We probably all get connecting intuitively. Like when we say ‘I just connected with him’, but what does that actually mean? Can connecting be broken down into actual repeatable behaviours that you can use every time to connect with your customers, a stakeholder, your audience?  Well I’m going to try, but this is by no means a complete list.

The first thing that matters in building a connection is people like you.

Everyone has heard the first 30 seconds count, that first impression matters.  This is when what you say or do sets the tone for people to like you, or not, and don’t dismiss that, as people like to do business with people they like.

Recently I had the privilege of hearing Mark Stephenson speak.  When he was introduced, the MC did a short version of his bio.  He is among other things an expert in both prime number cryptography and computer aided design.  The intro went on for a couple of minutes and was packed with all his achievements, and to state it mildly, Mark is a super high achiever.  The audience was thinking ‘Wow, don’t think we could connect with him. He’s up there in the stratosphere and I hope I can even understand what he’s going to say’.

Mark stood up to speak and the first thing he said was ‘You probably think I’m an arse now!”  There was a brief second of silence before the whole auditorium exploded with laughter.  People were thinking ‘We like this guy!’.  Now you don’t have to swear but if you can tell people who you really are in the first moment that helps them know you and like you.

What happens in the next 30 seconds? Can you launch into your messages yet?  Absolutely not, it’s too early and you are still building that connection.

In the next 30 seconds, connecting is about being relatable and  your audience whether it’s a customer or a room full of people they need to feel  ’you get them’.

Did you see the first episode of Junior Master Chef on Sunday?  All eyes were on Anna Gare, the new judge.  When Anna was introduced to her young audience, all under 12,  she said ‘I started cooking when I was your age and I could barely see over the counter’. Her audience laughed and immediately connected with her, she was relating to them and understood what it felt like being a child cooking.

Connecting is also about seeing your interaction as a value exchange.  You might be giving your audience information, or a cool new tool, but they are giving you their time and attention.  Your audience needs to feel they are getting something of value from you, something they can take away instead of just being sold to.  This explains why there is so much free high value content on the internet.  The people who give away free high quality high value content, know by doing that they are setting in motion a high value exchange.  You initially engage with them, through the high value content (whether it’s downloading a free e book, or watching a video).  It’s almost like a taste test, and if you like what you see you will probably buy what they are selling.  They sold to you by connecting with you first through a value exchange.

These are some of the building blocks of connecting with other people. Of course the acid test of connecting is whether they would like to see you again?  I know I would love to see Mark Stephenson present again, and again.

I realised at that moment that’s what great presenters and great leaders have in common. With poetry and plumbing, they are able to engage both our minds and our hearts (the poetry).  Poetry is also the things that can happen in a presentation that make it memorable.

An ‘OK’ presenter  or a novice presenter might just have the plumbing down pat, the facts, figures and the data, and make a ho hum presentation.   A great presenter, working on the same material will intuitively realise that the poetry is missing.  There is nothing there that engages, excites or connects with the audience.  So how can you introduce ‘poetry’ into your next presentation?  First of all there is the power of the unexpected.  The predictability of a presentation makes it actually mind numbing.  We can almost guess what the speaker is going to say before they say it.  Presenters can break this pattern by doing something unexpected.

We once attended a presentation on change management when the presenter simply said “I want to start by sharing this with you”. And proceeded to show the Amazing Honda Ad called ‘The Cog’ which ends with the tag line “Isn’t it wonderful when things work?”.  He then used this tag line to make the rest of his presentation work.  It was unexpected and that made it powerful.

Poetry happens when you connect what you are saying with the people in the room.  You present like you are talking to just one person and you speak conversationally.  So often when I am listening to a TED talk, I feel the speaker is speaking to just me.  Even though I know they are in an auditorium with thousands of people watching and I am watching a recorded version on my computer!  The illusion is powerful because they use simple everyday language.  Language that you would use if you were talking face to face with just one person.  I am immediately reminded of the power of JFK’s vision around space travel when in 1961 he said ‘We will put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth by the end of this decade’. You can feel the poetry . Everybody connected with that and understood what he meant and indeed a generation of Americans worked to make it happen.  Imagine if JFK had used obfuscating language like “Technology enabled, strategically focused inter galactic travel, best of breed,..”

The poetry gold standard of presentations is when presenters humanise their content and make it come alive by using stories.  Not business stories but stories of the everyday, the ordinary, as this is where your audience mirrors itself in your stories. A CEO talking about dropping his kids off to school, or shopping at Bunnings on the weekend is presentation poetry gold.

Every time you take a risk in a presentation, it is an opportunity for your presentation to have poetry in it.  Great presenters know this and often take risks.  Mark Stephenson says he often walks out of presentations when leaders tell him ‘We can be innovative if we stay within the rules”. The walk out is a risk and shocking, but he knows in a matter of seconds people will follow him out and invite him back in. He’s making a point there that innovation only happens when you are ready to break the rules.  Instead of saying this as a trite statement he stages a walk out to add gravitas to the situation and make it an unforgettable experience for people in the room.   Risky but pure poetry.

Sometimes poetry happens by chance in presentations, but mostly you have to plan for it…if you want to engage, excite and inspire your audience. If you are interested in making this happen for you, we are running a workshop on June 21, ‘Making Good Presenters, Inspiring!’

The ‘Curse of Knowledge’ is referenced through Elizabeth Newton’s, PhD research. Newton studied a simple game in which she put people into pairs and one was given the role of tapper and one of listener. The tappers received a list of twenty-five well know songs, such as Happy Birthday.  Each tapper chose a song and tapped it out to the listener.  The listener had to try and guess the song….simple!

Newton asked the tappers what they thought their success rate would be and they estimated 50% but there actual result was only 2.5%!

But why is the tappers / listeners exercise so difficult?  It’s hard to be a tapper.  The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge.  When you are a tapper you can’t imagine what it’s like for the listener to not know this knowledge…in your mind it is as clear as day.  Your knowledge curses you.

This Curse of Knowledge happens to us in all walks of life as leaders to their teams, teachers to students and parents to children.  So the first step is to recognise that as a communicator you, indeed we all, have the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ and the second step is to actively dodge this curse.  One way could be running what you are trying to communicate past someone who knows absolutely nothing about it.  In the 1993 film Philadelphia, Denzel Washington plays a lawyer who always says ‘Now, explain it to me like I’m a four-year-old’.  We could all take a leaf out of that book.  When you can successfully explain something to a 4 year old you have definitely dodged the curse of knowledge.  Of course you have to strike a balance and make sure you don’t dumb your messages right down or come across as condescending or patronising.

Newton concludes in her research that we all overestimate our ability as communicators – surely if we just tell them they will get it.  Sadly too much leadership communication continues to impale itself on the stakes  of overconfidence and the ‘Curse of Knowledge’.

John Stewart ex CEO of NAB nailed it when he said ‘Communicating complex messages in a way people understand is really hard, using jargon is easy.  It is not until you truly understand something that you then can communicate it in a way everyone understands……and only the very good leaders do that’.

Early 2009, Sonia Aplin was facing a challenge.  As the Internal Communications Manager for Ericsson Australia and New Zealand Sonia was tasked with advising the senior leadership team on how best to communicate the new corporate strategy.

The challenge for Sonia and Ericsson was two-fold.  She knew that for the strategy to be successful, employees needed more than to be able to just recite the new strategy – they needed to really believe in it and understand how their work contributed to the organisation’s success.

The other challenge was that the latest Employee Engagement Survey showed two concerning facts.  The Leadership Communication index was at 57 points (compared with the Ericsson Group total of 73) while Strategy Awareness was at a moderate 66 points.  A critical success factor for the Ericsson strategy depended on improvement in both these areas.  Sonia and her HR colleagues had a goal to increase both those measures by 3 points….and anyone who works closely with employee opinion surveys will know that this is easier said than done.

During this time, Barack Obama was the hot topic.  Being a communications specialist, Sonia was more interested in the way he communicated as opposed to his politics.  What she noticed, as well as other commentators, was Obama’s effective use of story.  So that triggered Sonia’s research into storytelling.  What started with a Google search, ended with a tender process and working relationship with us to deliver organisational storytelling workshops to their top 80 leaders.

Sonia along with the Leadership & Culture Manager went to the executive team with their recommendation.  To take the leaders through a 2-day program.  The first day was designed to ensure understanding of the new strategy and the desired behaviours associated with that.

The second day was our organisational storytelling workshops, which would give them the practical business skills of storytelling to engage their employees and clients in the strategy.

They were tentative at first…..we are talking about taking storytelling into a male-dominated, engineering firm, but their courage was rewarded. The executive team supported the approach and every single member of the team, including the CEO, attended the training and continue to encourage and role model the use of organisational storytelling throughout Ericsson.  97% of the participants agreed it was relevant to their role with 91% saying it improved their effectiveness as an influencer and leader.

Leadership Communication Capability, increased by a staggering 18 points.

So did it work?  Sonia states “Anecdotally, yes. The use of stories in team meetings, presentations and formal and informal communications is obvious and is having a real impact.  Another measure of the success is that the Australian and New Zealand Communications team won the Ericsson Global Award for Best Strategy Communications, with storytelling being cited as the point-of-difference. So that was something we were all very proud of and we are now working with our global colleagues to bring storytelling to their organisations.”

But what about the tangibles…the key measures of success?  Increasing both Leadership Communication and Strategy Awareness by 3 points. The subsequent Employee Opinion Survey showed that Strategy Awareness increased by 11 points and Leadership Communication Capability, increased by a staggering 18 points. That is what we call a success story.

If you haven’t watched it already, 4 judges, Seal, Joel Madden, Delta Goodrem and Keith Urban sit in chairs with their back to the stage.  It’s a blind audition with singers being judged purely on their voice and if a judge / coach likes what they hear, they hit a red button that turns their chair around.  But what makes it compelling viewing is (apart from the quality of the singers) if more than one judge turns around, they have to persuade the contestant to join their team.  There is a shift in the power balance and you see both leadership and the art of influence in operation.  In one of the first episodes, Seal and Delta Godrem both went head to head to try and secure one of the contestants, Chris Sebastian.

Seal told Chris, ‘If you come on my team, I’m interested in one thing and one thing only, making you great’. Delta in response said ‘I understand your spirit and I understand this country. This is my country.  I love Australia.  We can make this happen together, and that will be a very easy ride for us”.

To which Seal retorted  “That is a very good pitch she’s making, but there’s one thing that doesn’t sit with me, she keeps using the word easy.  It’s not going to be easy brother”.

Chris thought about it for a moment and went with Seal and later he explained why saying  ‘When she said it will be easy with me – she lost me – the last thing I wanted people to think was I had taken the easy way out’.

There are classic communications lessons we could all draw from this.  Seal made his pitch all about the singer. Who can resist the opportunity to have someone coach you to greatness?  It’s irrestible and that’s why artists come on to shows like this, to be discovered.  Delta promised an easy ride thinking that would appeal.  Compare the promise of an easy ride versus the promise of greatness?  Which would you pick?  Seal also understood where this particular contestant was coming from, he wanted to carve out his own identity and not ride on the coat tails of his famous older brother Guy Sebastian.  So Seal immediately picked up on the word easy ride, understanding that this would be the last thing Chris would want. Also when Seal said it won’t be an easy ride, he knew this would not turn Chris off as he was also speaking to a universal truth. Everyone knows it’s hard to make it in the music business.

To persuade as a communicator, it has to be all about your audience, what they want not what you think they want. As Seal and Delta’s responses indicate there is a world of difference between what we might think someone wants versus what they actually want.  You have to understand your audience, and walk in their shoes to succeed, to influence and persuade.

I am loving watching and learning from Seal (and the other coaches), and now have a legitimate (cough, cough) academic reason to continue to couch surf and watch The Voice weekly.  And you have been warned, its highly addictive.

You will no doubt have your own opinions on whether she has demonstrated those attributes or not …I am not going there with this post.  What I do want to propose is that Government is also about ensuring that those reforms are communicated in a way that people understand and connect with.  Gillard admitted that she has made mistakes in not putting enough effort into ‘selling’ her big reforms.

There are lessons in this for current and would be leaders.  It is very well to have courage and strength to implement your new business strategy or organisational change but you if you do not have the ability to communicate that to your employees, your shareholders and the wider community then most likely you will fail in your attempts.

You can have the best strategy in the world but if and your leaders cannot communicate this in a way that your people understand and connect with then you chances of success will significantly decrease.  It has been and continues to be the reason most change efforts fail.  And here is the tough bit, it is not a one off communication, it should be a day-to-day focus for you and all your leaders in your company or team.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of interviewing John Stewart who is the ex CEO of National Australia Bank Group.  Stewart was known for his communication ability and seeing him first hand on several occasions, I can certainly attest to this.

Stewart said that “I recall when I first became a CEO I thought that about 20 to 25 percent of my time should be taken up by communication.  I soon started to realise that is was at least 75 percent of my time and often much more than that”

So as a leader you need the courage and strength to make the big decisions and implement those strategies but then you need to ensure you get out their and communicate, communicate and communicate again.  Otherwise you may find yourself in your own leadership battle.

Click through to Read the full interview with John Stewart

We met Carson Page a couple of years ago in Sydney.  Carson has a dream job working as the L&D Manager for Google Australia and spending a lot of his time travelling around the globe doing all these cool things that we just assume that everyone who works for Google does.

Because of his frequent absence I more than often receive one of his out of office messages and the reason I seek them out is because they are often funny, but always honest and refreshing.  His latest one I found particularly honest and refreshing, not too mention funny and with Carson’s permission I share it with you.

“Up until Friday, March 30, I’ll be in MTV at a conference.  This will result in my response to you being delayed by a little bit.  From March 30 until April 10, I’ll be on holiday.  This will result in
 my response being delayed by a considerable amount, specifically until 
at least April 10.

For any questions about L&D, you’ll just have to be patient, because 
everyone else will be at this conference too; though, they may be a
bit better about checking e-mail.

If your message is urgent, please contact your local law enforcement
 agency, as they are better equipped to handle life-or-death situations.  If things are exceptionally bad, your local government
 will assemble a team of oil-drilling roughnecks, give them some
 mediocre astronaut training by way of a comical training montage, and
 then send them into space to prevent the asteroid from colliding with
 Earth.  If your problem is not an asteroid, well…I’m afraid I can’t
help you there.

I’ll try and get back to you at my earliest convenience, which may or 
may not be convenient to you.

Sit tight – I’ll return April 10.

Yours truly,

-Carson”

So it got me thinking about how honest and refreshing our communication is and I thought I would share this with you so that you may ask yourself the same question.  Sure, not everything we write has to be humorous and witty but wouldn’t it be good to be in a position that people are actually awaiting your next communication, even it is an out of office reply.

So let us know about what you think of honest and refreshing communication and please leave a comment.  We know that leaving comments is a pain in the butt for you but bloody hell it makes us feel good.

So whether you are presenting with or without PowerPoint here are 3 top tips to make your next presentation shine. This can be summarized in just one-word connections.  People need to connect to you the person (not the presenter, not yet anyway); they need to feel you connect with them and they need to connect to your messages.

Getting your audience to connect with you first as a person, is the presentation equivalent of shaking hands when you meet someone. Just as you would never launch into business stuff before shaking hands, you would never launch into your presentation without getting the audience to connect with you first.  So can you begin with something personal, humble, even funny, that segues into your presentation? Keep it short, and never launch into your CV – that is boring.

How can you connect with your audience? One CEO coming into the company’s strategy session handled this one by saying ‘Even this morning when I was driving here I thought what not another strategy session, feels like we just had one a few weeks ago!’. He was echoing what a lot of people in the room where thinking and feeling – so even before you have started your formal presentation people connect to you, as a person and they feel you understand them …that you connect with them.

The next tip for all presenters is to get people to connect with your messages.

Just yesterday in my daughter’s school I was listening to a parenting expert who said you should have 3 non negotiables as a parent, because your kids can only remember 3 and any more will be hell for you as a parent!  The same rule applies to your presentation have only 3 key messages. 3 is all your audience can remember and anymore and it’s hell maybe not for you but definitely for them!  Some tough love here, no one is going to walk away from any presentation remembering what your 8 key messages were.

For each key message think of an anecdote, a story that would make it memorable.  People remember the story and through that they remember the point you were making.

So there you have it – to be a successful presenter with or without PowerPoint you need to get people to connect to you as a person first, you need to connect to the audience and you need the audience to connect to your messages, by having a maximum of 3 and using stories, anecdotes and humor to make your messages memorable.

“What a wonderful experience it’s been soaking up your storytelling knowledge and applying it to my business. You really sharpened up my game over the course.”

Paul Kaan, The Social Larder

We are experts in business and thought leaders in storytelling and this combination has enabled us to develop the very practical and results driven, Success Through Stories Online Coaching Program. This interactive program contains over 30 training modules as well as direct access to us.  The program is designed to take you from a white belt in storytelling to a master black belt…with a clear focus on business success & results all using the power of storytelling.

Now, if you need to get your messages across better, if you want to increase sales and grow your business or if you want to be a more engaging, influential and we are going to go all out and say the word INSPIRING business person then the Success Through Stories Online Coaching Program is for you.

“The Success Through Stories online coaching program was beyond my imagination …The quality of the content is exceptional”

Kristin Owen, Kumon franchisee

We invite you to join us today and start achieving success through stories.

So if you are ready to increase your sales and grow your business all through the power of storytelling, then click here to start your journey. We have seen so many clients just like you achieve success after success by using our proven, results-driven methodology, to know that this will be true for you too, no matter what industry you are in.  Whatever you are trying to achieve in business, storytelling will help you succeed.

Looking forward to seeing you on the program.  This will be one of the most important decisions you will make for business success in 2012.