How Adaptable is Your Corporate Dinosaur?

In July, 2011, 45 scientists from around the world pooled their data and confirmed that the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70% of the species living on earth was caused by the impact of a gigantic asteroid 65 million years ago.

According to their calculations, the scientists speculate that the asteroid was approximately 9.5 km across and traveling at the leisurely speed of 69 thousand km per hour.  It struck off the east coast of what is now Mexico, leaving an impact crater 38 km deep and 200 km across.

The pressure wave and the resulting fireball probably cleared most of the forest cover from the North and South American continents.  It took 15 million years for the planet to recover.

The dinosaurs, however, never did.  The resources required to maintain their massive bodies were gone.  The species that survived, however, were more adaptable to the abrupt change that had taken place around them.  The demise of the huge and powerful dinosaurs allowed for the emergence of the smaller, quicker mammals that inhabit the planet today.

Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.”  In other words, external environmental changes must initiate internal changes for the organism (or the organization) to survive.

Now, take a look at your organization.  Are you now or are you becoming a corporate dinosaur?  Have your policies, processes, behaviors and cultures evolved enough to ensure that you can adapt to the changing realities that we experience more and more frequently in business today?

Most of us like to think we’re prepared, yet studies show that 70% of all business change management initiatives FAIL to deliver the promised benefits.
 
Mathematician and philosopher John Allen Paulos wrote, “Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”
 
This means that for your organization to remain productive and relevant today, you must be changing and changing regularly.  And this is especially true in large businesses, where your challenge is to keep your people thinking smaller and quicker.

After all, you never know when the next asteroid might come and wipe out a few more dinosaurs.

How to Handle Hair and Hands

Centuries of scientific research has proved conclusively that men and women are different.  Surprised?  I didn’t think so.  I could elaborate on this topic for the rest of the year.

But, the topic I’ve been discussing with you recently has been non-verbal communication through body language, and since I’ve only got room for a few paragraphs, I’ll quickly explain gender differences between the most distracting aspect of body language in business presentations.  For women, it’s hair.  For men, it’s hands.

Women: If you have short hair or traditionally keep your hair tied up at work, you’re unlikely to encounter this distraction.  If your hair is long and free-flowing, however, your may be inadvertently sending subtle signals to your audience that are out of alignment with your message in your business presentation.

Imagine this: You lean forward over your laptop and click to forward to the next slide.  Your hair, as a result, falls over your shoulder and into your face.  When you stand up and begin presenting again, what’s the first thing you do?  You either brush your hair with your hand or toss your head to flick it all back.  Outside of the context of your business presentation, what message might these gestures otherwise send?  To help you ensure that your signals always send what you want to say, a simple no-nonsense hair clip will do the trick.

For men, however, the problem is not so easily solved.

Men: Have you ever noticed that when you get up to deliver a business presentation, you suddenly don’t know what to do with your hands?  You clap them and rub them together, you scratch your forearms, and you wave them aimlessly in front of your body or towards your PowerPoint slides.  And yet, those hands still feel like gangly appendages that you have suddenly sprouted from the ends of your arms.  Unfortunately, a simple, no-nonsense clip won’t get them out of the way.

The messages you send with your hands at times like these tell your audience quite clearly that you are uncomfortable, nervous, and probably lacking confidence.  So what do you do?  Well, after you try clasping your hands in front of you and then again behind you, you finally slip them into your pockets.  Which is fine, until you find a 20 sen coin in there and nervous energy goes back to work.  Imagine how this might appear to your audience.

To help you relax, remember: the most natural-looking posture you can assume is to drop your hands straight down at your sides.  If this feels uneasy, press the tips of your index fingers and your thumbs together.  This completes a circuit and helps you feel ‘in touch with yourself’.  The best part is, it controls your hand gestures so they don’t distract your audience.

Yes, men and women are different.  But, no matter the gender, the need to get your non-verbal signals straight makes all presenters the same.

Congruency: The Simple Lie Detector

Do you watch CSI?  Of course you do.  It’s arguably the best TV drama on crime forensics ever made (sorry, Jack Klugman fans).  The science is mind-boggling and sometimes you wonder if the technology they’re using really exists.

Get out of the laboratory and leave the technology behind, however, and you’ll see another science at work on CSI that’s much more subtle, but just as mind boggling.  It’s the science of congruency.  Let me explain how it works.

Jim Brass from CSI Las Vegas takes a suspect into a small, dark room outfitted with nothing but a table and some chairs.  This is his laboratory.  He starts asking some simple questions and watches for the suspect’s reactions.  Then the questions get tougher and Brass finally comes out and accuses the suspect of the murder or crime in question. Now he observes carefully, because without fail, this is where the suspect will deny. 

When he does, Brass is paying attention to five of the suspect’s communicative signals – word choice, tone of voice, facial expression, eye contact and body posture.  If all five of those signals send the same message at the same time, then Brass knows that the suspect is telling the truth.  The suspect’s signals, in other words, are congruent.  However, if one of those signals is even the slightest bit out of alignment, Brass can detect that.  He’s professionally trained to do so.  When the suspect’s signals are not congruent, Brass leans harder and asks even tougher questions until the suspect finally cracks.

Believability in your business presentations works almost the same way.  Even though your audience might not be professionally trained in congruency, they can still detect if one of your communicative signals is out of alignment with the rest.  Maybe your facial expression and your words are sending different messages.  Perhaps your body posture is betraying a lack of confidence.  Or possibly, just at that critical moment, you broke eye contact.  As insignificant as these incidents may seem, they play a big part in congruency, and therefore in getting your audience to believe you.

To ensure that your signals are in alignment with each other, the most critical step for you is to know your material inside and out and to anticipate any questions that may arise.  This will elevate your confidence levels and will immediately show up in the way you address your audience.
 
Speak with clarity and project your voice throughout the room.  Stand up straight, elevate your chin just slightly and lift your shoulders back.  Then, face your audience directly, make eye contact, and greet them with a smile on your face. 

Now, that would impress Jim Brass.

Say It on Your Face

Paul Ekman is one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century.  Through his work on human emotions, he has determined that the meaning of facial expressions is universal across cultures, and therefore, that they are biologically determined and not culturally determined as previously thought.  By showing photographs of different facial expressions to people from different backgrounds, Ekman found that basic emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, sadness and surprise were recognized across cultures.
 
Every facial expression you can imagine has been programmed into Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System, or FACS.  Using the FACS, experts can tell you precisely how certain muscles in the face move to create a recognizable expression.  The smallest movements, or microexpressions, may even be used to determine whether a person is telling the truth.  Through his work, Ekman has demonstrated how facial expressions are the window into human emotions.

You don’t need to be an eminent psychologist like Ekman to know this, however.  Facial expressions tell you how people really feel about what they have to say to you, and you can sense this without expert training.  Knowing this can also help you send messages more effectively when you deliver your business presentations.  If your facial expression matches what you have to say, people in your audience are more likely to believe you.

When you begin your presentation, for example, telling your audience that you are very pleased to have the opportunity is only half the game.  As you say this with words, you must also say this with your face.  If you really are pleased, you need to look pleased.
 
Most of the time, it’s not even necessary to mention the emotion you’re attempting to deliver.  Suppose you’re presenting a drop in your quarterly sales figures to the sales team than you manage.  This is serious business, and the expression on your face needs to tell your sales team that you’re concerned without your having to say so.

When you have exciting news, look excited.  If the trends you’re presenting are worrying, look worried.  Emotions can be infectious.  During your most effective moments in your business presentations, your audience should not only believe what you’re saying, but should also feel what you’re feeling.

When you speak with people in normal face-to-face conversations, your changing facial expressions are natural and spontaneous.  So think of your business presentation as just another conversation.  The more naturally you express yourself, both verbally and facially, the more likely it is that your audience will believe you.