Tag Archives: pitchcoach

When body language tells all.

At a time when we have just seen the astonishing Obama deliver yet another mesmeric speech, this one in Cairo, it is depressing to compare it with what we are seeing from politicians in the UK.  It is a comparison that flatters few of  them.

Obama, in an unbelievably sensitive environment, gets the words right, as we have come to expect, but, even more important, the delivery. His calm, measured tone, his authority and confidence as he says things never contemplated or dared by previous Presidents.

And, since most of his audience will be getting his words via interpreters, it his body language  and tone that creates the impact, that in effect is the message. What a message.

Compare this with the fevered response of most of our politicians in an unbelievably sensitive environment of their own making. Few, ‘guilty or not’  have handled their expense   explanations with dignity.  Searching so hard for the right words, they have protested too much.

Defending the indefensible, as far as your audience is concerned, or in a pitch responding to the unanswerable question,  calls for few words -assume they will be mangled by an interpreter-and an Obama- like manner.  And rehearsal..

 

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Women Warriors.

An article in the Daily Mail  today introduced the concept of Warrior Women as a new  group to take over from the overexposed WAGs. Inspired by the feats of Joanna Lumley, ( recognised here in an earlier post) , the writer, a woman, nominates  her warriors.

She choses them for being independent, strong, unapologetic with grace and passion. They include Helen Mirren, Michelle Obama, Marianne Faithful, Camila Batmangheildgh, Annie Lennox and Shami Chakrabarti.

All of these would be great in any pitch but may not be available!  However, the concept of women warrior is relevant when it comes to casting a pitch team.

Other things being equal, in terms of role and qualification, teams that are only men or only women, tend to perform less effectively than mixed teams. This observation is based on coaching scores of rehearsals.

Why is this?   It is almost certainly due to the better balance that comes from the differences in the approach to communication. Men, generally, talk to convey information,’report-talk’, wheras women, generally, talk to build relationships,’rapport-talk’. (www.eloquentwoman.blogspot.com).

And, after a pitch, I have found that the women in the team will usually have a better sense of  ‘how it went’. In other words, how was it relationship-wise?

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PowerPointless and less and less…

This headline was in the Evening Standard today, “Lumley set to win Gurkha campaign”.  The way she did this, with charm and passion, was  the subject of recent post, Easy Opening , on May 7th.

And she won without using PowerPoint!

Of course it has its uses.  For some theatre style presentations, for much repeated product demonstration, but too often because it is easy to create and cheap.

For most  pitches, however, when a small team of four, or so, is presenting to a similiar number, beware!  It inhibits story telling and  dilutes personal impact as the screen takes over. 

As Malcolm Gladwell, of Blink and Tipping Point fame, said recently….” he was a firm believer in the axiom Power corrupts.  PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.  PowerPoint has destroyed storytelling”.

Take a look at this amusing demonstration of how Lincoln might have used PowerPoint  for his Gettysburg address:

        http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

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Likeability.

Two recent posts, Just Be Yourself and Easy Opening, both looked at  some practical ways of handling nerves in a pitch, allowing your nice side to shine through.  Some interesting observations on http://theresazagnoli.blogspot.com reinforce the importance of being nice, being likeable.

“Gallup’s ‘Personality Factor Poll’ concludes: it turns out that in politics, the single best determination of electability is likeability. Not knowledge, not experience, not the candidate’s position on a specific issue– likeability.”

This is one of the reasons the Obamas, both of them, rate so highly and why Boris Johnson is a more formidable politician than many had anticipated.

It’s much the same in business. People, decision makers, chose to work with people they like.

Interestingly, when formal rating or evaluation is applied to assess a pitch, factors such as likeability are rarely included, or at any rate not in an overt sense.  However, it is self-evident that ‘likeability’ will increase scoring across all the measured elements.

Nice guys do come first.  And, not for the first time here, rehearsal makes nice people nicer!

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Just be yourself

It is so simple to say, but surprisingly difficult to achieve in the hot house of a pitch when nerves are jangling, but being yourself, being conversational, is all that is needed to get through to your audience. You do not need to be an actor or assume the mantle of a speaker on a soap-box at Hyde Park Corner.

In informal, non-pitch meetings, that is how most of us are.  Engaging, listening, allowing space for response or for our words to be heard/recieved.   Under pressure to ‘perform’ in a presentation, there is always the danger of going into hyper over-drive, talking at, over emphasis, losing awareness of whether the audience is in recieving mode. You stop being your natural self.

This issue is well expressed in a recent post on www.presentationzen.com “In Zen, we put emphasis on demeanour, on behaviour… the natural expression of yourself.  You should be true to your mind, expressing yourself without any reservations.  This helps  the listener understand more easily…. Without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, to express yourself as you are is the most important thing”.(Shunryu Suzuki).

The secret to being yourself is simple. Rehearse.  The more you rehearse the more natural you become.  And the easier to listen to and understand.

Thoughts on how to rehearse are in the Best Practice Guides.

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