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I’ve said many times to tech executives that I couldn’t care less what their eyebrows are doing. Why? Because I’m an inside out communications coach, not an outside in one.
What does that mean?
The “inside” is your mind, your insights, the value you can share with your audiences. That’s the most vital thing to master as a spokesperson, whether it’s in a media interview, on a podcast, or from the stage. Are you sharing something that your audience can use? Something that will inspire them to think and then act in a different way? A spokesperson who shifts an audience’s thinking is a master, regardless of what they are doing with their faces or their hands.
Once I told a terrific engineering executive to use an open-armed gesture in his keynote in
front of 20,000 people. I thought it would help him look more natural, more welcoming.
But he took my counsel to heart so much that he over-focused on that gesture. On stage, several times, he paused, opened his arms in an awkward manner, and then continued speaking. Every time he did it, he looked like a marionette. I was gutted. This was my fault. He concentrated on the outside - the gestures - which lessened his focus on the inside - the exceptional insights he had to offer.
In the tech industry we’ll forgive someone who is wearing a t-shirt and dirty sneakers on the keynote stage, we’ll try to keep
up with someone who talks too fast or too softly. As long as that person is delivering a message that will help us succeed in our businesses, we’ll try our best to listen to and comprehend it! Because we care about the value of the content and the outcomes we can create with it. The style of the deliverer is secondary.
So many of the people I coach as speakers spend 90% of their time being engineers. They aren’t performers. When we first start working together, I want them to do the best THEY can do, not the best that a regular contributor on CNN or a Chief Evangelist could do.
As a technical person
builds their public speaking and interview skills and their confidence on stages, we DO move on to addressing nuances like dress, gestures, and facial expressions.
But that’s never where I start. We start with the inside - the insight that will change their audiences minds!
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