One way for presidents and world leaders to assure the public is through their body language. The words are important, but how they stand and gesture can add or detract from their message. Click here to see an example >>

Remember the recent debates between presidential candidates? When they addressed each other – did they face each other, then turn to the audience to give the rest of their message? Did they stand up straight? Gesture appropriately? Where did their eyes go?

You may not be running for President, but whatever you do – at work or at play — your body language – the way you stand, sit and "pose" sometimes has more effect on the message you’re trying to get across than what you’re actually saying, especially with the short attention span most people have today. How do you come across?

It may sound crazy, but stand in front of the mirror and observe your body language. Stand up. Sit down. Pretend you’re talking to a client. To a date. Watch your face, your arms. Are you standing up straight? Arms crossed on your chest? Are you smiling? Start with a good attitude, a pleasant expression and a self-confident posture. Don’t cross your arms or legs. Take up space. Face the person you’re talking to; don’t just give them a shoulder or half a back. Work on maintaining eye contact. Can you really trust or believe someone who won’t look you in the eye?

Next time you see someone you respect, or even someone you don’t, but someone who has an air of authenticity and self-confidence, pay attention to their body language. Then go back to the mirror.

Below, see Patti Wood's body language expertise in action on CBS's Inside Edition show, aired on January 22, 2008. In this segment entitled "Democratic Debate Body Language", the topic of discussion is the nasty and heated fireworks debate between democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama the prior evening covered by CNN. Patti's body language analysis reveals the non-verbal bitter battle of symbolic weapons and gestures used by the two presidential hopefuls.

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The psychedelic 60’s phrase coined by Timothy Leary, “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out” is being replaced with Silicon Valley's new mantra “Turn Off, Tune in and Unplug.” 

The latest meeting model encourages us to leave our laptops at our desks and keep our smart phones out of sight. If you can endure the initial anxiety and craving, this progressive trend in business paths the way to connecting with our coworkers, rather than what has become the ubiquitous distraction of our personal devices.  Meeting productivity, focus and teamwork are the goals of disconnecting from our technology for a short time.

Todd Wilkens, who works at a San Francisco design firm Adaptive Path, waged a "personal war against CrackBerry."  

His colleague, Dan Saffer, coined the term "topless" as in laptop-less. Mobile and smart phones must be stowed on a counter or in a box during meetings. "In this age of wireless Internet and mobile e-mail devices, having an effective meeting or working session is becoming more and more difficult," he wrote on his company blog in November. "Laptops, Blackberries, Sidekicks, iPhones and the like keep people from being fully present. Aside from just being rude, partial attention generally leads to partial results."  LA Times Article

"It's increasingly difficult to get people's undivided attention," said Stanford University Professor Pamela Hinds, who studies the effects of technology on groups. "People would argue they are attending to the most important information without any loss of participation, but in fact they aren't fully there." The culprit: Etiquette has not kept up with technology, said Sue Fox, author of "Business Etiquette for Dummies." 

Below, a pharmaceutical cure for Blackberry addiction (comedy):

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In these days of seldom speaking to a human when we make a phone call, we need to have a successful strategy for dealing with voice mail.

Since business people receive dozens of voice mail messages a day, their time is too valuable to spend it listening to some sales person ramble on.

 

Your voice mail message must be the one that generates a response. A call back.

 BEST VOICE MAIL PRACTICES

1. Plan what you’re going to say before you call; write it down, or at least a few notes.
2. Introduce yourself and your company first.
3. Make the message concise and crisp; 30 seconds or less. Speak slowly and enunciate.
4. Ask them to make the next step: "Please call me at……"
5. Give your phone number twice, or once very clearly and slowly.
6. Be unique. Create curiosity or get their attention. Compel them to call you back.
7. Refer to them personally: their company or their role in it.
8. Mention who referred you to them.
9. Use a conversational tone.
10. End the call with a "Thank you," always appreciated and never out of place.  

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That well-known dramatic fear of public speaking (40% of American adults suffer from it) is also called stage fright.

Your hands shake, your mouth dries up, your heart pounds loud enough (you’re sure) for the audience to hear. You’d like to escape but your knees are shaking or too weak for you to run. You’ve heard of panic attacks and now you’re having one. Join a very large segment of humanity who have this phobia, also called "performance anxiety." You can add your name to a list which includes Barbra Streisand, Rod Stewart, Carly Simon and more.

Here are the four "A"s of stage fright:

1. Anticipation: Imagining the disaster you’ll be on stage.

2. Avoidance: Not going on stage and thus losing the chance to cope and grow an inner strength.

3. Anxiety: Those panicky physical symptoms which you’re sure will cause you to pass out.

4. Appraisal: The "Whew! I did it!" conclusions after the performance or presentation. 

Should you try to overcome your stage fright, here are some helpful hints:

1. Breathe from the diaphragm. Practice this type of breathing before going on stage.

2. No one can tell you’re a wreck. It’s just your inside self that’s panicking.

3. Realize you will be anxious and use the shot of adrenaline which comes from our "fight or flight" response. Turn it into power. You never know; dealing with anxiety just might improve your presentation.

4. Focus. Know your lines or your material.

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Let’s face it: whoever you talk to, it’s going to be a man or a woman. And, since the chances are 50-50 that that other person will be a different gender than you are, you need to know that your way of communication may not be the same. Many experts attest to that difference, but even so, even if men and women have two different ways of communicating, shouldn’t we focus less on the difference and, instead, try to learn each other’s "language?"

Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation, uses the terms report and rapport to describe male-female communication. Men report, she says. They work with facts and figures in order to convey or obtain information, to strip away the details and get down to the bare bones of the problem. Women, on the other hand, want others to understand the complexity of the information and the situation, and in that effort toward understanding, work at establishing a rapport and building a relationship.

It benefits no one to emphasize the differences in male-female communication, but it does help to understand that there are those differences. Deborah Tannen says: "Male-female conversation is cross-cultural conversation." That may be true, but in an age when so many cultures in the world are striving to improve communication, shouldn’t we also be working on our daily communication — at home and in the workplace.

Learn More About Communication >>

I recently came across an op-ed article in the New York Times by David Brooks that struck me as significant for the art of presenting. In his piece, Brooks examines "The Mental ABC's of Pitching" by the sport psychologist H.A. Dorfman. While the book is geared towards professional pitchers, I feel that Dorfman's advice can be extended quite naturally to presentations.

As told by Brooks, what Dorfman "offers is to liberate people from what you might call the tyranny of the scattered mind." This sort of tyranny is not closeted to baseball however: any highly demanding activity can be undermined by a lack of focus. The everyday mind is like an out-of-control chariot: without direction and jumping from one thing to the next, it is almost impossible to prepare for anything important. This is where mental discipline comes in.

I had a coach in high-school tell me that "you play the way you practice;" as I've grown older, I continue to see the truth of this statement. Through practice comes mastery. This is consistent with the story I tell in my workshop about Eugen Herrigel from "Zen in the Art of Archery." Herrigel spent 1 year learning how to stand, how to hold the bow and how to breathe before he ever put an arrow to the blow string. That intense practice frees up the mind from other distractions. This is also necessary in presenting. Now while I don't suggest you take a year to learn how to introduce yourself, nonetheless, master presenters must own their material and their technique in a way that they don't even have to think about it. There is simply no substitute for this type of practice. Mark Twain said it best, "It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

Returning to Brooks analysis of Dorfman, "by putting the task at the center, Dorfman illuminates the way the body and the mind communicate with each other." This is the essence of the teaching of our workshop: motivation follows action, not vice versa. If you change your behavior then you will change the way you think. As E. Thomas Berr PH.D put it in the The Tao of Sales: "It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than think yourself into a new way of acting." Indeed, this is the essence of the Zen way: through intense practice of mindfulness (being present right here, right now) the mind can be calmed and focused.

Just like a baseball game, a presentation is a spectacle, with a thousand points of interest. Nonetheless, master presenters reduce it all to a series of simple tasks, and at the center is the task of presenting well, nothing else. By putting the task at the center, the presenter helps to push away their expectations, nerve and ego, and by doing such they can calmly and adeptly connect with the audience, their material, and deliver a masterful presentation every time.

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by Terry Gault

You may not be a world leader but wouldn’t you like to connect to others in the best possible way — with your clients, your employees, your boss, those in your personal life, even with strangers? And, at least in business, a better connection will reward you with a more competitive edge than the next guy. A better connection with others will also help you maximize the potential in every relationship you have.

Zig Ziglar, popular self-help author, says that "You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want."

Here are a few ways to connect:

1. Find common bonds (schools, affiliations, past companies, common technology).

2. Show genuine interest in what people have to say.

3. Remember names and personal details.

4. Ask questions that go beyond business.

5. Create memories with people and make each interaction enjoyable.

6. When given a chance to meet or entertain, do it uniquely (an unusual restaurant, etc.)

7. On the phone, ask personal questions (where they live, long-term goals).

8. Send handwritten notes and cards as thank yous.

9. Build connections with everyone at the client site – not just your buyer.

10. Talk about your own life. Share your perspectives. Tell your stories.

Connecting with others takes more work than a handshake. John Donne writes: "No man is an island, entire of itself…." We can’t help it; we humans are social beings who require not isolation but connections with others, and enhancing that need will make for all-around better relationships.

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It is almost impossible when meeting acquaintances, friends of friends, business associates, to not be forced to give your "elevator speech." If you are not sure what an elevator speech is, it is just a clever name for a mundane task: answering the ubiquitous question "what do you do?" Nonetheless, while mundane, the elevator speech is quite important; who knows what possible role the person you give your speech to will take in your life: perhaps you have found your next client, or employer, friend, partner, or an important contact for further networking?

Here are a few tips to help.

1: Keep it succinct and interesting

A successful elevator speech will be a descriptive statement that provokes questions and interest.

The first obvious reaction to the question of "what do you do?" is to quickly give your label for your profession; however, I think this is a mistake. Instead, frame what you do in a more interesting way: instead of saying you are a lawyer, say that you try to help the disenfranchised and under-represented get a fair-hearing. Explain what you do in terms of benefits and who it is you are helping.

2: Keep your audience in mind

Did you meet this person professionally or in your personal life? While it may be okay to be highly informal at the bar, this off-hand style will probably not be met well at important business meetings. That said, you don't want to be too formal either, since this will make you seem stiff and less personable.

3: Practice and polish

Since you will be asked this question often throughout your life, and the answer is so short, there really is no reason to not have a good answer ready. Practice your speech so that it starts to sound natural and effortless, without any verbal filler or awkward phrasing.

4: Don't be over the top

Finally, some people in an attempt to come across as interesting may overdo it. For example, to make sure that they don't fall into the trap of pigeon-holing themselves, they will give vague answers such as: "I make people's dreams come true." This, however, sounds more cliché than it does interesting and will often turn your audience off.

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