Get Personal with Your Audience

When making presentations, increase your effectiveness by showing your personal emotional involvement in the project

By Carmine Gallo

Layoffs, scandals, and scams are taking their toll on employees' trust and customers' trust of businesses large and small. But with every presentation, business leaders have the ability to regain that trust. One way to do so is by getting personal. I'm not talking about anything more than expressing heartfelt emotion in a focused way, but it's an important skill that few presenters remember when they get in front of an audience. Consider the following tips.

Convince your team first; then pitch your prospective client. New Orleans resident Peter Fleischer is a partner at Ketchum, a leading public relations firm. Fleischer's commitment to the city he loves helped his PR firm win an important pitch back in 2005. That's when state leaders created the Louisiana Recovery Authority to secure federal dollars and wanted to hire a PR agency to help. To increase his agency's chances of winning the contract, Fleischer took his team on a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward to see the devastation for themselves. After the tour, Fleischer, who had helped with the recovery effort, says the entire team shared his commitment to help rebuild the city. "We went into the pitch with emotion, passion, and power from having experienced the kind of devastation none of us could ever imagine. It was almost like we still had the dirt on our feet. I got tears in my eyes during the presentation. We did not use PowerPoint slides. We just spoke from the heart."

Speak from the heart. As Fleischer's experience suggests, the most effective presentations are deeply personal. "Some leaders are uncomfortable with expressing emotion…but it's the passion and emotion that will attract and motivate others," writes Jim Collins in his book Built to Last. Starbucks (SBUX) CEO Howard Schultz is never uncomfortable expressing emotion. I once asked Schultz how he won over investors who funded the original concept for Starbucks. "The presentation was everything," he said. "But it was the substance and the unbelievable commitment we demonstrated early on about our feeling about the business." Schultz would often share his personal story of growing up poor in a Brooklyn (N.Y.) housing project. He would tell stories of his family's financial struggle after his father, who didn't have health insurance, was injured at work. His personal stories reinforced his commitment to building a different kind of company; a company where people are respected in the workplace. "On many levels, the experiences I had as a young child formed my values and my understanding of what it meant for people to be left behind," Schultz told me. "I've always thought it was important that people have a sense of my own vulnerability as well as what it is we're trying to achieve as a business. It goes against the past tradition of business leaders. But it's important that people understand who you are, why you act a certain way, and respond to things in a certain way. To do that, you have to let people in—take down the shield."

Repeat your commitment regularly. Lowering your shield doesn't mean you reveal deep, dark secrets to all who will listen. But it does mean that you consistently share your personal commitment to a brand. Enthusiasm and commitment are contagious. For example, the other week I visited Workday, a fast-growing Pleasanton (Calif.) company selling HR software via the Internet. Workday was started by Peoplesoft founder, David Duffield. (Oracle (ORCL) has bought Peoplesoft). During my tour, I met with several employees who all shared the company mantra of customer satisfaction. The intense devotion that pervades the organization begins with Duffield's insistence that customer service set the company apart. He once told one of his employees that he wanted his tombstone to read: "He had happy customers." Duffield is passionate about customer service and takes every opportunity (presentations, e-mails, customer visits) to share his personal commitment.

Whether you're committed to reinvigorating a city as Fleischer is doing, reinvigorating a struggling company like Schultz, or keeping customers happy like Duffield, the important lesson is to make it clear it's a personal mission for you.

Carmine Gallo is the communication skills coach for the world's most admired brands. He is a popular speaker and the author of several books including Fire Them Up! His upcoming title, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, will be published by McGraw-Hill in October. More of Gallo's columns are available in his ongoing series.

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