Coaching, Presentations
Ingrid Gudenas
The 10 rules of “Audience Logic”

Most people don’t know how to create instant acceptance. It’s rare to see someone who does. When the stakes are high, most think they’re being “logical” when they’re actually relying on a kind of logic that generates too many words. They talk a lot, present too much detail and explanation, believing it’s essential to creating understanding and agreement. Audiences don’t work like that.

Especially at the executive and senior levels. They have their own logic.

To be successful you have to master a different logic. Audience Logic. Audience Logic decides the outcome.

Here are the rules of Audience Logic (especially senior level audiences):

Coaching, Presentations
Ingrid Gudenas
How to win the audience before you say a word

Laura: “You weren’t watching me!”

Me: “No, I could hear you. I knew what you were doing. I was watching the audience to see what change you produced in them.”

Laura had asked me to be there when she presented at an industry conference with hundreds of potential customers. The revenue potential was enormous if she was successful with her presentation. I spent several days coaching her to get her messaging, and the way she delivered it, just right.

The big day came. I was watching the audience like a hawk. I wanted to see the audience reactions from the moment she said “Hello”, all the way through exactly how they looked as she walked off the stage. Were they looking at her with admiration as they applauded? Or shuffling around and checking their phones?

I started watching the audience before Laura even walked on. They were on their phones or talking to the person next to them.  Laura entered the room. I could feel something change in the room as they watched her walk. It was the way she was walking. They could see she carried herself differently.

Coaching, Communication, Causative Communication
Ingrid Gudenas
He didn’t argue. Everything changed.

Many people come to us for training and coaching because they want to create a personal transformation. What surprises, and blows them away, is when they find they’re also creating a beautiful transformation in the other person, whether it’s one person or thousands. That’s where the true power is.

This is Michael’s story, which started when he said:

 

“I am so frustrated! My new boss won’t listen and keeps overriding me. If this keeps up, I’m going to quit.”

Michael was one of the students on the Beyond Persuasion: The new route to extraordinary outcomes course. He chose this “unsolvable problem” to work on as part of the course.

Coaching, Communication, Causative Communication
Ingrid Gudenas
Dreams don’t take a day off

My parents came to America from Lithuania with nothing. They had a beautiful life in the old country, and lost it all when the Soviets occupied their land and took it all away. I gained something infinitely valuable from them as they built a new life here. My parents showed me by example that the only real security we have is our innate ability to dream new realities and create them into being, abilities which nothing and no one can take away without our permission, and which they did so well.

I always think about what I learned from them as we go into a new year.  I’m filled with a feeling that was well expressed by the great poet Ranier Maria Rilke, “And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”

This threshold into a new year is a beautiful time for self-reflection, for dreaming of the future.

Coaching, Communication, Causative Communication
Ingrid Gudenas
The moments that give life meaning

I’m a first-generation immigrant. My parents came from Lithuania, right across the sea from Sweden.

We have a beautiful Christmas Eve tradition I think you’ll enjoy hearing about.  It creates a very special moment.

Each person at the dinner table receives a large wafer of unleavened bread and we have communion.

You might have heard of “Holy Communion”, which is different.  That’s when a Priest blesses the wafer and gives it special religious significance.

This Christmas Eve tradition of communion is not religious. If you look the word communion up in the dictionary, without the word “Holy” in front of it, it means:

The sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level. 

You can see it’s something special.

Presentations

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How to Maintain Executive Presence When You Have to Use Slides

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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.

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The Stepping Stone to Executive Presence

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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.

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The secret to keeping your audience on the edge of their seats

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Here’s the thing to know about audiences: they will only stay with you as long as they are learning.

I know, I know. The problem is you don’t have exciting content to work with. You have, well, corporate presentation material. And, let’s face it, nobody’s ever made an action movie out of a corporate presentation. I know your challenge. I get it.

But just because the material may seem boring, does not mean that you have to be.

This is something you can do with your own presentations to keep your audience on the edge of their seats. I’m going to tell you how a professional keeps their audience engaged.

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The end of "flat" presentations

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George was droning on. And no matter how hard he tried, his sounded like every other flat corporate presentation.

Not only was it boring, it made George boring. There was nothing of value in his work or in George. Nothing to pay attention to.

Never having had a real mentor, George was following in the footsteps of the thousands of other tiring corporate presenters he’d seen, all stamped from the same mold.

His presentations had devolved into a stream of words with no meaning.

But George always had the feeling that he was capable of more.

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The one thing that can free you from fear of any audience

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“I get stage fright so bad, my mind freezes up and my ears start to burn.” So said Matt.

Janet, our Lead Trainer, and I were coaching Matt, preparing him for an upcoming in-person presentation he will be giving to 500 leaders from his company, gathered together for a quarterly meeting in a large convention center. Matt is a Senior Vice President, responsible for $6.2 billion worth of annual revenue. He knows his stuff, he’s a good man. Yet terrified of public speaking.

Put Matt in front of 500 people, his expertness, confidence, talent and intelligence drain right out of him.

“I feel all alone up there, completely disconnected. Even when I know what I want to say, it all leaves me.”

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Seeing people transform into powerful beings

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We’re still delivering an abundance of virtual coaching, and we also recently opened up our office for in-person training for the first time in 2 ½ years. It’s been thrilling. It’s for small groups of no more than six, so it’s also very personal.

Having the whole person in front of us for the whole day, several days at a time, seeing them laugh and smile in all dimensions, has been rich.

Even more remarkable have been the incredible transformations in their presentation skills.

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How to tell the truth...and why it matters

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Walter is a very high-level engineer who works on new product development, critical products that generate billions in annual revenue for the corporation. He presents quarterly to the CEO and executive leadership team who rely heavily on Walter’s technical expertise.

Walter is a really nice guy with a great sense of humor. I liked him right away. But when he started the presentation that he wanted to practice during our Executive Coaching Session, all the life in him drained away.

I asked him, “Walter, you don’t look like you’re enjoying this very much. What’s happening?”

He said, “I really hate giving this presentation.”

Me: “Why?”

Walter: “Last quarter, without talking to me or my team, the CEO promised Wall Street we would have a new product release in January. A brand new product that’s really complicated to develop. The CEO was feeling pressured because our competition is ahead of us on it.

“In our last presentation I tried to tell him that we’re not ready, that it will take us at least a year and I tried to explain why.

“He cut me off and told me that he had already publicly promised Wall Street and we had to do it. He said that since the competition had done it, he didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t do it. He said it was my problem to figure out, and just to go solve it.

“I went back to my team and we’ve all been running around in complete confusion for the past quarter. We’ve gotten nothing done and now I have to present our quarterly results and we don’t have any. I have to make it look like we’re working on it and moving forward when we’re not, and you’re right - I’m most definitely NOT enjoying this at all.”

Walter was faced with the dilemma of: How do you present something that violates your integrity? (READ MORE…)

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Earning the audience’s attention

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“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?

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The end of dull corporate presentations...forever

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“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.

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Body language and other ways to ruin Executive Presence

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“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.

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The art of knowing without seeing

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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.

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Managing 12 people in a heated debate

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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.

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This never happens …

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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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Painting 2022 with your palette of dreams

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This week right now is for dreaming your 2022 into being.

2021 was all about What do I need to do to survive?

2022 does not have to be more of 2021. 2022 can go way beyond a survival endurance contest.

2022 can be about dreams that come true. Don’t look to the world for permission. There is no “Dream-Come-True Licensing Entity” that’s ever been any good.

You are your own licensing entity. You are the one who gives yourself a license to dream and to paint those dreams into reality, to make them come true. Or not.

Don’t limit your dreams by what other people dream.

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The tortured life of Senior Leadership

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Senior executives spend their days listening to endless proposals and briefings. They sit through so MANY presentations, it TORTURES them to listen to presenters who don’t get right to the point.

I’m sure you watch YouTube videos. Have you ever watched one that took a long time to get to the point? You know that feeling you got? Did you ever fast-forward hoping they would get to something good? Did you ever skip out before the end?

Senior executives LIVE with that feeling.

It’s torture. There’s no other word for it.

I’m sure they would wish for a remote control that could fast-forward. And they would use it liberally.

This is how to stand out from this crowd in your executive presentations:

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Executive presence doesn't work with training wheels

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Many executives who come to me for executive coaching come prepared with their word-for-word script.

What’s the problem with speaking from a script when you’re giving a presentation?

Well…what does a script say about your mindset? About your thoughts and feelings about yourself? Your feelings about the audience? About your true power?

Having a script sends out a lot of messaging about you that you might not want to be sending.

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