The Exchanges

Q What happens when someone does craft themselves as the hero of the story?

A There are two outcomes. The first is that subconsciously people don't want you to succeed. They go, oh my God, I just don't believe them, and I don't want them to succeed. The problem with the credibility is that there's that great quote from George Orwell, no autobiography is to be trusted unless it reveals something disgraceful. Most people that self-aggrandize, they lie about other things. That creates a credibility problem. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that when an audience hears you as the hero of the story, they are no longer standing next to you. They're watching you. And that doesn't create an air of camaraderie and friendship. It doesn't make you one of them.

AI assessment note: “There are two outcomes. The first is that subconsciously people don't want you to succeed.”

Q I'd love to ask you about the video presentations. You're doing a lot of these now on YouTube. We've come out of the pandemic, but there's still a lot that happens on video. What have you learned from doing these about being effective on video?

A Number one thing that I've learned about video is that there's a power in gestures. When you are on screen, it sometimes helps to pull your hands up higher in the image so they can see your hands and you're explaining. And this dynamism of the gestures creates more of the impression that you are actually there with them. Sounds like a small thing, but it's actually a big thing. Whether you're on a Zoom call and naturally they can't see your hands because it's above the shoulders. I would encourage your listeners to actually bring their hands Into the frame so they can see the gestures that support their talking. That extra added energy is useful, and it helps overcome the metronome of your speech. Another thing is, even in video, it really helps to not be monotonous. That is, allow your voice to go high, go low, to swerve this way and that, and that will naturally engage your head properly. It sounds like minor things, but they're helpful to the audience when they feel like you're an energetic figure and you're dynamic.

AI assessment note: “Number one thing that I've learned about video is that there's a power in gestures.”

Q Well, Neil, I'd love to break down that story a little bit. How do you think about the arc of that story and some of the things you just told along the way that just made it so engaging?

A I had the benefit of that happened to me. The beauty of it is that you can recall events in your mind pretty vividly. And now all that's important is you say, okay, well, what do I want to make sure that people hear so that they can get to the same emotional space that I was in? For example, one of the beats of the story is the opening is me falling flat on my face. And even though that does seem to surrender a little status on my part, everybody can identify with that moment. They all say, yes, something similar has happened to me. The next piece of action is, okay, so there I am. I'm frustrated, and I can't sleep, and so I'm thinking, well, maybe the hotel bar is open. You're thinking, okay, well, he's going to do something to try to relieve his pain. So here we are in a hotel bar at one or two in the morning. In the mind of the listener, they're with you. They understand where you are, and they've got an image in their head, and the beauty of storytelling is it's theater of the mind. That is, They're forming the images, and because they're forming the images, this is a way for them to remember what's happened. The great thing about stories is people are often able to recite them. There's no way I could give you 50 pieces of data and have you remember them later, but in a story, they can remember the basic arc of it, and it's memorable in that way. They can repeat it. It's go…

AI assessment note: “one of the beats of the story is the opening is me falling flat”

Q When you're encouraging someone, therefore, to be authentic, how do you coach them to get better in their presentation?

A Oftentimes, CEOs and CFOs and CMOs are very good. They're quite good presenters. That's how they got to where they are is because they're very good at representing themselves. What they are not typically able to do is devote a lot of time to a presentation. When they do that, they do themselves a disservice because they wing it, and in winging it, they're demonstrating their slickness, but not their sincerity. So the first thing is, I'd like you to prepare more so that you're able to do this in such a way that you're comfortable being yourself, not feeling like you have to put on a facade and read the teleprompter. There's something that I coach people on. It takes them aback, which is this isn't about you. This is about them. So you need to observe them closely enough where if it isn't working, you can stop and ask them why. Let's say you're in a room full of people and And you're trying to explain to them the benefits of something, and you can see that they're confused. Well, clearly, something's causing that confusion, and rather than just keep going to the end and leave them confused, you should stop and say, I'm looking at your faces. I'm getting a little bit of that confusion. That tells me I'm not successfully describing this. Can you tell me where I've gone wrong here? What's confusing you? You know, the beauty of that kind of engagement with an audience is that They wi…

AI assessment note: “The first thing is, I'd like you to prepare more so that you're able”

Q Before we turn to a couple of closing questions, in line with what you said earlier, it probably is appropriate to have started with the story and end with the story. So why don't you pick out another and take us off with the story?

A Ted, we live in a day and age where everybody thinks that the country's lost its mind, and we all hate each other, and there's just so much conflict, and we really feel like this is unprecedented. America's never been like this, but they don't seem to remember what it was like back in 1969, back when the Vietnam War was tearing the country apart, and there was the Manson family and the Zodiac Killer, and they had assassinated presidents. They'd shot JFK. They'd shot Robert Kennedy. They'd shot Martin Luther King. Political assassination was a thing back then. I was nine years old, and my father, who had grown up in the Depression, his confidence in America was just at a low ebb. He really felt, you can't trust anybody, and this country has gone to hell. We were driving on the Five, heading north from LA to Oakland, and we were in this old, and the water pump blew out. And this was way before cell phones. So we were stuck about nine miles south of Bakersfield with no coolant. We were going to have to hoof it into town to get help. And along comes this young cowboy in a flatbed. Looked like maybe he was about 22 years old. He says, hey, fellas, looks like you got some trouble here. Can I help out? My father, all he's got on him is just a Chevron gas card. He doesn't have any money. He figured we would just go south to north Just off the card. And so he says to the guy, well, I ca…

AI assessment note: “I was nine years old, and my father... We were driving on the Five”

Q Why do you think understanding how to tell stories is so valued by the C-suite?

A It's a really significant thing for an executive to be good at selling their message and their agenda. It really is because consider they are growing in consciousness of the power of belief in their company mission for their own people to be more engaged. Anybody who's in the hotel business or the restaurant business, they understand the attitude of the staff Has everything to do with the satisfaction of the customers, and the way that you make a hotel staff highly engaged is they believe in what they're doing, and they love their company, and they want to communicate that to the world. When the chief executive can make you feel this is a brand that you can believe in, they go out into the world with a different attitude. On your website, Ted, you have this wonderful quote from Warren Buffett, And the quote is, only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked. It's a terrific investor quote, and what it means is that when market conditions worsen and things go a little bit south, what remains are the ones that are legit, and the ones that are not legit get exposed, literally. Warren Buffett could have said it that way, or they could have spun it in this really neat little analogy where it creates a vivid image in your mind. And what happens is, Is you look at Warren Buffett this way. You go, he explains things simply. That is a very intelligent man. So it…

AI assessment note: “power of belief in their company mission for their own people to be more engaged”

Q When you're coaching executives, what are some of your favorite tips that you see come up that people can improve upon?

A You have to really fixate on, here's how I'm trying to help. The idea is not for you to be a slick presenter. The idea is for you to be helpful and to make it worth their while, make it worth listening to you. Oftentimes, people overestimate how important it is to appear professional, when in fact, what they need to do is they need to be sincere, and they need to be their authentic self. They'll tell a quick tale that involves a group of businesswomen. There are these 12 businesswomen. They're all waiting to see a presentation. These are hard chargers. These are very accomplished women. They get introduced. A speaker stands up. He's there to sell something. He pulls a speech from his pocket, a short speech, and he proceeds to, without looking up, read it word for word, haltingly, looking up once from the paper and then back to the paper, and he reads the entire thing rather nervously. Then, without really proposing a call to action or a price, he simply sits back down. You would expect, I think, that nobody would buy anything, that these women would be embarrassed by that whole thing. But instead, the actual results were that he sold out his entire inventory of product, and not only that, but a few of the women made a point of complimenting him on how well the presentation went. You're thinking, what? Well, the presenter was seven years old, and he was selling cookies that he a…

AI assessment note: “You have to really fixate on, here's how I'm trying to help.”

Q I'd love to break down some aspects of this school of hard knocks and the art of storytelling and try to distill some of the lessons you've taken away. Why don't we start with how do you think about preparing and setting the stage for whatever presentation you're preparing to give?

A Preparation, I think, is something that people really underestimate, and I don't mean preparation in the form of rehearsing what your act, but preparation in terms of doing a sufficient research about who you're speaking to, to know what it is that drives them and what they really want. Your number one mission in any kind of presentation is help them. Deliver something of value. Give them something to walk away with where they feel like that was worth it. I'm glad I showed up here. That means that you have to know what they want, what will benefit them. As you know, there's going to be a very big difference between a group of forty-somethings who are starting to get into some pretty big earning years and looking for ways to make money, and a group of seventy-five-year-olds who are trying to protect their nest eggs. There's a difference of ambition. Not only that, but because they come from different age cohorts, they respond differently to mentions of celebrities, and likewise, a baby boomer is a lot less sensitive about And terminology and pronouns and that sort of thing. But if you don't know that, if you have the same pattern with a 75 year old that you're doing for a 25 year old, you haven't done sufficient research to understand how you're likely to be received. So that's the first thing. Who are you speaking with? Know enough about them. The second thing that you would be…

AI assessment note: “preparation in terms of doing a sufficient research about who you're speaking to”

Q You hear a lot about people getting nervous in front of large groups. So there is that you're in it focusing on one person. What are some of the other tips that you give people when they're preparing to go in front of a large group?

A Practice certainly helps and that will get you over it. But there's another thing, which is it's the way that you frame your nervousness. So for example, before any kind of sporting performance or before any kind of big performance, whether it's a stage performance or standup routine, You're going to have butterflies. It's just, that's how it's going to go. That energy actually will power you. It can be gasoline. It can be gasoline in an engine rather than gasoline all over you on fire. So you got to just say to yourself, look, I'm going to get nervous. That's not a bad thing. Allow that to increase your energy level and get you out there and excited. I often caution people, don't say you're nervous. It doesn't help any It doesn't have the effect that you think it's going to have where it wins you over for them. They see you as a wounded animal, and that's a problem. Instead, let the nervous energy resonate in excitement. In order to do that, you have to be prepared for this moment. When I'm coaching people is to say, you are going to be nervous. This is going to be how you feel. Let's craft a beginning to get you past that moment, to use that moment to your advantage. So for example, instead of getting up and saying, I'm really excited to be here, you say, I cannot wait to tell you what I'm about to, because this is how it's going to benefit you. When you walk out of here, you…

AI assessment note: “Practice certainly helps and that will get you over it. But there's another thing”

Q How do you recommend that someone goes about practicing?

A Try to set the stage in such a way that everything about where you're going to present and how you're going to present, you are mimicking in your presentation. You won't be able to have the faces of your audience there. Nevertheless, it will help literally do it into a mirror so that you can see what they see by doing it in a mirror and not being ashamed to just go ahead and by yourself, do the real show. It will give you the chance to tune it up. I've had the chance because I've been doing so many videos, I've had the chance to watch myself again and again, and I can tell you that I've made a lot of progress on my own case in the last year, just watching myself hundreds of times, because as I edit them, you get the chance to see, well, what works and what doesn't work, and some of the affectations that you perhaps don't like, and the tilt of your head, and so on. When you are rehearsing, I would recommend a mirror, and the second thing is, don't Say to yourself, okay, and then I'll say this and this and this. No, no, no. Go ahead and say it. Do the whole thing, soup to nuts, from how you react to the introduction to when you're asking for Q&A. Say the whole thing. When you rehearse it exactly as it's going to be done, it makes it that much easier for you. Plus, you walk onto the stage or in front of the camera in such a way that you feel confident because you know you've done …

AI assessment note: “When you are rehearsing, I would recommend a mirror, and the second thing is”

Q What have you learned in your coaching practice about presentations and feedback that you didn't fully understand in your time at Saatchi and Saatchi and the other roles you had in advertising?

A Forgive me for banging away at this one thing, but people often misunderstand what it is that they're really trying to learn. They think they're trying to learn to be a professional, learn for it to be really seamless and clean and so forth. When what I'm really teaching is let's get you to the place where you're helping people. It's a funny thing. There was a wonderful quote from Winston Churchill's mother, who was an American. She had the chance to meet both Benjamin Disraeli And William Gladstone, who were both regarded in the English tradition as great orators. They came from that long parliamentarian school of debate and speechifying where they were absolutely the world's best, no doubt. And they asked her for her impression of Gladstone and Disraeli. What was the difference between the two? And she said, when I met Gladstone, I felt like he was clearly the most brilliant man in England. And when I met Disraeli, I felt like the most brilliant woman in England. Her summary was, in my mind, the exact point about why I keep banging away on the audience and benefiting them. Are you there to impress everybody with how smart you are, or are you there to make people feel like they gained something from this exchange?

AI assessment note: “what I'm really teaching is let's get you to the place where you're helping people.”

Q When you're telling these great stories on your YouTube channel, what is the arc of that story?

A I'll tell you another story, and I'll do the post-mortem on the story, and it really helps to understand the beats. My wife and I were walking along the New Orleans waterfront. This was back when people didn't have cameras in their phones. I had this big camera around my neck. Obviously, we're tourists. As we're walking along, I hear this man's voice say, damn, those are some nice shoes. Where'd you get those shoes? I want to get some just like it. I turn, thinking this guy's probably looking at my wife's feet, and instead, he's looking at my feet. You can see he's a little down at the heels, maybe a little rough around the edges. Is he a panhandler? I'm not sure. And he goes, yeah, those are some great shoes. Where'd you get those? And I'm trying to remember, and while I'm in that memory bank access, he goes, oh, I know you got those shoes. And I said, no, I'm from out of town. I don't think so. And he goes, no, I know you got them. I go, no, I don't think so. And he goes, I bet you five dollars I can tell you got those shoes. And I'm It's a con. My wife is literally pulling on my arm like, let's go. But we're on vacation, and I'm thinking to myself, is it worth five dollars to hear the punchline to this gag? Yeah, it is. So I go, okay. And he goes, you bet me five dollars? And I say, yeah. And he goes, you got those shoes on the end of your feet. Oh, okay. All right. So I sta…

AI assessment note: “I'll tell you another story, and I'll do the post-mortem on the story”