Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone

An idea is only as good as its pitchman and Steve Jobs was a master. The key to his presentation success? Practice.  Jobs spent 10 hours rehearsing for his major keynotes. This clip of Jobs announcing the launch of the iPhone is a classic business presentation case study.  It brings into sharp relief: you present what you practice.

Drama queens may draw all the attention, but the person with the most persuasive communications skills makes the biggest impact and leaves the best impression, and this is how reputations are made.

The most powerful starting point for a sensitive conversation is to show up fully present in mind, body and spirit.  Like most profound truths in life, it is simple but not easy.

Presence is a state of alert awareness that sets the stage for poise and effectiveness.  Master each of these four components of presence and you will make a big step toward developing the skills you need to initiate and manage sensitive conversations.

1.            Start with beginner’s mind.  In the beginner’s mind there are many options; in the expert’s mind there are few.  Approach your sensitive situation with an open mind.  The challenge here:  it requires you to leave the past behind.  The opportunity:  you will make room for this newborn moment – the present — in which anything can happen.

2.            Listen with your heart. Empathy is the ability to identify with or to be sensitive to another person’s emotions and thoughts. Empathy is not synonymous with sympathy, nor does it imply that you agree with the other person.  Empathy is a function of your heart’s intuition and perception. It creates a clear and open channel for you to listen for and to hear the underlying needs the other person is expressing.

3.            Transform your inner voice.  Thoughts and feelings drive behavior and universally a handful of thoughts and feelings are responsible for driving most of human behavior.  Number one on the list:  I’m right, you’re wrong.  Monitor your inner voice, look at other perspectives and choose as your default position positive, constructive thoughts.

4.            Manage your emotions.  Emotion can be a powerful tool when deployed skillfully.  For most of us, anxiety and fear overwhelm our ability to think clearly and shift perspective at critical moments.  A pumping heart and shortness of breath is our body’s way of signaling its anxiety.  Meditation and breathing practices help to derail these physical signs of stress.

1) Authenticity is the New Cool.  Leaders, effective communicators and moving presenters communicate with intention. They bring their entire being — mind, body and purpose — the table.  Good to great takeaway: It’s not what you say, it’s how you make them feel. For more: read the posts under category ‘Presentation Yoga.’

2) The Best Story Wins. The human brain is wired to interpret the world and our experience of it through stories. Good to great takeaway: Stories are the vehicle for the WOW factor that leaves an emotional imprint that makes for memorability and meaning. For more: read the posts under category ‘Do You Dream in PowerPoint?’

3) Get Ready for Your Closeup. The video age is here. Good to great takeaway: Learn the skills to master and leverage the most powerful communication tool since the Internet. For more: read the posts under category ‘Speaking with Power and Persuasion.’

Tindell’s leadership playbook reflects his values-based business philosophy:

• Communication IS leadership. Communication and leadership are synonymous.
• Team is the tie that binds. Calling it “… a beautiful human experience…”, Tindell understands the human need to belong.
• Trust yourself.  Your whole self includes the metaphysical, like instincts and intuition.
• No man is an island.  We are mutually interdependent, and we means employees, vendors, community, customers and shareholders.
• Business is not a zero sum game.

Sorkin’s social network story tells a bigger-than-life creation myth.  Facebook was The Big Bang of social networking.  It created an entirely new digital world and a reordered the social contract.  Every creation myth needs a bad guy, too.  The Zuckerberg character that sprung from Sorkin’s imagination is a young man who lost control of his own narrative.

Effective leaders know that the best stories win — people’s hearts, minds and commitment. “The Social Network” is a cautionary tale for a new generation of executives who recognize the need for a compelling narrative and the skills to communicate it across multiple media channels – live and in person, by text, audio, video and interactive social networking dialogue.

You, too, can take an idea from concept to story by following a logical and methodical process:

1.    Start with SOCO. To make an impact, make a point: a single, overriding communications objective. Build your story, develop your story and resolve your story around a SOCO.

2.    Build your story on a classic foundation. It was true in ancient Greece and it’s true today:  Persuasion balances logos, ethos and pathos.

• Logos/logic: your story must be logical and make sense.
• Ethos/credibility: the storyteller must be trustworthy and credible.
• Pathos/emotional: the story must stir people’s emotions and compel them to listen.

3.    Follow the Rule of Three. Why is the three pairing so pervasive in communication? Pattern recognition. Design the progression of your story using the rule of three:

• Your story needs a beginning, middle and end
• Your story should create tension, build tension and resolve tension
• To increase audience retention, recognize, layer and repeat.

4.    Every story needs a good guy and a bad guy. Certain types of stories and their archetypal characters have endured to tell universal truths, to explain how the world works and to reveal us to ourselves.  Archetypal heroes represent social values and the villains represent a problem or a set of problems.  Three well known archetypes lend themselves to business stories:

• The Classic Hero’s SOCO: Save the world.
The Hero meets his destiny. Think Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker.
• The Rebel’s SOCO: Change the world.
The Rebel rejects the status quo. Think Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.
• The Detective’s SOCO: Make your life better. The Detective thinks outside the box to find the solution to thorny problems.Think Google.

5.    If you must use PowerPoint, use it to enhance storytelling. Storytelling is used to help an audience process information, come to a conclusion or to make a decision. Richard E. Mayer, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California, conducts research around educational psychology.

To design a powerful PowerPoint presentation, follow these principles that emerged from professor Mayer’s research about how people learn:

• Multimedia principle: people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
• Coherence principle: people learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included.
• Contiguity principle: people learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented at the same time or next to each other on the screen.
• Modality principle: people learn better from animation with spoken text than animation with printed text.
• Signaling principle: people learn better when the material is organized with clear outlines.

A new generation of business leaders understands that to build trust and effectively lead, the best stories win — people’s hearts, minds and commitment.

Stories bridge cultures, gender, age and industries. Storytelling is highly effective when your goal is to:

• Present your vision. A story can create a vision of the future, articulate values and build trust.
• Help people make a choice. A story can guide your audience through a decision making process.
• Make abstract ideas a reality. Stories simplify scientific and technical information so that the audience can imagine it as a reality.

2.            To leverage the power of storytelling, it helps to understand:

A good story makes meaning by tapping into universal human experiences. Stories bring abstract ideas to life. Facts don’t speak for themselves, they an interpreter – a storyteller — to place them in context, as this example illustrates.

Facts: The Queen died. The King died a week later.

Story: The Queen died and a week later the King died from a broken heart.

The pain of heartbreak and loss is universal. The emotional power of the King’s grief translates across culture, gender and age.

3.     Emotion is the gatekeeper of the intellect. Emotions filter the human experience, shaping our beliefs and behavior. A good story speaks to what the audience emotionally needs or values. Marketers have long known that people buy on emotion and justify with intellect.

Stories create enduring memories. The audience may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

More than sentiment underlies the grip of emotion. Emotions are a complete mind-body event, produced by a secret sauce of hormones, peptides and proteins that creates a chemical imprint on your brain, forming a lasting memory. Strong emotions create vivid memories.

Many thanks to my friend Geetesh Bajaj, one of the world’s leading authorities on Power Point, for running this post on his international blog, Indezine.

Back