I’m coaching Geoff, a senior exec, on his virtual presentations. Geoff presents internally to thousands of employees, to the senior leadership team, to the board and at global industry conferences. He’s an important guy.
You might not be surprised to know that Geoff has three other communication coaches. Two are internal and one is a consultant. I was added as Geoff’s fourth coach to accelerate his progress toward becoming a more charismatic presenter.
I was asked to meet with the other three to integrate my coaching strategy with theirs for an important upcoming presentation Geoff will deliver to thousands of employees.
The three coaches told me they had already worked out Geoff’s key message and were hoping that I could help Geoff deliver it “impactfully”. I asked them what it was and they said Geoff’s key message was:
The organization now critically needs teams to create transformation by rapidly iterating new approaches
And then they sat back and looked at me with great satisfaction.
It had taken them entire afternoon to come up with that key message and they were very proud of it.
You, reading this, are probably not a high-priced communications coach. But I’ll bet you can easily see the flaw in that key message.
It leaves you thinking, “What the heck did you just say? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I hate to say this, but that describes much of what I can say about corporate presentations.
I have thousands and thousands of “Before” and “After” videos of clients and one comment I can make about many of the “Before” videos is, “I have no idea what you just said.”
People get so wrapped up in looking good and trying to be impressive, in trying to overwhelm in an effort to be convincing, that they forget that what you’re REALLY doing is getting a message across that you want people to understand, and very possibly you actually want them to go out and do something.
People come to me for coaching with goals that sound like, I want to be impressive. No one comes to me and says, I want to be understood. Yet, this second one is the powerful one.
They make the mistake and assumption that If I’m saying it, you must be understanding it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I told Geoff’s 3 coaches that I definitely want him to be impactful and that I would help. I talked to Geoff, found out what he was REALLY trying to say, and translated the key message back to a language people understand.
Here’s the key message that Geoff delivered to the troops. It was the same message, said differently. Geoff said:
You know all those new things you’ve wanted to try to make our organization better? GO FOR IT! NOW! And if something’s not working, figure out why real fast and make it work. Don’t sit around blaming anybody. Who cares whose fault it was. Just get it working. As fast as you can.
When I first presented this key message to them, the other coaches looked at me disapprovingly and said, “But this doesn’t sound very SVP’ish.”
I said, “I understand. I think this is what he’s trying to say, isn’t it?”
They said, “Yes, but…”
Somehow in their minds, SVP communication has to be elevated, sophisticated, way beyond the way normal people talk.
To the point of being incomprehensible.
Geoff developed a very strong executive presence during our coaching (see last week’s article). So when he delivered this communication it had a LOT of power.
People got it. The organization got moving. Everyone stopped blaming each other. They got things working. Fast.
The message was understood. Loud and clear. Action was immediate.
Your primary purpose is to get your message across. Your primary purpose is to be understood. With high fidelity clarity.
Once you are certain you are being fully understood, there are lots of things that you can do to add interest and create emotional impact. I’ll write about those in future articles.
But don’t be like so many in the corporate world, so caught up in being fancy and impressive, that your signal gets lost in the noise.
In the simplest possible terms, what is it you want to tell them? Exactly what is it you want them to do? Craft an elegantly clear key message. And deliver it with real presence and impact.
If you’re having any difficulty working out your key messages, that is what we do here. It is just one of the skills we teach. Just reach out and ask for help.
Getting clear on how to do this is one of the KEYS to becoming causative.
Be the cause!