On the first day of a workshop, an accomplished client delivered an effective presentation with verve and style.  On the second day, I asked him to reorganize his talk to make it more customer-centric, a challenge he embraced with enthusiasm.  However, when he delivered it, he was tentative and less effective.  Why?

The simple answer is that the new is hard.  Learning to play a musical instrument is hard, as is hitting a golf ball, or hitting a golf ball with a new grip, or getting used to being alone when you’ve been accustomed to being with people, or being with people when you’ve been flying solo for a while.

This is odd when you consider all the recent neuroscience demonstrating the plasticity of the brain.  The research suggests that our gray matter can rearrange itself quite readily.  Patients with damaged areas of the brain can, in some cases, recover lost abilities because another part of the brain steps in to lend a hand.

I assume the brain responds to demands placed on it.  Maybe not right away.  You have to keep knocking on the brain’s door before it will wake up and pay attention.  But when it does, it gets busy figuring out how to meet your request, and puts together the infrastructure that will allow you to do what you’re trying to do.

The same is true of muscles.  You put consistent demands on them, and they get stronger, more efficient.  It’s not easy, but if you push yourself through your own resistance, they respond to the challenge. 

I had to leave my client while he was still in a state of uncertainty, frustration, and diminished capacity.   He was calling on other parts of his brain, and it wasn’t leaping out of bed and rushing to his rescue.  He was in pain. 

Here’s the $64,000 question:  will he continue to try the new approach to his presentation, which I am certain will raise the level of his game?   Or will he give up, and drop back to his default operating system?

The new is hard.  If he’s like most of us, he will take the path of least resistance and stick with the tried and true.  If he’s got an engine in him, he will drive himself into his pain and frustration, and come out on the other side with a sense of self-mastery and a new skill.   He will have made the new familiar, and with the awareness that he is able to persist, he will continue to grow.

At least that’s my hope.  I’m going to send him this post to light a fire in him.

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

I read the following in The Alternative Board’s newsletter today and want to pass this on to presenters and persuasive speakers.

What conversations are you avoiding?  Maybe it’s with a good friend you don’t want to hurt.  Maybe it’s with a difficult person and you are concerned about their response.  Or maybe it’s with a family member in your business.

Susan Scott, the author of the book “Fierce Conversations,” tells us that people want to hear the truth, even if it is unpalatable.  There is something within us that responds deeply to people who level with us.

The Seven Principles of Fierce Conversations:

1. Interrogate reality:  Get everything out in the open.  Identify the issue, check for understanding and agreement.
2. Make it real:  What are you pretending not to know?  Authenticity is not something you have; it is something you choose.
3. Be in the moment:  Simply paying attention to someone, really asking, really listening can evoke a wholehearted response.
4. Tackle your toughest challenge today:  Go directly to the source and confront the person, one-to-one, privately.
5. Find a way to say the things that can’t be said:  Bring some of your private thoughts into the conversation without labeling them as truth, only conjecture to be explored together.
6. Take responsibility for your emotional wake:  Deliver your message without the emotional load – blaming, sarcasm, exaggerating, labeling.  Leave every conversation with the other person feeling better than before.
7. Use silence:  Fierce conversations require silence.  Ask a question that expands possibilities, then, wait.

The Three Steps in a Fierce Conversation

Make a clear, concise opening statement:  Name the issue; give examples; describe your emotions; clarify what’s at stake; identify your own contribution to the problem; indicate clearly your wish to resolve the issue; invite the other person to respond.

Inquire into the other person’s view:  Really try to understand their perspective, but don’t be satisfied with defensiveness or surface explanations.  Ask for more, saying “I see things quite differently.”

Resolution:  What have we learned?  Where are we now?  Make an agreement and determine how you will hold each other accountable.

What fierce conversations are you avoiding?  Or what fierce presentation are you avoiding? 

Maybe it’s time for a fierce conversation.  Maybe it’s time for a fierce presentation!  Thank you Susan.

I was steered to a web video the other day by an e-mail from a friend, and found myself in a garden of presentation skills coaches (also on video), many of whom quoted research done by Dr. Albert Mehrabian of Stanford University.

You may be familiar with the data, which suggests that voice and body language carry much of the message spoken by a presenter, while the actual words used carry much less meaning.

I have spoken to Dr. Mehrabian, who is now retired and dealing in antique musical instruments.  He is powerless to do anything about this misunderstanding of the findings of his research. 

As a professor at Stanford, his research investigated how human beings communicate emotion.  His data do not suggest that the fine distinctions needed for strategic plans, legal arguments or scientific presentations are communicated predominately by voice tone and body language.

His data do suggest that humans communicate emotion primarily through tone of voice and body language, which confirms intuition and/or common sense.   They do not suggest that the entire meaning of your careful and thoroughly prepared presentation is carried by your voice and body. 

 How you feel about your content is important, but it’s not the whole story.  Of course your delivery is important, but it is in service to ideas made of words that delivery earns its value.

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.