Authentic Communication Training » Practice

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.

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.