Speech contests and debating contests are usually for younger people at school or university. It is not often you see the most senior people from major corporations going head-to-head in a public setting. I was at an event where there was a vote to take place for some prestigious seats on the board of a non-profit. If the number of applicants equals the number of seats, then it is a perfunctory competition where the winner’s names are just announced. In the case of more hopefuls than places, then things hot up.
Each person had two minutes to make their pitch. Now remember, these are very experienced and senior people, in some cases heading vast organisations. I was fascinated to see how they would fare. With one exception, English was not their native language. However, they have been in international business their whole lives and many have lived in numerous foreign countries running the local business for the multinational parent company. Language skill wasn’t even a factor.
As you might expect, some were better presenters than others. However, overall they were pretty underwhelming, given the types of big jobs they were holding. They knew for many weeks that this day would arrive, that they would have to speak and compete for places with each other and that they only had two minutes. They had the opportunity to prepare, to rehearse what they would say. This was not a spontaneous idea on the part of the organisers suddenly thrust upon a bunch of innocents. The first thing I noticed was how poorly they had all prepared. Talking about your resume and how big your big corporate is, is fine, but there was no thought given to what the audience wanted to hear. Everything was presented from their own point of view.
A few minutes spent planning and preparing would have come up with a fine list of audience expectations of this board. They would have identified which hot buttons they needed to push. This is not hard stuff folks. They will represent our interests on the Board and so what would our member interests be? Having divined that, we should then craft our message to present about how our experience, organisational muscle and personal attributes will deliver for the members.
We only have two minutes, so that means we have to prune hard to fix upon the most high impact points which will resonate with the audience. We then need to rehearse to make sure we can get this inside the strict two minute limit. We don’t want to be rushing it or confusing our audience with too many varied points. If we rush it, they have no hope of keeping track of what we are on about.
Now when we deliver our talk, we have to engage with our audience. We will be going one after another, so we have to break through and override the message of whoever preceded us and implant our message, such that our successor speaker cannot root it out. Sadly, none of this was happening and they were not engaging their audience at all. What are they like when addressing the troops back at the office I was wondering? Going by this effort not much chop!
The common thing I noticed that was missing from all the speakers was eye contact. They were not using their two minutes to physically engage with enough people. Using six seconds of one-on-one eye contact, we can directly engage with at least twenty people in the audience. Toward the rear, because of the distance, the people sitting around the target person also believe the speaker is talking directly to them as well, so we can increase that twenty number quite substantially.
Delivering your resume in a monotone means you are missing the opportunity to hit key words for greater effect. Now when I say hit, I mean that in the sense that you can choose whether to add voice strength or withdraw voice strength to gain variety in your delivery. Our gestures are another way to bring power to what we are saying. It creates energy and that is what we want to transmit to the audience – we are a person of energy who can get things done for the members. Some of the speakers chose to speak while holding their hands behind their backs, denying themselves the opportunity to use gestures. When we don’t show our hands, we are triggering a deep mistrust in the audience. This is because since we lived in caves, we have learnt not to trust people whose hands we cannot see.
It was all pretty bad actually. Corporate leaders need to be excellent communicators and that includes giving professional presentations to external groups. This is not something we are born with. We learn it and we further develop it, over the course of our careers. There was a lot of personal, professional and company brand damage done the other day, at the face off for the Board seats. When it is your turn to speak, be ready and blow your competitors out of the water. Prepare properly, rehearse thoroughly, work on the mechanics of audience engagement through your eye contact, gestures and highlighting key words.
