Become a Confident, Clear and Compelling Communicator with The C3 Method™
Empower Your Voice
If you're like most of us and someone who has to present regularly or even from time to time - you don't walk away from that experience thinking: "I was confident, I was clear and I was compelling - and I did all three of those things simultaneously." If you are someone for whom that is true, you definitely don't need to read further. But if you don't fall into the category and the thought of having to give a presentation or talk makes you uncomfortable (or worse), read on...
The problem is that to be good at something we generally need two things:
A method or technique.
Time to practice with that method consistently
A bit (more than a bit) on my background before we dive in...
It was only until recently that I've been able to coherently define myself and my career path. This is thanks to Christina Wallace and her book The Portfolio Life. I learned I have a lot in common with Christina from performing arts, to tech to teaching and the Venn diagram she uses to bring clarity to her journey aligns perfectly with what my life continues to look like:
My anything but linear journey <<<<<
I have had a VERY non-linear path. In anything but a nutshell...
I enlisted in the Navy at 17 and after four years on active duty (with two of those years as a US Navy Rescue Swimmer) I went straight to undergrad (2 weeks later) as a Psych major at Penn State. One semester in I was convinced to audition for a play and, while I loved movies, acting was never in the cards for me or so I thought... I got cast in a one-act play festival, did something on stage that the audience loved on opening night and that laughter became an instant addiction. Being able to move fellow humans in a room to laughter (or tears) is quite a thrill.
I decided right then that I wanted to be an actor and was soon accepted into one of the best theatre programs in the state of Pennsylvania. DeSales University was the school and home of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare festival. DeSales was an incredible experience with professors who all worked professionally and taught me to have a love and respect for the theatre. Also, attending undergrad as a somewhat non-traditional student with 4 years of military service under my belt, was definitely a blessing.
Full disclosure: I barely graduated from high school and I knew better to attempt to try college first thing as I would likely flunk out before the end of the first year. The Navy certainly did give me some perspective and I valued my education much more than I would have as an 18 year old as a result.
Nearing the end of my undergrad experience and getting ready to graduate, at the request of a professor, I took part in a unified audition for some of the most highly regarded acting Masters degree programs in the country. My plan was to go straight to NYC and "be an actor" however...
One of the most competitive schools in the country took interest in me. The Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and the head of acting there, Deborah Hedwall, insisted that I come sit in on a class. I did and was floored by the work I saw in that room.
Rutgers was the premier program for the Meisner technique. This was because William Esper, regarded as the best Meisner teacher in the country and one of the best acting teachers in the country, founded the program. Bill worked directly with Sanford Meisner for over 15 years. I didn't know anything about the Meisner technique or who Sanford Meisner was before I arrived at Rutgers. In very short order, Sanford Meisner defined acting as: Living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Bill later adapted this to: Doing truthfully under imaginary circumstances. It was the clearest definition of acting I had ever heard. Acting 'clicked' for me and in a way that I hadn't experienced in undergrad. Further, the Meisner technique is just that: A technique. It is a two year long, progressive technique that you learn to ensure you have a practicable, repeatable and reliable craft to be consistent and compelling in your acting. The experience I had at Rutgers studying the Meisner Technique, voice, speech, language and movement with some of the best teachers the world had to offer at the time was nothing short of a transformative treasure. Those three years spending (mostly) all of my time an energy on how to be a better performing artist taught me what was necessary to be not just a good but a great actor. And great actors are world class communicators.
Cut to: graduating from Rutgers and moving straight to New York City. I had 7 years of actor training under my belt (B.A. in Acting/Directing & M.F.A in Acting) and was ready to take the industry by storm. I would like to say "what they don't tell you..." but they do tell you: A sustained career as a working actor is very rare. 'They'- my teachers, all spoke from experience and were, no doubt, spot on. Like most actors, I had to support myself as a waiter and bartender. I lied my way into a bartending job (never tended bar before in my life) at a New York City landmark - Cafe des Artistes.
The restaurant had been there since the 1930's and, in 2004 when I first started working at the famed establishment, it was still regarded as a gem of the NYC restaurant landscape. I won't go into the history now, but there is a lot of history - especially being directly across the street from ABC studios. Most know this, but tending bar at a high end, historic NYC restaurant sure has its benefits.
For one, I got to learn the ways of the world, so to speak. New York City in the early 2000's was a special place. Post 9/11, pre Great Recession. Opportunity was abound and I had a blast. Not much of an acting career though.... Why..?
Well, 7 years of actor training taught me about acting but not about auditioning. There are some pretty intense differences between being able to ride the emotional wave of a 2 hour play performance and having to walk into a room for 30 seconds, say 3 lines and leave a lasting impression. Auditioning was an art form unto itself and one that I did not learn until I found my way to Kimball Studio many years after graduating. Actors, if you want to learn how to absolutely crush TV and Film auditions, there is no better place that I know of than Kimball Studio.
Over the years I've come to learn that we're all always auditioning whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. More on that soon.
Feeling a bit lost as an actor, and being open to other avenues, a friend had asked me if I wanted to come work for a small but mighty IT consulting firm and think tank. Having two acting/arts degrees and knowing nothing about tech, I didn't feel I was qualified to interview for the job - let alone take it if offered - but money was tight, predictable income was attractive, and I interview well #actortraining. The organization I interviewed for and came on board with brought together fifty Fortune 70 Chief Information Officers for a 3 day strategy exchange twice a year. There were two groups of 25 and they would meet in Menlo Park and New York City alternating locations in the Spring and Fall.
I was hired as a mix of event planner and all purpose personal assistant type to the two Senior Partners and living legends in tech consulting: Naomi Seligman and Ernie von Simson. I don't use the phrase 'living legends' lightly but they are. They had been consultants since there were punch card computers and were incredibly successful and had impeccable reputations with the heads of technology, venture capital, startups and the industry at large. I felt incredibly out of place in this firm but I can learn fast when I need to and, spending most of my time with Naomi, saying that I "learned a lot from her" is a world class understatement.
Naomi is a flat out genius. Her intelligence, self-awareness, empathy and ability to foster meaningful relationships is staggering. I'd have to write another article to share what I learned from working one room over from Naomi for over six years so I won't try and address it here. With that said, one of my biggest takeaways was how well she was able to foster and maintain meaningful relationships.
>>>>> Enter SoHo Creative Studio
At my brand marketing consultancy, SoHo Creative Studio, our tagline is: Meaningful Relationships Mean Business™ - but what does that mean..? We have a belief system that drives everything we do and it's the basis of being a better presenter. The belief system is as follows:
A thriving business is the result of meaningful relationships.
Meaningful relationships are the result of promises kept.
Promises kept can only happen when someone believes that "we're right for the role" This is any role: employee, CEO, CFO, founder, husband, wife, friend you name it. Promises, in some form of relationships, are so important that we have rituals where we gather hundreds of people together in view of whatever God(s) we believe in to state those promises out loud with God(s) and family and friends bearing witness. Good promises are: measurable, demonstrable and, of course, valuable to the parties in question. But how do we get to be right for the role...?
Confident, clear and compelling communication.
I believe one of the greatest tragedies a human or business can endure is having something of value to others but not presenting that value effectively enough so that others can understand exactly how right this person, product or service is right for the role.
At the CIO Strategy Exchange or CIOSE for short, Naomi and Ernie's firm, I was able to see top startup founders and the CEOs of the world's most valuable companies present to our clients. The presentations that seemed to go best were the ones were the speaker was confident in who they were and what they were saying, had some sort of structure to their stories and arguments and, finally, felt prepared but not over rehearsed or canned. It was more like a conversation albeit a somewhat one way conversation. It was in this environment that I started to realize that my 7 years of actor training had some serious value to those who need to communicate their value and the value of their products or services in a confident, clear and compelling way. And by 'they' I mean the CEOs of largest tech companies on the planet and Founders of up and coming startups. Admittedly, I didn't realize how lucky I was at the time to have access to that level of insight.
>>>>> Next chapters - photographer + presentation coach
At the same time I had taken a role at CIOSE, a Nikon D70 digital camera fell into my lap from a family member. Up until that point, I had no aspirations to take a good picture let alone become a professional photographer. But that's what happened, I became a professional photographer. I quickly became obsessed with learning all I could about photography. I would reach out to New York's best photographers and ask them out to coffee. Some never responded, but many said 'yes.' After I would come home from my day job at CIOSE, I would photograph anyone who was willing to be photographed. I did this on weekends too - never taking an actual day off but photography felt like a day off. Photography was the first thing since acting that really moved me and filled me with energy. Eventually I got good at what I was doing and started charging. I was able to build a lucrative side business as a photographer while working for CIOSE. Eventually, I went part time at CIOSE to build that business and then left entirely to be a full time professional photographer. But/and...
I had also started presentation coaching. First on a small scale at some tech accelerators in NYC then taking on clients in larger organizations. Then getting to collaborate with some even larger companies like Red Hat/IBM.
Over the next few years I photographed hundreds of humans, coached and was brought back to consult for CIOSE which was a pleasant and welcome surprise. But back to that Sanford Meisner guy I mentioned earlier...
One of the things I noticed when I would photograph people is how self-conscious they would get. Even in our selfie-era, it didn't matter. There is something about a camera that drives our attention inwards. I've come to call the camera "the great accelerator" because it can accelerate our attention inward and, as a result, shine a bright light on our insecurities. The camera and that act of being photographed offers an opportunity to face these fears in an elevated way and get past them faster than we normally could. I kept being told I had a knack for setting people at ease and one by one my clients would be surprised by how good they felt (and looked) after their sessions with me. "Wait, that's ME?!" (it was always them.)
I'd love to take all the credit but all I was doing was what Sanford Meisner would teach: The more you get the attention off yourself and onto someone or something else, the freer you will feel and the more captivating to others you will become. How did I do this? Kind of a trade secret - but not really. I simply helped this person get their attention off themselves and onto the camera in a way that freed them of being self-conscious. By the way, self-conscious people (and actors) can be pretty uninspiring to watch. Presentation hack: If you're struggling with nerves, don't look down. When we look down we're either listening to our inner monologue - which likely won't be a positive one - or we're honing in on a body sensation like rapid breathing or an elevated heart rate. So where 'to' look? At the audience or up - just not down.
>>>>> Creation of The 3C Method
So as I continued as a presentation coach, my methodology was helping to translate Meisner's method for business professionals and founders. The issue that I was running into was that in order to be confident, clear and compelling you have to have some sort of clear structure to meet the clarity standard. That structure for actors takes the form of a script or screenplay. But I didn't have anything formulaic and easy to understand that could be applied in business. Enter Barbara Minto formerly of McKinsey. Here's an excerpt about Barbara direct from McKinsey's website:
Barbara Minto was with the Firm for only 10 years, but the mark she left is permanent.
The first female MBA professional hire our Firm ever made, Barbara is best known for the Minto Pyramid Principle, her immortal framework for writing and presenting ideas. First published in book form more than 40 years ago, its lessons are still taught at Embark. The countless courses Barbara has taught on the subject have made it, for many, practically synonymous with structure.
“The pyramid is a tool to help you find out what you think,” she says. “The great value of the technique is that it forces you to pull out of your head information that you weren’t aware was there, and then helps you to develop and shape it until the thinking is crystal clear. Until you do that, you can’t make good decisions on slides or video.”
Barbara's SCQA framework and Minto Pyramid was the perfect structure for my business clients. Why?
Because it's still in use at places like McKinsey and Bain today. #triedandtrue
Because it follows a many thousand year old storytelling structure that's woven into our DNA as humans.
Lastly, it prevents an audience from getting ahead of you during a presentation because there are rules you have to follow to make sure your story is clear and your arguments well supported. Here's what the pyramid looks like:
The 3C Method™ that I teach in my workshops and use with my coaching clients, marries innovative acting techniques inspired by Sanford Meisner and Meisner trained actors such as Timothée Chalamet, Krysten Ritter, Chadwick Boseman, Liev Schreiber, Sigourney Weaver, Christoph Waltz, Tina Fey and Amy Schumer with the strategic communication frameworks of leading consulting firms such as McKinsey, Bain and Accenture ala Barbara Minto.
In order to present better we have to work the pyramid. The full technique looks like this:
We start at the bottom of the pyramid and work our way up. I included listening first because it's often the most overlooked part of presenting and we're increasingly awful at it due to our device driven lives. You can't be a confident, clear and compelling communicator if you are a poor listener. At the confidence level, you, of course, need to tell the truth and know what you're talking about. Might seem simple but we're talking about not only the truth of what you're saying but having the ability to live in the truth of the moment - at least to a degree. In the first semester of the Meisner training, you're not permitted to use scripts or memorized diaglogue. It's all improv to get you grounded in the fact that great acting is about living from one unanticipated moment to the next. So is great presenting.
The level listed 'clear' is about having a clear and predictable structure that the audience can follow along with. In the case of The 3C Method™ we use the pyramid principle discussed earlier along with SCQA which stands for:
Situation
Complication
Question
Answer
AKA foundational storytelling.
At the top of the pyramid is where the captivators live. Most anyone can move up to the second level and give us information delivered clearly but often stop there because the perceived risk goes up as you move up the pyramid. Not actual risk, but perceived risk. I say "perceived" because I believe it's much more risky to have someone 'not' know about your product or service than being concerned with moving into the top of the pyramid where you'll be a bit unpredictable (even to yourself) and there will be deep meaning for you in what you're saying and you'll let your audience see how you feel. That is, if we turned off the sound on you could we still deduce how you felt about what you were saying? Good? Bad? Happy? Concerned, etc. I have to disagree with anyone that feels having a strong and meaningful point of view in a business presentation is not appropriate. I believe it's not only appropriate but a necessity. Why?
Think about this: if you're going to stand there and just deliver information clearly, why do I need to be there at that moment? Synchronously? If it's just information, we can certainly do that asynchronously. Write a book, memo, blog post or a LinkedIn article ;-)
You have to earn the right for your audience to be there with you in real time. You do this by moving beyond information delivery and up to:
Being able to answer the question "But what does it mean?" in an appropriately personal way. "Appropriately personal" depends on who you are, what the audience is, what the situation is and how much risk you're willing to take. At SoHo Creative we say: Make it meaningful. What makes something meaningful is up for debate but, if you're being honest with yourself, you know if something has deep meaning or not.
We need to see how you feel a la Charlie Chaplin. My Meisner teacher, Bill Esper once said to me: If acting was about words Charlie Chaplin would have been an idiot - but acting isn't about words it's about behavior and that's why Chaplain was a genius. 20 years after I heard those words from Bill I couldn't agree more.
Presenting better means using that predictable structure but, at the same time, letting go of exactly how you're going to express those ideas in the moment. I don't mean departing from the structure or going off your talking points, I mean sticking to your talking points but not giving a memorized speech. Why? Because as soon as you're trying to regurgitate a memorized speech you stop being a presenter and start being an actor.
That is, what is asked of actors is a tall order. Actors have to convince us of an illusion:
Actors have to convince us they're the person they're playing, while speaking words that are memorized and not their own all under extreme circumstances in often fantastical worlds.
This illusion can break down very quickly and when it does we're out of the moment and out of the story and into our own heads. As I tell my clients: you don't want to be an actor. Unless, of course, you actually want to be an actor, which in that case I say go for it. Personally, I'm still in acting class and audition regularly and wouldn't feel like a complete human without it. Acting continues to breathe life into my soul and teach me valuable lessons.
Rather than trying to be an actor, you work your way through the SCQA and Pyramid Principle leaving some give to exactly how you're going to say what you're going to say. If you know what you're talking about and you've taken the time to map out your arguments and supporting data, you have nothing to fear. You'll crush it.
One final caveat about this technique... And this is the one few of us like to hear... You cannot get better at this technique in isolation. As the late great acting teacher, Kelly Kimball would say:
You do not get to inject yourself with courage alone in your living room. You have to take risks in the presence of others.
This is why you will see the words: Practice in the presence of others along the left hand side of the pyramid above. As an actor and speaker, I'm absolutely brilliant in my living room alone. It's the camera and/or the couple hundred people in the audience that can throw me.
If we want to present better, we have to do what one of my many great teachers once asked of me:
The place to go is out on the edge and survive it and then breathe in the thrill that you GAVE and FELT and EXPRESSED in front of people who were moved by you (and you by them). And THEN we grow. Then we are bigger. We are more capable of tolerating all that can be asked of us as actors.
I don't believe Kelly's words are reserved for actors. I've learned that any and all of us can bring this level of ourselves to presenting in any and all situations. We truly have nothing to lose and everything to gain. In the end, all that we risk losing are opportunities to convince others that we or our product/service is right for the role. We won't get to make and keep promises and in turn that means fewer meaningful relationships. And no meaningful relationships = no business if we don't commit to the practice of communicating in a confident, clear and compelling manner. We're all always auditioning, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not.
After all, Shakespeare knew what was up some 424 years ago:
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.
-As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7
To learn more about The 3C Method™ and how it can help you and your team become more confident, clear and compelling communicators through any medium, hit me up directly, I'd love to hear from you.