Ignite CSP

Don’t let the light shine down on you.

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If you are presenting with slides, keep a couple of things in mind:

Don’t stand in front of the screen so that the projector is shining on your head. It’s distracting to the audience.

If you’re standing in front of the screen, you’re not using the slide at that moment. Use the blackout key to take the slide out until you need it.

Reminder! I’ll be answering questions from blog readers in an upcoming post. Send yours my way! They come right to my (Angie’s) inbox.

Asking someone for something

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“I’m hoping this person I kinda know, who has a bigger reach on social media than I do, will do me a big favor and post this idea to their two million followers.”

OR

“This cool idea made me think of you since it dovetails with a passion of yours.”

What’s more likely to get traction? Asking someone for a favor, or speaking to their interests?

Step forward.

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One of my favorite theatre directors, a brilliant woman named Anne Bogart, talks about what she does in a situation familiar to anyone who feels all the eyes on them, and they don’t know what to do next.

 

For her, this moment comes during rehearsal. She is standing at the back of the theatre or rehearsal room, giving the actors some space to work. Things are moving along, and then they grind to a halt. The actors are stuck, or they have tried what she asked them to do and it didn’t work, or something else has come up that is keeping the rehearsal from going forward.   Every eye in the room turns to seek her out. What’s the answer to the problem?

 

What Anne Bogart does next is very simple. She steps forward; she starts to walk toward the stage. She doesn’t know the answer. She doesn’t have a solution to the problem. She simply walks, and knows that by the time she arrives at the front of the room, she will have a response.

 

I have tried this in rehearsal, in meetings, when I’m coaching. It always works. The built-in pause of the travel combined with the countdown-clock of  imminent arrival creates a space where an answer can come.

 

Step forward.

Yes!…and

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The fundamental principle of improvisation is “yes, and.” No matter what your scene partner says or does, you accept it and build on it. If she says, “Glorious day to be on a boat,” you might say, “It sure is. I hope we make it to China before sundown!” Now we know we’re on a boat, it’s a nice day, and we’re headed to China.
What would happen if, instead of accepting the premise of the first statement, you said, “What do you mean, boat? We’re on a spaceship!” The scene comes to a screeching halt, we’re back to square one, and we’ve alienated the audience, who thought we were on a boat.
This dynamic shows up in our lives every day. In meetings, it can feel like the agenda item is “shoot down ideas”. See if any of this sounds familiar: “Here’s why that won’t work, “ “We tried that already,” “That plan doesn’t fit with what we rolled out last quarter.” Or the ever-popular: “Yes, we could do that, but…”
When we practice “yes, and,” it doesn’t mean we implement every suggestion that comes down the pike. It means we listen to the end, we suspend our own agenda, and we act as if that idea will work when we discuss it. This “acting as if” is what opens up innovation and solves problems. When we’re stuck in “here’s why it won’t work,” it’s impossible to see beyond what we have known in the past. “Yes, and” provides a window into the future.

A practical tip for meetings, interviews, and presentations.

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Make the furniture work for you.

A lot of people take the arrangement of furniture in a conference room or office for granted, like it put itself there. More than likely, it was either left that way by the people in the room before you, or a team of people arranged it according to a floor plan they default to, a floor plan that may not suit your needs.

Ask yourself: What configuration of the furniture will best support the goal of this meeting/presentation?

* If you’re leading a meeting and the tables aren’t set up to allow for maximum interaction and visibility, move them around.

* If you’re speaking and there’s a big screen that is dominating the center of the room, stand in front of it. If you’re using slides, black out the screen when you don’t need the audience to look at it. They’re there for you, not the deck. (That’s a blog for another day.)

* If you sit down at the table for a meeting and you realize it’s hard to see everyone else there, adjust your chair, get higher or lower, push back or forward to get a new angle.

There’s enough for you to think about without being preoccupied by less than ideal furniture placement. Take a minute or two to get it right.

That chip on your shoulder looks delicious!

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Why intention matters (part 512)—

 

Because we can see it on your face, read it in your body, and hear it in your voice. You tell us what is really going on with you, and boy is it fascinating!

 

I was coaching a woman recently, let’s call her Laura,  who had been asked to give a presentation about a new project that she wants to get off the ground. She’s really passionate about it, and the idea seemed like a no-brainer to me, from a business standpoint. I asked her to run through her presentation so I could see it.

 

Almost as soon as Laura began, the wheels came off the wagon. The person who was enthusiastically describing her idea to me was gone. Now, the defiant set of her shoulders and chin, the clipped tone of her voice, and her speedy vocal pace all let me know that her intention was to defend her idea and prove me wrong. It was as if I had said, right before she started: “By the way, no matter what you say, we’re not going to greenlight this plan.”

 

When she finished, I said, “So you’ve been having a hard time getting any traction on this, huh?” She was surprised; how did I know? “You gave the presentation with a chip on your shoulder. You were already mad at me and I hadn’t done a thing!” She laughed and admitted that she had had several meetings on this topic and hadn’t been able to get anywhere.

 

The key here is that Laura didn’t realize that she was bringing that backstory into this presentation. All those frustrating meetings were coming along with her for this presentation, which was going to be for more senior executives at her company than she had talked to before. This was a fresh chance for her to get people on board with her idea, but if she didn’t knock the chip off her shoulder, she’d run the risk of alienating the audience.

 

Laura decided on a new intention, to inspire action. In the next rehearsal, her entire demeanor changed–her face was lighter, she landed her sentences, and I could actually focus on the content of what she was saying rather than her body language.

 

The power of intention, folks. It shows up whether or not it’s invited.

Outside in

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Typically my coaching philosophy begins with the inside—what’s going on that is resulting in this behavior or symptom?

 

But sometimes outside-in works better. By standing up straighter, you can feel more confident. By making eye contact, you can generate connection.

 

It doesn’t have to be one-size-fits-all. Try it on and see what works for you today, in these circumstances.

Making a choice.

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Last week, in the U.S., we had an election.  So much of what I write about and what we coach centers around intention—making a choice to show up in a certain way, to affect people, to move them or make a change.

 

Nothing is more intentional than voting—that is, if you want it to be. Like anything else, you can default to a decision that doesn’t require much action on your part, you can not choose, you can take the path of least resistance. Or you can do your homework, engage in our democracy, and make a choice that requires you to show up.

 

And of course, we get to keep showing up, even when it’s not Election Day.

The F-word

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Most of the people I coach have a horror of failure. They set up their lives to avoid failing, to insulate themselves from any possibility that they might be seen being less than terrific at something.

 

Now, if you asked them, “what are some uses of failure? what’s it good for? why do we need to fail sometimes?”  I’m sure they could give you good answers, answers that might look like this: “Oh, I tell my teams it’s important to make mistakes because you learn from them, and I even set them up to do things on their own where they may fail in a controlled atmosphere, where I can help them.”

 

But if you push, and say, “What about you? What’s something you need to fail at in order to grow?” you can watch their bodies tense up and their brains spin, coming up with all the reasons why that’s not such a good idea.

 

When you lift weights, sometimes you “go to failure.” That means you go until you can’t go anymore, you add weight until you have surpassed the maximum your body can move, and you drop it. You fail the lift. Everyone in the gym knows that this is the assignment—you go until you fail. The failure is the point. It’s literally how you get stronger.

 

How can we find places to practice failing, getting it wrong, making mistakes? We know it’s good for us, but like so many things, we avoid it because it’s scary. Where can you go to failure? What might be on the other side?

Frozen mushroom popsicle stands

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My team got to lead one of our favorite workshops today—Better Communication Through Improvisation. We were working with leaders from a hospital, department heads from all over the organization.

 

As so often happens with this particular workshop, when we were introduced and the word “improvisation” came up, a variety of interesting faces and body language emerged. One woman completely stopped moving, as if she hoped by being perfectly still we wouldn’t see her. Another had a look on her face that said, “Uh huh. We’ll see.” A man near her crossed his arms over his chest, giving himself some protection against this wacky activity.

 

I asked them how they felt when I said “improvisation.” They laughed, some nervously, and we talked for a minute about what they could expect. Then they all stood, leaving the safety of the tables and PowerPoint and agenda.  Within a minute they were laughing genuinely, enjoying each other.

 

My favorite moment today came when they were doing an exercise called “Conducted Stories.”The only rule was that each storyteller had to accept completely whatever the person before them had already created, and build on that. In quick succession, groups of three made up, with no prior planning, incredible stories about whales in Ferraris, frozen mushroom popsicle stands, and trips to the zoo to visit teapots.

 

As many times as I’ve done this, it is still miraculous to me to see what happens when people simply trust each other, take what comes their way, and shut down their inner editor for a few minutes. The trick, though, is bringing that mindset of openness in to our “real lives”—what would it look like today to just build on what the person before you said, without critique or adjustment?