You’ve got them in the room.  They are mingling with each other.  Old friends are catching up.  Old rivals are checking each other out.  It’s time to begin.

Set the tone

We the people perform best in a “high energy, low tension” environment.  Your advisors are people, so create energy and relaxation at the start.

This means that before you get to the serious issues surrounding your compound in development, rearrange their internal molecules by getting them to smile, laugh, interact, or do something unexpected.

For instance, I recently attended a symposium on American poetry where, at the start, the host sang a ridiculous song about Cape May, NJ, the site of our meeting, and encouraged us to sing along with him.

When we finished, our fearless leader said, “If I can sing in front of 200 people, you can certainly express your opinions with vigor at this meeting.  I urge you to take chances.”

You may think such an approach is not appropriate for you or your situation.  However, consider this:  we laughed, we breathed deeply, we relaxed, we connected with our facilitator and each other, and I recall the meeting with fondness.

Ask yourself:  Do your advisors feel the same way about your meetings?

Lay the ground work

Now comes the housekeeping—the objectives, agenda, and ground rules.  If a list of all attendees is in front of each person, complete with bio and CV, skip the usual personal introductions and ask them to tell the group something about themselves that the group can’t read on the paper.

I’ve had success asking people in our workshops to speak about pet peeves, pet passions, or to tell a story about a time in their lives when they “should’a been dead.”  Everyone’s got one of those stories.

PS.  You might even do the “should’a been dead,” exercise instead of asking them to sing.

PSS. Yes, your audience is time-pressed, content-driven, and results-oriented.  But so are you, and the results you want include a relaxed, honest, and spirited group.

Poke them in the brain

Now we’re getting serious.  What makes people think is a really interesting question, or a puzzle—a problem that needs to be solved.

Think about the most popular shows on TV:  House or Law and Order.  They start with a problem that needs to be solved.

Frame the discussion around a problem. Make it sound fascinating and complex.  They’ll start pondering right away.

If the group has met before, than recap briefly what transpired previously, and then proceed to re-frame the remaining questions or problems that need to be solved.

Ask precise questions

We all know that the way questions are phrased determines the answers we get.

For example, two priests who, being unsure if it was permissible to smoke and pray at the same time, wrote to the Pope for a definitive answer.  One priest phrased the question, ‘Is it permissible to smoke while praying?’ and was told it is not, since prayer should be the focus of one’s whole attention; the other priest asked if it is permissible to pray while smoking and was told that it is, since it is always permissible to pray.

Be careful how you phrase questions.

Now that you’ve brought them together, laid the ground rules, framed the topic in an interesting way, and introduced your well-phrased questions, let’s look at the importance of sequencing.

Sequence questions

Sequencing questions is like constructing a good survey instrument.  You have to anticipate what the possible answers might be, and then generate a unique follow-up question, or a whole branch of questioning, for each possible outcome.

It could be instructive to frame a single question as a Yes/No, then as a multiple choice, and finally as an open question.  This would be especially interesting if you had an electronic audience voting or tally system on hand.

For instance, “In the design of this protocol, do you think investigators will be able to determine which patients are on therapy (vs. placebo) because of side-effects?  Yes or No.”

Following the answers being tallied on the screen, you could ask individuals on each side to explain their choice.

Then, you could put up this question: “Investigators will be able to determine which patients are on active therapy and which are on placebo.  Very likely.   Not likely.  Highly unlikely.   Impossible.”

Again, you could ask them to explain their votes.

Or, you could ask them this open question:  “What are your thoughts around the issue of investigators being able to ID patients on active therapy vs. placebo by observing side-effects?”

Finally, you could ask them: “To what extent will this issue influence the credibility of the data with the regulatory authorities?”

If your advisors begin to change their opinions when they consider the due diligence of regulators, you may have your answer.  Actual bias, and the perception of bias in a protocol, can result in the same outcome.

Take breaks

Nice long ones, with food and coffee and access to sunlight. Maybe even some brief calisthenics and some lively music.  Mens sana in corpore sano.  (A healthy mind in a healthy body!)

Also, they hunger for their cell phones.

Display the questions

This may be obvious, but you should have your well-phrased and sequenced questions displayed on the screen, so that everyone can remember what the question is.

Listen to their answers

Listen.  Don’t pretend to listen.  Really listen to what they say.  Ask follow up questions for clarification.  Point out inconsistencies between contributors.  Or ask someone else what he or she thinks about what was just said.

I find it gratifying when, after I have spoken, the facilitator or another advisor summarizes what I said, as if to make sure he got it right.

If as the facilitator you space out, say so.  If you think they’re wandering off the subject but you’re not sure, say so.  And if you’re sure they’re off the subject, stop them firmly.

They want a strong leader who will ensure the meeting is orderly, energized, and successful.

Watch them like a hawk.  Pounce on them when they roll their eyes, or scrunch their mouths.  They’re trying to signal something.  Ask them what’s going on.

And don’t let a highly influential advisor dominate the meeting.  Be the boss.  Tell them that you want to hear from everyone.  Call on the less experienced, the junior members.  Compliment them on their contributions.  Sprinkle your approval around the table wisely, and your disapproval as well.  You are, more than likely, herding cats.

They will appreciate strong, diplomatic leadership.

Use names

Nothing is as sweet to us as the sound of our own names. And nothing makes a meeting better, in the eyes of an attendee, as having been acknowledged as a valuable contributor.

When referring to something said earlier, include the speaker’s name.  You might say, “But as Dorcas said earlier, time to progression is not an end-point.”  When you do, a little pilot light in Dorcas’ chest will ignite her self-esteem.

And she will be grateful.

Summarize

To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish.  Summarize the journey that the group has taken.

Do it alone with your prodigious recall of the entire conversation.  Or engage the group in reconstructing where the conversation started and where it ended.

Or take a mini-break before you wrap up, and have a colleague (who has been acting as the secretary and note-taker of the meeting) present the record, or review it and present it yourself.

Gain the approval of the advisors that what you have captured is accurate.  Promise them a copy of it in the mail.

Plan next steps.

Thank them and say good-bye.

Follow up with a personal letter, or a phone call.  Get more feedback.

Be endlessly curious.  Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it has preserved the life of many compounds in development.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Here in New Jersey, scientists grow on trees and work in laboratories, developing and testing molecules for bio-tech and pharmaceutical companies.

Every day, they leave the known world to explore microscopic molecular places and witness scenes that quite possibly no human being has seen before.  They are the Lewises and Clarks of medicine.

Like grizzled pioneers, they take their daily journey into the unknown for granted, and don’t express much awe and wonder about what they see.  Many are like airline pilots, whose aeronautical culture demands a steady tone of voice, even when tumbling toward the ground at 600 miles per hour.

But when scientists speak to senior business people, who are unfamiliar with their area of expertise, the wrong approach to communication can cause significant business problems, chief among them lost business opportunity.

George Bernard Shaw said it best, “The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”

For example, in 1981, in a small conference room belonging to a large consumer products company, a team of research scientists lost a mousse.  Five years later, they found it in their files and launched it as the fourth product in a new category of hairstyling products.  After years of struggle, they managed to reach only a 15% market share.

Had they launched their invention five years earlier, they would have been the first to market, and probably would have owned the lion’s share of the market.  But they delayed because, according to one executive, the leaders of R&D were simply unable to present the concept cogently to the rest of the company.

What happened?  Was the idea of a foamy hair gel so new that anyone outside R&D couldn’t grasp it?  Or was there something about the way the researchers communicated that left the rest of the company scratching its head?

The causes for such a rupture between departments are often hard to define, but experience reveals that communication could be the culprit.  One of the reasons is that the ranks of business are filled with people from different tribes.  For the purposes of this blog, let’s call the sales and marketing functions the Tribe of Belief (TOB), and the R&D functions the Tribe of Skepticism (TOS).

In training, aptitude, psychology, predisposition, language and thinking, Skeptics have special tendencies and approaches.  So do the Believers.

How wide is this tribal rift?  Consider how the two groups use language.

On the one hand, those in the sales and marketing (the TOBs) are paid, like professional actors, to act “as if” they believe whole-heartedly in the value of their products. Their job is to induce belief, and raise belief to the level of action.

Believers are expected to invent arguments to support their point of view, to be persuasive, to take sides, to draw inferences from fact in order to drive home a point, (exaggeration is a staple of advertising) to appeal to their listeners’ psychological and emotional needs, and to demonstrate the truth of their ideas through the force of their conviction.  (Some Skeptics would call this “proof by violent assertion.”)

The TOSs seldom use language rhetorically.  Their faith is in the unalterable power of fact.  The truth of fact is more important to them than the truth of belief, the detail more important than the dubious “claim,” the content more important than the context.

For them, nothing is truth if it hasn’t been tested, measured, and proven. They distrust generalizations and “benefit statements.”  The notion of selling ideas troubles them; it seems manipulative and, well, unscientific.

The gulf between these two tribes is wide, and needs to be bridged. Without good communication between tribes, ideas and initiatives will not get the buy-in they deserve, individual leaders will lack credibility and influence, and research and development may go for naught.  Just ask the me-too mousse maker.

The easiest way to close this gap is to teach scientists cross-cultural communication.  They need to speak the language of sales and marketing to ensure their intellectual output can leap across the gap.  It would be harder to teach sales and marketing to speak the language of science.

Scientists need a basic education in the principles of persuasive speech.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

Every great store has a theme.  Nordstrom’s has the theme of customer service.  Starbucks has coffee.  L.L. Bean used to be great when it stuck to its theme of outdoor clothing you could pass down to your children.
 
Sims Wyeth & Co is a store that sells presentation skills, and one item that some customers want to find on the shelf is PRESENCE. 

So, I choose as my theme for a month the idea of PRESENCE.  What is it and how do you get it?
 
If you ever had the pleasure of seeing Merce Cunningham, the great dancer and choreographer, you may know what presence is.  

Johnny Carson had presence, more than Dave, Jay, and Conan combined. 

Bruce Springsteen has presence, even when he’s not filling a stadium with his energy. 

And Roseanne Barr has presence–she radiates mischief.  Sarah Palin too, although her presence comes more from combativeness.

All of these people  have presence—a magical aura that makes them appealing to others.  We suppose they were born with it, they did nothing to cultivate it, and they didn’t have to do anything to send it our way.  It just leapt off them like light off a mirror.
 
I will challenge that notion for the next month, until October 15th.  I will argue that all kinds of people can have presence, that it is a multi-dimensional attribute that can be cultivated, and that it can be thrust upon all of us by the circumstances of life’s ups and downs.
 
So my assignment is to answer two questions:  What is presence?  And how do you get it?

Stay tuned for a month of presence.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.