I don’t know the origin of the term “all hands meeting.” Sometimes people refer to it by the acronym AHM.  Just a little advice — AHM can also refer to:

• Automated Hacking Machines
• Adaptive Handoff Management
• Airline History Museum
• Airport Handling Manual
• Anterior Hyaloid Membrane

…and over a dozen other terms, so personally I would avoid it.  Could be confusing.  As acronyms usually are.

Anyway, I would venture the All Hand Meeting term originated with the maritime phrase “all hands on deck.”  Picture the ship captain (that’s YOU!  Or the EXECUTIVE TEAM!), charting a course (the BUSINESS STRATEGY), and then calling the crew (EMPLOYEES) up top for a hearty kick in the wooly britches.  The captain urges the swashbucklers to toughen up for the voyage (NEXT QUARTER), brace for the next storm (STRUGGLING GLOBAL ECONOMY, NEW COMPETITIVE CHALLENGES), and fortify themselves for a long stretch without provisions (BUDGET CUTS), not to mention and stingy meals of stale bread and water (LOUSY RAISES AND BONUSES).   Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! 

Ah! The All Hands Meeting.  What will you say when you get up to speak about the state of the organization?  How will you stand and deliver a talk that perfectly frames the current issues, challenging people to move forward and redouble their efforts?  

The purpose of the all hands meeting is quite simple.  Think of it as the President’s State of the Union Address.  You may not get 40 standing ovations on live TV, but your talk should stir genuine emotion from your employees.  Strive to speak eloquently, succinctly and clearly about the current and future state of the enterprise.  Paint a vision of where you have been and where you are going.  Get out the compass, set a course, and tell us how we get to that distant shore.

So, your AHM is coming up soon.  Where should you begin?

May I suggest that the first step is NOT to pull out the musty, old slide deck from the LAST quarter’s all hands meeting.  Think about starting from scratch, and preparing a fresh, new, “killer” presentation.  

What you say matters.  Every word.  Take time to make it great.  Getting people together isn’t logistically easy, and it’s expensive.  And your own professional reputation is riding on this.  You’re evaluated as a leader every time you get up to speak.  Make it count. 

One thing about this fall that’s worth noting - people are still feeling “at sea” because of economic uncertainty.  You would think they would be more motivated to work hard.  But people are actually  paralyzed by fear.  Clear the log jam and get that ship sailing.  

I do everything in my power to shut out the drumbeat of negative economic news, as I know you do.  But  most people don’t.  So it takes a toll.  They need leaders who will stand up and lead. People are only human; they’ve been resourceful for a long time, projects are demanding, and they are tired.  They need to be inspired.

My advice? To inspire, you have to BE inspired.   Ask yourself these questions and then answer them for your team: 

1.        Where are we going? And why is it the right course?  How do you know?

2.       What makes you believe it can be done?  

3.       How do you know that our team can do this?  

4.       Where can we course-correct?   

5.       How do you know we can do it? 

6.       What’s cool about our company? (Tell them how brilliant they are)  

7.       How will we know when we’ve arrived?   

If you want to learn something about attracting great talent, a good place to start is by studying winning professional sports teams.  The complexities of salary caps, egos and free agency aside, the best have certain advantages.

For instance, the Yankees brand is singularly powerful - pinstripes and piles of money are a killer combo, even for players who have previously enjoyed being big fish in smaller ponds - spending their entire careers in a city that adores them.  My husband hates it when you say that but he’s a lifelong Yankees fan living in New England, and he’s just a little sensitive. 

The Celtics have lately been successful with another proven talent magnet -the law of attraction.  Shaq had lunch with the legendary Doc Rivers and decided he wanted to join the  green team.  Voila, a couple of good meals and he’s lined up to help them make one more run at a championship.  I have some single friends who wish dating was that easy.

However, if you’re not the Yankees or the Celtics in business, you can still attract great talent.  For instance, there’s a small but soon-to-be mighty technology company that has neither unlimited resources nor brand name.  Not yet.  But when they needed talent, and needed it fast, they found a “third way.” They took one year, and devoted 50% of their time to recruiting the best of the best. 

Since I know their story I can assure you that they could ill afford the “luxury” of being out of the office and away from business.  They did it anyway.  They decided that attracting top talent WAS their business. Talent to grow the company was job one. With adequate bank accounts and a small but interesting set of press clippings they had enough ammunition to be resourceful.  Their secret weapon was their story.

Armed with a quite remarkable account of how they started, what they’d accomplished, and where they were going, they secured meetings with their A-list players and … and wowed them.  They didn’t have a shamrock brand but they had a track record of early success, and more important, extreme commitment and firey passion for their business plan.  You wouldn’t believe the people who have said yes to them.

How did they take time away from business to focus like a laser on talent? One of their advisors explained it to me this way.  Instead of trying to keep all the plates spinning by themselves, they took their fingers off the plates, stacked them at the side momentarily, and went out to find the experts who could spin better than they could.  Now the plates are spinning like nobody’s business and they are on the verge huge success in every way you can possibly define it.  And just to take that metaphor a little farther than I probably should - had they NOT taken their fingers off the plates, they probably would have shattered into a million pieces anyway.

Think of your role as a leader in attracting talent this way.  If you want to have Brad Pitt in your movie, you need to either:

a. scare up $20 million bucks

b. put George Clooney in the cast, or

c. get a meeting with Brad, and HAVE A GREAT SCRIPT.

Movie stars, like business stars, want to be a part of an exciting company story.  They can work anywhere.  They like to be able to brag about it. 

Why do I share this in my blog on leadership and communication?  Because you can spend all day fussing with your compensation packages, but once all things are relatively equal and a person you’re trying to recruit believes it is fair enough, what they really want is to join a team with a passionate leader who has an exciting vision and a key spot for them.      

When you get out there to recruit, tell your story with passion and conviction.  Make sure your employees do the same.  They’re your best ambassadors.  Who needs pinstripes - when you have passion?    

30th Street Station, Philadelphia, PA

The other day on my way to a lunch meeting in Philadelphia I passed by the scene of a crime - my own - some 20 years ago.   It wasn’t illegal, unethical or immoral; however, what I did was nearly fatal to my budding television career. 

Snow flurries were swirling outside 30th Street Station on a bitter cold, pre-Thanksgiving night, when I was sent out to do a live shot for the 11 o’clock news on WCAU-TV.  The music played (Where do they get those awful, self-important news jingles); the anchorman introduced me; I offered my one-line “lead-in;” they rolled the pre-recorded story, voiced from the field. When it ended, they cut back to me for the live close; I started, and then stopped.  Mid SENTENCE.  I couldn’t for the life of me remember how I had planned to throw back to the studio.  

I still wince when I imagine the panic that must have ensued in the control room.  ”What the….did her brain freeze?  What’s wrong?  BATES!  You’re ON!  Mike - CUE.  CUE!!!!! We’ve got nothing. Standby, Larry…back to you….”  After the longest 7 or 8 seconds of my lifetime, Larry Kane must have apologized to the audience.  I don’t remember.  It’s a blank. I was horrified.  And humiliated.

Trudging slowly up the stairs to the newsroom now after midnight, I encountered producer Paul Gluck who had waited for me, rather than joining the crew for an after-news beer.  

“What the hell happened?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” I replied.  “I memorized every word.” 

“That was your first mistake,” he retorted.  “Never memorize.  Internalize.”

I have often shared that story.  The lesson is to master material without setting yourself up to be a victim of momentary memory lapse.  You can’t count on the brain to fire on all cylinders WORD FOR WORD.  Practice phrases and internalize the ESSENCE of it.   

I share the story for a different reason here.  I was struck - as I drove by that side of the building in the photo above - the scene of my  “crime” -  and felt a flutter of those old, raw emotions.  It wasn’t exactly like yesterday but I was back there, feeling something again.   

That’s when it dawned on me to write about this.  About how important it is to go back and re-live those moments as you think about sharing your stories.  Not just retell.  Re-LIVE.

Freeze frame the moment.  You’ll find a rich source of material.  Because it’s the feelings that make your story powerful.  Connecting with audiences on an emotional level is the point.  Leaders teach.  People learn when they make both an intellectual and emotional connection.  Hence, emotion is part of teaching. 

Truth be told, people vastly prefer to hear about your mistakes.  To err is human, and people want to follow human beings.  They appreciate leaders who open up.  They connect with you emotionally.  And that is  powerful stuff.

You may not relish going back to the scene of some of those crimes.  However, its easy, working with a partner, to recall emotions and imbue your presentation with authenticity. Let them prompt you. ”How did you feel about that?”  When we teach  storytelling “live” at boot camps it’s amazing how well this works.  You see the impact in the faces of the audience, as the storyteller reveals an emotion.  They soften, smile, nod, laugh, and cry.  

Yes, it is appropriate in business to share emotions.  In fact, if you want to influence hearts and minds, it is imperative.  So don’t take the detour.  Drive by the scene of the crime, if only literally.  See what happens when you allow yourself remember… how you felt.    

A fascinating essay by Jonah Lehrer in the Wall Street Journal explores how nice people are likely to rise to power, and yet the very traits that got them there disappear when they get to the top.  Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power.  Lehrer cites a compelling bunch of studies affirming this human tendency.  Apparently, SOME people who get to positions of authority by being polite, honest and compassionate become impulsive, reckless and rude once they get there. 

Here’s one example of the research on how nice people finish first, which I find utterly credible.  A University of California Berkeley psychologist gave students free pizza and a survey at the beginning of the year, and asked them to provide their first impressions of every other student in the dorm. At the end of the school year he comes back with more pizza and another survey.  Turns out that the nicest, most considerate, outgoing students were at the top of the freshman hierarchy.  Their peers conferred authority on the people they “liked.”

However, additional research shows that once SOME people gain power, they start listening less, making up their minds in spite of evidence to the contrary, growing less compassionate, more reckless, far less generous and even cheating when they know no one is looking.  In its most benign form, power tripping can lead to bad business decisions.  For example, one study found that overconfident CEOs were more likely to pursue innovation and take their companies in new technological directions, risks that often didn’t pay off.  “Unchecked, bad things can start to happen,” he said.  

I was thinking about that pizza study.  My daughter is going into her junior year in college, and her early impressions of some of kids she shared dorm space with have changed dramatically in two years.  It happened in high school.  You remember high school.  The popular crowd doesn’t “wear well,” over time.  At my daughter’s school, they were still outgoing (involved in every club and activity) but many were not nice or inclusive.  A few went REALLY BAD - mercilessly taunting kids on the lower rungs of the teenage social strata.  By 12th grade, my daughter used to refer this group, which had managed to retain social authority, as the “So-Called Popular Crowd,” with a sardonic look that would leave you in stitches.

So this isn’t news.  You know that old saying, ”Abolute power corrupts absolutely.”  I went looking for the origin to see how old it is.  It arose from John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, (1834-1902) who expressed it as an opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men.”  Human history is the story of good versus evil, the stories of the powerful and corrupt.  Still, it’s interesting to think about this tendency of leaders to  evolve for the worse, not the better, in terms of modern business.  What can be done - in terms of leadership development as well as business practices.  

In business we need leaders who are tough minded and  decisive.   You can’t please everyone.  You will disappoint.   You have a responsibility to the greater organization.  As Lehrer writes, ”In some cases, (these) new habits can help a leader be more decisive and single-minded, or more likely to make choices that will be profitable regardless of their popularity.” 

However since it’s human nature to cross the line - for decency, respect, courtesy, and even morality to be lost as people rise to power, how do we protect our organizations?   How can we encourage the right behaviors in leaders, in spite of the potential for things to go so wrong?  

The article suggests the remedy is transparency.  If people tend to think they’ll get caught in bad behaviors they tend not to go there.  Isolation breeds contempt.  There is, as Lehrer puts it, ”no cure for the paradox of power,” but transparency can keep people from doing bad things.

 Click here to read the entire essay.

Jodie Fisher, Actress

Jodie Fisher, an actress who appeared in several R-rated movies and on the NBC reality show “Age of Love” may never have thought her resume would include bringing a major technology company to its knees.   But it happened on Friday when Hewlett Packard’s board of directors forced CEO Mark Hurd to walk.

After Fisher wrote a letter claiming sexual harassment, the board investigated, concluding no on the harassment, but yes, there was a problem. Hurd violated company policy by falsifying expense reports.  They weren’t happy that he concealed his relationship with Ms. Fisher, and paid her when there was no legitimate purpose.  

Move over Tiger.  Self-destruction always finds a new poster-boy.  Tiger is officially old, old news, especially since he can’t find his game to save his life.  Hurd’s legacy now becomes just another tragic story about a swift end to a great career.  Shake your head and wonder.       

The board did the right thing, of course, even though initially people were questioning it.  They had ethical issues in the past.  The policy was crystal clear.  And Hurd had championed it.  HP’s standards of business say employees should pose a simple test as they decide whether an action is appropriate: “Before I make a decision, I consider how it would look in a news story.”  

It’s particularly painful for HP employees and investors, since Hurd is said to have brought a period of consistency and outperformance.  Those who watch the company credit him for the most successful corporate turnarounds in American business history, posting five years of blistering profit growth and iron-fisted cost cutting. The stock outperformed the broader market by 101% over his five-year tenure. 

But you can’t let the CEO’s stink all over the company, period.  As a director, your duty is to protect the brand. Yes, Wall Street is chattering now about how uncertain HP’s future is.  But long term, the company will survive.  In fact, on Monday, some analysts were calling it a buying opportunity as the company is well positioned and the stock relatively cheap.   

Still, there’s a lesson here, about how the CEO brand and the company brand co-exist, sometimes uneasily.  Like Tiger’s wife, HP’s directors knew the marriage was doomed.  Mirroring the self-respecting Elin, they called it what it was and I doubt they will ever look back.  Hurd will be hurting all the way to the bank with an exit package reportedly worth $35 million; his once glorious CEO brand suffers a mortal wound.  But HP, while vulnerable without a succession plan, will come out fine.   

Short term, it will be rocky; company executives will have to go into defensive posture as they have, assuring the street that they will stay the course and aggressively pursue their strategy for new markets and products.  Investors may wait until they recruit the new CEO to pass ultimate judgment.  But the board should be lauded.  They didn’t flinch.  

 Does the financial services business need to wash out its mouth with soap?  Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that “There will never be another S—- deal at Goldman Sachs.”  This after Goldman Sachs told 34,000 traders and employees (verbally) that it will no longer tolerate e-profanity.  An April U.S. Senate hearing had exposed Thomas Montag’s 2007 missive, “[B]oy, that timberwo[l]f was one s— deal,” and GS decided something needed to be done. (the profanity, not the policy that allowed the act). The S.E.C. said Goldman needed to review its business standards.  So Goldman’s next step was to inform employees that the company will be policing them with profanity-screening software, which Citgroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bloomberg and others have done for years.  

Since Montag was telling the truth (it was a bad deal) perhaps he could have avoided embarassment by  prettying-up his profanity.  One way to do that is by substituting symbols, which I learned are called ”grawlixes” (alert Bill O’Reilly - I believe we have a new word of the day).  But how satisfying would that have been?  They really look silly, don’t they?  It’s as old fashioned as when your parents used to spell titillating messages (Mary’s daughter had S-E-X with her boyfriend and she is P-R-E-G-O’s) You knew exactly what they were talking about.    

I’ve said before I’m no saint in this department.  Profanity has its place in modern life. Researchers say it helps mitigate pain.  That means when my husband can’t get the thingamajig contraption that holds the corn on the grill to work and he drops it on the ground and burns his hand, I should say, “Go ahead honey, let ‘er rip - it’s a stress reliever.”   

But how about profanity in the workplace?  Is it justified?  After all, our jobs are filled with stress.  There seems to more stress than ever.  For example, it must have been terribly stressful for trader Tourre to act against the interests of its clients, and for the management to realize what had been done.  Oh, the pressure.    

I do wonder with stress in the workplace at an all-time high, how many times a day does the average person let ‘er rip?  Perhaps a better question is what is average?  After all, some people cringe when they hear a profanity-light-word; others have blasphemed a thousand times before they order their morning coffee roll with a Dunkin on-the-run.    

In search of what is “average” I came across one study of tape-recorded conversations.  It claimed roughly 80–90 spoken words each day—0.5% to 0.7% of all words—are swear words, with a variance of 0% to 3.4%.  I’m thinking that is on the ultra light side.  This researcher must not get out much.  He certainly didn’t visit any of my old newsrooms and I doubt he carried a tape recorder into the sacred halls of Goldman Sachs.   

Okay, enough.  Let me take a step back and talk what really matters on the topic of profanity, which is your own self-interest.  My view is simple.  Profanity in e-mail?  Stupid.  Idiotic!  Why would you risk it?  It goes viral in a second.  Do you really want it  in the inbox of your boss, your boss’s boss, your client or customer, your enemy, the Wall Street Journal, where it will live forever in the archives if it gets that far?  It’s one thing to whisper sweet profane nothings to your best work friend in the hallway, and another to write them down and hit the send button.  It isn’t becoming of a top executive. It hurts your leadership brand. Protect your reputation. Enough said.

Before I wrap up I do want to say that I believe Goldman Sachs missed the point.  I agree with WSJ reporter Michael Corkery who noted in his blog that the ban on profanity is the first new Goldman Sachs policy to emerge since the bank settled its case with the SEC on July 15th.  As he points out, the irony is that most of the e-mails that got them into trouble in the first place were profanity-free.  “What was most damaging to Goldman in (Fabrice “Fab”) Tourre’s trove of emails,” says Corkery, “was the French trader’s admission that he knew there were problems with the mortgage derivatives market at the same time he was peddling them to investors.”

So Goldman Sachs has taken a tough stand against bad words.  Whoopdy do.  Yes, setting boundaries with appropriate vocabulary is a good idea.  I have no issue with the edict, or with the scanning software.  You can only hope they now are prepared to address the ethical standards that genuinely threaten their reputation, the lapses that help fuel American’s ongoing disillusionment with Wall Street.    

I took accounting in college, got a C, and was grateful to make it through.  It just didn’t come easily.  At 19, I couldn’t envision a time when I would need to read a profit and loss statement.  The best thing about it was it was a summer course so I could study at the university pool, and the boy who volunteered to tutor me was pretty cute.

It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy courses outside my major, journalism.  I loved biology, for example.  My semester project was to research and write a vegetarian cookbook with original recipes (fairly radical back then.)  I discovered that I detested the lentils and tofu.  It’s a texture thing.  I grew up in the Midwest where we eat steaks and burgers for breakfast.  But I digress.

As I look back, I realize that that I’ve always liked learning through experience.  History is replete with stories of people who did, too.  When Apple’s Steve Jobs dropped out of college he enrolled in a caligraphy course, which he credited with helping him to develop the deep appreciation for design that now characterizes every Apple product.

Some things you can learn in a book, others you can’t.  The other day, a friend emailed to ask me to recommend some books on public speaking.  She was distraught about a business presentation and writing a to do list - did I have suggestions?  I told her to forget the books- and get busy speaking.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m the author of two, soon to be three books, so I believe in reading. But books are just the first step in speaking well.  Get your head out of the book and get up on your feet.  Schedule a talk.  Practice.  Take  a course.  Give another speech.  Take another course.  Join Toastmasters.  Give another speech.  Speaking is something you learn by doing.

Many of our clients love to read.  So do I.  But this proclivity can be an obstacle if you don’t take the next step.  At a certain point, reading one more book won’t help you improve one iota.  

Every leader I’ve ever worked with who is a great speaker tells me they started speaking early in their career - and kept going.  You can learn later in life.  You just need to put some muscle into your plan.  If you do the same thing with the same result, it’s like going to the gym and doing curls with two pound weights; no matter how much time you spend, you’re never going to have Popeye arms.  No pain, no gain.  Raise the stakes.  Then, practice like mad.     

It’s also important to get clear about the difference between “preparation” and “practice.”  Preparation is the thinking and writing and editing of your script and materials such as slides or handouts.  Practice is getting up and saying it out loud.  Many times.  Many, many times.  

Sometimes clients will say, “I’ve been working on this for weeks,” or “I’ve spent hours on this presentation.”  However, upon further examination of the above statements, I find they’ve been dinking around with the slides, rejiggering the bullet points, creating four quadrant process visuals that you couldn’t read with a magnifying glass.  As far as “practice?”  The night before the presentation, at 9 pm, they get in bed to review the slides, until their loving spouse or significant other roles over and begs them to turn off the light.  This, my friend, is not practice.  

So if you love books, keep buying books for heavens sake.  Support your favorite authors.  Just don’t stop there.  As Gloria Estefan sang,

Get on your feet

Get up and make it happen

Get on your feet

Get up and take some action  

I used to be a devotee of the CBS show “Survivor.”  It’s fascinating the way that human beings adapt and live through horrible, if contrived circumstances.  In the corporate world, the equivalent of Survivor is the dreaded business meeting.  You don’t have to be wearing a loin cloth and eating worms to feel like a contestant.  Running from meeting to meeting, you must learn to outwit, outlast and outplay.

Like travelers in a jungle without food, water or time to think, people are desperate.  It’s not just physical deprivation.  It is the emotional toll.  When meetings routinely start late, run long, are badly managed, and accomplish little, you go a little insane.  To survive, you must outwit.  Come late; schedule calls during the meetings on purpose; duck out to answer “emergency” email; or just don’t show up.  Manipulate people to make them think you’re with them; leave the meeting and shoot them down behind their backs.  It’s a brutal, brutal game.    

Yesterday I was coaching a leadership team, and decided to throw down the gauntlet.  The topic was leading great meetings.  Something had to be done to shake things up.  I said, “Name one routine meeting that you could cut out altogether, or cut in half.  Add up the hours you would save.”   In the room: 11 leaders.  These are their numbers: 45, 45, 200, 10, 45, 25, 25, 45, 45, 90, 25.   That 600 hours a year.  For 11 people. 

Take it macro. The company has roughly 27,000 employees.  Imagine 20,000 of them routinely attend these types of meetings.  I could be flip and say “you do the math,” but what the heck - let me get out my calculator.  Hold on … it’s 12,000,000.   That is not a typo.  12 million “man hours.”  By cutting out one meeting. 

12 million is the record number of the famous posters Farrah Fawcet sold.  12 million is a lot of hours.  Hours that could be spent productively doing the work that drives your company forward.

Is it really possible to save this much time?  Of course!  There are three aspects to meeting “management:”  

• Planning - how you prepare for the meeting
• Conducting - what happens when you get into the room
• Leading  - the vital role that a meeting “owner” plays

The secret to success is commitment.  Learn the skills, commit to a new path, develop guidelines.  Come back in a month.  Take stock.  No excuses. 

Pretty soon, meetings start..going well.  You know how on Survivor when they get to take the luxury sailboat cruise around the island and get a hot shower, a burger and a beer?   People feel human again.  They want to get off the island.    

Here are a few “get off the island” tips:

• Decide whether or not to have the meeting - how else can you handle it?
• Eliminate people who don’t need to attend - the more people, the more time things take.
• Communicate the purpose of the meeting - if you don’t konw why you’re here, it expands.  
• Send a written agenda in advance so people come prepared and stick to the topics.
• Get rid of the “optional” and “tentative” invitations- commit or don’t have the meeting.
• Get decision makers and stakeholders to the table - otherwise you’ll be having another meeting.  
• Always go by the agenda; time for each item, owners, next step, outcomes.
• Set aside ten minutes at the end of every single meeting to assign tasks and deadlines.
• Plan shorter meetings. 10 minutes instead of 20. 20 instead of 30.  50 instead of an hour.

Don’t tell me “It’s not our culture,” or We’re a very inclusive group, we like to discuss things.”  Culture schmulture.  Anyone can do this.  

Or not.  That’s okay.  Back to the island for you.  Pass the worms.  

Interesting question, isn’t it?  Most of the time you’re speaking to a captive audience.  What if they didn’t have to stay?    

I had the opportunity to stand at a podium and watch the room empty out.  It was as painful as you might imagine.  

This was right after I left television news and started my business. The event was the American Bankers Association Conferenc in Bermuda.  Early in my new venture, I was thrilled to be asked to be the ”warm up act” for the main program.  The session ran from 9 to 12 so that the bankers could get afternoon tee times.  And just to remind those attending the conference what it was really all about, the ballroom had a scenic vista of the oceanfront course.

The keynote speaker (following me) was Howard Fineman, the legendary Newsweek Chief Political Correspondent.  I was a little nervous but okay until I checked in with the meeting planner.  She sheepishly informed me that Mr. Fineman’s schedule had changed- he needed to catch an earlier flight back to Washington - and would I mind if he spoke before me.  Like I had a choice.

Now, Howard Fineman is no Jerry Seinfeld, but he is a very good speaker and he’s collected a lot of inside stories on the legendary political figures he’s covered over the years.  As a new speaker, I was still pretty sure that the audience was not going to laugh when I presented the “10 Steps for Success with the Media,” or whatever I was talking about.  

You know how people try to make you feel better by saying, “How bad could it be?” or “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”  In this case, it happened.

As Fineman left the stage, the mass exodus began, and it was as if the fire alarm had gone off.  Two thirds of the room emptied before I was even behind the podium.  I felt like a little tiny person with a little tiny speech. I was visibly rattled and utterly convinced that those who were stayed did so because they felt pity.      

I wish I’d had my wits about me.  I considered “fainting” but had no idea how to make it look real.  I could have come up with a room-emptying line and caught the next flight to Boston. “Good morning, before we begin I wanted to announce that Titleist golf balls are 75% off in the lobby for the next 10 minutes.”  Or, “If any of you are interested, Cameron Diaz is giving autographs on the beach.”  

Instead, I just started the talk, as planned.  I cut half of it out but it was still an eternity.     

That got me thinking.  What would happen if every audience could vote with their feet?  What if they always had a choice? Would they stay or would they go?

Pretty intriguing question, isn’t it?

Whether you’re the featured speaker, the speaker following the featured speaker, or the only speaker,  everyone in the audience is exactly like you.  What I mean is, they all walk into the room wishing they were someplace else.  

This is still what scares me and thrills me about speaking.  If professional speakers are honest they would tell you the same thing.  It’s not the fun, it’s the fear. That’s why they work so hard to tell some stories and add a little humor.   All to avoid the humiliation.      

When speaking to a captive business audience, remember your audiences DO have a choice, if only in their minds.  Even if the occassion is a mandatory all-hands meeting, they only have to physically be there.  Mentally they can still check out.  That’s why it’s important to take another look at your material and be ruthless.  Can you make it more interesting?  Tell a few stories, make them smile?   

Last week, one of my clients did just that.  He didn’t have to.  He gave an engaging, personal, 18 minute presentation to introduce us to the sales team.  His stories worked, the photos were funny, everybody loved the T-shirts he passed around, as well as the show and tell props.  It was the perfect set-up and the best introduction anyone has ever given me.  

The effort he put into it paid off.  Not only did he engage them from the start.  He modeled the communication skills he was asking them to develop.  It was obvious he put time into it - exactly what he expected them to do - as they learned to engage customers and prospects.  It set up a great 1.5 day session.      

I’ve never actually met Howard Fineman and he hasn’t a clue who I am, but all the same, I want to thank him.  It was really good to get that nightmare over with.  And it taught me to think about audiences not as bodies in chairs, but as people with ”feet.”

Bill Clinton Greeting Rudy Giuliani

I’ve never met Bill Clinton but many of my friends have, and all say the same thing about him.  He’s so … in the moment.  When he shakes your hand he focuses on you like you’re the most important person in the world.  For that fleeting moment – 30 seconds or a minute- you believe you’re his nhew BFF.  Even if you’re a Republican.     

That got me wondering – what would Bill Clinton do if his cell phone rang while he was locked in a conversation with you?  Would he pull the phone up and look, raise that right index finger, and say “just a sec.”?  Would he check to see if it was Chelsea?  Hillary?  (“Sorry, she’s boarding a plane to the Middle East and I need to catch her.”)  Former presidents do have “people” who take care of the routine “incoming,” but he must have a Blackberry or an I-Phone for personal use. What would he do?

How do you make people feel important when you’re always trying to do two or three things at once?  The other day I was wrapping up a call with my husband (delivery of furniture was late… etc. etc.) while on my way to meet colleagues in the towering lobby of a beautiful old Chicago hotel.  It was so loud that I could barely hear him, he had more to say, but they were waiting, so I weakly mouthed “Sorry, just a second” to them – and then, “honey, I’m sorry, they’re waiting,” and felt bad about all of it.    

Timing your calls is impossible.  No matter how well you plan, communication events collide.  You have two choices;  end the call (like a jerk), or keep other people waiting  (like a bigger jerk).  For example, the other day in the airport I thought I had ten minutes to wait for my luggage.  I returned a call to my friend Annie,  The bags showed up two minutes later.  I had to cut it short because my colleague had now been forced to snag the bag off the carousel and was rolling both his and mine toward the cab stand.          

We feel justified when we are the ones who “have a conference call,” needs to “take the call” or “get back to the guy” right away.”  But when that shoe is on the proverbial other foot, when you’re the one being sidelined, its funny how we feel so … well… small.  

And sometimes if we’re honest it makes us a little angry. 

Maybe not as angry as Glenn Close’s character Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (”You won’t answer my calls, you change you number.  I mean, I’m not going to be IGNORED Dan.”)  But it feels bad all the same, to be… second choice.

The other day at the hair salon, the owner, who I am loyal to because she wins Best of Boston every year for color, answered three calls and carried on lengthy conversations – while highlighting my hair.  I mean, pretend I’m important for ten minutes before you charge me $145 dollars.  The same day, I went to the manicurist who took two calls from her daughter.  I don’t suppose you can tell employees not to answer calls if you don’t live by the same rules.    

Bill Clinton became president before cell phones ruled our lives.  I couldn’t find any photos of him on a cell phone, even current.  However, he is famously in perpetual motion, with dozens of pet projects around the globe, so I have to believe that he’s had to consider how to maintain his brand image without compromising connectivity.  

In my own firm, the policy is no mobile device in front of the client.  We take breaks and leave the area to return quick calls or answer email.  My feeling is that clients are paying us a lot of money and they sure as heck prefer we not take care of other client’s business on their dime.  However, this policy flies in the face of our other policy to be highly responsive.   Welcome to juggling in the age of Modern Mobile Mania.    

Multi-tasking communication is a little like driving through the Grand Canyon and reading a good book.  You’re missing the scenery and you’re also distracted from the story, unable to fully appreciate either. Multi-tasking is the opposite of a conversation with Bill Clinton. Instead of completely absorbed, vaguely distracted.  

This is an interesting issue for any executive who wants to build as brand a connected, focused leader.  You can’t turn it on and off.  Your behavior has to be consistent.         

Many of my friends or clients have unspoken 24/7 cell phone policies - as in - you’re expected to have it on at all times.  You pick up or respond immediately to the CEO and other key people.  What’s not clear for all of my friends and clients is where the boundaries lie.  While some CEOs would never suggest they want you to walk away from your kids baseball game, others wouldn’t even ask where you are or what you are doing.  That raises another issue - clarity of your policy on 24/7 connectivity.  If you decide on connectivity at all costs, then the leaders who work foryou are going to find themselves in conflilct.  They may have to interrupt their employee in the middle of a difficult conversation.  They may have to duck out of a customer meeting.  You may not mean to create that conflict, and they may not be using common sense, but it’s going to happen.    

Common sense has to rule, of course.  A smart leader needs to figure out how to stay connected and also be in the moment with people.  But the interruptions and overlaps in our movement from one communication event to the next are simply inevitable.

Again, I wonder, what would Bill Clinton do?   

Maybe someone who knows Bill Clinton could ask him for me.  I’d really like to know.