Disarm Your Audience When You Present

by Nancy Duarte  |   8:00 AM November 12, 2012

When you walk into a room as a presenter, it’s easy to feel as if you’re the central figure: You’re up front, and people came to hear you. In reality, though, you’re not the star of the show. The audience is. It’s in their power to embrace — or reject — your ideas. You’re presenting because you need them to change their beliefs or behavior in some way, and people find it hard to change. So expect them to resist.

Resistance doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, if you prepare for it, you’ll sharpen your presentation and stand a much better chance of winning your audience over. By considering different points of view and addressing doubts and fears before they become roadblocks, you’ll demonstrate an open mind — and invite your audience to respond in kind.

Here are the most common types of resistance and some tips on getting ready for them:

Logical resistance: As you plan your presentation, try to come up with arguments against your perspective. Familiarize yourself with alternate lines of reasoning by digging up articles, blog posts, and reports that challenge your stance. This kind of research will prepare you for skeptical questions and comments — and it’ll help you develop a deeper understanding of the topic and a more nuanced point of view.

Emotional resistance: Does your audience hold fast to a bias, dogma, or moral code — and do your ideas violate that in some way? Hitting raw nerves will set people off. So look at things from their perspective, and proceed carefully. If, for example, you’re at a medical conference launching a new HPV vaccination for kids, emphasize the importance of abstinence in youth.

Practical resistance: Is it physically or geographically difficult for the audience to do what you’re asking? Acknowledge any sacrifices they’re making, and show that you’re shouldering some of the burden yourself. Suppose you’re asking your team to work nights and weekends to meet a tight deadline. Explain that you’ll be in 24/7 mode, too, until the big project is wrapped up — and that everyone will get comp time afterward.

Anticipating resistance forces you to really think about the people you’re presenting to, and that makes it easier to influence them. If you’ve made a sincere effort to look at the world through their eyes, it will show when you speak. You’ll feel more warmly toward them, so you’ll take on a conversational tone. You’ll sound — and be — authentic when you address their concerns. As a result, you’ll disarm them, and they’ll be more likely to accept your message.

If you’re struggling to figure out what kinds of resistance you’ll face, share your ideas with others before you present and ask them to pressure-test the content. You may be so deeply connected to your own perspective that you’re having a hard time anticipating other points of view. Use your boss as a sounding board as you prepare to speak to the executive committee, for example. Or ask a colleague for a reality check before you present to other managers in her group.

Always remember that the people in your audience get to determine whether your idea spreads or dies. You need them more than they need you. So be humble in your approach. Their desires and goals — and their frustrations and anxieties — should shape everything you present.

This is the fifth post in Nancy Duarte’s blog series on creating and delivering presentations, based on tips from her new book, the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations.

Read the other posts here:
Post #1: How to Present to Senior Executives
Post #2: Create a Presentation Your Audience Will Care About
Post #3: Do Your Slides Pass the Glance Test
Post #4: Structure Your Presentation Like a Story

More blog posts by Nancy Duarte

More on: Communication, Presentations

NANCY DUARTE

Nancy Duarte is the author of the all-new edition of the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, as well as two award-winning books on the art of presenting, Slide:ology andResonate. Her team at Duarte, Inc., has created more than a quarter of a million presentations for its clients and teaches public and corporate workshops on presenting. Follow Duarte on Twitter: @nancyduarte.

Your Brand Is the Exhaust Fume of the Engine of Your Life

by Nilofer Merchant  |   8:00 AM July 1, 2013

“How do you manage your brand?” I get asked that question really often, especially at public-venue speaking events. Typically, I sigh. It is not that the question is silly, or the questioner shallow, but because this question itself represents so much of what is stopping all of us from doing work that matters.

We talk about “reinventing your brand” when in reality the goal is to reinvent what you work on. We talk about the “brand called you” when we talk about being able to do more of the work you love to do. We talk about ways to “deliver on the impact equation” without asking first, “what is it you want to impact?” We are told by marketing gurus that “everyone now owns a media company!” — as if somehow this is, itself, the goal — rather than a means to an end. Marketing has become the default language — the lingua franca of the day — that we use to describe work, and it is distorting how we evaluate what matters.

Yes, it’s true that web tools can let you be known for the work you do more easily and more cost effectively, letting you own how you present yourself to the world. But that’s probably the least interesting thing about these social constructs and social media tools.

The much more relevant point is that you now get to create, share, and connect ideas with others to do work, ideally meaningful and impactful work. As in the person who was able to accelerate scientific research because of the online game, “Fold It.” This particular game enables important research in the medical field, research that is usually conducted by scientists with PhDs. But making it a game that anyone could play allowed someone “unexpected” to help. A woman who worked as an executive assistant by day turned out to be the best protein folder in the world at night.

As I’ve written in more depth elsewhere, connected individuals can now achieve what once only centralized organizations could. The implications for this are huge. It changes the basis of market power for organizations because size no longer protects competitive advantage. It changes management because people can figure out for themselves what needs to be done to implement the larger strategy. It changes careers because we no longer need to belong to an organization to be able to create scale or impact. You don’t even need to be “old enough” — five-year olds can invent consumer goods products. Today, what matters is the ability to create, not the ability to first prove you can.

So let’s stop using the language of marketing to talk about meaning.

The truth is this: The brand follows the work. Your brand is the exhaust created by the engine of your life. It is a by-product of what happens as you share what you are creating, and with whom you are creating.

It is a sign, yes. Significant, yes. But the real signal comes from being able to answer these two questions:

What is it you care about? It takes courage to find and follow an individual path; finding our own path takes us off the path that others are following, in directions that can seem distinctly alone. Each of us is standing in a place no one else stands in as a function of our history, experience, vision and hopes. I call this onlyness, that thing that only you can bring to any situation. Go with it, and you end up being able to design your own life — and maybe redesign entire industries, too. At the very least, it lets you improve the results of any group you are a part of. Berkeley professors Charlan Jeanne Nemeth and Jack A. Goncalo have proven that “minority viewpoints” aid the quality of decision making by juries, by teams, and for the purpose of innovation. In other words, even when distinct points of view turn out to be wrong, speaking them lets everyone think better, create more solutions, and improve creativity. But if you don’t know what it is you care about and why, you lack the ability to contribute meaningfully.

How will you find and work with allies? While it may be lonely to step into your own path, once you do, you attract those with affinity. The clearer you are in your onlyness, the strong your magnet for the right people for you (and possibly repulsion for others.) This is a good thing. It helps you find, filter, and formulate. It eliminates wasted effort to convince those who will never be convinced. It lets you know what kind of workplace is right for you, and it lets you find the right people for your projects. It lets you align in purpose with others. Esther Dyson points out that the “trick today is not just to find the right target (that is, a person), as social networks such as LinkedIn and search tools can do, but to enlist allies and manage the work to achieve a specific goal.” (Emphasis mine.) Proximity used to reign supreme — where you lived, what school you went to, and whom your parents knew was more of a factor in what opportunities you had. Proximity is still one factor, but in the social era, the other four Ps of community end up growing in importance and power. Communities of passion who share a common interest (photography, or food, or books) can inform new product lines. Communities of purpose willingly share a common task to build something (like Wikipedia) together. Communities of practice, who share a common career or field of business, will extend your offer if it extends their expertise (like Intuit has with its accountant community). Communities of providence allow people to discover connections with others (as in Google+) and thus enable the sharing of information, products, and ideas.

Just recently, I passed up an opportunity to serve on a Fortune 100 Board of Directors. The company has a well-known history of dysfunctional board dynamics and it became clear to me that there was little one person could do to change it. When a friend asked why I was still considering the opportunity, I answered, “It would lend me legitimacy.” When I heard those words come out of my mouth, I knew I had to turn it down. If I’d said yes, it would have been because of “brand” — because I’d want readers like you to see me with more esteem. But in truth, it wouldn’t have meant I was doing more good work.

I’ve studied how actual value is created for over 10 years now, and what I know to be true is this: While what people think of us does matter, what matters much more is our ability to do and deliver. That’s what makes the ultimate difference in the world. And that’s what reputations are really built on. That’s what will draw people to you.

Yes, we are in the middle of a vast sea change in which social can put the power of connection to work to solve meaningful problems. But in order to do that more meaningful work, we need to recognize what is holding us back. In a world of “personal brand” and “leadership brand” and “personal reinvention” and so forth, we should not forget: the real signal is the work itself, and the social signaling is just its echo.

More blog posts by Nilofer Merchant

More on: Branding, Career planning

NILOFER MERCHANT

Nilofer Merchant has personally launched 100 products amounting to $18B in revenue. Her blue-chip career includes Apple, Autodesk, GoLive/Adobe. She's served on both public and private boards. Today, she lectures at Stanford. She’s an expert on collaborative leadership and author of The New How and 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era.

A Formula for Fixing the Hardest Problems

by Frank Weil  |   10:00 AM August 14, 2013

For many years I have been asking friends and colleagues, “What frustrates you the most in modern society?” I’ve received many, varied answers but at their core, so often, was a common root — another question: “How can citizens and government accomplish what modern life requires of them to improve the world in which they coexist?”

As the three basic sectors of U.S. society — government, business, and nonprofit,each of which have their own culture, language, and mentality — attempt to solve our most-pressing challenges, we seem to be sinking into a bottomless black hole. Even simple problems elude solutions, and the ones that do exist — regulation in government, competition in business, and the work of nonprofits to fill gaps — frequently fall short.

How can we find some way out of this mess?

Let’s start by considering one knotty problem: traffic in Manhattan.

Yes, as in many big cities, it does seem to get worse all the time. Private cars, taxis, buses, delivery vehicles, construction sites, double parkers, diplomats, garbage trucks, film crews, ubiquitous jay walkers are all scrambling for limited space in this dense, fast-paced city.

Just think what would happen at a four-way intersection if a (city) fire truck ran into a (private-sector) FedEx van, an ambulance from a (nonprofit) hospital, and a motorcycle driver (that is, a private citizen) without a helmet. All those vehicles (and their respective sectors) are going somewhere presumably important to them. But when these competing elements collide in a busy intersection, societal havoc is unloosed: insurance problems, pain and suffering, more traffic, litigation, and plenty of costs all around.That’s a rat’s nest of potential and real confusion and conflicts.

Into this maelstrom stepped Mayor Bloomberg. Although he wouldn’t think of himself in these terms, the mayor is a paragon “tri-sector athlete” to use Kennedy School professor Joseph Nye’s term — a rare breed of leader, who owing to an unusual breadth of experience is able to build bridges and hurdle barriers between the business, non-profit, and government sectors to address some of society’s thorniest problems.

As a first step, Bloomberg had city government officials study the problem. Looking at London, Paris, and other dense cities, they came up with the idea of deploying bike lanes, bike stations, and bikes. Citibank came up with the funds for the bikes and their stations in return for advertising rights. Finally, private citizens of all ages and stripes are making an effort to learn to ride again. Thus Citi Bike was born, out of a collaboration between the city government, private enterprise, and the public at large.

The program is still too young to know if it will fully succeed. If the high number of bikes in use is any indicator, things look promising. But traffic may need to get worse before it gets better, as it will take people time to adapt. Drivers, parkers, and pedestrians are already screaming about giving up space to bike lanes. Worse, many folks who have not been on a bike in decades are wobbling through New York’s streets and endangering themselves and everyone around them.

Is there hope? Surely, yes, if tri-sector leaders and citizens at large get behind the joint effort to collaborate and change behavior.

This may seem improbable but in reality it is an old, old idea. Such efforts at collaborative governance, as John Donahue and Richard Zeckhauser explain in their seminal book of the same name, have roots that go as far back as George Washington and his efforts to create routes to the West by working with private enterprises to build canals. The Lewis & Clark expeditions, the Smithsonian Institution, the New York Public Library, and the Metropolitan Museum are all in various ways, combinations of government funding, and private ingenuity and enterprise.

A more recent example of successful collaborative governance at work is the renaissance of New York City’s park system, when the non-profit Parks Conservancy and the City Parks department came together to develop a long-term collaborative plan to maintain, oversee, and improve the park.

Why aren’t such collaborations more obvious today? Many such efforts have to take place behind the scenes for good political reasons, and so they remain invisible, failing to get the recognition they deserve.

I have been thinking about this subject for the past 10 years, and I have come to the conclusion that a better way to untangle intractable problems, like New York City’s traffic, is by enabling genuine collaboration in the intersection of the three basic sectors — that is to create an “intersector” — a notional space where individuals like Mayor Bloomberg can work with the government, business, and non-profit sectors to make collaborative governance a reality again. That won’t be easy or quick. But when people of good will accept and recognize a joint problem and goal, it can work.

If the visionaries who planned Citi Bike and enough other participants, for instance, give it a fair try, Manhattan traffic just might get better over time, as it has in other similar cities around the world. In fact, if all this comes together and works out, the end result would not look like that crash in a four-way intersection — where the hypothetical fire truck, FedEx van, ambulance, and motorcycle collided — but more like a roundabout where those elements can integrate smoothly and safely in an orderly and flowing way. Everyone will get where they need to go, avoiding havoc and benefitting all traffic and society at large.

All it will take is tri-sector leaders and ordinary citizens who want to cooperate, who understand and embrace the elements of collaborative governance and are willing to work through the intersector to give better balance to the three traditional, and quite insular, sectors. And, then, when Manhattan traffic gets better, don’t worry; there will be lots more challenges ahead.

More blog posts by Frank Weil

More on: Corporate social responsibility, Leadership

FRANK WEIL

Frank Weil is chair of the InterSector Project, which promotes tri-sector leadership and collaborative governance. He also heads the private investment firm Abacus & Associates. In the late 1970s, he headed the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and he has chaired numerous nonprofits.