You can have the smartest solution in the world, but if you talk about that instead of what the key stakeholders actually care about, it's like playing your favorite song on mute.
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 on 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 short episode, you will know the go Rick method for understanding what your audience truly cares about, regardless of what the meeting agenda is.
You'll discover why emotional relevance beats technical brilliance in high stakes communication and how to make any presentation or message more persuasive by starting with what's at stake for your audience.
And if you've ever walked out of a meeting thinking, why didn't they get it?
This episode is for you.
You're going to learn how to read the room before you speak, so that your words land with power and precision every time.
So this is the thing.
You smart people, especially introverts, we often think that persuasion is explaining the logic and the facts.
You know data makes sense, right?
It just happens to be a false premise.
You start with your solution.
You think, oh, I'm just going to explain how it works, give all the details and they will see.
It's so obvious that this is a great answer and it sounds fantastic.
It just does not work.
You cannot start with a solution.
You have to start with what the audience cares most about, the impact on them.
And that's regardless of Whether you're in a meeting or making a presentation.
Like you need to have your radar tuned to how the topic of conversation is affecting the stakeholders that you care about.
Your keyword for today is impact.
You don't start with information.
If you do that, you're going to lose their attention.
We are bombarded.
Information is infinite.
It's everywhere.
You have to filter.
Think about just some leader kicking off a meeting with KPIs and everybody pulls out their phone under the table.
But what if you talked about KPIs in an effort, or connecting that to protecting jobs when there have been layoffs, or winning clients or somehow making more money?
Then you're going to get people's attention.
That's when people lean in.
I even once heard a Senior leader link employee bonuses to cybersecurity measures years ago.
It was brilliant the way he connected those two.
He took a super boring topic and he made people listen by tying it to their pain point.
You cannot persuade a person until you connect with what matters to them.
So here's a client story for you.
This man is a board director of a very large agricultural concern.
He has local stakeholders who are farmers in his state, but big farmers.
You know square miles, not square acres.
And then he has national stakeholders.
And for one region there was a significant investment in this thing I don't remember the name of it that would load up the train that was carrying their product a lot faster than what they currently use.
So he starts off talking about the money that they've invested and how long it's taking to build and install and all the bells and whistles and how this is modernizing.
And literally nobody cares.
Then he learned to talk about how loading the product faster would mean them getting paid faster, having less damage to their product, getting more time back.
And then they're like, oh, that sounds really interesting.
They start paying attention.
So that is what you call reading the room.
And you as the speaker, you are going to feel the difference.
You will always want to be framing your message in terms of what key people in your audience care about.
So you want to know what is frustrating them, what is keeping them up at night.
Now I imagine that it's not that easy to take the CEO of your company and say hey Mary, by the way, what's keeping you up at night?
I'd like to know.
So I'm going to give you three things to think about with this great acronym called GORIC.
Go Rick, goal.
D-O is for goals.
Now, of course, you've got the company objectives.
You can use those to connect to that.
But you can also think about what is the compensation package of, Maybe the senior leaders in the room.
What are their objectives?
What are the key markers for them to get their bonus or the stock price?
Or if you're talking to product people, maybe it's time to market.
If it's CEO, maybe it's something about the board of directors.
Like you need to know what is top of mind for that audience and connect to that.
And it takes sometimes creativity.
But that makes everything more interesting.
So the goals of the people that you want to reach.
Number two is the risk.
Like everything.
What are they afraid of losing?
Remember, the higher up you go in the food chain, the more you have at stake, and people fear loss more than they are attracted to gain.
What are the things a senior executive can lose?
Credibility, budget, headcount, status.
I mean, those are serious motivators for somebody in the senior leadership position.
You could speak to those.
Or finally, to personalize it, you want to notice keywords.
When you are communicating with someone that you don't know that well, but it's an important stakeholder role.
You want to be leaning on the things that they're always talking about, whether it's innovation or market stability or collaboration.
What are those key words, even descriptors, as far as profitable versus profitable? competitive.
Use those words.
That's a trick from the advertising industry.
Use the words that your audience cares about.
That's focusing on them and not you.
And that's the whole focus of this getting to what the audience really cares about.
So it's easy to forget this emotional connection when you have a brilliant technical solution or idea, or you're used to getting rewarded based on your results and you don't really think about emotional impact.
What I mean by emotional impact is relevance to people in the audience.
That's a rather rational way of stating it.
That's where your message is landing because you're going to hit the pain point of your audience.
Read the room mindset.
You start with their stakes, their risk before you go into your solution.
It's not about being psychic.
You will appear to be psychic, but it's about strategic connection to impact.
What is their true pain point?
And remember, when you speak to what your audience already cares about, you don't have to push your ideas.
They will lean in and they will be much more agreeable to what you have to say.
If you're ready to see how strong your communication impact is, I have an executive presence scorecard.
A free assessment.
It will show you where your influence is stronger and where it's leaking.
If you want a copy of that executive presence scorecard, simply email me at hello, at speakupwithlauracom.
Put the word score in the subject line and I will get you that access pretty quickly.
Have a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next episode.
