The Blog / Archive

Recently I was driving on a very familiar road near my house. As I rounded a curve, I saw a sign indicating that traffic was going to go down to one lane. Okey doke. I’ve done this before; I know what to expect.  After another few hundred yards, I saw the telltale cones narrowing the road, and in the distance, a flagger holding a STOP sign. I slowed down, following the cones and approaching the worker. His hand shot out in the “Hold it right there” motion, so I braked.  I was much farther away from the flagger than his … Read more

Being in front of people can be scary. It makes us feel vulnerable and exposed. And what “being in front of people” means varies from one person to the next. For some folks, the sentence “Let’s just go around the room and quickly introduce ourselves” is the scariest form of being in front of people. For others, leading a meeting of peers is at the top of the “no thank you” list. For still others, making small talk is way scarier than giving a speech in front of hundreds of people. What all the variables have in common is that … Read more

A client shared recently that she had gotten a very dry throat and a cough while giving a virtual presentation. After asking a few questions and consulting with Ignite CSP coach Nathan Crocker, here’s what I think was going on. My client was presenting to a large group she didn’t know, and she described the audience as “mostly introverts.” Though she could see them on the call, she didn’t get much visual (or any audible) feedback from them during her presentation, and the material she was presenting is a topic that is very important to her.  Nathan suggested that the two … Read more

There is a trend in recent years toward more informal, conversational presentations. For the most part, I like it. Knowing that you, as the speaker, can create an atmosphere that feels more like a dialogue with the audience helps people show up confidently and soothes nerves.  But too often, speakers take this informality a step or two too far, into casualness. This matters because if the speaker is casual, our listening is, too. Our attention is more likely to wander. We aren’t sure what matters in the talk because it all sounds kind of the same.  The easiest fix for … Read more

This short video fascinated the Ignite CSP team last week. Mark Zuckerberg sat down with another employee to hype…some video games, I think.  Their conversation is something most viewers can immediately identify as “not authentic.”  It’s scripted and highly choreographed, and the entire premise of the dialogue is dubious. What is their relationship? Why are these two people discussing these games? It’s disingenuous at best. We know instantly that these two people aren’t having an actual conversation. But hold on. No major corporation is going to put out a video that showcases the CEO just winging it as they announce new … Read more

In many professions, almost every person above a certain level has had some kind of public speaking or presentation skills training. Maybe they have their own coach, or perhaps they attended a one-day workshop, but they walked away with some idea of what they could apply to be a more effective speaker. So far so good. This gets complicated when the advice or prescription given to one person within the context of a larger training is passed along to others. What was delivered with nuance to a specific participant is, over time, boiled down to a “tip” that may do … Read more

Recently I was on a video call with a small team. Most of the people on the call were engaged, participating, and connected. One person, however, stood out. He sighed with frustration. He dropped his head into his hands. He covered his eyes, rubbing his face. What was going on? Nothing really negative was happening on the call, yet he seemed completely out of sorts. And his behavior was affecting other people in the meeting. I got a text: “Hey, is he mad at me? Did I say something wrong?” Nothing any of us were doing was causing his behavior. … Read more

Many of our clients fit the following profile: super smart, accomplished, ambitious, and humble. They are dedicated to their work and to maximizing their skills. They are good leaders. So why are they getting coaching? One characteristic that comes up a lot with these brilliant folks is that their humility can actually get in the way every now and then. 90 percent of the time, it serves them, and their teams, really well. They are terrific collaborators. They don’t need to have the best idea. They’re happy to have others get the credit. People love working with them. But then … Read more

Sometimes I think about all of our vast array of communication behaviors as being like knobs and sliders on a control panel.  Each one of the knobs adjusts and mediates a behavior: pausing, volume, eye contact, gestures, cadence, pace, vocabulary, etc.  We probably have some factory settings (I might even call them default settings), that, untouched, dictate how we behave in most circumstances. Okay, so far so good.  But what happens when we want to come across in a different way? How can we tweak the settings to reach a different outcome? As you already know if you have read … Read more