“I’m now walking into meetings and making what I want happen. The first thing I noticed was that everyone started listening to me differently. Even my boss. Now people go quiet when I speak and genuinely listen, even my superiors. I hadn’t realized there are different kinds of listening. This is REALLY different. After that, it’s not hard.”
This broke all the rules considering where Agoston was on the corporate ladder. He was young, early in career and had no authority. But he spoke up at meetings, in hallways and conversations. His influence was growing daily. It wasn’t long before he was promoted and began rapidly moving up the organization.
Before he did the Causative Communication workshop, no one listened to him.
What made the difference for Agoston was mastering the skill of…
The question, “What do I need to say to get the outcome I want?” is a good question. Knowing the answer to it is essential to being causative.
The reason people experience difficulties when they’re looking at a situation through this lens is because they don’t realize that they’re skipping steps.
Alistair came to me for coaching because his evaluations were filled with words like “Dry”, “Dull”, and “Not inspiring”. They thought Alistair was a smart technical geek with no leadership ability. The “Loyalty” scores in his division hit the bottom.
It was very quickly clear to me that Alistair had tremendous leadership ability and was an exceptional strategist. He was tripping up on his ability to communicate, and so the outside world never saw it.
When you trip up on communication, you will trip up on leadership. They go hand in hand.
I coached Alistair on many skills. The continuing monthly evaluations from his All-Hands told us whether he was winning.
Watching Arjun’s initial presentation, I could see he was rational, professional, very corporate. But it was not compelling. You might walk away liking Arjun, but not much moved or influenced by him.
Virtual presentations had always thrown Arjun off, especially with people that he didn’t work closely with and didn’t see that often.
We worked on many skills. I’m going to talk about two that really made a big difference. They both have to do with your state of mind.
A well-loved and successful Vice President recently came to an in-person Causative Communications class we were delivering for their company to talk to the students about how she utilizes the skills she gained from our classes to create real success in her daily life and her career.
The students loved her talk. She was supposed to talk for about 20 minutes, but they were so enthralled it went on for about an hour and a half, with question after question, each followed by her giving them practical advice that inspired them. Their faces were glowing listening to her.
One question she was asked was, “How do you prepare for a challenging meeting or big presentation?” This was a particularly good question for her because she goes into many very difficult negotiations and conversations, as well as gives many important presentations. Her answer will surprise you … (read more)
“I can feel it. People’s minds get very quiet when I start to talk. They’re totally quiet until I’m completely finished. They’re really listening to me.”
Mateo, a recent graduate of Mastering Virtual Presentations, wrote that to me last week.
Why are they quiet? Because they turned off all thinking.
When do audiences do that?
“Can I send you the feedback from my last presentation?”
Only a week earlier, Lukas had completed the Mastering Virtual Presentations workshop.
It was supposed to be “just another normal corporate presentation”.
When you see those two words together, corporate presentation, what do they conjure up for you. Something thrilling? Gripping?
Very few people find them exciting.
Lukas was asked to give a “quarterly update,” which is the same low level of thrilling as a “corporate presentation”.
Except that Lukas surprised them all. And he was amazed by the response. He’d never gotten feedback like this before. No one had.
“What are you doing?”
I was asking Alessandro this at the beginning of the Mastering Virtual Presentations workshop. Alessandro was giving his first presentation and I was trying to make sense of his sudden stone-faced glare and forceful hand gestures.
“I was told I need executive presence so I’m trying to come across with gravitas.”
The problem was that he was trying to do it with his body.
I said, “Here, watch me.” And then I took George’s slide and presented it exactly the way he was doing it.
I asked, “What do you think about that?”
George, “It’s really awful.”
I said, “Now watch this.”
I presented using the exact same words, but differently this time.
Me: “What did I change?”
George: “Everything! Your body language, your tone of voice, you were leaning in, you sounded more passionate, your hand gestures, your eye contact. You were compelling, you were engaging. It was impactful, the first one didn’t feel like it had much meaning.”
I told George I only changed ONE thing. Only one. Everything that George observed were byproducts of the one thing I changed.
I asked, “Do you have any idea what that one thing was that I changed?”
For two years, Jason had been in his home office, in front of a computer monitor not more than 2.5 feet from him. The camera was close up, and everything was within arm’s reach and easily under his direct control.
Today, his presentation was “direct to camera”. The only live audience was the crew. And they weren’t paying attention. They were running around, moving equipment, ignoring Jason.
Jason scoped out the room one last time. Located the main camera, boldly connected with it and told the crew, “Hit it.”
He looked directly into the camera and smiled, an irrepressible, irresistible smile. He brought forth all of his warm, eye-twinkling charm and charisma and said, “Hi. Thank you for being here. Let me tell you what I want to talk to you about today.”
The reviews of Jason’s talk from his worldwide audience were enthusiastically positive. Employees felt drawn in, they were captivated, inspired, engaged and they really liked listening to him. The Communications Department is suddenly getting requests for “More Jason presentations please!”
I was reviewing the recording with Jason afterward and he revealed the secret to his success.
“Muscle memory.”
Thomas was one of three experts on a cyber-security panel, a media interview with a live audience televised across the world.
Thomas was looking directly into the camera, eye contact strong, executive presence strong, confidence strong, competence undeniable.
I started coaching Thomas about two years ago. The presentations he was giving back then had much less visibility. As his competence increased, he was asked to present more frequently.
When you see him now, you would say he’s a natural.
That doesn’t mean he started out that way.
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