Monday, November 07, 2005
It's Not What You Say, but How It Sounds
September 7, 2003
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
nytimes.com
NOTHING looks calculated about the beige sport jacket and
tie that Kevin R. Daley is wearing, or about the barely
sipped glass of pinot grigio sitting before him, or about
the well-lighted corner table at the Princeton Club at
which he and a reporter have been genially sparring for
more than four hours.
Looks are deceiving. The jacket, he readily concedes, was
carefully picked - with the help of his wife, Ann
Goodson-Daley - to be less formal than a suit, yet not so
casual as to trivialize the occasion. The glass of wine?
Ordered so that his tablemate would feel comfortable about
having ordered one herself. (Had she not, he would have had
iced tea.) And the table? Days before, he persuaded the
club's management to waive its rule against transacting
business or taking notes at lunch - in small part by
drawing a somewhat dubious distinction between business and
an interview, in large part by suggesting that the club
would probably get some nice publicity.
Why go to all that trouble? Because the Princeton Club
gives him home-court advantage. "I really did want an
environment that was both controlled and controllable," he
said.
It is not that Mr. Daley, 71, is a control freak. It is
just that he has spent decades studying the impact of how a
person looks and acts and sounds on his or her ability to
get ahead. And by now, ensuring that his garb, his behavior
and the ambience are all seamlessly meshed comes naturally
to him.
Mr. Daley knows that it is not as natural for others. In
survey after survey, he says, public speaking is ahead of
rats and snakes on the list of things that people fear
most. So he and his oldest daughter, Laura Daley-Caravella,
46, have codified the dos and don'ts of effective
communicating, be it on a dais in front of hundreds, or at
a lunch in front of one. Their book, "Talk Your Way to the
Top: How to Address Any Audience Like Your Career Depends
on It" ( McGraw-Hill), arrived in bookstores this month.
Some of his tips - know your subject, do not read woodenly
from notes, hold important lunches at restaurants where
past tipping has made you a favored customer - are pretty
obvious. And many sound like orders from drill sergeants
and schoolmarms: Hands out of those pockets! Elbows unglued
from those sides! Distribute weight evenly on both legs,
and stop moving around so much! Do not keep opening and
closing your hands, and, for goodness' sake, try not to
stare at your shoes!
But Mr. Daley offers a formidable list of eye-opening
pointers, too:
Gesture with one hand. Waving both looks fidgety and
distracting; using one looks natural and emphasizes a
point.
Speak up. Speaking low may force people to listen harder,
but it will make you sound boring.
Focus on one member of the audience to keep your eyes
from darting around. But change to another person often, so
you don't stare.
Don't ever be in total darkness, even if that means
audience members must squint at visuals. You want them
riveted on you, not on the slides.
Apply the same rules to one-on-one meetings as to keynote
speeches, but just tone them down. "Make the gestures
smaller and the voice more modulated, but never forget that
an animated person is more interesting," Mr. Daley said.
If it sounds like a top-heavy emphasis on style over
substance, that is because it is. Mr. Daley cites many
studies that indicate that, as long as you are not
announcing a cure for cancer, more than 90 percent of the
impact of communication rests on how you look and sound,
not on what you say.
"Information by itself, unless it's genuinely startling, is
boring," he said. "Conveying it through stories and
gestures and analogies makes it interesting."
Mr. Daley sounds like a born public speaker. He is anything
but. He still smarts when he remembers how, as an eighth
grader, he failed an assignment to deliver a one-minute
presentation. His chosen subject, Japanese swimmers,
fascinated him, but he did not lard it with anecdotes that
would interest others. His teacher mocked him, and the
experience so humiliated him that he did not speak in
public again for nearly a decade. "Even when I was duty
officer in the Navy, I'd get others to give my reports for
me," he said.
It was not until 1956, when he was 24, that he lost the
luxury of public shyness. That year his father, the
sportswriter Arthur Daley, won a Pulitzer Prize, and son
Kevin got up to speak at the tribute dinner. He froze. He
felt guilty and humiliated - and ready to take action. So
he signed up for a Dale Carnegie course and got over the
stage-fright hump for good.
FAST forward a few years.
Mr. Daley, by now a vice president of the advertising
agency J. Walter Thompson, is speaking easily to crowds of
all sizes. Others at the agency are not. Time and again, he
sees his colleagues win or lose business based on the verve
of their presentations to clients, not on the validity of
their ideas. "I realized that decisions are made on
feelings about facts, not on facts themselves," he said.
He began teaching co-workers to speak before audiences.
Soon, he was offering the same training to J. Walter
Thompson clients. Perhaps inevitably, communications
training supplanted advertising as his primary vocation.
So, in 1969, he made it official: he and a colleague quit
the agency and founded Communispond, a business that
teaches communications skills and that now has offices in
the United States and London.
Mr. Daley's premise is that success in selling a product,
giving a speech or seeking a promotion rises and falls on
the ability to hold the listeners' interest and, just as
often, to convince them that they are holding yours. And in
this kind of economy, those skills are particularly
important in seeking jobs or clients.
He easily trots out examples:
Two stockbrokers are
competing to handle a bank president's finances. The banker
tells both that he became rich investing in risky stocks
but that now, at 62, he wants to preserve his lifestyle,
not better it. One broker says, "So you want a more
conservative portfolio." The other says, "So you've enjoyed
a good ride for the last 12 years, and you want to be sure
you don't throw away what you've earned." He gets the
account. "He didn't just parrot a conclusion, but showed
that he really listened to the man's underlying concerns,"
Mr. Daley said.
Two copywriters applying for jobs at an advertising
agency are asked what they would bring to the party. "Well,
I'm very creative," one answered after a while. The winning
applicant made no such claim but told of a successful and
highly creative campaign he developed at another job. "A
good presenter knows how to use a vignette to make a point
without bragging," Mr. Daley said.
Two executives, applying for positions at a manufacturing
company, are asked why they want to work there. Both say
they respect the company's integrity. The one who was
hired, however, specified that the company's printed code
of ethics put the interests of customers, employees and the
community above those of shareholders. "She presented
herself in a way that showed her values were aligned with
those of the company," Mr. Daley said.
Of course, honed presentation skills are as necessary for
doing the job as for landing it. For example, here is Mr.
Daley's advice for running meetings: Start with headlines,
and quickly personalize them. "Tell them the July slump is
over and you played golf to celebrate, or tell them we just
lost three more clients and you tossed and turned all
night," he said.
Mr. Daley clearly follows his advice - and in more ways
than carefully orchestrating a lunch interview. The
American Heart Association recently asked him to give a
speech about fund-raising skills, so he started with a
personal anecdote about helping his local Y.M.C.A. raise
money for a pool. "A shared experience helps the audience
identify with you," he explained.
And he clearly understands that positioning is everything,
even when it comes to titling a book. His first choice was
"Speak Up, Stand Out: You Can't Get Promoted From a Seated
Position," a title he still contends is catchier than the
one McGraw-Hill used.
But, he did not fight hard. Why not? "Their title probably
has a better chance of landing a spot in the business book
sections of the stores."
September 7, 2003
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
nytimes.com
NOTHING looks calculated about the beige sport jacket and
tie that Kevin R. Daley is wearing, or about the barely
sipped glass of pinot grigio sitting before him, or about
the well-lighted corner table at the Princeton Club at
which he and a reporter have been genially sparring for
more than four hours.
Looks are deceiving. The jacket, he readily concedes, was
carefully picked - with the help of his wife, Ann
Goodson-Daley - to be less formal than a suit, yet not so
casual as to trivialize the occasion. The glass of wine?
Ordered so that his tablemate would feel comfortable about
having ordered one herself. (Had she not, he would have had
iced tea.) And the table? Days before, he persuaded the
club's management to waive its rule against transacting
business or taking notes at lunch - in small part by
drawing a somewhat dubious distinction between business and
an interview, in large part by suggesting that the club
would probably get some nice publicity.
Why go to all that trouble? Because the Princeton Club
gives him home-court advantage. "I really did want an
environment that was both controlled and controllable," he
said.
It is not that Mr. Daley, 71, is a control freak. It is
just that he has spent decades studying the impact of how a
person looks and acts and sounds on his or her ability to
get ahead. And by now, ensuring that his garb, his behavior
and the ambience are all seamlessly meshed comes naturally
to him.
Mr. Daley knows that it is not as natural for others. In
survey after survey, he says, public speaking is ahead of
rats and snakes on the list of things that people fear
most. So he and his oldest daughter, Laura Daley-Caravella,
46, have codified the dos and don'ts of effective
communicating, be it on a dais in front of hundreds, or at
a lunch in front of one. Their book, "Talk Your Way to the
Top: How to Address Any Audience Like Your Career Depends
on It" ( McGraw-Hill), arrived in bookstores this month.
Some of his tips - know your subject, do not read woodenly
from notes, hold important lunches at restaurants where
past tipping has made you a favored customer - are pretty
obvious. And many sound like orders from drill sergeants
and schoolmarms: Hands out of those pockets! Elbows unglued
from those sides! Distribute weight evenly on both legs,
and stop moving around so much! Do not keep opening and
closing your hands, and, for goodness' sake, try not to
stare at your shoes!
But Mr. Daley offers a formidable list of eye-opening
pointers, too:
Gesture with one hand. Waving both looks fidgety and
distracting; using one looks natural and emphasizes a
point.
Speak up. Speaking low may force people to listen harder,
but it will make you sound boring.
Focus on one member of the audience to keep your eyes
from darting around. But change to another person often, so
you don't stare.
Don't ever be in total darkness, even if that means
audience members must squint at visuals. You want them
riveted on you, not on the slides.
Apply the same rules to one-on-one meetings as to keynote
speeches, but just tone them down. "Make the gestures
smaller and the voice more modulated, but never forget that
an animated person is more interesting," Mr. Daley said.
If it sounds like a top-heavy emphasis on style over
substance, that is because it is. Mr. Daley cites many
studies that indicate that, as long as you are not
announcing a cure for cancer, more than 90 percent of the
impact of communication rests on how you look and sound,
not on what you say.
"Information by itself, unless it's genuinely startling, is
boring," he said. "Conveying it through stories and
gestures and analogies makes it interesting."
Mr. Daley sounds like a born public speaker. He is anything
but. He still smarts when he remembers how, as an eighth
grader, he failed an assignment to deliver a one-minute
presentation. His chosen subject, Japanese swimmers,
fascinated him, but he did not lard it with anecdotes that
would interest others. His teacher mocked him, and the
experience so humiliated him that he did not speak in
public again for nearly a decade. "Even when I was duty
officer in the Navy, I'd get others to give my reports for
me," he said.
It was not until 1956, when he was 24, that he lost the
luxury of public shyness. That year his father, the
sportswriter Arthur Daley, won a Pulitzer Prize, and son
Kevin got up to speak at the tribute dinner. He froze. He
felt guilty and humiliated - and ready to take action. So
he signed up for a Dale Carnegie course and got over the
stage-fright hump for good.
FAST forward a few years.
Mr. Daley, by now a vice president of the advertising
agency J. Walter Thompson, is speaking easily to crowds of
all sizes. Others at the agency are not. Time and again, he
sees his colleagues win or lose business based on the verve
of their presentations to clients, not on the validity of
their ideas. "I realized that decisions are made on
feelings about facts, not on facts themselves," he said.
He began teaching co-workers to speak before audiences.
Soon, he was offering the same training to J. Walter
Thompson clients. Perhaps inevitably, communications
training supplanted advertising as his primary vocation.
So, in 1969, he made it official: he and a colleague quit
the agency and founded Communispond, a business that
teaches communications skills and that now has offices in
the United States and London.
Mr. Daley's premise is that success in selling a product,
giving a speech or seeking a promotion rises and falls on
the ability to hold the listeners' interest and, just as
often, to convince them that they are holding yours. And in
this kind of economy, those skills are particularly
important in seeking jobs or clients.
He easily trots out examples:
Two stockbrokers are
competing to handle a bank president's finances. The banker
tells both that he became rich investing in risky stocks
but that now, at 62, he wants to preserve his lifestyle,
not better it. One broker says, "So you want a more
conservative portfolio." The other says, "So you've enjoyed
a good ride for the last 12 years, and you want to be sure
you don't throw away what you've earned." He gets the
account. "He didn't just parrot a conclusion, but showed
that he really listened to the man's underlying concerns,"
Mr. Daley said.
Two copywriters applying for jobs at an advertising
agency are asked what they would bring to the party. "Well,
I'm very creative," one answered after a while. The winning
applicant made no such claim but told of a successful and
highly creative campaign he developed at another job. "A
good presenter knows how to use a vignette to make a point
without bragging," Mr. Daley said.
Two executives, applying for positions at a manufacturing
company, are asked why they want to work there. Both say
they respect the company's integrity. The one who was
hired, however, specified that the company's printed code
of ethics put the interests of customers, employees and the
community above those of shareholders. "She presented
herself in a way that showed her values were aligned with
those of the company," Mr. Daley said.
Of course, honed presentation skills are as necessary for
doing the job as for landing it. For example, here is Mr.
Daley's advice for running meetings: Start with headlines,
and quickly personalize them. "Tell them the July slump is
over and you played golf to celebrate, or tell them we just
lost three more clients and you tossed and turned all
night," he said.
Mr. Daley clearly follows his advice - and in more ways
than carefully orchestrating a lunch interview. The
American Heart Association recently asked him to give a
speech about fund-raising skills, so he started with a
personal anecdote about helping his local Y.M.C.A. raise
money for a pool. "A shared experience helps the audience
identify with you," he explained.
And he clearly understands that positioning is everything,
even when it comes to titling a book. His first choice was
"Speak Up, Stand Out: You Can't Get Promoted From a Seated
Position," a title he still contends is catchier than the
one McGraw-Hill used.
But, he did not fight hard. Why not? "Their title probably
has a better chance of landing a spot in the business book
sections of the stores."
# posted by Cate @ 7:27 PM 
