I Guess You Had to be There

November 30th, 2015

Humans are hard-wired for stories. The Aborigines have been telling stories for over 40,000 years; every religious text is a collection of stories and the nightly news shares stories from around the world.

Stories are powerful for two reasons.

When we tell stories, the audience integrates any new information into what they already know. This is powerful for getting them to remember your message.

The second benefit of using stories is, they let the audience be right. You picture what you want to see and how you want to see it. This is why the book is always better than the movie. When you read the book, you pictured scenes a certain way and the movie showed them another. This tells you that you were wrong and you push back against it.

There are five elements you need to include in your presentation so you can tell great stories. They are:

Characters – people, places, weather, objects (car, house, horse etc).
Conflict – tension between the characters. This can be good or bad tension.
Emotions – we humans are drawn to emotions.
Resolution – resolving the conflict.
Point – your reason for sharing the story.

If you leave out any one of these elements you will usually have to finish your story by saying, “I guess you had to be there” and that’s not cool.

Include stories and people will remember your message.

As always, would love your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment in the comment section below.

Ramp the Risk

November 23rd, 2015

Engaging your audience physically in your presentation, is risky on two fronts:

For the Speaker – what if they don’t get involved – I will look silly.

For the Audience – what if I ask a dumb question – I will look silly.

The secret is in the setup.

To effectively get your audience physically involved you need to:

Be Relevant. Don’t have activity just for the sake of activity. Make any physical involvement relevant to the presentation.
Ramp the risk. Writing personal notes is safer than sharing ideas in a group. Group discussion is a safer option than speaking to the whole room.
Clear instructions. Make your instructions clear. A confused audience does not act.

It is possible to get your audience to be involved in ever increasing ways. Ramp the audience up towards the engagement you want, and you’ll have greater success.

As always, I would love your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment in the comment section below.

Three Ways to Demonstrate Logic in Your Next Presentation

November 16th, 2015

Logic plays an important role in any style of communication. First, it opens the door for emotional persuasion. Then, after the emotion has subsided, it supports any decisions that were made based on those emotions.

There are three easy ways to include logic in a presentation:

1. Facts and figures – show me the numbers.

2. Case study – bring a specific case alive with details. Include the three points:

Situation the subject was in.
Solution that you put forward.
Success they had because of your intervention.

3. Research report – used to demonstrate your credibility in a specific area.

When possible, open with logic before moving into emotions. If you open with emotions you could be seen as trying to manipulate.

As always, would love your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment in the comment section below.

The Power of Leveraged One-to-One

November 12th, 2015

There is a way to structure your message so that every person who hears it, feels as though you are speaking directly to them. You do this by constructing your message, and speaking as though there is only one person in your audience. This applies even when you are speaking to 2, 20 or 200 people. It doesn’t matter how many people are in your audience, speak as though you are only talking to one of them.

We speak leveraging one-to-one because the audience is in the different communication paradigm than the speaker. When a person is at the front of the room speaking, they are in a one-to-many relationship – there is one person speaking and many people listening. So from the speakers perspective, it kind of makes sense that we say, “How many people in this room would like to have more influence?” This then becomes a question being addressed to many people.

However, if we look at the communication relationship from the audience’s perspective, they are in a one-to-one relationship – that is, they are sitting in the audience as one person listening to one person at the front of the room speak. The speaker is in a one-to-many relationship.

So that we can tap into the audience members’ world more quickly, and with greater ease, we need to speak as though we are in a one-to-one relationship. The question that we had of “How many of you would like to have more influence” gets reworded to “Would you like to have more influence?”. This has a major impact on how close the audience member feels to your message. When the audience member feels that your message is directed to them, they have a greater chance of taking action based on your message.

You can start using this technique today. This technique will work in emails, it will work on the phone, it will work in team meeting where there might be 10 to 15 people, it will work when you’re talking to 10,000 people in a room.

Structure your message as though there is only one person in your audience. Ask questions of that one person. Each person in your audience will then feel as though you are talking directly to them.

When you apply this technique, your audience feels connected to your message, and will see you as someone who should be listened to, and as a direct result, you will have greater influence.

Connecting the Head, Heart and Hands

November 9th, 2015

The idea of speaking is to make a connection with your audience. If your audience is not connected to your message, they won’t hear it, and they can’t follow it.

There are three ways you can connect with your audience, through their head, heart and hands.

Head – logic, facts and figures.
Heart – emotions elicited through stories.
Hands – get them involved – writing notes, raising their hands, group work.

Aim to include all three.

If you have logic with no emotion, your audience won’t be connected.

If you have emotion but no logic, your audience will lose motivation once the emotion subsides – the logic sustains motivation once the emotions have evaporated.

Engaging the audience physically enables them to contribute to the conversation.

When you talk to your audience they ‘may’ hear what you have to say. But, when you connect with them through the head, heart and hands they will remember.

As always, I’d love your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment in the comment section below.

Information is Power

November 5th, 2015

Information is power. Sharing the right information, in the right way, at the right time, will make you a more influential person.

There are three types of information that can be shared with your audience.

What you could say. This is everything you know about a particular topic. If you’ve been in your role for a number of years, you’ll have a number of years’ experience on what it is you could say.
What you should say. Now, this is looking only at the information that your audience should hear. If you’ve been in your role for a number of years’ and you’re selling a product, you’ve got a couple of years worth of knowledge that you could share. The audience wants to know about the features-benefits, and that is what you should share with them. This is what your audience wants to know about so this is what you should share.
What you shouldn’t say. If you’re selling a product, you shouldn’t talk about supply issues; you shouldn’t talk about office politics and you shouldn’t talk about the product manager and how you don’t like them.

While this all sounds very basic and obvious, it is something that people trip up on all of the time. The reason they trip up is because information is power. We like to show that we have power and the way we do this is by sharing information.

What happens if you’re not aware of what you could, should and shouldn’t say? You’ll end up talking about all three types of information. What happens then is, you begin sharing all sorts of information and then halfway through, you realise, “I shouldn’t be talking about this, and if I keep going, it’s going to be a disaster. But if I stop where I am right now, it’s going to draw attention to it and I’m going to look just as bad.”

Now, this problem affects people in areas of their life. Unless they are aware that there are different types of information, they will share information that they shouldn’t.

Be aware of the information you are sharing. By sharing the right information, in the right way, at the right time, you will become a more influential speaker.

16 Ways to Get Your Message Across

November 2nd, 2015

In the early 1980s, an American psychologist, Howard Gardner rocked the psychological world by declaring that there were 16 types of intelligence. Up until this time, the dominant thought was that there was just one type of intelligence.

These 16 types of intelligence included musical/rhythm, visual/spatial, verbal, logical, kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, moral and existential. This in turn, has massive implications for getting your message across to the audience.

While Howard was at pains to state that people should not be labelled as specific types of learners, it is clear that some people have a preference for one over the other.

For me personally, don’t even try to teach me anything musical or mathematical – I won’t remember it once you have gone. However, give me something verbal or interpersonal and I’m all over it.

When you are presenting your ideas, it is important to remember that not everyone thinks in the same way that you do. Some people love detail while others hate it. Some love the bigger picture while it scares others.

This is why a well-formed message encompasses detail as well as the bigger picture. It includes the logical thinking (often called left-brain thinking), and emotional reasoning (right-brain thinking).

When you have both the bigger picture as well as detailed information that is presented with both left- and right-brain thinking, you have a much better chance of engaging your audience and having them understand what you are saying.

As always, would love your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment below in the comment section.

The Strength Of Your Stance

October 29th, 2015

The way you hold yourself signals to the world how confident you are in your ability to influence.

When speaking, in leading, and while influencing, there is a saying, “The strength of your stance shows the strength of your message.” A great example of this is, the person who is under pressure, they start squirming in their seat. You know the pressure is getting to them because you can see them squirm, and react in a physical way.

Controlling the way that you sit, stand, walk, and carry yourself will show to others, and yourself, the strength that you have within your message.

Movement plays a large part in nervousness. It’s the twitching of the hands, it’s the rubbing of the nose, and the scratching of the neck. When you display these characteristics of nervousness, it telegraphs a subconscious message of, “I’m not comfortable, I’m nervous, and I don’t have the authority that I wish I had.”

To control your stance, practice being still. You can still move, to pick up pens, to look people in the eye. But when you’re speaking, remain solid. If you’re going to move, have movement with purpose. When you move with purpose, you have strength in yourself, and you have strength in your message. People will pick up on this – they may not know that they’re picking up on it, but it will come through. There are a couple of ways in which you can practice this.

Firstly, reflect on how you felt. For example, after you’ve been in a meeting, after you’ve spoken to someone, reflect on what it is that you did, how you held yourself. Ask yourself, can I be stronger in the way that I stand, the way that I sit, and the way that I carry myself.

The second is to look at world leaders you see on the TV or on the news. People you trust and respect – it could be business leaders, CEOs of large companies that you admire – look at the way that they hold themselves, look at the way they speak, and the way they stand when addressing and delivering their point with influence. Copy what they do.

The strength of your stance shows the strength of your message. Have a strong stance and people will see you as someone with a strong message.

I’d love your thoughts on this, please leave a comment below in the comment section.

This Is Why Your Audience Is Present

October 25th, 2015

There are three reasons why your audience is present when you speak. Your audience are there because they either want to gain, comply or avoid.

Those who are there looking to gain, are the customers who have asked you to sell to them. It might be your manager who has asked you to report or staff looking for direction.
Those who are complying are present because it causes less grief to be present than to stay away. These are the people who have been told to attend.
Those looking to avoid are present so they don’t have to be somewhere else. They want to avoid work and you are the perfect excuse.

This is how they will interact:

The ‘gaining’ audience will ask questions and interact for clarity.
The ‘avoiding’ audience will interact to prolong the experience.
It’s the ‘complying’ audience who does not want to be there who are the hardest to work with, and sell too.

By understanding what type of audience you have, will help you clarify how you pitch your message to them.

As always, I’d love your thoughts on this, please leave a comment in the comment section below.

The Eye Of The Tiger

October 22nd, 2015

The way that we create, hold and break eye contact, says a lot about our ability to influence.

In western cultures, the ability to hold eye contact is interpreted as a sign of strength. If you can’t look someone in the eye, you are perceived as someone who is weak. Alternatively, if you hold someone’s eye contact for too long, you are seen as being aggressive. When people challenge each other, they often stare at each other to show a sign of strength. They stare at each other to see who will break first.

When you make eye contact, the length of time that you hold that eye contact can determine how powerful you intend to be, in coming across. If you’ve ever looked into the eyes of a person you have strong feelings for, and held eye contact, you will find that the longer the eye contact is held, the more feelings are aroused. It’s the same in the workplace.

There are two exercises you can use to strengthen this.

The first is the length of time that you hold eye contact. Practice holding eye contact just a bit longer than is comfortable. If you look your boss in the eye maybe you would break that normally after two to three seconds. Try holding it for four. Maybe you hold eye contact for four or five; hold it for six. And gradually, over the next few days, extend the length of the time that you hold eye contact. This will give you greater strength and ability to stare at someone, and hold eye contact in a position of power when you need it.

The second exercise is to be conscious of where your eyes go once you break eye contact. If you’re looking at someone in the eye and you break your eye contact and your eyes go down to look at nothing in particular, it’s seen as being weak. It’s almost cowering, “I shouldn’t have been looking”. If you’re making eye contact with somebody and then your eyes move up just to look above their head or out the window or off in the distance, that gives the feeling of “I’m above you, I’m above this, I’m looking elsewhere”.

When your eyes break and move off at the same level. This gives a feeling and perception of equality, “I’m with you; I’m equal”. It’s not as threatening, nor is it seen as “I’m cowering”.

Today you have two exercises to do:

Hold eye contact just a little bit longer than is normally comfortable
Pay attention to the way in which you break eye contact

Go through Dynamic Reflection on this – that is, once you’ve had a conversation and you’ve moved on elsewhere, think about how your eyes have been making contact, holding contact and breaking contact.

Eye contact is a powerful way to establish authority and influence.

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