Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
Mastering “Direct to Camera” presentation skills

Jake, the executive I was coaching, was looking at the camera like it was a snake. He had come for coaching for what’s called “Direct to camera” presentation skills.

Many executives are coming here for this coaching because so many are being asked to make Direct to Camera videos. They’re being asked to sit in a small room and talk to a camera, with no actual audience present, to create a solo video that will be watched by 200 or 10,000 people. Many of these videos will be posted online for the public to see. I recently coached an executive who posted a video to 5,000,000 views.

It’s a weird feeling to talk directly to the camera. It’s not a “natural” skill.

Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
The love we feel today

Me: “I just called to tell you how much I love you.”

Justine: “What’s wrong?”

Me: “Nothing‘s wrong.”

Justine: “Yes there is. You never call me in the middle of the week. And you sound like you’re about to cry.”

Justine’s my big sister. She was right. I was driving across the San Francisco Bay, on my way home …

Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
One presentation strategy almost no one knows

“I don’t know if it’s possible, but I would like to be captivating.”

This came from Jeffrey who sounded like it would never happen.  He was telling me his goals at the start of the presentation skills workshop for senior execs their CEO had arranged. Jeffery is in Finance and no one would have described him as captivating.

Alan, the senior exec over Engineering, said, “Me too.”

The rest of the group all nodded, they wanted that too.

They all did their “Before” videos. They came across as brilliant, smart, experienced. None of them was captivating.

They looked at me hopefully.

 

By the end of the training, they were each not only captivating, but irresistibly compelling, and even charismatic. They came across as true leaders.

I’m going to talk to you about one of the things they learned that contributed to their transformation…

Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
How not to lose the audience … or yourself

I was watching the audience. When Arte walked on stage, they were looking at him with mild interest, light curiosity. It was his quarterly All-Hands presentation to 1500 in his division. Arte started:  

“Good morning, I’m excited to be here, I hope you’re excited about being here also. Today I would like to talk to you a little bit about…”
By the time Arte got to that point, the audience had lost their spark, they were fading. He didn’t see it.  By the time Arte got to the middle of his presentation, even to him something felt flat. He started to talk faster. He tried to inject enthusiasm, but it felt forced. He ended by telling a sea of polite but uninspired faces they had an exciting future ahead.

Arte knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what. He felt a powerful need to break free of something, but had no clue what was binding him and holding him back.

Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
The 2 skills that enabled her journey from ...

Bryony hung up from the virtual meeting with her boss with a heavy heart and a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had just gotten the news she dreaded.

Bryony was a Senior Manager who’d requested a promotion to Director. Her boss said, “Well, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll recommend you because you’re doing good work” and had unenthusiastically taken Bryony’s request to her boss. The answer was not only “Not now,” the top boss dismissed Bryony’s future possibilities as well.

Her boss thought she was being helpful when she said,” You don’t really have a chance of getting promoted because you don’t have leadership communication skills.”

Bryony had no idea what she was talking about. She asked what skills were they?  The boss had trouble defining them, just that Bryony wasn’t coming across as “a real leader”.

Bryony sat for five minutes trying to figure it out, wondering if she needed to be bossier. It was not her style and if that’s what was required, it was hopeless. She also didn’t see how being bossy was a good thing.

When you're not the CEO and still want people to listen to you

It was one of those days where Gayle wished she were the CEO and could simply tell people, “Just go do it!” and not have to argue with anyone.

Gayle had been trying to get her organization to rapidly act on an opportunity for a new market with the potential for billions in revenue. Sure it was risky, but they were in the middle of a business downturn that wasn’t pretty, and this very possibly could get them out of it. If she could only get them to LISTEN!

They were not only NOT listening to Gayle, they didn’t even want to hear anymore. “We’re done with that, Gayle” was the message she was getting.

For many years now, people have been coming to me because they want to learn how to “persuade”. Over and over I hear, “I need to learn how to ‘persuade’ them.”

I don’t know if you realize this, but there are THOUSANDS of books and classes on “persuasion”.

Basically, “persuade” means get you to do something you don’t want to do, or get you to believe something you don’t believe.

This is why no one likes to be persuaded. And this is why persuasion is not a smart route if you want to achieve extraordinary outcomes.

So, if not “persuasion”, what is it that you really need to learn?

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How to present in a very large room

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The room overwhelmed Alan the moment he stepped in and his eyes touched the endless space around him. Unfamiliarity with the enormous size crushed his confidence and sense of importance, leaving him feeling small, nervous and terribly self-conscious. His walk to the stage was uncomfortable, an awkward expression of embarrassment. Should he walk fast? Slow? He walked like he wasn’t sure.

Alan would be speaking to almost 1,000 of his organization’s leaders in this very room.

He already dreaded the moment the room would be filled with their faces, turned toward him, silently waiting for his first words.

Long before that moment arrived, Alan had already lost the battle to save his dignity and present with confidence.

It was an honor to be invited to join the senior leadership ranks, but Alan was far from feeling the grandeur he experienced when he watched the other senior execs present.

He simply felt small.

Anticipating the event had him drowning in a sea of misery and anxiety.

But Alan wasn’t ready to give in.

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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.

Beyond Persuasion

To “persuade” means: to convince, to satisfy the mind, subdue the opposition of the mind, lead to the opinion or conclusion presented, make one think or believe, successfully achieve the acceptance or practice of, create agreement.

It comes from the Latin persuadere - to bring over by talking.

Persuasion is something many people want to accomplish. It’s something they wish they were really good at.

The problem is that what most people think is “persuasion”, doesn’t work. And what they try to do to “persuade” someone who doesn’t want to be persuaded, doesn’t work.

The act of “persuasion” renders you powerless. And that is exactly how you feel when you’re trying to “persuade” – powerless.

Ultimately, “persuasion” betrays a lack of power and little understanding about how to achieve desired outcomes with ease.

What does that look like?

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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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Breaking free from what's holding you back... made easy

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Causative [kaw’-zuh-tiv], adjective: Making what you want HAPPEN. Being able to cause your intended effect or outcome at will.

When did we first stop being causative? Well, if it didn't happen sooner, it probably happened for most of us when we started school and were told to sit down and be quiet … for hours and hours at a time.

They told us exactly where to sit. We weren’t allowed to leave that seat.

They made us ask permission for everything, including leaving the room.

If we did something without permission, we were bad. It didn’t matter if it was right. It was automatically bad if it was done before asking for and receiving permission first. Even if it was just standing up to stretch.

If we wanted to talk, we had to raise our hand and wait to be called on. Raising your hand was dangerous because the teacher was asking a question that had one “right” and many “wrong” answers and when we were wrong, it was very public. Where I went to school, not many hands went up (usually the same ones over and over). We became skilled at avoiding eye contact with the person in the front of the room (something I still see today in my corporate workshops).

We weren’t allowed to talk to each other, only the one person in front of the room.

Everything we did was graded and compared to what everyone else did. Smarter than him but not as pretty as her.

We were graded based on one person's opinion of us, a person who often didn’t understand or like us. A person we thought was paid to be critical of us. To find every flaw.

Most of us did not get straight A’s. We were always falling short on something. Grades could easily make us feel that we were mediocre. Few were happy the day they got their “report card” and some hid them from their parents.

We were severely restrained from being causative. For years.

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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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How the "techie guy" learned to win over every audience

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“I’m a techie guy. I’m not one of those dynamic, charismatic types. I don’t even like them.”

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Steve. He had just been promoted to Senior VP. His boss, the Executive VP, reached out to me within weeks of Steve’s starting in his new role:

“You’ve got to help him. He’s in a very visible position now. His presentations are dreadful. He’s dry, monotone, off-putting. The employees are not warming up to him. Frankly, I don’t think they like him.”

The problem was that, while Steve dislikes the dynamic, charismatic type, that’s exactly the words used to describe the previous Senior VP, the one Steve was replacing, the one everyone loved, the one who had just left the company, the one everyone missed, the one everyone wished would come back.

You see the problem.

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This is better than being polished

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“I was struggling to find words.”

Vince, one of our Executive Coaching clients wrote that in an email that he sent along with the video of an extremely difficult conversation he had with a group of very unhappy individuals who felt they had experienced a great injustice.

He wanted to show us how, in an hour, this extremely distrustful group transformed into a smiling, grateful, warm, and unbelievably appreciative group of individuals who beamed at him with great friendliness.

It was remarkable to see.

Vince’s journey has been a fascinating one. He is a deep man, a good man.

Like many who come to us for Executive Coaching, his goal was to have executive presence and polish.

Isn’t it funny that now, after his coaching, he is writing about struggling for words? It sounds like he’s not “polished”. You would think he didn’t achieve his goals.

Yet Vince achieved something that goes way beyond.

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The secret to more progress, faster

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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”.

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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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The price tag on your soul

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“I don’t know who I am anymore.”

I was coaching Victor, a young man in his early 30’s who had already made millions. He came to me questioning everything. Early success in the venture-capital world led Victor on a hot pursuit of things he found did not matter to him once he had them.

The things that matter most are the ones you can’t see, like deep human connections. Like kindness, respect, real understanding, and emotional well-being.

Victor was missing all of the above and burst into tears when he found a safe haven with me to be able to say it out loud.

“My life feels like it’s been stripped of meaning.”

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How to talk to someone who doesn't want to talk to you

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Victoria leads a high-level Engineering team. It’s vital to her team that Sales doesn’t promise the customer anything Engineering can’t deliver.

It wasn’t going well. Engineering was no longer being invited to meetings involving Sales. That’s putting it mildly. Engineering was told to “stay out.” The relationship with Sales had gotten extremely contentious, to the point where the door was completely shut.

Victoria showed up for the Causative Communication workshop wanting to know how to communicate effectively with these people. How do you talk to someone who doesn’t even want to talk to you?

Her big focus was on finding out, “What do I say?”

She honestly believed she understood the Sales position and needed to get them to listen to her. She also knew they weren’t open to hearing anything.

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Fred’s search for executive presence

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“I’m the one who held back your promotion because I don’t think you have sufficient executive presence to be promoted to VP.”

I was helping Fred prepare for an upcoming one-on-one with the Executive Vice President, Olga, who was going to say these very words to him. Fred was there to change her mind.

We were practicing acknowledging the difficult things Olga would be telling him. Fred had earned some tough feedback and now had to pay the price of hearing it.

Even in the best of circumstances, Olga made Fred defensive. His hot buttons were triggered quickly. In past conversations, Fred’s strategy for getting Olga to change her mind was to overwhelm her with reasons she was wrong. But that didn’t work. It made Olga like him even less.

As Fred practiced acknowledging the piercing statements Olga would be making, I pointed out to Fred that his acknowledgements came across very reluctantly … and Fred just about shouted:

“Absolutely! I AM reluctant! Absolutely! I don’t WANT to acknowledge her when she’s WRONG!”

Acknowledgements have nothing to do with right and wrong. 

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What is essential is invisible to the eyes

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“What is essential is invisible to the eyes.”

Maxwell was quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the wonderful French writer, author of the lovely book The Little Prince.

Maxwell was a student in the early morning Causative Communication workshop I was delivering for European students last week. We were wrapping up the last 5 minutes of the 2-day training, talking about the class.

The golden sun was rising in California as he spoke.

Maxwell continued: “The Little Prince is required reading for every child in my country. I thought of this quote because ‘the invisible’ is what I believe you work on in this class, and this is what we have learned to do.”

He was right.

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