virtual presentations
Ingrid Gudenas
Out of the shadows and into the spotlight
Causative Communication
Ingrid Gudenas
The missing ingredient in executive ...

You have to master this ability before you speak, before you listen. In the in-person Causative Communication program, it takes half a day. It’s not something we skate over lightly.

Presentations, virtual presentations, Designing Presentations
Ingrid Gudenas
Eloquence brings your vision to life

Everyone wants to connect. Most people don’t know how.

Presentations, virtual presentations
Ingrid Gudenas
How to change everything in a single ...

Everyone wants to connect. Most people don’t know how.

Executive Presence, Presentations
Ingrid Gudenas
How to Maintain Executive Presence When You ...

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. 

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What to do with someone who never lets their guard down

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We were meeting for the first time. Her face was hard, stern. She had her head tilted back and was looking down her nose at me. Her voice was uncompromising.

“I am the Chief of Staff here. We are responsible for billions of dollars of new product development and I report directly to the Chief Operating Officer.  Everything to the COO goes through me. I make sure everything gets done. I have global responsibility.”

Her eyes challenged me, daring me to top that.

I looked into the heart of this woman and said, “Very nice to meet you. You must have done a lot to get there.”

I wasn’t flattering her.  I was understanding her.

She looked into my eyes and changed into a different person.  Her eyes softened and she smiled very slightly. 

She thought for a moment and said, “Honestly, it’s a tough job, they don’t always listen to me.”

I thought about that for a moment and quietly said, “I can really understand that. That would be tough.”

I was in no rush.  I wasn’t being sympathetic.  I was understanding her.

She looked into my eyes to see if my understanding was true. Being understood was new to her. She saw it was. 

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Transforming Henry: the worst communicator in the room

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Some people think you have to be “born with” the skills and charisma that make a really great public speaker.  Not true.  Let me tell you the story of Henry.

I was invited to give a two-hour talk on presentation skills at a technical conference for a highly specialized professional association.

At the banquet the night before my presentation, I told the President of the association, Steve, that I wanted to line up a volunteer to coach during my talk.  He asked what qualities I was looking for and I said, “Someone who really needs to improve in their presentation skills.” 

Steve enthusiastically told me Henry would be perfect and I said, “Let’s go meet him.”  Well, meet him I did.  Henry hardly took his eyes off the floor while we were talking, and for the brief moments they did come off the floor, they went straight to the ceiling or the wall on our right.  Turns out, Steve interpreted my request as, “Who is the absolute worst communicator in this group?”

Henry didn’t look like someone who liked to be told what to do. I told Henry, “You know, I’m going to be coaching you in front of 300 people.”  He glared at me for a brief moment and said, “What does THAT mean?”  I said, “I’m going to be telling you what to do and you’re going to have to do it.  Are you okay with that?”  He mulled it over a little (looking at the ceiling) and then said, “I guess that’s okay.”  Neither one of us was sure that it was, but with these words we locked in our next day’s destiny.

After Henry left, Steve said, “I hope you’re going to coach him on looking at people!” And then laughed for 2 minutes straight. 

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How to light up the virtual meeting room by subtracting

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Tamara was nervous.  In two days, she had to give a presentation to 400.  Her first really big one.

It was Day 1 of Mastering Virtual Presentations and it was difficult for Tamara to practice without her teeth chattering.

The problem with being nervous is it makes you lose touch with everything good about you. Sometimes to the point where you can’t see anything good about yourself.  The things you tell yourself at these moments tend to be dreadful.

Tamara was doubting whether she could speak without forgetting what to say, without everyone seeing how nervous she was.

There was a lot riding on how well Tamara did. If the Salespeople got excited about the new product, the revenue it would generate would be tremendous. But they had so many other products that they were selling, one new one often didn’t register. Tamara was one of many speakers throughout the day that would all turn into a blur.

As one doubt piled on top of another, Tamara doubted even her own ability to speak coherently.

She was a nervous wreck.

It was a truly exciting product she was going to present. If only the Salespeople understood what it did.

In Tamara’s case, it was not a matter of adding anything to her presentation. It was a matter of subtracting.

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You’ll never get the outcome you want if your face looks like this …

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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.

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How to have Executive Presence, even when you're not talking

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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.

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Curing yourself from unnecessary apologies

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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.

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Why Causative Communicators don’t fight

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Many people ask me what happens when TWO people who totally disagree, but who have BOTH learned Causative Communication skills, come together?  In other words, when they each know how to make what they want happen, but both are super intent on achieving their own opposing or competing outcome? Wouldn’t that just cause a fight? Do they get stubborn and persistent?  Does it go on forever? Does it stick in an unresolvable stalemate? Does it get ugly?

Let me answer that question with something that just happened.

When Rick came to the Causative Communication workshop, one of his prime motivations was a situation with someone he called “the difficult guy”.  We’ll call this guy Philip. 

Rick and Philip completely disagreed on important details of a big project. Up to this point, every single meeting turned into an argument. They never agreed on anything. They never came even slightly close to achieving the outcomes they wanted.  All they managed to do was irritate each other.

During the Causative Communication workshop, as part of his practical assignment to apply what he was learning to real life situations, Rick decided to try what he’d learned in his next conversation with Philip. A real test.

Rick decided to initiate a conversation about a previously unresolved topic, but this time he would strictly follow the full process of the Communication Formula and see what happened.

Rick wasn’t going to give an inch on what he wanted, he was just going to follow the specific process of the formula while they talked about it.

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The power to lead from anywhere in the organization

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Paula was a young “Early in Career” engineer, her first job out of college. She was excited to land in a successful corporation filled with 80,000 employees.  As a new member, Paula was at the very bottom of the towering command chain.

While her position was small, her vision and her dreams were big. More than anything, Paula wanted to do good in the world around her. 

She came to Causative Communication to learn how to communicate effectively with the whole world where everything was new to her. She was young and wide-eyed and innocent, no accumulated failures pulled back her confidence. She was driven by her dreams, not by her fears.

Paula knew she had no command power over anyone, but she could already see that communication is a powerful force, and had concluded by watching others that the ability to communicate is the most powerful ability she could have when it came to working with a whole lot of people.

She was part of a small team that was part of a larger team that was part of an even larger team. Paula often attended meetings with 40 others from her division. Everyone had seniority and experience over her.

With the communication skills she developed in the workshop under her belt, Paula spoke up with confidence in these larger meetings. She voiced her thoughts, she acknowledged others, she participated. She didn’t try to control the meeting. She just wanted to be a part of it.

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The one person who decided to do something about it

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Benjamin: “I used what I learned and I changed two teams.”

Fred, George and Sam disagreed and simply said, “No. That’s not what happened.”

These were corporate leaders attending a virtual online Causative Communication workshop. Their assignment, after the second training session, was to spend several weeks using their new communication abilities and observing the results.

The teams that Benjamin was talking about had been stuck in an argument for weeks prior to the training. Their meetings never moved beyond stubborn debates and were disappointingly unsatisfying and unproductive, much disgruntled grumbling on both sides. They were each “right”, but unable to unite to solve the bigger problem the organization needed them to solve.

There were extremely smart people on both sides. Genuinely good people who all believed they were doing the right thing.

Unfortunately, their communication ability was nowhere near up to the challenge of solving the heated, disagreement-filled situation they were all in.

Benjamin was the one person who decided to do something about it.  He arrived to the training tremendously motivated. Benjamin was frustrated because the lack of cooperation seriously interfered with his ability to be productive and move forward in his own job.

In the first two training sessions, he worked on his own ability to communicate.  He learned how to create a real human connection and a level of understanding that uplifts every conversation. He developed the ability to transform any conflict into harmony, then lead discussions into creative, productive and satisfying outcomes.

He had 3 weeks to put his new skills into action and make them hold up in this hurricane.

When we got together again at the start of the third day of training, they all were reporting back on what they had done, and the results they had produced.

Benjamin: “I used what I learned and I changed two teams.”

The others: “No, Benjamin. You changed the whole organization.”

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How to get the audience to “open up”

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I was watching Jed give a sales presentation. The faces of his audience were attentive and respectful.  They were also unsold.  Unmoved.

In other words, Jed’s ideas weren’t landing the way he wanted.

They were politely waiting for Jed to come to the end. They had probably already mentally formulated a polite way of telling him, “Thank you, we’ll consider it” as they gently ushered him out the door.

Jed had no idea why he was losing it, and he kept going. As Jed talked, he got visibly more and more enthusiastic as a way to pump energy into the meeting, which did nothing for his audience.

Jed knew something was wrong, but had no idea what it was.

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How to make stage fright go away

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I have seen innumerable methods for attempting to vanquish stage fright. 

Bianca addresses groups of 3,000 customers at a time.  She’s in sales.  Her way of coping with terror was to run out on a large stage with very loud music, seemingly all “pumped up” and yell at the crowd, “Hey!  How's everybody doing?”   It was about as far from her true personality as could be, and the second she started her presentation it was obvious she was tense nervous.

Peter found two people in the audience on either side of the room.   First, he talked to one, then he talked to the other.   They were the only 2 people he looked at. Anchoring on only 2 people didn’t handle his stage fright, but it kept him from totally losing it.

Risha is an engineer. She presents project updates to a skeptical and demanding senior leadership team.  Her solution was to avoid all eye contact because she didn’t want to see their disapproving looks, she forced herself to keep her eyes squarely fixed on her notes and her slides.

Lynette powered through her talks on pure nerves and adrenaline, and collapsed with exhaustion when they were over.

If any of these methods of handling stage fright worked, they wouldn't have it. 

What they’re all trying to do is drive their symptoms out of existence. The symptoms include every flavor and intensity of fear, from feeling slightly nervous and on edge to complete terror.

The reason these methods don't work is because they don't address the root cause of stage fright.  And most people have no idea what's causing it.

If you don't know what's causing it, how can you fix it?

Leaving “persuading” behind for something that works

Frank: “I thought when I got the title, everyone would listen to me. But I’ve never been so frustrated in all my life.”

Frank is a Fellow in one of Silicon Valley’s largest high-tech companies.  “Fellow” is an extremely prestigious and the most senior title one can achieve in a scientific or engineering career. Fellows are the geniuses behind the inventions we all enjoy. 

So far, Frank’s scientific and engineering breakthroughs had made his organization over $42 billion as new products he dreamed into existence rolled out to eager customers around the world.  He should have been someone everyone listened to.

The problem Frank was having, however, was happening full blown in frustrating meetings with the senior leadership team. No one was listening to him. Led by a new CEO, the company was now going in a direction that Frank saw was never going to be viable.

Frank: “The company is going off a cliff.”

The people making the decisions did not have the technological expertise to understand why they were headed for a disaster. The new CEO got his technical advice from The Wall Street Journal. If it wasn’t in his morning paper, he dismissed it.

Frank’s problem was that he was SO smart, and knew so much, he was at a complete loss for how to explain complex technology principles to people who didn’t even understand the basics.

What made it worse was that Frank knew the technology advance that would save them and lead the company rather quickly into a new realm of innovation, consumer joy and market leadership. But when Frank tried to explain it all to the senior leadership team, their eyes glazed over. They told him, “No time, no budget, and very risky.”

Being the smartest guy in the room was excruciatingly painful.

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The really smart way to get others to listen

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

Me: “How do you start the meeting?”

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

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

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

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

I know very, very, very few people you could walk up to and say any of these things to who would happily listen to you.  If you want to test how to make someone immediately defensive, just try walking up to someone and saying, “Is it okay if I give you some feedback?” 

Or if you’re really feeling adventurous, you could see what happens when you say, “You know, you really need to change.”  

The only other way I know to make them even more defensive is to say, “I don’t want you to get defensive when I tell you this …”  That’s guaranteed to create an instantly defensive reaction from even the nicest person.

On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to initiate challenging meetings and difficult conversations and get them rapidly rolling in a positive direction when you understand that the most powerful human motivating force is purpose.

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Putting yourself in command of an outcome

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Sean was one of several hundred employees in a division of a very large corporation. He reported to a Manager who reported to a Director who reported to the Vice President.  Sean “commanded” no one.

The Vice President issued a directive to Sean’s division that, after being in place for two weeks, was extremely unpopular within the ranks. Despite major grumbling, the division Managers told their people that they understood their frustration, but to try to deal with it best they could.

Sean was so bothered by this directive, he was seriously thinking of quitting a job he loved and looking for another one outside the company. 

Since he had just taken Causative Communication, he used what he learned to ask for a meeting with his Manager. It took COURAGE for Sean to approach her on this hot topic. 

As he suspected, the Manager knew people were unhappy, but it wasn't totally REAL to her how bad it actually was. It often happens that the other person has some idea of the situation, but it's just a glimpse and not the full force of it, it’s not as REAL to them as it is to everyone else.  They don’t really get it.

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The power of taking yourself off automatic

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Carl was walking out the door.  Over his shoulder, walking away from me as he was talking, he was tossing off a goodbye, “Thanks a lot!  I’ll be in touch!” 

Carl had just completed an intensive 3-day Causative Communication class.  In just 2 sentences he had forgotten everything he learned.  His tossed-out comments sounded insincere, or at best, meaningless, just something you’re supposed to say because you’re leaving.

I said, “Carl, do you have another minute?”   He said, “Sure!”  Turned around and came back to me.

I said, “Carl, you’ve already lost everything you learned.”  

Carl looked thunderstruck.  He wasn’t expecting that. 

There was a long silence as he looked into my eyes.  I said nothing.  Then he said, “Oh wow.  You’re right.”

Then he said, “I can see I’m really going to need to deliberately and consciously practice this.” 

Knowing Carl’s commitment to becoming a truly great communicator, I told him what I’ve told many of my students: “If you really want to master communication and achieve its highest strata of excellence, you’ll need to apply what you learned in every conversation, every single day.”

Then Carl said what I’ve heard from many:  “I’ll keep practicing and it will become automatic.” 

No, it won’t.

And you don’t want it to.  That was the problem that Carl was already having.  Too many things on “automatic”. 

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How to change a corporate culture in 2 hours

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The members of the senior leadership team of a large Silicon Valley company were good people, they were just adversarial.  Facts were instantly disputed and ideas were challenged and criticized.  Their weekly meetings turned into antagonistic confrontations, they were unpleasant and rarely ended well.

The General Manager had a tendency to become overbearing and repeat himself to the point where the team tuned him out.

They were the kind of meetings that left you feeling bad for a couple of hours after they were done.

Two of the nine on the team attended a Causative Communication workshop.  Neither one of them was particularly liked or respected by the others (no one was) at the time they started the workshop.  Neither one had any authority relative to the others. What they did have going for them was an eagerness to create change.

In the next senior leadership meeting after the training, they both did something they’d never done before, that no one on the team had ever done before.

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Do THIS to keep your audience on the edge of their seats

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Sam put them to sleep within the first 10 minutes of his 40-minute presentation.  He’s not alone in being able to do this.

The problem with corporate presentations is they’re lifeless.  Audiences slowly drown in a sea of droning boring corporate “they all look alike” PowerPoint presentations.

They all start with, “Today I’m going to talk to you a little bit about…”

Then they unroll a slowly moving parade of too many uninspired slides endlessly connected by unimaginative transitions of, “Now on my next slide you’ll see…”

If this is you, you’re gradually putting them to sleep. Your audience slowly, but politely, disengages. Their minds start drifting and they start covertly multitasking, their attention desperately seeing something to keep them awake. 

If they possibly can, your audience will start interrupting you.  I coached a VP last week who told me that when his people present to executives they always hear, “Okay, let’s stop here, stop presenting for a moment, just let me ask you some questions ….” and the execs just take over and drive the presentation into a ditch (as far as the presenter is concerned).

Here’s the thing to know about audiences: they only stay with you as long as they are learning from you, and what they’re learning must be new and interesting. 

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 understand your challenge.

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

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When you hate seeing yourself on video

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“I hate seeing myself on video!  That person I see up there is not at all the person I want to be!!!”

I hear this all the time when I show my clients their first video at the start of their workshop.  It’s torture.

To see that person up there on the screen and feel powerless because it’s not who you want to be, and not even that person you know you are.

This is the struggle.  And it’s an incredibly important breakthrough when you are able to watch a video of yourself and love seeing yourself. 

Most people are not there.  What, and who, they are being is stiff, uncomfortable, disconnected.  And very unnatural. And they hate when they see themselves being this way.

By the same token, people don’t want to look the way many people look after they’ve done “speaker training”, like a speaker on steroids, overly pumped up, overly polished, over-rehearsed and scripted, performing not communicating.  That too is unnatural.

The worst part for people watching their first video is they don’t know what’s wrong.  They know there’s something wonderful trapped inside them, but when they get up to speak, it stays trapped.  This disturbs your confidence.  It disturbs your power. It disturbs your ability to be understood.

Being in a senior executive level position doesn’t alleviate this discomfort.  As a matter fact, it makes it worse, because there’s more “pressure to perform.” Your presentations are more visible and more widely critiqued.  Many senior executives dream of being free of presentation anxiety.

I’ve just described 80% of the people I see giving corporate presentations.  It’s so common, it passes for “normal”. 

But most people KNOW they’re capable of MUCH more.  Even if not one of them knows what’s wrong or how to get there.

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My one-day communications "experiment"

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A man in Silicon Valley known to grit his teeth and multitask through everything shut his phone off a moment before the meeting started.  A woman on the East Coast relaxed, slowed down and took her time getting her ideas across. A usually distracted woman in Europe in yet another meeting was fully present, focused, giving 100% of her attention.  In India, a man who talks too fast, in a different meeting, took his time, spoke clearly and paused throughout to let his ideas fully resonate. They all paid attention when others were speaking and took time to reflect on what was said.

They were all in different meetings, but what they all had in common was their decision to participate, along with hundreds of others in their company.

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The secret to successful high-stakes communication

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Flashback to three years ago – Susan: “I don’t think it’s going to work.”

I was looking at a beautiful, strong and successful corporate attorney. Susan wasn’t being defiant. She genuinely didn’t think what I was teaching was going to work.

Susan faces tough negotiations.  No one backs down, no one gives an inch, they aggressively fight for every possible advantage.  They pounce at any hint of vulnerability.  Warmth is construed as weakness.

It’s a high-stakes game played with millions of dollars. It’s not an arena for taking risks lightly. It’s certainly not one where you would try something that you didn’t think was going to work just to see if your communications instructor was right about it.

What were we talking about? Acknowledgments.  Susan was my student in a communications class and I had just covered the power of acknowledgment.

The key to a really good acknowledgment is the listening that precedes it.

In difficult situations people’s minds are usually racing around too much to really hear what the other person is saying. They’re too busy disagreeing or trying to figure out what they’re going to say, manufacturing a winning rebuttal.

A really good acknowledgment starts with really good listening.  And real listening always includes being interested.  It always includes understanding.  By definition, it must.  Whether or not you agree.  And ESPECIALLY when you disagree.

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