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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Tap into the powerful techniques of professional actors and great communicators The Pin Drop Principle is a step-by-step master class for anyone wishing to become a more confident and credible communicator. Lewis and Mills believe all business professionals ought to deliver their message in such an engaging way that one could literally hear a pin drop when they speak. The secret to doing so comes from an unusual world: professional acting. By activating "objective" and "intention"--the main tools of actors (and great communicators)--business people can give their messages meaning and relevance, so the recipients walk away knowing why the message is important and what is in it for them. * Empowers business professionals with performance-based delivery techniques--from storytelling to vocal dynamics--essential to becoming a great communicator * Written for anyone wishing to engage listeners, establish instant credibility, influence key decision makers, and create a positive lasting impression * Based on the Pinnacle Method, one of the most popular and groundbreaking communication skills training methods The Pin Drop Principle is an accessible resource for anyone who routinely needs to present ideas to large or small groups, convey feedback effectively, conduct difficult conversations, and persuade others.
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Seitenzahl: 402
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Table of Contents
Praise for The Pin Drop Principle
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
About the Pinnacle Method and The Pin Drop Principle
Chapter 1: Understand the Secrets of Persuasion: Communicating with Intention and Objective
Intention and Objective
Putting Intention and Objective into Practice
Chapter 2: Tell a Good Story: Using Personal Experiences to Inspire and Persuade
The Power of Storytelling
Why Is Storytelling So Effective?
How to Craft a Good Story
Finding Your Voice as a Storyteller
Chapter 3: Craft a Compelling Narrative: Building the Framework to Support Your Message
Composing Your Message: An Overview
Assessing Your Audience
Finding Your Core Theme
The Primacy–Recency Effect
The Rule of Three
Mastering Your Transitions
Structuring Your Message
Rhetorical Tools and Techniques
Chapter 4: Be Prepared: Managing Nerves and Controlling Anxiety
Preparing Like a Pro
The Anxiety of Performance
Chapter 5: Project Confidence: Expressing Your Intention Nonverbally
Intent Versus Impact
Congruence Versus Incongruence
Creating a Strong First Impression
The Five Major Areas of Nonverbal Communication
Chapter 6: Say It Like You Mean It: Using Your Voice to Influence
The Power of the Voice
Paralanguage
Volume
Pitch
Inflection
Pace
Articulation
Choose Your Operatives
Protect Your Voice
Chapter 7: Listen to Understand: Maximizing Comprehension and Retention
Why Listening Matters
Barriers to Effective Listening
Active Listening
The Four Types of Listening
Improving Your Listening Skills
Chapter 8: Think on Your Feet: Mastering Impromptu Speaking in Any Situation
The Challenge of Thinking on Your Feet
Mastering Impromptu Speaking
Tackling the “What Do You Do?” Question
Chapter 9: Stay Focused and On Track: Handling Questions and Controlling Your Audience
Distracted Audiences
Red Flags and Warning Signs
Controlling Your Audience
Capturing (and Keeping) Your Audience's Attention
Handling Questions Effectively
Prepare by Murder Board
Chapter 10: Assert Yourself: Gaining Commitment, Providing Feedback, and Delivering Difficult News
Getting What You Want
The Persuasion Equation
Finding Your Signature Style
Gaining Commitment
Getting Buy-In from Senior Leadership
Providing Feedback
Delivering Bad News
Conclusion
Notes
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Glossary of Terms
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
About Pinnacle Performance Company
Index
End User License Agreement
Praise for The Pin Drop Principle
“A great book. At the end of each chapter, I found myself cheering for the concepts and wishing I had been introduced to these ideas years ago!”
—Dan Hebel, former senior vice president, claims, Allstate Insurance Company
“Practical, straightforward, sane advice. Anyone who speaks will benefit from applying the concepts in The Pin Drop Principle to their communication.”
—Eloise Haverland, director, training and development, Fort Dearborn Company
“The techniques presented in The Pin Drop Principle have proven to be the most effective communication tools that I have acquired as a senior executive. I can only imagine how much more valuable they could be if I had been exposed to them twenty years ago.”
—Gregory J. Rizzo, former president and CEO, Spectra Energy Partners
“The Pin Drop Principle is essential for anyone wanting to improve presentation delivery.”
—Roshan Joseph, global head, learning and development, Virtusa Corporation
“This insightful book provides everything you need to know to move from being an average speaker to becoming a great speaker.”
—Brendan Noonan, senior vice president, learning and development, Emirates Airline Group
Copyright © 2012 by David Lewis and G. Riley Mills. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
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Author photos by Ben Newton
Cover image by iStockphoto
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis, David
The pin drop principle : captivate, influence, and communicate better using the time-tested methods of professional performers / David Lewis and G. Riley Mills. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-28919-8 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-118-31013-7 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-31016-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-31017-5 (ebk)
1. Business communication. 2. Persuasion (Psychology)
3. Communication. I. Mills, G. Riley. II. Title.
HF5718.L475 2012
658.4′5—dc23
To Celeste, Rider, and Hunter, for their love and inspiration
—DL
To be heard so intently that a pin dropping would be a shock … is, of course, the perfect high C of communication.
—UTA HAGEN
Introduction
Communication—the human connection—is the key to personal and career success.
—Paul J. Meyer
We have been privileged, over the course of our careers, to train thousands of executives around the world. Wherever our travels have taken us, people across all industries consistently bemoan the poor communication skills of the individuals within their organization, from entry-level employees all the way to the C-suite. Complaints include lack of credibility and assertiveness, low levels of enthusiasm, unclear messaging, and more.
This will likely not surprise you. How many times have you attended a meeting, sat through a presentation, or listened to someone's story and thought,
Experts estimate that the average business professional attends a total of 61.8 meetings per month—that's more than three meetings a day.1 According to the National Statistics Council, 37 percent of employee time is spent in meetings. A full 91 percent of business professionals admit to daydreaming during the meetings they attend, and a shocking 39 percent confess to falling asleep.2 Judging from these statistics, it is quite apparent that a lot of people out there are not engaging their audiences.
This book, and the methods and techniques we present here, will help you make sure you are never one of those people.
Without engagement—meaning your audience is in a willing state of attentiveness—effective communication is not possible. This is a fact. It doesn't matter who you are or what topic you are discussing, if the arrow that is your message does not hit its intended target, you will have fallen short of the mark as a communicator. Think about it. You can be the most brilliant nuclear physicist in the world, but if the people in the audience you are presenting to have fallen asleep, the theories you are there to explain will not be understood. As a salesperson, you can have the most amazing product on the market, but if your customers aren't clear about what it can do for them, you are not making that sale. As anyone tasked with delivering a message to others knows, you need to penetrate your audience to make an impact on them. You must engage them if you hope to persuade them. We want to teach you the rules of engagement. It's as simple as that.
At the heart of The Pin Drop Principle is a conviction that the burden of engagement always lies with the speaker. It is your responsibility, in any communication you deliver—whether you're running a meeting, presenting material, or sharing a story—to engage your audience so fully and completely with what you are saying that, at any given moment, you really could hear a pin drop. As legendary acting teacher Stella Adler puts it, “When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.”
We all know a great communicator when we see one, that rare individual who captures our attention, rouses our emotions, or compels us to take action. We are drawn to people like this—both in our personal lives and in the public arena—those unique individuals that can project confidence and speak with passion and purpose. In fact, let's try a little experiment. Close your eyes right now and think of the first three people who come to mind when you hear the words great communicator. Whose faces do you see? Which voices do you hear? Chances are that some of the names on your list probably include politicians or public figures like Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, or Martin Luther King Jr., individuals generally acknowledged to be great orators. Or you might have gone in a slightly different direction, listing corporate executives like Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, or Meg Whitman, or perhaps you have chosen media figures like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Maher, or Tony Robbins.
All great communicators share five traits in common. When they are speaking—when they're “on”—their speech comes across as clear, concise, confident, credible, and compelling. But they have something extra—some spark that makes them more engaging or dynamic than those who are just good communicators, or even very good ones. What makes them so effective as communicators? Is it simply their self-confidence or their ability to tell a story? The way they use facial expressions or body language? Is it their voice? How does someone attain that mysterious combination of passion and confidence that results in charisma?
In truth, it is never one thing alone that makes a speaker engaging in the eyes of an audience, whether that audience is a boardroom full of investors or a set of in-laws at a dinner party. It is the combination of many skills and qualities all bundled together to support the communicator's secret weapon: the activation of a strong and specific intention in pursuit of a clear and tangible objective.
Many people share a common misconception that great communicators are simply born that way, that they were somehow endowed at birth with the magical ability to move people with their words. Sure, great communicators make it look easy. But like any top athlete or brilliant opera star, this greatness does not happen by chance; it is a result of disciplined practice and hours of hard work. In fact, great speakers refine and perfect their communication skills for precisely that reason: to make it look easy. They want their delivery to appear effortless in the eyes of an audience. But the big secret, as any effective speaker knows, is that great communicators are not born; they are made. The greatest orators in history didn't start out great; they achieved their polish and panache through effort and diligence, through trial and error, and by pushing through mediocrity, never settling for good enough.
In other words, they learned the tools and techniques of great communication, and they never stopped honing them.
In the system of effective communication we teach (it's called the Pinnacle Method, and we talk about it more in a page or two), the secrets to success as a communicator are expressed graphically in what we call the Pinnacle Matrix (Figure I.1).
Figure I.1 The Pinnacle Matrix
The matrix is two concentric circles, with the center ring, or bull's-eye, representing what we believe are the heart and soul of great communication: intention and objective. As we begin to discuss in Chapter One, these two concepts are the spark that transforms communication from good to great. Once activated, intention and objective will inform all the other main aspects of your communication—your material, your preparation, and your delivery (or, as we call it in the Pinnacle Method, your performance).
As anyone in business knows, countless books and articles have been written on the subject of effective communication: how to appear more likeable, how to influence people, how to make more sales, and so on. The Pin Drop Principle is different from those, packed with the effective and accessible tools and techniques for organizing material, preparing to communicate, and delivering a message—both time-tested approaches and techniques informed by recent research in psychology and neuropsychology.
But there's a twist—a crucial one. In The Pin Drop Principle, every aspect of communication is filtered through a unique lens. We approach the subject of effective communication from a perspective that most people have probably never even considered before, in a methodology we call Performance-Based Communication. Specifically, we build on the time-honored delivery techniques that professional actors have used for centuries to deliver credible and compelling performances to their audiences.
That's right. We said actors.
What exactly does a professional actor know about effective communication? The answer: just about everything. Think about it. Aside from psychologists and novelists, no one studies human behavior and motivation more thoroughly than the actor. (Christian Bale, who won an Academy Award for playing a crack addict in The Fighter, recently remarked that “studying people endlessly without having to apologize” for it was his favorite part of the job.)3 And then, after studying people's behaviors, emotions, thought processes, motivations, movements, facial expressions, gestures, and voices, the professional actor channels it all, and we receive it in all its power. Together, actor and audience communicate.
In his seminal book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, sociologist Erving Goffman uses imagery from the theater to discuss human interaction in daily life. Calling every person a “social actor,” Goffman makes the case that we all play various roles in our relationships with others, writing, “the part one individual plays is tailored to the parts played by the others present.”4 We behave and present ourselves one way in front of the boss and another way in front of a next-door neighbor. How we behave depends on our circumstances—the person with whom we are communicating and the objective we are pursuing at any given moment.
So what makes actors such great communicators? Ronald Reagan, one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history, was actually dubbed “The Great Communicator” by the press because of his impressive skills as a speaker and influencer. When asked how his background as an actor served him in his role as a world leader, Reagan responded, “Some of my critics over the years have said that I became president because I was an actor who knew how to give a good speech. I suppose that's not too far wrong. Because an actor knows two important things—to be honest in what he's doing and to be in touch with the audience.”5 When asked how Reagan's years as an actor influenced his presidency, Reagan's Chief of Staff, Kenneth Duberstein, said, “Certainly, it's the communication, the ability to communicate, the ability to find the right words … the right expression or the right anecdote … proving yourself each day … because you have another performance.”6
Communication, as defined by researchers John Schermerhorn, James Hunt, and Richard Osborn, is “the process of sending and receiving messages with attached meanings.”7 These messages can be delivered verbally and nonverbally, and no one is more of an expert in both verbal and nonverbal communication than an actor. Quite simply, that is what actors do. Professional actors spend years honing their craft—learning how to employ voice, gestures, and body language to influence others. And it is a craft, with techniques, tricks, skills, and practices that can be taught and learned—by anyone.
The premise we operate on is a simple one: that the exact same toolbox of skills that has been used for centuries by professional actors can also be used quite effectively by non-actors. In fact, anyone who desires to appear more confident and compelling in their communication—whether they're trying to reach and influence their boss, a client, or their future in-laws—can take advantage of these methods. And there's more good news: you already have many of these tools in your communication arsenal. What we do over the course of The Pin Drop Principle is show you how to use them more effectively, in ways you may never have considered before, to sharpen your communication and deliver your message—any message—with purpose.
In taking cues from actors, you will be in illustrious company. Leaders throughout history have inspired nations with their soaring rhetoric. And for years, many of these powerful leaders have quietly enlisted the help of professional actors and acting coaches to train them in the art of performance-based communication.
In 2011, the Academy Award for Best Picture went to a film called The King's Speech. The movie was based on the little-known but true story of King George VI, who, racked with stage fright and an uncontrollable stutter, in 1926 secretly employed an Australian actor named Lionel Logue to help him overcome his fear of public speaking. Using the very same training methods of speaking and breathing employed by actors in the theater, Logue was not only able to help the king overcome his devastating stammer, he was also able to transform the shy and timid leader into a confident and credible orator who was eventually able to lead and inspire his countrymen through the trials and tribulations of World War II.
Of course, up until recently, very few people knew anything about King George studying acting techniques to help him project a strength and confidence he did not actually possess. Imagine the reaction at the time if word about this had gotten out—the king of England being trained by … an actor! As it happened, Logue had taken great pains to keep their relationship a secret as a gesture of respect for the king and his privacy. It was only decades later, long after both men had passed away, when Logue's grandson discovered his grandfather's diaries detailing what had taken place, that this amazing story finally came to light.
But King George was not the only great leader who has borrowed from the performer's toolbox to sharpen and shape their personal communication. Other individuals of passion and influence have also achieved success at least in part due to these methods—people like Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton, Winston Churchill, Bob Dole, Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, Hu Jintao, Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, John F. Kennedy, Oprah Winfrey, and Robert F. Kennedy, to name just a few. Sadly, even Adolf Hitler is said to have secretly studied with an acting coach to teach him to use his voice and body more effectively in his communication. Of course, the origins of these techniques don't simply go back decades, but centuries, all the way back to ancient Athens, where Demosthenes—arguably the greatest orator of all time—was inspired by the actor Satyrus to perfect his delivery.
There is an adage in the theater that all you need to create drama is a plank and a passion. In the years before television and radio, actors would travel from city to city performing on makeshift stages wherever crowds would gather. This same principle of a plank and a passion is often referenced in the business world, since the concept is equally applicable for someone communicating in a corporate setting. As the actor John Lithgow pointed out in an interview on The Colbert Report, in the end “All business is show business.”8
Think for a moment, and strip away the flashy PowerPoint slides and glossy handouts. It doesn't matter whether you are selling a product, delivering a performance review, or starting a neighborhood book club, at its very essence, every communication consists of three simple elements: you, your message, and your audience.
In many ways, the relationship between speaker and audience in a corporate setting is the same as the relationship between actor and audience in the theater. Both operate under an unwritten contract: an audience will willingly offer time and attention if, in return, the speaker will provide that audience with information or content that is worth the value of their time. A communion of sorts takes place in this exchange, a flow of give-and-take between speaker and audience. Whether it is Hamlet delivering his “to be or not to be” monologue, Mark Zuckerberg pitching the concept of Facebook to a group of potential investors, or a young man asking his girlfriend to marry him, it all comes down to the same formula—one formulated for the ages by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle wrote eloquently about such subjects as oratory, politics, and theater (three things that have a lot in common). In his famous treatise Rhetoric, Aristotle discussed the art of persuasion, recognizing that any speech or communication basically consisted of three things: speaker, subject, and audience.
We all present ourselves on a daily basis; we all perform. As author Ken Howard writes in his book Act Natural, “Every day in our life and work, we play many different roles—as friends, lovers, spouses, parents, students, teachers, employees, managers, CEOs…. The key to genuine communication, whether you're playing Hamlet, a top job candidate, or a VP of marketing, is getting your authentic self before the people in the room.”9 While most people think of a presentation as a formal event involving standing up in front of a crowd, in reality, every time you interact with another person you are presenting ideas or information for the benefit of another person or group. And just as every interaction can be considered a presentation, you can take it a step further and think of it as a performance as well—a chance for you to consciously and skillfully put your best self forward and deliver your message effectively and engagingly. With The Pin Drop Principle, we invite you to think of every communication you do as a performance. Not acting. Not theatricality for theatricality's sake but as a performance to an audience, even if that audience is only one person.
About the Pinnacle Method and The Pin Drop Principle
The birth of The Pin Drop Principle dates back to the creation of our performance-based communication skills firm, Pinnacle Performance Company. What began as a unique and experimental approach to training communication and presentation skills has evolved into a proven, innovative learning system that has empowered thousands of executives around the world, at companies such as Apple, GE, Oracle, Capgemini, Walgreens, Allstate, Barclays, and Emirates—not just in their business interactions, but their social communication as well. This year, Pinnacle was proud to accept the 2011 Award for Vendor Innovation in Learning & Talent Management from the World Human Resources Development Congress at a ceremony in Mumbai, India.
To understand what makes The Pin Drop Principle's approach to effective communication different, you first need to understand our individual backgrounds as the book's authors. Aside from our years of corporate experience running companies, managing sales teams, and facilitating learning, we share one other trait in common: we both have extensive training and experience as professional actors. And it is precisely the meshing of these two skill sets that led to the creation of this book.
One of us graduated from Cornell University, majoring in business and communication before ultimately focusing on acting; the other studied acting at the Theatre School, DePaul University, before shifting over to the world of business. After completing our respective studies, we both embarked on dual career tracks, working in business while also continuing to appear professionally onstage and onscreen, in film and on television, working with the likes of Ewan McGregor, Milos Forman, Lois Smith, Zack Snyder, Jason Alexander, Tom McCarthy, Juliana Margulies, Patrick Wilson, Michael Jordan, Neil McDonough, John Heard, Kyle Chandler, and Penelope Milford.
Prior to launching Pinnacle, we worked in various corporate leadership roles, where we were often tasked with bringing in vendors to provide workshops and seminars for our teams: leadership training, sales training, or communication skills training. And while some of these workshops had value, we quickly discovered that virtually every company we hired (and every book we purchased) came up short, failing to cover in any significant detail the two most important aspects of communication—the ones we had mastered as professional actors: the concept of intention and the application of a person's physical delivery to achieve their given objective, whether that objective was making more sales, motivating a team, or creating a more streamlined workforce. Time after time, these so-called experts focused on theory and structure, while barely mentioning the actual delivery and outward communication of the people we had sent to the training!
We quickly realized that while our team members were generally prepared with their content and knew their material, too many times when they actually delivered that material, their physical and verbal messaging—their performance—failed to put the information across; it was a serious blind spot, and sometimes a fatal one. The disconnect in their communication between material and delivery often meant losing a million-dollar deal, angering a loyal customer, or inadequately training a new employee—costly, damaging situations that could have been avoided if their message had been delivered properly the first time.
And that's when the light went on.
We realized that we basically had two options. We could continue to pour our limited training dollars into workshops and seminars that were disappointing, cookie-cutter, or simply a waste of time, or we could create a brand new curriculum ourselves—one that originated from the invaluable tools and techniques we had mastered as professional actors. And with that, the Pinnacle Method was born.
After piloting our initial series of programs and curricula with a select group of Fortune 500 companies, we instantly knew that we were onto something: that the exact same methods and techniques used by professional actors could be transferred, quite easily, to any environment to make anyone's communication more effective and compelling. It is precisely these methods that we have decided to share with you in the pages of The Pin Drop Principle. A note: this book is not about acting. And it will not teach you how to be a great actor. Acting is a craft, and like any craft, it takes years to study and perfect. What we have done in The Pin Drop Principle is take the time-honored performance delivery techniques you would have learned in an acting conservatory and mesh them with the essential communication skills needed to thrive and succeed not only in your personal life but at every level of the corporate world.
This book is a toolbox and each chapter provides you with new tools—or with new ways of looking at tools you already possess. Each chapter deals with various aspects of communication preparation or performance—storytelling, managing anxiety, controlling your audience, and much more. We encourage you to read the first chapter, which unlocks the secret of pairing objective with intention—an approach that informs everything else in the book. Then read through from beginning to end, or start with the chapters that interest you the most. Chapter Two teaches storytelling skills, while Chapter Three deals with structuring your overall presentation and teaches rhetorical techniques that will keep your audience with you. Chapter Four disposes of the myth that there is such a thing as over-preparation, showing you how to prepare effectively and how to minimize anxiety and error.
Chapters Five and Six are full of the sorts of insights into and methods of using your body and your voice that actors all learn—and that few businesspeople have even heard of. Chapter Seven deals with listening from two perspectives: how understanding how an audience listens helps you maximize their listening; and how improving your own listening will improve your communication. Chapter Eight uses the lessons of theatrical improvisation to empower your impromptu speaking, and also gives you the tools to handle one of the most common and important impromptu speaking opportunities in the business world: the “What do you do?” question. Chapter Nine is packed with tools to use while delivering a presentation in tough circumstances—when you're facing a distracted or hostile audience, or a challenging question-and-answer situation. And Chapter Ten helps you assert yourself to get what you want in challenging or high-stakes situations—closing a deal, getting buy-in from senior leadership, giving critical feedback, or delivering bad news.
Take the tools and techniques here for a spin. Try them out. Explore. Experiment. Practice.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
—Leonardo da Vinci
One of the underlying tenets of the Pinnacle Method is that, whether you are delivering a presentation, running a meeting, or telling a story, if your audience is bored during your communication, it is your fault. It is not the audience's responsibility to be engaged, it is your responsibility to engage them. If you are not able to get through to your audience and move them with what you are saying, your communication will have fallen short of its mark.
By learning and applying the methods and techniques detailed in this book, you will be able to engage your audience in every communication you deliver: whether running a meeting, telling a story, or simply presenting information. These tools and techniques will allow you to become more present in your daily communication, more confident in your abilities, and more engaging in your delivery. The end result: the ability to get your audience to react the way you want, in any situation, simply by mastering the delivery of your message.
Let's get to it, shall we?
Chapter 1
Understand the Secrets of Persuasion
Communicating with Intention and Objective
The starting point of all achievement is desire.
—Napoleon Hill
We've all seen or heard persuasive speakers—people who engage us with their communication effectively, whatever its subject may be. And because they are able to capture our attention (and perhaps our imagination), the chances are good that they will also be able to move us emotionally or change the way we think about a topic or issue. But how exactly do they do it? What makes someone persuasive as a communicator?
The story of one of history's most famously persuasive speakers gives us some insight.
Often regarded as the greatest of Greek orators, Demosthenes, the Athenian statesman and rhetorician, rallied the citizens of Athens against the military power of Philip of Macedon and Philip's son, Alexander the Great, for almost thirty years. So powerful was Demosthenes in his ability to rouse the passions of his audiences that Cicero (perhaps the greatest Roman orator) called him “the perfect orator.”
But Demosthenes, who was the son of a wealthy sword maker and was orphaned at age seven, was not always celebrated for his abilities—in fact, his early attempts at speaking were met with ridicule.
In ancient Greece, public speaking was a vital aspect of everyday life, and skilled orators or rhetoricians were valued very highly. When he was still a boy, Demosthenes saw some of the great rhetoricians of the day speaking in court or in the assembly—a regular meeting of the citizenry, where they would deliberate and vote on all aspects of Athenian life. He was captivated by their power and popularity, and set about to study their methods and become a great orator himself.
He had some early success in court, bringing suit against his guardians for mishandling his estate. But his first efforts in the assembly were met with jeers and derision—his style was stilted, his sentences tortuously long, his voice weak and breathy. People hated listening to him. Crushed by this public humiliation, Demosthenes fled the assembly in shame.
On another day, when Demosthenes had not been allowed to speak before the assembly at all, he came upon an acquaintance—an actor named Satyrus. It's not fair, Demosthenes said. I work hard on my speeches; I'm far better prepared than any of those idiots they let speak, and they won't even listen to a word. Satyrus, as a professional actor, perfectly understood the cause of Demosthenes' failure in the assembly: the problem was not his message—it was the poor delivery of his message. Demosthenes' speeches failed to connect with his audience because they lacked something vital—they lacked intention. The young orator took no care in how he came across to his audience—he didn't even seem to know he should—and as a result he thoroughly alienated the people he meant to persuade.
To demonstrate the problem, Satyrus had Demosthenes read a passage from the classics, and then he read it himself, using his voice and body with all his skill. Demosthenes was thunderstruck—the passage seemed like an entirely different text when the actor read it—and from that day he began to believe that if a speaker neglected his presentation, he might as well not speak at all. He saw that a speaker's intention—the choice to act and speak persuasively—was imperative and essential to his objective—to persuade.
Demosthenes took to the actor's teaching with a vengeance. He built an underground chamber—a sort of cave—and he practiced his gestures and intonation there every single day. He picked apart speeches—his own and others'—rephrasing what was said more gracefully and practicing it aloud in his chamber. He trained his breathing by reciting a speech while running or climbing. He put pebbles in his mouth to improve his enunciation. He rehearsed in front of a mirror to check how his posture, gestures, and other body language would come across to his audience.
When it was time for Demosthenes to speak in front of the assembly again, all of Athens took notice. His fiery speeches about the political, social, and economic issues of the day riveted, persuaded, and roused the Greek citizenry. Neither his subject matter nor his audience had changed, nor had his objective—to compel his listeners to action. But once he began delivering his speeches with intention—and with an actor's techniques—the results could not have been more different.
Intention and Objective
The Pinnacle Method, adapting the actor's approach to a wide range of communications, is based on the simple premise that whether you are making a customer service call, delivering a large presentation, running a team meeting, or having dinner with your family, the success of your communication depends upon two things. First, you must identify an objective—something you want or need from your audience. And second, you must choose an intention that will assist you in the pursuit of that objective. Think of the objective and intention in your communication like this:
Actors, by training, know the secrets of objective and intention and how to make them work together for effective communication.
It's a common misconception that actors pretend to be other people. In reality that's not what we do at all. Rather, we are trained to put ourselves—our true selves—into imaginary circumstances and deliver our message (in this case, our lines) with a specific intention to generate a desired reaction from our audience (whether that audience is our scene partner or the audience who paid to come and see us). We need our audience to believe what we are saying as the character in that moment. If they don't believe what we say, the credibility of our character comes into question, and the success of our performance is compromised.
The same can be said for any person's communication. If we don't believe what someone is saying—whether that person is a salesman, a mayoral candidate, or our teenage daughter—they end up communicating to us something different from what they intended—for example, we come to believe that this product is actually not a good fit for our needs; that these policies don't sound very effective; or that perhaps we should check to see if her homework is really done.
All of these people in the examples above want something that depends on us, their audience—a sale, a win, a trip to the mall—and they want to compel us to do something—buy the product, vote for them, give them permission to go. If their objective and intention are not well aligned, we'll remain unconvinced, their communication will have failed, and they won't get what they wanted.
Thus an objective, if properly aligned with intention, should result in a successful communication—one that changes your audience's knowledge, attitude, or action with regard to the topic being discussed or presented. As a communicator, you must have a specific objective in mind—something you need to accomplish—if you hope to impact and move your audience. In the end, without an activated intention behind your delivery—and one that is specifically in line with your objective—the best your message will be is ambiguous. A strong intention behind your words will literally fuel the emotion of your delivery.
In the rest of this chapter, we show you how to clearly identify a specific objective for your communication—to understand exactly what you want to have happen as a result of your message. We also guide you in the process of pinpointing and choosing the most effective intention to accomplish it.
For your communication to achieve its objective, all aspects of your delivery must be supported and driven by the chosen intention. It is the ability to combine these two elements working in tandem that separates engaging communicators from those who fail to engage an audience in any meaningful way.
Defining Your Objective
As Demosthenes discovered, effective communication never consists of words alone. There must be a purpose behind those words that calls an audience to action. The result of this action is, ideally, identical to what we call a communicator's objective. Simply put, your objective is the goal or purpose you hope to achieve with your audience as a result of the delivery of your message. A computer sales rep wants to sell a computer, a teacher wants the students to learn their state capitals, and a safety manager wants the workers to avoid injury.
Constantin Stanislavski, the founder of the Moscow Art Theatre in the late nineteenth century and the father of modern acting, wrote extensively on the concept of objective in his groundbreaking book An Actor Prepares.1 In his books and methods, Stanislavski developed an approach to realistic acting that is still used to this day. One of the major precepts of the Stanislavski system was the importance of a particular kind of preparation. An actor was to begin by studying the script and identifying goals and objectives for every scene, seeking answers to the following questions:
By carefully and thoroughly answering these three questions, actors gain a much clearer idea of what they want to accomplish in a particular scene. The questions are so effective that they have come to represent a sort of “holy trinity” for actors.
But they can just as easily be applied to communication in any setting—whether you're managing a team, hoping to influence a stakeholder, or asking someone out on a date. As Stanislavski explains, “Life, people, circumstances … constantly put up barriers … Each of these barriers presents us with the objective of getting through it….2 Every one of the objectives you have chosen … calls for some degree of action.”3
But not all objectives are created equal, and most communication doesn't consist of just one objective; instead, it comprises numerous objectives—smaller goals that need to be achieved in order to accomplish the main one. Your most important objective, the one that best describes your overall goal, Stanislavski called a super-objective. For example, a teacher's super-objective might be to teach the students geometry, but first they must be induced to take their seats and be quiet.
Before delivering any message, you need to understand what you want at the end of your communication. What is your super-objective? Is it buy-in from the other party, or commitment for more funding, or additional personnel? Is it a signature on a contract or the adoption of a new policy? Whatever the goal is for your communication, you need to clearly understand it for yourself. Otherwise you risk being like a marathoner who runs and runs but has no idea where the finish line is. Write it down, using concrete language. If you have more than one objective, express each clearly and concretely.
Once you know your objective you have half of what you need to communicate effectively. The other half is the communicator's secret weapon and most invaluable tool—intention.
Choosing an Intention
Often when we develop a message, we focus primarily on the words and content we are delivering. We usually also have an objective in mind, of course, even if we have not defined it carefully and precisely. What we often fail to ask ourselves is why that overall message should be important to our audience. Why should they care? What would make them care? We neglect to pair intention with objective. This very common mistake is usually fatal to effective communication.
Before delivering their messages, communicators must understand with great clarity how they want their audience to react to each message. How do they want their audience to feel as a result of their communication? The answer to this question is the speaker's intention; according to the dictionary, intention is “an aim that guides action.”
Understanding the importance of intention and deploying it effectively is the cornerstone of brilliant acting, often separating a memorable performance from a forgettable one. Actors use intention in every aspect of their performance, breaking down each moment of a scene to understand their objective and help them identify the specific intentions they will use to deliver their lines. Actors always have an objective in a scene, something they want (to get the money, to sleep with the girl, to convince the bully to stop picking on them) and they always pair that objective with a complementary intention. They use their intentions to threaten, seduce, or intimidate to accomplish the objective. While actors focus their intention and objective on their partner in a scene, there is always another audience at play in the theater: the people sitting in the dark watching the action on stage. The director's job is to make sure that the intentions of the actors on stage are strong and specific so they have the effect of bringing the other (theatrical) audience along, ensuring that they feel the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times. And as circumstances in a scene change, an actor's objectives and intentions will change as well. As a communicator, you'll find intention the most powerful tool in your arsenal too. It will not only bring passion and purpose to your message, it is the most critical component in the pursuit of your objective—the rocket fuel that will launch you toward the eventual accomplishment of your goal.
In Tell to Win, Hollywood producer and former chairman of Sony Pictures Peter Guber writes that capturing your audience's attention “involves focusing your whole being on your intent to achieve your purpose…. Your intention is actually what signals listeners to pay attention.”4 In other words, without a strong intention supporting your delivery, your audience is less likely to give you their attention in the first place. And that's just the first benefit a strong intention brings to your attempts to communicate. It also holds the audience's attention, and the passion and purpose it conveys actually bring the audience members into sympathy with your point, so that they are connecting both emotionally and intellectually with your message.
Dan Siegel, a UCLA neuroscientist and author of The Mindful Brain, has discovered that a listener's mirror neurons only switch on when they sense another person is acting with passion and purpose. Everything people do with their voice or their body communicates information to a listener or audience. For this reason, Siegel states that people such as teachers or instructors “need to be aware of their intentions … to make the experience of learning as meaningful and as engaging as possible…. In return, [the students or audience] will feel inspired and engaged in the passion of the work.”5 Humans begin reading each other's intention cues as soon as they are physically close enough to see, hear, or smell them. Says Siegel, “With the attention to intention we develop an integrated state of coherence.”6 This is precisely why all aspects of a person's communication and delivery must be in sync. The cues your face, voice, and body send are so powerful that your audience will pay attention to them before anything else; thus an intention that's out of sync with the content of your message or your desired objective will torpedo your communication.
When you're identifying your intention, express it as a verb—a strong action word that can activate and inform your delivery. For example, your intention might be to inspire your employees to act in a certain way, or to reassure a colleague that a decision was correct. Here are a few examples of different intentions commonly used during the average person's daily communication:
Think of a recent interaction with someone where you tried to convey one of the intentions in the list. Did your physical and vocal delivery support your intention so effectively that your listeners knew exactly how you wanted them to feel? A strong intention, activated properly, will inform all aspects of one's communication—body language, facial expressions, vocal dynamics, and all the rest. To experience how this works, try this: using the list of intentions provided previously, say the phrase, “Can I see you in my office?” five different times, each time reflecting a different intention. You will notice how the delivery of the words changes as your intention does.
Putting Intention and Objective into Practice
The famous acting teacher Uta Hagen writes in her seminal book Respect for Acting, “The action of the words, how I will send them, for what purpose and to whom, under what circumstances, hinges solely on what I want or need at the moment.”7 What she is speaking about here is the combination of intention and objective. When identifying the intention and objective, you should be able to describe the purpose of your message in a single sentence:
Here are a few examples of different communication scenarios to illustrate the point:
Intention and Objective: I want to warn my employees about their unsafe behavior so they comply with safety policies and avoid injuries.
Intention and Objective: I want to commend my staff and volunteers for their great work in this campaign so they feel appreciated and validated.
Intention and Objective: I want to motivate my daughter so she applies herself and studies harder.
