Authentic Communication Training » Performance

Speaking with the Power of a King (part 2)

Howard Stableford — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:52:44 +0000

Did you take up my Challenge?

Did you watch the clip and decide how the speech and staging hits all the principles of the MAGIC presentation boxes? Well, here’s what I see.

Message: Remember, Henry’s troops have lost a lot of enthusiasm for his cause. He hears Westmoreland wishing they had more men. Henry’s message is surprising. He doesn’t want one more man to share in the honour that will be theirs by winning the battle. Why should we share the glory with anyone else he says? It would dilute what “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers” are about to achieve. “The fewer men, the greater share of honour.” he says.

This piques the soldiers’ interest. Henry knows he has their attention now because in Branagh’s version he physically moves away to see if they will follow…. and they do.

This is the Gracing the Stage part as I see it. He uses the space to gather all the lords and troops together as he warms to his theme. Now his audience is literally crowded together, unified by the space as Henry, in an elevated position, now unites their minds in resolve and purpose. This is a superb use of space to emphasize the message.

Authenticity: Throughout this speech Henry reveals who he really is and what he stands for. “I am not covetous for gold. Not care I who doth feed upon my cost: It yearns me not if men my garments wear; such outward things dwell no in my desires. But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive.” He also says that in this venture we are all equals: “For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother: be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition.” He is saying that even the roughest yeoman present today is elevated in social rank to equal the king! Great motivation!

Interest: How does Henry keep them hooked? He paints a picture. He creates a future in which St Crispin’s day forever will belong to each of them. It will be celebrated as a day when they will show their scars to jealous friends and admiring families and remember the glories of this day. “He that shall live this day and see old age will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours and say Tomorrow is St. Crispin. Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say “these wounds I had on St. Crispin’s Day”.

Why painting such a picture works so well as a motivational tool is that each soldier’s version of the future is yet a personal one. They can see in their mind’s eye their own families, friends, villages and contexts. So in reality Henry is creating hundred’s of individual pictures, not just one. Therein lies the genius of the speech for me.

Commitment to Practice: OK, I mentioned this in my last blog that I am cheating a bit here by pointing to Branagh’s stagecraft and the fact that this scene clearly took a great deal of practice!

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little exercise. Thanks for indulging me in my passion for Shakespeare and may I take this opportunity to wish you and your family a wonderful Holiday Season.

I will be back in the New Year to hopefully paint some pictures for you in which you, like Henry, can rally your own troops and bring motivation and morale to all who hear you.

Leadership Communication: Speak with the power of a king

Howard Stableford — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:36:57 +0000

What if you had but one chance to speak and your life and the life of all those who were following you depended on it? How would you start? What could you possibly say?

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers….”

I was recently working with a group of senior executive leaders at one of the world’s largest and most successful high-tech companies and successfully used our M.A.G.I.C. communication formula to break down some long-standing barriers to effective communication in their organization.

As a part of my preparations I wanted to provide visual examples for Message, Authenticity, Gracing the stage, maintaining Interest and Commitment to practice.

In the process I found a single superb example of extraordinary leadership communication that demonstrates at the same time all five of the MAGIC principles dramatically and profoundly.

Before you take a look at the video here’s some background.

By the time King Henry Vth of England reached the fields of Agincourt in the year 1415, he was a leader without much of a following. He had promised his army quick wins on French soil and here they were six months later exhausted, hungry, most suffering from dysentery while the French army stood before them fresh, ready for battle and outnumbering Henry’s weakened soldiers by at least five to one.

Several times the French send a messenger offering Henry a peaceful but humiliating way out.

Each time Henry refused.

In Shakespeare’s version of events, on the night before the battle Henry dons a disguise and walks among his troops in the camp listening to their opinions of the King that promised much and had delivered little apart from the promise of death at the hands of French swordsmen the next day.

Henry, like many leaders, finds himself in an impossible situation. With little time left how can he change the hearts and minds of his men?

How can he rally and motivate them not just to fight but to fight believing they will win?

Shakespeare composes perhaps his most stirring speech for Henry and as I watched Kenneth Branagh’s version of the “St. Crispin’s Day” speech it occurred to me that this confluence of historical Henry Vth, playwright William Shakespeare and Branagh’s film version of the speech hit everything that our MAGIC communication model strives for.

Take a look at the movie clip and see if you can identify what Henry’s real message is; how he creates and resonates authenticity with his audience; how he uses the physical space as a persuasive tool; how he keeps his soldiers interested and how there is a commitment to practice?

Well, the actors certainly committed to practice since this complex scene is very long for a sequence that has so few shots in it.

In my next blog, I’ll tell you why I think this scene ticks all the boxes of the MAGIC communication model. And if you have ideas you’d like to share about why this is a near perfect persuasive speech, let me know.

Young Start Ups: Communicate Your Mantra!

Howard Stableford — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:59:24 +0000

I recently returned from a wonderful trip to Russia where I was invited to teach a course on executive presence as well as presentation and communication techniques at the brand new Skolkovo Moscow School of Management.

The students are an extremely lively and, of course, incredibly bright collection of talent from around the world. Although most are Russian, citizens from Brazil, India, Finland, Australia, USA and Kazakhstan are also represented. They are not a shy bunch either.

A vision of Moscow

One exercise I introduced them to was how to develop and communicate a compelling vision for an organization. We discussed the differences between mission statements and vision statements and then I gave them free reign to invent their own company profiles and develop vision statements for them. Company products ranged from a pill that could make you instantly sober to a weapons factory designed as far as I could tell to eradicate all other weapons! (you had to be there I guess).

They did pretty well with the vision statements too, but it was at this point that Sergey Pavlovskiy from Russia, who is seriously into creating start up companies, suggested that mission and vision statements should be replaced with a “mantra.” He pointed to the book by Guy Kawasaki called The Art of the Start in which Kawasaki says “forget mission statements, they’re long, boring and irrelevant. No-one can even remember them much less implement them. Instead, take your meaning and make a mantra out of it.”

In fact, Kawasaki’s mantra idea is the vision statement. Vision statements should conjure up the values and philosophy of a company succinctly and memorably. They are not about how to achieve the bottom line but are externally focused and express why customers will want to work with your organization. Kawasaki uses these examples of good “Mantras”:

Authentic Athletic Performance – Nike

Fun Family Entertainment – Disney

Rewarding Everyday Moments – Starbucks

They are all great vision statements as well as Mantras. Each conjures up a clear image of the organization’s goals and aspirations. They are called vision statements for good reason - they paint powerful pictures in our minds.

So thanks Sergey for introducing me to Mr. Kawasaki. No pressure or anything but I think we should all watch out for a really powerful “vision/ mantra” statement coming out of a start up company in Russia soon!

Executive Presentation Training

Michael Gardner — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:16:08 +0000

Presentation training teaches you how to drill down and make what's important interesting

What can you learn about authentic communication from one simple question?

In my last post I talked about the difference between how participants at the Center for Creative Leadership come across during a TV interview when asked about personal questions versus business questions.

While the week-long program is not billed as a presentation training course, executives do go through a seven minute TV interview that most say seems to last much, much longer. There are a number of psychological reasons for this. When under stress the brain seems to shift into a higher gear. This is why traumatic events—not that being on TV is traumatic—that actually take but seconds (think auto accident), seem to play out in our memories in agonizing slow motion detail.

The questions our executives get asked have been carefully prepared and are based on interviews with their peers, direct reports and superiors. They are all about real-life business challenges and, while not always easy, they are completely familiar to the participant. They answer earnestly, objectively and even for those without presentation skills training, quite skillfully. And why shouldn’t they? Aren’t they, after all, one of the world’s top authorities on this particular topic?

But, and this is a big but. Too often their answers are overly technical or abstract or detailed in ways that aren’t meaningful to a wider audience. They lapse into what I would call execuspeak. And unless you are a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, an analyst or a direct report, the answers can be, well, boring.

In a world where “basic” cable includes 100 channels, where attention spans are measured in eight-second sound bites (the average length now of a TV news clip) our tolerance for anything not entertaining, meaningfully informative, immediately useful or easily digestible is very close to zero—unless, of course, you are on drugs.

Our executive may have answered the question spot on but because his or her responses lacked a few key vital elements it is doomed to be channel fodder, an easy victim to anything even minutely more interesting… and the airways are filled with minutely interesting programs.

So what are those vital career-saving elements? What will keep the viewer glued to you?

To find out let’s go back to the interview for a moment. At the very end we ask one question about a personal interest and almost without exception the executive lights up, either out of sheer relief or because they finally get to talk about something that’s fun and interesting and something they have a personal passion about. That’s not to say their work can’t have all those elements too. It’s just that they have a much harder time showing it. Sure, there are exceptions, but not as many as you might think. And you know who they are immediately.

As our executives talk about their fishing hobby, or new sports car or grandchild a funny thing happens. They talk to you like a person and not as if they were standing in front of their PowerPoint slides. They smile. Their natural humor bubbles up. They finally become human (in the best and most authentic possible way) and yes, interesting.

Being interesting is one of those vital elements. Unless you are a gifted actor it’s not something you can fake, which is why people who are genuinely interesting are often felt to be authentic presenters.

Now maybe you are thinking (and you wouldn’t be the first). “Well, I can’t honestly think of anything interesting about what I do.”

I understand. Some jobs are quite technical and just trying to explain what you do can be a challenge. You can’t imagine how anyone, short of the people you work with and for, would find what you do interesting, even if you could explain it. And that’s ok. Lot’s of people are in that boat.

But there are techniques for drilling down and making whatever you do (challenge me on this!) interesting and for making yourself, in the process, come across as authentic.

I’ve rambled on long enough in this post and will get to those techniques straight-away next time.

Until then may your light burn bright (at least brighter than whatever else is playing!)

Why Online Presentation Coaching Works

Howard Stableford — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:18:24 +0000

Practice makes presentations more palatable

The short answer is because today’s technology allows for easy and secure ways to get better at presentation speaking through communication training courses. Which can now be taken online.

But I prefer long answers so……

My favorite meal in all the world is Chicken Tikka Masala. Seriously.

When I travel abroad I test the local Indian restaurants looking for the perfect combinations of spices aromas and viscosity of sauce.

I once tried to make it myself from a cookbook. I found the mouthwatering recipe I was looking for, gathered the right ingredients and followed the instructions to the letter. After two full hours of preparation and creation, I presented it triumphantly to my family.

We ate out that night. It was so bad even the dog turned up it’s nose.

The lesson I learned was that the most important ingredient of all was missing. Practice! Oh, and a coach, or chef to give me pointers would have been nice too.

To be more precise, I needed practice, repetition and refinement of my culinary skills from family feedback. Great chefs are not born. They work very hard at it, they constantly practice and tweak their recipes until they work consistently every time.

The same is equally true for great speakers. The problem can be that as we prepare presentations we don’t have access to a “family” to provide truly helpful and objective presentation feedback.

Well, that used to be the case, but today websites like this one can help speakers all over the world prepare tasty, flavorful presentations by providing an online family to listen to and assess presentations in a totally safe and encouraging environment.

The way we coach clients online is to invite them into a secure online communication training conference room. The client sometimes records their performance and emails their PowerPoint slides beforehand but the whole thing can be totally live as long as they have a simple webcam pointing at them. We can even provide a camera.

We find it beneficial to have a small group of clients doing this at the same time because feedback from others in the same boat complements the pointers my colleague Michael Gardner and I might make.

The beauty of this simple recipe is that participants can be anywhere in the world and in any time zone. It’s also very economical to do. So if you have an important presentation coming up and would like to pass it by the ACT family, just belly up to the table and click here for more information.

While we’ve been doing this collectively for over 20 years in other venues our blog is quite new and so if you are one of the first 7 to respond we’ll give you an extraordinary discount in exchange for your feedback!

Meanwhile, although we know it is impossible to become truly skillful at anything just by reading a manual, I have just picked up this little book called “How to Play Golf”. This just might be the exception to the rule. It seems all you have to do is hit a small ball with a stick until it falls down a hole. Hmm. Now how difficult can that be? I’ll let you know.

The Curious Power of Authenticity

Michael Gardner — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:42:18 +0000

What does it mean to be an authentic communicater?

“You are perfect, just as you are (and you can use a little improvement).”
–Shunryu Suzuki

Over the past 11 years I’ve coached literally hundreds of executives through a surprising and sometimes grueling mock TV interview at the Center for Creative Leadership in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

And the funny thing is, with few exceptions the executives who go through this interview, no matter how much (or little) media training or exposure they’ve had feel that they did terribly.

Even after a sumptuous dinner it’s with a somber, hangman gallows humor that they enter the debrief room that evening to watch themselves and hear commentary from a psychologist, their peers and me.

With the lights dimmed they watch themselves objectively, some for the first time. And just as predictably, what most see is pleasantly surprising. They did well. At the very least they were adequate. They weren’t terrible like they first suspected. And to others they seemed perfectly natural and competent.

Of course, there are always a few imperfections, but they are mostly slight and easily correctible with just a little practice. (More on that in a future blog).

Perhaps you are saying, “Well, yeah. You are working with high level executives. Of course they are going to be good already.” And that is true, but only in part. Most are excellent communicators already–but not necessarily in front of a camera. Most are extremely bright. But they, just like you and me, have a certain trepidation when being filmed for TV.

Maybe it’s because unlike in person, or even a group presentation, there isn’t that sense of audience. There’s no feedback, just the daunting red glare of the live camera light. It’s hard to feel comfortable with an interviewer you just met two minutes ago and who is now asking uncomfortable questions. You have no idea how you are coming across and at this point many businesspeople resort to a kind of executive speak. They retreat to safety, speaking abstractly and in generalities. It’s as if they were addressing a board interested only in a strategic 50,000 foot view of their operations. But even this is fine, as far as it goes.

One of the questions asked, often the last, is a personal question. “Tell me about your new grandchild,” I might say. Or, “What about that scuba trip you just took.” Or, “I hear that on weekends you like to play in a rock-n-roll band at your church?” Inevitably, the veneer of seriousness disappears. A smile forms. And a different person speaks.

Who is that person? And why has he or she been hiding all this time? That person speaks naturally. They laugh. They show enthusiasm and energy. There is an aliveness, a sparkle in their eye. That’s the person I feel most comfortable with. That’s the person I most like.

When I ask how they can bring some of that energy, that passion, to their previous business responses they often look puzzled. “There is no way. I mean that other stuff is serious. There is no room for levity.” True, some topics are serious. Layoffs, disappointing results, these are all worthy of, and may require a serious tone. But that’s not entirely what I mean. I want that other person, the more authentic one, to answer the question in a way that is like one person speaking to another, not someone making a statement or trying to remember what the press release said.

There are ways to create a bridge between those two personas, and to do so with integrity and authenticity. How you can do this using some of the latest research on neuro-physiology I’ll explore next week in part two of this posting.

Beginnings

Howard Stableford — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:21:56 +0000

It’s a big day for us here at ACT as Michael Gardner and I unofficially launch our brand new blog site and look forward to reaching and engaging with new audiences around the world.

Since this is a new beginning for us, it set me thinking about where it all began for me personally. Where did my passion for authentic communication and creating persuasive performances start? I think I can trace it back to a single incident many years ago when I was a spotty fourteen year old school boy at a northern grammar school in England. The English teacher has just entered the classroom to the customary clatter of chairs and desks as we shuffle to our feet and greet him with a bored rendition of “Good morning Mr. Jagger’. Today is slightly more tense than usual since we are getting our marked essays returned. Before he distributes these his custom is to select one he particularly likes and read to the class. He opens an essay book and begins….

OK I can’t remember the essay, but I do remember being very impressed by it. It grabbed my attention right away, it was dramatic, funny and left you wanting to know what happened next. I started to look around the class to see which of my swotty colleagues must have written this masterpiece. Then I realized this essay belonged to me and I also knew for certain that the essay I wrote was no masterpiece at all.

So what was happening here? Well no doubt you are ahead of me here. It was the way the teacher was “performing” my essay. He wasn’t just reading it, he was bringing it to life in a way I could never have expected - by putting meaning to unexceptional prose through a dramatic delivery.

That revelation has stayed with me ever since. The words don’t have to be monumental, but the power of performance can elevate any message to a much higher level. This has helped me in very practical ways many times in my broadcast career when presented with a dull script and no time to rewrite it!

Actors can only succeed through the power of their own authentic performances. They have to bring something of themselves to every part they play to make the performance authentically their own. Finding this authenticity is crucial for all of us who need to perform to any kind of audience and it’s an important aspect of our courses.

If you want to see an extreme example of a great actor taking these techniques to the limit, take a look at what William Shatner did to the urbane lyrics of Rocket Man written by Bernie Taupin at an awards ceremony back in 1978. The audience was evidently left bemused. I think it’s fantastic.

William Shatner- Rocket Man

Before you go there though, take a look good look around our new site. Thanks for being here, we hope you’ll come back often.