Have you ever walked out of the meeting feeling that your message did not land, even though you had great ideas and prepared them?
What if being boring, not your work, but your messaging is the real reason you're being overlooked?
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts where we reveal the charisma and communication secrets of A-listers so that you get the recognition and the opportunities you have earned.
I am your host, Laura Camacho, your magical executive presence coach, godmother, and strategist.
By the end of today's episode, you will know the three biggest leadership consequences of boring presentations that even top performers face.
And these are backed by research, by the way.
Five subtle signs that you're losing your audience's attention, and what those really mean, and a simple recovery trick to regain control when you've lost the room.
Now the reality is that people get pretty bored quickly these days.
We all have microscopic attention spans.
But there are career risks for high performers who bore people at work.
And generally I'm kind of giving it away here, but it's because you didn't tailor the message for this specific audience.
That's generally to do a root cause analysis.
So it's not just a matter of being awkward, giving too much information.
It's a professional liability with tangible research-backed consequences.
It's poor engagement that's going to erode your perceived competence.
It's going to limit opportunities.
And it's going to contribute to the broader organizational efficiencies that drive us all crazy.
And these can stall your career trajectory.
So I'm going to outline three career costs. which are drawn from survey studies and analyses.
And then I'm going to tell you what the signs are, so that when you see these signs, you can take action.
And then I'm going to tell you what to do about it.
Now, if you've been listening to this podcast for some time, like if you've heard a few episodes and you know they're mostly short, you should never be boring because I've given you in these episodes so many great tips and frameworks, mindsets.
So maybe you need to send this to a colleague who needs some help.
But what I want to do for you, the good communicator, is to help you realize the value that is involved in crafting your message, your presentation, your update, so that you're evoking curiosity.
And the goal is inevitable that you will have people wanting to know what does Bob have to say?
What is Sandra going to say on this topic?
That's where you want to get to.
But if you are boring people, number one, you're limiting your career advancement.
You're missing promotions.
Weak presentations signal a lack of leadership potential.
And that may not even be accurate.
You can be a great leader and not give a great presentation.
Isn't that possible?
I think I've seen that before.
But you're not going to get promoted.
There was a Prezi survey of employed Americans and it found that 70 consider presentation skills critical to workplace success.
And yet 75 of employees believe their communication abilities are not sufficient for their next career step.
Everybody basically believes that communication is a top skill for leaders, and all the research is going to back that up.
So you need to prove it.
And that's partially because the senior leaders are like ambassadors for the company.
So you are representing the company if you're a senior leader, even if you're not at work.
In some industries like pharma biotech, like a week presentation.
That is almost like a death sentence for your career.
I mean, you've got to take a tedious topic and make it industry.
One more thing on that.
This is not science necessarily.
This is my experience.
But when companies are laying off people, you better believe they're going to lay off.
You know, people who don't give great presentations.
It's not what they say.
They will say it's lower performers.
No, it's weaker communicators.
So.
File that away.
Number two bad communication.
Boring people is definitely going to erode your credibility, your reputation.
People are just going to think that you don't really know your topic that well, even though it could be that the reason you're boring them is you're telling them too much about it.
It's really quite remarkable to me, but the effect of that is a loss of trust.
And that is going to reduce your influence.
And that's going to make people not want to work with you, to be completely frank.
Dull project updates, it can lead to perceived incompetence.
And not that people are rationally connecting their dots.
They just, they want to move away from that.
And they want to move towards somebody who's an interesting presenter, even if that person in real life is not as competent.
So.
That's another cost is that you lose credibility and it may not be fair.
So I want you all to know that I understand that a lot of the perceptions that this podcast is about are not necessarily fair.
It's just reality.
Number three the course is going to have financial implications of boring delivery will fail to sell ideas products, visions.
That's rejected funding, lack of sales, unapproved initiatives, which all are tied to your career growth.
You need to have skills to attract investment, to inspire teams, to get funding, to get promotions.
And we all know that we waste billions of dollars on unproductive meetings and you don't want to contribute to that.
So make sure that you're not boring.
What are the signs, right?
Because nobody is ever going to tell you.
I've never heard of anybody saying, you know what, your presentation was boring.
But I've seen it, especially, you know, in doing public speaking, you see all your audience.
And if you're giving a talk right after lunch, you have to do an amazing job to keep everybody engaged, because they're kind of like slowing down.
It's kind of like nap time.
So I'm not saying that if you're boring people, you're a bad person or you're not doing your job.
It's just a skill that you need to work on, deliver.
All right.
So people start discreetly checking their phones.
They're not listening.
They are disengaged.
They are looking for distractions.
So that's the first thing you're going to see.
And if you think about it yourself, like, what do you do the instant?
You're in a conversation that's somewhat boring.
You pull out your phone.
All right.
Number two, posture.
People start slouching.
People can tap their feet, although I think that would be extreme.
But when you just see people kind of slouching, they're losing energy.
It's under stimulation.
It's not good.
It means they're getting bored.
Noticeable drop in eye contact.
That's number three.
Eye contact is so important when they're not looking at you.
They're looking past you.
They're looking around the room.
If they're writing notes, it could be that they're engaged.
It also could be that they're writing their grocery list.
So eye contact?
You want to notice that people are watching you and you want to make eye contact with them.
It's a very good sign.
When you catch people looking at you, that's kind of the opposite of that.
That means they are interested in you.
Now that also can create a second of awkwardness if you look around and you see somebody's looking at you.
So either look away real quick or give them a smile.
Eye contact.
Number four is when people hold up their heads with their hands.
That you see in virtual presentations.
At the end of the day, it also reflects lack of interest, lack of engagement, lack of stimulation in your message.
And number five, finally, fidgeting, crossing the arms, touching their face.
These can indicate frustration, boredom.
They are emotionally distancing themselves to you.
And leaning back.
That's also part of the body language of the slouchy when they're leaning back.
That's not good.
You want people alert, looking at you, good posture, and like they're paying attention.
And so you can have this presentation and it seems to be going okay.
But then you look around and you realize that you have lost your audience.
So there's a number of things you can do.
The main thing is to prevent this from happening by... being more strategic in how you put together your presentation to start with, I would say off the top of my head, the doctor in me would say that's probably TMI, too much information.
So here's what you do.
You just completely stop talking, even if it's mid-sentence.
And that pause is going to make people look up.
So when they look up, you ask them a question like does anybody want to share an experience related to this thing?
Is everybody clear about the next step?
What questions do you have about what our competitors are doing?
Like, you've got to stop talking and get some engagement by asking questions.
And then you take it from there.
But knowing that probably they're disengaged because you're giving too much information and the material is not customized to the audience.
It's customized to you.
And that is why they're bored.
So it's just one of many factors, but it's a big one.
If you've been passed over for a promotion or you feel like you lack visibility, that you're capped at mid-level.
And of course, I know the people listening to this are all high performers.
You have great performance reviews.
And so this situation... sometimes becomes extremely frustrating.
So there's a lot of little tweaks you can do to your messaging to really build, multiply exponentially, build your engagement.
And that's one of the things I teach in the Executive Presence Mastery System.
I will work with you on specific presentations and messaging to really knock it up several notches.
If you're aiming for a spot in the C-suite or senior leadership, There's a link in the show notes at the top, or you can visit my website at wwwspeakupwithlauracom and book a call and we can talk about how to make your messaging more interesting.
Have a delightful day and I will catch you on the next episode.
