Gerry Sandusky's Blog, page 9

The Elephant in the Room

This week a story broke that the son of former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky, a convicted uild molester, was arrested on charges of child molestation himself. Needless to say that triggered an avalanche of nasty traffic onto my social media channels just like a few years ago when Jerry Sandusky was arrested.ckle

I put this tweet out on Twitter:

“To all who again invite me to spend eternity in hell, just a friendly reminder, I am Gerry with a G, no relation to former Penn State coach.”

It went viral. MSN.com, SI.Com, Mashable, The New York Daily Post all picked up the story and ran with it.

Why You Should Bring Up the Elephant in the Room

I put out that tweet and I bring up this subject because just like I faced this week, you too will sometimes face the elephant in the room when you get to the front of the room for a presentation or in front of a camera in a media interview.

I often begin a speech or presentation by pointing out the difference between the seventh letter of the alphabet, “G”, and the tenth letter, “J”, to remind people that I am Gerry with a G, not related to Jerry with a J. That usually gets a chuckle, but more importantly it creates a big sigh of relief for people who were wondering. And people always wonder.

How to Recognize an Elephant

The elephant in the room is the uneasy feeling people in the audience have because of either confusion, miscommunication, a bad interaction, or an awkward situation.

Too often presenters and professionals doing interviews try to talk around the elephant in the room. Don’t. Take it head on. And do it early in the presentation or interview.

When I tell an audience “I’m Gerry with a G, no relation,” those six words diffuse any tension caused by confusion, caused by people wondering, caused by people not knowing.

Once that tension leaves the room, the audience can then give me its attention and we can begin a conversation. Until I diffuse that tension, for the people who don’t know, their uncertain will monopolize their attention and energy and they won’t hear anything I have to say.

The same holds for you—even if you don’t have a name that sounds like one of America’s most hated criminals.

Situations that Become Elephants

There are all kinds of elephants in the room. Here are some situations that cause that:

A bad customer experience
A recent negative headline
A perceived slight or offense
A contract squabble
A member of your organization getting negative media attention
A member your industry getting negative media attention
Social media slamming you—fairly or unfairly
A significant drop in your company’s stock price
Public outrage over something an official in your organization is accused of doing
An ongoing investigation
A shift in the competitive landscape
The death or serious injury of family member
An inappropriate comment intended for a private conversation that somehow became public

And that’s just a short representation. There are hundreds of situations that can place an elephant in the room. Once it’s there then you have a simple decision to make: address it or ignore it?

Your Lawyer Might Disagree

Legal counsel for many reasons may tell you not to touch it, ignore it completely.

I would disagree.

Sometimes you can’t take questions and you face obvious limitations, but the sooner you address the elephant in the room, the sooner you can try to answer the biggest question on the minds of audience members.

Until you answer that question, you can’t get them to hear anything else you have to say.

Regardless of whether it’s fair or unfair, a lot of people come to my audiences wondering if I am related to the former Penn State coach who is now in jail. And now they may wonder if I am related to his son who was also arrested.

I am not.

That answers the question and clears the air. Now we can move on.

What Happens If You Don’t Address The Elephant in the Room

You can do the most compelling, involved, elaborate presentation with a Wow factor of 100 on a scale of one to 10. But if you don’t address the elephant in the room, the audience will leave saying things like, “That was great, but I wonder if…(fill in obvious question about the elephant of the room).

And that will undermine the impact of your presentation every single time.

So before you get to the front of the room for your next presentation, ask yourself is there an elephant in the room?

Is there a situation, a complication, an interaction, or a perception so strong that it is on the mind of most of the people in the room?

If the answer is yes, address that as soon as possible in your presentation to the best of your ability and the extent your lawyers will let you.

Don’t Ignore the Elephant.

Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

Ignoring it just makes people talk about it more when you go away.

One day, the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State scandal will diminish and disappear. No one will welcome that day more than me.

But until the elephant disappears, I will do my best to address it, to answer the number one question people have before they have to ask that question.

Getting the Elephant Out of the Room

When you address the elephant in the room, when you answer the question your audience has before anyone has to ask the question, it gives you a chance to not only diffuse tension but also build report because your audience members get that you get them. And that transforms and elephant into an understanding. It also gets the elephant out of the room.

If you have ever smelled an elephant, you will understand why everyone feels so much better when it leaves the room.

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Three Ways to Use Questions to Improve Your Presentations

We often think of presentations as a formal way to answer questions.  You can also use questions as a way to improve the impact of your presentations.

In this video, I’ll share with you three techniques for using questions that can have a dramatic and immediate impact on the quality of your presentation. It will also help you to engage your audience early and often in the presentation.

And after you watch the video, leave me a comment. Let me know what’s the best question anyone ever asked you at a presentation?

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The Four Levels of Listening

Google “how many words does the average person hear in a day” and you’ll get search results suggesting somewhere in the range of 20,000 to 100,000 words per day. To give you a reference point, a 200 page book has about 60,000 words.

You hear a lot. But how well do you listen?

Communicating involves more than just talking. You also have to listen. I believe the easiest way to grow as a communicator is to spend more time listening and to learn how to listen at deeper levels.

Three Types of Listening

I have identified three basic types and four levels of listening:

Reactive
Reflective
Connective

Reactive Listening

Reactive listening is the first level of listening. It comes from either responding to instructions or from allowing your emotions to take control. Reactive listening usually prompts short responses: one or two words or short phrases.

Yes
No
Okay
Be quiet
Enough already!
Damn it.
Excellent.
Agreed
I suppose.
$%#! you!

Reactive listening is transactional. It’s on the surface. There is a time and place for it, but if all of your listening is reactive you will lack depth and you’ll feel like you’re living your life in fast food joints:

“How can I help you?”

“I’ll have combo number two.”

“Would you like fries with that?”

“No thank you.”

Reactive listening is built around the idea of I’m right and you’re wrong or I’m in charge so do what I say. Much of what we saw in this country over the past 18 months around the presidential election was level one listening—by all sides.

It’s not exactly soul affirming.

There are times when you have to listen at level one, but if you never go deeper you will likely discover that most of the relationships in your life are transactional and surface.

Reflective Listening

Level two and level three are both reflective listening.

I listening

Level two is what I call “I listening.” That’s where the listener reframes everything to his or her experience.

If you tell a level two listener about a movie you saw last week, he will respond along these lines: “Oh I saw that two weeks ago. I thought it was too long.”

Tell a level two listener about a client proposal you’re working on and she’ll come back with something like this: “I hate doing proposals. They’re so time-consuming.”

Level two listeners hear you but only long enough to reflect back to you something about them, their perspective or experience.

Much of the classroom learning you have done or job training you have gone through is done at level two. You are listening for what you can get out of it. There’s nothing wrong with that. There is a time and place where level two listening is where you need to be.

A level two listener is deeper than just a transaction but it never goes deeper than the other person’s perspective or experience. If you take your problem to a level two listener, the most you will get out of it is their take on your problem or their experience with similar problems.

Level two listeners love to one-up you. They are essentially saying, “I hear you, but shut up now so I can tell you something about me that’s even more interesting.”

You Listening

Level three is also reflective listening. This is “You listening.” When you talk to a level three listener they take the time to reflect back to you and learn more about your perspective.

Here are the kind of responses you often get from a level three listener:

“How did that experience make you feel?”

“That’s interesting. What do you think we should do?”

“You might be on to something here.”

“You make a lot of sense.”

“How would you like to proceed?”

Level three listeners show a real interest in what you have to say and they devote energy into fully understanding where you are coming from. Level three listeners build relationships because they strive for empathy compared to level two listeners who are just trying to impress you.

Level three listening is where a lot of people begin on a date. Unfortunately, as the relationship continues it frequently moves more to level two or level one. That’s the wrong direction.

Connective Listening

The real magic comes at level four. That’s connective listening.

A connective listener is mature enough not to react to what you do or say with an emotional response. A connective listener is secure enough with themselves that they don’t need to try to impress or one-up you with their response. And while a connective listener will take the time to learn more about your perspective, they’ll often do it in a more intuitive way than just reflecting back to you with questions about you. They’ll listen to your body language. They’ll consider the context of what they’re listening too. connective listeners don’t feel compelled to arm wrestle you into compliance with how they see the situation.

A connective listener gives the gift of total presence and full attention.

When you communicate with a connective listener, a level four listener, you will intuitively sense that they get you, they understand you—even when they may not agree with you. They aren’t just going along to get along. They have opinions and perspectives too, but they don’t feel compelled to share those with you until you feel understood. That’s where the connection comes from.

Connective listeners make you feel understood. That connects you to them because they have given you the gift of their full attention without

Connective listeners make you feel understood. That connects you to them because they have given you the gift of their full attention without judgment.

Connective listeners have the ability to listen without even needing to respond. A level two or level three listener will usually nod his or her head while you’re mid-way through saying what you want to say because they have already formulated what they want to say and they’re waiting for you to stop talking so they can start talking! Not a connective listener.

At the deepest level, listening builds relationships because it gives someone the gift of your full attention—voluntarily and not just because you are your boss or the other party in a transaction. When the other party feels truly heard, they’ll frequently feel compelled to return that gift. When you have two or more people giving each other their full attention, it’s a pretty short path to understanding.

Connective listening seems, at first, like it takes more time. And initially, it does. But long term it saves times because it reduces the amount of time and energy you have to spend patching up misunderstandings.

Now, unless you are a spiritual guru, you won’t likely spend all of your time at level four. After all, you don’t go into a fast-food restaurant to establish a relationship. We all listen at different levels. The question is how much time do you spend at each level?

How would you describe your baseline style of listening? Reactive, reflective, or connective?

In my experience, the quality of your relationships, and to a degree the quality of your life, has a lot to do with how much time you spend listening at levels three and four.

If you think you spend too much time at the reactive level (or if someone close to you thinks you spend too much time there), and you would like to move in the direction of becoming a connective listener, try to develop these two habits

1. Pause between comments

When the other person finishes what they have to say, avoid the urge to jump right in. Pause for a second. It might seem awkward at first, but you will soon find the conversation starts to “breathe.” It will have a more comfortable tempo, feel less rushed. Gradually, that pause will remind you to avoid rushing in with “I” comments. Reflect back with “You” comments.

2. Listen without intent to reply

Connective listeners do this one thing and it changes everything. They just listen. They aren’t formulating what they are going to say. They aren’t nodding their head like a bobblehead doll waiting for the other person to take a breath so they can jump in. And they aren’t reframing everything the conversation around their own perspective and point of view.

They just listen.

The gift of their full attention and presence gives the other person what they are really looking for anyway. And because they are fully present, connective listeners usually find that when it is their turn to talk, the right thing to say just seems to come to them.

Interestingly enough, connective listeners often say less more than most people but others pay closer attention to them when they do.

This approach to listening works in a one-on-one conversation in your home or your workplace. It also works extremely well during a presentation when you bring it around the question and answer session.

Each level has its proper place. And no one level of communication is wrong. If you’re crossing a busy street and someone yells, “Stop,” you want to be a level one, reactive listener. Your life might depend on it. But if your spouse or your boss is sharing a deep frustration with you, you want to strive to be a level three or four listener. Your relationship might depend on it.

Understand the situation. Try to match the listening level to the situation. When appropriate, go for the connection. Be present. Don’t worry about what you’re going to say next. And try to leave the word “I” out of it as much as possible.

Okay, it’s my turn to listen. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of my take on listening. I would love to listen to your thoughts.

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Making Your Audience Comfortable Starts with You.

The audience takes its cue from the presenter. When the presenter looks comfortable, the audience feels comfortable. When the presenter looks uptight, the audience feels uptight.

Comfort is your job, not theirs

As a presenter, you can’t expect the audience to go out of its way to make you feel comfortable. It’s not their job. It’s your job to do that for the audience. And the audience will wait for you–but not very long.

Get comfortable ahead of time

The fastest way to do that is to take charge of the room long before you begin.

To do that you must get familiar with the space where you will present. In this video, I’ll show you how to do that long before you get to the front of the room.

 

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The Right Amount of Practice for a Presentation

A coaching client of mine shared with me last week her disappointment in a presentation. Before I could even ask why she said, “I know I didn’t put in enough work ahead of time. I didn’t practice enough.”

Preparing a presentation is only the first step in the process.

The Process

Here are the three steps to a success presentation or speech:

Prepare
Practice
Perform

A lot of people get lost on step two: practice. Just because you put your PowerPoint together doesn’t mean you’re ready to go.

The Dilemma

Every football coach shares this same dilemma with presenters. What’s the right amount of work to put in ahead of time? Put in too little work and you won’t perform well because you won’t be comfortable. Put in too much work and you won’t perform well because you will have left your best performance on the practice field.

The Target

There is no one-size-fits-all answer for the amount of work to put in. But there is a universal target to shoot for in your practice. You know you are ready when you can do two things:

Easily anticipate what’s coming next in your presentation throughout the entire length of your presentation.
Take any portion of your presentation and comfortably deliver it during your commute to work

When you can mentally run through your presentation and know that after your open comes the story of your trip to Tuscany. And after that comes your research on trend X. And after that comes your insights from working with company Y. And after that comes…you get the idea. When you know the outline and the flow of your presentation you have the big picture.

When you can pull any part of your presentation out and deliver it by itself on your car ride or commute to or from work, then you know you have a grasp on the small picture too.

How to Know You Are Ready

Those are the two landmarks I use to know I’m ready. If I’m not comfortable with either one, I know have to do more work.

I want to emphasize that I didn’t say “memorize.” When you strive to memorize a presentation or a speech you will almost always over-practice. By the time you nail it you will be so tired of that presentation or speech you will find it tedious. When you perform that emotion will come through and your audience will likely find it tired and tedious too.

The Big Picture and Small Picture

You want to have a high comfort level with the big picture–the flow of the presentation–and the small picture–the content in each section of the presentation.

Once you have that you’re ready to move on to the third step in the process: performance. We’ll cover that in a later blog. For now, know that the goal of your practice is to give you a high level of comfort in your performance so you’re not wasting a lot of energy trying to remember what comes next, but also enough flexibility so that when the performance adrenaline brings you a brilliant idea, line, phrase, or insight in the middle of your presentation, you aren’t so locked into what you memorized that you can easily use it and adjust in the moment.

When to Stop Practicing

When you feel comfortable with the flow of the presentation and confident in your understanding of each part of the presentation, you are ready to go. That’s when you stop practicing. That’s when it’s time to shift your attention to performing.

As late NFL coach Tom Landry once said, “When the time to perform has arrived, the time to prepare has passed.”

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Techniques for Using Notes in a Presentation

A note about using notes in a presentation…

You have probably had this experience before: You’re in the middle of a presentation, you look down at your notes and suddenly you can’t find what you’re looking for. Your heart starts racing. Your voice rises and octave. You panic.

What you’re looking for is there. You just can’t find it.

The key is knowing how to format your notes so you can always find what you’re looking for when you need it the most.

In this video, I’ll show you how to do just that.

 

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A Focused, Patient Start to a New Year

To help you get off to a strong start in 2017, I want to help you focus. If you’re like me, you have a big list of goals in a lot of different areas of your life. I love goals. But too many goals are as bad as no goals because they can leave you feeling overwhelmed, which in turn undermines your effort to make progress.

Less is more

The key to improvement is limiting the number of goals and tightening your focus on those goals.

If you want to become a more effective, impactful presenter or public speaker in 2017, I want to help you. Let’s start with a simple approach: focus on only a few areas at a time. You can’t improve everything at once–or even many things at once. Take one part of your presentation game and sharpen it, improve it, polish it. When you have nailed it then–and only then–move on to the next area of your skill set you want to develop.

Where to begin

Not sure where to begin on the path to improving as a presenter or speaker? Here are some areas to consider:

Openings
Getting your audience involved
Storytelling
Effective use of PowerPoint
Reducing the size of your presentations
More effective Q & A sessions
How to manage anxiety before and during a presentation
What to put in and what to leave out of your presentations
How to use handouts to increase the effectiveness of your presentations
How to create and deliver more powerful closes to your presentations

Resources to help you

To help you get started on your journey, I am listing the three most popular blog posts I have put up recently as well as the three most viewed videos I have posted on my YouTube page. Each focuses on one specific aspect of presentation skills. See if one, just one, resonates with you. If it does, start your journey there.

If you improve one skill set a month over the next year you will look and feel like a master in front of the room by this time next year. But if you try to improve in 12 areas right away, you’ll find yourself right back where you are this time next year.

Most Popular Blogs:

Where Should You Put the Q & A in Your Presentation?

The Voice The World Needs to Hear

Gold Medal Focus Precedes Gold Medal Results

 

Most Popular Videos:

How eye contact can improve your presentations

3 Ways to Improve the Close to your presentation

How to handle presentation panic

Start small

Start with one of the blog posts or one of the videos. See if it speaks you. If it does, take what you find valuable in it and put it to use, focus on it, practice it. When you have merged that skill or insight into your presentation skills, then–and only then–move on to another blog or video. Be patient. Doing one thing really well will take you much farther in front of the room than doing several things poorly.

Here’s to a great, patient, and focused 2017!

Feel free to share your goals with me in the comments below. Sometimes committing yourself publicly to that one big goal can help you continue to bring your focus back to that goal.

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Step-Up Your Presentation Game

With a new year on the horizon, you may have started to put together your list of things you would like to accomplish and improve in 2017.

If any of these items below are on your list, then this video can help you get there:

Become a better presenter
Run more effective meetings
Save time preparing for speeches
Rock the room!
Improve communication skills
Inspire people to accomplish more
Close more deals with killer presentations

None of those goals are accomplished with one simple step. Each requires a process. In this case, a six-step process. You won’t master this process the first time through, and you don’t have to in order to benefit from it right away. If you want to step-up your game, you need to take the right steps.

 

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The Marriage of Practice and Performance

I recently attended a wedding of one of my daughter’s childhood friends. A pretty affair, it had all the standard elements you expect at a wedding: service, reception, cocktail hour, introduction of the wedding party, etc.

It also had toasts, a few of them.

The best man read his toast. Not a bad thing.

And he struggled. Bad thing.

That got me thinking about the marriage of practice and performance

What he struggled with was reading his toast. Every time he looked at his speech it looked like he was seeing it for the first time.

The one mistake you can’t afford to make

You should never look like you’re seeing your speech for the first time—whether you are giving a toast or making a presentation to a board of directors.

You should practice it enough so you not only look comfortable but so you only need a few words to remind you of where you are and what comes next.

A simple way to prepare

Here’s a simple, five-step technique that will ensure you never look lost reading your notes and that you only need notes instead of the full script:

Write out your entire speech or presentation. Word for word. Put down every single word you intend to say.
Practice reading it out loud until you become comfortable with it. This will be different for everyone. Some people need to do this once, others three or four times.
Record yourself reading the speech. Use your smartphone.
Play back the recording over and over during your drive time in your car or on your commute to and from work. How do you think you learned the lyrics to your favorite songs? You listened to them over and over. Do the same thing with your speech or presentation. It will engrain the content and the delivery in your mind.
Reduce your written speech to a few words, a simple outline that will remind you where you are and what comes next.

By this point you will know your talk or presentation so well, the outline notes will be a safety net, a backup, that will give you a sense of comfort just in case you forget where you are or what comes next.

The combination of strategic practice and confidence leads to a strong performance. That’s the marriage of practice and performance. Like all good marriages, sometimes one partner will have to carry the other but over time they balance each other out.

The benefit

Using this technique will ensure that you never get caught looking and sounding like you’re seeing your speech or presentation for the first time in front of an audience.

Time concerns

And as for complaints of “I don’t have time to practice,” what you should really say is “I don’t have the opportunity to ever go back and perform better in that one, crucial moment.”

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The Voice The World Needs to Hear

I took the day off the other day because I had lost my voice. Ironically, I spent part of the evening watching the TV show The Voice with my wife. On the show singers compete for the big break in their career.

Each competitor has something in common with nearly every professional I have worked with in developing their presentation, public speaking, or media interview skills. They have to overcome their fear to achieve their dream.

And it’s a big fear.

The nature of our fear

I used to think people held back because of fear of failure, fear of drawing a blank, fear of looking bad.

It’s more complicated than that.

Some of that fear is a fear of success too.

You see, if you succeed, if you really shine, people will see the real you. Putting the most authentic you out there in front of other people–whether it’s a crowd of nine or 90,000–is a scary proposition.

Your voice

The fact is you have something to say. You have an insight to share. You have something unique to bring to the front of the room that the world needs to hear because there is no one else who has ever lived who is or was exactly like you.

Two choices

You can choose to keep that authentic you hidden behind a cloak of fear, a cloak that keeps your truest voice silent, or you can choose to let your voice be heard, the voice that carries your deepest truths, your greatest hopes, your grandest dreams.

The impact

If you let your voice be heard you have the power to change a life, a company, a community, a society, even the world. But if you choose to hide behind fear the world will never know what you know because the world will never again see a person exactly like you. Never.

Moving past fear

On the show The Voice, each singer who dared to shine despite feeling fear discovered another part of his or her voice they didn’t even know they had: a broader range, a softer tone, a subtle texture. It works the same way for professionals like you.

If you will move through the fear and dare to bring the most authentic you to the front of the room you will discover parts of yourself that don’t even know about yet: bigger dreams, more daring goals, greater insights that are all lurking below the radar of your attention blocked by fear.

Early next year I will release an on-line course that will help people move past what we commonly call stage fright. I’ll show you the techniques. For now, I want you to simply make the commitment that you will begin to act despite feeling fear.

The real journey

Becoming a better presenter, public speaker, or media interview isn’t the end of the journey. It’s the beginning.

The front of the room isn’t the end of your fears. It’s the end of allowing your fears to prevent you from becoming all you can be, all you can share, all you can learn about yourself, all you can give to the world around you, to the people you know and to the people you can influence who you will never even meet.

A new year; a bigger voice

As you begin to look to a new year, I have one question for you: If you had no fear and total confidence what would you tell the people in your company, your community? That’s your authentic voice.

Will you let your voice shine in 2017? The world is waiting for your answer.

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