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We spoke in the opening about hills, and about hills that for some of us are incredibly difficult or that we might be new to. For some of us, we've been up those hills many times before. Communicating is, for me, a hard hill to climb in any sense of the word; specifically, public speaking is a hard hill for me.
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Through my youth, I was turned off by public speaking. It was not something I planned to pursue. Then a friend told me about a course he had taken during his senior year at Brown called "Persuasive Communication." He explained that it wasn't just about speaking; it was really about how we communicate in all areas of life.
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Eagerly, I signed up for the course, only to realize that to get in, I had to be on a waitlist for about two years because it was so competitive. Somehow, I managed to weasel my way into the course, and through it, I became significantly more confident at speaking. I would say that this was probably the biggest reason I am here today.
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I have the distinct privilege to introduce our first keynote speaker. She is the professor of that course. Communication is a hill she has climbed many times before. For over 50 years, she has been teaching persuasive communication and is a distinguished senior lecturer at Brown University. It's my privilege to introduce Barbara Tannenbaum.
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Okay.
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Thank you, Gemma. You can see how well she did in the class! Yes, another round of applause! I came to Brown for a one-year appointment. It's been a heck of a year, but it's students like her who keep me doing it. I always say, when my own kids are not around, it's like the best part of parenting without any of the mess.
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So, my goal with you this afternoon is quite simple: it's to change your lives. Now, I know that’s a big goal, and I don’t have a whole semester, but my prediction is that after our time together, you will think about communication in a different and more strategic way.
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Because communication matters. You are all bright and knowledgeable; I wish that were enough. Because if it were only about knowledge, the whole country would be vaccinated. It's not just about the knowledge; it’s about how that knowledge is conveyed.
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I want to share with you some more tools for your toolbox, or paints for your paintbox, or whatever way you want to use these strategies. Most people assume that we are making communication choices about the way we communicate. So if the presumption is that we are doing this actively, why not choose actively the best way to influence our audience?
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An audience can be one other person. It can be to get done what we need to get done, and I don't just mean job-wise here. I mean the things that we need to do. Though we may not all agree politically, we've got a dangerous announcement coming tonight. I believe you all know what I mean.
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What I want to do is look at what we can learn from this kind of communication, all kinds of communication. For some of you, I may be asking you to be bilingual, to speak power, talk, and confidence in a way that you might not always feel. You can use that tool when and if you want to.
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But know that it doesn't make you any better or that it’s not the only way to communicate. The goal is to give you strategies that you can use immediately to think about your communication. My prediction is that after our time together, you will start watching and listening to people's communication in a different way and ultimately start thinking about your own communication differently.
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We don't have a lot of time together, and there is so much I want to cover, so let's continue. All speaking is public speaking. It is public speaking even if you have just one other person, or if sometimes unintentional public people overhear you. If you talk to yourself, well, I don't know. It’s not really public unless you keep answering yourself.
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However, all speaking is public speaking. The reason for the repetition is that learning theorists tell us that in order to remember an idea, we need to hear it between two and four times. Fewer than two times and we forget; more than four times and we start getting annoyed.
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That old newspaper adage—some of us still remember newspapers—goes, "Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them." The three goes right down the middle. Why is this important? Because we forget so much of what we hear.
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Generally, depending on the study, we forget between 65 and 80 percent of what we hear almost immediately. I will be grateful two weeks from now if you start using some of the things that we’re going to highlight for you in my presentation today.
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So how else can I increase retention? Visuals can increase retention. There are data that show that the more senses you engage in learning the message, the better you learn the message. If you just hear it, you forget more. If you hear it and see it, it's better. If you hear it, see it, and say it, and ultimately teach it to someone else, then you've got it.
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So sensory involvement matters. In terms of thinking, I want you to think of public speaking as a conversation and not a performance. That's what makes a successful presentation, be it one person on Zoom, on the phone, Twitter, or whatever platform—it's that all speaking is public speaking.
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The first reason I want to highlight is that the general strategies I will share with you will cross audiences and situations. Yes, because I’m up here today and there’s a videographer, I need a microphone, but I still need to ask myself the same questions and answers in anticipation that I would if I were talking in an interview, or if I were talking to the media.
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The second reason I say that all speaking is public speaking means that the bad habits we have are always present. I don't suddenly acquire them when I get up here, but my fear might exacerbate them a little. My tip is this: we can start on this journey together today. I want you to find a coach or several coaches, people you hang out with, colleagues at work, or whoever they may be.
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If I uncover a behavior that you say, 'Gee, I’d like to work on that,' then you might tell the coach that finding the most effective way to provide feedback is important. If you studied psychology, you might recall that intermittently reinforced patterns are often the hardest to extinguish. Translation: if sometimes I do and I am stopped, and sometimes I do and I am not, it will take me longer to rid myself of the behavior than if I am stopped each and every time.
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So the frequency of interrupting the old behavior will accelerate the behavioral change. There are ways of reinforcing that I highlighted: repetition, visual aids, and two more—humor will increase retention, and we remember funny stories.
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Not always fun to make fun of things, but humor can be dangerous, so we need to be careful with it. Sarcasm doesn’t work because audiences often don’t know you well enough to know whether you're being serious or sarcastic, which can lead you into big trouble. I’ve done it.
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The last thing I want to do is what I call verbal highlighting. Verbal highlighting means if I had a textbook, even at a distance, you could tell where the most important ideas are. There would be boldface, chapter heads, enumeration, and illustration, but when we talk, we don't have those markers.
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I’m sure you’ve heard many speakers, and if someone said, 'I sat next to the present former president of Brown University,' who was Martin Gregorian, thought to be very eloquent, using big words and long sentences, the person next to me said after about 45 minutes: "Wow, that was such a wonderful speech!" I said, "Can you tell me the main point?" He paused long enough to realize he couldn’t.
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For me, I want to highlight what’s most important. This is verbal highlighting: if you remember one thing from my talk with you today, we're coming up to it, and it isn’t even mine; it belongs to an old white guy named Aristotle.
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Aristotle says that whenever we communicate—and this can be on the phone, on Zoom, on Teams, or any other platform—there are two things we’re always trying to balance: number one, what’s my goal, and number two, who’s my audience? All communication is goal-oriented and audience-centered. Now, I want to ask a real question: which do you think is harder to change—your goal or your audience?
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Audience. Does anyone want to say why? You don’t have much control. The metaphor I like to talk about is that the audience is the hand we’re dealt. We can think strategically about how to play out the hand, but rarely do we get to throw in the cards and say, 'You know, I’d like a new audience.'
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This boss? I’d like a new boss! This interviewer doesn’t seem to like me; could I have a new one? Hence, it’s important to think always about what my goal is with this audience. If I’m expecting a phone call at three in the afternoon, I will admit, I don’t pick it up on the first ring; I get it on the second ring. I don't want to be rude, but that first ring reminds me again: what’s my goal and who’s my audience?
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Is my goal to apologize? Is it to clarify something? Is my goal to get business or set up a meeting? Thinking in these strategic ways helps me with my communication.
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Well, Aristotle was great and even greatness can be added to, hence, the tantamount corollary to the Aristotelian observation: we need to talk to our audience in terms of their values and beliefs. Here’s the tricky part: those values and beliefs are most important to them, not necessarily to us.
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Now I know you’re thinking, 'Will she pander to the audience, tell them anything they want to know?' No, absolutely not! But I cannot—and this is part of the problem now, widespread—right? We all have our values and beliefs, and unless somebody moves, we’re not going to make much progress.
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So I need to understand how to reach out to you with your values and beliefs. Let me give you an example: for many years, I was asked—and I know that I teach at Brown that gender is not a binary, but my task was to put more women on the Boards of Directors of large corporations.
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I tried, for me, the diversity, inclusivity, and fairness were values I’ve lived my life on. I have decades of experiences to back that up, but those board members had heard those arguments. Today, we have diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, or DEI, but I don’t know that we get better results; let’s just be honest about that.
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At any rate, I would make these arguments, and it was a tough sell. Once I had data that boards with women on them performed better financially, it became an easier suggestion for the bankers. I’m not saying that I’m against them making more money if they have more diverse boards, but I am saying that is not my top value.
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My top values were not theirs, so I had to find a place where my values could connect with their values in a way that would make that argument real to them. This is thinking hard about finding common ground—something that my undergraduates don’t often get.
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The metaphor I like to use here is: how far will I go to change the key of my song so that more people can hear it, versus at what point am I now singing somebody else's song?
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So I found out that when I talked to Brown alumni groups, the more conservatively I dressed, the more radical I could be in what I said and have it accepted. For example, I used to train police officers in Rhode Island on how to question people who had been sexually assaulted, and I found that I got a very different reception.
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Number one, if I wore a skirt, yes! But I also found that the questions I got weren’t that: 'Oh, she’s one of them; she hates me' and so on; I got a different reception.
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The second thing was I used my title 'Dr. Barbara Tannenbaum.' Why? Because every person in that precinct had a rank: Sergeant this, Detective that, and Lieutenant this. I worked hard for that doctorate, and they need to know that. At Brown, we don’t use 'Doctor' often, but that’s because everyone would think I’m an MD.
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It's true; you pay the price of admission and then you don't want to talk about it. The questions 'Dr. Tannenbaum' received from the police officers were much more respectful than the questions 'Marta,' the other volunteer from the center received.
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I’ve learned that I’m not losing anything by using my title if I need to. Should I wear a skirt to get better treatment for rape survivors in the state of Rhode Island? No! Would I do it now in the middle of winter? No!
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But it started a different kind of conversation. We always need to think about our audience!
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Now I want to ask a real question and maybe ask for a show of hands: has there ever been a time when you, as an audience member, have not felt included by a speaker? That’s most of us, if not almost all of us, and it happens often.
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It means the audience, that the speaker has not thought inclusively about who they are. Thinking about your audience is so important, let me quote from none other than the Harvard Business Review: "Designing a presentation without an audience in mind is like writing a love letter and addressing it to whom it may concern."
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Who is the audience, and how do I research them? I start with websites, if they have them. I got asked by Gemma; I asked, 'What about the audience? What's the main way that people are communicating?' I got asked to come to a speaker's event last night, where I met people and asked them, 'What do you want to hear?' So that I could revise and target my speech accordingly.
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The speech doesn't exist here. It exists here, as a conversation. It should always be fresh, different, and tailored to your audience. One of the ways we need to think inclusively is about culture. Can anyone give me an example of a communication mishap caused by culture?
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Yes! Chevy introduced the Nova in Latin America. Nova means 'doesn't go.' Not clever! Bad advertising campaign.
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Any others? Yes, please.
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For the videographer: Canadians apologize when sending random messages.
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Growing up as I did as a female, I was taught to apologize for everything. Here’s a public confession—I have walked into inanimate objects, and I have indeed apologized to them! That laughter shows identification.
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This hasn't yet gone away. When my students apologize, I say, 'Don't apologize!' What are their next words? 'I’m sorry.'”
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I apologize—it's the endless hall of mirrors. How do we get out of it? Apologize for what you've done wrong.
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We may not agree politically, but I think it took Hillary too long to apologize about those emails. It became an issue over and over. Just say, 'Okay, I did it, I learned,' rather than creating points of contention. I'm not saying don't apologize, but when it's real.
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When I was working in India, I read four books on doing business. What nobody told me was that in their culture, people wouldn’t say 'no.' If they said, 'I will try,' it really meant 'It will never happen.' I invite Nita Ambani and her family from India when I havedinner here. She said, 'I will try,' and in the U.S., 'I will try,' means 'likely to happen.' It's the day of the dinner—do I cook for one family or two? It puts one in an uncomfortable position.
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I did a project with USAID designing workshops for women business owners in southern Africa—Botswana and Namibia—where they owned agribusiness, mining, and craft businesses. The more assertive the women got, the more violence was directed at them at home. We always need to think about culture when considering communication.
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You probably noticed what I did here: I blacked out the screen. Gender matters, too. The most recent figure I could find was in the U.S. that 1.7 million people identified as transgender. We forget sometimes that some terms feel gendered, even if they aren’t intended to be, such as the term 'you guys.' I've turned to 'y’all,' or 'we all' is even better, when talking to include everyone.
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It’s not about us. I'm feeling like crap. I used to say 'women, they' still identified as one, though I am cisgender. But I learned to say 'women, we.' Working at Wellesley, the way that institution thinks about women is that anyone who decides to be a woman is indeed a woman.
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First, I was turned away at Penn Station while trying to enter the restroom. There was one stall labeled, all gender. I figured great, I would get there in time for my train but the guard said, 'You can't use that room.' I said, 'All gender?' and she said, 'You’re not trans.' First of all, how does she know?
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But that’s a conversation for another time. What I want to discuss today is the only acronym you will hear from me: the 'woofem,' which stands for, 'What’s in it for me?' Me being your audience. So here are the two things you want to do at the beginning of any presentation, which could also be presenting an idea at a meeting.
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Number one: establish your credibility. I have a slide later on credibility. How do you know what you know? The data suggests it's better to have someone else introduce you than to introduce yourself. You’re more believable if someone else confers trust upon you.
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So your best friend can sell you. When writing letters of accomplishments, it’s also helpful. We should share accomplishments. If you don’t trust yourself, get another set of eyes on it—someone who will help you.
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The second thing you want to do is address the question: 'What’s in it for me?' and remember this will change your perspective on communication. You are answering two questions at the beginning of any presentation.
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How do you know? That's your credibility piece. And why should I care? If you can engage either an audience or one other person to care, then you have made a substantial step toward connection.
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I want to borrow a term from advertising. Advertising emphasizes the talking points on features versus benefits. The feature of my car has no tires; the benefit is that it will get me up College Hill in winter.
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When we talk to people about ideas, we should talk to them about benefits, not just features. People typically judge us by our weakest reason. Once someone says that one doesn’t make any sense, suddenly our reliability on all of the others appears suspect.
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We don’t need ten reasons to buy; we need one compelling reason. And yes, if you think we have a variety in the audience, I may need more than one because what might work for you might not work for someone else.
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However, features should be turned into benefits. I now want to delve into how communication is evaluated when we present, whether in person or via video.
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The most critical aspect for most audiences is the visual, then the vocal, followed by the message. This shifts, as the message we often obsess about must still matter. I want to emphasize how to maximize the visual and vocal.
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An experiment demonstrated by a woman—now deceased, whose last name is now known—showed subjects videos of individuals teaching through different sequential exposures.
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There was virtually no statistically significant difference among groups who had seen as much as a minute to as few as three different samples of five seconds each, meaning something speaks to confidence and competence.
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As I present today: I want to talk to you about being a good speaker. Not so credible! There’s a shy girl hiding in here. I was that quiet girl, who received all ideal report cards.
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At age 22, I began full-time as faculty, and my parents said, "Bobby, you're going to get up and talk in front of people!" My lack of confidence stemmed directly from those memories.
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Let’s consider the visual and vocal aspects. When I talk about silly things to consider, we must know the camera angle. I’m assuming you know how to look. It’s crucial to have the right lighting. If you turn your head completely to a right angle, you will see the office, but I have a ring light, which is important.
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The ring light has an arm for notes. If you create good notes or even record, you can succeed! Make sure no distractions occur. Some of us wear glasses—and we need to position ourselves where we don’t cast reflections.
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I’ve encountered issues where poor angles are showcased. I receive favorable results when giving a presentation from a respectful distance.
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Participant research showed that many years gone by meant shorter exposure times. Therefore, we don’t need the labor to tilt angles at a higher frequency; about thirty degrees shifted from center appears favorable.
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What I advocate for might seem perhaps rather counterintuitive, but we all can monitor our postures to enhance visibility. Throughout this process, whether on stage or not, we’ve learned many principles.
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If we rehearse in front of others we’ll receive feedback, which proves sufficient for improvement. Using a blanking function generates interest within the audience; it takes away the physical distractions from slides.
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So when you’re engaging with your audience, remember to engage them as you stand or deliver. Closing meetings may call for standing as well. When we stand, we project authority and strength.
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Think about posture. Most of us speak about ideas at shoulder-width distance. Anchoring should be your feet flat on the floor to establish a stable platform.
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When you emphasize your ideas and tone, aim for variety. If you cause people to check their watches or phones, you’ve lost them.
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Pace your words, and intonations help emphasize. When you appear too monotonous, raise your pitch at times.
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As you manage pacing, you will find that pausing emphasizes your points significantly. Use repetition to cement ideas firmly, especially for ideas crucial to building bridges.
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Lastly, I want to discuss verbal nuances or voiding phrases we often can fall back upon.
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We resist fillers such as 'um' or 'uh' and we ensure declamation. Style should vary as everyone speaks at different rates; specific jobs expect different presentation characteristics.
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Please avoid 'trying to' as it projects uncertainty. Confidence drives your delivery. Imagine coming in knowing that expertise already exists: 'I have direct experience! That's something I am personally proud of.'
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As for facial expressions: allow them. Embrace imperfection, stay honest, and tend to your talents. When you personalize your message, it resonates significantly within hearts.
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All eyes remained on you when requesting genuine inclusion. I might run the risk saying quite a bit and more. However, no matter the complexity, this is about inviting engagements or questions. What becomes critical for all learning is the trust and connections we create.
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Any questions should be encouraged; it releases the burden and allows dialogue. If we hope for communication to evolve, it needs to explore areas of improvement. Find ways of addressing core aspects of conversations.
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Now, is there anyone who wishes to tackle effective communication for those to whom English is a second language?
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It’s crucial to get started, feel confident without fear overshadowing your voice. Additionally, ensure the talks don’t intrude in ways by introducing components that speak to added layers.”
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Remember it takes roughly a minute and a half for your audience to acculturate to a strong accent, so avoid strong information or decisions in that minute.
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Remember, we do not want ambiguity. It’s so important! Find ways around challenges be it tooling or exploring language concepts.
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What you’re doing matters. Know that it’s imperative to explore every topic and sound.
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Be cordial, ask questions, and always engage. Thank you all for the energy, for the work that you do! I’ll be outside if anyone has questions.
