Terror, fear, even a little anxiety, makes people talk too fast. When you talk too fast, your words lose their meaning. Correct pacing is the hallmark of a professional speaker. There was one thing that Mariela was doing that was causing ALL the problems I just mentioned. She was talking to EVERYONE.
It seems logical. You have 300 people in your audience - you should talk to 300. Right?
This is the worst thing you can do.
I’ve been delivering tons of virtual and in-person presentation skills workshops and coaching. Extraordinary executives, brilliant engineers, top sales professionals, fascinating attorneys, individual contributors, early in career, the complete spectrum of corporate life.
They’re dynamic, charming, funny, warm, open, personable …. that is, until the workshop starts.
Then they each take turns giving their 1st presentation, before any coaching.
Suddenly life, personality and charisma drains out of them, they become very corporate. Very businesslike, deadpan. Dry data, cautiously stated conclusions, serious, matter-of-fact, completely restrained and inhibited self-expression. Conservative. Suddenly it’s SERIOUS.
I remember a student I had a couple years ago who, when I asked her to tell me her goals for the workshop said, "I want to get my Mojo back. I used to have Mojo and somehow I lost it." Such a good goal!!!
When your Mojo’s working, you’re feeling GOOD. And the audience can’t help but feel good too, and absolutely love you.
It has nothing to do with content. Nothing at all to do with WHAT you’re talking about.
It has everything to do with YOU.
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.”
Alisa had an important presentation before our second Mastering Virtual Presentation Skills coaching session. She decided to try what she learned instead of her normal routine which is to look at her notes or her slides.
Afterward, Alisa made a brilliant observation, “The results exceeded expectations. Looking into the camera made me tune into their voices, how their voices sounded.”
I asked her, “What did the voices tell you?”
Alisa said, “I could tell they were warm, receptive, interested and engaged. I didn’t need to see their faces.”
Alisa is right. Human voices, when you really tune in, tell you everything.
Teams from three companies, different time zones, were coming together to discuss supplier issues. All three anticipating an unpleasant, contentious, argumentative, blaming, confrontational series of disagreements, punctuated by complete resistance on three sides.
Valerie, the vice president I’m coaching, was one of 12 people attending.
Valerie arrived to the meeting early. And did something no one had ever done before in their previous meetings: She turned on her camera.
As each person joined one by one, Valerie greeted them warmly and used the new skills we practiced in her coaching.
One by one, they all turn their cameras on and the next thing you know they were all talking warmly with each other. Like friends, actually.
And the meeting transformed into a collaboration.
Linda was given work that was beneath her capability. When she spoke up, she was dismissed. They gave a project that belonged to her to someone less qualified. No one would talk with her and her boss kept canceling their one-on-one meetings.
Everything about her was dark. She came across like doom and gloom combined with fear, resentment and blame.
Linda decided to find out what she was doing wrong that was causing her to fail, and to discover what she could do about it.
She transformed during the coaching. Every video showed dramatic progress. New strategies. New abilities. Real personal growth. She learned how to handle not just that situation, but any conversation, any communication challenge.
After using what she learned in our one-on-one coaching program, she became radiant and compelling. The people she works with changed from cold and hostile to warm and greatly appreciative.
They pushed her into a leadership position because they wanted her there. This never happens, ever.
I received a tremendous number of emails in response to my last article, many people tremendously grateful for a way to rebuild relationships that are being destroyed by today’s politics. Many asked for a link so they can post on their social media and I want to also provide that here for you
I’ll be writing more about this topic next week as we are on the cusp of Thanksgiving, our deeply cherished and joyous celebration of family, love, and way too much food. How do we create the great emotional, spiritual and physical satisfaction we crave during this crazy time?
For this week, I want to address a lighter topic: your camera presence.
Camera presence is how you show up for your conversations, meetings and presentations when you’re virtual.
You want to make the people you’re talking to feel like you’re right there with them. You want all the technology to melt away to create a feeling of closeness. And you want them to react warmly toward you the moment they see you.
Camera presence is a subject where small things make a big difference. Here are some of the key mistakes people make. I’ll show you with photos of Janet, our wonderful Lead Trainer. See if any of these photos look like you.
Camera angle is important. This is the most frequent mistake I see. Your camera lens needs to be on a straight horizontal line directly across from your eyes. Most people are looking DOWN at their laptop. This makes you look like you’re looking down at me. HOT TIP: We should NEVER see your ceiling. Looking up isn’t any better. You need to be looking directly across into the lens. This means putting your laptop on a laptop stand (or a bunch of books, or a box, etc) and making sure the lens is HIGH enough to be horizontally across from your eyes.
2. In Hollywood the stars know that lighting is everything. Most people are in the dark. They don’t know what ENOUGH light looks like. The light needs to be in FRONT of you. It needs to light up your face. It needs to not reflect in your glasses. See how COLD Janet looks when she’s in the dark.
3. Some people are so thoroughly in the dark, they look like they’re in the Witness Protection Program. This is mainly because the source of light is behind them (usually a window) and they have no light in front of them.
4. This is better, but many people make the mistake of lighting only half their face (usually because there’s a window on one side), while the other side of their face is dark. This does not bring out the best in you.
5. Here the lighting is good, but Janet is sitting too far away. Look at all that dead, empty space over her head and around her. Whatever she says to you will not be as impactful as it would be if she were filling the screen. You don’t feel close to her. You should fill the screen.
6. Fill the screen, but not at a weird angle – the top of her head is chopped off.
7. This is what you look like when you are looking at the other person’s video on the screen during the conversation. If you’re talking while looking at my video, it looks like you’re talking to my knee. Not impactful, not powerful, not effective. I know, I know, I know – YOU feel comfortable looking at the video and you don’t feel comfortable looking into the camera lens. I totally understand. But this is how you LOOK when you feel comfortable. Not good. You need to get comfortable looking into the lens while you’re talking. If you have any difficulty doing that, sign up for Mastering Virtual Presentations and I’ll teach you how to do it. This makes a HUGE difference in how effective you’ll be. I have a great knee, but it doesn’t deserve all that attention. :)
8. This is what you look like when you are looking at the camera LIGHT. You need to look at the camera LENS – NOT the light. Yes, this is better than looking like you’re talking to my knee – but now it looks like you’re talking to my left ear. Eye contact is king when it comes to human relationships and the camera lens is their eyes.
9. Here Janet is off-center. You need to be in the center of the frame for the most powerful and effective communication.
10. Here we go! The camera angle and lighting are terrific. Look how good she looks with her face fully lit up! Compare to the darker photos above and you’ll see what I mean. She’s centered and close enough to fill the screen. Looking straight into the camera lens, she looks like she’s looking straight at you. If she showed up for your meeting looking like this, what would be your first reaction? If you’re like most people, you’d like her right away. Her camera presence is great. And that sets the right foundation for excellent communication and a wonderful relationship.
Take a look through all these photos and see which person you most connect with. You can see the difference all these points make and adjust your camera presence accordingly so YOU create the best impression and relationship.
NOTE ABOUT LIGHTING: Lighting is SUPER important. You can get an inexpensive (less than $20) “Ring Light” that clips onto your laptop and a wide variety of others on Amazon. No, we don’t sell them, but you can easily find them with a search on Amazon. I and my team had to experiment with different lights until each of us found the right ones for us. Janet has a window on her left side (you can see it in the photo) and a ring light clipped to the laptop on her right side to light up the dark side. You need to light up your WHOLE face and make sure it is WELL LIT. This is important. For sure you won’t make it in Hollywood without it. :)
Please feel free to send me a screen shot of yourself and I’ll give you coaching tips on what you need to do to look fabulous on camera. I’ll do this with the first 25 screen shots I get.
Are you ready for your close-up?
Be the cause!
Harry was gritting his teeth. The SVP of Sales was (yet again) derailing Harry’s presentation to the Execs on the Senior Leadership Team, smoothly undermining Harry’s credibility.
Even worse … the execs were listening to the Sales guy.
How does Harry gain control?
Harry, the new VP Technology, prides himself on being logical. Logic is a system of thinking that enables you to reach conclusions and then take action.
Logic runs on assumptions and data.
Harry’s mistake was thinking there was only ONE system of logic: his.
To Harry, things were either logical, or they weren’t. Simple.
Harry’s assumption was that everyone runs on the system of logic that’s so obvious to him. And he was frustrated when they didn’t.
Harry’s second assumption was that others (legitimately) require robust quantity of data in order to buy into his conclusions. It was offensive to him to hear a conclusion without having ALL the data first.
So Harry had NO CLUE why senior execs multitasked while he presented every bit of his (to him vital) data.
Harry ESPECIALLY didn’t understand why the panel of Execs perked up and paid attention when the Sales SVP simply said, “I think this is a good idea. Customers will like it and it will increase revenue.”
Only after hearing the Sales SVP chime in did the Senior Leadership Team look at Harry in unison and say, “Good idea, Harry. Go ahead.”
Harry should have been happy they supported his recommendation, but he was miffed that they had to hear it from the Sales SVP. He was especially fuming because the Sales SVP didn’t present ANY data to support his statement.
Here’s what Harry’s was missing: Executive Logic™.
The logic Execs use to make decisions was foreign to him. I’ll give you one component of it.
One of the assumptions executives operate with is this: They hired you to worry about the details.
Yes, Execs ABSOLUTELY want hard data. But Harry was confusing hard data with details. Big mistake.
They TRUST you with all the details. And they don’t want to hear the them all.
If they want to hear the details, they’ll ask you questions about them. But it’s a SAFER assumption to assume that the less detail, the better.
Here is a law of Executive Logic: The further down the organization you go, the more concerned about details you should be.
The higher you go, what Executives are increasingly interested in is your EVALUATION of the data.
The details aren’t valuable. Your evaluation of the data and the details is.
That, very simply, is WHY they listened to the Sales SVP. They easily got the main point of Harry’s hard data. The Sales SVP saved them from all of Harry’s details. He evaluated Harry’s data for them and offered an easy to understand conclusion: Customers will like it. It will increase revenue.
The trust Execs had placed in Harry to evaluate the data and manage the details, very simply, was not part of Harry’s logic. Trust was not logical in Harry’s universe.
He couldn’t fathom how the Execs could give him so much trust without seeing all the data themselves. As a matter of fact, it was illogical.
Harry also had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that the Execs were not the least bit interested in the details. How could that be? Personally he found the details fascinating, so this was doubly hard for Harry to grasp.
So much for Harry’s logic.
Harry got that his logic was PERFECT … at his level and below. But NOT when he needs to communicate UP. I taught him how to think like an Executive. He caught on quickly.
Harry’s presentations to the Senior Leadership Team became tight, brief, concise.
He said much in few words. Although he was ready with details if they asked, Harry presented only critical hard data. His conclusions were precise. His recommendations were easy to understand. It was enough.
Even the Sales SVP was nodding in support.
For the first time they said that Harry was, “Clear” and, ”Compelling”.
Harry was blown away. He made a brilliant observation:
“I use my logic to get to the table. I use Executive Logic to win the poker game.”
Wishing you a winning hand for your next presentation!
Be the cause!
Ingrid
“Too many words.” – a Senior VP’s answer when I asked why he sent Frank, his new VP, to me for coaching, hoping for more effective presentation skills.
Right off the bat Frank complained the Senior Leadership Team only gave him 12 minutes to present his team’s complex research. He’s a technology genius. But it’s difficult for him to “compress everything important”.
I asked him to give me a typical presentation so I could see what he was doing. He managed to keep it to 8 ½ minutes.
Frank started out with the most commonly used –the most overused - sentence in corporate presentations: “I want to talk to you a little bit about….”
Yawn.
It took Frank 5 ½ minutes to get to, “The biggest issue we have is…”
At the 7 ½-minute mark he said, “The most important thing is…”
He ended without a recommendation, closing with the words, “So, I would like your input …”
It would have been a GREAT presentation …. IF Frank had a lower-level technical audience. But he didn’t. He had the CEO of a major multibillion, multinational corporation with his direct reports.
And here’s the effect this kind of presentation has on senior execs: Most tuned out, openly multitasking, until the 5 ½-minute point. And the rest didn’t engage until the 7 ½-minute moment, a minute from Frank’s closing.
From their point of view, Frank hadn’t said anything meaningful until then.
Why is there such a disconnect?
Frank is a brilliant technical guy. What has he been taught?
The current overpowering, but misguided, system for educating brilliant technical guys almost always guarantees that their communications will be misdirected when presenting to execs.
It’s both HOW Frank organizes his thoughts AND how he communicates them.
Brilliant technical professionals use brilliant technical logic. This logic requires that great quantities of minute detail be discussed. It mandates that not only should ALL this detail be laboriously presented and defended, it should ALSO be comprehensively duplicated on every accompanying slide.
This logic blindly follows the mandate, “Prove it!”
In a technical world where absolutes are unobtainable, this logic builds slowly, painfully, systematically, to a plausible conclusion like, “Most probably this is what we should do ... unless you think that we shouldn’t.”
Executives find it excruciatingly frustrating. This isn’t how they think. This isn’t how they decide. This isn’t how they act. Yet they have to rely on the person giving the presentation to help them make good decisions and act intelligently from an executive level.
Both sides feel defeated when it’s over.
How do you cross the divide keeping technical genius from reaching the executive mind? Next week I will talk about the presentation structure that follows Executive Logic™ and creates the language of success.
In the meantime, notice if this goes on around you. I’d also love to hear your war stories of the battle for minds in presentations.
Be the cause!
Their VP sent them for coaching on virtual presentation skills. It was obvious they didn’t want to be here. They’re Senior Directors, Senior Managers. Busy, don’t have time for this. Forced to endure. Probably secretly planning to multitask.
It was a group of 20 and, after the main intro lecture, the ETS Trainers and I divided them up for personal coaching. I took 5 into my breakout session.
I soon had them laughing. I hate seeing the misery of being forced to be somewhere you don’t want. I don’t try to make people learn something they’re not interested in. I personally had too much of that in school, where often I was more prisoner than student.
I established a fast friendship with the group and let them know I would teach them only what they wanted to know.
I asked each one how good they wanted to be. I let them know I could take them to rock star level if they wanted, but they were responsible for furnishing their own personal goals. I expected their goals to be as individual as they are.
I also warned them: the higher your goal, the tougher a coach I’m going to be. I have much to accomplish in six hours. So I don’t spend time messing around with anything not important.
I asked what level of coaching they wanted: light, medium or really tough. They all perked up by this point and unanimously requested tough coaching. They were now fully engaged. So we dove in.
As each one gave a short presentation, I got a sense of how they were currently doing it.
I can say this about all of them.
Their camera presence was uninspiring. In dark shadows, bad lighting, terrible camera angle, weak positioning. No executive presence. None.
These are leaders!
When it came to speaking, they were corporate and wooden. Stiff.
Not engaging. No chance of it. Audiences would be multitasking in less than three minutes.
Brilliant minds. Fabulous content. No impact. Yawn.
And with the birth of sudden hope that I could get them there, they all now wanted to be rock stars.
No problem.
You know why I say that? Because every ability they want is within them, just as every ability you want is within you.
Education comes from the Latin word educare, which came from the Latin ex (out) + ducare (to lead), to lead out.
And that’s what I do. I show my students how to find that ability within themselves and I lead it out of them. I lead initially, and they follow until they get the hang of it. And then they can finish the job and lead it all the way out. Then they are the leaders. Of themselves.
I often spend a good bit of time undoing all the damage that’s been done to their natural ability.
The informal and formal training they’ve gotten on “how to give presentations” often ruins it.
All these people who think they “have no natural ability” find out: not true. You do have great ability. And once you tap into it, it’s unstoppable.
I’ll give you an example that affected these five. It ties back to the reason why they were corporate and wooden.
They explained to me that they’re in a “technical field” and this is “how people in this field are.”
They had the firm belief that they needed to be “serious and professional”. And that “serious and professional” means using big words, formal language, erasing the pleasure in their hearts, killing the twinkle in their eyes, and wiping the smiles off their faces.
This is faulty education.
Professional should come from the quality of your work and serious should come from the intensity of your commitment. Both of these are demonstrated in your results, not how cold your face and your eyes are.
We got the lighting right for each of them so they showed up handsome and with executive presence. It’s politically incorrect these days for me to tell my clients that they’re handsome, but I can tell you.
When you get your camera presence right, you are handsome. Or beautiful, as the case may be. I see it every time.
Trying to be “serious and professional” (you can now read that as “corporate robot”), had diminished and almost extinguished each of their intensity.
These are VERY intense men. (I love intense people.) I gradually, gradually, gradually brought out all their intensity. I showed them how to experience and communicate that intensity while still being fully connected and in rapport with their audience. It’s glorious to see them speak now.
Learning to form a connection with their virtual audience, to speak naturally and powerfully, to really get their message to land, transformed these five.
Each of them now has charisma. Unique, very individual, powerful charisma.
As I coached each one, I had the others give feedback also. I thought I was a tough coach! They were brutal with each other once they got the hang of what I was doing. Relentless critics. But it was all done in the spirit of helping and we were laughing a whole lot. It was fabulous.
By the end, they were giving each other enthusiastic thumbs up, blown away not only by what they were capable of themselves, but what they now saw in their colleagues.
I fell in love with all five. There’s many kinds of falling in love. I’m talking about the swept away by competence kind. Of course it’s politically incorrect for me to tell them, but I’m telling you. They were amazing. Each one of them had the rest of us on the edge of our seats feeling like we could listen to them forever.
I can’t even describe the feeling it gives me to know that each one of them is now going to create that feeling with all of their virtual meetings and audiences. To know that every future audience is in for the most delightful of surprises.
Audiences are hungry for great presenters, especially virtual audiences. And these five, actually the whole group of 20 who worked with the other incredible ETS coaches, have the power now to create that charisma, anywhere, anytime, with any who.
And so do you, my friend. And so do you.
Get your camera presence right. Connect with your audience. Forget all the BS you’ve been taught about being stiff and wooden to convince the world that you’re really professional. Tap in to that charisma within you. And sweep them away.
Be the cause!
I get a sense of how desperate audiences are for someone who can give them REAL communication whenever I speak at conferences. It starts during pre-conference meetings with the conference organizers as they prepare me for what to expect.
I was recently asked to speak at a week-long virtual conference. I was speaking on the third day and the organizer wanted to touch base right before. So we talked on Tuesday. He said I would have to” really worry” about this group. “They’re only 2 days into the conference and they’re multitasking through everything. We can monitor engagement and it’s only around 20% at any given time.”
And then he started suggesting all kinds of techniques and gimmicks for me to use to increase engagement. Like calling participants out by name and other dreadful things my third grade teacher used to do.
I sincerely appreciated the heads-up going into my talk, but I’m antipathetic to any techniques or gimmicks. I believe in the power of new truths, in my own powers and in the intelligence of the audience.
I also believe that if the speaker isn’t good enough, the audience should multi-task – just to preserve their own sanity, especially during a week-long conference!
So, I started my presentation. The audience was engaged from the get-go. I was anticipating a challenge and there wasn’t any.
The conference organizer called me the next day, beside himself with enthusiasm, to tell me engagement for the 3 hours of my seminar had been 100%. They’d never seen anything like this. I let him know that I really appreciated his heads-up going in.
Right on the heels of that, I spoke at another week-long conference with a large international audience. This time I was on the fifth day, Friday. By this time, virtual audiences are usually as close to dead as you can get without actually burying them.
This conference organizer sternly let me know that the conference was precision-timed and no speaker was allowed to go even 60 seconds over their allotted time. I had precisely one hour. The clock would start ticking the second he was finished introducing me.
He made this clear in an email, in our 2 pre-conference planning meetings, and then just in case I hadn’t gotten the message, he told me again right before we started.
I had carefully precision-timed my talk to end precisely at the 60-minute mark, not one second longer.
It was going well and then unexpectedly halfway through my talk, the conference organizer was frantically texting my assistant, “The senior exec is loving this! Please tell her to take an extra 15 minutes! No one wants it to end!”
When I got this message, it was so unexpected, I was doing my best to not burst out laughing while wildly scrambling in my mind for, “What the heck am I going to talk about for another 15 minutes?”
And, less than 24 hours later, I was flooded with new requests to speak from that conference.
I can hear people asking, Well, how did you do that?
You should know that I am anti-technique, anti-gimmick.
Here’s what I do.
I have something worthwhile to say. Very.
I care about them. A lot.
I communicate. And I do it very well.
And I maintain a meaningful dialogue throughout. Many people think it’s challenging to do it virtually with a large audience, but I don’t find it so. That two-way interaction throughout is good for me and it’s good for them.
This is what I teach others to do too because I want to live in a world where we ALL are able to communicate with each other. As one of my clients said, “I am signing so many people up for your workshops because I don’t want to sit through any more boring presentations!”
And I don’t want anyone to ever be that boring presenter when I know the great things each one of us is capable of.
My real message to you in all this is this:
The world is being bombarded with people talking. Talking, talking, talking.
The world is starved for someone who can create a REAL connection, REAL communication. They eagerly tune in to you when you give them that. They enthusiastically engage with you. They want more of it. They are starved for it.
That is what they want from you.
You want 100% engagement? Go ahead and give them an abundance of the truly satisfying communication they are longing for. With the power of your ideas. With your powers to communicate them.
Be the cause!
The essence of humanity is our individuality. Because of this, we each have unique viewpoints. Often we have emotions attached to them.
“Viewpoint” literally means, “the point from which you view”. If you’re at the bottom of the mountain looking up, the top looks very different than it does after you’ve climbed it. You’ve changed your viewpoint. You now see it from a different viewpoint. You now possess two viewpoints of the mountain top.
You can say what is true for you at the bottom. The truth will be different when you’re at the top.
The challenge becomes when we try to communicate our different viewpoints. Often it goes smoothly. But not always.
When it doesn’t, it’s generally because disagreement is overwhelming the conversation, and has overpowered understanding.
When there’s no understanding, there’s no real acknowledgment of what is said. And that’s when communication goes south.
Understanding and agreement are very different. “Understanding” means, “I can see it from your viewpoint, I see what you’re seeing from your point of view, I perceive it clearly.”
“Agreement” means, “I think the same way as you do, I consent, let’s do that, I have the same opinion, I even think you’re right.”
To simply see something from another’s point of view is often the greatest challenge people have.
They’re so busy disagreeing, they stop seeing.
The problem people have is this: when they don’t agree, they withhold their understanding. They say things like, “I don’t understand how you could feel that way.” Or they mistake this for understanding: “I totally understand you. You’re selfish, stupid, stubborn and you’re wrong.”
The moment you withhold your understanding, even a little, you suppress the one thing that makes communication, and relationships, work.
Understanding is a skill. A high level skill. A powerful ability.
The more you perfect it, the more magical your life becomes.
I received this email from a student who completed Causative Communication online training a week ago:
“I'm amazed at how quickly it allows a conversation to move on by acknowledging, and how finding the words is easy when you have affinity. It's exactly what we learned, but it has not stopped happening outside of class or at work. I've also shared the approach I learned with my kids, and I've seen them be successful with it as well.
“My son struggles with anxiety, and in particular he worries about making people angry by not agreeing with them. I told him about affinity, acknowledging, and the difference between understanding and agreeing, and with a little practice at home, it has completely changed his perspective on interacting with people, and eliminated that fear!”
I love that there is a young boy who is learning how to be causative, how to freely communicate and exchange viewpoints with anyone, while still a child. This is going to serve him well throughout his entire life.
It gives me great joy that his fear, his anxiety, has vanished.
This opens up the whole world to him, and endless possibilities.
With affinity, understanding and acknowledgments, you possess the tools to create magic in any conversation, to bring about affinity, understanding and acknowledgment in others.
When you have this certainty, you can achieve harmonious collaboration with anyone, and the ability to create the future you dream of.
Every service we offer, whether it’s online/offline, in a group or even one-on-one, will move you forward towards that goal.
Be the cause!
Learning does something nothing else can. It engages and exercises your mind, fills you with well-being and makes you feel powerful.
Today I’ll tell you about Virginia and the transformation that learning created in her life…
Virginia is a really good person, but she never stood out. She interviewed for a number of exciting new roles within her company … and kept not getting them.
She works for a company that offers our classes to their employees, which is how I met her. Virginia showed up for Causative Communication eager and motivated to find out how to create a winning streak.
The following week she was in Mastering Virtual Presentations and, as I started the class, she interrupted, bubbling over with enthusiasm, and said, “There’s something I need to tell you:
“Right after the last class I had to do an extremely difficult series of interviews for a competitive position. I was interviewed by a panel of executives, followed by a series of one-on-ones with key stakeholders. The next day their HR partner called me and said, ‘I normally never tell anyone this so quickly, but we’ve all talked and you are for sure the person we want in this role. Everyone who interviewed you said that, compared with everyone else they interviewed, you really stood out. You created such a bond and trust with each one of us, we all felt you’re part of our team already! One of the execs even said that a wonderful positive energy comes from your eyes. We can’t wait to have you start!”
She was the same person, but the result was completely different. Keep in mind: she created “a bond and trust” with people and execs she didn’t know and these interviews were all virtual!
REAL communication dissolves all barriers. It creates true understanding, trust and a closeness you wouldn’t think could be possible when you’re virtual.
Virginia had a clear and beautiful vision of success. And a firm decision to make it.
Learning enabled her to cross that bridge. And now she’s flying high with wings that will keep her airborne.
Learning enables you to cross any bridge into the land of your dreams. That’s why a great teacher is such a gift in your life and to the world.
Never let your current level of ability limit your dreams. There’s no ability you can’t develop. All the abilities you could ever want are inside of you, like many seeds waiting for sun and water.
Your dreams are there for a reason. They are waiting for you to live them.
And learning can make it all possible.
What are you going to learn next?
Be the cause!
I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard or read the words, “We are living in a time of uncertainty.”
I’ve been around for a while and I can’t EVER recall living in what anyone would call “a time of certainty.” As a student of history, I can’t name any past civilization that I’d characterize as “a time of certainty”, including the Golden Age of Greece in the time of Pericles which was considered one of the best.
Persons today writing or saying that this is “a time of uncertainty” may be describing their OWN world view (and they’re likely to be having quite an awful day as a result), but it certainly doesn’t need to define your reality.
The word certainty means freedom from doubt. It also means unfailing and always producing the intended effect.
Imagine being free of doubt. Imagine being unfailing and always producing your intended effect. That’s what certainty is.
Certainty came from the Latin word certanus which meant full of confidence in one’s knowledge or judgment.
Doubt is the opposite of certainty. Freedom from doubt is powerful. A good dictionary will tell you that doubt means:
to waver or fluctuate
to hesitate
to be in suspense
to be missing confidence
to believe truth or fact to be undetermined
to fear, be apprehensive, to suspect
to be in an unsettled state
Doubt came from the Latin duo which meant undecided between two things.
Clearly, a feeling of certainty is one of the most important feelings you can have. A feeling of certainty is both desirable and VITAL for a happy life. Having a feeling of certainty about yourself feels GREAT.
It’s not a feeling you want to have go away. You want to feel certain … all the time.
But how do you achieve that?
The question that shines a light on this path is this one: Do you derive your certainty from WITHIN? Or from outside?
Your answer defines the degree of certainty AND happiness you can look forward to.
When certainty comes from the outside (what other people, economic conditions, news media, etc. are doing or going to do), you can all too easily get blown by the wind, and who knows which way the wind will blow? You’ll NEVER have enduring certainty and any certainty you THINK you have, will blow away one day.
When your certainty is from within, it’s ALWAYS a time of certainty.
Let tell you some real examples from the hundreds I have heard from the professionals and execs who recently completed our online courses on Building a Foundation for Causative Communications and Mastering Virtual Presentations.
I’ll give you three examples of what increased certainty does.
A manager was leading a team meeting and, unexpectedly, politics flared up. The conversation suddenly became an inferno of miscommunication, became very tense and people got upset. Using all the skills she gained, she guided the conversation into and through the tough issues to a positive outcome where everyone felt happy and satisfied. She especially made sure EVERYONE felt heard and acknowledged. She turned it into a meaningful, emotionally impactful conversation that had a profound impact on all of them. It brought the team together in a powerful way. Afterward she was flooded with “Thank you” notes.
A client wrote me, “I am transformed. I really needed the skills this week. I turned every negative situation into a positive. I pumped affinity and real understanding into every situation. My week is now absolutely fabulous! I just kept thinking, 'Is this really happening?' I walked away so charged up, I was ready to take over the world!”
An engineering professional who had been extremely nervous presenting to senior execs (especially virtually) wrote me after a very important presentation: “It felt so great to know I was connecting and engaging the panel of execs, even though I couldn’t see them. I could FEEL it! At the end of my presentation, the top exec said, ‘Wow! I have no words! That was AMAZING!’.”
I’m receiving email after email from many other students sharing their extraordinary wins.
What does this have to do with certainty? And with you?
When you take your communication skills to an extremely high level, your impact on the world around you is powerful, inevitable. Your doubts about yourself, about the future, the world around you vanish. You have great certainty.
In today’s world, especially because we’re virtual, it takes EVERYTHING I’ve been writing about in these articles to create it – but MORE of everything than before! It takes MORE imagination, MORE being fully present, MORE really connecting with the other person or persons, MORE focused attention, MORE full affinity, MORE speaking with powerful intent, MORE listening, and MORE total acknowledgements so the other person feels truly heard. These are all things you want to SPLURGE on right now!
I live my life with certainty. And I’m dedicated to helping you live yours with certainty too, with extraordinary communication and presentation abilities that always work for you, with freedom from doubt.
I love certainty.
I am certain these three people I’ve written about will hit it out of the park again, that their success is just beginning.
I have 40 clients I’m working with this week. I am certain I’m going to love them and make some lifelong friends. I am certain they will have extraordinary realizations about their communications and relationships. I am certain they’ll experience enduring life-changing wins and that they’ll gain abilities that make them stand out. I’m certain they will have a positive impact on the world around them. And at home too.
I’m certain we will laugh. A lot.
Do I know when I’ll be able to walk into a store without a mask? No. But is that running my life? Not at all.
I have WAY more things on the list of things I’m certain of – and all the IMPORTANT things are on that list.
Certainty comes from being able to cause the outcomes you want. It comes from self-confidence. And that comes from competence.
And attitude. An attitude that says you look within for what you want. An attitude that you can create anything you want.
Attitude alone WITHOUT skills gets defeated.
The people who have abilities plus attitude are the ones who are going to change the world. People like YOU!
I’m certain that good things are created on an individual level first, that individuals begin to impact other individuals around them, and that begins to impact a group and a wider and an expanding sphere of life.
I’m certain if good people (like you) are filled with their own inner certainty, that we can have a golden age ahead.
I’m certain you are unique. I am certain you are important. I will bet that you are a stabilizing force for the world around you. The world needs you.
Live in a world of certainty!
If I can help you do that, email me. I am committed to helping you in your journey towards 100% certainty.
Be the cause!
Do you have a favorite photo of you?
If you’re like most people, you have many photos of you that you’re not crazy about, and a small handful you like. That photo you do like captures for forever something wonderful about you. It’s the one photo of you that makes even you smile.
A really good photographer knows how to bring that out in you. That’s what I do in teaching people virtual presentation skills. Bring it out. In this article I want to help you see WHY you like that photo of you and not others.
This will help you create more photos you like, but the reason I’m focusing on this is that the same principle applies to creating powerful communication virtually, especially when you’re giving virtual presentations.
I’m going to use Marc as an example. Marc is a senior executive I coached this week, helping him prepare for a presentation he’ll be making with thousands watching. The two reasons people are listening to Marc are interest in his content and his position in the organization.
As a technical leader, Marc is extremely knowledgeable and has great technical content. Marc also has a great strategy, and he’s innovative. None of these come across.
It comes across dry. Fine for the first 3 minutes, then disappointingly uninspiring. He can’t wait for it to be over, and neither can you.
How do you bring out the charisma of someone like this?
Let me bridge back to you and talk about how do you bring it out of yourself?
Well first let me tell you how NOT to do it.
You know when someone’s taking your picture and they tell you to smile? What are you feeling at that moment? Pretty awful, right? Like you’re forcing yourself to smile when you’re not feeling it. You’re FORCING that smile. You hold it until the camera clicks. And then you drop it.
When you do that, your smile looks fake. It doesn’t match the look in your eyes.
The look in your eyes is THE most powerful, THE most important, aspect of your body language there is.
People ask me all the time if body language is important. My answer is an unqualified YES! But we have to look at WHERE it comes from.
If you work on the superficial, your body language will be terrible because it’s fake, like you see in the bad photo which captures your fake body language and freezes it in time for you.
Let me repeat this. The look in your eyes is THE most powerful, THE most important, aspect of your body.
Whether you are in person and even MORE so when you’re virtual!
When your smile doesn’t MATCH your eyes, whether in a photo, an in-person conversation or a presentation, you DON’T look good. I don’t even need to see you to tell you I’m 100% certain of that.
The other thing that happens when someone tells you to smile for the camera, is that you get self-conscious.
Self-conscious literally means too conscious or aware of yourself. It means you’re putting your attention on yourself.
Having attention on yourself VIOLATES every principle of powerful and effective communication.
Imagine watching your arm while you play tennis. How well will you play?
If you look back at that photo of yourself that you really like, what was your attention on?
What were you thinking?
Most importantly, what were you feeling?
I have no doubt you had no attention on yourself and you were filled with a powerful feeling. Right?
And it showed in your EYES.
An empty smile will NEVER create the effect we’re looking for.
It’s not in your mouth. It’s in your eyes.
You want your eyes to speak.
Film stars in silent movies knew this very well. They didn’t have sound to carry them. They spoke with their eyes.
How you do that is by what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling.
Let me make a point here. Your eyes speak whether you want them to or not. If you’re feeling any anxiety, if you’re even a little bit self-conscious, believe me your eyes are speaking that out to the world.
I have a photo of me I really like. I’m in India with 225 students. They’re each doing individual exercises. I’m wearing a beautiful Indian salwar (gorgeous silk tunic over fabulously elegant pants). I’m holding a clipboard loosely in my right arm and my left hand is on my hip. I’m closely observing a young student as he works on his assignment. I’m utterly absorbed in him and the look of pure love on my face floods the photo. This photo captures timeless beauty.
Genuine and great affinity for the person or persons you’re talking to is what puts that beautiful look in your eyes and makes you look good, makes you beautiful or handsome. And, very importantly, makes others respond.
I coach many senior executives. Only a small percent of them have sufficient affinity to be called charismatic.
I’m like the photographer who can draw the charisma out. I draw their affinity out.
I do this by coaching them on what’s in their core. Not superficial facial expressions or hand gestures, but their core, which is the true fountain, the true source, of charisma.
Going back to Marc, he looks like two different people in his “before” and “after” videos.
In his “before” video, Marc’s eyes are dead. They’re not cold, just lifeless. He smiles occasionally, but his eyes have no life.
In his “after” video, Marc’s eyes are filled with great warmth, they’re smiling, twinkling even. The look in his eyes fills you with great warmth for him.
This can ONLY happen with genuine feelings of affinity. You will never be successful faking it or forcing it. It has to be REALLY happening inside you.
It comes from inside you, moves to your eyes and then to your smile.
Marrying Marc’s incredible content with charisma created a leader whose communication is inspiring. I guarantee if you see him talk, you’ll find yourself smiling without even realizing you’re doing it, a smile that starts before you even have time to think about it. It starts the moment he starts speaking.
Which brings me to another point.
Many people have momentary bursts of affinity in their presentations. A small burst at the beginning, one or max two brief bursts in the middle and occasionally a tiny burst when they’re leaving. They’re all momentary and over in a flash.
Very few maintain powerful affinity throughout their entire talk. You can see it in their eyes. No life in the eyes throughout most of their presentation.
The key is to start STRONG and CONTINUE that affinity throughout your entire presentation. Of course that feeling will still have very natural peaks and valleys, but in a much HIGHER range of feeling that brings out the BEST in you.
My inbox is full of emails from students I coached last week, telling me that already this week they’re getting incredible results and the feedback they’re receiving is that they’re now “Amazing!”
Nothing makes me happier than helping someone who wants to reach others with their ideas achieve their goal. Nothing makes me happier than filling the world with great communicators. Nothing makes me happier than helping people be amazing. If we do this enough, we’ll have an amazing world.
Be the cause!
Many, many people have been signing up for our online training. It’s very uplifting and, as one of my clients said, “It makes you feel good about the world and it makes you feel good about yourself.”
That’s one of my purposes, so it makes me very happy to hear that. It’s a good time for learning.
I’m coaching a lot of people on their virtual presentation skills these days. I have about 50 students this week alone, a combination of workshops and one-on-one coaching for execs.
Here’s one question that comes up a lot:
“I know I’m supposed to look into the camera, but I want to see their faces to see their reactions to what I’m saying. How do I look into the camera and see their reactions at the same time?”
My answer surprises them.
There’s a huge difference between:
A. Causing the reaction you want and KNOWING you caused it without having to look
B. Doing something and then stepping back to look and see what reaction they’re having.
When someone says they need to “see their faces” to know their reaction, it immediately tells me they don’t have enough ability or skill to simply cause their intended reaction and know they caused it. Without looking.
You have to be pretty good to do that.
This level of ability gives you a super high degree of certainty. It’s a, “I don’t have to look, I KNOW I did it.”
For example, when you can say, “I don’t need anyone to tell me no one was multitasking during my presentation. I KNOW they weren’t.” And you’re right.
Or, “I don’t need to see if they get it. I KNOW I delivered it so well that they absolutely got it.”
Or, “They don’t need to tell me. I KNOW they like me. I KNOW they agree with me.”
Or, “I don’t need to see if they’re inspired or are going to act. They are and they will.”
And they do.
In other words, you knowingly caused it and you’re sure you did.
This kind of certainty comes from being able to hit it out of the park, an expression describing an American baseball batter hitting a home run that makes the ball travel so high and so far, it flies way out of the stadium beyond anyone’s reach.
What I’m talking about is being able to tell by the perfect FEEL of your swing, by the impact when you connect with the ball, and the special sound of the crack of the bat … everything about that motion feels so right, you start running around the bases because you KNOW you have a home run.
It takes an incredible amount of intention to achieve that.
Intention is positive and deliberate purpose. Deliberate means you’ve decided. Positive means totally certain. Certain means no doubt. Intention means no doubt about the outcome.
When you have that level of intention, magic happens. Whether it’s baseball or communication.
Society encourages self-doubt, but surrenders to intention.
I think I’ve mentioned to you that my inbox is full of successes and wins from students. What a joy to read them!
This week one of our recent students from Mastering Virtual Presentations wrote that she’d been invited to present to 200+ people at a Virtual event earlier in the day. She wrote she created, “25 minutes of focused presentation, total connection with the audience, eye contact, Affinity, FUN and intention! It all came to life!”
She had 200 people watching her that she couldn’t see. Did she have any visible sign that she was connecting with them?
No, she just KNEW, just like the guy who hit the home-run knows.
It’s funny. When you have that level of ability, you can actually FEEL the energy of the audience coming back to you, even when you can’t see them. Don’t ask me how, you just do. It’s powerful.
What happened after her talk? Over 50 people spontaneously reached out and emailed her kudos. 50 out of 200. Spontaneously.
When does that ever happen? Home-run.
By the way, she’s not a senior executive. She’s not someone people have to play up to. She’s an individual contributor. With noticeably amazing communication skills.
You cause the reaction of the people in your audience. Or you are the effect of their reaction.
It’s all up to you.
That’s why it’s so important for you to have a clear decision about what reaction you want to cause and the ability to do it. Then you can go ahead and cause it.
And KNOW you did it, whether or not you see their faces.
Work on your abilities. Work on your intention. Work on your certainty. They will lead you down the path to magic.
If you want to fast track your journey down that path, I invite you to get involved in one of the events below…
Be the cause!
I just received an email from a recent student who wrote:
“I did your Causative Communication online training to learn how to handle difficult conversations. The weirdest thing happened. I’ve stopped having difficult conversations!!! I haven’t had ANY since the training!”
Then she wrote two words that I’m very used to seeing in my inbox:
“It’s magic.”
Magic is when you produce a spectacular, even impossible, effect with very little effort, done so swiftly it’s invisible how you did it.
In difficult conversations, most people are used to expending a TREMENDOUS amount of effort and getting a mediocre or frustrating result. So, what she’s describing IS magic.
The other word you see in her email above is one I’ve also gotten used to seeing and hearing from our students and clients:
Weird.
I hear this word a lot. At one point I joked I was going to call it Weird Communication, but I knew that unless someone’s done the training, they wouldn’t understand.
Let me explain why it’s weird.
I have another client who recently put all of our online training into their corporate catalog to make it available to 100,000 employees. She sat in to observe our first three training sessions to make sure they were going well. A lot was at risk for her if they weren’t.
After the first session she said,
“That was weird. They were all paying attention. That’s really weird for 6 hours of virtual training that they would pay attention the whole time. What was even weirder was I was planning to multitask as I was listening and I couldn’t multitask. I’m the world’s busiest multitasker and I just couldn’t do it. I found myself riveted and being attentive the whole time. That was really weird.”
After the second session she said,
“That was so weird. I can’t believe how much people change in such a short period of time. It’s like they blossom before your eyes. They become compelling. You start to really LIKE them WAY more. That’s weird to watch how they are at the beginning and how they are at the end, so different.”
After the third session she said,
“I know I keep saying the word “weird”, but it really IS weird. I’m watching these people transform in these workshops and you do it so quickly and so consistently, that’s so weird.”
Then I overheard her telling her boss, “These training programs are so good, they’re weird.”
She’s not the only one who’s used this word. I hear it often. Almost as often as I hear the word magic.
When some says something is weird, they mean it’s really unexpected. They mean it’s hard to believe.
I understand. I know the world we live in. I know it well.
It’s a world where GREAT communication is weird. A world where creating a spectacular effect with very little effort is weird. Where a “normal person” being able to create consistent magic is weird. Where having a great teacher and learning how to do it in such a short time is really weird.
It’s weird to suddenly have everything going exactly the way that you’d like.
It’s weird to suddenly have a great relationship with someone that you haven’t been getting along with.
It’s weird to suddenly be able to influence an entire organization.
It’s weird to tell your child to go to bed once and have them do it cheerfully and willingly.
It’s weird to present an idea and have it immediately accepted.
It’s weird to be alone in a room talking to a virtual audience that’s far away and be able to feel their energy coming back to you and know they are swept away and totally with you even though you can’t see them.
Great communication IS magic. Creating magic is weird. Learning how to create magic is weird. They’re all spectacular. They’re all hard to believe.
Want to hear something really weird? I looked up the derivation of the word weird (where it came from) and, get this, the word originally meant the power to control your fate or destiny.
That’s precisely what being CAUSATIVE is all about. That’s precisely the PURPOSE of Causative Communication.
So, I guess in today’s world – that’s weird!
I personally don’t WANT to live in a world where great communication is weird. I want to live in a world where BAD or frustrating communication is weird. Where argument, misunderstanding, conflict, hostility, crushing disappointment, bitterness, not feeling heard, anxiety and fear are weird.
That’s WHY I’ve chosen this path. To help the world around me gain the REAL abilities needed to make magic happen.
I was grinning reading the email above. Nothing makes me happier than to know someone came to me to learn how to handle difficult conversations (of which she had many prior to the training) only to find that, MAGICALLY, after the training she doesn’t have any.
This is what I have to say to her:
“Welcome to this new weird world. It’s so GOOD, it’s weird. You have a magic wand in your hand called new communication ability. I know you’re using it to make the world a better place and we are all grateful for it. Continue on!”
Be the cause!
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