Jo O’Reilly draws on her background as an opera singer and in comedy and improvisation to teach executives in the General Managers’ program at AGSM about the relationship between verbal messages and non-verbal communication in presentation. Her work falls into three areas – content, voice and physicality. “Great communicators have these three things working together and well-aligned,” O’Reilly emphasises.
“People’s content is often well-prepared, but when I ask them, ‘What is the essence of what you want to say, in 25 words or less?’, they are often unable to answer. So we apply some real rigour to that part of the process – articulating what they want to say and what’s in it for their audience.”
On voice and physicality, O’Reilly asks clients to focus on how they want their audience to experience them. “That’s what people will remember. If they can recall three key points from your speech, you’re doing brilliantly, but they’ll always remember the experience of what it was like to be in the room when you presented. Good performers recognise that a good presentation is not about you, it’s about the ‘other’. The moment you start to engage with your inner critic, you’re focusing on yourself instead of your audience.”
“Oratory is not a perfect art,” notes O’Reilly. “The best speakers and performers give themselves permission to fail, regroup and reconnect, and they enjoy riding that wave.”
Fast, but formal
In workplaces, communication has become “informalised”, observes Peter Ryan, regional learning and development manager for the John Holland Group, Australia’s largest contracting organisation in heavy industry. “The challenge for managers today is frequently to get the message across, and to be inspirational and informative at the same time – often in the corridor!
“When I entered into management, I found I needed to be able to consciously structure communication in a way that met my goals of team motivation and engagement. I also found that, as a manager, I had to be a ‘filter’, because I didn’t want to damage team morale or team engagement. Harsh business realities and ‘raw feedback’ is seldom what people need to motivate them,” Ryan says.
One important change that Ryan discovered on moving into a management role was that he was used to relating to his managers in a formal way, but to peers in an informal way. “When you become a manager, almost all communications are formal and business-related, and should have a business objective attached to them. The whole ball game changes.”
Ryan has found that, even in a formal presentation, the goalposts have changed as no one now has the luxury of time. “Now is the age of immediacy. You need to grab the audience up front, and maintain their attention for the time that you’ve got them. Formal presentations rarely go longer than 30 minutes,” he reports. “We get in, we deliver the message, we make a decision, and then we move on.”
