Booher BanterBusiness Communication Consultant

People can argue with facts all day. But they can’t argue with your experience or your story. When you present your case as information, statistics, or data to be digested, people move into analysis mode. Lights go on; wheels whir in an attempt to “take the other tack” and prove you wrong. But when you offer an illustration or personal experience, they relax and listen for the idea.

Like a scriptwriter, think in themes, scenes, and storylines. Instead of laying out platitudes, create a compelling story to get your point across. Stories include humorous anecdotes, slices of everyday life, success stories, or failure stories (use these to build trust and balance the picture about what you and your organization can and cannot do).

Think “theme.” Shakespeare had his 26 plot lines. Business storytellers have their favorite key themes and initiatives from year to year and decade to decade: “The Customer Is Always Right.” “Content Is King.” “Quality Is Our Number One Goal.” “Nothing Happens Until Somebody Sells Something!” “David Versus Goliath.” “People Are Our Most Valuable Asset.” “Change Never Ends.” “Great Leaders Are Made, Not Born.”

With the theme in mind, identify an appropriate story to illustrate that point. What customer incident can you relate to your executive team to persuade them to act on your recommendations? What happened at the industry meeting that underscores to your colleagues the need for competitive intelligence sharing among them? What personal experience can you tell that helps your staff know what you value most in their performance? What tidbit of conversation did you overhear last week in the cafeteria that illustrates the team spirit you feel in your division? What happened last with your most satisfied client?

Identify the punch line. It may be funny, dramatic, sad, shocking. That’s where you end the story. Everything needs to build up to that point. Say the punch word in that punch line last.

Set up the story in an intriguing way. Don’t wave a flag by saying, “Let me tell you a story that illustrates why I think blah, blah, blah.” Instead, try something like, “Honesty can kill your business. Last week I made the mistake of being honest with one of our suppliers about X. Tuesday of this week, I get a call from J.T. Wilbot there, who says to me,….” And you’re off into the story. Whatever setup you use should make people say, “Tell me more.”

Keep the details relevant. Just like the movie scriptwriter, use enough details so that your listener can visualize what’s happening. But omit details that contribute nothing to the setting, mood, or point.

Let us see the action. To make fullest impact, set your characters in motion. Let us hear them talk and see them act. As the storyteller, don’t get between the audience and the action, merely telling us what you heard and saw earlier. Let people see for themselves—just as they do when sitting in the theatre. Cast the characters, re-create the scene, and start the dialogue.

Transition to your point. So what’s your point? Never tell us what the story means. Interpreting the punch line kills a good joke, and it’ll also ruin a great story. Tell the story and stop—just like the movie screen fades to black. Be silent. Let the audience soak up its meaning. Then, and only then, bridge to your point in the presentation, conversation, or meeting.

Why tell a story rather than dump data or prepare platitudes? Storytellers hold mindshare longer than most people. A well-chosen story can help you deliver an emotional wallop that makes the point memorable and persuasive. That’s presence, and that’s staying power!

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 46 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

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• 5 Tips for Telling Better Stories (nytimes.com)
• Could Pixar’s ‘Secret Story Guidelines’ Work for Your Team? (hbr.org)
• 5 Tips For Better Business Storytelling (blog.hubspot.com)
• Body Language: How Loud Does Your Walk Talk? (booher.com)
• Communication Skills: How Do You React to a Friend’s Success? (booher.com)

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Posted at 11:04am in Communication—Oral, Presentation Skills | Permalink | 12 Comments |

Without a doubt, the most prevalent problem among business presenters is the monotone. When they speak for only 5-15 minutes, the audience survives, but longer than that and they escape via cell phones, tablet, or hallways. So what to do if you suspect you may be the presenter causing this distress?

Three tips to slay this monotone monster:

Improve Your Posture

Voice quality involves breathing properly. You can’t breathe properly if you don’t stand properly. Without standing properly, you can’t inhale to full lung capacity. Without taking enough air into your lungs, you can’t breathe out enough air to talk with the intensity needed to sound strong and energetic. So stand up straight, expand your lungs, and take in enough air so you can speak with energy and force behind your words. Make sure the surroundings (of your caved-in body) don’t force you into a low-energy monotone.

Become the Highlighter, If Not the Headliner

Have you ever had someone say to you, “I heard what you said. But I didn’t get your point”? If so, chances are that this is what they meant: “Everything you said was expressed with equal emphasis. I didn’t understand your real overriding concern (or issue).”

To make sure others understand where your emphasis falls, something has to pop out of the pack of words.

Consider the highlighter principle to increase your vocal presence. Imagine using a yellow highlighter (or pink, green, or orange maybe) to mark key ideas in a favorite book, article, or instruction manual so that they stand out for later review.

When speaking, your voice inflection acts as that highlighter for the listener. You punch (inflect, emphasize) those words harder with volume and intensity; you pause before and after them longer so that they stand out from the rest of the sentence. Because your listeners have neither a script nor a highlighter to follow along as you speak, your vocal variation has to mark key ideas for attention and recall.

Most people highlight well in casual conversations––about the movie they saw last weekend, their favorite sports team, or the current project that has them puzzled. That is, they raise or lower their volume. They speed up and slow down. They emphasize key words. Consider the following comment and how the meaning changes with each variation, depending on which word is highlighted or emphasized:

“The CLIENT didn’t say Robert was upset about the decision.”

“The client DIDN’T say Robert was upset about the decision.”

“The client didn’t SAY Robert was upset about the decision.”

“The client didn’t say ROBERT was upset about the decision.”

“The client didn’t say Robert was UPSET about the decision.”

“The client didn’t say Robert was upset about the DECISION.”

Highlighting—my term for vocal variety—conveys your meaning.

Recharge Your Vocal Energy with Movement

Your speaking pattern follows your physical movement—not the reverse.

When presenters stand in one spot to address a group, they often lose all sense of natural inflection, pacing, and pausing. Their voice pales to pathetic. Don’t let that happen to you.

Stay conscious of the link between your physical energy and your lips. Make others feel your energy as you drive home a key point. Move. Walk to a different spot in the room to deliver a different point. Use the entire conference room as your platform. When appropriate, gesture with your entire body. Become your own prop when you need one. Use your hands. Animate your face. Get the blood flowing.

Movement takes energy. The more energy you exert as you move, the more energetic and natural your voice will sound.

Modulate, modulate, modulate. A monotone voice projects a monochrome personality—one dimensional: low energy, mousey, uninteresting, timid.

Your voice can be a powerful tool to control a conversation, command a crowd, communicate a culture, and ultimately create a career. Don’t let the monotone monster defeat you.

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 46 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

Related articles

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• Communication Skills: Create a Powerful Executive Presence When You Speak (booher.com)
• Presentations Skills: Look at These Eye-Popping Visuals (booher.com)

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Posted at 10:39am in Communication—Oral, Personal Presence, Presentation Skills | Permalink | 4 Comments |

“What’s your point?” I ask that same question hundreds of times a year to clients. They typically look at me puzzled—as if I should know their point after listening to 15 minutes of their talk and reviewing their slides. Granted, I’ve usually gotten the gist. But an audience should walk away with a clear, crisp point.

Pick up a newspaper and you’ll read headlines like these:

“Tornadoes Level Homes Across Texas”
“Graduates Rethinking the Value of a Business Major”
“Pain at the Pump Hits Gas Stations”
“Yahoo Pushes Reset”
“Office Vacancies Decline”
“Insurers Facing Greater Scrutiny”

Log onto an Apple store website, and you’ll read “Gather. Learn. Create. Come to shop. Return to learn.” Shop Walmart and you’ll hear, “Save money. Live better.”

Tune in to the most popular TED Talk on the internet (viewed more than 8 million times), and you’ll see Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on how the schools are killing creativity, titled “Bring on the Learning Revolution.”

My point:

These headlines—whether oral or written—present a clear, memorable message.

Yet just the opposite often happens in corporate conference rooms across the country. You’ll hear presentation after presentation and see slide after slide that sounds dull and drab––full of deadwood:
––Objectives
––Goals & Accomplishments
––Mission-Critical Projects
––Implications of Pending Deadlines
––Timelines
––Case Studies
––A Study on the Effects of . . .
––Conclusions Regarding the
––Budget Allocations
––Four Critical Factors
––Considerations for Improvements
––Pricing Issues
––Staffing Decisions
––Organizational Chart
––Marketing Strategies
––Initiatives for Third Quarter
––Implementation Plans
––Conclusions and Recommendations

Your presentations and your slides should not be summed up simply by a topic. Nobody remembers a garden-variety presentation title or topic heading on your slide.

Think headlines. And incorporate as many of the following attributes as possible to make that headline memorable:
• Pithy
• Visual
• Alliterative
• Specific
• Colorful

If your audience remembers nothing more than the presentation title or slide headlines, they’ll walk away with your key ideas. That’s much more than the typical haze that descends after they see 27 slides with generic topics that sound like the same slide deck they saw the day before, … and the day before that, … and the day before that.

Words create thought. Choose them well in your titles to drive decisions.

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 46 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

Related articles

• Ten Things I Liked (and Hated) About Your Presentation (hbr.org)
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Presenters (inc.com)
• Ten Tips for Making Effective Presentations (expressyourselftosuccess.com)
• Presentation Skills: Do Your Webinar Slides Wow Them or Weary Them? (booher.com)

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Posted at 10:10am in Communication—Oral, Personal Presence, Presentation Skills | Permalink | 17 Comments |

Sooner or later, you’re going to get caught in the spotlight:  You excel on a big project, and you’re invited to claim your accolades in front of a group.  You lead a team or organization to success, and the media ask how you did it.  You write your first bestselling book or win the lottery, and reporters ask you dumb questions like, “Are you thrilled?”  Or, heaven forbid, you witness an accident or a robbery, and the evening TV anchor asks how sure you are in identifying the victim and the get-away car.

Don’t blow it.  Don’t miss your chance to make your 15 minutes of fame count toward career equity.

The most important thing to remember is that you’re not talking to the person in front of you.  Yes, you read that correctly.  In all these situations mentioned above, the immediate person engaging you in conversation or an interview—asking a question or presenting an award—is not your real audience.  You’re talking to everyone else “out there” listening in on the conversation.

Those are the listeners who count where your career matters.  Keep these guidelines in mind when communicating while you’re in the media spotlight.

Forget Chatty Cathy 

It’s easy to get caught off guard and make a mistake that can cost your career, put your organization in the crosshairs, or at best make you look foolish and incompetent.  Chatty Cathy will try to engage you in casual conversation, friend to friend.  After a few moments, you forget that you’re talking in front of a group and may reveal things you shouldn’t.  Know what you intend to talk about—and what you don’t intend to talk about. Then stick with those parameters.  Never relax in such situations. At the moment you’re relaxed, you’re in danger.  Sure, look relaxed.  Sound relaxed.  Just don’t let your brain relax.

Remember That Negative Words Trump Positive Words 

Never repeat negatives.

Example Question:  “At any time during previous meetings and discussions were you aware that the reports being sent to headquarters were inaccurate and misleading?” 

Response:  “Inaccurate and misleading?  No, I had no reason to believe they were inaccurate and misleading?  Why would I? No one ever told me anything about it. Not in any meeting I attended did anybody ever complain that what our department sent was misleading or inaccurate in any way. If there’s ever a complaint, we’re always the first to hear it. So if anybody thought that our reports were inaccurate in any way or misleading them to a false conclusion, I feel certain that we would have received questions and emails. So no, I did not hear any comments at all that employees in our division felt there was anything inaccurate or misleading at all about the reports that they received.”

After reading that long response, what’s the key phrase that stands out in your mind?  “Inaccurate and misleading,” right?  Negative words always trump the positive.  Every sentence in the response denies wrongdoing. Yet what you recall is “inaccurate and misleading.”   The lesson here?  Never repeat the negative.

A better response:

Question:  “At any time during previous meetings and discussions were you aware that the reports being sent to headquarters were inaccurate and misleading?”

Response:   To the best of my knowledge, all the reports were completely accurate. If there are ever any complaints, we’re typically the first to hear of them.  We’ve heard none. To my knowledge, all the reports were accurate.

Big difference.

Stay on Message 

Even if you’re not in an adversarial role, you should have key points to deliver during your time in the spotlight—whether at the awards ceremony, the boardroom podium, or the industry tradeshow.  You may want to thank key people, emphasize the critical skills a project required, highlight the complexity of some critical success your team has had.  But all those messages may get lost unless you intentionally prepare talking points and stay on message.

Winging it is for the wanna-bes.

For example, your boss summons you to the front of the room before a large group of people, says a few kind words about your performance, and gives you a congratulatory handshake.  You give an aw-shucks, thank-you-very-much response and sit down.

Lost career opportunity. Your message is not just “thank you” to the boss.  Your opportunity is to say a few words about the project, your team, what they did to deserve the credit, and what the overall contribution is to the company.  You know what message you want to deliver; the boss, the introducer, the host, or the reporter does not.   Wherever they start, bridge back to your key points.  Stay on message.

Make good in your first 15 minutes of fame, and you may launch 15 years of career opportunities.  It happens.

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 46 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

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Posted at 10:43am in Communication—Oral, Executive Communication, Personal Presence | Permalink | 16 Comments |

Demonstrate Goodwill. Find a way to convey to the listener that you want to help him achieve his goals. Once the other person understands that you have his welfare at heart, he tends to trust you and believe your message.

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 45 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

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Posted at 12:46pm in Communication—Oral, General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |

By preparing carefully, you webinar audience can be engaged and entertained by your presentation.

Just because you build and advertise a webinar doesn’t mean people will come.  And once they show up doesn’t mean they will stay.  And just because they stay doesn’t mean they will listen actively and shut out the other distractions around them. Your slides—how you design and use them—play a key role in enticing people to engage with you.

Build Your Webinar Slides for Maximum Engagement
Attendees to your webinar have nothing to look at except your slides—or their cell phone, or their email, or the piles of paper on their desk, or the people walking down the hallway.  My point?  There’s much to distract them if your slides do not engage them.

So learn to use all the features of your software tool to build interactivity into your visuals—polling, white board, ranking, chat room, raise hand.

For the same reason (interactivity), neither do you want to put all your key points on your visual so that your audience can quickly skim your slide for the skeleton ideas and tune out while you elaborate.  Your visuals should entice so that the listener is thinking, “So tell me more…” or “What do you mean by that?”

Provide an Opening Slide to Remind Attendees of Logistics
Don’t spend valuable time droning on and on about the mundane details at the point of highest interest and attention—when people first log on.  Instead, put the ho-hum logistics on the first slide to remind your audience of how to log in and provide call-in numbers for audio by phone in case they can’t hear the webinar through their computers or in case of other technical difficulties.  Then move on quickly to the substantive material.

Provide an Overview Visual
Include a slide that provides an overview of the key topics. Your promotional materials have already provided an overview to some extent. But often audience members who’ve received an invitation by word-of-mouth or other means may not have received a complete description.  This visual confirms to the attendees once again what you intend to cover—as well as keeps you focused (less you’re tempted to stray at the last moment from the promised agenda).

Include a Photo of the Presenter to Personalize the Webinar
Webinars are by their very nature impersonal.  So listeners often feel that they have permission to tune out, to multitask, to keep the webinar going “in the background” while they get more important work done.  By adding your photo early on, you create a more personal connection.  And that warmer environment does several things:  It encourages interactivity, promotes learning, and elicits more questions and feedback throughout the session.

Don't put your audience to sleep with a boring webinar.

Use More Visuals Rather Than Fewer
Because a webinar is totally dependent on one type of visual—a slide and whatever kind of interactivity you can creatively imbed for interactivity—you often think that you should err on the side of fewer visuals rather than too many.  Typically, just the opposite is true.  Staring at one slide for more than 7 seconds becomes boring very quickly.  Your viewers are accustomed to watching TV, where even the broadcast news programs change the camera shot (on average) every 4 seconds.

While it’s true that “live” presenters typically use far too many slides for the time slot, webinar presenters typically use far too few.

Use More, Not Less, Animation
I’ve frequently had clients who planned for me to present a webinar for their employees to say, “We’ll need you to send us your slideshow to load into our system. And don’t forget to remove the animation.”  They may be using a system that can’t handle animation, but that doesn’t mean you as presenter should reveal a slide showing all 5 bullet points at once!  (That is, if you use a bullet-point slide at all!)

If you do display such a list, your audience will read it faster than you can elaborate on the first point, and then they’ll be impatiently strumming their fingers waiting for you to catch up with them.  With such system limitations, handle “animation” differently:  Show five slides, with one bullet added to each view.  Effectively, you’ve worked around the “animation” issue without the software capability.

Have a Back-up Plan When Your Visuals Aren’t Visible
Make sure that you have an alternative way to present your content when the technology fails and some or all of your audience members began contacting you or the producer/host to say they’ve been booted off the system.  It will happen.

In a recent webinar I just did, the host worked on a technology problem for 48 straight hours before the webinar began. It was resolved approximately ten minutes before start time. In such emergencies, your energy, vocal variety, questioning techniques, and notes are your back-up tools for engagement!  To paraphrase: never let ‘em hear you sweat.

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 45 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

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Posted at 10:01am in Communication—Oral, Executive Communication, Presentation Skills, Presentation Skills - Webinars | Permalink | 17 Comments |

Sales professionals rarely face buyers without getting questions. Yet most will tell you that although they may spend hours, or even days, planning for the formal part of a sales presentation, they often give little thought to the Q&A period.   Yet seasoned sales professionals use the opportunity to respond to questions to increase persuasiveness and credibility.   The most successful avoid the following mistakes:

Mistake #1:  Failure to Anticipate and Prepare for Routine Questions

Sales teams frequently spend hundreds of hours learning to position their product against the competition––but no time in anticipating and perfecting answers for routine questions. This situation should be labeled sales malpractice:   If you’re in sales, put yourself in scenarios where colleagues fire product or service questions at you until you can think on your feet well enough to answer those typical buyer questions with substance.  Consider Q&A part of your presentation preparation.

Mistake #2:  An Information Dump

If you’ve ever gotten caught in the never-ending trap of “Send me some information, and I’ll take a look,” then you know that information does not necessarily persuade.  Buyers do not need more information. Most have far too much information. They’re paralyzed by information.  They need someone to help them make sense of the information at their fingertips.  Become their guide and interpreter.  Take a stand.  Recommend.

Mistake #3:  Talking Rather Than Listening

I just experienced one of the worst sales pitches ever—from someone who bills herself as a business development specialist geared to selling at the C-level.  A mutual colleague had set up the introductory teleconference. After my colleague’s introductory comment, salesperson April opened with, “I’ve been to your website.  Is there anything you want to tell me that you think I wouldn’t already know from looking at the website. I’ve prepared 25 minutes of material. So unless you have a comment or question, I’m ready to go with my presentation. Is that okay with you?” She talked non-stop for the next 25 minutes—and was totally off-topic of my interest.

Mistake #4:  Jargon

Jargon builds a barrier.  Rather than marking you as a leader with broad knowledge, jargon categorizes you as a specialist with limited perspective. Profound people strive for simplicity and clarity.  Persuasive sales professionals simplify their answers and key points so buyers “get it” quickly and can move on about their real business.

Mistake #5:  Failure to Cut Through the Clutter

Cut through the clutter to the core message.  What can your product or service do for the buyer?  With tweets limited to 140 characters and people texting in syllables and letters because words take too long (R U OK?), people have little patience with those who can’t “say it in a sentence” and stop. Summarize succinctly.

Mistake #6:  Body Language That Sabotages Success

Sure, Q&A can be unnerving. But beware body language that says “I’m a loser.” Slouching posture suggests defeat.  The look says, “Poor, poor, pitiful me.  Please feel sorry for me. I can’t help myself. ”

 Other negative body language reveals signs of inward stress and shouts, “I’m nervous; I need reassurance”:  foot-shuffling, hair-tossing, sleeve- or cuff-link adjusting, watch-band adjusting, lint-picking, ring-twisting, necklace-fondling, coffee-cup shuffling, holding your own hands in front of you or behind you (in imitation of having a parent hold your hand).

When standing during your sales presentation, a few more gestures scream “I lack confidence”:  crossing one or both arms across the chest for protection, locking your arms behind your back, clasping your hands tightly in front of or behind you.

None of these postures or gestures gives the buyer confidence in you, your offering, or your organization.

Responding to questions can be your biggest nightmare—or your chance to showcase your expertise, build rapport, and customize your offering exactly to what your buyer needs.

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 45 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

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• Did You Lose To Price or Ineffective Selling Skills? (customerthink.com)
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• Best Question Yesterday = Worst Question Today (terrybrock.com)

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Posted at 9:49am in Communication—Oral, Communication—Sales, Personal Presence | Permalink | 12 Comments |

CNN just posted an article “Want to Be a Leader? Act Like One” with tips from my latest two books: Communicate with Confidence—Revised and Expanded Edition and Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader. I thought you might be interested in reading it or circulating it to colleagues.

Want to be a leader? Act like one
Dianna Booher, Special to CNN 

Editor’s note: Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 45 books. Her latest books include “Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader ” and “Communicate with Confidence, Revised and Expanded Edition.” As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff deliver speeches and training to increase effectiveness of communication and presentation skills.

(CNN) – You’re doing all the obvious things: the right education, solid experience, a good mentor. But those in the C-Suite often confide that it’s the subtle “polish” that takes the superstar to the next level of success.

Small differences can make a big impact. What affects others’ perception of your ability to lead a project, a division, an organization, or a movement?

Consider the following habits, attitudes, skills, and characteristics of a leader to see how you measure up and then determine how you can step up:

Act with integrity

Tell the truth. Practice the principles you preach. Be genuine and sincere. It takes just one inappropriate action or comment to uncover the counterfeit. And once credibility vanishes, regaining it becomes a monumental task. People want to see the real you — the integrity behind your face, the actions behind your promises. In today’s economic landscape, trust trumps … Read More at

Want to Be a Leader? Act Like One by Dianna Booher, Special to CNN

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Posted at 6:32pm in Communication—Oral, Executive Communication, Leadership Communications, Personal Presence | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Does what you say sync with what you do? In addition to meeting your deadlines, achieving all your project goals, and staying within budget, establishing trust in your communications is vital to your career. In both oral and written communication, including your social media interactions, a lack of trust will lower your hallway credibility.  And once you’ve lost it, it’s all but impossible to regain.

Consider these rules to ratchet up the trust level and build your credibility for the long-haul:

Explain It to Your Grandmother.

Sometimes the better we understand something, the worse job we do of explaining it. Our familiarity makes us careless in describing it. It’s difficult to remember when we didn’t know something that has become second nature to us. Ambiguity creeps in when we least expect it. Envision your grandmother as you explain a technical concept. If it doesn’t make sense to her, it probably won’t make sense to your client or boss either. Meanings depend on context, tone, timing, personal experience, and reference points. The best test of clarity is the result you see.

Admit What You Don’t Know. 

When people smell blood, they start to dig. It’s human instinct to push when they feel they are being bluffed, especially when you’re trying to gloss over spotty patches in knowledge, memory, or experience.  Admitting ignorance is a simple principle, easy to remember, easy to accomplish, but often difficult to follow.  Nothing makes people believe what you do know like admitting what you don’t know.

Stay Current.

Give up outdated data, opinions, and stereotypes. Given today’s information overload, data more than two or three years old can’t support your decisions. Correct but outdated statistics soon become incorrect.

Demonstrate Cooperation With Good Intentions.

To be credible, demonstrate that you’re acting in good faith to the best of your knowledge and ability. People must believe that you want to cooperate with help them to achieve their personal and career goals. They’ll forgive you for poor judgment, but they’ll rarely forgive you for poor intentions.

Be Complete.

Are you telling all you know? Recognize the difference between lies, half-truths, omissions, and cover-ups. True, but incomplete, statements can lead to false conclusions; literal truth, when offered without complete explanations, can lead to literal lies. Knowing smiles accompanied by long silences can elicit wrong conclusions. Lying happens in numerous ways. Intentions stand center stage here. Ultimately, questionable intentions cast doubt on character.

Keep Confidences. 

What happens when a boss or confidante tells you, “This information is not to leave the room,” and it instantly does?  And you’re the carrier pigeon? When people know you break confidences, that you share personal matters, they fear you. Breaking confidences speaks volumes about your character. Those who observe your ability to keep your promises and your confidences will begin to trust you with their real feelings.

Avoid Exaggeration.

Did you wait on the phone for fifteen seconds, or five minutes? Did the supplier raise the rates by 2% or 10%?  Did the scores dip to 30 or down to 10?  Spinning a story can put you on a slippery slope.  Exaggeration makes for great humor, but it is a credibility killer.

Be Sincere and Genuine.  

People who pretend to be sincere can pitch an earnest plea, look at you with pleading eyes and a straight face, and promise plums that dance in your head. But genuineness comes from character and is therefore harder to generate on the spot. You either are or you aren’t. What you experience is what you share. What you value is what you give. Make what you say what you believe.

Show Concern.

People tend to trust those who care about them.  People want to know that they have a sympathetic ear in you. Even companies in crisis mode know the first reaction must be to show sincere concern over individuals in question.  How do you demonstrate concern?  Tone of voice.  Word choices. Listening.  Asking questions.

Accept Responsibility. 

If you were involved in the discussions, decisions, or actions, and had some control over a situation that didn’t end the way others wanted it to, own up to it. Shirkers suffer credibility gaps.

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 45 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

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Posted at 9:58am in Communication—Oral, Communication—Written, General Communication, Social Media Communication, Uncategorized | Permalink | 4 Comments |

The executive vice president of a large oil company called the director of HR with this request:  “We’re opening up a new call center this year, and we’re going to need you to help get it staffed. But I’ve already got the person in mind for the director’s job.”

“Okay.  Great.  Who’s that?”

“Donna ___________.”

“Donna _______?    Why, she’s just an admin!  I don’t see her as qualified at all.  The director’s position would be at a middle management grade, at least.”

“That’s for you to determine.  But that’s who I want in there.”

To the astonishment of the HR director, the executive continued his explanation of seeing Donna’s competence in her ability to articulate ideas in a couple of meetings when her boss was out of town and she’d been sent as his representative.

She got the promotion.

To present your own ideas with equal impact, consider these tips:

Be Obscure.

Try the direct-mail approach. Start with a provocative or intriguing statement to get people’s attention and whet their appetites for the main course. “So maybe we should hire only those with no experience in this industry.” “I’ve got an idea—let’s beat them at their own game.” When the point’s “not all there,” you’ll grab people’s attention for your elaboration to follow.

Start With What’s on Their Mind—Not Yours.

If you want to grab attention for your ideas, you have to start where people are and lead them to where you stand, not expect them to meet you halfway. What policy is bothering them? What do they fear might happen tomorrow? What frustrates them today? Start there and tie your idea into that concern or hope.

Stand if You Want to Convey Authority and/or Underscore the Importance of an Issue.

When someone “rises to the occasion,” others generally settle back and give him or her the floor. The group dynamics change from an informal team discussion to a formal presentation. A formal presentation says three things: “I already have an opinion on this issue,” “I am well prepared with supporting details,” and “The issue is bigger and more important than the routine ones we deal with.” From your physically elevated position, your words take on more authority; the group is likely to grant you control of the meeting, even if only temporarily.

One word of caution:  As a result of all these dynamics, you probably will get less feedback on your idea. Those who support it will withhold their comments, thinking that you obviously sound authoritative and need no help in garnering others’ opinions. Those who disagree with you may hate to buck authority before an audience; they often save their negative comments for the hallways. You can sometimes have it both ways by presenting your proposal standing up and then taking a seat for the follow-up discussion and turning over the facilitation to someone else.

Present Your Proposal Only One Way, and Be Specific.

When you’re courting several people with differing viewpoints, it’s natural to think that the more general you can make your idea, the more “hooks” you’re creating for people to latch onto. In that effort, you tend to explain your idea first one way and then another. You use this analogy and that. You think maybe this and maybe that would be part of the final product. Often, the intention of the elaboration is to offer something that will appeal to everybody.

A broad, generally expressed idea, however, usually has the opposite effect: everybody hears something that they disagree with. And you wind up spending more time dealing with the minor details and “what you didn’t mean to imply” than you do with the gist of the idea. The group has the sense that your proposal has been thrashed to death, when in reality only the chaff around it has been discarded. Prefer, instead, to propose the idea succinctly, in only one specific way. Let it stand there in all its glory until people force you to add details by their questions.

Make Abstractions “Hit the Gut.”

Accept the fact that we don’t make all our decisions based on logic. When people get emotional about an issue, accept that emotion, show that you understand it, and then, when they regain their composure, ask if they can share the reasons for those feelings. When it’s in your interest to do so, play to others’ emotions. Abstractions are difficult for people to rally around. Tie them to specifics so that people “feel” an issue. For example, if you want your team to provide input into designing your corporate policy concerning charitable contributions, don’t deal with nameless agencies and noble causes. Talk about specific people who benefit from these contributions and specific agencies that will be receiving the money allocated by the policy your team helps draft. If you generate appropriate emotion, “dull” tasks can take on new life and importance.

Don’t Withdraw Your Proposal Simply for the Sake of Harmony.

Encourage others to express either support or disagreement, but don’t let people turn down an idea simply because “someone doesn’t like it.” Ask for supporting explanations.  If you’re going to toss out an idea, support it until someone changes your mind.

If You Can’t Manage a Touchdown, Try for a First Down.

If you can see that your idea will not be accepted in total, settle for measured success. Suggest that the team give you the go-ahead in a limited way. Ask for a “test run” at some phase of the project “before too much money is spent.” All you may need is a little running room to prove that your idea or plan has merit. Don’t give up simply because you don’t make a touchdown with the first play.

Above all, be flexible on the issues.   We’re not talking about flip-flopping like the politicians do—whatever the polls support today, they “believe” tomorrow. Instead, be open to the facts and flexible in your feedback. The purpose of meetings—most staff meetings, anyway—is to exchange ideas. If someone presents facts and sways your opinion, don’t hesitate to change your position. That’s not weakness; it’s democracy.

Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 45 books, published in 26 countries and 20 languages.  Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication.   www.booher.com

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• Communication Skills: Series on Contributing Valuable Ideas in Meetings – Part 1: 9 Tips to Keep Your Ideas from Being Ignored, Discredited, or Stolen in Meetings (booher.com)
• Communication Skills: Contributing Your Valuable Ideas in Meetings – Series Part 2: 7 Don’ts to Keep Colleagues from Hating You in Meetings (booher.com)
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Posted at 9:16am in Communication—Interpersonal, Communication—Oral, Successful Meetings | Permalink | 25 Comments |