Here’s a Behind the Voice YouTube episode featuring James Spader – 3 time Emmy Award winner and Cannes Best Actor winner. Best known for portraying eccentric characters in movies and shows like Crash, Stargate, The Practice, Boston Legal and The Blacklist.
Some of you may have seen this speech by Al Pacino from the movie Scent of a Woman. Please see Link and the Clip below. Pacino starts speaking at the 25 second mark of the clip
Pacino with this performance, is in a category of one. No analysis needed.
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Since March 2009 I’ve written over 600 articles providing insights, guidance and commentary on how communication influences business and the world around us.
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When I first work with a client in one on one format, or with a group of participants in my ‘Delivering memorable messages’ program, one common area that people struggle with, is how to be very clear on what their take away message(s) is – that they want the audience to retain and/or act upon – and then be able to translate that words into a one to two sentences or up to three bullet points.
Here is a simple, powerful process to determine your take away message(s) prior to delivering a presentation.
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“So, what Laszlo did was he put in a simple rule, which I would call good friction, which was, if you are going to do more than four interviews before making a decision about hiring a candidate, you have to get written permission from me, an executive vice president. And the number of interviews dropped quite considerably after that.”
The above quote is from a great article, Jargon monoxide, friction fixers and the meeting that could have been an email. It refers to Google’s former Head of People Operations, Lazlo Bock’s dictate to fellow team members who were doing too many interviews (20 plus) with potential candidates for a job at Google.
Here are other points from the article that resonated with me:
# “To me, culture is essentially the expectations about behavior in an organization that people hold for themselves and hold others responsible for.” (This is the best and most concise definition of culture I’ve heard to date).
# “One of the things that I’ve been obsessed with for years is the notion of “jargon monoxide”—that is, people in organizations often use language that, well, means nothing.”
# “And I would say to leaders, “Do you unknowingly have incentives in your organization for people to add complexity, and maybe even punish people who don’t play that game?”
# “But if you are making a bet that’s so big that it’s going to kill or hobble your company, you’ve got to slow down and really do that heavy analysis—and good friction is absolutely necessary here.”
Implementation Ideas
In the book the author of the book Act like a leader, Think like a leader, Hermania Ibarra shares a study about networking, by professors Tizina Casciaro, Francesca Gina and Marym Kouchaki. Here is a link to an abstract of the study.
The research distinguished instrumental networking *(making connections to advance one’s career) with personal networking (making spontaneous connections that aims to build friendly, collegial connections). The authors mention that their MBA students has a strong distaste for instrumental networking?
Do you have a strong distaste for instrumental networking*?
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Consider these two bits of information.
#1. “If you stop moving your head around, you’ll be a movie star”.** (director, Steven Spielberg, speaking to actor George Clooney on the set of the television series ER quoted in a New Yorker magazine article.
#2. Below is a 26:55 minute video clip of an interview with actor Hugh Laurie. Laurie is a captivating speaker.* Watch as much of the clip as you want to. What I want you to pay attention to, are his shoulders.
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“(Bryant) What were some early moves you made, in terms of culture, in your current role?
(Kenny) From Day 1, I wanted to establish that it was a culture of respect and generosity and truthfulness, and that we were going to work together to solve problems.
On my first day, I met all the employees at a quarterly ad sales meeting The first presentation started – and this was January 2012 – and we had just come off a big quarter because of Hurricane Irene.
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My view, is that people will make judgements about you, on the quality of your questions, not your answers.
With that thought in mind, below are 22 questions leaders can ask their team members to understand the teams’ thinking, feelings, views and about their operation, themselves, et al.
Questions to ask, for newly appointed leaders and for leaders who have been in their role beyond the newly appointed stage:
Consider this. Any time someone hears you speak, it forms an impression, and a potential for loss or gain.
Let me share a quotation from luminary speaker and former New South Wales premier Bob Carr.
“If your speech sounds under educated there are people, consciously or unconsciously, who are marking you down”.
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