Follow these steps and you won’t have to dance
I’ve written a lot about planning and preparation, but there is also tremendous value in having the skill and poise to rise to the occasion when someone springs an unexpected question on you or asks you to say a few words on a particular topic. Having survived (so far) 21 years in front of trainees, I’ve developed a few habits that have served me well.
Plan for the unexpected. This sounds like an oxymoron; how can you prepare for an impromptu talk? If you’re going to a meeting, think about who will be there, and based on your knowledge of their history, their positions and their stake in the topic, what might they ask? To be really sure, don’t limit yourself to the scheduled topic. You might be there to discuss a particular project, but someone might have an interest in one of your other projects as well.
Practice situational awareness. Have you ever had the feeling of looking up and seeing all eyes turned on you? It’s easy to tune out or check your email momentarily when someone else is speaking on a topic that doesn’t immediately concern you—and that’s when Murphy’s Law guarantees that someone will direct a question to you. There’s nothing more credibility-crushing than having to ask someone to repeat the question.
Good training for future politician or business leader
The news media this week have been buzzing with discussion of Mitt Romney’s remark, “I am not concerned about the very poor…” Taken out of context, it was clearly very damaging to Romney, at least in the short run.
The Romney camp complained that the quote was taken out of context, and indeed it was. When you read the entire statement he made, it’s not quite as bad, although it’s still a statement he probably wishes he could take back.
The real point is, that anything a leader says can and will be taken out of context, and you don’t even need a “media conspiracy” for that. Even without the press as an intermediary, listeners can filter anything you say through their own biases and desires. They will provide their own context to interpret your statements. That’s why you have to constantly use outside-in thinking to anticipate what your words will sound like to your listeners.
At least politicians know this is a professional hazard and try to be on guard against it. Business leaders may not be as sensitive to the danger. They may not realize that they are being scrutinized just as carefully as a politician, in everything they do or say.
I’ve worked with thousands of bright and articulate people in my twenty plus years of training, people who are justly confident of their ability to rise to the occasion and think fast on their feet, whether it is in a sales call, an important presentation to their boss, or the give-and-take of internal meetings.
That confidence is usually an asset, but it often veers dangerously into overconfidence which leaves them vulnerable to error and discourages the preparation that could make them even better than they already are.
Here’s just one example. In teaching sales call planning I have salespeople list the top objections they expect to hear from their customers during the call, and next to it, jot down the key points they would use to answer the objection. Most salespeople find the first step easy to do, because they’ve heard some of the same objections over and over hundreds of times. Yet, because they’ve heard them so often, they usually resist writing something in the second column, because the answer is so obvious to them in their own minds. Unfortunately, when they role-play the call, and get the same objection they have heard over and over, they almost always fumble a little, as if they are re-inventing a good answer every single time. When we debrief the role plays, they will usually admit that they could have expressed the answer better.
Today is the shortest day of the year, so let’s take a quick look at brevity.
German designer Dieter Rams, who inspired Apple designer Jonathan Ive, believed in the idea of less but better. What works in the design of products can also apply to communication.
In today’s era of gnat-length attention spans, brevity is even more important than ever, but simply shortening your message without improving it will fail. (Sometimes less is less.) In telling stories, one vivid detail trumps a lot of boring detail. In selling, one unique differentiator that the customer values will trump a long list of features. One well-designed chart can replace several minutes of explanation.
Just a few words can pack a tremendous punch. Supposedly, Hemingway was at lunch with several writers and claimed he could write a short story in just six words. Bets were made, and Hemingway scrawled on a napkin:
“For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”
