Three ways you should never start your presentation

Not only should you never START your presentation with any of these statements, you should never END with them or include them ANYWHERE in your presentation.

Ready?

1. People fear public speaking more than they fear death.

It's trite, and the only study to ever come up with this conclusion was a survey posted in the Sunday Times of London, in a tiny blurb with no citation, in 1973. Get over it -- it's not true.

2. People would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy.

This is Jerry Seinfeld's clever version of #1. Again, not original (it was funny when Seinfeld said it... the first time), and not true.

3. Communication is 93% nonverbal.

How many times have you read this in an article about communication or public speaking:

* 7% of communication comes from our words
* 38% of communication comes from our tone of voice
* 55% of communication comes from our body language?

Or, in other words, "our words make up only 7% of the meaning of our communication."

Well, it's bunk.

Albert Mehrabian, the originator of the research that is so often misinterpreted, was studying incongruent verbal and nonverbal communication when a person is expressing feelings. He looked at how subjects responded to images with different facial expressions and recordings of a voice saying a single word with different inflections conveying like, dislike and neutral emotion.

Nowhere in his research does he say that words make up only 7% of communication.

Listen to Mehrabian himself talk about how frustrating he finds this constant misrepresentation of his research in this brief audio interview. This quote says it all:

"Whenever I hear that misquote or misrepresentation of my findings I cringe, because it should be so obvious to anybody who would use any amount of common sense that that's not a correct statement."

Please, for the love of audiences everywhere: If you want to present yourself as stale, unimaginative, derivative and out of touch with reality, then keep on telling these tall tales. Otherwise, stop it.

Be courageous. Let go. Find something new and fresh to say that's actually based on real research and/or your own experiences. You'll be doing the world a huge favor.

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Getting and keeping the audience's attention - interview

If you missed my interview by Sharyn Abbott on August 31, you can listen here. We talked about how to get and keep the audience's attention... among other things. It's about an hour long.

Listen to internet radio with VoARadio on Blog Talk Radio

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On The Everything Page you'll find everything you need to build visibility, credibility and influence through engaging presentations that move your participants into action: freebies, low-cost products and courses, and 1:1 coaching!

Communication is NOT 93% nonverbal

I totally get what he's saying

Almost daily I hear the communication research of Albert Mehrabian misquoted or misrepresented:

"Remember, nonverbal communication makes up 93% of all communication!"

Or in other words:

* 7% of communication comes from our words
* 38% of communication comes from our tone of voice
* 55% of communication comes from our body language

I've been writing about this since 2007, along with several of my colleagues (linked at the bottom of Olivia Mitchell's post), and I'm not sure I'm making a dent.

I'm most disappointed when I hear other speaking and communications professionals repeat this statistic. Because it's just not true, and they should know that by now.

When I find new resources to share in my fight against uninformed sharing of statistics, I bring them to you, so here's the latest one I've found: an interview with Albert Mehrabian himself.

I'm unable to find a link that can be embedded, so please click the link and go listen to what Mehrabian has to say about his research (it starts at about 23:15). Here's a snippet:

"Whenever I hear that misquote or misrepresentation of my findings I cringe, because it should be so obvious to anybody who would use any amount of common sense that that's not a correct statement."

and...

"You cannot extrapolate my findings to communication in general."

It's a brief interview, and well worth the listen!

And if you haven't seen the animated video debunking the misinterpreted numbers, it's dead-on, and just 3:30 long. Take a look:



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Words and actions in alignment

Download audio here.



I was reading an article on The Positivity Blog, when I was struck with #9 on the list of Gandhi’s Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World:

9. Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self.

Followed by two quotes by Gandhi:

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."

I'm a big fan of authenticity. In fact, I'm one of those coaches who will tell you to "be yourself," or "just be," a concept that my pal and fellow trainer Laura Bergells thinks is poppycock.

I've written articles about how to discover your own personality and style, how to discover what makes you unique, and falling in love with the real you.

But these Gandhi quotes sent me in a different direction today. A direction that Albert Mehrabian was going in all those years ago!

What I hope to be as a speaker and to see in a speaker is a person who is congruent. When "what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." When a speaker is congruent, they gain trust.

A large part of engaging an audience and making your message memorable is in gaining trust with the audience. When, in simple terms, your words and your actions don't match, there is a disconnect. When what you say and what you do don't match, the audience is confused. The audience may perceive you to be insincere, they may perceive you to be hiding something, or they may not know what to think at all.

But they will not connect with you, and they probably will not trust you.

As Laura Bergells points out, human beings are complex. Frequently, we can't even make sense of our own thoughts and actions, because knowing and understanding ourselves is a lifelong process. For a person to be completely congruent all the time, with thoughts, words and actions in alignment, that person would have to be completely self-actualized.

However, to reach a desired level of trust with an audience, congruence is critical. Don't portray yourself as open, warm and approachable onstage and then run out the door the minute the presentation is over, for example.

Authenticity and congruence go hand in hand. Being yourself means portraying yourself as you are, showing the world who you are in words and in actions. When your message and your person are aligned, you are more believable, more trustworthy and more credible. And why would you want it any other way?

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On The Everything Page you'll find everything you need to build visibility, credibility and influence through engaging presentations that move your participants into action: freebies, low-cost products and courses, and 1:1 coaching!

Mehrabian myth busting -- animated!

Here's a clever animated video discussing the constant misinterpretation of Albert Mehrabian's communication research. Very entertaining! Here's my original blog post on the topic as well.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dboA8cag1M

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On The Everything Page you'll find everything you need to build visibility, credibility and influence through engaging presentations that move your participants into action: freebies, low-cost products and courses, and 1:1 coaching!

How you dress = 55% of your presentation?

If you missed my article in August about the "7-38-55" rule of communication, please take a look.

Once again, I find this statistic being used in a way that completely distorts its original intent.

I came across an article the other day that stated, "Statistics show that influence on an audience is determined as follows: 7 percent by what we SAY; 38 percent by how we SPEAK; and 55 percent by how we LOOK AND BEHAVE."

The article then went on to apply this to what a speaker wears; that is, if 55 percent of communication is about how we "look and behave," then that must mean that how you dress is more important than your actual words, which make up only 7 percent of communication.

People, this statistic is being misinterpreted all over town. So read my article again and especially Judith Pearson's, that clearly explains Albert Mehrabian's research and debunks the mistaken application of the "rule."

And please get your facts straight.

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On The Everything Page you'll find everything you need to build visibility, credibility and influence through engaging presentations that move your participants into action: freebies, low-cost products and courses, and 1:1 coaching!

The truth about 7% - 38% - 55%

How many times have you read this in an article about communication or public speaking:

* 7% of communication comes from our words
* 38% of communication comes from our tone of voice
* 55% of communication comes from our body language?

Or, in other words, "our words make up only 7% of the meaning of our communication."

These statistics supposedly come from Albert Mehrabian's book "Silent Messages: Implicit Communication of Emotions and Attitudes," a book about nonverbal communication and body language.

However, Mehrabian's research is, most of the time, misunderstood and misinterpreted.

For example, his statistics are mistakenly applied to public speaking (and all communication in general), and speakers are told that their words are practically meaningless, because only 7% of communication is transmitted verbally. That is, your nonverbal communication is much more important because 93% of the meaning of your presentation is transmitted nonverbally. Or, speakers are told that they should use PowerPoint or visuals "because 55% of communication is visual."

Mehrabian was studying incongruent verbal and nonverbal communication when a person is expressing feelings. He looked at how subjects responded to images with different facial expressions and recordings of a voice saying a single word with different inflections conveying like, dislike and neutral emotion.

Here's what Mehrabian says about his research being applied outside of the parameters in which he intended it:

"Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable. Also see references 286 and 305 in Silent Messages -- these are the original sources of my findings."

Here's an article by Dr. Judith E. Pearson, explaining in more detail how this research has been misused.

I'm writing this today not to suggest that speakers change the way they present or to suggest that we put less emphasis on nonverbal communication.

I'm more interested in making sure that you, as a speaker, retain your integrity and credibility by not throwing around statistics that aren't true. If that means you have to go to the source to confirm a statistic that you're using, then do it. I've said this before: back up your facts.

Using a story or statistic that is incorrect, just because everyone else uses it, is lazy. And unoriginal.

(ETA: See my follow-up post here.)

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On The Everything Page you'll find everything you need to build visibility, credibility and influence through engaging presentations that move your participants into action: freebies, low-cost products and courses, and 1:1 coaching!