Charisma | Up Front Communication

Don’t say sorry

Nov 6, 2013 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Confidence 2 comments

“Sorry” is quite possibly one of the most pernicious words I hear in regular conversation. When used in its truest sense, a sincere sorry is lovely – both strong and vulnerable in the way in admits and accepts responsibility, or empathetic in the way it expresses understanding. These uses, however, are heard with woeful infrequency.

More often than not I hear sorry used as reduction term, as a form of pre-emptive verbal submission. We say sorry when we give an opinion, say sorry for asking for help, say sorry before speaking up in meetings, say sorry as a way to fill silences between sentences. On one hand, this compulsion can be seen as a throw-away word. We have lots of those, little words we use to fill in sound space when our brains are working. The danger of using sorry as a filler or an opener is that is has the same effect on our thinking as standing with our shoulders hunched and gaze low. It diminishes us in our own mind.

Whenever I have heard sorry used as someone’s go-to opener when they begin to speak, it has never resulted in them giving the impression of confidence or competence. This is unfortunate; one of the worst offenders in my circle of acquaintances is a remarkably competent man who gives good ideas and input. Yet instead of presenting his thoughts and ideas fearlessly or with pride, he physically and verbally shrinks, peppering his phrases with sorry.

Don’t be sorry for what you have to say. Don’t even think sorry for what you are going to say. Don’t think or feel sorry for giving your thoughts voice or for “taking up” your listeners time. Putting your ideas forward is an act of generosity, and conversation is an act of sharing. So share without restraint. You can be polite without being sorry, so for everyone’s sake, do so!

Off the Introspective Cuff

Sep 27, 2013 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Connecting Comments Off

One of the keys to being able to ramble out a good, solid off-the-cuff or spontaneous speech is introspection – and lots of it.

The purpose behind this introspection isn’t to indulge in endless navel-gazing. That’s what Facebook and Instagram are for. This self-reflection is to develop an acute awareness of your values, your personal drivers, and your thoughts on life, the universe, and everything.*

When making spontaneous speeches, we need to rely on tidbits of information that we hold in our head. There isn’t time to ponder and compose an answer, and we may be lacking data critical to making an informed argument. We can, however, always give our opinion on matters. This is where the introspection comes in: if we spend time thinking about how our own brain works, we can address subjects from a personal angle. This may not result in a speech with heavy hitting evidence and data to back up your opinion, but it will result in something (relatively) thoughtful. You can speak to how you think about the topic or situation, about what affects your views and opinions, about how it relates to your own context. And – prize of prize – you can do so with sincerity because you are ultimately revealing a part of yourself to your audience, and you take the time to think about yourself and your context.

Speaking is about sharing. We don’t always have the luxury of being able to share facts, but we can always share a piece of ourselves. But in order to share ourselves, we must understand ourselves first.

*42.

Interest

Sep 18, 2013 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Charisma Comments Off

If you want to be interesting, you must be interested.

Be interested in everything; be interested in current events, in culture, in daily life. Be interested in new ways of doing things, in activities you’ve never tried, in subjects you don’t know much about.

Definitely be interested in the people you are talking to. The more interested you are about them – the more questions you ask them and the more opportunity you give them to tell their story – the more interested they’ll be in you. They’ll wonder why it is that you are so interested in them, why you are giving them the precious gift of time and attention. They’ll start to wonder about you, ask you questions in turn, and remember you in greater detail.

The key is to make this interest genuine. It may seem next to impossible to display real interest in something you find really dull, but usually there is at least a silver thread of fascination in just about any topic. If you find yourself having difficulty finding a subject interesting, drill down into it and find some way that it affects you on a personal level. If the person you are talking to is desperately boring, ask them questions and then ask more questions for every answer until they reveal some odd or delightful nugget. The fact that the interesting nugget is unexpected will make it even more interesting. If you are having trouble finding some glimmer of interest in that person, you either haven’t asked enough questions or you aren’t really listening to them. We humans are an odd bunch, which means endless opportunity for fascination if you are willing to look hard enough.

Approach just about everything you encounter with open curiosity. The interest-rebound effect that it has on you is due to the fact that it expands your worldview, increases the breadth of subjects you can converse about, and encourages others to be interested as well.

The added advantage, of course, is that it also makes life a whole lot more fun.

Analysing the interview: Justin Trudeau

Apr 18, 2013 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Performance Comments Off

The other day I was working with a client, and I gave him a section from a political commentary article to read aloud. He glanced over the article, which was about Justin Trudeau and the recent Liberal Party leadership race. We briefly chatted about Trudeau’s famous father and the current buzz around the newly elected Liberal Party leader. My client said that he wasn’t too sure about Justin Trudeau; I replied “I don’t think Trudeau is too sure about Trudeau.”

After we were done for the evening, I thought more about what I had said and why I said it. After all, I actually know very little about the man, not having following his political career with much interest. This man has many factors in his favour when it comes to establishing a high-office political career. He is well-practiced: the Liberal Party has been grooming him for this for some time and he is already familiar with the glare of the media lens. He is a young, fresh face for a new generation of voters. He is tall, handsome, well-educated, and well-spoken with honed presentation skills – these give him the sort of charisma politicians need to sway voters.

My opinion was formed based on an interview between Peter Mansbridge and Trudeau which I watched the night before. There was something odd about that interview, something that made me feel that Trudeau is as yet too green in his career to be able to make a reasonable stab at the position of Prime Minister. The feeling of unease came almost entirely from the way Trudeau spoke during the interview.

As I am a big fan of analysing performances to figure out why they have the effect they do, I will give you the analysis of the interview and how it affected my opinion of him.

In the interview in question (you can watch it here), I saw a young man – a young man who is being called out by his opponents as lacking in experience and judgement – take on an air of erudite casualness that seemed more appropriate for the owner of a social media start-up than for a potential Prime Minister. He sits far back in the club chair, which brings down the energy of the room and the viewers. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, reinforcing an image that is more “Google-employee” than “party leader”. I suspect the look was intended to radiate calm confidence, but for me the confidence came across as forced. Casualness is not the same as confidence, and it looked as though he was trying just a little too hard, which made me wonder just how confident he really is.

Next was the manner in which he spoke. He has a pleasant voice and uses gestures well. I thought he spoke particularly well during the pre-interview segment, in which Trudeau and Mansbridge conversed while walking down an Ottawa street. It could be that the physical activity of walking helped focus Trudeau’s energy. During the sit-down interview portion, however, there was a marked change in the speech style. His energy seemed to get the better of him and his rate of speech kept increasing as the interview went on. He clearly called on his stage training in terms of breathing, but eventually the pace caught up with him. By the end of the interview, I found his breathing distracting. Additionally, his tone began to lilt upwards more and more often as the interview progressed. The sincere passion that his voice had at the start was replaced with notes of dismissive incredulity. Combine these two changes with eyebrows that were usually knit upwards, and I was left with the impression of a breathy, wide-eyed man making his first foray into local politics. This does not exactly inspire confidence in this particular voter.

Initially, I was prepared to like what he had to say in the interview. Unfortunately, by the end of it, I felt as though Trudeau himself was uncertain of what his new position of Liberal Party Leader meant to him.

I’m not writing off Trudeau as a politician just yet. He is green, and it is possible he will grow to be a responsible official with sound judgement and leadership qualities. It is impossible to determine his strengths and weaknesses based off of one interview given early in his leadership career. That being said, however, it is worth noting how my reservations were developed. If we understand why other people leave the impressions they do, it better enables us to figure out how we can give the impression we actually want.

What is your opinion of the interview?

Communicating Intimately #2: The Experience

Jan 20, 2013 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Connecting Comments Off

The funny thing about establishing intimacy with an audience is that it doesn’t necessarily matter whether you, the speaker, feel that an intimate moment has been shared. Like just about any desired emotion, what really matters is that your audience feels it. They, quite frankly, don’t give a damn about what’s going on in your own head, and neither should you. The audience’s focus is on their own personal feelings and experience. Your focus also needs to be on your audience’s experience.

What constitutes an intimate experience for your audience, be it an audience of 1 or 1000? It’s when they feel that you, the speaker (or manager, or persuader, or whatever you may be) gets them. They feel that you understand them, their context, their desires, their needs, their wishes. They feel that you care about their problems and are helping them improve their own lives on an individual level. Because they believe that you do (or would) understand them, they feel that you can also relate to them, that the two of you have something in common. That feeling of connection can happen whether you are sharing a one-on-one conversation or you are speaking to an anonymous group of people comprised of individuals you will never actually meet. It doesn’t matter that you, the speaker, feels this connection. Your audience feels it. Because they feel it, they will most likely accept what you have to say as right and/or reasonable.

Your job is to create that feeling of connection and intimacy. The difficulty is that you as the speaker become wholly responsible for generating that feeling. The speaker must be willing to forgo every consideration of their own comfort and constantly, constantly, constantly strive to establish an intimate connection with the audience. The audience doesn’t – and shouldn’t – give a crap about your own state. Your job is to project whatever it is you need to project to create intimacy.

Are you physically, mentally, or emotionally tired? That doesn’t matter. You need to appear energised and alert; the audience must see that you are energized about speaking to them. Energy means you care.

Are you completely bored about the topic at hand? That doesn’t matter. The audience needs to believe that you think that topic is the most important thing you could be speaking about at that moment. If you show that you don’t care about the topic, then neither will they. Boredom is the death of intimacy.

Are you uninterested in or lack knowledge about your audience? That doesn’t matter. You must either find something about them that interests you or be able to flawlessly imitate interest. The audience absolutely must feel that you find them worth your interest if they will allow an intimate connection to be established. Do your homework about your audience and find something out about them that interests you; become knowledgeable about the people you are speaking to. If your audience is small, you may potentially discover something about them on an individual level. If your audience is large or you don’t have the means do find out much about them, then research the company they work for, or the area they live in, or the culture they come from, or their demographic, or their interests. There is always, always, always something you can learn about your audience that will help you become interested about them.

Are you disdainful about your audience? Then fix that attitude, fast. It doesn’t matter if your experience or qualifications leads you to think you are somehow better than them. Your audience will pick up on your disdain within moments of you starting to speak. Something will betray you – the words you use, the posture you adopt, your tone of voice, a way of behaving that you never considered. Once your audience picks up on this, they will reject you and everything you have to say. If you are approaching a speech or conversation with feelings of superiority or disdain, then you again need to research your audience and learn something about them that you can respect. Intimacy cannot exist without respect, and respect is the antidote to disdain.

Are you in a foul mood? Then do something before you meet your audience that improves that mood. Go for a walk, meditate, look up funny pictures of cats. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as it makes you feel better. If you are surly, your audience will become surly. No one wants to connect with a cantankerous swab.

Are you an anxious or nervous speaker? Learn some techniques to control your anxiety. Stage fright is normal, but you must appear confidence. Audiences want to connect with strong, confident speakers – speakers who look and act as though they can help them solve their problems. Learn how to project confidence externally even when you are quaking internally.

You, speaker, need to set aside your own state of being and focus entirely on what will create the desired state of being to those you are speaking to. So what if you felt that you just delivered the best speech of your life and that you really felt a connection with your audience? The real question is, did your audience feel the same way?

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