Communication is Constant: Presence, Public Speaking and Pitching with Stacee Mandeville
Meet Stacee Mandeville, CEO and Founder of Red Leaf Coaching.
In her over sixteen years of experience, Stacee has delivered communication skills coaching to executives on many continents. She specializes in body language control and “executive presence” while presenting or pitching under pressure.
She has worked with individuals in myriad industries, including Fortune 500 Companies (Merck, HP, General Electric), finance (JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup), law (Fish & Richardson P.C., Kirkland Ellis, DLA Piper), fashion (Fabio Scalia, Levi’s, LDJ), and small to mid-sized businesses (Ballantree Consulting, TAE, Affinia Hotels).
Things you notice or mistakes clients make: Clients don’t practice. Even if I give them the tools, they often let it slide. Isn’t it worth five minutes a day for a week or two to improve your overall ability to communicate?
Ways that your process is different than other coaches: I’m all about human connection. Mine with my clients, and theirs with their audiences. Big companies bring a system, I bring a solution. Because I’m a boutique company I can really truly be customer focused. My superpower is being able to diagnose what an individual needs to do to make immediate change in their presence and to phrase it so that each person can hear it in their own way. I’ve been called “The nicest bad-cop ever”; I will not let anyone get away with anything, and call them on all their issues without making them feel like they’re losing face. This is from working with actors, who are very sensitive! Also, even with topics whose actual data I cannot comprehend, such as deep dive financials or chemical engineering, I can grasp the salient point of a client’s presentation and help them tease out the impactful information.
Can you think about specific trends you are noticing in how communication is changing: There’s this great book “The Shadows: What the Internet is doing to our brains” by Nicholas Carr. He posits (very paraphrased) that our inherent neuroplasticity is changing how our brains work as a result of the prevalence of digital communications, but we don’t know how much, or in what ways this will make our grandchildren’s brains work….yet. Essentially, every tech advance makes the old folks panic and long for “the good old days”. We speak (and write) in slang and shortcuts and emojis, probably because keyboarding is a pain…humans always want the most energy efficient means to an end. We are in a grey area where the new ways and old ways are still at odds. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when the boomers are all retired, and the kids born today are in the corner office. How much does spelling and handwriting and wearing a suit really matter? To us? A lot. To the next generation…we’ll see.
Why do people get distracted: That’s how we’re built. Always looking for food, a predator, a mate or something to make us feel good. It’s our brain working to keep us alive. We just have more ready distractions available. I’ll bet you $20 that before phones people were hiding books in their laps, passing notes written with tiny pencils worn around the neck, (I have one of these from the 20’s) and using their fans to communicate desire to flirt and arrange dates while a boring speaker was droning on. We haven’t changed all that much.
Why are public speaking skills disappearing: My theory is that the advent of the microphone was where it began. You no longer needed to “orate” to get attention. Our body language got smaller, we lost the need and desire (and therefore the ability) to project our voices. We can communicate to large groups via Youtube and Twitter…we no longer need to “orate” to share ideas. I think (I hope) there will be a trend towards improving public speaking skills, to recover the lost connection between people. Or not. We’ll see!
Are tech people losing the skill sets: I don’t think tech people are losing the skills to communicate. I think that people overall, (not just in tech) are communicating less face to face and therefore become more nervous when faced with speaking to groups. They are not used to it. That makes them more fearful, which makes them seem less good at it. Again, it’s practice. I’ve seen as many tech folks who are lively, engaging speakers as I’ve seen introverted Nervous Nellie’s. Show me an introvert who is terrified to speak, and I’ll show you a person who has not done it very often.
With technoligy becoming more integrated into our lives, are people’s expectations changing? Are audiences wanting something that they used to not want? I think that people want what they have always wanted from a speaker. We want information of value. We want help. We want to be engaged and not have our time wasted. Only now, there is a perception of being ‘time poor’, so we are even more aware of wasted time. Also, we are used to having information in short bites, with lots of visual stimulus, and in a shallow way…we skim and then click on something else, and skim…so a speaker really has to be on top of their game to hold our attention.
Are speakers required to change their approach to succeed in a digital context? Yes and no. Does it help to have sleek, colorful infographics, use Prezi (which is Powerpoint, but cooler), add some video? It can. But it can also be distracting. (I know there are those who will disagree, and that’s ok…this is just my take on it) When I coach I aim to get people to connect with audiences, provide value and keep it short and concise…it’s a nice break from the digital that I think people need, and crave without even knowing it. My best advice on communication in the digital age comes from a wise pre-digital age gentleman, FDR; “Be sincere, be brief, be seated.”
How can speakers keep audience from looking at their phones while speaking: Three strategies for keeping people off their phones:
1. Care about their needs more then about what’s in your head, and take action to help them-in other words, be engaging and worth listening to!
2. Make extended, deliberate eye contact throughout the audience. They will not want to get caught (we are all kids in our hearts), and if you look at someone that’s on the phone, hold your gaze on the top of their head for a bit. They’ll feel it, and put the phone away.
3. Stop judging them. You never know what’s going on in a person’s life. Someone on the phone might have a sick child…or a crazy deadline…or an important client issue that can’t wait…or their spouse’s birthday and they forgot. If you are engaging and helpful, you can let go and trust that they will put it down when they can.
Stacee regularly mentors at pitch events for Lean Startup: Newark, TechStars, StartUp Institute, and ProtoHack. She has used her accumulated experiences with clients from all over the world, combined with her theater background, to create the Red Leaf teaching methods.
www.RedLeafCoaching.com | @S_Mandeville |
