Then it all fell apart. Sigman reached in his pocket, brought out cue cards, and proceeded to read for seven of the longest minutes in the history of Macworld. His comments were disconnected and uninspired, sounding as though they came straight from the boilerplate of an AT&T press release. He looked physically stiff and uncomfortable. While we can’t be sure that he didn’t have an intention for his talk, he certainly didn’t convey one. He overlooked the emotional reaction his presence should have had on the audience, and instead left everyone feeling bored, at best, and at worst, disappointed that Apple had picked such a dull partner.
The Stan Sigman experience became an Internet sensation immediately. Bloggers wrote about it, audience members posted comments, and journalists picked it up. YouTube videos went viral. He became the poster child for poor executive presence.
I show this video frequently in workshops where people are stunned that someone at Stan Sigman’s level would present so badly. But it is about more than presentation skills. Sigman rose through the ranks of telecommunications and built a hugely successful company. He knows how to present. He failed to determine the emotion he wanted to impart and then set the intention that would inspire that emotion in others. His presence should have conveyed excitement, creativity, and innovation. If he had succeeded, 20,000 people would have been a lot happier. It was an anemic beginning, unbefitting a culture-changing product.
Build a Strong Intention (or How to Be More Steve than Stan)
Intention has the power to work for us or against us, so why not cultivate it for good? In this book I discuss cultivating two types of intention:
— Your personal presence brand
— Situational intentions
Taking the time to consider, develop, and use both kinds of intention have far-reaching implications for your presence.
Your Personal Presence Brand: The Big Intention
Your personal presence brand is what you want your presence to convey overall. It shows your core values and beliefs. It reflects your personality. Forward-looking and far-reaching, it is how you aspire to present yourself at work, and potentially in the rest of your life as well. Your personal presence brand is backed by your actions, which I discuss in detail in Chapter 2. Like any brand, your personal presence intention doesn’t change on a whim. It’s relatively static, building over time. Ideally, it’s an internal touchstone, a reminder of how to present the best version of you.
The sidebar “Determine Your Personal Presence Brand” contains an exercise to help you cultivate yours.
Determine Your Personal Presence Brand
1. Fill out the following chart. Start with whichever column is easiest or go back and forth as necessary.
Qualities I admire/value in others
What I want my presence to convey
2. Look at the column of qualities you want to convey and condense or rank them into a top 5 list.
3. Reflect on your list. What do these qualities have in common? Try to create a sound bite, acronym, or archetype for these qualities. For example, “Jack Welch of the education industry.” Also abbreviate as much as possible: “Credible and Compelling; Visionary and Vocal—C2V2,” or “Catalyst for innovation—CFI,” or “Pinch hitter for critical programs.” It can be anything you can keep in your thoughts—all that matters is that it has meaning and resonance for you.
Once you have your personal presence brand figured out, keep it top of mind. Post it on your desk or on your computer desktop if that helps. Return to it at times when you need to communicate strategically, exhibit presence, or even make an important decision. It is an always-available reminder of what you want to reinforce about yourself to others.
Your Situational Intention: “In the Moment” Calibrations
So, your personal presence brand—and the intentions that drive it—remains steady. But you are constantly calibrating your situational intentions depending on the circumstances at hand. And while situational intentions should build and never detract from your personal presence brand, different situations require different actions. A leader’s personal presence brand may be “inspirational visionary,” but that’s going to be applied differently in a sales pitch than in a corporate meeting to announce a restructuring.
Your situational intention is about creating a desired impact. Rarely is it a one-size-fits-all scenario. I mentioned that people process information and events in emotional terms, and often this is a good place to focus your situational intention. Consider what emotion you want to invoke in your audience and you are generally close, if not spot on, to what your intention should be.
Craft a Situational Intention
Before your next communications event, answer these questions:
1. How do you want your audience to feel about this exchange?
2. What emotion do you need to embody?
The answers to these two questions outline your situational intention. (Hint: Because you need to embody what you want to impart, the answers are generally the same.)
The exercise I’ve outlined in the sidebar “Craft a Situational Intention” isn’t the only approach that will work, but it is one of the most effective. Again, just as in the personal presence brand, it is less about specific verbiage or semantics and more about what creates the mind frame for you. A former workshop participant of mine once told me that she’d applied a situational intention of “We deserve to win!” and landed a multimillion-dollar client. You can’t argue with that!
Now Try This: The Intentionality Frame
Typically, employees are most likely to interact with leaders at meetings. Meetings are, in fact, a fertile training ground to learn to use intentions effectively. And because of the repeated exposure (most meetings occur on a regular basis), the rewards are huge.
The types of meetings you attend (e.g., small groups, board meetings, sales calls) may be different depending on your position, but the dynamics are the same. Many of us overlook the importance of meetings. Some of us even approach them with disdain because they get in the way of “real” work. Actually, meetings are your best chance to make a positive impression on others. Learning how to contribute effectively, manage your points adeptly, and display confidence are part of moving up the ranks of any company. Careers are made (and waylaid) from interactions in meetings.
For many executives, meetings are also the places where important ideas are communicated and where other people assess their thought patterns and strategic ability. All eyes are watching—and determining what the person speaking is made of. Here’s a tool called the Intentionality Frame to help you align your intentions to your contributions in meetings. The Intentionality Frame can be adapted to practically any situation.
Let’s say, for example, that you need to have a meeting with an underperforming team that you supervise. You want to learn the root cause of the performance problem so that you can correct the issue. It helps if you have a personal presence brand you can reflect upon first. Then you know to set a situational intention for how you want to come across and what your presence needs to convey. For the sake of this discussion, let’s make your situational intention “gravity with openness.” Your situational intention goes in the center of the frame, as shown in Figure 1-2. Normally when we assemble the points we want to make, we do it either in our head or in a vertical list. Instead, use the Intentionality Frame to make your points along the outer edge of the frame. If your intention is gravity with openness, your points around the frame might be (1) there’s a clear issue though the cause is uncertain, (2) let’s focus on solutions rather than blame, (3) it’s important for everyone to commit to change from this meeting … and so on as you go around the frame. When you use this tool, your points stay in greater alignment with your intention. It’s a visual trick—a mental reminder—to communicate your intention. You can also see that if your initial reaction were to start with some version of “If you don’t improve performance, there’ll be serious consequences,” it would not support your intention. That’s too heavy on gravity with no room for openness.