Trying to Channel Bill Clinton 

by Jerry Weissman

Scenario #1: Silicon Valley, an Executive Briefing Center at a major IT company. One of the company’s product managers finishes a presentation about a product upgrade to a group of existing customers and then opens the floor to questions.

The first question comes from the CIO of a large financial institution: “We’ve spent millions of dollars on the first version of your solution and it gave us nothing but problems—crashes, down time, glitches, and endless repairs—and now you want us to upgrade to a new version. We’re still having problems with the earlier version. What are you folks going to do about it?”

The product manager responds, “Quality is important to us…”

Scenario #2: New York City, a hotel meeting room during a financial conference. A CEO of a public company finishes the company’s management presentation to a group of investors and then opens the floor to questions.

The first question comes from an analyst at a leading mutual fund: “Your revenues are flat, your stock is down, and your outlook for the next quarter is guarded. When are you going to turn this sucker around?”

The CEO responds, “Performance is important to us…”

Scenario #3: Chicago, a conference room at the headquarters of a national retail chain. An account executive of a manufacturing company finishes a presentation about the status of a current product and then opens the floor to questions.

The first question comes from the vice president of sales: “Your last product was late and the one before that was late. Now you tell us that this one will be late. You know that our sales are seasonal and if we miss that narrow window we lose revenues and market share. When are you guys going to get your act together?”

The account executive responds, “Promptness is important to us…”

Sound familiar? No doubt you’ve probably heard the “_______ is important to us” phrase countless times. It has become boilerplate in the Q&A trade.

The problem with the phrase is that is the blinding flash of the obvious. Of course quality, performance, and promptness are important—each of the questioners just got finished saying that! Therefore, when a presenter states the obvious in a paraphrase, it sounds patronizing to the audience.

Why would any presenter do that to any audience? It is probably a misguided attempt to echo Bill Clinton’s famous words, “I feel your pain.” Mr. Clinton coined the phrase during his run for the presidency in 1992, in response to a question from an AIDS victim. The phrase was to become a campaign slogan that sent a broader message that Mr. Clinton hears and understands every voter.

As presenter, it is vitally important that you send the message that you hear and understand every questioner, but do so without saying that you feel your audience’s pain—especially when, by the challenging nature of the question, you or your company caused the pain in the first place. Instead, paraphrase the key issue neutrally, with no emotional value.

The correct paraphrase for each of the three tough questions above is:

• “What we’re doing to assure quality is…”
• “What we’re doing to improve performance is…”
• “What we’re doing about on time delivery is…”

From this neutral start you can move forward into an efficient answer as to how you are going to address the questioner’s problem. And, regardless of the verbiage, you’d better have an answer, regardless of the paraphrase.

If you want to channel Bill Clinton’s undoubtedly effective presentation style, follow the advice of his campaign slogan, “Put People First.”

Leave the Acting to Actors

by Jerry Weissman

Ever since Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the race to become the Republican presidential candidate in the 2012 election, he’s learned the importance of presentation skills—the hard way. Right after he announced his candidacy in mid-August, he soared to a double digit lead in the public opinion polls, ahead of all the previously-announced candidates. But as you read earlier, after a poor showing in a debate among all the candidates in September, and another poor showing in another debate in October, Mr. Perry’s ratings did a double digit drop to fall behind the front runners, Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.

The criticism of Mr. Perry’s debate appearances—even from other Republicans—was primarily about his halting delivery and lack of energy. NBC’s Saturday Night Live parodied his behavior in a skit in which actor Alex Baldwin did an impression of Mr. Perry bumbling and yawning.

In response, Mr. Perry shifted gears for the next debate and went after Mitt Romney, his chief opponent, with a vengeance, hurling charges at him with aggressive body language and voice. Mr. Romney responded with equal aggression that devolved into a virtual food fight.

Feeling his oats, Mr. Perry continued the animated delivery style in his media appearances and stump speeches. In one particular speech—to a group of conservative supporters in the key primary state of New Hampshire—he let out all the stops, mugging, giggling, winking, and gesturing broadly. An eight-minute video digest of his performance went viral on the Internet with over a million and a quarter views, followed by countless blogs, tweets, and another parody on Saturday Night Live that attributed his dramatic change to alcohol, drugs, or medications.

The video was perfect fodder for Jon Stewart’s satire. He commented, “Best case scenario, that dude's hammered. Worst case scenario, that is Perry sober and every time we've seen him previously, he's been hammered.” Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post was more balanced, questioning whether Mr. Perry’s speech was “Playful or plain odd.” In my opinion, it was the former. Mr. Perry was not under the influence, but was overcompensating in response to the earlier criticism.

His shift in delivery style was reminiscent of Al Gore’s reversals in his debates with George W. Bush during the 2000 election campaign. In the first of their encounters, Mr. Gore repeatedly expressed disdain for Mr. Bush with frowns, eye rolls, head shakes, and sighs, but this arrogant behavior immediately boomeranged. The television producers had a camera isolated on Mr. Gore for reaction shots, and their directors edited the videotape of his expressions into a rapid-cut sequence. When the news broadcasts ran the sequence, public and professional criticism rained down on the vice president. In response, Mr. Gore made a sharp about face and, in the second debate, came out like a lamb. During the 90 minutes, Mr. Gore expressed agreement with his opponent seven times on major issues. (You can see this “sigh” sequence in my DVD, In the Line of Fire.)

The lesson for Mr. Gore, Mr. Perry, and you is to be natural, be yourself. Don’t try to perform when you present. Instead, consider every presentation a series of person-to-person conversations.

As Mr. Perry said in response to all the ado about the video, “I've probably given 1,000 speeches. There are some that have been probably boring, some that have been animated, some that have been in between.”

Be in between. Be yourself. Leave the acting to actors.

This post also appears on Forbes.com.

Writers Block II

by Jerry Weissman

In a prior post on writer’s block, you read about how to get past the proverbial blank page with a step-by-step process that is as applicable to presenters as it is to writers. But another method to break through the mental barricade is to just start talking.

Writers have long known that speaking aloud what they have written in silence helps them to shape their ideas. In a Wired Magazine article on voice recognition, Clive Thompson tells of 16th-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne and 19th century American writer Henry James, both of whom wrote by dictating their work to their secretaries. Moving to the present, Mr. Thompson cites the example of writer and critic Tim Carmody who “found himself staring at an empty page, not knowing where to begin. He had no problem talking to friends about his ideas, so Carmody booted up Dragon, (voice recognition software from Nuance) talked aloud for hours, and got past the block.”

Mr. Carmody was experiencing the front end of a spectrum of benefits that comes from combining the written words with the spoken. At the back end of the creative process—reviewing and polishing—speaking aloud provides perspective. Many professional writers read their work to themselves (rather than to their secretaries as Messrs. Montaigne and James did.)

Giving sound to what had been a silent process puts writers in the role of their readers. This extra step gives writers an objective view of their content. Bestselling author Nicholson Baker calls his version of the verbalizing process “speak-typing,” in which he dictates to himself and types as he speaks. In an interview with the New York Times about his new book, House of Holes, Mr. Baker explained that “the words come out differently. The sentences come out simpler, and there’s less of a temptation to go back and add more foliage. I’m trying for a simpler kind of storytelling.”

Presentations are all about speaking aloud, and preparing for them should involve talking too. As a coach, I recommend that presenters rehearse their presentations by displaying their PowerPoint slides in the Slide Sorter view (also known at Storyboard) and then running through their narrative aloud, assuming the role of their audience.

But giving voice to ideas also helps that challenging front end of the creative process. Just as Mr. Carmody did, you can jump start your own creative process by speaking your presentation aloud and recording it using Dragon software or the voice record function on your smart phone. Play back the recording afterwards to shape or reshape your ideas and words, but the key to breaking the logjam is to start talking. (If this technique sounds familiar, I referenced it in the prior post as a method to eliminate meaningless words. The same approach helps you develop meaningful words)

Writer’s block occurs because the prospect of starting from scratch is daunting. Even if a writer has a clear idea of a new story—or a presenter has a clear idea of a new presentation—the prospect of choosing which of all the available ideas to include or how much detail to provide, overloads the writer’s mind. However, writers and presenters alike, having lived with their subject matter, know it intimately and have no difficulty chatting about it. Extend that facility into having a conversation in private with your recorder. You’ll find the process liberating and productive.

Mr. Thompson’s article tells us how much Mr. Montaigne valued the process: “‘The things I say,’ Montaigne dictated, ‘are better than those I write.’”

This post also appears on hbr.org