Leveraging AI as a Communicator

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Last year, I wrote a newsletter called “Can Chat GPT write my speech?” And essentially, I said AI can get you to a first draft. Over the last year, as we’ve worked with it and seen others apply it to communication, I would say it’s gotten better than that. But I also agree with the stats that say AI gets things 70% right.

Because I see the 30% wrong almost every day. At this point, I’ve seen and edited hundreds of meetings, speeches and presentations built by an AI engine. Here’s what happens:

AI goes unchecked. At least once a week, I see copies of unchecked work. One presenter confused industries by misspelling the name of a company in AI. The insights were good on another industry, but it led the communicator down the wrong path with the prospect.

AI goes uncoached. I saw a keynote recently written for a top leader. An analogy was included that aligned to the content, but not to him. He’s telling a story about coaching 8-year-old girls in soccer. He doesn’t have an 8-year-old, he doesn’t even have a daughter. So, it wasn’t authentic to him.

If you check AI and coach AI, it can adjust. But if you think of AI as just getting things done faster, you will be the next victim of the 30%. And if you’re okay with 30% wrong, then this newsletter won’t be helpful to you. But if you believe, like I do, that communication should be memorable and repeatable, then you need to leverage AI as an innovation and still keep yourself front and center in your content.

These guidelines will help you develop a strong partnership with AI.

First structure. In our workshops, we talk about communication as a journey. The communicator should be leading the listener to a destination. AI cannot create the journey. But it can follow structure. In fact, it probably does. But if you aren’t setting the structure, you have no idea where AI got the structure it uses. In the SW&A toolkit, we call structure the storyline. And while we know data points and insights are helpful, it’s the structure that keeps the listener on the journey.

Second, language. It takes me 30 seconds or less to tell that a script, outline or email was written by AI. If the rest of us know it, why isn’t the communicator worried about that? AI is like leveraging an encyclopedia. It brings knowledge and insight quickly. But there’s nothing conversational about its output. You have to work with AI content to transfer it to your words and your language.

If you’re earnest about being believable as a communicator, AI can’t get you there. It doesn’t know you. Everyone else in the room does. And that’s why it isn’t believable. In fact, the rest of us would say it isn’t even your words. And aren’t you better than that?

Third, personalize it. As a communicator, you should be working for more than believable. You should be working toward engaging and empathetic.

What listeners love about a good communicator is when we spend 30 to 45 minutes listening to them, we feel like we get to know them through what they share and how they talk about a product, direction, or a strategy. AI can tighten a story or help you package it in a fun way. But don’t talk about coaching a girls’ soccer team if you don’t have a daughter. Personalizing content and being open and honest with audiences has always been hard work. And it will continue to be for those who want to be better than 70%.

The best way to leverage AI tools is as a great partner and tool that can enhance something or add something for you. It might be insights or case studies or background. It can save a lot of time and get you to a better product. But you have to put the YOU into communication every time.

We have been learning to integrate it and adapt it ourselves. And we’re feeling good about AI as a partner. But I’m not nearly as interested in helping AI become a good communicator as I am in helping each of you get there. And that’s why our efforts have been on coaching AI on storyline structure, so you can adjust the language and add the personalization to keep communication unique to you. And now, we’ve got the tool that can help you get beyond 70%.

We’ve launched the SW&A Digital Coach. It works in an app to leverage our toolkit for outlining content with an AI engine that guides you to craft a compelling message and the right flow of ideas to take a listener on a journey. And who wouldn’t want SW&A, and our language, guiding the outlining process?

Here’s how you can try it!

Former Students: On Your Own: If you’ve taken our storyline program and already worked with the SW&A methodology, it’s all yours. We’ll give you a link to the app, and you can build three outlines on us. If you love the tool, you can purchase more uses. If not, you got a lesson in AI as a communication partner. Sign up here.

Former Students: A Guided Tour: If you’re a former student, but sheepishly admit you don’t remember the storyline structure, you can take a quick refresher and learn the tool in a 90 min hosted webinar. See dates below. Sign up here.

Team Workshop: If you haven’t worked with us but think we might be onto something, you can book a workshop for your team. We’ll incorporate the AI tool into an in-person or virtual program. And we’d be happy to do this for our former students as well! Sign up here.

The best part of all of this is learning to leverage AI in communication. But if you stop at 70% effective, you’ve missed the value. You’re working faster but you aren’t getting better results. In fact, from what we see, it may be getting worse. But if you learn to leverage AI as a partner, you can get to 100%—and that’s our standard for a great communicator!

Call us when you need us!

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Also Read: Coming Full Circle: The Future of Executive Presence

 

Your Authentic Presence

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We’ve wrapped up the research for our fifth book! Through interviews, focus groups and surveys, we’ve talked to hundreds of people who shared a current perspective about presence in today’s corporate setting.

Over 50% of respondents are working in companies with over 1,500 employees, and the majority of them are between 36-55 years old. The group was split between people who have experienced us in the last three years, people who experienced us more than three years ago, and 30% who have never worked with us at all.

And the unanimous perspective across all the inputs is…presence hasn’t gone away.

In fact, two in three respondents believe presence has grown in importance over the past five years.

Most of the people who gave input used the pandemic as an inflection point of change. It shifted how we work, it put looking out for people first and foremost, and it required all of us to see each other in a more holistic way.

Corporate norms changed, rules softened and guardrails widened. We began meetings by asking people if they were OK. We experienced our colleagues in vulnerable moments. Communication was often vulnerable and honest. And even though it’s a period that we’re glad to have behind us, the openness and vulnerability took hold. And it’s had a real impact on how we think about our expectations of presence.

While the book will provide a broader view of insights and consider the listeners’ perspective from different vantage points inside a company, here’s an overview of four themes we explored and what we learned.

IMPRESSIONS
Presence begins with impressions, and those impressions take shape for any communicator in a similar fashion. The statistics that suggest we can from 11 impressions in seven seconds still support how quickly we take someone in.

• Body Language: 36%
• Listener Engagement: 34%
• Voice Power: 30%

We talk about a communicator’s toolkit as the body, voice and listener, and as groups weighted the importance of each concept, the body was still the larger impression. But not nearly as much of the impression as it was been in the past. It dropped from 55% of an impression to 36%. Listener engagement was 34%, and the voice was 30%.

What’s different is the reduced number of situations where you can make a strong impression or reset a misinterpreted one. In-person meetings bring a strong advantage to a communicator over virtual meetings, and the hybrid meetings with people in a room and online are considered the most difficult to manage. The virtual and hybrid meetings were listed as the most challenging by all participants.

These inputs show up in current coaching sessions, and it’s put a heightened demand on coaching to diffuse impressions or find more intentional ways to set impressions as a virtual communicator.

ATTRIBUTES
The attributes of presence today look very similar to the attributes we began coaching more than thirty years ago. People want communicators to be confident and clear. They like conviction behind thoughts and a communicator who works to pull them into the conversation.

But when asked which group of attributes matter most, listeners are split between confidence and authenticity. And that means it isn’t enough to be confident and commanding from the front of the room. Listeners want less performance and more sincerity. They want a communicator to build trust, not just respect.

This has been building as an expectation, and it’s a hard one for communicators to consider because authenticity, like trust, builds over time not in a single meeting. But this sound bite shared by one listener says it all: Be the same person tomorrow that you are today.

SKEPTICISM
This theme may go hand in hand with what listeners describe as authenticity. There is more skepticism in most audiences and meetings, and it shows up in tougher questions. Listeners want more context with direction, and they want more than an email message as an explanation. In fact, communicators who are live or visible via video are twice as likely to be believed as a written note. “Talk to us frequently, tell us the truth, and admit your mistakes.”

Communicators say that they feel more challenged in settings. When they hit a skeptical listener, they feel defensive and need some guidance on managing through it. For some communicators, it’s getting comfortable with different perspectives in every setting. For others, it’s learning to hear it, acknowledge it and still move people beyond it.

Communicators feel the pressure to gain alignment. As one said: “Hearts and minds are still there as a focus, but the focus on outcomes has intensified.”

PERSONAL BRAND
Our 1:1 interviews went further in exploring how people think about presence related to their personal brand. And that’s what seems to bring authenticity into focus.

Personal brand is authenticity; it’s who you are and what you’re known for. It evolves over time, and if you’ve been intentional about it, it shifts from what you do to what you can do.

As we talked to individuals about their brand and their presence, it resonates that your brand is how people describe you when you’re not in the room. Brands take shape over time. Your presence is the experience of you in each and every moment.

And coaching someone to deliver on all of it is the focus on our fifth book.

Our observation is that people who have invested time in understanding and exemplifying their personal brand find it easier to bring authenticity to their presence. It’s broadened our coaching, and it’s all part of the communicator’s journey to presence.

We’ll share more as the book project continues.

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Also Read: Coming Full Circle: The Future of Executive Presence

 

Coming Full Circle

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If you receive newsletters and mailings from us routinely, then you know that we are well underway with a fifth book to reset our perspective on presence. The book begins with the concept of “coming full circle” and how we’ve evolved our approach to coaching it.

To be honest, I thought we needed to write the book because our concepts were set fifteen years ago through the eyes of communicators in high-profile, business settings. The insights for the first book came from senior leaders who defined the expectations of executive presence based on their experiences. And in today’s setting, that seemed too narrow of a lens.

We’ve redefined leadership in the last decade in terms of who leaders are and what we expect in how they lead. Every meeting is an opportunity for leadership, and every communicator can influence decisions. We’ve evolved work settings and stretched business norms to the point that guardrails seem less certain. And with so much shifting, evolving and resetting, we knew that we needed to understand how expectations of communicators have been impacted by that. Even with thirty years of experience as coaches, we told ourselves to listen and observe.

And we have listened through surveys, interviews and focus groups. We’ve observed virtual settings, in-person meetings and hybrid presentations. But we expanded the lens to not just observe the communicators, but to observe the listeners as well…what they take in and what they take away.

And here’s the bottom line:

Impressions have remained steadfast and universal. No matter who you are, where you’re from or what you do, people have expectations of communicators. And when you speak up, those expectations take shape as impressions. We’ve coached to impressions and expectations for three decades, and we continue to leverage that approach to strengthen your skills. We observe your style, and we note impressions. And almost as if working a puzzle, we focus on the origin of impressions. By helping a communicator adjust impressions of the voice and body, we can improve how someone sees them, hears them, and responds to them. It’s about intentional choices and helping a communicator feel effective to be effective. That all remains true.

But presence has evolved through a broader lens.

When you consider the listeners’ expectations, it’s less about “in this moment” and more about the consistency of impressions “in every moment.” Presence has moved beyond the pressure to show up well in high-visibility moments to the ability to prove out those impressions in every moment.

It started with the pandemic shutdown and the vulnerability we all expressed as people first and then leaders and managers second. Expectations shifted from confident to authentic and today, listeners want both. As we saw all elements reset from that point forward, the concept of presence became intertwined with personal brand.

Today, our research shows that while you might be a great presenter and communicator when the spotlight is on, listeners pay just as much attention to how you communicate in small settings and with all groups. That’s where authenticity and consistency take hold.

The full circle for us has been how we describe presence and coach someone to consider it.

We don’t just explore a communicator’s ability to engage and connect; we start with it. And our focus has evolved from guiding someone to a defined set of impressions to evolving someone from their own sense of authenticity. Those aren’t vastly different in how they’re coached. But they are different in how communicators feel about the journey. As one communicator recently shared: “I get it. It’s less about the performance and more about the impact.”

To us, presence is the convergence of two themes: intention and consistency.

You might think of those as expanding expectations, and in the short term, it’s true. It’s harder to deliver on both. But if you believe your presence is tied to who you are and how you want to influence, you’ll find that the broader lens on presence gets more aligned over time. It’s not a concept you turn on when it’s needed. It’s an impact that you take with you into every setting.

Communication becomes a continuous loop and a set of impressions that get validated over time. Presence is earned by a communicator when listeners feel it’s as much a part of who they are as how they communicate. And that’s how we’ve come full circle. So much so that our workshops start with engagement today and build the elements of presence around that full circle of connection. We start with the listener lens, and we raise the bar on not just presenting well but influencing consistently.

If you haven’t taken a presence workshop or been through a coaching session with us recently, maybe you should come full circle.

More to come in the months ahead as we share excerpts from the book.

We’re on a new journey! And I hope you’ll call us when you need us.

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Also Read: Strengthening the Impact of Leadership Teams

 

Strengthening the Impact of Leadership Teams

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If the focus of our work is any indication of a trend, one priority that we’ve seen across companies is the focus on top leadership. Specifically, on leadership teams. In fact, our work with senior teams has increased threefold. And as different development teams organize these programs, their objective is similar.

“We need to strengthen the consistency and impact of our leaders’ communications.”

Effective communication skills were identified as a strength or an area of improvement by mid-career. Many leaders have been coached, and most are pretty good communicators once they step up to a leadership role. But pretty good isn’t good enough when everything about the success or failure of a leadership team tethers back to communication.

Leadership isn’t just about a good strategy. It’s how effectively you paint the picture of the strategy and get others on board. That takes compelling communication.

Leadership isn’t just about navigating troubled waters. It’s how well you calm the waters and keep others moving forward. That takes compelling communication.

Leadership isn’t just your impact behind closed doors. It’s also your impact in the public eye and whether you’re liked, admired and trusted in high visibility moments. And that takes compelling communication as well.

And while senior leaders have always felt the pressure of impact, three variables have increased the pressure on and the complexity of their communication: Pace, Transparency and Trust.

PACE
Acceleration is a common term in every strategy and playbook. Leaders feel the impact of that increased pace on their ability to align an organization. It takes a while for messaging to take hold. You can say it once and repeat it a second time, but messaging gains buy-in over time as ideas are illustrated and validated. The faster pace of work has shortened the amount of time a leader has to establish buy-in.

Today, communication has to be compelling enough to be repeated by others so that it travels faster within an organization. Leaders have to hit the mark in a more compelling way, and they have to be in sync as a team so that messaging resonates timely and consistently with all audiences.

It isn’t easy. Companies may scale up in January and lay off in June. Messages can be contradictory and confusing because direction shifts and leadership teams aren’t always aligned on how to talk about it. Teams have to anticipate questions and align with each other on responses. We developed a workshop, Owning the Message, specifically focused on helping leaders align on messaging and handle questions and discussion that follows it.

TRANSPARENCY
Transparency is a great aspiration, but it creates risks in execution for leadership teams. When today’s leaders ran departments, they communicated openly and they shared their perspective as well as the company’s perspective. Sometimes, there was a little friction between the two, but leaders would say that’s how they built trust with their teams. Employees counted on them to share the message — and their opinion on it.

For senior teams, that approach is fraught with risk. When employees or external groups hear different views, it sounds like dissention. And it spreads like wildfire. Leaders say their perspective has been overshadowed by their responsibility to the company’s perspective. And some even say they’ve lost their voice in the pressure to align to one voice.

That’s true. Getting a senior team to one voice is more critical and challenging than it’s ever been. We work with teams to understand the impact of one voice and the risks of multiple ones. And we shift their thinking from being transparent to be authentic. Employees would say transparency and authenticity are one and the same. Leaders would say they are miles apart.

Our coaching helps a leadership team find their authentic voice. They can rarely be transparent about what they know until the company is ready to share it. But they can be authentic in how they communicate and present their voice in their communication style. And that’s why we developed, Finding Your Voice as a Leader, to help teams define their leadership brand and their authenticity within that brand.

TRUST
When a senior leader steps up to a new role, they ask: How do I establish trust with this group? And the reality is: over time. You can establish good intent, clarity, warmth, confidence and many other attributes. But trust has to be earned. And that takes time.

Today’s leadership teams struggle with getting to trust quickly. Many have changed the frequency of interaction and the cadence of being together. They don’t have as many opportunities for informal connection. Or they may not reach out to each other enough for input, advice or just commiserating.

Ask any leader how they manage communication as a team, and they will say trust is the added element that helps them align on messaging, consistency and a single voice. It takes time to trust a process and to trust your colleagues to follow it. It’s the most critical variable to work on. In our programs, we focus on building trust and making sure teams are working toward it as part of their contract with each other.

>Download an overview of our Strengthening Leadership Teams programs

Solving for these variables has been the focus of our work in helping current leadership teams strengthen communication. And this year, we’ve added these elements into our leadership programs for tomorrow’s leaders because they will face the same pressures.

Investing in the development of leadership teams is a smart priority. When they work together on challenges of pace and transparency, they build trust. And when leaders trust each other, they communicate as a team and lead companies to great outcomes.

We’re excited about new challenges and opportunities in 2026. And we’re ready to help your teams work together to strengthen the impact of communication.

So, call us when you need us.

Click here to schedule a call to talk more about this topic!

Also Read: Raising the Bar on Your Influence & Impact

 

SELF-REFLECTION: Raising the Bar on Your Influence & Impact

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2026 promises to be a year focused on momentum and outcomes. We see efforts around AI multiplying, and expectations around pace accelerating. In every corporate strategy, we hear transform, pivot, accelerate, and disrupt. Every message is energized like we’re competing in the great race to reach better outcomes and growth.

And it’s why as you set goals for the new year and evaluate individuals and teams, you’d be smart to evaluate yourself as well. Because whether you’re a senior leader, a seasoned manager, or an individual contributor, your ability to influence and impact is dependent on and rooted in the ability to communicate effectively. In fact, as you consider the year ahead, ask yourself what would change if your skills as a communicator shifted from competent to compelling?

Everything!

And that’s why we believe raising the bar on your own skills should be a top priority. Here’s how we evaluate and guide a competent communicator to become a compelling one.

INSIGHTS VS. OUTCOMES

If you’ve worked with SW&A, you know the storyline framework. And we’ve coached you to use insights to shift perspectives and gain alignment with listeners before positioning options and a recommendation. But the blind spot we continue to see is defining value from a listener’s perspective. Some of this comes through in a message, but it’s also about learning how to define value from the perspective of different audiences.

Consider your role in communicating outcomes.

Senior Leaders:
Senior leaders say it’s easiest to align value for internal audiences and harder to position value with external ones. To gain traction beneath outcomes, you’ll have to bring messaging close together for audiences from the inside looking out and outside looking in to buy into results. For many leaders, it’s less about getting it right the first time and more about staying consistent every time.

Raise the bar this year by setting the direction so clearly that you can stay consistent with the big goals as you move through the year. It’s how you avoid confusion with too many redirects and gain believability and memorability to outcomes.

Seasoned Managers:
We describe you as “the mighty middle,” and you will feel it in the year ahead. You sit at the intersection of big goals about where the company is headed and the work required to get there. In every communication, you need to connect the dots between them. If your senior leaders communicate direction effectively, it will sound so clear that the path feels defined. It isn’t. For your team, the path ahead will be full of dead ends and potholes. They will have to reset, restart and sometimes totally turn around. If your communication focuses only on the work of your team, it can feel like they’re floundering when what they’re really doing is resetting against bigger goals.

Raise the bar on yourself by learning to connect specific actions to bigger outcomes. Set a repeatable structure for communicating progress, setbacks and continuous learning so the group feels intention to their efforts.

Individual Contributor:
Whether you’re delivering presentations or collaborating through discussion, connect your thoughts to a bigger picture, whether it’s an overall strategy or work by other team members. Be the communicator who is valued for connecting ideas that help any group move forward. Focus less on talking about why things won’t work. Focus more on ideas to get beyond hurdles.
Raise the bar on how you listen and how you contribute.

COMFORTABLE VS. INVESTED

This is about raising the bar on how people experience you. A lot has changed about how we work and formats we use for communication. But the power of impressions has stayed constant. And your presence is the foundational tool that differentiates you as a communicator. So, what’s the difference between being comfortable versus invested? It comes down to body language. When I see you as comfortable, you seem experienced. When I see you as invested, you seem inspiring.

Consider how your style conveys inspiring.

Senior Leaders:
If you’d say most groups would describe you as comfortable, we’d say you’re relying on years of experience as a communicator. But it isn’t enough because it isn’t about you. It’s about everyone else. And every time you communicate, you need to be motivating enough that listeners will follow you, align with you, and maybe shift how they’re feeling because of you. Your style and presence can erase uncertainty with employees, investors, board members and every other audience you face.

If you’re asking your organization to move mountains, raise the bar on yourself by ensuring you know how to get physically and emotionally invested in every message you deliver.

Seasoned Managers:
Employees feel a difference in being told what to do and being inspired to do it. It has a lot to do with the conviction that comes through in how your manager communicates. Do you communicate in a way that says work is due by Friday? Or are you inspiring in a way that says that work is making a difference?

You are the connective tissue for your team, and you should raise the bar on how you illustrate conviction before you ask them to move the needle on what they’re delivering.

Individual Contributor:
All companies are assessing how to use resources differently and who to keep on teams as roles evolve. As an individual contributor, your direct manager knows your capabilities. Everyone else makes assumptions about capabilities based on how you show up in meetings. You can influence those impressions if you know enough about your personal presence to add intention to how people experience you.

Raise the bar on yourself by investing in work on personal presence to better understand impressions and choices.

IMPRESSIONS VS. IMPACT

Our beliefs and our coaching centers around the impact to listeners. A compelling communicator knows that and makes an intentional shift from focusing on themselves to focusing on listeners. Our coaching on presence starts with awareness, but it never ends there. It goes much further in helping someone explore their ability to impact others. It’s not an easy shift. It takes awareness, intention and practice. And it takes a little vulnerability to start the journey.

We measure impact by asking listeners for input on communicators. When we get inputs on how someone looked and sounded, we know that the listener is stuck on impressions. When we get inputs on actions that a listener plans to take as a result of the communicator, we know the communicator had real impact. Listeners don’t distinguish a communicator’s ability to impact based on their responsibility in a company. But as you think about yourself as the communicator, you might distinguish the risks you have in not delivering on this.

As a senior leader, if the year ahead is relying on your ability to inspire an entire organization toward bigger outcomes…your risks may be that employees who don’t feel inspired won’t deliver results.

As a seasoned manager, you will be the epicenter of things that have to be reset and reconsidered. If you can’t inspire…your risks may be employees who get defeated early and give up on the challenges ahead.

And as an individual contributor…your risk may be missed opportunity. As companies think differently and work differently, it will create more moments of visibility in meetings and discussions. Don’t miss your chance to be seen and heard as a voice that wants to be a part of the changes ahead.

It’s the right time to raise the bar on yourself as you raise the bar on an organization or a team.

Make this a priority for yourself, and we’ll ensure that you get there.

Click here to schedule a call to talk more about this topic!

Also Read: Communicating the Value & Impact of AI

 

The Spirited Leader – Passion vs Intensity

The last six months have been different, and the next six months may continue the trend. And our response to that is beginning to show up in language and communication.

We’ve said a lot about blurred lines between workspace and personal space, worktime and down time. But we’re also hearing some blurred lines between appropriate and inappropriate language and experiences.

Most of us are stressed with uncertainty and have felt a little frayed along the way. It’s a very confusing picture when some companies and individuals are overworked, and some are out of work. Some managers are pushing to make quotas and others are pushing to deliver products and services faster than they ever have before. And both extremes seem to bring out bad behavior.

Here’s what we hear:

“He just snapped on our sales call. He yelled at me and called me an idiot who would be lucky to still have a job on Monday.”

“She glared at me and told me I was the dumbest product manager she’d ever had to work with. She just didn’t think she could put up with me through the conversion.”

 “He called me out in front of all my peers.  He said his ten-year-old could have done a better job than me. And I was so upset that I burst into tears on the call. Then, I was mortified.”

 

And while the tense times may bring out the worst in some, the spirited leader wasn’t born out of the pandemic. And the language above isn’t passion; it’s intensity. It’s lashing out with the intent to make someone feel badly. And it’s wrong.

If you’ve been on the receiving end of intensity, you know how it makes you feel. We’ve all had our feelings hurt by a personal friend who’s a little too honest or a little too direct. But, when your boss takes a shot, it’s different. It’s someone in a position of power and influence who makes you feel belittled.

We meet a lot of leaders who are intense. And we sometimes meet leaders who need a little help recovering from outbursts similar to those above. In most cases, I don’t think they mean to belittle anyone.

Their roles are stressful. If an employee feels pressure, you can assume the pressure only intensifies when you talk to their manager or the manager’s boss. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation for what happens.

The spirited leader is someone who blends thoughts with emotions and expresses them in a tangled outburst. For a moment, emotion gets the better of them and they say things they shouldn’t say.

Through coaching, we can help someone recognize that emotion and thought have been smashed together. As a leader, you have to be intentional about what you say. And sometimes, you have to be careful about revealing how you feel. It doesn’t mean that you won’t have emotional reactions to people or situations. You are a spirited leader, and that spirit or passion may have gotten you where you are today.

But you can’t release that on someone else. You have to stay intentional about what you mean to say, and you have to own how you make someone else feel based on what you say. By separating your emotion from your thought, you can talk through what you’re thinking without always sharing what you’re feeling. You can also share what you’re feeling and then put it aside before you share the thought of what you want an employee to do.

Here are coaching thoughts for the leaders who shared the emotions above:

“He just snapped on our sales call. He yelled at me and called me an idiot who would be  lucky to still have a job on Monday.”

“John, I’m very frustrated right now, and I don’t want that frustration to be the only thing you hear.  So, let me put that aside and tell you this. (Breathe!) You aren’t delivering on our agreed upon expectations.  You had three things to accomplish this week, and they have not been accomplished. So, you need to figure out how to get out of a rut in order to stay in your role.”

“She glared at me and told me I was the dumbest product manager she’d ever had to work with. She just didn’t think she could put up with me through the conversion.”

(Breathe and exhale as you relax your face. Don’t send emotion forward through nonverbals.)

“I am feeling very defeated by our mistakes on this conversion. And I’m not sure how to improve things. Do you have better insight on why we’re struggling to work well together?”

“He called me out in front of all my peers.  He said his ten-year-old could have done a better job than me.  And I was so upset that I burst into tears on the call. Then, I was mortified.”

It doesn’t take a spirited leader to get this one wrong. Good leaders give positive feedback in front of a peer group and give constructive feedback only one on one.

We have blended workspace and personal space and work time with down time. But intensity has to stay out of the work conversations. In personal relationships, unleased emotion may hurt someone’s feelings. In a work relationship, it could cost you your job.

If you’re a spirited leader, try the concept above. Recognize what’s happening and manage through it by talking about emotions and thoughts separately. And if you work for a spirited leader, see if you can get this newsletter in front of them.

Maybe they’ll call us when they 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.