The Mastery of Presence

The development of an effective communicator is a journey. And I’ve always felt that my team can impact that journey in two ways. In our workshops, we introduce awareness and core competencies to start someone’s journey, and in our 1:1 coaching relationships, we accelerate the journey by working side by side to influence results.

But neither format nor a combination of the two is a promise of mastery. And I’ve thought about that a lot in the last few years.

I’ve had an opportunity to work with a lot of people over thirty years, and I’ve tracked their progress over time. Every investment of time leads to progress and every lapse in effort leads to bad habits. And so behind the scenes, I’ve been thinking about mastery and comparing my knowledge of different journeys to different outcomes.

I don’t think it can be solely blamed on a lack of effort if someone never truly masters the art. And I don’t think it can be assumed that only a few people can. I’ve seen the road to mastery for many clients, and I’ve thought about my own experiences at trying to master different things in life.

To be honest, there are far more skills that I’ve quit on than ones I’ve mastered. And you may feel the same way. It’s why I believe any kind of “road to mastery” has to have passion behind it. You have to deeply want something to be great at it before you’ll invest the time and the length of the journey to master a skill. That easily takes learning guitar and marathon running off my list!  Way too much of a commitment and not enough passion to master it. But it still leaves hiking 16ers and beating my kids at pickleball as potentials!

If you connect passion to a true interest in mastery of communication, then you’ll see some people  drop off the journey based on a lack of a commitment toward something they just don’t value enough.  And if that’s you, we should have a different conversation because I believe that someone who can influence and impact groups is destined to be a leader in one setting or another. And I also believe if you aren’t willing to be a great communicator, then you shouldn’t lead people because people want to follow someone who can define a direction with passion and purpose.

But even those who have been earnest about communication skills, don’t always master them. And I think some people stall on the journey because they don’t have all the ingredients in place for mastery.  As we’ve thought about it on our team, we’ve agreed that mastery comes from combining six things:

FEEDBACK:

Impressions and guidance aren’t the same thing. Everyone can give feedback by telling you how they’ve experienced you. But few people really understand what drives impressions and how to help someone consider new choices that move beyond them. And that’s why a lot of communicators get guidance that isn’t very helpful. More than 70% of the guidance clients share was a clear impression and misguided direction.

To master communication, you need insights from an expert, and someone who knows how to interpret impressions into actionable goals.

WELL-DEFINED GOALS:

One of the hardest things to do as a coach is to meet someone where they are versus where you think they should be. Thinking through where a person’s journey is today helps shape goals that they can reach. And accomplishing some goals encourages someone to keep working toward mastery.

It’s no different than training for anything else. You don’t start at the top of the 16er. You work your way up through the length and difficulty of hikes.

We work hard to set goals that can be reached in a workshop day or across a coaching engagement. To master communication, you have to keep resetting goals that align to your journey and push you toward the next milestone.

NEW HABITS:

That’s the first real roadblock for new skills. Are we really willing to change habits and think about being uncomfortable as a part of the journey? Mastery is way outside your comfort zone, and it’s the reason a good coach can keep setting new goals and forward motion for a communicator.  Expectations change with any new role, and skills have to expand and grow as well. It’s why communication should be integrated into any transition plan.

To master communication, you have to keep resetting communication skills. Every time you step into a new role, you should align goals for influence and impact and think through how you can continue to grow.

Those three elements make a big difference in how well someone begins the communication journey.  It’s the right formula to start with awareness, intention and effort. And I’ve evolved our coaching steps over the years to integrate these three concepts into everything we do.

And we deliver on it really well…as long as we’re in charge! And that’s what I’ve been thinking about around mastery. The difference in someone who becomes a master of communication is something that’s happening when we aren’t around:

PRACTICE:

It’s really what leads to mastery. And it’s practice with intention, not just repetition. It takes a plan, manageable pieces and a little motivation. And those are the remaining three ingredients.

PRACTICE PLAN:

We’ve created practice plans in coaching engagements for years. We outline where to practice and align someone’s goals to upcoming events. But we’ve come to realize we can’t practice for someone. And the difference in someone who knows how to practice versus someone who picks up a few techniques is miles apart.

People who master communication buy into practice. They’re less about “I use a few things” and all about “Here’s how I think about it.” When it’s internalized, it sticks.

SMALL PARTS:

Practice helps a communicator break big goals into small parts. Whether it happened in our workshops or someone else’s, when someone tells me they took away a technique, I explore it further. Techniques feel like acting to me. It’s something you think you’re supposed to do in a certain setting. Communication doesn’t have one setting or one technique. Communication is all about intention in every situation.

To master communication, you have to know what you’re trying to do in order to do it well. Break down techniques into intents. When you truly understand it, you begin to accomplish it. And, that’s great momentum toward mastery.

MOTIVATION:

I called out passion at the start of the newsletter, and I think it’s critical to keep you going. I can’t force you to be as passionate about communication as I am. But I can help you practice in small parts, and maybe that’s all the motivation you need! That’s why we built SWAU – a practice platform that provides the intent behind every communication tool and a little encouragement in every step. It brings clear goals together with an intentional plan to work on style step by step.

Our exploration around mastery has expanded our thinking about Presence and has led to a few additions to our offerings.

We recommend you begin your journey with our personal brand workshop. It takes a deeper look at impressions and assumptions. And it sets a great stage for thinking through why impressions occur so that you start your journey with a clear set of intentional choices, rather than universal techniques.

And when you’re ready…we’ve added Presence 2.0, which we call Mastering Executive Presence. And whether we worked with you two years ago or ten, this is the next level course that shifts focus from your style to the audience impact. We look at style through the lens of a listener and take the basic concepts and fit them within a higher profile setting and a high-stakes impact.

And mostly, we’ve built the practice platform to keep the journey going.

 

That’s what we’ve done about mastering communication. What will you do?

 We’re here when you need us!

THE VIRTUAL COMMUNICATOR: It’s Not as Easy as it Seems

Our “new normal” as virtual communicators has progressed in the last few months. As we’ve talked to clients, the first conversations were about how “easy it was” to make systems and processes work virtually. Corporate teams did a great job of setting up transitions and processes to move a workforce to a virtual setting. The first focus was the technology of communication…but it wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

Then, the conversation shifted to communicators and we were asked: “What should leaders be doing to create a virtual culture?” This was our article, “Leading through Video” that focused on how to stay visible with employees. Overnight, a leader’s toolkit expanded. Many had to adapt quickly to engage an invisible audience in virtual town halls and conferences…and it wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

And now, conversations are shifting from leaders to everybody else, and we’re hearing: “We need help with this. We don’t understand the ground rules of virtual communication. My team can’t run meetings, my team can’t lead customer conversations, my managers can’t influence their teams. We need help with platforms, we need help with focus, we need help with engagement.” None of it was  as easy as it seemed

How can that be?

Remote working and virtual working may not be synonymous. Remote working is a term we’ve used for a while to refer to someone who doesn’t come into the office. They may work remotely every day or just some days. It implies a different way of working and sometimes a different schedule. Remote workers set their own timeline, their own space and their own approach to their role. It works well for people who can work independent of almost everyone else.

When we made everyone virtual, we realized that every employee couldn’t work independent every day. We needed to communicate and interact with each other. And most people can feel work happening if they can “see” work. So overnight, virtual working required video. It’s a good way to get interaction and to talk to someone.

But it also required employees to sit at a computer and interact with a laptop screen for 8+ hours every day. It’s like playing a video game for hours on end. It wears you out. And it didn’t really follow the same practices of a remote worker who’s working, but within their guidelines and time frames. And very few were sitting for 8+ hours.

And now we’ve figured it out. It isn’t the same setting, and it isn’t as easy as it seems. In fact, it’s different from both perspectives.

For a listener, it’s more removed and more independent. You can get most of the experience through video, but it’s not always clear and focused. That’s because communicators are distracted by new steps and not always “ready” to manage a meeting. Listeners also have a harder time interacting with other listeners. It’s not like sitting in a room and observing others. Technology controls your view, and you get a snapshot of those talking a lot, not those who are quiet. And if a listener doesn’t like the pace or the interaction, they have the power and independence over video to turn off their camera, turn off their audio and just “leave” for a few moments.

That changes the power of the communicator. We’re not used to people connecting and disconnecting so easily. It makes things very disjointed. While the listener is a little more distant, the video makes the communicator more intimate. It’s a close-up shot of you. Yes, you can change that if you know how, but some communicators aren’t really sure where the camera is. So, the snapshot may have them looking down, looking left or all around, and it makes it harder to focus on them and harder to hear what they say. And many communicators say they’re managing too much in this new format, and it feels like a juggling exercise to run a virtual meeting.

It is different, and it’s a new set of skills. And it’s why in response to the questions and discussion mentioned above, we’ve pulled our best practices together to create “The  Virtual Communicator” program for leaders, sales teams, internal teams, project teams, and anyone who is trying to improve their impact in a virtual setting.

Our premise is that it takes three things: Preparation, Participation and Presence.

Here are a few highlights from the program.

 

PREPARATION

We’ve always said that a prepared communicator sends an agenda in advance, so participants know what you expect them to do in an upcoming conversation. It’s a best practice for all meetings, and it’s a necessity for the virtual communicator. It’s hard for the virtual communicator to generate participation in the moment. When listeners aren’t prepared to participate, the virtual meeting falls flat. This makes the communicator lose confidence, and the listener lose interest. And that’s when listeners disconnect.  They can turn on/off technology at will.

Sometimes, technology is the challenge for communicators and listeners. Platforms are being over-worked, and they aren’t running beautifully. But most of it is operator error. The leader is dropping calls, dropping people, talking without sound, talking with too much sound, etc. The first two minutes of any virtual meeting should be ground rules for technology and participation. No one is doing it, and everyone needs it.

PARTICIPATION

Once the ground rules are set, the communicator has to signal participation. We introduce techniques for getting involvement early and keeping it throughout a meeting.

It takes facilitation skills, and few communicators have had much experience with facilitation.

Technology works against you on this one. Technology pulls the talkers front and center. If you’re speaking, you show up more on the screen. The communicator needs to know who isn’t talking to make sure they have everyone engaged. And the quiet listeners are hard to “see.” We’ve developed a simple workaround that helps a communicator track a full group and still keep their focus on the conversation.

PRESENCE

Your presence is as important on video as it is in a conference room. In fact, it’s a more intimate snapshot. We don’t see the communicator from head to toe. We see a close-up shot from the shoulders up which makes connection and expression the most critical style component.

That’s a challenge because many communicators don’t seem to know where the camera is. In order to make a listener feel seen, you have to be talking directly to them. Communicators seems to be looking down and all around. In the close-up shot, the lack of connection is front and center.

You can adjust the listeners’ view…. you can improve it, but you have to think about it. Some teams are having a lot of fun with backdrops. They are fun, but distorting, for important meetings. It seems as if someone is behind a curtain pulling on your body parts. Ears get cut off, arms seem to be broken, etc. It will be a “to do” for marketing teams to improve the green screen backdrops. For now, find a real setting in your house that works for important meetings to avoid the distraction.

 

It’s a new medium, and it requires a new set of skills. They aren’t totally different, but they aren’t as easy as they may seem. If you’re beginning to focus on the skills of your communicators, we’d like to help your team manage and improve their virtual setting.

Learn more and sign up for The Virtual Communicator today.

We’re here when you need us.

Don’t Blame PowerPoint!

Next to a laptop, PowerPoint (PPT) could be considered one of the top three tools used in business. More than 30 million presentations are built in the software every day tying up 15 million people hours at a cost of $252 million…..every single day! And yet, few of us are Masters of it. In fact, we have a love/hate relationship with the software which has led to the term, “death by PPT.”

AT SW&A, we hear a lot of the angst around preparing presentations blamed on the software.

From the listeners:

• “There were too many details and too much information.”
• “I got lost in the details and didn’t understand what the listener was asking me to do.”
• “It’s a horrible eye chart.”

From the communicators:

• “We go through more than 15 iterations of decks before we have a final presentation.”
• “I got so many edits to my slides that I’ve lost the point I was trying to make.”
• “I’m not artistic or creative; I hate building slides.”

And our response is always: Don’t blame PPT.

It’s the process…or lack of a process…that frustrates you. Not the software.

Here’s a little self-diagnosis.

Assume that you’re asked to deliver a presentation two weeks from today.  Whether you start planning it today or wait until next week to develop it, how many of you will start the process by opening up a PPT document on your laptop?

If this sounds like you, stay with me. Then, you begin outlining points by putting a text box on each slide or if you’ve covered the topic previously, you’ll open up another PPT and begin to migrate slides to your new deck. Either way, you’re building the foundation of your content, one slide at a time.

It’s a very linear approach to structure, and it’s the wrong approach.

Because now you have a collection of details instead of a storyline, and you will present the deck slide by slide versus concept linked to concept.

Is this your approach?  Most people say yes.

When PPT is used as the planning tool, it becomes cumbersome to work with and takes on a very different role. PPT’S role is to help you illustrate details or connect two points, not to thread all the points together.  That’s the role of an outline or storyline structure as we refer to it. The usage numbers above may explain this.  Because organizing content has become such a constant in our day, we may be telling ourselves that we can skip a step and organize our thoughts at the same time as we illustrate them. And, that’s a misuse of PPT.

The storyline structure is the first step, always. Whether you use our model or you have your own tool, as the communicator, you should always start with an end to end view of what you’re asking the listener to do. It’s rarely the details that fail in presentations; it’s always the connection between them.

A storyline view helps a communicator understand the bigger ideas and repeatable points that will lead the listener to an outcome or takeaway.  This changes how you build out a PPT.

When PPT becomes the second step, it works beautifully for the communicator and the listener. A broader storyline helps the listener see beyond what you’re illustrating and understand why you’re illustrating it. The communicator’s focus gets simpler and key concepts get repeated as the communicator focuses on pulling ideas forward rather than making every point.

PPT is also a horrible communicator and a really good illustrator.

Let’s diagnose that one.

Assume that the presentation you’re building is for another leader to deliver or it has such high visibility that several people want to give input before you deliver it. So, you work on the PPT for a few days and then you forward it for feedback.

Does this sound like you?  Then, what you may not realize is that even though you shared it for feedback, you were pretty locked into those slides. And your editors now begin to interpret what the slides mean.  They can see the illustration; they just don’t know the storyline. So, they create their own mental storyline to support your details. Then, they edit to their own thinking.

This leads to adding content on your slides, reordering your slides and even adding new slides to support their thinking. You get the edits back and don’t feel grateful for the input.  You’re frustrated. Because they’ve changed the meaning of your slides and thrown off the flow of your storyline. At least the storyline you have in your head.  Because it was never shared as a structure for the conversation.

Have you had this experience? Most people say yes.

 

The storyline drives communication; PPT creates illustration. If an editor can read a storyline to see the end to end plan for communication, they are much less likely to edit slides.  Instead, they’ll identify areas of the storyline that aren’t easy to understand or where they want you to add detail.

In fact, when a team is involved in preparing a presentation, we urge communicators to get buy-in to the storyline first before PPT is even introduced. This helps a group align to the full direction of communication and the big ideas before the supporting PPT takes shape. And it keeps a team moving through the organization process together. Then when you move to PPT, the second step, the feedback is limited to the look and feel of illustrations.

As a communicator, you want listeners spending less time on how to follow your thoughts and more time on understanding how the big ideas connect and lead to outcomes.

And if we’re pleased with the transformation we see when individuals add our first step  into content planning, we’re ecstatic when we see teams adopt it. Because if an individual can improve a single meeting, the full team can change their influence in an organization.

We know because we’ve made it happen.

We’ve taken many teams beyond the storyline structure to a team template that gives the communicators a template to follow and the listeners a consistent expectation. So, listeners spend less time trying to follow the structure and more time hearing the ideas.

When teams adopt a standard structure, it quickly takes hold in an organization. They become known for their ability to deliver clear ideas and recommendations which often raises their visibility in a company.

If you’re getting bogged down in details and edits, don’t blame PPT. Put the first step back into your process. And if you’d like some help learning to do that, join us for an upcoming storylines workshop. Even better, bring your team together and strengthen the group’s impact across your organization.

Call us when you need us.

Creating High-Performing Teams

As leaders step into new roles and realign strategies, they almost always adjust their teams. It makes sense. Leaders need people that they can trust, and they want people that they have experience with. In short order, they bring trusted colleagues into their group. It gives them peace of mind and an established working pattern, but it doesn’t immediately yield a high-performing team.

In fact, it can create competing priorities on a leadership team. As strategies get realigned, it shifts focus, responsibility and some initiatives. And unintentionally, peers can get on opposite sides of an issue from one another. The real risk of conflict is competition among the leaders’ employees who can feel as if they’re working on opposing teams. This creates friction within a culture and angst among employees. In order for employees to align behind strategies, the leadership team has to appear to be aligned with each other. And that doesn’t happen without effort.

To drive fast results, leaders create great 1:1 relationships with members of their team but they don’t always take the time or have the time to help the new colleagues build relationships with each other. In fact, the 1:1 approach can eliminate any need for peers to collaborate with each other.  When this happens, leaders have strong relationships but lack the bench strength that they’d like to have, the team trust that they need to have or the support system that the team needs.

Over time, it may sort itself out among the peers or by the leader.  But time is the one thing that organizations don’t seem to have these days. And, that’s why we’re often asked to help a leader accelerate the process.

Essentially, you’re trying to establish openness and candid feedback in order to work toward trust.

A high-performing team has three core qualities.

• They value diverse thinking.

  They’ve learned to see their peers beyond functional responsibility.  Instead, they value the way peers think and they learn to seek out the added perspective in their own decision making.

• They share ownership.

  A true team mentality comes from working together and solving together. They understand that they will have to compromise or improvise on most initiatives. They respect that multiple perspectives are usually better than a single one. And once their voice is heard, they align to the decision of the team.  

• They trust each other.

  Trust is an earned relationship and a goal the team reaches over time. By accelerating openness of thought and feedback, trust becomes a more intentional goal rather than evolving over time with trials and missteps along the way.

So how do you get a peer group there quickly? By focusing on the first two qualities in a way that lays the foundation for trust to develop. 

We follow a three-step process with teams to improve how they interact with each other and to strengthen their impact across a company.

First, we get to openness by putting each leader’s brand and peer impressions on the table for discussion. With our help, each individual understands how they’re perceived within a group today and what the group expects from them. We help each individual understand their strengths/challenges, and the areas where they will need to improve to win trust with their peers. We talk through the aspiration of a high-performing team and what each member needs to feel a part of it. This work is done without the leader and begins the process of empowering a team.

Second, we work to help each individual introduce new skills into the team. This may take shape in a workshop or across projects with a partner.  To value diverse thinking, the group has to begin to experience it. The openness of feedback and willingness to grow together sets the right environment for peers to speak up and get outside of their function area more often.

And finally, the leader has to adjust to a team mentality versus the 1:1 relationship that they may have started. While 1:1 expedites activity and gives the leader quick insights, it can also blindside buy-in across a group.  Leaders need help learning to defer decisions to group settings and shut down some of the side conversations that lead to misalignment. When a team senses that a leader has trust in them, they begin to respect the perspectives and ideas of one another. This drives more honesty in the room and ultimately works toward building trust for decision making within the team.

A high-performing team leads to a high-performing organization.

But with today’s pace of change across leaders and teams, most groups need a little help. If you’re leading a new team, a great starting point is peer feedback and honest impressions. And if the timing is right, we’d be happy to talk through how we might develop a plan for your team.

Call us when you need us!

Executive Presence Is a Top Priority for Leadership

High-potential and leadership programs are a top priority as companies focus on succession planning and the development of future leaders. And, as companies define skill gaps, Executive Presence has become a hot topic and an urgent priority.

While it is a part of every assessment and curriculum, many development managers struggle with what it is and how to build it into a leadership program. The concept of Executive Presence is not a new one. People have talked about the aura of leaders and the need for them to have leadership presence for some time. But the gap is wider because future leaders just haven’t followed the same development paths or had the same mentoring opportunities their predecessors had.

Presence isn’t something you give yourself. It’s something you earn from those around you who respect your right to speak and your ability to lead. Some have called it an “earned authority.” It is a combination of behaviors and attitudes that present a sense of confidence, competence, commitment, and authenticity.

Although we’ve coached leadership presence for thirty years, we were intrigued to understand the impact of presence within an organization and to gather perspective through a lens other than our own. So we commissioned a survey on Executive Presence with nearly 400 CEOs, C-level executives, corporate communications executives, and professional development managers. The results were confirming and surprising.

We found them confirming in that senior executives see presence as an essential part of their job. In fact, 89 percent of survey respondents believe that presence helps you get ahead. All of the executives interviewed believe presence can be a differentiator. And 78 percent say a lack of presence will hold you back.

Why? Because while many struggle to define it, everyone agrees presence is easy to spot. Presence fits a person like a well-cut suit. People who have presence fill a room and command attention as if they simply have a right to be there.

Surprisingly, 98 percent of the executives also admitted that their skills were not innate. That’s surprising because most development managers are quick to say that future leaders either have this trait or they don’t. While they definitely value the impact of presence, development managers are skeptical about whether or not it can really be developed.

In fact, the gaps in perspective were highlighted when we asked senior executives and development managers for the most effective ways to develop presence. Executives leaned heavily on three concepts:

1. Observation: 70 percent of the executives observed presence early in their careers.
2. Coaching: 65 percent of executives say executive coaching can help a leader develop presence. Only 20
   percent of the development managers believe this.
3. Training: 55 percent of executives say that leadership programs are a great way to develop presence; only 33
   percent of those who run these programs believe this.

All of the executives we interviewed said they were aware of the impact of different leaders in their organizations and they made note of what set them apart. All of the survey participants felt they had worked on their own presence, and approximately 35 percent thought they could benefit from more work. Most said they think intentionally about how they need to come across, and they work hard to deliver an authentic, succinct, and relevant message. In fact, they believe their ability to do so can calm unsettled issues, inspire unfocused employees,
and convince skeptical audiences.

This strong buy-in to presence by the C-suite explains why senior executives need to be involved in developing presence in others. Some companies do this by rotating a portion of the curriculum among senior leaders; others use executives to set the tone for a program and to offer feedback at the completion of it. Executive participation also speaks to what future leaders really want out of leadership programs, and that’s exposure. Many rising stars believe that if they get exposure to the senior management team, they can create their own fast track and their own potential. The personal stories we heard through our research suggest this may well be true.

We recommend three key elements for a program or curriculum on Executive Presence:

• Assessment: Presence is about perception, and the critical starting point for any future leader is to have a clear understanding of how he/she is perceived. Feedback and evaluation set the stage for where you are today and where you need to be in the future. It’s also the acid test for feedback. The executives we interviewed said feedback was an important part of their own development. They were open to it and sought it frequently.

• Core Skills: There are fundamental skills of presence tied to how you use your body and voice. Every future leader needs to know how to develop and deliver thoughts with confidence and conviction. Our research defined key attributes of presence and revealed that these skills can be developed and fine-tuned in any individual.

• Coaching and Practice: Ultimately, it takes practice to turn initial impressions into lasting ones. Many structured programs use a case study or simulation to give future leaders an opportunity to apply skills to a business situation. This is the point at which existing leaders are willing to engage and support the program with feedback. Coaching
ensures that this high-profile exercise is a high exposure and high payoff for future leaders.

Ultimately, these three ingredients help future leaders develop skills for immediate success and long-term results.

According to senior executives, Executive Presence is a priority because it’s one of the leadership traits that can’t be supported by anyone else. When you step into the C-suite of an organization, you go from being a specialist in an area to being a generalist. Your messages broaden, your audiences expand, and you have to engage and influence every one of them.

We’re here when you need us!

 

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!