during a strategic presentation, but you should always be strategic about it. Think about where to place it. If it’s too early in the talk you run the risk of shutting down listening. First, show that you’re a reasonable person that has considered everything, next make your logical arguments for why your idea is the best choice, then go ahead and let your passion show through in your closing arguments. Even then, frame your passion for the idea not so much in terms of why you care so much but why they should care as much as you do.
“And they said you’d never make it…”
That’s a comment my daughter’s new co-worker told her when she told him she had majored in art history. Mackenzie has just begun a terrific new job in marketing for a prestigious firm, having been selected out of a large pool of applicants after an intensive interview process, and her choice of college major has been a source of comment and bemusement from some of those she has met.
Her first week on the job, a VP learned about her major, and said, “tell me about that…” Mackenzie told her how her course of study required her to absorb large amounts of ambiguous detail, grasp its meaning and think, speak and write cogently and convincingly about it. She also explained how artists were the original marketers. Before the modern era, very few people could read or write, so the ruling powers used art as their way of communicating with the masses to polish their image, express their values, etc.
After she finished explaining, the VP smiled and said, “It’s all in the way you spin it.”
Here’s the point for young adults choosing their path in life: Following your passion is a wonderful thing—as long as you can convince someone to pay you for that passion. Mackenzie got to spend her college years studying a topic that is fascinating to her and that will enrich her experiences for the rest of her life. But she also had the ability to analyze her skill set and express it in terms that a potential employer would find valuable.
As I’ve stressed repeatedly in this blog, if you can think, communicate and sell, there is no limit to what you can do.
I’ve often wondered how many fine speeches go undelivered, and how many smart people go unnoticed because they fear getting up in front of a group to speak. In this post, I’d like to point out some misconceptions that may be holding them back from their true potential.
Mistake #1: You think you get more nervous than everyone else before a presentation or a speech. Sure, it’s common knowledge that public speaking is the top fear in America today, just behind death. (As Seinfeld said in one of his sketches, that means that if you’re at a funeral, you’re better off being in the coffin than delivering the eulogy.) But that common knowledge does not comfort you; you see others confidently taking control of the stage and compare yourself unfavorably. They might get a little nervous, but they don’t suffer the pangs of anxiety that fill your mind in those excruciating minutes before it’s your turn to speak; they don’t know the doubts that bounce around in your brain the night before the big presentation; they’re not wrestling with the real possibility that your throat will constrict and squeeze the first words out of your mouth into a high-pitched squeak.
The real truth is that everyone does get nervous. I’ve made my living speaking to groups for 20 years, and I still get nervous. Some of the best-known actors and performers have struggled with stage fright throughout their distinguished careers, among them Barbra Streisand and Harrison Ford. Cicero, one of the greatest orators in history, said: “I turn pale at the outset of a speech and quake in every limb and in all my soul.” Mark Twain said “There are two kinds of speakers: those who are nervous and those who are liars.”
Mistake #2: Everyone will be able to tell how nervous you are. Because you’re the expert (otherwise, someone else would be the speaker that day) and you’re well prepared (right?), you may be more concerned about appearing nervous than about flubbing your material. They will notice your rapid shallow breathing and hear your heart beating right out of your chest, and that will make them doubt you and mistrust your message.
The real truth is that you seriously overestimate the extent to which others can tell your internal feelings. Your feelings are perfectly obvious to you, but they are hidden inside your mind—they don’t leak out nearly as much as you might think. It’s called the illusion of transparency, like when you look through a mirrored window—although you know you can see out but others can’t see in, it still feels like they may be looking right at you. Studies show that speakers rate themselves as more nervous than the audience thinks they are. In some of those same studies, researchers have found that merely informing speakers that their nervousness is not visible, often makes them feel less nervous. Consider yourself informed.
Mistake #3: Nervousness is bad. You think that your anxiety will keep you from performing at your best, which makes you even more anxious about your performance, which can lead to a vicious circle of doubt.
The truth is that your nervousness is a normal feeling of arousal in your mind that is helping you gear up for extraordinary performance. It’s a manifestation of the fight or flight syndrome, which turbocharges your body and primes your mind to perform at greater than normal levels. Nerves show that you care, and in fact, if you’re not nervous, that’s when you should be worried. Self-confidence may lead to complacency, which may have contributed to President Obama’s flat performance in his first debate. Embrace the feeling of nervousness before you get up to speak, be glad that you have that extra fuel that’s going to add energy to your speech and your gestures, and will actually make you look even more confident than you feel.
To sum up, your nervousness before a presentation is a secret asset that will make you a more forceful and dynamic speaker, as long as you view it properly. If this short post can convince one person to deliver a speech in site of their fear, it will be more than worth it.
Everyone loves stories, but be careful how you use them
Everyone loves to hear stories, don’t they? We’re in the era of story for business presentations. All the experts tell us that stories are the best vehicle for making your content engaging and convincing audiences, and for making your points stick in their memories. Use stories for persuasive presentations, we’re told, because so much of our decision making takes place in the fast, intuitive System 1 thinking process in our brain. For the most part, I agree with this advice, and I can personally attest in my training and speeches that using stories to illustrate my points can boost credibility, engagement and retention. (It also boosts my instructor ratings—not that I pay any attention to that)
But stories do not always work for every audience, and may even backfire in some situations.
Audiences can differ in their need for cognition, which is a fancy way of saying that some audience members like to think carefully and deeply about the points that are being presented to them. In fact, everyone has a need for cognition in the right circumstances. If you are being asked to make an important decision that requires considering various complex factors, you are much more likely to engage your slow, deliberative and analytical System 2 thinking. But some audiences place much more emphasis on careful thinking than others, especially if you’re presenting a proposal that will cost a lot of money or require major change.
Besides, not everyone in the audience is the same. When you consider the social styles of individual audience members, roughly half may be analytics or drivers. In some audiences, you will have a much higher proportion of analytics and drivers. If you’re presenting to a high-tech company that has a very engineering-driven culture, you will often have a majority of analytics in the room. Or, if you’re presenting to senior managers, they will tend to have a higher share of drivers than a regular audience. Analytics will be automatically suspicious of stories because they think they are being deliberately used to hoodwink them, and drivers will become impatient for you to get to the point.
Once, after running a sales training class, I received a complaint from their sales director that I should have told fewer stories and finished the class earlier. Yet, I later heard from others that he often repeated a couple of the stories he heard during the class to make his points in sales meetings. So, I’m definitely not advocating that you dispense with stories altogether—just make sure you modify your approach to match the needs of your audience. For analytics you should lead with data to earn the right to follow up with an anecdote to make it real; for drivers, keep the stories as short as possible, and be prepared to cut one short if you notice signs of impatience. Above all, make sure they are spot-on relevant to your point.
What if the audience is mixed? That’s where your preparation and audience analysis are critical. Make sure you know the style of the most important decision-makers in the room and plan your use of stories accordingly.
