Leon: “How do you talk to people who don’t want to hear it?  When I give them feedback, they immediately get defensive.”

Me: “How do you start the conversation?”

Leon: “I say:  I need to give you some feedback.”

Me: “Any other way you start the conversation?”

Leon: “I might say:  What we’re doing isn’t working and we need to change.  Or I might say:  You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect it to work, that’s insanity.  Or I might say: I’ve told you all this 3 times already but nothing’s happened.”

Leon: Sigh.  “I’m just so frustrated.  They’re just not open to anything.”

The problem wasn’t that Ashley was soft-spoken or insufficiently forceful. The problem was that she didn’t have the skill of communicating with intention. Not surprising. Few people do.

When people really want something from another person who isn’t cooperating, they often fall into the trap of being forceful, being louder, trying harder, and even demanding.

They find out the hard way that none of these work. Intention is very different.

People who come to me for coaching or training ask me to teach them how to be “impactful”, “compelling”, “charismatic”, “powerful”, “memorable” … and more.

No one yet has ever come to me and said, “I want to be unmistakably clear”.

And yet that is exactly what they’re missing.  Unmistakable clarity.

When what you’re saying is unmistakably true and unmistakably clear, you ARE powerful.  You are compelling. You are impactful. You are successful.

Nick, a young leader, completed Causative Communication and signed up for executive coaching to develop his messaging and presentation skills to high level executives.

I was looking forward to seeing Nick again. He showed up for his first coaching session looking WOW! Nick was looking directly at me with a smile, exuding warmth and charisma. He was captivating.

I said, “Nick, you look amazing! What are you doing?”

Nick said:

Developing executive presence does not happen by accident. Presence delivers your message before you ever speak a word. Most people see the effects of their presence without fully understanding its cause or how to control it.

Developing executive presence does not happen by accident, it is not a power reserved for the few.

Executive presence is engineered.

Most presenters talk too much. They present too much information of little interest and save their important points for the end of their presentation. You can tell this is happening if the audience is relatively tuned out during the presentation but perks up toward the end. Some audiences never perk up. They just look relieved when it’s over.

Most presenters don’t know how to create a powerful set of Key Messages that land with impact and move their audience. They just throw out excessive details and hope some of them will matter.

“She gets very defensive every time I talk to her.”

Vincent was describing Vickie, the Executive Vice President who had just cast the deciding vote to veto Vincent’s promotion to Vice President.

Vincent was complaining about how difficult Vickie was with him. She always disagreed with everything he said. And now he was trying to get her to agree to promote him to VP. Even though his boss, the Senior Vice President, was fighting to make it happen, Vickie wouldn’t budge. It was hopeless.

From his perspective, the problem was …. Vickie.

Everett, a senior level executive, came in with many goals for his Executive Coaching. Everything from wanting to become a rock star when he gives presentations, to mastering persuasion during negotiations, resolving high level conflicts, getting others to do what’s needed and handling tough, sensitive conversations. Everett runs into everything and everyone in the course of his high-powered week.

Everett did get everything he wanted, but Everett’s biggest win was something he never expected. And that was the incredible relationship that unfolded with his three-year-old son.

He walked in and transformed his team before he even said a word.

The team of 20 was stressed. Agitated. A reorganization had been announced and they didn’t like where it was going. Their tension was palpable, even in the silence as they waited for him.

Evan walked in, stood in front of his team, and calmly looked at each person. A calm moment of simply connecting with each one.

The whole room calmed down.

I was coaching a small group of women for a “Women in Leadership” program in a high-profile energy company. One of them raised a difficulty about working from home and how much she disliked communicating virtually, how much better it was to be in person, and how you lose the essence of a human connection when you’re looking at a computer screen. She felt she wasn’t communicating as effectively through this technological medium.  The experience caused her stress she didn’t experience in person. Others in the group agreed, they felt the same way.

And then I had them make one change that created a complete transformation.

Today I was coaching Daniel who’s working on closing a $10 billion deal. What’s the difference between working on a $10 billion deal and a much smaller one?

Besides all the zeros to the left of the decimal point, and the fact that with a $10 billion deal you’re probably working with a team of excitable people who are sometimes even more of a challenge to manage than the customer, other than these things, there’s not going to be much difference in the skills you need to close either one.

Both will take the ability to connect with another human being. 

“Um’s” are what’s known as “filler words” during a presentation. They’re unnecessary and distracting. As in, “What we learned was important because … um …. what customers were saying was that … um… they wanted faster service.”

She turned to me and said, “Can you help him with the ‘um’s’?”

I told her yes, but not to worry about it right now. She trusted me and nodded.

I coached him on other things and within an hour they had disappeared.