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Authentic Voice communication and presentation skills with Alexander Massey Oxford |
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Defining
the real problem - Case Study 2
Charles the global Sales Director works on the issue of sounding 'convincing' The story of Charles in the article about projection illustrates the importance of reframing - re-defining a situation in a way that moves it forward. Gareth Morgan, in his book 'Metaphor in Organisations' points out how the stories we tell ourselves have enormous power to affect our experience (for good and ill), and the choices that we believe we have. Charles had told himself the 'story' that his problem centred around the audibility of his voice, and the clarity of his diction. He referred himself to me, asking to do work on what I call the 'mechanics' of the voice, to change the way he sounded. There was another story that was governing Charles' request. For Charles, voice was essentially a physical phenomenon, and therefore to sort it out required primarily physical intervention and re-education. Examining this 'story' that became our next piece of work. Sixty percent Charles and I worked for some time on how he navigated meetings so that his key contributions were recognised, and he was given due credit for his ideas. As Charles found a firmer footing in the 'power' meetings, he now turned to another key area of his communication at work: presentations. By this stage he knew that there could be more to the work than just making his voice louder or clearer. However, he felt that his voice must be part of the problem in some way because he found himself stumbling over words at times, speaking too rapidly, or dropping volume so that people sometimes asked him to repeat himself. Charles reported that he had "never been comfortable giving presentation or speaking in public". He had been on training courses for presentation skills, which had "helped a bit" but had never addressed his basic discomfort giving presentations: "I never seem to get the audience engagement I want." Charles wondered whether the problem was to do with his voice "not sounding very exciting", so, as before, we decided to explore this element of the story he told about his voice. I asked him to score the expressive range of his voice on a scale of 0 to 10 in different contexts. He suggested the idea of a speedometer. With me, and in business contexts, Charles thought that he might stretch to 50mph (out of a possible 100). With his best colleague, this could rise to 60mph. I asked if there was any context where he might be more expressive, and he said that with his children it could rise to 90mph. I remarked that it was interesting there was no context where he would give himself a full 100mph. "Oh no!" Charles laughed. "I could never do that. It's like my father. No matter how well I did, you could never completely satisfy my father. He always wanted that little bit of control, and to let you know that you'd never quite 'got it'." "How do you respond to your own children in that context then?" "Oh, I think I'm the same. I don't think that I'm as hard on them, though." "So what number would have to be on the speedometer before you asked your own children to put in more effort?" "I think if they dropped below 60 percent I'd be worried. I'd talk to them." "What about your staff at work?" "Probably something similar. But I'd never let them believe they were getting 100 percent." "So you'd never give them the real opportunity of, say, reaching 100 percent, and then set a new, more demanding challenge?" "I never thought of it like that, but yes, you're right. I'd never let them think they were 100 percent successful." "Changing back for a moment, Charles, and just thinking about motivation, what excites and inspires you most about your work?" "Getting a deal is the first thing, and finding a viable opportunity, you know, a promising lead." "What else?" "I like to be able to excite the person I'm talking to, to get them interested." "What about your company's products and services?" "Oh yes, of course, it's good if I can get them fired up about what we offer." "Charles, if I can play Devil's advocate for a moment, it strikes me that wasn't the first thing to come to mind. Actually, it was the fourth in your list, and took some prompting from me as well. Let me ask you a question. It could be one of the most important questions I ever ask you, or that you ask yourself, and even if you don't want to disclose your answer to me, I would encourage you to be as honest with yourself as you dare. Thinking of your speedometer again, how would you rate your belief in what your company sells?" Long silence. "Being honest, I'd have to say about sixty percent." We sat in silence as this sank in for both of us. After a while, Charles spoke again, quietly: "That's not very good is it?" "Well, as Sales Director with international responsibilities, I certainly think it's worth a close look. I wonder what impact that is having? I mean, if you have only a 60 percent belief in what you're selling, and what you're talking about, how could you possibly speak with 100 percent conviction in a sales meeting, or a presentation? What do you communicate to your sales staff? Could you ever expect them to give 100 percent if you yourself have only 60 percent belief in what they have to sell?" "I see what you mean. I guess the problem in some of my presentations is that I'm not really convinced about what I'm saying." "Absolutely. And without conviction, I'm not surprised that you're stumbling over words, mumbling sometimes. That's exactly what we do when we lack commitment or passion. You could always work to make your voice richer, more resonant and crisper in delivery, but if you don't believe in what you're saying, you're just going to feel worse, and false." "I agree. There's no point in that. You don't do yourself any favours, and you don't help the customer either. So what do I need to do to become a 'true believer'?" "I don't know the answer to that, but do you think that's a question worth working on?" "Yes, I think so. Because if I'm not coming across with 100 percent conviction, then that doesn't do me any good in career terms, and it's not going to be doing the company much good either." The statistician George Box famously wrote: "Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful" (Empirical Model Building, 1987). Charles' model of the voice as essentially physical had outlived its usefulness, and needed to be replaced with the model that the voice is a physical instrument governed by anatomical and physical laws, but driven by our psychological and emotional patterns. And if we want to change our physical voices, we also have to update the way we think and feel. For the final instalment
of Charles' story, click here.
(Case Study 3 - Charles sees a wider communication problem) |
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Alexander Massey - Communication and Presentation Skills - Oxford Telephone: 01865-716571 -- Mobile: 07771-988207 Email: alexander@AuthenticVoice.co.uk -- Web: www.AuthenticVoice.co.uk www.OxfordCommunicationAndPresentationSkills.co.uk |
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