Earlier this month, an executive delivered testimony before the House Financial Services Subcommittee, and rose from the witness table with a dozen daggers deeply embedded in his chest, neck, and back. Well, not literally.
But I wonder if it felt that way for Edward Liddy, the caretaker head of American International Group or AIG. As you'll recall, Mr. Liddy testified about the $165 million in retention bonuses paid to employees of AIG's troubled Financial Products unit. By the time he was finished, there didn't seem to be a pair of dry hands among the panel members. As Macbeth may have put it (as he did in Shakespeare's play that bears his name), "All great Neptune's ocean won't wash this blood clean from my hand."
I would guess that you or I wouldn't be willing to face Mr. Liddy's ordeal for one dollar a year--the salary he has agreed to accept for his work. But what about instances in our own presentations and speeches when we face skepticism or hostility from our audiences? Resistance that's expected, the kind Mr. Liddy faced, at least advertises itself beforehand. But how do we deal with challenges to our position or ideas that we can't anticipate, the kind that only rear their heads during our presentation?
The most important thing to remember about "push-backs" like this, is that we shouldn't fear them. Resistance is a natural element of a thinking and attentive audience. Listeners who question, challenge, and play the devil to your advocate, are people who are engaged in what you are staying. Salespeople recognize such questioning and skepticism as nibbles at the bait. Why would this person take the time and trouble to engage in such a dialogue with you if they weren't interested? The audience member who resists you completely will stop listening, and probably leave to boot.
We should therefore continue to reach out to audiences, whatever the resistance, and not shift to defensiveness. Once our responses become defensive, we've lost control of the situation and shifted into a "siege mentality." From that point on, we're only dodging flaming arrows coming over the battlements--not advocating effectively for our product, service, or message.
So stay positive when you speak on behalf of your company, your organization, or your ideas. Audiences respect a speaker who stands up for his or her beliefs, even, and sometimes more strongly, in the face of determined resistance.
In my next post, I'll discuss 7 specific tips for overcoming audience resistance. Now, that is, that you're ready to welcome some rough-and-tumble as a speaker.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Use Emotion to Persuade Your Listeners
This week, the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. published an amazing piece about a recent discovery in human brain activity. The findings contain information that anyone who gives speeches and presentations had better pay attention to.
Scientists have recorded "the gentle flicker of activity that lights up the brain" when we form our first impressions of someone. Volunteers underwent brain scans while forming opinions of people, and activity was recorded in two specific regions: the amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex. The scientific labels aren't important. But the findings are highly significant with regard to public speaking. They remind us that audiences make judgments about us within the first 30 seconds of our presentations. And those judgments attach not only to us, but to our message and the people and organization we represent as well.
"Okay," I hear you saying, "so ancient brain circuits in our listeners light up when we give a speech. So what?" It may sound like news from the Cro-Magnon equivalent of Twitter, yet it has enormous implications for how we persuade our listeners.
We all know that human beings make critical decisions at a gut level, then justify those decisions with logic. "Gut level" equals emotions. That means that unless we're speaking to audiences in emotional as well as intellectual terms, our persuasiveness will have a great gaping hole in the middle.
To understand why, let's take another look at the human brain. The earliest part of the brain to evolve was the brain stem, where basic functions like breathing and heart rate reside. Next came the limbic system--the seat of our emotions. Last to develop in evolutionary terms was the prefrontal cortex, the region in our brains where complex logical thinking occurs. Think about that (and feel its power): our emotional brain came first--followed by our thinking brain.
The emotional brain and the thinking brain not only share beliefs, judgments, and feelings, then--there are actually anatomical links between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. So the thought that "business is business," and we shouldn't get all emotional about it, is exactly the wrong kind of thinking if persuasion is your ultimate goal.
To put all of this most simply: audiences use their emotions to receive what we say, to judge whether it's true, and critically, to decide about how to respond to it. The conclusion is inescapable: We had better give emotions a front seat when we're driving our essential messages home.
Do so, and your listeners will judge you all the more positively--not only for the honest self you're showing them, but for the emotional and entirely human approach you're sharing with them.
Scientists have recorded "the gentle flicker of activity that lights up the brain" when we form our first impressions of someone. Volunteers underwent brain scans while forming opinions of people, and activity was recorded in two specific regions: the amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex. The scientific labels aren't important. But the findings are highly significant with regard to public speaking. They remind us that audiences make judgments about us within the first 30 seconds of our presentations. And those judgments attach not only to us, but to our message and the people and organization we represent as well.
"Okay," I hear you saying, "so ancient brain circuits in our listeners light up when we give a speech. So what?" It may sound like news from the Cro-Magnon equivalent of Twitter, yet it has enormous implications for how we persuade our listeners.
We all know that human beings make critical decisions at a gut level, then justify those decisions with logic. "Gut level" equals emotions. That means that unless we're speaking to audiences in emotional as well as intellectual terms, our persuasiveness will have a great gaping hole in the middle.
To understand why, let's take another look at the human brain. The earliest part of the brain to evolve was the brain stem, where basic functions like breathing and heart rate reside. Next came the limbic system--the seat of our emotions. Last to develop in evolutionary terms was the prefrontal cortex, the region in our brains where complex logical thinking occurs. Think about that (and feel its power): our emotional brain came first--followed by our thinking brain.
The emotional brain and the thinking brain not only share beliefs, judgments, and feelings, then--there are actually anatomical links between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. So the thought that "business is business," and we shouldn't get all emotional about it, is exactly the wrong kind of thinking if persuasion is your ultimate goal.
To put all of this most simply: audiences use their emotions to receive what we say, to judge whether it's true, and critically, to decide about how to respond to it. The conclusion is inescapable: We had better give emotions a front seat when we're driving our essential messages home.
Do so, and your listeners will judge you all the more positively--not only for the honest self you're showing them, but for the emotional and entirely human approach you're sharing with them.
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