I was part of the audience watching Louis present. The audience was listening, but unmoved. Louis could feel that and was suffering.
Until recently, his career had been focused on the engineering technology that was the core of his company’s success in the high-tech industry. He had now been promoted two levels up and his presentations were no longer to other engineers. They were now business presentations, not technical presentations. All the details that had made Louis an expert within the engineering community were uninteresting to his new audience of executives. Louis felt like a fish out of water. The senior executives he was presenting to looked and felt like a panel of cold, unresponsive strangers.
Louis had two goals when he began the Transforming Your Presentation Skills workshop, two skills he wanted to learn: how to keep his audience engaged and how to be persuasive. Louis felt both were impossible for him to ever achieve.
When we talk about audience engagement, we’re talking about mental engagement. What does that mean? The height of mental engagement is when the audience is swept away. Their attention is captivated, their interest is absorbed and they are thoroughly enjoying it. They are lost in the moment with you.
At that moment you are creating a wonderfully rich, beautiful experience for them. They are captivated by your excellence. Swept away.
You actually take hold of their imagination.
When you have an audience engaged like that, you can persuade them. Their minds are open.
That’s what Louis wanted to be able to do.
There are two principles I focused on while coaching Louis to show him the way there. The first is that every amazing outcome is built on the foundation of a deep, profound and calming human connection. Despite what you’ve been told, you can build this connection in a matter of minutes if you know how, whether it’s one-on-one, in a meeting or when you’re in front of a group.
By the end of the first day, Louis had this connection. The metamorphosis happened so quickly as he did the exercises I had for him, he almost didn’t know what happened. All he knew was that he suddenly went from NO connection to having a deep, powerful connection with the audience, and that this connection alone completely changed him as a communicator. What came out of him now was much stronger, much more powerful, and now the audience was leaning in. They gave him an overwhelming feeling of well-being.
The second principle I coached Louis on is that everyone is a natural. It’s a matter of releasing their natural abilities, their natural powers. It’s a matter of getting rid of the things that intervene, removing the barriers.
When you do that, a natural power, actually powers because there are always several, emerge.
You can’t “empower” others. You can’t give others power. They ARE powerful, they HAVE power. They are just not using it.
Em in empower means put in or into. You don’t put power into them. You release the power inside them already, you release the power inside.
You can develop their skills which will make them more powerful because knowledge and skills amplify the power that is already in a person.
This is important to you because what it means is that the power is within you. It’s simply a matter of releasing it, removing the barriers that inhibit you and learning how to use it, learning how to direct it, learning its chemistry.
Each individual is totally unique. And the power that is released in one person will look nothing like the power that is released in another. It’s beautiful to see.
At the end of the second day of the workshop, Louis gave his final presentation. Louis had not prepared a speech or script. He was operating at a much higher level. Conceptual not mechanical. He knew the concepts he wanted to communicate and spoke spontaneously.
Everyone’s jaws dropped. I kid you not when I say it was “Martin Luther King worthy”. Powerful, stunning, persuasive, inspirational.
Most amazingly, it had something that corporate presentations are sorely missing: rhythm. Rhythm is the height of art. Musicians know it. Rhythm applies to speaking and writing too, but for most corporate presenters, it’s out of reach. When you have rhythm, you take your audience to the height of being swept away. Steve Jobs had it. In the corporate world, it’s hard to find.
Rhythm was released in Louis. I didn’t “teach” it to him. I hadn’t even talked about it – it’s too advanced for this workshop. But the barriers were gone for Louis, and there it was. In full force and glory.
Who knows what’s inside a person until it’s released? It’s always amazing. It never disappoints. It always blows you away. It’s why I love this work.
Louis too was blown away by the experience. And his new feelings.
Louis said, “I have no idea where that came from”.
I said, “It came from you.”
And there’s plenty more in there where that came from, now that Louis knows the path and how to tap the source.
When you really learn how to express yourself, the audience finally begins to understand you, their minds open, they’re swept away.
It looks like a miracle. Because it is a miracle.
Be the cause!