You’re already a leader, but how do you take it to the next level? As today’s guest puts it, you need something you’re NOT born with – presence – and it needs to be actionable.
In this episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations, V2's Roger Courville, CSP sits down with Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE -- hall of fame speaker and best-selling author of more than 50 books with major publishers including the inspiration for this discussion, Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader.
Dianna has appeared under more big-name logos than you can count -- from NPR to Good Morning America to The Wall Street Journal -- has won numerous writing and publishing awards, and regularly blogs on Forbes, CEO Magazine, HuffPost, and Microsoft.
As you listen in to this conversation, you will:
Learn why executive presence is essential for influencing perceptions in an increasingly digital and global world
Understand the importance of authenticity over perfection in building trust and credibility with audiences
Discover how being prepared for spontaneous, real-time interactions reflects a leader’s confidence and transparency
Hear how storytelling, not just anecdotes, is crucial for engaging others and illustrating leadership points effectively
Find out why vocal variety, pausing, and tone contribute significantly to a leader's perceived confidence and impact
Get tips on tailoring humor appropriately to enhance connection without undermining professionalism
Learn how to navigate hypothetical questions without getting sidetracked by extraneous details
Discover the impact of precise, concise communication in conveying strategic insights at the executive level
Understand the role of feedback from trusted peers in strengthening executive presence over time
Learn more about Dianna and her work at BooherResearch.com.
Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: You're already a leader, but how do you take it to the next level? As today's guest puts it, you need something you're not born with. You need presence and it needs to be actionable. Well, hello and welcome to executive presence for marketing leaders. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of thought leader conversations sponsored by the crew here at virtual venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team with a crew that helps you focus on something other than the tech.
But we're not here to talk about us, and I'm excited to welcome to the virtual stage, Diana Bohr, CSPCPAE, we're gonna get to that here in a second, author of more than, catch this, 50 books with major publishers, including the inspiration for today's chat, Creating Personal Presence, Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader.
She's appeared on under more big name logos than you can count from NPR to Good Morning America to the Wall Street Journal and on and on has won countless writing and publishing awards. She blogs on Forbes and CEO Magazine and HuffPost and Microsoft. And I think there are some others there too, but notably Diana is accomplished as a speaker, boasting the highest earned award from National Speakers Association, the CSB, the Certified Speaking Professional.
I know, I know how hard that one is to get, but going way beyond me. She has also been inducted into the CPAE Council of Peers Award for Excellence, which is the Speaker's Hall of Fame. That's a big deal. Welcome Diana. Glad you're here. Tell us a little more about who you are and what you do.
[00:01:32] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Thank you, Roger.
Basically, I'm an author. I started out not speaking, but just people call from the books. It's the best marketing thing I ever wandered upon. I really didn't plan it, but I now, since I've sold my communication training company, primarily, I am coaching other people to get their message out with their own published books.
[00:01:55] Roger Courville, CSP: I, and I know you coach and train and speak to more than just marketers, right? But if you're listening to this, I also wanna encourage you, not everybody is a professional speaker, but we are professionals who speak and writing a book is a killer way to advance your career, or probably a bunch of other things that we'll talk about today.
And your acumen, your acumen with communication skills is particularly relevant given the topic of personal presence and how the fact, the fact that it's. arguably ill defined. Diana, how do you define personal presence?
[00:02:30] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Well, you know, there's not any kind of, uh, measure stick out there about it, but I think of that as someone who's comfortable in their own skin.
They are confident. They sound confident. They look confident. They're able to think on their feet, uh, under pressure and respond to questions very clearly. They're persuasive when they speak. And then there's the character component also, integrity, humility, empathy, all of those things count as well. The thing, the thing is you can learn those first three things.
I like your comment when you started, Roger, about, uh, we're not born with it. You can learn how to look, talk and think like a leader and, and increase your presence. The character thing, you can't just learn that, you know, you, you observe that you're taught that by your parents, but it's not like you go to a one day course and learn that.
Right.
[00:03:24] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. You grow into that for sure. Yeah. So maybe as a starting place, why do you, Why would you argue that creating an executive presence or growing in your executive presence as a skill is more important now than ever?
[00:03:40] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Well, I think it's more important now because there's just distribution of much wider of who you are even 20 years ago We didn't put out videos all the time.
We weren't using the social media platform. You just got Perceived if that's a good phrase you were perceived by others You through someone's interpretation, what they said about you, what they wrote about you. But now with all the technology, people can actually see if you look confident, if you sound confident, they can hear you in your own words.
And it's just, Distribution around the world, whereas we were limited 20 years ago to a geographic location and we didn't go beyond that. But now you say something now they can hear you in North Korea or China, Shanghai, whatever.
[00:04:29] Roger Courville, CSP: Exactly. And, and in the digital context, it, it is. Very well might live on forever.
So it's going to be out there representing you for a good long time.
[00:04:40] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: That's a pro and a con too. You know, it's, it's valuable and it's a benefit that we can just distribute what we think, what we feel, try to persuade someone to change their mind or the behavior. We can do that very quickly, but also the drawback is that much of that is edited, and what you're seeing is a scripted person, an edited, produced, vision.
So, uh, that's why you need all the different technologies to really form an opinion about someone.
[00:05:12] Roger Courville, CSP: I've got one thing to say to that. Yes. And you know what? Because, you know, I earn my CSP the weird way doing, you know, 70 percent of my gigs virtually, right? I mean, my books were about how to move your presentations from on site to online.
And one of the challenges was that, Just exactly that people who showed up and somehow had a different expectation of themselves. Like, Oh, I'm, I'm on video now. So it's got to be perfect. No, well, this is just me. And maybe I'll throw this. Maybe I'll describe to you my perspective. And then I would love your response because I think yours is I looked through your book and, and your perspective is a lot more refined than mine.
I just would coach people saying authenticity beats perfection every single day. And I, I think that fits into your vision of, uh, you know, your kind of broad umbrella with regard to how you defined presence. Because of that very fact, we all know that we can edit a video within an inch of its life and you know, And if you never get off teleprompter, well, then now what?
[00:06:24] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: And we see that downfall a lot of times in our political situations. People say, Well, I don't know who the real person is because somebody else wrote the speech. They put it on the page. the teleprompter. They cut out anything that didn't work or misspeak or an idea that they think is controversial. So we hear that all the time.
And I agree with you that authenticity is far better than a choreographed, produced presentation. And that should be Um, that should be good news for marketers because they have so many opportunities to catch someone being authentic and if they're a marketer and like to do personal interviews, just like you're doing, live, that works wonders for, for really communicating the essence of a person, uh, when they have to think on their feet, when they can't be scripted and somebody else is not feeding them the lines.
[00:07:15] Roger Courville, CSP: You know, the, um, for me, the beginning place was, you know, be real because, because it's the only way you can be right. I mean, to your point about that you made early on about humility and integrity and character. I mean, you got to be you at the same time. I would, of course, then follow up saying. You're wasting everybody's time and money if you're not practicing the live in baloney out of this so it feels really natural So you don't you weren't tempted to read the slides or read a script or something that you know in that pursuit of faux faux perfection
[00:07:46] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Yes, some people take that comment about be yourself is no prep.
That's wrong You do need to think about an issue think about a controversial situation Think about how it would respond to a certain question. So get your thoughts together, certainly. And you need to learn your craft of holding someone's attention, learning how to question an audience, uh, how to, how to be engaging if you're on the stage, but it shouldn't be fake.
If, if you can do those things that are correct and engaging, When you're live, then that's far superior than having someone just, like I said, edit you and produce you and pick out the things that they perceive to be the best clips, as opposed to the real responses under pressure when you don't know what's coming up.
You know, for example, you're setting it. at McDonald's and you've got your kids or your grandkids there and something happens and you, you see a car about to back up over the, and hit the playground fence or something and immediately you scream, stop! That, that's natural, that's authentic, it can't be choreographed.
Well take that same idea and that same authenticity of what you feel in a moment and, and do that in a Q& A session if you're an executive. And you get asked in the all hands on employee conference. you should know how to do that.
[00:09:14] Roger Courville, CSP: A few of the questions that come to mind involve, well, because we're in the middle of the political season, this, this, uh, recording will live on well beyond the election here in the States in this, in a few months. But, but I know that marketers or senior executives. Run into as many of the same challenges, whether it's dealing with a scandal or, or, you know, how they're perceived by those, they lead just out of curiosity.
How much do you think of personal presence counting in terms of electing our political leaders or perhaps or perhaps how an executive might grow through the ranks in terms of moving up the movement of the food chain on the org chart?
[00:10:00] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Well, I think it counts a tremendous amount in our political situation.
You have voters all the time when they're polled, telephone polls or live polls, and people ask, you know, why you're voting for them. And you hear them all the time and say, well, they look smooth or they're good looking or, or whatever. So people do make very shallow judgments in a political season, but it counts.
It counts how they speak, and how they look, and how they move, and are they approachable, and the handshake they have, and gestures they use. People pay a lot of attention to body language. But it's also critical for the executive who wants to move up in an organization. Particularly if they're changing their responsibilities, they're moving to a new team, new group, or even a new organization.
They have to win that confidence. I remember working at coaching, I, An executive who was in a, uh, moved from one company to another and a top 10 fortune 10 company and he, we worked a day and a half on his presentation for his first all assembly all employed and have thousands and thousands of employees.
But he knew how important that was and he incorporated his, his life story, so to speak, you know, where I've come from. I grew up in Germany. These are the things that I think are important values. And this is how I've implemented those in my past company. So he wanted to, and he understood the value of making that.
connection with his employees because of being real and telling who he was and revealing things and being transparent and also expecting or expressing empathy about being an employee when a new person takes over at the top and not knowing if your job is safe during a merger. So it's extremely critical.
that executives not just get up and spout numbers, you know, this is how we did last quarter, and not just spout initiatives. They have to build a link to employees to be engaged, to, to want to achieve with them, to, to feel that loyalty to them personally, as well as the organization. All of that, I think is critical.
And Roger, one other thing, the reason I know it's so critical is because when I'm coaching people in their presentation skills, I'll have executive CEO, executive vice president call and say, we would like to promote. Let's just use a name here. We'd like to promote Jim and our organization. He has all the technical know how he brings in more business than a lot of other people.
But he just needs, and a lot of times here's where they fumble as they're talking to me on the phone, and say he needs, well I don't know what he needs, you'll have to assess that, but he needs polish. We can't put him in the executive reins and have him go out and meet with our clients. until he gets that presence.
And usually they will use the word executive presence or polish. So I know it's important to them. I know how critical it is to not plateau, plateau about mid management and, and just hit a ceiling when you're trying to go further.
[00:13:09] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I've seen more than once and I don't remember it. It might've been Jim Collins or somebody I read eons ago talking about how the top ranked skill for senior executives tends to be relational rather, rather than technical, right?
And you've got to relate in a different way, right? Speaking to a thousand people in front of you is very different than speaking to 10 people in front of you or, or now do it in some other medium.
[00:13:41] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Doing it and doing it so that you make that personal connection, even though you're not face to face is really a strange environment.
Still, even after doing this seven, eight, 10 years, I don't know, you've probably been doing it even longer than the average executive. But that is a strange environment for them, and they do have to polish those skills, uh, and, and you would be surprised at, or at least I was surprised, let me put it that way, when I started coaching at the executive level, what difference little things make in someone's first impression.
I had a CEO of a large financial, I don't know if it's the largest, but a very large financial agency. Thank you. Call and, and ask me if I would try to assess someone's management skills by their, um, writing and their speaking. And I'd never met that he was sending me four executive vice presidents. I had never met them.
And I said, I'm not sure that I can do this, Keith. I was talking to the CEO. I'm not sure I can just. You know, pick up on how they come across personally from their writing. He says, well, all right, I'll, I'll understand that caveat, but I'm gonna send you these samples. I looked through 'em, wrote 'em a one page summary as he had requested on the, the leadership and the, the presence and promotability of these executives.
And he, when I sent them to him, he said, right, right on. And during that conversation. He made this comment. He said, I, I know that I know this one executive vice president because he brings in billion dollar clients and when we send him out personally just for a dinner or they take them out on their yacht and they're entertaining for a weekend, he comes across in a sloppy way and when I probe, he says, for example, his hair is hanging in his eyes, uh, he doesn't have his tie exactly straight.
He just, poor choice of words. His grammar is not polished. And I, until that conversation early on in my career, would have not thought that the CEO paid that much attention to how they came across in a social situation. But he said, Oh, it's far more important. They have other people to do the technical things.
They they've had training in the technical skills, even in the interpersonal skills. It's those higher, those very nebulous. Issues that get them every time in a social situation, even knowing what kind of topics to choose. I remember another executive talking about, he said, I go around and visit my mid level managers once a year in each of the different offices.
And he said, most of them understand how critical this dinner meeting is and the opportunities they have to ask me questions. But he said, I went to, and he was talking just the, the, uh, week recently. He said, I just had dinner. I only meet this person once a year. And he started throwing out these frivolous topics and flip questions.
And then he was at a loss for even what to say. And he said, I can't imagine. Someone not preparing for a dinner meeting and a conversation at that level. And so he was going to dismiss this person. He said, you know, that's his job to go out and bring in business and social settings. So, the little things have a big impact.
That's, that's my point, little things that you might not notice. have a huge impact in your career.
[00:17:16] Roger Courville, CSP: Yes. Uh, and I don't have that level. I don't have that expertise that you do in that kind of context, but we also know that in just both written and or spoken communication, right? Just how you use your voice, right?
You can't change the voice that you were born with, but you can change how you use the voice you were born with.
[00:17:36] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: You can learn vocal variety. You can learn pausing. You can learn how to use the appropriate word to describe something, how to tell good stories that again, engage people in, in the book. I talk a lot about storytelling and how, how important that is for an executive.
I know when I was starting out in my career, after people started calling me from the book saying, come out and talk to us. Then I knew I needed to up my game and I got a speech coach and we worked all day, eight hours on telling a two minute story. That's how important storytelling is.
[00:18:11] Roger Courville, CSP: I was actually just going to go there because you just naturally told some stories.
In the process of making a point, right? And whether you think in terms of some acronym like PSA, Point Story Application, or, or something, leaders have to give stories and use anecdotes and analogies and stuff.
[00:18:31] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Yes. And there's a big difference, you know, there's a big difference between telling an anecdote and telling a story.
Anecdotes are great. They work fine. When you tell a story, maybe it's the story. It doesn't have to be about a person. It could be the story of the success of a product line that you've just launched. Or it could be saying, we were going up, we're, we're, um, Goliath, you know, we're, we're, we're David with a slingshot going up against Goliath, the big company, the big organization, that's our competitor.
and you, you have to root for the, the person who's the central hero or heroine of the story. And that could be an inanimate object, it could be a company, it could be a team, but you have to engage people through that process of all the obstacles, all the challenges that they overcame to reach their objective, to be successful if you're talking about a product or a service or a company.
So there is a difference. And I found in coaching executives, many times they don't know the difference between telling an anecdote and telling a real story. The anecdote, you know, it's just a slice of life. It's the other day I went into the bank and this is what they said to me. And so I walked out 30 minutes later, still not have accomplished my, my goal.
That's an anecdote. But a story really is what engages people. I, I never try to tell a story that I haven't practiced. Now, the ones that I just talked to you about, I was just, those were anecdotes.
[00:20:03] Roger Courville, CSP: We're just having a conversation.
[00:20:06] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Just explaining, but when you really want to tell a story as an executive, in your organization and you want to engage a group, then that story needs to be planned, but you know, there's a structure to doing that.
[00:20:18] Roger Courville, CSP: Exactly where I was going to go because our brains are wired for story. In fact, there's a, uh, one of the people that I quote in some of my research, uh, There's a gal named Michelle Crossley, who's a psychologist and wrote a book and did has an area of specialty called narrative psychology. And she actually argues that toddlers begin to understand story structure before they might even understand all of the elements of the story, right?
And so I, I'm probably go the other direction. I don't create the distinction between say, anecdote and story in, in your more exacting way. But I do point out that our brain is wired for. The basis of this story form and, you know, what's the, you got a beginning and an end, but in the middle, there's an inciting incident.
And, you know, how do we go from problem to promise with some kind of a path in the middle? Uh, how do we resolve that cognitive dissonance and, and the challenge, particularly I find in, in it is
telling stories takes time, right? Sometimes, sometimes we have to, you know, to fit our presentation into the 18 minute slot or whatever it is that we've got, we've got to make strategic choices about facts and stories. And it's way too easy to, as grandpa used to say, squeeze 50 pounds of spuds into a five pound sack.
[00:21:48] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: That's true. And a lot of people throw in extraneous details. You want to select details carefully that either set the mood, set the mindset, and then the punchline is very important. Now, when you say punchline, most people think humor, ha ha, joke, but that's not necessarily part of a story. Story could be a sad story, but you need, the point needs to be very polished and be the final thing that you say in your story.
So it, it takes skill, it takes practice, it takes know how, but you know, Roger, thank you. I think one of the things that is even tougher for sometimes the mid level professional to get to the executive rank is knowing how to analyze and summarize succinctly. When they're making a presentation to that executive level, you have to do that as a marketer all the time.
You, you know, you've got 15 seconds or 30 seconds on TV. If you're paying big bucks, thousands of dollars for an ad. And even in social media, it's even, it's cheaper, but it's even more important because people are scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. But I find that, uh, being able to take a lot of information and summarize it is part of your executive presence.
that part that I talked about when you asked me earlier to define it,
Draw a clear conclusion and summarize that succinctly is invaluable at the executive level.
[00:23:18] Roger Courville, CSP: That is a killer point. Uh, even as you were talking about that, I was brain was going back to groups of engineers that I was training in a, in a big company once was flying around to their offices and working with their engineers, all of whom were like, you know, in that top echelon, highly educated.
And my example to them was, Hey, Think back to college. You, you've got an academic paper. That academic paper has 20 pages of hardcore details, but what's at the front? One paragraph summary that tells the whole story. So I know when you're standing in front of the, the C suite and you're making a presentation, you want to get down into the weeds because that's where you live.
[00:24:04] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Key complaint from executives. I say they, they know their point. They know they can respond. To a key question that focuses on the technical part, but when they get to the Q and a session, they want to get too far in the weeds. They can't. succinctly answer a question.
[00:24:23] Roger Courville, CSP: Which just takes practice, right? To your point earlier, that's not an unlearnable skill, but it does take a little bit of practice if it doesn't come out of you naturally, like me.
I, I think verbosity is a, is a spiritual gift, but
you know, that's
[00:24:40] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: as far, far more people believe that way than not. And that's we teach when we taught when I used to teach presentation skills. I now just do the one on coaching. But when I was doing training programs and I would ask people, what's the most difficult part of doing a presentation? They would always say the Q and a, because I get down in the weeds.
So we taught a formula for a four point formula for being able to summarize succinctly, particularly when you're asked questions. And then of course, when you get the tough questions like the, the no at all question, The hypothetical question, all of those tough ones, or even more skill, you have to have more skill to do those.
[00:25:21] Roger Courville, CSP: The question that isn't the question, that isn't actually even a question because I'm just trying to show off how much I know.
[00:25:26] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: It's a tough question, yes, we've got about 12 of those named, and they all, you deal with them all in a different way. And once people learn that, in fact, I put it on a little, uh, eight by 11 laminated sheet, you know, to pass out because they're anywhere from three to seven or eight different techniques, according to a hostile question, hypothetical, show off, et cetera.
And if you get what I call the routine question, then that's when you use that generic formula to present what you want to say in a way that they understand it clearly, you touch them logically, you know, back to Aristotle's persuasive. You have to touch them logically, you touch them emotionally, and then they have to believe in your goodwill.
They have to trust you. And so you have to accomplish all of those, even if you're giving a Two sentence answer to a question that's, that's difficult. It takes practice, as you said.
[00:26:24] Roger Courville, CSP: So give one example or tactic for how someone might answer a question. Now, you mentioned there's a bunch of different types of questions and there's a bunch of different tactics.
Choose one just as an example, so someone has an understanding of how you're think.
[00:26:41] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: All right. Well, let's talk about the hypothetical question many times. Well, what would you do, et cetera. The first thing you have to do is to decide, is this a legitimate question or, or am I gonna get down in the weeds?
You never answer it. I know you told me to give to give you a technique here. Don't ever ev answer a hypothetical, because most of the time when somebody's asking you a hypothetical question, they have a point to make. They are trying to argue with you and lead you to their point of view. So the first thing you do is to sidestep that and just probe for the issue or the concern.
So maybe somebody's asked you a hypothetical question and you say, uh, is, is the reason you're asking that question, are you asking about, would we increase our cost if we bought that particular software package? Well, let me talk about cost a minute. See, if you get involved in Last week, Billy at the Atlanta office wanted to install this software, and it wouldn't work.
Then you're gonna say, well, how much did that cost? Well, how did, did they have a good installer? Well, how much did they have to pay that installer? And was it a compal compatible, compatibility issue? You're going to get in the weeds of that specific situation they're asking about, and you lose the rest of the audience.
They're just totally, what does that have to do with me? And that's when they take a recess mentally, check their phone and check their email. So don't answer a hypothetical question, probe for the issue or the concern and then respond to that concern or address the issue. Separate that from their specific situation or hypothetical that they laid out.
[00:28:23] Roger Courville, CSP: Let's talk about your book for a second. The subtitle of your book, or at least the book we're talking about today, one of 493 books that you've written. But the subtitle mentions four components of presence. How you look, how you talk, how you think, how you act. Uh, talk to me about the first one for a moment.
How you look. Just out of curiosity, how do you define that? How do you guide that?
[00:28:45] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: It's a lot of different things, other than just, are they good looking, are they ugly? You know, uh, that, that's immaterial, really. But what look has to do with is, first, your appearance. Is it symmetrical? Do you look sloppy? Do you look like you've put some thought into how you dress?
Is it appropriate for the occasion? So that's about the dress. But then there are other things about what, how you approach someone. Do you stand off in a corner and hug the wall or do you walk up and shake hands with people? It's about your gestures. You know, they're open gestures and closed gestures, extending your arms up and out.
It says, welcome. Welcome. The topic, when you throw up a finger like this, you know, you're lecturing people. Um, so gestures matter, your handshake, how you walk, how you move. All of those have to do with your. how you look to people. You've seen people that, in fact, I know somebody in my church I just talked to about two weeks ago and I said, I have totally changed my impression of you.
I think that you are a very warm person after we had a conversation and I named the event where we had the conversation. But I said, for years I've seen you from afar and I thought you were unfriendly. And it was not that I'd ever talked to her. It was just her, she held a chin high when she walks, which is the way we usually assess, uh, arrogance.
And so the body language that you see, you make an impression of people on people just immediately when you walk in the room, you look comfortable, you look ill at ease, you look stiff, you look laid back. They, they judge, you look comfortable and confident. All of those. Immediately are assessed when they see you.
[00:30:38] Roger Courville, CSP: I would say the same thing virtually, interestingly, for years, you know, part of my, my work was doing the same thing, but saying how do we adapt it? Right? It might be more obvious, like if you're on, you. on 24 zoom or Webex or something going, okay, if I'm going to make a physical gesture, I need to make sure that my hands are within the camera scope, right?
As opposed to outside of the camera scope, where you, that doesn't, that doesn't count for anything. But there are also other tools that are part of the psychosocial experience of the person on the other side. That is part of how you show up. And you may not have thought of that because, um, because it's a totally different environment.
[00:31:20] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Yes. And just even when you're on zoom, just leaning back in your chair, you've talked to people who are leaning back in chair. And sometimes when they want to make a point, they lean very close to the camera. All you, you do have movement options about your movement when you're online, but staying in the frame, obviously, the more you practice, the better you are at that.
But it's just a change. It's not good or bad. It's just different and you have to adapt to that. Um, in addition to the way you look, your presence comes across, as I mentioned, through how you talk. Do you use the same word over and over? You know, you've, you've talked with people who use, I did a blog about this not too long ago, the three A words, amazing, absolutely, and awesome.
And everything they say, that's amazing. That's awesome. That, you know, you're next in line and you hand them your application for something. Awesome. I mean, is that really awesome? You know, if you use cliches all the time, you get known for that. That does not enhance your presence, but the way you structure sentences, um, the variety, your difference in the volume and how you inflect words to emphasize, pausing all of that.
makes an impression on someone about how comfortable you are, how authentic you are, how concerned you are about what they're going to have to do or not do based on what you're telling them.
[00:32:46] Roger Courville, CSP: If we go back decades, I spent a chunk of my life as a sound engineer. I was in the music business. So I'm kind of geeky about how somebody sounds. And we know there are, there are triggers in the brain. relative to voice. In fact, there was a study where they studied, um, matching. Vocal quality with image quality, and that was actually a study done with people with cleft palettes.
And there in the world of science, there are scales for evaluating higher or lower image, you know, like a visage or higher or lower. attractiveness with regard to voice. What they found was that the attractiveness of your voice changed the perception of your, the attractiveness of your face, but it didn't go the other way.
Meaning, you know, I mean, I got a face made for radio, so I'm very glad, but that's the power of having a great microphone or that just to your point about using your voice well. It's one thing to use it well in terms of grammar and, and enunciation or pausing appropriately. It's another thing to make sure you sound good.
[00:34:02] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Very true. Most people hate the sound of their own voice recording. They just did not like it, but you can, you can improve that. Sometimes you can even change the range, but you certainly easily can change things and improve things like your understanding of of emphasis, inflecting a word, highlighting something, allowing stronger pausing, longer pausing, so that people really think about what they just heard.
All of those are just so, so easy to learn and to change and improve.
[00:34:42] Roger Courville, CSP: We kind of evolved from the visual to the oral. Well, let's go back to the visual for a second because, uh, something came to mind as you were talking about how one gestures, facial expressions, wild gestures. Can you be too expressive or too open to be taken seriously in terms of your own presence?
[00:35:01] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Yes, if your gestures or your voice or your enthusiasm does not match what you're saying, your topic, then it's not appropriate. Most people don't have to worry about that. I found in a presentation because most people sort of fear that and they tamp down their enthusiasm. They're standing up to make a presentation in the boardroom and they don't want to sound too invested, you know, if they're presenting two options or three options.
So they try to present them all as if they were equal. That's not a good idea. If you're trying to persuade someone to do something, you need to have that enthusiasm in your voice. You need to sound like this is something that excites you. And you're looking forward to the, The client or the would be client accepting this and, and getting aboard, but you can, if you're talking about a, a serious topic, maybe there's an executive who's passed away, killed in a plane accident or something, or you're talking about a merger and people are fearful of losing their job, but it's just a more serious topic.
treating it in a lighthearted way with, with jokes or one liners that doesn't work. So I would say to your, to your question, you can be too flippant if you're on a serious topic, but most of the time you don't have to worry about being too passionate when you want to emphasize something, when you want to sell an idea, you want to push across a recommendation and how much you believe in it.
Don't tamp that enthusiasm down. You need to show that.
[00:36:37] Roger Courville, CSP: Continue down that path a little bit. You've, uh, in your book, you mentioned, you know, you talk about the appropriate use of humor. Yes. Give a few pointers from, from, I think you had a checklist in there, like called helpful humor or something like that.
Just out of curiosity, what's a tip or two that you would have for keeping humor appropriate?
[00:36:56] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Well, along the lines of what I've just talked about, you want to make sure that the humor is appropriate to the situation. and the topic. We've all been in a situation where maybe somebody was expressing a real concern in a meeting about some, some loss in some way, some project they have is behind deadline or whatever, and somebody makes a flippant remark.
That's just inappropriate. That's not good use of humor, so it needs to match the topic, match the situation. But also another, a valuable tip, I think, is to use self deprecating humor. If you're going to tell something where someone was a failure about something, make yourself the butt of that joke. Um, if there's any way that people could be, uh, thinking that they're, they're the, the object of your derision.
You know, stay away from that. Make sure that you, um, invite others to tell you your foibles. You know, if you're the leader, you're the executive in the room. They have to know that it's okay to say something frivolous to you. Otherwise, they think that you're not approachable and, and I'm defining humor here is not a joke necessarily, but just looking at things at a lighthearted way.
For example, you know, you get cut off in traffic, you can be really angry when you come in, or you can. I think this is, this is not an earth shattering, you know, earth shattering situation and making, looking at something in a lighthearted way is always appropriate.
[00:38:35] Roger Courville, CSP: Your book mentioned a tweet you did more than two years ago that is still circulating.
Talk about that. That sounds fun.
[00:38:41] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Yes. Um, that tweet, uh, let me see if I can recall it exactly. If you can't say your message, if you can't express your message in a sentence. You can't say it in an hour and that, uh, has gone around. It's in different, you know, if you look up joke collections or quote collections, you'll see that a lot of different places and what I'm talking about, what I'm getting at there.
is the ability to be succinct, to be concise, and some people, when I try to coach them on their presentation, I'll say, can you tell me one sentence, if you had to get on an airplane, or we're talking on the phone, and I'm saying, I'm getting on an airplane, 15 seconds, tell me, what was the point of the meeting, or what did you decide?
If you can't succinctly state that in a sentence or two, you are not ready to make a presentation. You are not ready to write an email. That is tough. It's hard. You can learn how to do it, but just going on with more and more information does not improve the presentation. Going on and on with more details in an email does not improve the clarity of your message many times.
That one sentence overview as you start an email, and by the way, your presence does come across in your writing. That one sentence or two sentence overview in a presentation is extremely important and it reveals your ability to think strategically and to analyze and synthesize, synthesize a lot of information.
[00:40:17] Roger Courville, CSP: Talk to me a little bit about some of the various places that you're. organization touches down. You do coaching, you write a lot of books. For
[00:40:30] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: years, I have written a book a year, sometimes two books a year. So I, that is my main thing, but people call organizations call all the time saying, can you come out and tell our people how to do this, teach our people how to do this.
And then coaching more and more. doing the coaching one on one with someone who wants to improve their presence. Either I go to them or they come to me. And then the, the very best way to market, I would say, even though I'm talking to, you know, supreme marketing leaders, the best way to market is with a published book with a major publisher because it has staying power.
I have had over 78 percent of all my clients through the years. decades of work called because of a book. They say, I'm in the library, picked up this book, or I'm in a Barnes and Noble and I picked up this book. And can you come out and talk to us about it? So the executives who want to promote their career, their organization, a key project, they write a book about it because it gets distributed worldwide.
where they may not be able to go themselves. And it creates that real one on one connection. When you're reading an author's words, you think you, you know them, you, you trust them. You, you feel with them about what they're saying. So that's the next step. And as I say, from the, the particularly nonfiction authors that I know that are entrepreneurs that have a business, who've established a new company, they write a book to promote it at some point, not too early, but They need to have experience, but they ultimately write a book, publish it with a major publisher and it gets out there.
So what I'm doing now is helping a lot of other people. I've written everything I know, Roger, in 50 books. I've written everything I know. So I'm helping other people, uh, coach and get their message out.
[00:42:20] Roger Courville, CSP: Two questions as we wrap up here. The first one is this. Are there any questions I should have asked you that I haven't?
[00:42:29] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: Well, um, I maybe would, if I were listening, would want to know how do you measure presence? Is there some measurement to it? And my answer to that is no. We, we don't measure it as you would measure someone's running distance, how fast do they do a mile, or how high do they jump, or how far do they throw this discus, but there is a general sense.
of measurement. When you think about the components, the 20 components that I talked about in the book, and you think, I think of it as a continuum. How far along are you? I have never mastered, very, very few things have I mastered. And executive presence is one of those that you're always extending your mastery.
You're always learning. You're always getting better at it. But in the same way, when I said you can't measure, I mean, you can measure someone's pulse, you can measure how quickly they recover from exercise, but you can look at someone and assess that they are generally fit, they are generally healthy, and in the same way, you can look at someone, interact with them, and have a sense their personal presence.
So you're, although you're never mastering, you're always on a continuum. You do sense that about people.
[00:43:51] Roger Courville, CSP: How do you recommend someone move further along on the continuum toward stronger personal impact? Is there a process to it?
[00:43:59] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: There is a process. And those four buckets that are in the title of the book, look, talk and think, act like a leader, paying attention to specific learnable things.
Not the last one on character, how you act. You can't teach someone to be, to have integrity. You hope they've absorbed that and developed it by adulthood. You can't teach reputation, things, humility, things like that. The first three are learnable. And so as you learn what those specific skills are, you can practice those.
And then I think it's very important to put a, a board around you. I don't mean necessarily advisory board or a, a formal board, but people who don't, you don't control their destiny. and get honest feedback from them about what you need to improve. It's highly, uh, revelatory when you have people who, uh, you know, your, your spouse may be, and your, your, your kids, your adult kids may be far too critical, but to get people on an even keel who just like you, but want to help you to give feedback on these skills would make a great deal of difference.
[00:45:06] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, who maybe even love you enough to, to be straight, right, exactly. Diana, thank you so much for spending a little time with us today. How what's the best way to get in touch with you?
[00:45:22] Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE: My primary website is Boer, like my name spelled B O O H E R, boerresearch. com. Or if you're interested in the publishing, coaching business, boorbookcamp.
com.
[00:45:34] Roger Courville, CSP: Fabulous. Well, thank you again to Diana Boor, C S P E C P A E for, I don't even know how many wisdom nuggets you just dropped on us today. So thank you so much for doing that. And thank you again to our sponsor Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team.
We'll see you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations.
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