Speak with Impact

by Allison Shapira

  Every time we speak, we pick up on people’s body language. But in another country, body language is culturally dependent. If people look serious, it could simply be a sign of respect, or they could be concentrating to understand you. Don’t look for the same visual cues you’d look for in your own country. Speak with the organizer of your event in advance so you know what to expect.

  Traveling for public speaking is one of the joys of my career. A lifelong adventurer, I look for any excuse to visit a new country and connect with people through communication. Remember that trip to Mauritius I referenced earlier in this chapter? I was there to visit a friend who had just formed a new political party. I was able to lead a public speaking workshop for that new party, giving me an insight into the country I would never have had as a tourist. Getting to know a country while speaking is a wonderful way to connect with others and see just how similar we all are.

  SPEAKING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

  Many of my clients speak English as a second (third, fourth, or fifth) language. I myself have given speeches in Italian and Hebrew (and once in Arabic, but it wasn’t very good). Many of you reading this book will not have a choice; you already live and work in a specific country and are simply expected to speak publicly in that language. But some of you will have the option of deciding which language to speak.

  Speaking to an audience in their language is an incredible form of respect for their culture, and a way to connect with them on a deeply personal level. In some countries, there is the language of the government and the language of the people; it sends a powerful message when you speak the language of the people.

  As an American, I have always tried to disprove the stereotype that people from the United States don’t speak a foreign language (many of us speak several!) or that they expect everyone else to speak English. Watch the first few minutes of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Q&A at Zinghua University in China.3 Don’t listen to what he says (unless you understand Mandarin Chinese), but focus solely on the audience’s reaction, which is surprise and delight.

  Regardless of which foreign language you are speaking, here are some important tips to keep in mind:

  •Speak that language as much as possible beforehand. Watch TV, listen to the radio, and talk to yourself out loud in that language so that it feels natural. When I’m preparing to speak in a foreign language, I make myself think in that language so that it becomes my default language instead of English.

  •Prepare the exact phrases in advance. When you speak a foreign language in front of an audience, it’s hard to think of the right words on the spot. It’s much easier to think of those words in advance. You don’t have to memorize them, but take the time to find the right phrases and practice them out loud so they come more easily when you present.

  •Choose words that are comfortable to you. In any language, there are words that are difficult to pronounce. If you find yourself stumbling over a word while practicing, you will probably stumble over the word in front of the audience. Take the time to find words that are familiar to you.

  •Bring notes. It’s okay to bring notes with your outline and key phrases so that you don’t have to remember them on the spot. You can glance down to remember a phrase and then smoothly keep going. Practice giving the speech or presentation from those notes so you can refer to them easily.

  •Practice with a native speaker. Run through your speech in advance with a native speaker of that language. This helps ensure that your words and argument make sense, and also lets you talk through any language questions.

  •Slow down and enunciate. When you are nervous, you tend to rush. Add to that a foreign accent, and it will be hard for people to understand you. There’s nothing wrong with having a foreign accent; simply make sure you slow down and enunciate so people can follow you.

  •Pause and breathe. In my experience, non-native speakers are more likely to use filler words like um or ah while thinking of the next thing to say, oftentimes translating in their head right in front of the audience. As you go from one sentence to the next, pause and breathe instead, and you’ll sound more purposeful.

  •Don’t be perfect! Foreign language speakers tend to be their own worst critics. They expect their speech to be perfectly grammatical, which is impossible. Not even native speakers speak with perfect grammar. When you relax the need for perfection, it lets you focus on your message and your audience instead of on your language. A caveat: this does not apply to slides or handouts. If you are printing slides or handouts in a foreign language, have a native speaker proofread them to make sure they are grammatically correct.

  I have so much respect for people who speak publicly in a foreign language. Use the above tips to excel in any situation.

  CHAPTER 12

  Build Your Executive Presence

  Five Components to Bring Out Authority and Authenticity

  DEFINING EXECUTIVE PRESENCE

  I remember the first time I heard about executive presence. Clients would mention it when we discussed their public speaking goals. They’d say things like, “I’d really like to build my executive presence so I can own the room,” or their bosses would send them to my workshops and tell me, “They need to build their executive presence if they want to get promoted in this company.”

  There are some terrific books on the subject, from Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success by Sylvia Ann Hewlett to The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others by Kristi Hedges.

  Many of the components of executive presence are actually best practices of public speaking, such as: how to speak with confidence, connect with an audience, and command a room. As a result, I’ve developed my own methodology for teaching executive presence based on how I teach public speaking and based on my experience building stage presence as a performer.

  Throughout this book, you have been building your executive presence. You are developing a way of speaking and acting that makes others take notice and listen.

  In this chapter, I’ll cover what I believe to be the five components of executive presence, and I’ll point to where you can read in the book to more intentionally build them. You will find that we have covered many of them already.

  I discovered the power of stage presence when I was fifteen years old. As a sophomore at Booker High School in the visual and performing arts program in Sarasota, Florida, I once auditioned for a performance troupe that toured through our campus. During the audition, ten of us lined up in front of an auditorium full of students. One by one, we stepped forward and simply stated our name. No explanation, no bio, just our name. When my time came, I walked forward, then paused and breathed. I looked calmly and purposefully around the room and felt a sense of anticipation as the audience waited for me to speak. Then I slowly and clearly stated my name as if it were the most critical piece of information that someone should know about me. I made it into the troupe.

  Later on, when explaining why we were chosen, the troupe director would point to my introduction—not my name, but how I had pronounced my name—as the reason I was chosen. At the time, he had no idea that I was an opera singer in training or that I had performed in front of thousands of people. It all came across in those two words.

  Think about what gives an opera singer stage presence: it’s the way the soprano walks purposefully out onstage, her passion for the music; it’s the tenor’s confidence in his craft after years of study and practice. It’s the deep connection they both feel to the material, to the music, to why they do what they do. They don’t rush through their arias; they take their time and focus on the experience of their audience. They own the stage and believe in their right to be there.

  Now I’d like you to imagine someone with executive presence: perhaps the CEO of your organization, perhaps a member of the board, perhaps one of your colleagues without formal authority or a fancy title. It could be the confident way she walks into the room and starts a meeting. It might be the clear, decisive w
ay he speaks, cutting out the jargon and getting straight to the point. Perhaps it’s the reputation he has within the organization. Maybe it’s in the power of her voice. All those attributes are critical elements of executive presence, and together they command your audience’s attention.

  A few years ago, I was preparing to give a keynote on executive presence to a group of banking executives in a Fortune 50 company. Before my program, I interviewed three different leaders in the firm. I asked them why executive presence was important when presenting to clients. Their responses were incredibly illuminating: “Do you look like you deserve to be there? Does what you say make sense? Do you look like you’ll be able to execute the business? Your executive presence does a lot of the talking.”

  It’s not about creating a false leadership persona—your audience can see right through that, and it negatively affects your reputation and credibility. Presence requires you to connect authentically with what drives you in your work, and then allows that sense of purpose to infuse your words, your actions, and your energy.

  As you’ll see below, the five components of executive presence build off each other—developing one will help develop the others. And conversely, a lack of one will usually diminish the others. They are not talents; they are a selection of skills that you can build and develop over time.

  Executive presence does not come from your title; it comes from how you handle yourself. I’ve seen CEOs with no presence, and I’ve seen college students with a powerful presence. You can feel it in person or over the phone.

  It’s also highly cultural. My colleague Jeanine Turner, an associate professor at Georgetown University, describes presence as a social construct. That means it’s based on expectations and assumptions of how people should act, and in this chapter we’ll talk about how to balance those expectations with what’s authentic to you.

  Much of the research on executive presence has focused on an American business context, but you can observe it in people all over the world. The five components I describe below don’t change according to your culture, but how you use them can change according to cultural norms and expectations.

  As you read through each component, make a note of where you are strongest and where you would like to improve; there are tips to help you at the end of each section. The five components of executive presence are:

  1.Content

  2.Confidence

  3.Nonverbal

  4.Voice & Tone

  5.Interactions with Others

  1. CONTENT: KNOW YOUR STUFF

  The first component of executive presence is knowing what you’re talking about. If you’re giving a speech or speaking up in a meeting, it’s demonstrating that you know your subject and have a clear point of view.

  But it doesn’t simply mean being an expert. Can you think of someone in your organization who knows everything about a subject, but you would never put him or her in front of an audience? This is where technical people have an “a-hah” moment. It’s not about rambling endlessly in technical jargon while your audience is tuning out. It’s about being able to articulate a clear, decisive message without jargon or generic business language. It’s about getting to the point and having the courage to speak up when the stakes are high, keeping your voice calm while others around you are losing their heads.

  Imagine sitting in a boardroom while someone in the room proposes a new project. As that person speaks, your emotional intelligence guides you to look around and observe people fidgeting uncomfortably in their chairs and visibly wincing while this person speaks. You know exactly why this project won’t work, and you have the feeling that everyone in the room is thinking the same, but no one has the guts to say it. You don’t have the formal authority to stop the project, but still you believe something has to be said. You pause and breathe, gather your thoughts, and then calmly speak up, suggesting that the speaker solicit feedback from people on the ground before making a decision. You notice the tension in the room dramatically release.

  Your ability to influence the course of a meeting is part of your executive presence.

  Here are some tips to work on this component:

  •Be prepared. You can’t walk into these situations and expect to have an impact. Prepare for every meeting by asking the Three Questions we discussed in Chapter 2 so you come prepared with a point of view. Bring power questions to ask, to keep people on track.

  •Get to the point. You’ll remember Chapter 5, where we discussed how critical it is to be concise when you speak. In fact, in many industries, your higher-ups will assess your leadership potential based in part on your ability to speak concisely and deftly lead a conversation. Learn how to make your speech more concise based on techniques in Chapter 5, and practice your impromptu speaking skills from Chapter 10.

  •Lose the jargon and fillers. You can’t inspire through jargon; you inspire through descriptive, authentic language. Let yourself use language that’s conversational and genuine to you, and keep out the fillers and overly casual phrases like “you guys.”

  •Speak up when others are afraid to do so. Let your sense of conviction guide you to speak up when you know it’s important. If you are nervous about speaking up, review Chapter 7 to help you pause and breathe and find your courage to speak.

  •Know when not to speak. Building this component of your executive presence will cause you to speak up more often—which is generally a positive change—but I want to caution you to be judicious about it. Your executive presence doesn’t come from hogging the airtime on a conference call or in a meeting; it comes from being strategic about when you speak up and what you say. It also means deciding when something is better left to a one-on-one conversation than a group debate. As one of my executive clients says, “Sometimes the person who speaks the least in the meeting has the most power.”

  2. CONFIDENCE

  The confidence component of executive presence is bigger than simply knowing your subject or being prepared. If that were the case, then over-preparing would be the key to confidence.

  As we learned from Chapter 7, confidence comes from many factors, only one of which is knowing your subject. In addition, do you truly believe in what you are saying? Do you believe in what you represent? Are you proud of the work you do?

  Confidence comes from a belief in yourself, in your subject, and in the value of the work you do. It’s an aura that surrounds what you say and how you say it. It comes across over the phone or in person.

  One of my mid-career graduate students was preparing for a job interview for a senior role with one of the biggest technology companies in the world. She confided in me that she still wasn’t sure she would get the job, and she even believed that they were going to give her a verbal rejection during the final in-person interview. But she also stated how strongly she believed that she was the right person for the job and gave me compelling reasons why. As she listed those reasons, her voice strengthened and she sat up tall. She started to own her confidence in herself. We decided that she would visualize the upcoming job interview in advance and then walk in with the mind-set that she was going to get the job. One week later, she emailed me that she got the job.

  When you believe in yourself and in what you represent, you give off an energy that others pick up on immediately. It doesn’t have to be loud or brash; it can be a quiet but assured sense of confidence. It’s a sense of conviction in yourself and your abilities. Of all the components of executive presence, I find confidence to be the most powerful, because it breathes life into everything else.

  Here are some tips to speaking with confidence:

  •Ask yourself Why you? to connect with your sense of purpose. Talk through your Why you? with a friend or colleague to identify what motivates you in your work. If you can’t find it in your job, look for it in your life overall. Use the Core Value Statement exercise in Chapter 7 and speak it out loud before you walk into a room.

  •Use mental rehearsal to visualize your success. Visualizing th
e scenario in your mind is an effective way to build up your confidence in any situation, from a one-on-one difficult conversation to a stressful All Hands meeting.

  •Look for allies. Find those people in your work and in your community who build you up and see your potential. Spend time with these people to build up your confidence.

  •Do your homework. While preparation is not the only indicator of confidence, it’s a big one. Make time in your day to prepare for those situations.

  3. NONVERBAL

  When you walk onstage or into a conference room, every part of you is communicating: your eyes, your body, and your attire. All these components have a significant impact on your executive presence. When speaking, it’s important to make sure that everything is saying the same thing.

  Many times, people’s body language will betray their nervousness or lack of confidence. Their fidgeting hand gestures will undermine the clear recommendations they’re making. Pacing back and forth will make them look restless and unfocused when they need to be fully present. Chapter 6 taught us techniques to handle this.

  At the Harvard Kennedy School, there is a postgraduate fellowship that brings U.S. military officers (and some civilians) to the campus for one year. These senior leaders audit classes, conduct research, and provide a valuable perspective on campus based on their military experience. These fellows do not dress in military uniform, but I can still identify them from across the room. Why? Because of how they carry themselves: their posture, their pace, and, for some, their military haircut. Their executive presence comes across in their nonverbal communication.