A passionate teacher, Dr. Nick Morgan is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas – and then delivering them with panache. Nick wrote this little treasure, How to Tell Great Business Stories, which is how I happened upon him. Since then he has published a new book, Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact.
Related Podcast and Transcription: Maximize Your Story Telling
An Excerpt from the Podcast:
Joe Dager: Well, we live in this digital world. Can you present yourself better being virtual? Are there any real tips in that area that helps you besides putting the mirror in front of you and those types of things? You have to elaborate more or it’s all voice inflection, isn’t it?
Dr. Nick Morgan: Yes. For instance, on this podcast now, your voice becomes very important. My voice becomes very important.
Here’s the way I think about it. If you think about face-to-face communication, that’s the richest form and the most natural form for humans of communicating. As soon as you get virtual, you go on the phone or you send e-mail, then what you’re doing is you’re sending less information back and forth. It’s information poor. It’s like the difference, in the old days, between dial-up and broadband. Face-to-face is broadband and talking on the phone or email is dial-up.
As a result, we get less information about things that matter to us like intent, emotion and attitude. Does the person mean what they’re saying or not? If they say something mean to us, it’s much harder to tell. Are they saying it with a smile on their face? Are they trying to soften the blow or do they mean it? Are they saying it with a scowl? Those kinds of things get lost. That makes information coming through much less and it makes it much less interesting for us.
In the digital world, you have to do your best to replace those things that are lost. You need to replace the information. When I coach people, for example, when they’re on a teleconference and they’re talking to their team, they need to say things like “I’m excited about this!” or “This is great news!” or “it’s terrible that this happened.” You put the emotions in the words because they’re not going to show up in the face or gestures as they normally would in a face-to-face conversation.
Joe Dager: You’re saying, you practically have to prepare more for virtual presentations?
Dr. Nick Morgan: I think you do if you want to do a good job. I mean, we all know the jokes and the anecdotal evidence about people putting their teleconference on mute and then doing something else far more interesting while they’re supposed to be listening to a teleconference. The hero of the hour says, “Are there any questions?” Then there’s a long pause while everybody scrambles to take the phone off mute and to remember what was said. Yes, I think you do have to work harder.
Another thing you have to do is an audience in a room when we’re talking to somebody, we can see them. We can tell when they start to get bored. Or when they don’t make eye contact anymore, they start to fidget or something. Or when they disagree with us, they scowl or fold their arms. We can’t tell that virtually so you need to stop. Give people a break. Ask for feedback and say, “Let’s go around all the teams here and find out what they’re thinking in Dubai and what they’re thinking in Detroit…” and so on. Give people artificial chances to provide feedback because they don’t get the natural ones.
Lean Sales and Marketing: Learn about using CAP-Do
Special Marketing with Lean Book and Program offers on Facebook