At the risk of stating the obvious, communication is a big piece of that strategy. Maybe bigger than we realize.
If you’re like me and you still find yourself physically separated from your team, students or clients, you’re facing a disruption that’s challenging the connections we once took for granted.
Here are 5 tips on what to do to keep your communication effective and relationships strong:
And know that whatever you do, you’re communicating. In times of crisis, leaders step up. They speak directly and empathetically, and clearly. Your team is listening. What message do you want them to hear?
]]>You’ve been introduced by an expert. Some how the already excited crowd became even more ecstatic. As the applause wains, you step on stage. The tension in the room is palpable. All eyes are on you.
What do you say when you open your mouth?
Too often, the speaker in the situation above — which I’m sure would never be you — starts with something like, “Hi, guys! I’m so excited to be here. We’re going to have so much fun talking about blah blah blah blah…“
And before they can finish their third sentence, a quarter of the crowd is checking their timelines.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Your presentation doesn’t have to be an uphill battle to attract and keep your audience’s attention. When you learn to properly capture your audience, you can keep that rapt attention throughout your presentation.
After reading this post, you’ll never have to start another speech with the boring, ineffective “Salutation Intro” again. Here are my four fool-proof ways to start your presentation without losing your audience to Instagram.
My favorite introduction places the audience inside a movie from the first words out of your mouth. It’s like you passed out virtual reality headsets and immerse them in a world of your creating.
You do this with a story. Your narrative should involve their senses, focusing on vibrant verbs that drives the action forward. Don’t tell them that something happened to you, illustrate how.
The OG self-help author and motivational speaker, Dale Carnegie said, “Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt.“
The power of the two-act play intro, versus simply starting with a story, lies in not resolving the tension created in the first “act” of the story. Lead your audience to the climax or crisis point, and then pivot to a question that brings the issue home to them.
Near your conclusion, reveal how the story resolves, AND direct your audience to that same resolution. You’ll get a powerful introduction, motivation to take action, and a sense of closure that will make your audience feel like they remembered your presentation start to finish.
Okay, I’ll be honest. I’m being a little hard on the speaker who starts by addressing the audience (“Hey guys!…”). The instinct here, to connect, is a good one. But, powerful presentation intros seek purposeful connection.
Not all personalities should attempt the Call-and-Response intro. And not all presentation settings make it appropriate. However, there is a time when you want to employ this opener.
The Call-and-Response Intro reminds the audience that they are alive and part of the action.
By soliciting a response to a carefully-crafted question, your audience remembers they’re alive. The physiological response (the hand raise, the shout) releases hormones in the brain that readies your audience for quick decisions.
The audience also practices saying yes to you — and if you’re trying to sell a product or start a movement, this is a helpful frame of mind for your audience to be in.
This might be the most daring of intros — but it could also be the most memorable. A good ice breaker “warms up” your audience — and warms them to your topic. This can be done in two ways:
In small meetings, the ice breaker can be a brief discussion or activity that allows everyone in the room feel as though they are able to contribute. A good discussion let’s everyone speak to the prompt from their experience. A good prompt connects to your topic in some (possibly unexpected) way.
In large presentations, the ice breaker might be facilitated through a demonstration with a pre-selected member of the audience. It’s more interactive activity than discussion. The people in their seats live vicariously through their syndicate on stage — laughing, cringing, cheering them on.
This approach to an intro is risky because you relinquish control. Its effectiveness depends on how participative your audience is.
Have a plan for when your participants get stage fright, and know when you need to cut off the talkers to get on with your presentation.
Does your audience need a wake up call? Do you need to shift perspectives about your topic and overcome misperceptions? If so, the shock-or-awe opener might be a worthwhile approach.
Powerful introductions capture your audience’s attention. And, if you have a jarring statistic, breath-catching image, or “Wow!”-inducing video, you will have your audience leaning forward for the rest of your time on the platform.
For “shock” or “awe” intros to be effective, you can’t let your audience miss the moment. Consider leaning on your slide deck to reenforce what you say. When there’s cohesion between what we hear and what we read, the power behind the message is even more memorable.
But a few words of warning:
Maybe you’re saying, is there ever a time to begin by addressing the audience? To which, I’ll confess, there is.
In formal occasions, it is standard practice—and even expected—that you begin your presentation by acknowledging the host, master of ceremonies, and/or other distinguished guests in the room.
When I say formal, though, I’m talking the next time you’re in front of congress. Or, maybe at a funeral. And possibly if you’re the commencement speaker for an ivy league university graduation. Most business events (pitches, workshops, seminar keynotes) don’t require this level of formality.
But even in most formal settings where this canned acknowledgement is expected, you can still leverage one of the four openers above before nodding to the president. If you do this, you’ll want to make your hook brief — maybe one or two sentences, or just the set up for a story.
First impressions matter. Your introduction sets the trajectory of your whole presentation. It’s where your audience decides if they should engage, or Instagram. Every introduction, no matter what method, should have these five elements:
In any situation, it’s never a bad thing to address your audience or give your name in the introduction. The key is to avoid wasting your first words on predictable pleasantries.
Oh, and never start a speech with an apology.
How do you begin your presentations and workshops? Did I leave a favorite method out? Leave me a comment and tell me how you start your speech.
Got a presentation coming up? Don’t step onto the platform without reviewing your opening lines. Get this blog post as a FREE EBOOK, and when you download it, you’ll get a BONUS Intro Checklist so that you’ll never start another presentation with a boring, ineffective intro again.
Let me know where I should send it by inserting your email address below.
]]>It’s New Year’s Day, and I’m sitting with her and my friend Stephanie. They’re both subscribers to the People Business Daily, and a recent email stirred up a conversation. The email simply read:
More than nearly any email I’d sent before, this one generated a lot of responses. Like others, my grandma had emailed me in response to this one. Knowing I’d be around for the holidays, we dog-eared the conversation until we were in person.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, Grandma worked in international business. Since retiring, she uses her time to invest in causes that make the world a better place. I think I come by much of my hybrid of business and activism through her.
She continues her point. “Your words really do matter. And so, how do you avoid apologizing when you communicate?”
Of course, there are times to apologize. When our words wound — intentionally or not — we apologize. When our actions or inactions divide, an apology can mend.
But in the world of public speaking, most apologies should be avoided.
I explained that when I wrote what I did, I had in mind here avoiding apologies in the introduction to speeches. So often, I hear speakers start off with an apology:
Leading with an apology creates two problems.
First, it discounts your presence. You’ve earned the right to be on the platform you’re on. Whether you’re giving a toast at a wedding, or speaking in front of the board, you’re there on purpose. Most audiences aren’t hostile, and more often than not, they’re not looking for a reason to avoid listening to you. But, they’ll take one if it’s given to them.
Secondly, you tell your audience to listen to the wrong thing. You’re about to make the pitch and your voice quivers.
“I’m sorry, I’m really nervous.”
What your audience might have heard is deep commitment and belief in your product; instead, they’re thinking about how you told them you get nervous.
What if you had a cough yesterday and might have to clear the frog in your throat at some point in your 5 minute talk?
“I’m sorry… I’m a little under the weather and still have a cough…”
Your audience is now wondering whether or not you have the Coronavirus.
What if you’re asked to give the toast at your best friend’s wedding? You practice, rehearse, but you’re caught up in the moment and…
“I’m going to apologize in advance. There’s no way I get through this without crying…”
Your audience might have interpreted your tears as the love of a friend that stretched out from middle school on, bubbling up in tears of joy on a memorable day; instead, they remember you’re a crier.
The first set of tears wraps them into the experience of your speech, keeps them in the moment. The second set — the tears that follow the apology — are tainted, and written off because criers gonna cry.
One caveat. Is it ever time to apologize? Yes. If you can’t do what you’re there to do — your throat seizes and you cough uncontrollably, not able to get a word out; you choke, your voice cracks, and you can’t recover, sobbing in the middle of your eulogy — then, it’s okay to apologize. Here, it’s the polite thing to do, and will help your audience empathize with your situation.
What I want you to avoid, though, is the pre-emptive apologetic strike.
The next time you start a speech, bite your tongue. Don’t say you’re sorry. Take up the space you deserve, own the platform you’ve been given, and don’t apologize for being human.
Not that you need it, but in case you haven’t heard it from anyone else: You have my permission to be fully, unapologetically you on the platform.
Are you tempted to apologize when you’re on the platform? What’s your plan for next time you’re tempted to express pre-emptive remorse?
]]>In eight months, he’s flipped my life upside down. I’m the biggest cheerleader of this little guy. He does the most mundane tasks and I’m ecstatic.
Today, Silas grabbed the couch, stood up, looked around, and lowered himself back down. And I sat across from him, beaming with wonder and pride. He’s turning into an affectionate little guy, occasionally offering an unprompted “kiss” — pressing his open mouth against the stubble on my cheek — and every time, I just about loose it.
Silas brings me a lot of joy. I don’t know how such a little person could be filled with so much energy and happiness, but he is. And he’s filled with wonder — totally engaged in everything around him.
This afternoon, our neighbors were feeding their pit bull in the bed of their pickup. As I chatted with the neighbors, Silas watched the strong furry creature in the back, and when the dog popped its head up from the food bowl, Silas doubled over in giggly bursts.
As I’ve gotten to know my son over the past months, I’ve thought frequently about an episode in the Jesus story.
Towards the end of Jesus’s public life, Jesus overhears an argument between his disciples. They were debating who would had the best chance at being next-in-charge. Not anticipating the whole crucifixion thing, they anticipated Jesus going really viral and then taking over Jerusalem, if not Rome itself.
I imagine Jesus chuckled at their juvenile jostle. But, he saw it as a teaching moment. Jesus lifts one of the small children in their traveling party — maybe one as small as Silas — and says, “If you can see God in this little one, then you’re on the way to greatness.”
Let me tell you, my son is great! But he’s not strong. He’s not mighty. He’s not powerful as we so often think of The Powerful.
But, he has my heart. One look from him and I’m sailing. One cry for help and I fly out of bed in the dead of night.
It’s not just me, either! I can’t count the number of people who hold him and say with a sigh, “I feel better now.”
That’s power. But to see it, you’ve got to tell yourself a different story about power and greatness.
When this topic about who’s great in the kingdom comes up again, Jesus tells his disciples, “All the nations of the world use power to climb on top of some and pin others down. But not so with you.”
Sandwiched between these two “greatness” stories, in Luke’s version of the Jesus saga, is a peculiar pericope (Note: pericope = Bible-nerd word for a succinct chunk of text).
Word reaches Jesus and his fellow travelers that the Samaritans refused their request for hospitality — a cardinal offense in first-century, collectivist and honor-based Middle Eastern culture. James and John — those Sons of Thunder — responded in the way they thought was righteous. They wanted to call down fire on their Samaritan neighbors.
Spoiler Alert: Jesus shut this idea down fast.
He probably said something like, “Don’t you know this isn’t how we use power? Haven’t you seen what happens when power is weaponized? Do you think I said “do unto others” as a suggestion? If we use power in this way, how is the Kingdom of Heaven — how is God’s dream — any different than the nightmares of war and assault and holocaust that define the status quo of Rome and every other empire of the world? It’s not to be this way with you.”
Some manuscripts tell us that his rebuke ends with the reprimand, ““You don’t know what manner of spirit you’re speaking from; for the Son of Man came not to destroy people’s lives but to heal them.” What manner of spirit are you in? The spirit to kill and destroy or the spirit to heal and save?
Jesus constantly compares his story of power and greatness to the power structures of those outside it. The implication is this: the Spirit of God’s story about power is different than what we hear and see in the world. But that same Spirit is active when Jesus is rebuking a storm, and when he is rebuking his disciples.
We can’t think that God cares how power is used only in the public and dramatic and not for the personal and daily. We can’t expect to see and experience the greatness of God’s power in the explosive, if we don’t seek to practice it in the minutia of our lives.
That’s like thinking that a lasting relationship is all about grand gestures — the flowers and limo ride on the first date, the cinematic proposal, the standing outside on the lawn with a boombox — but then never doing the dishes, never voicing appreciation and admiration, never asking for forgiveness.
I recently heard someone say that the more power someone has — more success in life, more influence, more authority — the more they feel they have to purge certain phrases from their vocabulary. Phrases like,
When one equates power and perfection, it’s easy to see why. But may it not be so with you. Use your power to serve the people around you. Be impressed with the power of the “weaker” people around you.
When my son stood up and sat down today, I wasn’t taken by his strength but by his growth, his persistence, and his willingness to try again after all the days he wasn’t able to do what’s now so easy for him.
How we communicate matters. And, how we communicate the power we possess matters, too. What is the story of power in your mind? Who gets it? What do you do with the power you have?
This blog post is adapted from a sermon I gave at Biola University’s chapel series, Story and Spirit. Watch it on YouTube.
]]>We drove, parked, walked. And as we approached the restaurant, we noticed two things: a) it was EMPTY, and b) the only person in sight was a middle-aged man, dragging patio furniture inside.
Me: “Are you open?”
Him: “I’m closing. This is the last day. This is the last day.”
I’ve never seen anyone look so dejected. He looked at us like hope had come too little too late. I guess I should have tried the new restaurant in town sooner?
This was truly the saddest restaurant experience I’ve ever been a part of. I woke up the next day thinking about him and his first day without his business.
Man, that’s the ugly side of chasing your dreams that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Clearly, I’m in no place to judge the guy, or say what was or wasn’t happening in the moment — but the optics of that snapshot stuck with me.
One guy.
Shutting down shop.
By himself.
At 6:30 on a Wednesday.
So here’s my thought: Our dreams need teams.
Success is a team sport. We can’t do this alone. We need advocates, champions, and folks who will do the heavy lifting necessary when the going gets tough. Friends, mentors who will give us a kick before we have to turn the key for good. And still be by our side when we do.
This is the person I seek to be to those within my reach. And I hope to stack my team with those folks too.
Who’s on your team? Who are you willing to be there for — when the dreams come true, and when they don’t?
Here’s my advice:
THIS WEEK: Find one way to serve one person on their way toward their dream.
Here are a handful of ideas to get you going.
When you help someone out, I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment below or write to me at chase[at]chaseandre.com
]]>That was my first introduction to America’s most beloved public theologian, Martin Luther King, Jr.
The “I have a Dream” Speech is synonymous with Dr. King. It is also what King was known to live for. 10 years, the Reverend committed his life to living out that “Dream.” And while this is nothing new to most, it nonetheless is only a barely-scratched surface behind Martin King’s depth of character.
Two months prior to the March on Washington, King joined a march on Detroit. There, he stated, “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” On April 4th, 1968 — 48 years ago, tonight — King proved he was fit to live. Our cursory knowledge of King gives us pithy responses to the question “What did he live for?” But we must also remember what King died for.
II. To speak of what is worth dying for seems anachronistic. But in the case of King, it is possible to look back and see if what he lived for carried through to the end.
In April of 1968, King detoured from his agenda to go to Memphis in support of the city’s sanitation workers who were on strike. You see, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed and many people thought that would be the last of King. He won the right for people of color in the South to vote unobstructed by systematic discrimination. The nonviolent campaign of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its allies was won.
But, on January 7, King announced the launch of his attack on the limiters of liberty to the North; the Chicago Campaign began to show the world that the prophetic imagination of this Southern preacher was larger than the Confederacy. In Chicago, King addressed the disparaging conditions of the “black ghetto,” which “is confined by the conspiratorial noose confined by the racists attitudes and actions of the real estate interests and white residents with their restrictive covenants and (un)gentleman(ly) [sic] agreements, abetted by the prejudicial practices of the mortgage-money lending institutions.” And it was there in the North, he said, that he faced his most violent and dehumanizing resistance.
On the 4th of July of that year, King leveled an indictment in his speech entitled “The American Dream”:
I started thinking about the fact: twenty million of my brothers and sisters were still smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in an affluent society. I started thinking about the fact: these twenty million brothers and sisters were still by and large housed in rat-infested, unendurable slums in the big cities of our nation […] If we are going to make the American dream a reality, we are challenged to work in an action program to get rid of the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination.
Deep within his bones, King knew that the well-being of the country depended on the status of the most vulnerable. But the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s imagination for well-being did not know national borders. From April, 1967 to a year later when he was murdered, King continually spoke out against the war in Vietnam. A recurring theme? The war’s effect on the world’s most vulnerable:
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village.
The litmus test for the holistic health of a people is their care for the most vulnerable members. And in an atomic, globalized world, King knew that no one is outside our reach. Not voiceless villagers-turned-refugees in Vietnam. Nor 1300 “public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers” in Memphis.
King knew not only what, but who, he would live and die for: those that the hegemonic society—be it fueled by forces of white supremacy, or unrestraint capitalism, or rampant militarism—left at the wayside of progress and freedom.
III. In his famous last sermon, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” King reminded his audience of the Good Samaritan. His words could be directed toward us today:
And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”
But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” That’s the question before you tonight.
King lived and died for the one society rejected. He acted neighborly to those who only knew the incivility of others. He was a modern day Good Samaritan who, in his own words, “was the great man because he had the capacity to project the ‘I’ into the ‘thou,’ and to be concerned about his brother.”
So, tonight I on the 48th anniversary of his death, I’m thinking about King’s life. What he lived for, what he died for. And I’m thinking about mine.
As a public intellectual, King challenges me to realize that no philosophy exists in a vacuum. Conquergood’s Intellectual Error is rancid on those who talk about a way of life without living it.
As a public theologian, King challenges me to realize that all theology must put on skin.
IV. This is important to bear in mind as I press publish on something as trite and cliche as a new blog. As a Christian in the 21st Century, someone who cares about ethics and is deeply interested in how we communicate our world views, I am attracted to King’s contemporary contextualization and application of Jesus’ teachings; I’m convicted by how he tended to his audience, even when they were against him; I’m inspired by his unrelenting pursuit of a society where all thrive.
But if this blog is only a place to theorize about that, and never becomes a springboard to live it out, this blog is empty chatter; just another post in the ether.
What I die for will be decided by those who out live me, hopefully a long time from now. In the mean time, I hope this space will be a place where I flesh out what I’m living for.