The role you play in front of the audience is that of the leader of the conversation. You are the alpha dog. The audience wants you to express yourself with confidence, assertiveness, commitment, and clarity. No one wants to sit through an hour-long presentation watching an uncommitted, uninspired beta dog perform. However, very few IT professionals own the room. This chapter discusses two ideas: the concept of owning the room, which builds on Roger Ailes’s idea of controlling the atmosphere, and the concept of strengthening your alpha dog state of mind. Let’s first explore what’s meant by controlling the atmosphere, as found in Roger Ailes’s book, You Are the Message.
Control of the Atmosphere
The basic component of controlling the atmosphere is the ability to control time in the space. I have great respect for how IT professionals learn to master detailed technical concepts; if they could learn to control their use of time, they would have the one key ingredient that would make them master presenters. However, when you watch most IT professionals make presentations, it is obvious they are unable to pace their presentation for maximum impact. They have little awareness of the value of pauses because they are focused only on the data.
The space Ailes refers to in his book is the physical room and all the objects in the room. Rather than control the space, many IT professionals seem intimidated by it. They are reluctant to move around the room and to use objects, i.e., mass, to help make their points. Everything in the space, including PowerPoint slides, whiteboards, flip charts, and even the people themselves are resources you can employ to reinforce your words. An alpha dog doesn’t hesitate to use every tool in the space.
Control of the atmosphere means control of the time and space in which you work. When you control the atmosphere, you’re not operating on other people’s time. When you own the room, you are not concerned about what the audience may think of you. It is your show. You are free to take your time to express yourself clearly. You do not feel pressure to rush. You do not operate on other people’s time.
YOU HAVE NO FEAR OF SILENCE
Presenters who are uncomfortable with silence will try to fill the space with data. Why do presenters interpret silence as uncomfortable? Because they worry that the audience will think they have lost their train of thought, which would be embarrassing. So, they talk nonstop throughout the presentation and end up looking foolish and unprofessional. A true professional uses silence to gather his or her thoughts and allows the audience to think about what was just said.
YOU USE GESTURES AND MOVE EFFECTIVELY AND ASSERTIVELY, WHEN AND HOW YOU PLEASE
A common problem for IT presenters is the quality of their hand gestures, which I refer to as video, and the movement of their bodies around the room. A presenter needs to be in present time when delivering the conversation. When you are in present time, you have control of your body, so your gestures will be sharp and clear. I call this quality high definition. You will rarely see IT presenters come close to creating high-definition video images with their hands. And, because they do not control time, any video image they do create will not be held long enough for the audience to see it clearly. A good high-definition gesture needs be held for at least one full second.
A good way to tell whether you own the room is how you move your body in the space. By observing a presenter’s body movements, an audience can determine within seconds if that person is afraid or confident. The presenter need not say a word because body movements reveal his or her inner state. For example, if a senior executive at a major IT company runs to the front of the audience, he is displaying self-assurance, confidence, and an attitude that says “I can’t wait to talk with you.” In contrast, I have seen IT presenters walk slowly to the front of the room, make no eye contact, and then take a step back from the audience. These are beta dog movements that suggest fear and discomfort. The audience, sensing weakness, may be more likely to go on the attack.
When a presenter’s awareness is not in his or her body, the presenter is usually in another world called Data Land. The only time the presenter can regain control over his or her body is during a space packet—the pause between communication packets. You create a space packet by being able to stop speaking. When you stop speaking, you disconnect from Data Land and shift your awareness back into your physical body, a process I call a body check. During the body check, you can relax and make sure your feet are grounded. Grounded is an electrical term used here as a metaphor for being anchored or connected to the floor of the room. The flow of energy through you is now grounded. An IT presenter in Data Land is not grounded. During the pause, when the presenter consciously reconnects to his or her body, the quality of delivery immediately improves and the presenter takes control of the presentation. The body is the most powerful tool a presenter has to stay in present time and maintain a broadband connection to the audience.
Roger Ailes uses the word assertive to describe the body’s movement. To be assertive means to be confident, bold, and decisive. These are the characteristics of a leader who’s in control of the atmosphere. Either your body moves with purpose or your body moves without purpose. Because most IT presenters are not aware of their bodies, all you see is purposeless movement, which creates a distraction I call visual noise. Just as there is auditory noise such as ums, ahs, and okays, there is visual noise, which includes actions such as pacing, hand holding, bending the arm at the elbow, side slapping, fidgeting with objects, etc. All visual noise is unconscious and loudly communicates to the audience that you are a beta dog who is not in control. When you become present, all the visual and auditory noise disappears and the audience perceives you as a polished and professional presenter who owns the room.
YOU MODULATE YOUR VOICE WITH PURPOSE
The old expression “No one will follow an uncertain trumpet” still holds true today. When you stand in front of the audience, you are the trumpet. Either you speak with confidence and certainty or you don’t. When you own the room, the quality of your voice reveals your inner state. The audience will form an immediate impression of you from the sound of your voice. Is your voice dull, tight, nervous, monotonous, or harsh, or is it full and melodious? By controlling your voice, you can increase the impact of your delivery. In chapter one, I discussed how to develop the ability to control your voice. Sandy Linver, in her book Speak Easy, describes the importance of voice quality: “Slurred, sloppy articulation often reflects jumbled thoughts, vague ideas, or indifference toward your subject or audience, and often accompanies other lazy habits such as sloppy posture.”
Use your voice and eyes as you would a rifle. Get ready, aim, and fire your words. The number one tool to increase your power as a speaker is Point of Focus. Before you speak, connect to someone’s eyes. Once you have made this connection (which I refer to as a VPN or port connection), you download your communication packets. Holding eye contact while talking anchors you, shows confidence, and keeps you in present time. For a complete discussion of the Point of Focus tool, see chapter six.
You can express a range of emotions, including amusement, excitement, and even anger where appropriate. The voice is like a musical instrument, but most presenters just play one monotonous note. When you own the room, you vary the tones of your voice. You make yourself vocally and physically alive to the audience. You are not afraid to be seen.
The ability to convey enthusiasm in front of an audience is one of the most valuable skills a presenter can master, but most IT presenters are very weak in this respect. However, the leader or alpha dog will have mastered this technique. Roger Ailes has two short quotes on energy that I enjoy: “If you have no energy, you have no audience” and “An ounce of energy is worth a pound of technique.”
Why is passion or enthusiasm so difficult to express in front of the audience? The reason goes back to the purpose of the mind, which is survival. When you are passionate, you are visible, open, and vulnerable. If you say to your mind, we are going to be visible, open, and vulnerable, the mind will respond by saying no. Therefore, being enthusiastic in front of the audience is not only courageous but can be contagious.
How do you generate enthusiasm? First, you have to create excitement. Excitement is something that has form to it. You can put on excitement. You can fake excitement. You can make up excitement. You can pretend excitement. As a presenter, you need the ability to get excited. Don’t be concerned about enthusiasm—first, you have to generate excitement. Excitement is the outward expression of enthusiasm and inspiration. The purpose of dealing with excitement is to gain enthusiasm. You don’t have to pretend enthusiasm. You are already enthusiastic. All you need to do is discover that fact.
Try this exercise designed to break you through to your natural enthusiasm. Over the next seven days, be ten times more excited than you have ever been before in your life. Remember—even if you don’t experience it, fake it.
You can practice all over the place. Energy is the ingredient necessary to produce excitement. Get your energy up! When you do that, you can create excitement at any time and the excitement will be appropriate to your enthusiasm.
People are persuaded more by the depth of your conviction than the height of your logic, more by your enthusiasm than any proof you can offer.
—DALE CARNEGIE
In the presentation, your energy level can vary from low tone to a high tone. High tone would be exhilaration and low tone would be death-like. Your energy should be appropriate to the audience. If the audience is at a level 3, you should be at a level 4 or 5. If your energy is too high, the audience will feel uncomfortable and raise their firewalls.
Now let’s explore some techniques and moves that will develop your ability to look like an alpha dog at the front of the room.
• Being an alpha dog or leader means that you are psychologically free from being suppressed by the audience. You have no need to operate from behind a firewall. You believe you have a valuable contribution to make to the audience.
• Although the alpha dog dominates the pack, avoid doing anything that would be perceived as dominating the audience because that may offend them. If the audience is offended, it reduces rapport.
• When you talk, make sure you have a solid connection with the eyes of someone in the audience. Only talk after you have given yourself a conscious command to lock on to a person’s eyes.
• Don’t talk when looking at the empty space between the eyes of the audience.
• Minimize the time you have your back facing the audience while using your PowerPoint slides, whiteboard, or flip chart.
• After you have delivered your communication to a person in the audience, hold eye contact for just a second to make sure your communication has been received.
• When you enter the room and walk up in front of the audience, pause for a second, look at the audience, and feel your feet connected to the floor.
• Stay connected to your feet. Even when you are delivering your data, you should still feel your feet on the floor.
• At the beginning of the presentation, stand in the focal point of the room and keep your feet still. The focal point is centered in front of the audience and an equal distance from each side of the room. Stand up straight and maintain a relaxed yet powerful posture.
• When you transition from your introduction to your first point in the presentation, move from the focal point to another spot on the floor.
• If the customer is behind a table, touch the table with your hand from time to time. This has several benefits: (a) it steadies your body, (b) it shows you are not intimidated, and (c) it puts your scent in the other person’s territory so to speak. Unbeknownst to the listener, you are claiming his or her territory as your own.
• When talking to a person in the audience, stand with your body fully facing that person rather than at an angle. To use a naval analogy, it is harder for a submarine to hit the bow of the ship with a torpedo than to hit the broadside of the ship. Angling your body says you are timid and having your body facing the audience fully says you are bold.
• While talking to someone sitting behind a table, walk close to the table and lean your leg against it. You will derive the same benefits as leaning your hand on the table and it is even less noticeable.
• Imagine you are an artist and the room is your canvas. Move your body all over the canvas. Go to the sides, go to the back, and go up the middle. This shows you are free to use the whole space of the room.
• Touch things in the room. This includes walls, flip charts, and even people. Touching things grounds you and spreads your scent around the room. Touching should be done in such a way that the audience is not aware of what you are doing.
• Require the audience to perform for you. For example, throw a tennis ball to someone in the audience and have him or her catch it, pick someone for your demonstrations, ask people questions, make someone the timekeeper, have another check to see if lunch has arrived, etc.
• Change your stance by sitting on the table, sitting in a chair, or leaning down.
• Change the speed at which you move around the room. Most people move their bodies at the same speed and never get out of first gear. Once in a while, you should speed up to second gear.
• Use your whole body, especially your shoulders, arms, and hands, to create gestures and video images. Be bold, visible, and physically committed to the video gestures.
• Throw your voice and body into your self-expression. By doing this, you are committing to the data. Audiences rarely get to see presenters who commit their full self-expression to the data. When you own the room, you are fully expressing yourself. The audience will think “Wow! This data must be important if he’s committing his voice and body to it.”
• Your own assessment of your actions in front of the room is irrelevant. You are not presenting for yourself—you are doing it for the audience. If the audience likes the way you deliver the message, then do it that way, regardless of what the little voice inside your head may say.
• Try these suggestions to increase the energy in the room:
– Play lively music (you can have it on your laptop).
– Have people stand up to stretch.
– Schedule a break.
– Lead the audience in taking a deep breath from time to time.
– Do energy exercises like a powerful karate chop.
– Sing songs that require body movement.
– Do physical exercises in the morning like calisthenics.
– Keep your energy level vibrant via voice and body movements.
– Include the audience in your demonstrations.
– In our workshops, at the end of each module, we all stand, kick our right knee in the air, clap our hands together, and yell, “This section of the workshop is history!”
• Sound effects add to your conversation and make you more enjoyable for the audience. Examples of sound effects include snapping fingers, striking the table with your hand, whistling, tapping the side of a glass, clapping, stamping your foot on the floor, crinkling paper and throwing it away, tearing flip charts off the wall, slapping the walls, knocking over the flip chart, adding sound to the PowerPoint slides, etc.
• Your writing on the flip charts should be big and bold. This indicates you are not afraid to be seen. Too often, writing is so small that it is hard to read.
• As the leader of the conversation, you must command the attention of the audience. Think of yourself as a shepherd whose job is to keep the flock of sheep together. The best way to hold attention is to convince the audience of the value of the presentation to their business and remind them of WIIIFM (what is in it for me). The second way to hold attention is to use keep-alives. A keep-alive is a packet sent by one network device to another to verify that it is connected to the network. In the context of a presentation, the presenter is the source router and the people in the audience are the destination router. Therefore, the presenter is not only sending communication packets during the conversation, he is also sending keep-alives. Here are some examples of keep-alives:
– Using a person’s name from time to time in the conversation.
– Moving your body toward someone.
– Varying the tone of your voice.
– Connecting with the eyes of someone in the audience.
– Creating silence in the room.
– Getting someone to speak.
– Introducing sound effects.
– Doing something dramatic, such as throwing something over your shoulder but not looking at where it lands, or pouring water on the floor.
– Tossing something at a person who can catch it.
– Doing demonstrations with objects and people.
– Moving to the sides and to the back of the room.
– Having the audience stand up and stretch.
– Touching people.
• The leader of the conversation not only speaks clearly but has developed the skill of listening. Listening can be broken down into two components: creating space to allow the other person’s communication to exist and re-creating the other person’s communication. Let’s look at each of these two areas. What does it mean to create space? When another person speaks, they are placing their thoughts into the public domain. Thoughts coming from their private domain are offered to people in the public space. When these thoughts are expressed, they are judged by the audience as to whether they are right or wrong. The alpha dog has the confidence to set aside judgments. You are now able to hear the other person clearly. Once you can hear the other person, you can re-create that person’s communication. Re-create means to demonstrate to the person that you got their communication. In recreation, you use words, tones, physiology, and sometimes mass. Most people are weak at listening because they are unable to put aside their opinions and beliefs. Therefore, they don’t fully understand the other person. One of the greatest gifts you can give another person is to listen to and then recreate what was said. Most people are just too busy in their own worlds to take the time to listen.
• The leader of the conversation practices the skill of mindfulness, the art of being fully present in each moment of now. Too often, I see presenters trying to multi-task, such as looking at someone and talking while they reach for a physical object in order to create a demonstration. Mindfulness means not multi-tasking. You should only reach for the object. Once you have the object, present it to the person. Once the demonstration is complete, put the object down. Practicing mindfulness shows the audience that you are not intimidated and that you are operating the conversation on your time.
• Take a deep breath from time to time and keep your body relaxed. Sandy Linver explains, “Focusing on your own breathing is the most effective method I know for staying in the here and now. Breathing is an essential, central rhythm of your body, so focusing on your breathing means getting back in touch with yourself.”
• Introduce and shake hands with as many people as you can. This shows that you are the host of the conversation and the room belongs to you.
• Share personal stories and experiences that are relevant to the conversation. Opening yourself to the audience shows that you are confident and are unafraid to be seen. This attribute can be described this way:
No one can be loved . . .
Until they can let themselves be seen.
No one can be seen . . .
Until they can learn to love themselves.
• The leader of the conversation is able to stay on point and avoid being sidelined or distracted by people’s comments or questions.
In conclusion, owning the room—being the alpha dog—is essential to delivering high-quality IT presentations. It is your show. If you develop this sense of ownership, your audience will look on you as a leader who commands attention and respect.