7. Performance: The Physicality of Audience Engagement

Lisa Warshaw was starting on her fourth career. It was the year 2000, and Ms. Warshaw had just been named Director of the Wharton Communication Program. That program was supposed to prepare MBA students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to be effective communicators in business settings.

Ms. Warshaw had spent the previous 11 years teaching part-time in that program while she and her husband raised four sons. She had started her first career in statistics at the International Monetary Fund. She then earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and worked as an operations manager and investment banker. During that time she observed that the most successful senior managers tended also to be the most compelling communicators. Other senior managers, at least as smart and hardworking, were not quite as successful. Says Ms. Warshaw, “I also found that the brightest people weren’t necessarily the best communicators. When it came to inspiring trust and confidence, intelligence and technical skills weren’t enough.”¹

Ms. Warshaw’s observations were validated by her conversations with recruiters and Wharton alumni. Recruiters told her that one of the challenges in placing senior executives is that the higher positions require the ability to inspire and persuade. But most MBAs didn’t learn that skill in business school. They either had it all along or acquired it some other way in their careers. If Wharton, long regarded as one of the top business schools in the world, were truly to train the top business leaders, it had to teach more than the quantitative skills; it would also teach how to inspire and persuade.

With that insight in hand, she overhauled the Wharton Communication Program. With a grant from the marketing powerhouse Omnicom Group, she focused the program on what executives would have to do in the workplace: Get on their feet and engage audiences. The students would still learn theory, but class time would be devoted to students speaking. Says Ms. Warshaw,

I just didn’t see a shortcut to having students speak and giving them lots of feedback—from each other, the teaching assistants, and from the teachers. Students learn the theory and prepare outside of class; our goal for the classroom is for students to speak 90 percent of the time. Communication has been required in Wharton’s curriculum for over 30 years. I inherited a course with a strong skill-based component and have worked with terrific colleagues to build on that foundation.²

Every first-year Wharton MBA goes through the communication course as part of the school’s core curriculum. Starting in 2000, Ms. Warshaw changed the course to include second-year teaching assistants in the classroom and to focus exclusively on persuasion. Classes were kept small: eight to nine students on average. Teachers were not traditional academics, but rather business veterans who were both excellent communicators and passionate teachers. Their backgrounds were often in quantitative fields like engineering, closer to the backgrounds of their students. They would be supplemented by guest speakers from a range of disciplines. (I have been a guest speaker in the program each semester since 2000.)

Each student would have to stand and deliver—a short speech, a business plan, a strategy—verbally, in front of a group, at least five times per course. The teacher would assume the persona of a skeptical senior decision maker. Says Ms. Warshaw,

The more senior you are in a company, the more skeptical the audience becomes—whether it’s a boss or an executive committee or a board of directors. We have the teacher assume the role of skeptical audience member. We want students to focus on persuasive speaking as if they’re in a challenging business setting.³

Ms. Warshaw says that a key to success is that students learn by doing, and by watching themselves on video:

Content is what’s most important in public speaking. But people tend to worry about the issues we call “delivery”—how they look and sound. In our courses, students are completely exposed, standing in front of the class without a lectern. But they learn. It’s one thing to tell them how they did, but we show them by reviewing the video of their speech. The key to students’ learning about delivery is to show them the dozen minor things they do that weaken their presence. Then they’re motivated to change. They learn from watching their classmates, we help them change, and they improve.⁴

The Wharton Communication Program caught on. Over the next 10 years the basic communication course became the only required MBA course for which students consistently asked for more sessions. Alumni, out in the world of business, reported that they were able to harness their skills in both business and personal settings. And the program grew to include advanced electives and more robust content. Beginning in 2012, it will expand even more—students will present ten times per course, rather than five.

When Ms. Warshaw began in 2000, the program had about ten full- and part-time teachers and no teaching assistants. Starting in 2012, it will have 30 teachers, both full- and part-time, 70 teaching assistants, and another 40 writing coaches to help students master the written word. It will serve about 1,000 entering first-year MBA and Executive MBA students.

What Wharton figured out is that effective leaders need to be good at the nonquantitative interpersonal skills. At Wharton and other enlightened business and professional schools, aspiring leaders have the opportunity to learn those skills. Most leaders have to learn them a different way.

Commitment to Self-Development

The 2011 film The King’s Speech tells the true story of George VI, who surprisingly and reluctantly became monarch of the United Kingdom in 1936 when his brother abdicated the throne less than a year after their father’s death. Early in the film, his father, George V, coaches the young prince on the burdens of leadership. He speaks about the need to connect with the people via the relatively new social media technology of radio—what was then called “the wireless”:

This devilish device will change everything.... In the past all a king had to do was look respectable in uniform and not fall off his horse. Now we must invade people’s homes and ingratiate ourselves with them. This family has been reduced to the lowest and basest of all creatures. We’ve become actors!⁵

The rest of the film focuses on the relationship between the king, who has a debilitating stutter, and his speech coach, and on the king’s progress as he masters the leadership burden of connecting with his subjects.

Just as the emerging technologies in the 1930s created new expectations for leaders, the present environment of social media, of instantaneous communication where audiences have multiple sources of information available to them at any time, creates new burdens. Stakeholders expect leaders to be good at connecting with them.

In more than 30 years, I have coached more than 250 chief executive officers and thousands of executives and other high-profile people in complex fields, including doctors, lawyers, financial executives, and military officers. These leaders were in sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, heavy manufacturing, energy, biotechnology, computer software, financial services, law firms, advertising agencies, religious denominations, universities, and not-for-profit advocacy groups.

What they all had in common was a need to win hearts and minds. And a sense that they weren’t quite up to the task. Yet. They didn’t have the same obstacles as George VI, but they all needed to get better at this core leadership skill.

In many cases the skills that get leaders to the top of their organizations are not sufficient to do the work at that level. The higher one goes in a company, not-for-profit, or government agency, the more success is measured in winning hearts and minds rather than in the mastery of some technical skill—from medicine, law, finance, education, engineering, and the like. It isn’t that their core disciplines don’t matter—they do. But they’re table stakes. They’re what’s minimally necessary to get the job. But they’re not enough.

Rather, leaders need to be good at interpersonal verbal engagement—one-on-one and large group, in person and at a distance. I have found a high correlation between leaders seeing part of their work as continually developing their communication skills and their overall success.

I have one client—who is now the CEO and chairman of one of the largest companies in the world—whom I first worked with 13 years ago, when he was head of the company’s research and development subsidiary. He’s a PhD in one of the sciences, and he saw developing his communication skills as an essential part of managing his own career. We met at least once a year for a half day or full day just to hone his skills—plus in between to prepare for particular high-stakes events. Over the years he became president of the U.S. subsidiary, then chief operating officer of the corporation, then president, and then CEO. He eventually added chairman to his title. All the while, he would do an annual tuneup of his skills. I don’t suggest that he’d be CEO if he wasn’t also a good manager and brilliant scientist. But his own investment in his communication aptitude is part of his success.

Another client is the chief financial officer of a large financial institution. When he became CFO he was very strong at the numbers. But with the new position came the need to stand in front of large groups of employees and investors and to inspire confidence. He had never needed to do that before. And it was a bit scary. But he made getting good at it a priority. It took a lot of work. I meet with him every few months—sometimes just to build skills, more often just before a big event such as an investment conference or a quarterly earnings call. And he has risen to the occasion. He got better at it, and more confident about it, because he saw it as an investment in his career. Not as a duty to slog through, but as a way to build and maintain a core leadership competence.

The Marines show us a model for this. Every Marine is a rifleman, regardless of his or her primary occupational specialty. Whether a lawyer, an auto mechanic, or a pilot, every Marine must be skilled in the use of firearms and in infantry tactics. That means they need to invest in those skills—to stay in top physical condition; to periodically practice their shooting skills; to stay current in military doctrine and tactics—even if they spend most of their time editing briefs, fixing truck engines, or flying helicopters.

The same applies in civilian leadership. Leaders need to invest in their communication skills. They need to master basic skills, to practice those skills, and to continually enhance their capacity to lead verbally.

Connecting at a Distance

In 1936 King George VI had to master connecting at a distance through the new and scary medium of radio. More than 70 years later the same applies, but with even more daunting technology.

In early 2008 one of my clients called me for an unusual consultation. He was then the president of one of the world’s largest investment banks. I had first coached him on interpersonal communication skills some ten years earlier, when he was an investment banker. I continued to work with him as he rose in rank and responsibility, and by the time he was president I was meeting with him quarterly. But this time it was a bit different. His firm was in the running to win a very large deal to bring to the U.S. market the stock of a large government-owned Chinese company. He had just learned that the final round of meetings with the various competing firms would be later that night New York time, next morning Beijing time. But the meeting would not be in New York; it would be in Beijing. And he was expected to be there. His counterparts at other firms would be. But it was physically impossible for him to get there on time. That put his firm at a significant disadvantage.

Protocol required the senior-most executive at each firm to be at the meeting, and to lead the firm’s presentation of its capabilities and its plan to bring the stock to market. The senior-most executives at the Chinese company, plus senior government officials from the ministry in which the company was housed, would be there. It wouldn’t be possible to delay the meeting; there was no one else in his firm of sufficient rank who could get to the meeting in time.

So he had an audacious idea. He would attend via satellite hookup on a live television feed. And although his presentation would include all the requisite formalities and expressions of regret that he could not be there in person, he’d turn his absence into a positive; his disadvantage into an advantage. He’d use his video connection to demonstrate the truly global reach of his firm, the capacity to work effectively at a distance, the robustness of the firm’s technology infrastructure.

But for this approach to succeed, his video presence would have to be of exceptional quality. Not on a computer hookup or video conference call—the video and sound quality would not be good enough. Rather, he’d attend the meeting remotely from the firm’s television studio in lower Manhattan. He’d use the best equipment and present the firm’s capabilities through a multimedia presentation. With a strong team of bankers in the room in Beijing, and a strong television production team in New York, his firm’s presentation would be both high-touch and high-tech. And since a core element of what the firm had planned to highlight was its technological sophistication and its ability to work well across the globe, he would be able to demonstrate the capacity, not merely assert it.

But it also put extraordinary pressure on him. He’d have to overcome the violation of the cultural norm requiring his physical presence. The tone had to be just right. He couldn’t be glib or flashy, but had to get a good balance of humility (for missing the meeting) and of strength. And his performance had to be flawless. We spent the day preparing. He mastered speaking his opening remarks and the firm’s capabilities while looking into the camera and reading from a teleprompter, speaking as if spontaneously. He rehearsed fielding tough questions remotely. He rehearsed the interaction between himself, his team, and the video, and the different elements of the multimedia presentations. And he rehearsed the nonverbal elements—posture, facial expression, and especially what to do and how to look when others were speaking and he was listening.

It was a gutsy move. But it worked. His firm got the deal. It was one of the largest deals of the year, and an important inroad for the firm in building its business in China. He later told me that the only reason he even considered doing the session on TV was that he knew he already had a strong foundation on which to build the skills he would need for that meeting. I know that it’s only because he had invested in his ongoing development as an engaged and engaging speaker. He took seriously the burden on him to inspire. And he did the hard work to get good at it.

Engaging Audiences

In the Introduction I noted that a leader is judged based on three fundamental public leadership attributes:

• The leader’s bearing: how the leader carries himself or herself.

• The manner in which the leader engages with others.

• The words the leader uses to engage others.

Being effective in engaging audiences requires one additional element: an understanding of what audiences are capable of, and ways to break through the barriers and connect powerfully with an audience.

This chapter focuses on the leader’s bearing and the manner in which the leader can engage others. The next chapter covers content: the choice of words and the management of meaning. The chapter following focuses on current insights from neuroscience and cognitive psychology on how audiences attend to speakers and how speakers can adapt to their audiences based on how attentive they are and can be.

Physicality: Let Me Hear Your Body Talk

An audience’s first impression is visual. Charlene Barshefsky, U.S. Trade Representative in the Clinton Administration, needed to negotiate with world leaders from a position of strength. Being of diminutive stature, she needed to show physical presence. That meant perfectly tailored clothing and accessories. And it also meant carrying herself as someone worth taking seriously. She told Fortune magazine about the power of the visual: “The body speaks long before the mouth ever opens.”⁶

Before the speaker even opens his or her mouth, the audience is making judgments. About whether even to pay attention; about whether to rely on what the speaker might say; about whether the speaker is likely to be credible or not. And once the speaker begins, the visual drives an audience’s attention. Does the speaker look confident? At ease? Distracted? Scared? Angry? Mean?

These visual cues are nonverbal, but powerful. And they can define an audience’s reaction independent of what the speaker might say.

When I attend a client’s speech, whether to an investor group, an employee town hall meeting, or professional conference, I don’t watch the client. I watch the audience. Are they looking at the speaker, nodding at the right places, leaning forward? Are they checking their e-mail, texting, or daydreaming? And when the speech is over, I make a beeline to the restroom or beverage table—anywhere people will speak candidly to each other. And then I listen to what they say. In these moments, members of the audience rarely ask each other, “What do you think about what he said?” Rather, they ask, “What did you think of him?” or “of her?” They speak in the vocabulary of personal judgments. They are assessing the speaker as a whole, not merely the content. They report their impressions, their feelings about what they saw and heard.

And the first thing they notice is the speaker’s bearing. How the speaker holds himself or herself, whether standing or sitting. A speaker captures or loses the audience’s attention in the first 15 seconds. Anything that suggests nervousness or discomfort causes an audience to look away. Once they look away, it’s very hard to get them to pay attention. Anything that suggests comfort and confidence causes audiences to pay attention. And once they’re paying attention, it’s possible to keep their attention throughout the presentation.

Audiences are quick to detect nervousness, and to disengage from the speaker when they do. Speakers, for their part, need to understand that the first 15 seconds win or lose an audience’s attention, trust, confidence, and support. But too often speakers use the first few minutes of their presentations to warm up to the audience, and in the process they lose the audience.

Among the easy-to-remedy speaker behaviors that cause audiences to disengage are these:

• Speaking while looking down, at notes, at the floor, or randomly around the room.

• Moving their hands randomly and without alignment with content. Any small, apparently random hand movements betray a nervous speaker. These include opening and closing the hands, rubbing them together, locking fingers of the two hands together, putting hands in the pockets, or touching one’s face, hair, tie, jacket, the lectern, notes, pens, and the like.

• Holding, grasping, leaning against, or otherwise interacting with the lectern or table.

• Shuffling feet back and forth, rocking side to side or front to back, twisting in place while speaking.

• Licking lips randomly, locking one’s gaze on some inanimate object rather than looking at the audience.

• Speaking in a monotone voice, whether softly or loudly, or in a singsong cadence that repeats, unrelated to the content of what is being said.

These and other nonverbal cues sabotage a speaker and immediately diminish the speaker’s effectiveness. Wharton’s Lisa Warshaw had these in mind when she referred to “the dozen minor things they do that weaken their presence.”⁷ But too often speakers are unaware of their own marginalizing behaviors. Coaches like me and my firm, and effective communication courses such as in the Wharton Communication Program, videotape leaders while presenting, and allow a speaker to discover his or her own nonverbal weaknesses, as a first step toward taking seriously the need to demonstrate presence.

The late comedian Andy Kaufman broke out of stand-up comedy and onto the national stage when he performed on the very first episode of NBC’s Saturday Night Live in 1975. He came on stage portraying a meek, shy everyman. He placed a phonograph needle on an old-fashioned 45-RPM record and played the theme song to the cartoon Mighty Mouse. He stood nervously as the music played. Everything about his presence screamed discomfort. He exhibited an entire inventory of marginalizing behaviors. He slumped his shoulders. He curled his fingers open-and shut nervously. He shuffled his feet. He rocked back and forth. His eyes kept darting around the stage. He licked and pursed his lips. He seemed unsteady and unsure of himself.⁸

Then the music got to the chorus, and Kaufman was transformed. He stood upright, a confident smile on his face, feet planted firmly apart, one arm out above shoulder level, as he lip-synced the lyrics, “Here I come to save the day....” He was all presence, the very model of a confident speaker, completely in command of himself, his environment, and the audience. Then as the music continued, he reverted to the nervous everyman. Every time the record came to the chorus, “Here I come to save the day...,” Kaufman changed back.⁹ There was a Jekyll-and-Hyde quality to it. One moment paralyzed with fear; the next completely in command. The humor came from the sudden and unexpected transformation. The audience was initially uncomfortable watching a person so clearly out of his element; it began to empathize with his distress, to wonder whether the pressure of being on live TV had gotten to him. Their laughter was a release in the form of relief at seeing the confident performer that he was. Kaufman had played an elaborate practical joke on the audience, sucking them in and making them feel uncomfortable, then letting them off the hook. His timid character who occasionally becomes poised became part of his act—his ongoing character for the rest of his career, including a starring role on the TV series Taxi.

But there’s a larger lesson from Kaufman’s performance. It’s that a cascade of small marginalizing behaviors have a compounding effect, and in that compounding they diminish a speaker. But simply eliminating the marginalizing behaviors allows a speaker to project strength, poise, composure, and calm. In our coaching with executives, we’ve seen an equivalent transformation from mousy to mighty. It isn’t difficult. But it requires intentionality and an understanding of the behaviors that work and those to be avoided.

This book isn’t intended to be a comprehensive guide to the mechanics of executive presentation. But effective leadership communication does require mastery of the key presentation skills. The balance of this chapter focuses on the basic critical skills to demonstrate presence and inspire trust and confidence; it’s intended to point the way and get an executive started. The executive can then supplement what is here with personal coaching, group instruction, or readings from more tactical presentation how-to books.

Stand and Deliver

Effective speakers begin in a position of strength. The starting point is to get the posture right. And for most speakers, the key to getting the posture right is to start from a stable platform. If standing, that means planting the feet a bit farther apart front-to-back and side-to-side than is comfortable. There’s a paradox in effective stage presence: To project confidence and comfort, sometimes it’s necessary to stand or sit in a position that’s initially uncomfortable.

Take standing posture. For many speakers, standing with the feet apart is uncomfortable, and seems unnatural. But the closer together the feet are, the higher toward the head and shoulders the speaker’s center of gravity is, and therefore the more unsteady the speaker is. Standing with the feet together makes it easy to wobble back and forth like a metronome. Most speakers compensate by shuffling their feet, by grasping the lectern, by pacing randomly, or by shifting their weight from one leg to another. Each of these inadvertently creates the appearance of discomfort. Worse, with the center of gravity high, speakers are reluctant to gesture, because gesturing increases the wobble.

All of that can be prevented by planting the feet firmly apart. This lowers the center of gravity into the hips, eliminating the wobble completely. And with the wobble gone, the other counterproductive behaviors—shuffling the feet, grasping the lectern, pacing, shifting weight—also disappear. And the speaker can then gesture freely.

Initially my coaching clients are a bit resistant to speaking with feet planted apart. But seeing the effect of that posture on video tends to convince them. The burden of leadership is this: Posture and other elements of effective performance need to work not because they make the speaker feel good, but because of the effect of those elements on an audience. It’s not about how the speaker feels; it’s about inspiring trust and confidence in the audience. Whether it’s posture, gesture, or facial expression, the key is to focus not on how it feels, but on the effect it creates.

When a speaker is presenting while seated, the stable platform is created by sitting close to the lip of the chair, with the speaker’s back not touching the back of the chair. The feet can be planted on the floor, either one forward and one back for stability, or tucked under the lip of the chair. This allows the speaker to gesture fluidly. If sitting, the speaker may find that it helps to push the chair a few inches away from any table or desk. This allows a fluid gesture and prevents the speaker from leaning on the table or from playing with pens, papers, or other distractions while speaking.

Once the speaker is in a stable platform, either sitting or standing, the next step is to gesture while speaking. This is a particular challenge for many people when they first get coached. People gesture when speaking naturally. Some gesture broadly, some narrowly, but to some degree most people gesture. But when asked to present to a group, many speakers get self-conscious, and constrain their movements.

One of the biggest challenges the executives I coach face is comfort even with the idea of gesturing while presenting. In coaching sessions I often keep the video camera running after the executive has finished a passage from a speech. Very often the executive, now no longer in presentation mode, will passionately assert that he or she cannot gesture, but will be gesturing broadly while doing it. But that natural gesture is completely subconscious. The executive isn’t even aware that he or she is doing it. I then play back the video of the executive in presentation mode refusing to gesture, and then in real life gesturing while arguing that he or she can’t. After that the executive usually gives himself or herself permission to gesture.

Because the human body wants to gesture, executives who restrain their arm movements unintentionally gesture in other ways. Some emphasize key words by moving their eyebrows up and down. Some gesture by bobbing their heads. I had one client—a senior executive at a bank—who wouldn’t gesture with his arms, but would flail his right foot for emphasis. All of those non-arm-movement forms of gestures are marginalizing. But, as with other performance elements, once the individuals see the video of themselves gesturing with eyebrows or head bobs, and then see the effect of proper gestures, they come around.

Audiences need the executive to gesture. Recent research into cognitive psychology and neuroscience points to a connection between seeing someone gesture and hearing that person speak. Audiences retain more when the speaker gestures. Because they are accustomed to seeing speakers in ordinary circumstances gesture while speaking, audiences are habituated to viewing the entire package—voice, gesture, and content—when they listen. And the gesture helps facilitate understanding. Audiences particularly pay attention when voice, gesture, and content are aligned. For example, an upward gesture while speaking about something growing; a downward gesture for something declining, and gesturing with hands moving apart to indicate something widening all help audiences more quickly understand and remember the speaker’s points.

But there are other reasons to gesture. The first is biomechanical. Gesturing with the arms away from the rib cage creates a biomechanical effect on the body. The musculature of the abdomen contracts, harnessing more energy and allowing the speaker to better engage the audience. An effective gesture isn’t the movement of a hand from the wrist to the fingertips; or the movement of the arms from the elbow to the fingertips. Rather, an effective gesture is the movement of the elbow away from the rib cage, followed by movement of the entire arm. Gesturing only from the wrist or only from the elbow inhibits the biomechanical benefit of the gesture.

The biggest effect of gesturing is nonvisual. So gestures are needed even when the audience can’t see the speaker. I have found that investors on a conference call with management tend to listen more and better when the executives who are presenting gesture—even better when the executives gesture while standing. The same applies when bosses conduct meetings via speakerphone. In these cases the reason to gesture is the gesture’s effect on the speaker’s voice.

A broad and fluid range of gestures helps create a far more engaging voice range. Gestures allow the speaker to vary the voice’s dynamic range, in three dimensions:

1. Volume: Loud and soft. Effective speakers vary the volume of their voice, moving from relatively loud to relatively soft throughout their presentation. Gestures make this easier. Gestures allow a speaker to control the volume, getting louder or softer based on how the arms move. The gesture also helps the speaker emphasize important words, helping the audience appreciate the key points of the speaker’s content.

2. Pitch: High and low. Effective speakers also vary the pitch of their voice, sometimes going higher and sometimes lower. One way to vary the pitch is to smile, which has the effect of lubricating the voice. But gestures make it much easier to vary the pitch.

3. Speed: Fast and slow. Effective speakers vary the speed with which words pass their lips. Transitional language is typically spoken quickly; core message language is typically spoken more slowly. Pauses can be used for emphasis or to signal the end of one thought and the beginning of another. Gestures facilitate the variation of speed, and allow a speaker to be comfortable with silence in the pauses.

The gesture also serves as a mechanism for connecting with the audience directly. Effective speakers use gestures to involve the audience in what is being presented. They gesture in the direction of individuals in the audience. Or they use gestures of inclusion, such as sweeping both arms toward the audience and then back toward the speaker.

But the final reason to gesture is that the gesture helps the speaker remember content. New developments in neuroscience technology allow scientists to scan the human brain while the subject is engaging in ordinary activity. Increasing scientific consensus is emerging that the part of the human brain that controls gestures is connected to the part that controls word choice. When a speaker gestures broadly while speaking, he or she is simultaneously activating the word-choice part of the brain. So while gesturing the speaker chooses better words, stronger words, and fewer words.

A speaker who habitually gestures is able to speak extemporaneously far more effectively than the speaker who doesn’t. Neuroscientists have an adage that “neurons that fire together wire together.” The more a speaker gestures, the more robust the connections between the gesture and word choice become. So the speaker is better able to remember a memorized speech, or the content for which bullet point summaries are reminders. And the speaker is less likely to miscommunicate by using imprecise language. I advise my clients and students to rehearse their presentations aloud, standing and gesturing broadly as they would in front of a live audience. Invariably, this makes them better able to remember what to say and how to say it.

Other elements of presence include one’s bearing before a presentation even begins. As soon as an audience is paying attention, the speaker must exhibit confidence. That includes walking to the front of the room or onto the stage, or while sitting in a meeting while others are speaking. A leader is “on” whenever he or she is being watched by an audience, even when not speaking.

Connecting with Eye Contact

Once a speaker is standing or sitting in a position of strength, and gesturing for both visual and nonvisual effect, the speaker needs to connect directly with the audience. And although an audience can be anywhere from one person to thousands, the goal is to make every member of the audience feel that he or she is connecting directly with the speaker.

Eye contact is a key part of that. The phrase “eye contact” is often misunderstood by speakers. Simply telling an executive to “make eye contact” isn’t particularly helpful to the executive. Rather, “eye contact” is a metaphor for a complex series of interactions that cause each member of the audience to pay attention to the speaker.

Some speakers try to engage by sweeping their eyes across an audience. Or by looking in the general direction of one part of the audience, then another part. While better than not looking at the audience at all, these aren’t effective ways to engage. Rather, effective eye contact means looking directly into the eyes of a single person, one person at a time.

Ideally, the sequence of steps goes like this:

1. Find a member of the audience, and look directly into that person’s eyes.

2. Then give a brief smile. The smile triggers a mirror reaction: The audience member smiles back, and that member’s attention is fully engaged. Very effective speakers supplement the small smile with a subtle head nod, which is often mirrored back to the speaker.

3. Then find another audience member to engage. The first member, having been fully engaged, will continue to pay attention, knowing that the speaker may come back for additional eye contact.

Effective speakers persistently make one-on-one contact with many members of the audience, regardless of the size of the audience. When they make contact with one audience member, other audience members sitting close to the one being engaged will also pay greater attention, thinking that they may soon be similarly engaged.

But what about when the speaker can’t see the audience, because either the lights are low or the audience is very large? Then the technique is for the speaker to engage in the same behaviors as if making eye contact. He or she still needs to look at a single audience member, or in the direction of an audience member, and smile, nod, and then move to another. To the audience it will appear that the speaker is connecting with someone—probably someone sitting close by—and the audience will pay greater attention than if the speaker didn’t try to connect.

The challenge for speakers who are reading or speaking from notes is to create the appearance of eye contact even as they read their script or follow their notes. Teleprompters allow a speaker to seem to be making audience contact even while reading from a script that appears on a one-way transparent screen. The speaker sees the words; the audience sees only the speaker.

But when the speaker is speaking from a script, it’s much harder to make eye contact, because the speaker has to physically read words off a piece of paper and also try to make contact. This places a premium on mastering the content of the speech well ahead of time. Rather than memorizing just words, an effective speaker memorizes complete phrases and sentences. While speaking a memorized phrase, the speaker can look up from the text and make contact with an audience member before looking back at the text. Practicing aloud while gesturing also enhances memory, and makes it easier for the speaker to make contact during the speech.

And because the audience is won over in the earliest part of the speech, effective speakers often memorize the first 30 seconds or so, speaking confidently without having to look down at their scripts, making eye contact when it matters most, when audiences are most attentive.

There are also physical ways the speaker can make it easier to make contact. The first is to be sure the script is easy to read aloud. That means using a large font (I have found Helvetica 18, double-spaced to work best for most clients). Some speakers format their scripts so that the lower third of the page is blank. This prevents them from having to look straight down as they get to the bottom of the page, which would cause them to break contact with the audience. Some further place their script as far up on the lectern as possible, ensuring that the angle of their head relative to the page still allows for the eyes to make contact with the audience. I sometimes carry a small notebook to use as an anchor to keep the pages up high on the lectern.

Effective speakers also keep their scripts easy to manage. No staples, paper clips, binders, or other devices that make it hard to move from page to page, or that would call attention to the speaker working from a text. Ideally, the speaker lays two pages next to each other, sliding pages from right to left while speaking. That ensures that the speaker can move fluidly from the bottom of one page to the top of the other without arbitrary pauses. For this to work well, the speaker needs to rehearse with the pages properly formatted and numbered—afterward the pages will be in reverse order.

Gesturing while reading the script also makes eye contact easier. The gesture varies the speed at which the words are spoken, and in the silences the speaker can look down and see what needs to be spoken next.

Many speakers find speaking from notes allows optimal eye contact. Notes—essentially reminders of what to say—allow the speaker to always speak while making contact with the audience. Effective speakers look at the notes during pauses, and speak only while making eye contact with an audience member.

Effective speakers also use pauses as an audience connection tool. During the pause, the speaker can make contact with one or more members of the audience. Some speakers use a water bottle or glass of water to enforce a long pause, for emphasis and to provide a longer opportunity to make eye contact. The pause can also be made for dramatic effect, to punctuate key points, to signal the change from one topic to another, or to solicit audience reaction, either verbal or nonverbal.

Stagecraft

Often leaders need to speak on a stage, usually standing behind a lectern. The lectern presents its own challenges. The first is that it’s easy for the lectern to diminish the speaker’s presence. Speakers who grasp the lectern, seemingly for dear life, inhibit their own effectiveness and audience engagement. It’s also easy for speakers to lean against, interact with, or tap or pound the lectern, all to negative effect.

There are only three reasons to use a lectern: (1) when it is necessary to stand behind it in order to be seen or heard because the microphone is attached to it, a stationary video camera is pointing at it, or a spotlight has illuminated it; (2) to hold a script, notes, bottle or glass of water, or remote presentation mouse; or (3) because it presents a visual image that is part of the overall impression, such as a corporate logo or emblem of office—as when the President of the United States stands behind a lectern with the presidential seal.

Ideally, a speaker can speak without the lectern, or stand next to it. But whether at the lectern or beside it, or in the absence of a lectern, the standing posture is always the same: feet slightly farther apart than is comfortable, front to back and side to side. Often it is helpful for the speaker to stand just a bit further back from the lectern than is comfortable, to facilitate gesturing and to improve the angle of the head relative to the text on the pages that are resting on the lectern.

When there isn’t a lectern, or when the speaker chooses not to use one, the speaker has a chance to more fully engage the audience. The absence of a physical barrier exposes the speaker to the full gaze of the audience. Some speakers become self-conscious and exhibit nervousness. Effective speakers exhibit poise by standing closer to the audience than the lectern would allow, using the correct standing posture, gesturing broadly in the audience’s direction, and moving for effect. Random walking, back and forth without apparent reason, diminishes the speaker. But walking in synchrony with the content can create powerful audience engagement. Walking in the direction of one part of the audience, making a point, pausing, and then walking toward another part of the audience keeps an entire audience engaged. For a large audience, it’s important for the speaker to work the entire stage, directing attention first to one part of the room, then to another, until the entire audience has been engaged.

Part of the burden of leadership is to be prepared for the setting in which the presentation takes place. Where possible, a speaker should arrive early and test all technology, including microphone sound levels, lighting, and audiovisual equipment. The speaker should rehearse key parts of the presentation onstage with all equipment functioning, to avoid surprises when the presentation begins. This diminishes anxiety or nervousness, and creates muscle memory for how to be engaging in the first moments of the presentation, when it matters most.

Using Visuals Effectively

Increasingly, leaders present using visuals, often in the form of slides created in PowerPoint or Keynote computer software. And while PowerPoint and its equivalents can amplify a speaker’s points, too often the visuals become a crutch that diminishes both the audience’s attention and the speaker’s effectiveness. I have yet to meet someone in an audience who laments that the speaker didn’t use enough PowerPoint. I often get the opposite: Death by PowerPoint, or the observation that PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Part of the problem is how corporate presentations are typically put together. In many corporations, typically junior staff are tasked with compiling information into slide form. Worried about missing something, they tend to create many slides, with a significant amount of information on each slide. By the time the presentation reaches the level of the executive who is to present, the executive takes the slides and makes incremental changes. As a result, visual support created at a low level is allowed to drive the content of the executive’s agenda.

In many coaching engagements one “aha” moment for the executives is how dysfunctional this default method of developing presentations may be. The presentation should begin with what the executive wants the audience’s reaction to be (this will be covered fully in the next chapter). Rather than starting at a low level with maximum complexity, preparation needs to begin at a high level with maximum clarity. Then the process should shift to ways to amplify the content visually, to make the meaning stick with the audience. Very often after I’ve coached an executive, he or she will ask me to brief the staff who prepare presentation materials, to enhance the preparation process.

Effective presentations with PowerPoint tend to use few slides. The slides should contain few words, powerful graphics that make a point well, and minimal special effects that might distract an audience. But too often the visuals are cluttered, hard to read, and a distraction. I have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of presentations in which each slide is covered with small-font words, numbers, charts, or some combination. With more than 100 data points on a single slide. They’re unreadable. And they cause an audience to disengage.

The key question when using visuals is, who is in control of what? Are the visuals controlling the speaker, or the other way around? If the speaker merely reads what’s on a slide, then the slides are seen to control the speaker. The speaker is merely the way to amplify what’s on the screen. This diminishes the speaker. But effective speakers use slides to amplify their content. That places the burden of narrative exposition on the speaker. The slides are there for emphasis.

There are a few simple guidelines for developing effective visuals. The first is to limit the words. A simple way to do so is the Rule of 5 by 5: No more than five lines of text; no more than five words per line. Ideally, far fewer. The second is to use simple, intuitive graphs: a line moving up; a pie chart; a bar chart. The third is to use powerful photographs—of people, or products, or people using products.

But even the best visuals won’t work if the speaker isn’t effectively using them. Effective speakers align the use of visuals seamlessly into their presentations. There’s no break in either substance or performance as the visuals appear. The speaker continues to look confidently at the audience while speaking the content that the visuals amplify. Ineffective speakers look at the slide while speaking, thereby breaking contact with the audience. Effective speakers always look toward the audience. Ideally, the speaker has some way to know what slide is up without looking back at the screen. I always connect my laptop to a projector extension cord that allows me to see the computer screen in front of me. I use the Presenter Tools function of PowerPoint to be able to see on my computer screen both what the audience sees on the projection screen and the slide that comes next. This allows me to maintain audience engagement even as I move from slide to slide.

Some speakers like to call attention to certain parts of a slide by using a laser pointer or even a physical pointer. In those cases it may be necessary for the speaker to turn and look at the presentation screen. But effective speakers place their laser dot on the slide, then hold it there while facing the audience and speaking to them. If the speaker wants to gesture toward a slide, the speaker should use the arm closest to the presentation screen. Using the hand farthest from the screen has the effect of turning the speaker’s body toward the screen, and exposing part of the audience to the speaker’s back.

Effective speakers also use language that doesn’t call attention to the fact that they’re using slides. Even mentioning the word “slide” or “graph” or “chart” has the effect of diminishing the speaker, who then seems to be elaborating on the visual. Saying, “This next slide outlines our strategy for next year...,” calls attention to the slide, not to the strategy. An effective speaker says what the strategy is, beginning with, “Our strategy for next year is to [and then elaborates on what the strategy is])....” The slide then amplifies the speaker’s content. Similarly, saying, “This chart shows our sales growth for the quarter,” calls attention to the chart, not to the growth. An effective speaker using the same chart would say, “As you can see, our sales grew 5 percent during the last quarter....”

Recap: Best Practices from This Chapter

Lessons for Leaders and Communicators

Every Marine knows that part of his or her responsibility is to be a good shot and skilled in infantry tactics. Even if the Marine spends all day working as a lawyer, truck mechanic, or helicopter pilot. Part of the Marines’ professionalism is their emphasis on continuous skill enhancement and readiness.

Executives have a similar responsibility: One of the burdens of leadership is to get good at engaging stakeholders well. They need to master basic skills, practice those skills, and continually enhance their capacity to lead verbally.

At a very basic level of tactical execution, being good at engaging well starts with understanding the physicality of audience engagement. The audience makes judgments based on nonverbal cues. A leader is judged based on, among other attributes, his or her bearing: how he or she carries himself or herself. First impressions matter, and the first impression is often visual.

The most effective leaders take seriously the physicality of their performance: Standing or sitting in a posture that creates a stable platform. Gesturing fluidly. Making eye contact and locking in the audience’s attention. Using visuals to amplify the speaker’s points, and not the other way around.

The fundamentals work. And from those physicality fundamentals a leader can build an effective presence to convey content well.