One of the turning points in US political history took place in Nashua NH in 1980, at a debate in the Republican presidential primary. Ronald Reagan had entered the primaries as the favorite, but he had been upset in Iowa and Puerto Rico by George H.W. Bush, who seemed to have the “big Mo”. The local newspaper, the Nashua Telegraph, had invited the two to debate, but a question came up whether that would violate campaign finance laws.
To avoid the problem, the Reagan campaign paid for the debate, and then invited the other four candidates. This created a controversy when Bush threatened to pull out of the debate, and when Reagan began to explain his position, the editor, John Breen, began arguing with him. When Reagan insisted on continuing, Breen called for the microphone to be turned off.
To this day, it’s still a beautiful thing to watch, as Reagan got extremely angry and snapped, “I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Breen!” He then turned and glared at Breen as the crowd jumped to its feet and cheered. Even his opponents clapped, in effect publicly bowing to his leadership.
That was a leadership moment for Reagan that day, as the crowd, and the nation, responded to the physical display of dominance and strength. But just as important was the fact that his strength was seen as justified, which would not have been the case if he had not paid for the microphone. That simple fact gave Reagan the moral high ground, and he was able to take advantage of it.
I’m not advocating that you act the same way in a high stakes sales presentation, but you should have the same attitude going in. If you are nervous about speaking, or intimidated by the rank of the audience, keep in mind that you paid for that microphone.
You paid for it by doing all the hard and difficult work in the sales process that led up to that moment. You paid for it by researching your client’s needs, putting together the ideal solution and by thoroughly preparing for that presentation. You paid for that microphone.
Knowing that, how could you ever be intimidated?
Last week I coached a client based on a video of him in a press conference. I told him that a gesture he used, with his palm down and fingers outspread, showed a lot of confidence and authority. That was my impression, but, because I like to supplement my own experience with what the experts say, I did some more research on how hands can affect how confident you appear to others.
Coincidentally, I ran a class last week in which someone took some photos of me speaking to the group, and when I went back and viewed those, armed with my formal knowledge, I found a few that will apply to this article.
My favorite expert is Joe Navarro, a former FBI agent and body language expert who has written What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People
Navarro tells us that “…we have evolved to keep a close eye on the highly mobile hands.” This makes tremendous sense from an evolutionary perspective. Our ancestors survived by developing the ability to quickly size up whether another person is a threat, and their hands are their primary weapons. So, when we see and hear a speaker, we unconsciously and rapidly reach conclusions about their potential power, and hence their confidence.
We are all have a pretty good unconscious competence at reading others, but the fact that the knowledge is unconscious means that speakers may not know that they are betraying a lack of confidence through their hands. Once you have a conscious understanding, you can practice and develop your own confident hand gestures.
Hand-steepling is probably the most powerful:
Women who use hand-steepling tend to keep their hands lower. In general, the higher the hands, the more confident you appear.
A version of steepling is the “basketball”, where you hold your hands as if you’re holding an invisible basketball: (although I think Newt is holding a beach ball in this picture)
Holding your hands open with palms down indicates that you know what you’re talking about:
Thumb displays also indicate confidence:
Incidentally, keeping your hands in your pockets makes you seem unsure of yourself, unless your thumbs show:
Hands can also show a lack of confidence
Fingers interlaced:
Wringing hands or rubbing palms together:
The infamous and ubiquitous fig leaf:
Nervous touching of yourself, especially covering your neck:
You need to practice
If you want to work on having more confident hands, the first step is to videotape yourself so that you can become aware of your habits. Next, if you want to start using gestures that are new to you, it’s absolutely critical to practice them so that they become second nature. Natural gestures actually begin before the words come out, so that if you try to consciously use any of these gestures, they are going to come out wrong. Your listeners won’t know exactly why, but they will notice that you look awkward for some reason.
We tend to get a bit smug about our civil liberties in the U.S., especially our freedom of speech. But if you censor yourself because of a fear of public speaking, what good is that freedom? If you let others enjoy influence out of proportion to the quality of their ideas, what good is that freedom?
This article is a public version of a challenge that I issued to an audience last week. I urged the least confident ones among them to be the first to volunteer to make the presentations for their teams in their business plan competition. The same goes for everyone reading this who would like to become a better public speaker but shies away out of fear or lack of confidence: speak up!
I’m qualified to issue the challenge because I faced the same fear early in my career. I was extremely introverted and would get dry-mouthed and knock-kneed in anticipation of merely having to introduce myself to a classroom. A friend urged me to join a Toastmasters Club, and I kept finding excuses to miss the meetings. Finally, he called me a coward (using a different word that is not appropriate for this blog), and said if I did not attend that week I never would. Since I respond to that type of challenge like Marty McFly in Back to the Future,I did attend, and that first meeting changed my life.
I faced my fears and survived. Actually, I thrived. Fear was quickly replaced by confidence and even eagerness to take to the podium, and that got me more recognition within the bank where I worked than anything else I could have done. So, just do it.
And do it some more.
Besides recognition, I found that the even bigger payoff was vastly more confidence in other venues, including individual meetings, selling, negotiations, and social occasions.
If you’re a woman, you need to heed the challenge even more. According to The Confidence Code, women speak 75% less than men do in meetings where both are present. This leads to an unfair disparity in recognition and compensation, because the squeaky wheel gets a lot more than grease. If you’re hesitant to seek the limelight for yourself, speak on behalf of your team.
You can join a local Toastmasters Club; it’s cheap, low-risk and highly effective. If you prefer to apply your skills in a more immediately practical manner, find opportunities to speak within your organization, or facilitate a class. What is your special field or topic that you are expert in and that others might benefit from knowing more about? Follow your passion, because it will be easier to speak about confidently, but make sure it’s something that your listeners can also care about.
And do it some more.
Don’t expect that you will be magically transformed overnight, and don’t get discouraged if you slip up a little now and then. Keep in mind that every great speaker began as a bad speaker.
Will you take full advantage of your freedom of speech?
They’re not that thirsty
Have you ever attended a presentation that felt like you had to drink from a fire hose? Even worse, have you delivered one?
Our minds contain a vast store of information accumulated over a lifetime of living and learning. But every new bit of information we have, first entered our minds through our working memory.
Think of working memory as a mental scratchpad. It’s not just the short term memory we might use to keep a telephone number in our heads for the few seconds it takes to find a phone and dial it, it’s the capacity to retain and manipulate that information, such as if we had to add the digits together before dialing the number. The problem with working memory is that we have a severely limited capacity which can easily be overwhelmed.
It’s easy to see how limited we are. For example, if I ask you to add 24 + 17 in your head, you probably won’t have too much trouble. But if I asked you to add 247 + 175, I might start overloading your working memory, because as you are adding the digits in your head you are also trying to remember the numbers I gave you. For years, it was thought that working memory was limited to about seven chunks of information at one time, but more recent research has shown that the more realistic estimate is three to four items. Remember that it’s an average, and some people can go higher while some can’t manage even that much.
What does this mean in terms of presentations? When your listeners receive information from you, they are not simply trying to remember the data as if it were a phone number. They are actively processing the information: contrasting it to what they already know, comparing it to other ideas, and considering its implications. Depending on the unfamiliarity or complexity of the new information, they may be stretching their working memory capacity to the limit.
We progress in our knowledge of a particular topic by “chunking” bits of information together, so that the new combination then becomes one piece of information to remember. For example, if I gave you directions to get to my house, I might have to give you a dozen or more instructions if you were from out of town. But if you live here, I could simply say, “Head east on 17th Street from Federal, turn right at the bridge, and left at the traffic circle.” That’s only three chunks. Fortunately for the human capacity to learn, the definition of chunk is very elastic. A chunk can be quite elaborate and contain a lot of information.
When you learn a topic, you gradually build the details into larger and larger chunks, which is the only way your mind can manipulate ever larger bodies of knowledge to make sense out of them. But the problem is that we forget how difficult it was for us to grasp the material at first, so we skip over the parts that now seem obvious. Psychologists call this the Curse of Knowledge. In one study, six programmers were asked to teach the steps they used in a debugging task. No one expert was able to describe more than 53% of the actual steps they used.[1]
So all that learning can cause a communication problem when you’re feeding chunks to someone who is not yet familiar with them—they’re too large for them to swallow at once, and when you overload them they just shut down.
Because it’s not obvious to the listener, they start behind in the conversation and then have trouble catching up because while they are trying to make sense of what you have said, you’ve already moved on to the next phase.
Besides leaving out information that listeners need to make sense of our message, there are two other common ways of going too fast for them: speaking too fast and overloading slides with way too much information.
As it relates to personal credibility, a too-rapid rate of information transfer is double-edged. It can certainly give listeners the impression that you know what you’re talking about, but they may be turned off by your seeming lack of concern for their understanding.
How do you find the right rate?
Link to what they already know. You first have to know how familiar your audience is with your topic, to know where to start. Then figure out ways to relate the new material to what they already know, using analogies and comparisons.
Limit how much you try to say at one time. Sometimes you save time in the long run by doing short sessions or conversations, either in stages, or in deeper detail each time.
Organize your material into meaningful categories. If you have to provide a long list, for example, group the items into three or four main categories. Give the categories first and then fill in the detail.
Be clear on what they need to remember. A lot of material that you provide to people does not have to be memorized; they may just need to know where to find the details if they need them. For example, you can tell them the dates of the next six project milestones, or just tell them it’s in the handout.
Use the pull system. In lean production, manufacturers use the pull system to ensure that inventory is only produced when the downstream client needs it. The analogy for communication is to give them the bare minimum you think they need, and let them pull out additional information through questions if they need it. Or, supposing you have seven benefits to talk about, give them only the top three and only add others if necessary.
Don’t speak too fast, and pause to gauge whether they are getting it. Eye contact and “listening” to your audience is your best defense against working memory overload. Be especially alert to signs that someone is getting confused or tuning out, because they will be reluctant to speak up.
