by Roger Ailes
• Commitment and involvement: doing more than the basic job requires
• Understanding of the technical language and the practices of the industry
Here are some dos and don’ts for the interview (these also apply to communicating on the job).
DO
• Ask questions about relevant issues like job responsibilities, management practices, the assignments of coworkers, and performance reviews (how often, with whom, how done).
• “Bridge” or segue to a discussion of your skills. Relate your abilities to your potential boss’s (or the company’s) needs.
• Sit and walk upright, comfortably, and confidently. Look the interviewer in the eye. Smile.
• Listen actively. Nod and show interest with your eyes and face.
• Ask the interviewer to clarify anything you’re unsure of.
• Be concise. Don’t overexplain. If in doubt, ask, “Is that what you wanted to know?”
• Ask if you can provide additional background on yourself.
DON’T
• Slouch
• Fiddle with your hair, glasses, pen, or clothing
• Avert your eyes
• Mumble
• Criticize former employees, bosses, or coworkers
• Be too aggressive or arrogant
• Argue with your interviewer
• Apologize for any of your shortcomings
ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Although our female client found a new job quickly, not every story has been a success. Shortly after starting my own company, around 1971 or 1972, I gave someone’s money back after the second session. I’d spent two hours working with him and played back the tape, and I swear to you he was worse!
In retrospect, I didn’t establish the proper rapport with him in the beginning. I failed to do what I counsel others to do, and that is to make the other person comfortable. I clearly didn’t make him comfortable. Because of that, he was completely unwilling to let go and try anything. Fortunately, I had enough positive reinforcement from other clients at the time to keep on going. Otherwise, I might have gotten out of the business because that was so depressing.
A key ingredient of success in our work is that our clients feel safe. They know our training is confidential, so they feel free to talk about themselves. They often tell me about traumatic experiences they’ve had in speaking situations.
EYE DART
One of my clients was a young female executive, a graduate of one of the top business schools in the country. She was very charming, very smart, very articulate. But her eyes shifted all over the room. She was nervous and it was coming out through her eyes. She couldn’t make eye contact.
What we discovered was that this was a cultural thing for her. She’s Eastern European and was taught that women don’t hold eye contact with another person, whereas in America it’s totally acceptable to look into the other person’s eyes. We discussed the problem and had her watch herself on videotape to see how distracting it was.
CAN’T HEAR YOU
Occasionally, someone will come in and mumble, “I don’t know why I’m here.”
I’ll say, “What? I didn’t hear you.”
This is an obvious problem. This person has to learn to project his voice clear across the table. But if his world is charts and forecasts and numbers, he may not have to do that at work. So with him, we work first on helping him to become aware of how to amplify his voice, then on increasing volume comfortably.
I mentioned earlier that at my company we “hold up a mirror” to the people we coach. Actually, it’s a three-part process. As the Chinese say, there are three mirrors that form a person’s reflection. The first mirror is how you see yourself. The second mirror is how others see you. The third mirror is how you really are. We move our clients to that third mirror by combining their descriptions of themselves, the feedback others have given them, and our observations into a frank discussion of who they really are.
A HOT DOG AT FIFTY-THREE
For example, I had one client—a $600,000-a-year man—whom I asked to describe himself. He told me that he had always been the bright young man of the company. He was fifty-three. I had to tell him that he was fifty-three but acted like twenty-three. We had a serious discussion, and he could also look on the tape and see how he came across as a hot dog. A hot dog at twenty-three is okay, but a hot dog at fifty-three just doesn’t fit. (Could this be you?)
Like everyone else, I have my own personal way of working. Many of my perceptions come when I go off to my study alone and watch a videotape for a few minutes.
If I’m having trouble putting my finger on clients’ problems, there’s one technique I can always count on: getting in touch with how they make me feel. In essence, I become their audience.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
Sometimes, I’ll look at a tape with the sound turned off and try to examine my feelings just watching how a person moves. Then I’ll ask myself, “Is there anything going on here that makes me want to turn the sound up?” It’s an emotional thing. And often I tell the client, “Look, I don’t see any technical problems in what you’re doing. I can only tell you what I feel.”
Professor Albert Mehrabian of the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted an extensive research project in which he studied many different speakers and audiences to determine which factors most influenced listener impressions. His findings might surprise some people. Professor Mehrabian discovered that audiences’ interpretations of messages are determined 55 percent by the speaker’s nonverbal communication (facial expression, body language), 38 percent by the speaker’s voice (quality, tone, pitch, volume, variation) and only 7 percent by the words themselves. This doesn’t mean that words are unimportant. But audiences generally process words as indications that you can “speak the language” of your subject. Some of your words may be powerful or catchy enough to remember. But what audiences remember overall are two things. First, concepts—the idea clusters formed by the words. Second, your emotional expression as communicated through your eyes, face, voice, and body. The total package (composite) of these elements makes up the speaker, and the speaker becomes the message.
FEAR
The one overriding element which can distort your message is fear. It’s the major block to clear, crisp communications. Many people think they must conquer fear once and for all. They spend their lives jousting with fear—but never win a clear victory.
Fear is a natural emotion in all humans, and we must learn to live with it. Keeping fear in perspective and converting it to positive energy is the secret. We’ll discuss that in our next chapter.
13
EVEN HEROES GET SCARED
If you’ve ever had to get up and give a speech, did your stomach tighten, your palms sweat, and your throat dry up? If that’s ever happened to you, then you should read this chapter, because otherwise it is going to happen again.
In a poll of human fears, twice as many people were more afraid of speaking in public than of dying. I believe that fear of failure and embarrassment are the biggest reasons people don’t do certain things in life—including speaking in front of an audience.
ARE YOU READY?
Once on a television show, we had as a guest a Marine Corps general who had won a congressional Medal of Honor for his service in Vietnam. Life magazine had written about his courage.
I went backstage just before airtime and asked, “General, are you ready?” He said, “I’m not going on.” I had planned twenty minutes of the program around him, so I said, “General, this is not a good time to tell me you’re not going on. The show starts in five minutes.” He choked out the words again: “I’m not going on.” He looked ashen. He was clearly terrified by the prospect of appearing on a national television show. If he didn’t go on, the show would be a disaster; I had to think quickly. I finally said, “General, let me put it this way. In just a few minutes you will be introduced, and either you’re going to walk out there
and talk or I’m going on in place of you and tell everybody you’re chicken.” There was a long pause. He was huge, and I thought he was going to pound me into the floor. But then he smiled. First he got a smile in his eyes, and then his face smiled, and it seemed to relax him. He seemed to gain energy from the challenge I’d thrown at him. He went on the show. He was a little shaky starting. His throat was tight and he gave one-word answers. But after the first couple of minutes, he was fine.
TEMPORARY PARALYSIS
The temporary paralysis that the general experienced was for years known as “stage fright.” Dressed up in psychological lingo, today it’s often referred to as “performance anxiety.” Whatever you call it, you certainly know when you have it. The most common symptoms are increased heartbeat, a queasy feeling in the stomach, sweating, trembling, quick breathing as if gasping for air, dry mouth, and difficulty vocalizing. Due to stress, the vocal cords often tighten, choking off normal, relaxed speech and sometimes causing the voice to crack. Most of us don’t get all of these symptoms at once, but even experienced speakers feel some of them some of the time.
Stage fright has been compared to what psychologists call the fight-or-flight syndrome. This is the decision humans make when confronted by a threat. They either run away from it or take it on. The prehistoric caveman spotted a wild boar in the jungle and he either hightailed it out of there or took up his cudgel. Our contemporary fight-or-flight situations usually imperil our egos more than our lives. When we are asked to face an audience, the atavistic instincts remain in us: Do we retreat or charge ahead?
That’s the first decision anyone has to make when faced with stage fright. I pushed the general to that decision and he reverted to character. He decided to fight.
PERSPECTIVE
He put his fears into perspective. He contrasted his temporary anxiety with the longer-term confidence he felt about himself. I joshed him into seeing how absurd it was that a man with the courage to dodge bullets would dodge an interview. Once he smiled about the funny dissonance of these messages, he was able to relax a bit and return to who he was—a man of courage. Interestingly, courage isn’t the absence of fear. It is action in the presence of fear. That’s what it takes to overcome stage fright. The general was still afraid of going on television. But because he had enough inner strength, he decided to grapple with the fear instead of submitting to it.
You handle your fears in direct relationship to your inner strength. If you feel confident as a person, you can admit weakness, even fear and anxiousness, and not imperil your mission. Your self-image is strong.
SHORT-RANGE VERSUS LONG-RANGE
But overcoming self-image problems, at least on a temporary basis, is the real challenge. Performance anxiety results when you get nervous that all of your weaknesses over your whole life will become apparent in what is actually a short-range situation—for example, a particular speech, or even saying a prayer or making a toast at a holiday meal.
What many people tend to focus on is “I need to overcome all of my weaknesses and anxieties here and now. I need to be more handsome, more charming, more articulate, funnier, more intelligent.”
But that’s the impossible dream. So the anxious speaker stands backstage and says to himself, “When they introduce me, I need to be all these things which I’m not. I’ve spent my whole life trying to be those things and I didn’t make it.”
Instead, they need to ask themselves, “What is important right this minute? What do these people need or want to know right now? Why was I selected to speak on this subject? And how can I best communicate it?”
That puts the situation into perspective. It’s like putting a cockroach under a magnifying glass. It looks like the star of one of those Japanese monster movies. Enlarged. The bug looks as though it could eat you. Get rid of the magnifying glass. It’s just a cockroach. Step on it.
People with stage fright tend to put their whole self-worth and value against, say, 1 hour when they attend a meeting and give a speech. But there are about 720 hours in a month. Don’t judge yourself just on the basis of 1 hour before an audience. Your place in history probably will not be determined by what you say in 1 specific hour.
It’s a mental process to overcome stage fright. You have to say, “I have a right to be here. What I have to say is of value to this audience. I am an authority on this subject.” Use whatever works to overcome your obsession with all your lifelong insecurities.
THE BEST RIGHT NOW
Because you are the message, you must view yourself in both a short-term and a long-term way. Long-term, it is valuable for you to try to improve yourself and your abilities constantly, thus striving to broadcast a clearer signal of a better you over a lifetime. But as with playing golf, when you’re faced with a specific situation, you should play the best game of golf you’ve got right now. That means use everything you’ve got in your power at the moment and forge ahead. Missing a golf shot does not make you a hopeless, unathletic, lifelong jerk. Stumbling a little in a speech does not make you an inarticulate fool for life.
The process of putting fear into perspective will vary from person to person. The controller of a large financial services company suffered from stage fright so severe that he believed it would derail his career. My associate, Jon Kraushar, taped this man in our New York studio, first in conversation, then at the lectern doing a slide presentation which he had delivered, under duress, to his company’s board of directors. Jon also observed the controller making brief remarks before a live audience. The amazing thing was that, in both cases, the man was a very good speaker! He had an excellent dry wit. He was knowledgeable and interesting. Because of his inner anxiety he didn’t show as much commitment to his subject as he might have. However, contrary to his worst fears, he appeared to be comfortable. The live audience, in fact, gave him hearty applause when he finished.
THE MIND
Where then was this man’s stage fright? In his mind. In conquering his fear, he found it helpful to watch himself on tape. He slowly realized that the perception he had of himself as a speaker was much less flattering than the reality.
THE WORST
When I feel anxious before I make a speech, I ask myself, “What is the absolute worst thing that can happen to me in this speech?” The answer is I can blank out. The audience could get up and leave—or worse, they could stay and derisively laugh at me. They could have secretly brought in bags of groceries to throw at me. Perhaps I’ll humiliate myself in front of everyone else on the dais and never be able to give a speech again. That would be the end of my business. I’d be destroyed and never be able to get a job. Then I ask myself, “How likely is this to happen, even if I did blank out for a moment?” Of course, it’s all nonsense. But by thinking that’s the worst thing that could happen and knowing it won’t, I’m able to realize that the situation is simply not that critical. I can laugh at myself and my inordinate amount of fear about speaking. Sure it’s important to do well but it’s not life and death. Keep in mind one other thing as you move toward the lectern. You are an authority on what you are about to say. No one in the audience knows the subject better than you do. Therefore, you can draw on a certain amount of positive ego and approach the speaking situation with confidence.
TWO KINDS OF ANXIETY
There are two kinds of anxiety: exogenous anxiety, caused by frightening outside situations that may occur (like giving a speech), and endogenous anxiety, which is actually a disease caused by internal anxiety or panic. Very few people (probably less than 2 percent) actually suffer from endogenous anxiety. The rest have normal anxiety attacks at understandable times for logical reasons. If you recognize that this fear isn’t something that’s inherent in you, then it becomes a matter of controlling your externally induced fear.
ANTIDOTE TO FEAR
If you’ve read how-to books, you’ve been told that a normal amount of fear in a tense communication situation (like firing an employee or delivering a eulogy) is not only reasonable but goo
d. Well, I don’t disagree entirely with that. However, only a minimal amount of anxiety and fear is necessary if you are prepared. The single greatest antidote to fear is preparation. If you know exactly what you’re going to do when you get in front of other people, you will do it and the fear will disappear immediately. The most important moment in communicating is that moment of beginning. There are two things every speaker should know besides what he’s going to talk about: how to begin and how to end. Actually, it’s nothing new. Vaudeville performers had their openings and their closings down cold. Every communicator must do the same. If you launch properly and with confidence, you will forget anxiety and your speech will go well.
Why doesn’t every speaker do it if it’s that simple? The reason is they don’t plan exactly what they’re going to say in the first thirty to sixty seconds. That is an absolute must. If you have to write it down, word for word, do it. But then transfer it into an outline form so that you’re not staring at a piece of paper when you say, “I’m happy to be here.” Do the same thing with your closing, and know that you can go to your closing at any one of several moments within a speech or talk. Even if you’re on the telephone, speaking to a potential customer, you need to know how to grab his attention and how to sum up your main points. If you sense that you’ve been talking too long, cut it short and go to your ending paragraph. If you will work out the opening and closing of your remarks, you will never fail as a communicator—assuming, of course, that you have something to say in the middle. And more importantly, you will never be really afraid.