“Every time I try to convince them, they get irritated. It’s beginning to look like they don’t even want to hear about it anymore.”
I’ve heard this many times, many people I’ve coached. Sometimes it’s regarding a boss or executive leadership team. Sometimes it’s a person they work with. Sometimes it’s someone who reports to them. Sometimes it’s another team. Or a challenging customer. Sometimes it’s about politics. Sometimes it’s with their teenager at home.
It could be anything, any situation where they’re trying to convince or persuade, to introduce a new idea, to get buy-in or make change happen.
They explain and explain. And then they say, “No matter how I explain it, I still get ‘No’ or ‘We’ll think about it’ or ‘It’s just not a priority right now’. Or worse, they just ignore me.”
When that happens, you feel stopped. Horrible feeling.
What can you do about it?
Real persuasion happens when the person, group or organization wakes up and recognizes the truth of what you're saying, to the point they are moved and inspired to act.
I receive many emails telling me that my weekly articles have helped someone. They say they read them before going into meetings, giving presentations or having difficult conversations. It’s helped them get fabulous jobs, promotions and raises, get standing ovations, negotiate big deals and transform relationships. Many forward and share my articles with others they want to help.
I am truly happy to hear of it because this is why I write – to help you live the extraordinary life of a Causative Communicator.
It takes determination to be a Causative Communicator. It takes dedication. It doesn’t just happen because someone took a course. It’s your dedication after the course. Most of all, it’s keeping the principles fresh in your mind.
With that in my mind, I created a booklet of some of my articles to help you stay true to the Causative Communication principles which will empower you to achieve success in those areas of your life that matter to you.
Victoria’s fate for the next five years hung on what happened in the next 90 seconds.
Those 90 seconds would shape her future for the next five years, the future of her team, the future of the organization and very possibly the future of the industry.
Victoria wasn’t nervous. She was calmly enthusiastic. This is what mastery looks like.
Victoria’s coaching sessions had prepared her. Good coaching does that. It builds your confidence and makes you fearless. Real confidence is built on solid, consistent demonstrations of competence.
Being close to Silicon Valley, we have had many senior executives send engineers and other technical leaders from various disciplines, including finance, to us for coaching on their presentations to leadership. Their biggest complaint is also their top goal for the people they send. They phrase it like this: There’s too many details in their presentations.
What they mean is, too many unnecessary details. It drives executives crazy. And engineers are at a loss as to what to leave out.
There is a big disconnect between “engineering logic” and “executive logic”. I’ll explain what that is.
A team can be good when it has a star, or even two stars. But it’s nothing compared to a unified, seamless team when you are ALL amazing. This kind of team creates a juggernaut of exhilaration as it makes a common purpose real and broadly felt throughout the whole organization.
It’s a joy to be a star. It’s an even greater feeling of elation to be part of a dream team. You walk that much taller, hold your head up that much higher, knowing that to your left and to your right, your compadres are doing the same.
Dream teams are not the product of some mysterious luck or having a few stars. They’re shaped by practice. And they can happen fast.
I’ve worked with professionals and executives of large corporations for over 30 years. They are used to feeling tense. It’s become normal. Feeling completely comfortable is not normal. Being relaxed is not.
That’s how being slightly tense, or even very tense, becomes habitual. And they’re surrounded by others who are also slightly or very tense. So they’re swimming in a sea of uninspected “normal”.
Last week I wrote about Victor, a VP I was coaching on Executive Presence. I wrote about the effect Victor’s facial expressions were having on others and how it diminished his Executive Presence.
Victor’s BIGGEST realization was when he saw a screenshot of his face during a moment he didn’t think he had any facial expression, when he was feeling neutral, not one way or the other, not positive or negative, not really feeling anything.
What shocked Victor when he saw his face was that his “neutral” expression looked COLD.
People don’t realize that when you put a neutral expression on your face, you look cold. Try it in the mirror and see for yourself. Get your neutral face on and then look.
Neutral has no warmth in it. Zero.
And no warmth equals cold. There’s no way around it.
When it comes to human relationships, neutral leaves them cold about you. Possibly even defensive. You are discouraging them from warming up to you.
Larry, the Senior Vice President, was horrified.
It was an important meeting with important people. He was watching Victor, a newly promoted Vice President, and was completely horrified by what he saw. It wasn’t about what Victor was saying…he wasn’t saying anything. The problem was what Victor was doing.
Larry sent me an email saying, “You’ve got to coach Victor on his Executive Presence immediately!”
I said, “What specifically?”
It turned out to be something I’ve been coaching a surprisingly large number of people on, so I decided to write about it.
Larry said, “Victor is doing great work. But when he’s in a meeting, Victor looks totally bored, completely disengaged. He’s too relaxed, leaning back in his chair, totally disinterested. And often he has a disgusted look on his face. He’s creating a horrible impression.”
I told Larry, “No problem, it’s an easy fix.”
It was. It was one of the fastest coaching transformations in the history of the world.
A couple of days ago I started the first Executive Coaching session with Marcos. I asked him to tell me about his goals for the coaching and he said, “I really want to learn about Executive Presence.” I asked him why.
As he was telling me his goals, he apologized three times.
“I’m sorry, this probably sounds like a silly thing. But what I’d really like is…”
“That probably doesn’t make any sense, but what I was thinking was…”
“I’m sorry that was such a long-winded explanation of what I am looking for, I hope that makes sense…”
He’s not the only one apologizing. If I count the number of times each week that someone apologizes to me for communicating, it’s quite a number.
“I’m sorry if I’m coming across opinionated…”
“I’m sorry, I just have to say this…”
“I’m probably taking too long to explain this …”
This is a new phenomenon in society. Somehow perfectly wonderful people have been made to feel they need to apologize for communicating.
I could spend an entire article talking about how this came to be, but I want to get right to the point:
It’s not healthy.
Steve was nervous. New to the executive ranks, he was preparing for his first major presentation to 250 senior leaders of a $30 billion corporation. Let me tell you what was making him uneasy. This is what he told me:
“I’m putting the finishing touches on my slides and I’m nervous. I wish I didn’t have to use them, but I have slides that MUST be shown. I want to be able to engage the audience, and engage them like NO OTHER PERSON EVER HAS, but I’m worried I’m not going to come through because of all the slides I have to show them.”
I understand the problem.
The most important factor in a truly successful presentation is the deep, powerful, human connection a great presenter makes with every person in the room. Slides can easily BREAK your connection with the audience.
Without that connection, your words are weak. They hit the surface of the audience’s mind and bounce off. There’s no impact.
I was coaching Jon, a senior executive located in bustling New York City’s mid-Manhattan.
Jon wants to develop Executive Presence.
We began with presence.
Executive presence is a particular type of presence. It’s an advanced type of presence.
You need to possess tremendous presence before you can develop Executive presence.
A key factor in presence is the ability to stay in the moment.
I taught Jon the robust theory behind presence, and now he was practicing the first exercise he had to master. Jon had his eyes closed so he wouldn’t be visually distracted. He was simply sitting there, being in the moment, learning how to control his attention and awareness and simply stay in the moment.
It was difficult for Jon in the beginning. As he sat there with his eyes closed, he was struggling with a traffic jam of thoughts in his head. Worries about an upcoming meeting, snatches of yesterday’s conversations, sudden rememberings of something he’d promised. A mad rush of thoughts whirled around, colliding in his mind, distracting him from the present moment. Creating chronic anxiety.
Don (VP of a major corporation here for coaching): “I want to extend my executive presence throughout the organization, beyond my immediate area.”
Me: “What does that mean?”
Don: “I want them to know I can add value to their activities.”
Me: “Is there a problem with that?”
Don: “Yes, they’re not seeing it. They think that I can only add value in my own area. Not outside of it, not for them cross-functionally in the organization. It’s frustrating.”
Me: “Have you ever told them that you can add value?”
Don: “No.”
Me: “Why not?”
Don: “They need to see it for themselves.”
I call this “Executive Charades”.
“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.
“Dominique is smart, people like her, she gets things done. But we can’t promote her to VP yet. She has no executive presence.”
Imagine Dominique‘s reaction when she heard those words spoken by her senior management.
“But, but, but … I’m qualified! I don’t get it!”
That one missing ingredient was stopping it all.
What is executive presence? It’s an aura.
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.
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