Month: February 2011

Although we could be seen as going off the training and development reservation on this one, once you read the entire article, you’ll agree we are actually too close to the subject not to bring it up. This blog is probably the most direct way of saying I think training, public speaking and acting are related–at least in terms of movement on stage.

Public speaking is certainly coming into vogue as a performing art. Comedians, motivational speakers and others who inspire their audiences certainly give performances on stage. Some would argue everything that takes place on stage is all theatre. We may disagree with that notion, but that’s for another article. So, who are the critics and coaches if they aren’t other comedians and public speakers? The same people who are involved in the performing arts: actors, dancers, and singers are also coaching non-actors, including public speakers and trainers as I do, in the areas of communicating effectively with an audience.

Acting, singing, and dancing do have at least one thing in common when it comes to performance. They are all performed on a stage to an audience and involve movement. Now, add trainers, speakers and virtually anyone else who moves on a stage in from of an audience.

Many of the people in the business of motivating or providing inspiring speeches or presentations for corporate and business leadership may think more in terms of planning movements and gestures. Not done well, it comes off artificial. We know that actors and dancers must move with purpose on stage; singers move to show emotion, too, even if that movement doesn’t include dancing to the music. It is the same for comedians or professional speakers.

Strategies or plans to move around the stage can lack the fluid motion of natural movement. If you are speaking to an audience, and you don’t have to be a traditionally thought of performer, keep in mind the way you interact with your audience is based on your passion, your audience and subject matter. Look at general areas of the stage as points to reach your audience (all of your audience) on as many levels as you can; that means you may come down to them to get closer, or keep your distance by being upstage to take in the whole room. You may have to move to a side of the stage if you’re on a thrust stage. Imagine doing a speech in the round. It’s possible.

You should be led by those in your audience who seem to beckon for your attention. You’ll see it; you’ll feel it. Be careful not to wander the stage; it is distracting from the audience when your focus should be on them. In fact, if you want to make a strong point three steps forward will alert the audience you are about to say something important. When making an important point, center stage is your strongest area on the stage, but you don’t want to live there.

Just as a theatrical director looks at the stage to see the areas of strongest impact for the room for the audience and sets the stage for the scene, so should you. You may own the stage, but you are there to interact and communicate with an audience. Try not to leave anyone out. Now, Arthur in the musical CAMELOT moves to a specific point on the stage to punctuate a point. That’s a strategy. However, play it for fun or it won’t be effective. Want to make your audiences feel you really know what you’re doing, even without visual aids? Find an appropriate moment to go right to them. You’ll enjoy it and so will they.

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

Leaders must step up during a crisis

Too often leaders are paralyzed during the crucial beginning stages of crises. When things start to heat up it’s important to keep control, or things can quickly get out of hand. In an article for the Harvard Business Review, leadership expert John Baldoni gave his advice for those tasked with steering their organization through troubled waters:

Take a moment to figure out what’s going on. An executive I know experienced a major disruption in service to his company. He was the person in charge and he told me that at the first response meeting everyone started talking at once. The chatter was nervous response — not constructive — so he delegated responsibilities and then called for a subsequent meeting in an hour’s time. This also helped to impose order on a chaotic situation.

Act promptly, not hurriedly. A leader must provide direction and respond to the situation in a timely fashion. But acting hurriedly only makes people nervous. You can act with deliberateness as well as speed. Or as legendary coach John Wooden advised, “Be quick but don’t hurry.”

Manage expectations. When trouble strikes, people want it to be over right now — but seldom is this kind of quick resolution possible. It falls to the leader in charge to address the size and scope of the crisis. You don’t want to alarm people, yet do not be afraid to speak to the magnitude of the situation. Winston Churchill was a master at summing up challenges but offering a response at the same time. As he famously said when taking office in 1940, “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory; victory at all costs; victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.”

Demonstrate control. When things are happening quickly, no one may have control, but a leader can assume control. That is, you do not control the disaster — be it man-made or natural — but you can control the response. A leader puts himself into the action and brings the people and resources to bear. Think of Red Adair, who made a name for himself putting out oil fires that no one else could. A raging blaze may seem uncontrollable but Adair knew could control the way it was extinguished.

Keep loose. Not only does this apply to personal demeanor — a leader can never afford to lose composure — it applies to the leader’s ability to adapt rapidly. A hallmark of a crisis is its ability to change quickly; your first response may not be your final response. In these situations, a leader cannot be wedded to a single strategy. She must continue to take in new information, listen carefully and consult with the frontline experts who know what’s happening.

As you can see, successful crisis leadership is as much about behavior as it is actual business actions. If the person in charge is calm and controlled, that feeling trickles down through the ranks, boosting confidence and productivity. Combine that with solid planning and execution and you have a crisis management machine ready to roll.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

Blogs provide a simple crisis communication solution

Dark sites, fully built web pages held offline until needed, are known as valuable crisis management tools because they grant you the ability to react almost immediately to negative incidents. Taking that a step further is the idea of basing your dark site on a blogging platform, which, as Phillipe Borremans describes in this quote from a Communication Magazine article, has several benefits:

While a “dark site” doesn’t necessarily need to be based on a blogging platform, it does hold a couple of very important advantages:

• A blog is content focused and can be managed by non-technical professionals – no need for the IT crew to update a webpage, the communicator can completely control the crisis site.
• Updates are written using a standard word processing interface with “what you see is what you get” features.
• A blogging platform makes the best use of RSS feeds in publishing mode, allowing for easy and automatic content syndication to other social media platforms like a Twitter channel or a Facebook page.
• A blog can contain text, but easily integrates video, audio, files or a combination of these.

After creating templates for potential crises, it takes only minutes to plug in the appropriate information and publish, creating an information distribution center. Also, many fully-featured blogs are also free to use, a major advantage for small organizations and a good selling point for winning over resistant execs.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]