Don’t practice your speech in front of the mirror. 

I don’t know how this became such popular conventional wisdom, but it doesn’t make any sense. When you practice in the mirror, you’re doing the one thing you know for sure will not be happening when you actually present—looking right at yourself. 

It’s way more helpful to set up your smartphone to video yourself presenting to an empty room than to stand and look into the mirror. 

A note about watching yourself on video: a lot of clients tell me they dislike watching themselves back. The inherent understanding we have of ourselves and how we come across to others in rooted so permanently in our own perspective, looking our from behind our own eyes, hearing our voices the way only we can hear them, that it is unnerving to see ourselves as others do. 

Remember, though, that video is only telling part of the story. Yes, it’s capturing what we said and did, but it’s a two-dimensional representation. Video is really useful in assessing the points of physical and vocal alignment that we’re curious about, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that the video shows you all there is to see. When we’re live in the room, our brains are working hard to fill in lots of information that can’t be conveyed through video. 

So, yes, watch yourself on video. It’s a great tool. But always 1) notice what you’re doing that’s working and give yourself a pat on the back, and 2) don’t think it’s telling the whole story.

For several years, I’ve been following the work, the thinking, and the writing of a man named Patrick Skinner. Skinner served in the Coast Guard, then worked for the CIA in counter-terrorism, and then moved back to his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, to become a police officer.

Detective Skinner talks about the people he sees every day in his job as his neighbors. He asks, “If I didn’t have a badge or a gun, how would I handle this?” He believes that we have to behave as though all our neighbors matter, because they do. He knows, deeply and personally, that the system he works within is deeply flawed.

This week, Patrick Skinner wrote the linked piece for the Washington Post. I am really hoping that it won’t be paywalled, so everyone can read it.

Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the piece:

I was also worried that we would view the verdict as the conclusion of a trial and not the beginning of change. Because as powerful as the murder conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin is, what we do next — as a country in general but as police in particular — will go a long way in determining whether systemic positive police reform is possible. It is in this time immediately after the verdict that several things, which are entirely within my control as a police officer, have to happen.

I hope you can read the whole thing. If you can’t, email me, and I’ll cut and paste it for you!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/04/21/police-officers-chauvin-verdict-personal/

My son Cameron is learning to drive.

Watching him figure out how to learn this skill, one element at a time, is fascinating. He observes closely when I’m driving, and he asks lots of questions. 

Recently, I asked him to move a car in our driveway. He got in, adjusted the seat (he’s about six inches taller than I am), and looked around.

“Where’s your parking brake?” he asked.

I showed him, and then he said, “Oh, Mom, your parking brake isn’t engaged!” He teased me about leaving it off, said that his driving instructor had told him to always check the parking brake, and then we moved the car.

A few days later we found ourselves in the car again. Again, Cameron gave me a hard time about the parking brake not being on. At this point I realized that his focus on the parking brake was different from mine. 

As an experienced driver, I make the decision to engage it or not almost subconsciously. In my flat driveway, I almost never use it. As a novice driver, Cameron has zeroed in on the brake as an essential highlight of the process. To him, every part of driving seems as important as every other part.

I want Cameron to be thinking about the big parts of driving. Where am I going? Where are the other cars? What are my hands and feet doing? In the overall scheme of things, the parking brake is no big deal.

This disproportionate attention to what, in my mind, is a minor part of driving reminds me of how clients sometimes aren’t sure how to spend their time preparing for a presentation. The “parking brake” in those cases is often a chart they don’t have yet, a data point they’re waiting on, or some other aspect of the content or technology that is presenting an obstacle. Their focus on this minor aspect of their talk distracts them from thinking about the important stuff: how they want to affect the audience, what the key messages of the talk are, and how their body and voice will support that message. 

Like the parking brake, the missing chart or data point is definitely going to come into play at some point. I’m not suggesting that you overlook it entirely! But we can redirect our attention to the major aspects of the presentation and keep moving forward. 

I watched a webinar this week that had been recorded live. The host* took the audience through some fairly technical processes that were important building blocks to be able to use a certain software.

The aspect of her presentation that had the single biggest impact on me was this: she seemed like she wanted to be there. She was competent and smart, she had clearly prepared well, and she had deep subject knowledge. But what kept me watching was her enthusiasm and energy.

Whether it’s a standing weekly meeting or a once-in-a-lifetime presentation, the single best thing you can do to be effective is to make the other people there feel like there is no place you would rather be.

When you’re engaged, the audience likes, trusts, and listens to you more. That’s the ballgame, right there.

*If you’re curious, check out her YouTube channel: https://processdriven.co/hub/

A long-time client told me recently that she spends all day in virtual meetings, and their company culture is to leave cameras off. Even conversations between two people take place on Skype for Business, not the phone, and they are audio only. 

This practice predates the pandemic. Many global firms were used to meeting remotely, as team members sit in many different locations, and the new normal of working from home was no big change for them.

Two things: 

1. As I wrote very early in the pandemic (see post embedded below), not every meeting needs to be held on Zoom. We don’t have to look at each other all the time. However–
2. It is worthwhile to spend some time as a team to set up a standard operating procedure for how communication happens. When is an email enough? When can a meeting for eight really be a phone call for three? When is something high-stakes enough to warrant cameras being on, or even an in-person meeting?

When the habit of the team leader becomes the default behavior of everyone, regardless of situation or preference, communication erodes. Meet with your team to set up a system for how your communication will take place. It’s an investment of an hour or so now to mitigate untold miscommunication and inefficiency in the future.

Do all of our meetings have to be on video now?

A reader sent the article below, which describes the successful implementation of various hand signals in university classes taught via video. 

Developed from one researcher’s experience using hand signals as a lifeguard, a group of students experimented with using the signals in class to “show agreement or dissent, to display concern or care, to congratulate someone, or…to ask a question.”

The group that used the signals reported feeling more connected to the group, more enjoyment of the seminar, and “found it easy to exchange ideas” at a higher rate than the control group.

I have a couple of guesses as to why the hand signals had this effect. 

1. By introducing the signals, the instructors explicitly acknowledged that everyone was sharing a virtual setting, and that new and supplemental communication methods were needed. The act of acknowledging this and setting up some processes gave everyone on the call a level of input and engagement usually absent from virtual meetings and classroom settings.
2. One of the toughest hurdles of a virtual platform is that only one person can be heard at a time. The signals give everyone a way to “chime in” without talking over one another.

What do you think? Have you found yourself looking for new ways to connect via video? Tired of being talked over?

You can read the article here:
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-video-success.html

h/t to Craig for sending this article!

I don’t spend nearly enough time singing the praises of the Ignite CSP coaches, but today I’m going to take a step to rectify that.

Neela Muñoz has been an Ignite CSP coach since 2008. If you don’t already know Neela, you can read about her here, but I want to share a particular accomplishment. 

Part of what makes our approach unique and effective is that we combine deep expertise in communication skills, born out of our professional experience in theater, with leadership coaching. In order to help clients with the “how” and “what” of what they want to say, it’s important to be able to dig a bit into the “why” underlying their message, and that’s where the coaching comes in.

Neela attended a coach training program two years ago, and just last month, she was accepted into the International Coach Federation as a credentialed, professional coach. She has always been terrific at what she does, and now she has another laurel in her crown. 

I am blown away every day by the generous and insightful work of everyone on the Ignite CSP team. Congratulations, Neela!

When you’re learning to perform Shakespeare, you spend some time studying how verse works. When does he use it, when is it “regular” verse, when is it not, and when does he abandon verse altogether and use prose instead?

Ultimately, we learn that Shakespeare is sending signals to us through the way he uses (and intentionally misuses) verse. The “why” of his poetry reveals what’s going on with the characters who speak the lines. 

Many high school students also study Shakespeare, and the very rhythms that illuminate Shakespeare’s meaning to actors can make it feel very obscure to 9th graders grappling with Romeo and Juliet. Teachers often spend so long on iambic pentameter that at the end of class, the students don’t realize it’s a story about young people falling love for the first time, duels, family feuds, sex, poison, lovers being separated, and being misunderstood by your parents.

The form, in this case the verse, is there to amplify the meaning. We get into trouble when we get so into the details of the form (as described in the article below) that we lose the sense of what we’re saying, and why. It doesn’t make sense to speak the lines with an exact iambic rhythm; the audience will lose the understanding of what the character is saying.

As I was reading this article, it occurred to me that we make the same mistake when we get caught up in the form of our speech or our presentation rather than its function. We spend a lot of time shoehorning our messages into a slide deck or a report template–not exactly the iambic pentamenter of our era, but definitely a form we’re familiar with!

We need to start with asking: What are we trying to achieve? What key message must get across? Then we can make sure the form we choose matches the outcome we seek.

Are We Getting Shakespeare’s Rhythms All Wrong?

If you’re familiar with this blog, the title of today’s post may have made you do a double-take. After all, the third part of our 3-part approach to developing communication skills is Practice!  (Intention and Alignment are steps 1 and 2.)

So what’s all this “don’t waste your time practicing” stuff?

When you practice, do it with purpose and intention. When my daughter Nora was younger, she played the violin, and she was supposed to practice every day. Sometimes, she would practice simply to get through the day’s assignment, not in order to improve her mastery of some element of the instrument. 

I could tell when this was happening because as she played, she would make the same mistakes over and over again. Instead of slowing down and really working at that one passage, she would fly through it, mess up, recover, and go on.

This isn’t productive practicing. It’s checking the box of practicing. And it’s a waste of time.

If you’re practicing a speech and you find yourself tripping over the same phrase or transition, stop. Maybe the phrase is something that seemed good on paper but is odd to say out loud. Find a different way to say it that’s more natural for you, then try that section of your presentation again. Do just that little chunk until it feels easy.

If you’re going through a presentation and you keep forgetting the next point you want to make, stop. Construct a robust transition that builds a bridge between the part you remember easily and the part  you need to get to. Practice the end of the first part, the transition, and the beginning of the next point several times, until it’s consolidated in your mind.

The point of practicing is to make all the mistakes and find a way to fix them now, instead of when you’re actually giving the speech. Make that practice time valuable; don’t just check the box.

Developing communication skills isn’t an end in itself. 

The point of becoming a better, more effective communicator is so that you can be a better, more effective everything else in your life. 

Communication is the way we do all the other things that are important to us.