by Caroline Leach | Jan 10, 2016 | Corporate Communications
The Golden Globes is a great reason to gather with family and friends.
It’s fun to celebrate favorite movies and TV shows, rooting for favorite performers.
And if you’re a communicator and marketer, like me, it’s entertaining to listen for the best speeches of the evening.
The winners in my book? Sylvester Stallone for Creed and Lady Gaga for American Horror Story: Hotel.
Show emotion. Sly looked stunned when his name was announced, sitting in his seat for a few moments before he stood up. (The standing ovation may have begun before he stood up himself.) And his first words were about his genuine surprise.
Lady Gaga pulled her hand to her mouth, stopping time for a moment as the win sunk in. And among her first words were, “This is the biggest moment of my life.”
Shine the light on others. Sly endeared himself to the whole world when he said, “I am the sum total of everyone I’ve ever met.”
Lady Gaga said, “Because of you I was able to shine.” And, “Thank you for sharing your talent with me.” And, “You guys pick me up every day.”
Be brief. The best speakers leave you wanting more. Not wondering if they’re going to say something memorable (eventually), or wrap it up and be gone. Not so with Sly and Lady Gaga. I would have been happy listening to them speak for hours.
And that’s the art of a great acceptance speech.
by Caroline Leach | Dec 26, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Learning
What’s an upside to waking up in the middle of the night?
Here’s one: when a pre-ordered book from Amazon downloads after midnight on the publishing date.
A Christmas gift arrived early this week with Amy Cuddy‘s new book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges.
You may have been among the 30 million views of her TED talk, Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.
If so, you know about “power posing.”
When you’re facing a challenge – whether it’s a big presentation or a job interview or an everyday interaction – strike a powerful pose for 2 minutes. Making your body big will make your mind feel more confident.
Two years ago I tried this for the first time. I was planning our Chairman’s annual leadership meeting. As I was meeting with my boss to finalize the agenda, he suggested I should speak at the meeting.
WH-A-A-A-T?
The terror and excitement of speaking before 200 of my leadership peers fought a valiant duel. In my mind. In seconds. And then I said, “Sure, I’d be glad to speak.”
The opportunity won out over the fear. But now I had to perform. And it had better be good.
I began with the usual speaking preparation I would bring to any C-suite leader in my role at the time leading corporate communications.
The topic? Leading Communications.
Or, how my fellow leaders could lead communications among their teams, cascading leadership meeting messages across the enterprise.
And perhaps not so coincidentally, it’s also the original title of this blog.
The brainstorming, writing and practicing began. The weekend before the event I set up my iPhone to record myself giving the presentation in the meeting room.
Two days before the event, I did a dry run for a few colleagues and team members.
And it it fell painfully flat. No connection. No spark. No magic.
They were nice about it. But their body language spoke louder than any words of encouragement ever could.
There were still 48 hours to redeem myself.
I remembered the time Mark Cuban came to speak at our company in the early 2000s. He drove all night to get there. He was friendly and engaging with our employees.
Most memorable were his words about client meetings and commitments. A client would ask for something, and the group would agree it would be delivered the next day.
Later, Mark and his colleagues would look at each other and say they had no idea how to do what they’d just committed to. But they had all night to figure it out. And figure it out, they did. Time and time again.
If they could do it, so could I.
Picking myself up off the metaphorical floor, I got to work. I revised my speech so it focused more on the audience. And what was in it for them.
But what made the most difference on the day of my speech was the simple, yet powerful advice of Amy Cuddy in her TED talk.
It was to adopt the Wonder Woman pose for 2 minutes, before my speech.
The only problem?
My talk was right after a few other speakers, so I couldn’t power pose in private, as Cuddy recommends. So I did the next best thing. I took up as much space as I could, without violating too many social norms.
I sat up straight. I stretched out one of my arms across an adjoining chair. I put another hand on my hip. I planted my feet solidly on the floor. I took deep breaths.
The audience body language post speech? Smiles. Applause. Fist bumps.
Yes, power posing really works.
Two of my work colleagues screened Cuddy’s TED talk at a Lean In circle last year. It was a great session, with ideas like jumping into group conversations one beat after the current speaker’s last word.
So I couldn’t wait for Presence when it came out this week. I wanted to know more secrets to bringing my best self to the challenges of life.
What is presence? Cuddy defines it as “the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, value and potential.”
And what did I find? A well-researched, highly entertaining, inspiring and actionable book. Most of all, it reminded me to do the following:
- Start each day with a power pose
- Stand up straight
- Take up space
- Breathe deeply
- Share the power of presence with others.
The book also underscores the importance of personal power – an infinite resource that’s always available to you. It’s yours for the taking.
As Cuddy describes personal power, “it’s about access to and control of limitless inner resources, such as our skills and abilities, our deeply held values, our true personalities and our boldest selves.”
As a new year dawns, I hope you’ll bring your boldest self.
by Caroline Leach | Sep 7, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Social Media
It’s hard to tell who’s more excited about the start of a new school year – my children or me.
While every new season and every new day bring a fresh start, there’s something extra special about the fall.
Maybe it’s the combination of a new school year, a new football season (full disclosure: I work for the company that brings you NFL Sunday Ticket) and a new world of possibilities.
You get the benefit of a new start, without the pressure to make resolutions that a new year brings.
Fall is the perfect time for kids of all ages to recommit to learning. Here are my favorite ideas for learning something new this season.
Go online. Your professional association probably offers a myriad of on-demand webinars. I’ve been working on my APR recertification through the PRSA website, with sessions like Digital News Releases, Twitter PR Secrets and Media Pitching for 2015.
One of my favorite bloggers, Penelope Trunk, has amazing career courses at Quistic. I can’t wait until the end of this month when her series of Myers-Briggs sessions delves into the ENTJ type.
And one of the exciting things about the company that acquired my employer this summer is the access to hundreds of online courses through AT&T University.
Go the library. My neighborhood library has a great section of new releases when you walk in the door. I can stock up on all the latest books with a swipe of my library card.
I just finished Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind, with strategies for “thinking straight in the age of information overload.” Because our brains can’t keep track of all the stimuli that bombard us, it helps to set up systems to get information out of our heads and into external storage systems. This premise also reminded me to read the refreshed version of David Allen’s Getting Things Done.
And when my brain really needs a break, there’s nothing like the charming reading room at the Malaga Cove Library. Reading, reflecting, thinking or just chilling out are the perfect activities in this historical landmark built in 1929.
Go back to school. Whether it’s a MOOC or a university extension class or a local community college, there are lots of options. This may be my next strategy for learning Spanish, especially because I need an accountability mechanism!
And going back to school doesn’t necessarily mean doing so as a student. You can learn just as much by teaching a course – the process of distilling your thoughts into a structured framework can be an invaluable learning experience.
Mix up your exercise routine. My evening walks and treadmill sessions just earned me a New Zealand badge, according to a congratulatory email from Fitbit. But besides actually wanting to travel there sometime this decade, I’d like to experiment with some new forms of exercise.
This seemed like the perfect weekend to try Cardio Barre and stand up paddle boarding. And I loved them both. My mind recalled my years of ballet training much better than my body did, so I’ll have get up to speed on the barre over a bit more time.
The mind/body connection between exercise and the brain is fascinating, as Gretchen Reynold explores in her “Phys Ed” column in the New York Times.
Be a tourist in your own town. It’s easy to get complacent and not take advantage of all your city or town has to offer. My husband and I started the holiday weekend with a favorite walk around the Lake Hollywood reservoir.
Our reward afterwards was the Urth Caffe, where we talked about fun things we could do this fall and winter, like go to a few college football games and finally see the Rose Parade in person.
And my good colleague Katie Jenks gave me a great lead on a comedy club. A good laugh is just the thing to put life into perspective and making the living much more fun!
by Caroline Leach | Aug 30, 2015 | Careers, Change, Corporate Communications, Learning
A colleague recently asked me about the top three qualifications in public relations, today and in 2025.
It was for a curriculum review at a university’s journalism and mass communications school.
My first thought was about the tsunami of change we’ll see in the next 10 years. It would be easier to predict what the next three to five years will bring.
The Future Work Skills 2020 report by the Institute for the Future came to mind. Smart machines, new media and global connectivity are just some of the trends reported that will shape the future of PR and corporate communications.
For today, Tell Me About A Train Wreck, my blog post on what I’m looking for in a new hire, led me to the top qualifications for 2015:
- Critical thinking. Using reasoning and and systems thinking to make decisions and solve problems is the foundation for this field (and many others). This is a key skill in the framework for 21st century learning.
- Writing – for a social, mobile, global and video-based world. Writing reflects sound thinking. And in a world suffering from information overload, writing today has to be clear, concise and compelling.
- Business acumen. A thorough understanding of the business, the competition and the industry is key to successful PR and corp comms. Give equal weight to learning about PR and the business world.
As I started projecting future qualifications, I ended up with the same three. Yet, those will hardly be sufficient for what the world will look like a decade from now. So to those foundational skills, I would add:
- Tech savvy. This encompasses everything from video production to learning to code. As the Wall Street Journal reported, it’s about gaining “procedural literacy” and thinking about how processes work in the world. In the PR realm, it will become increasingly important to bring art (writing) and science (technology) together to engage and influence people in the future.
- Data analysis. With the explosion in data creation, it will become increasingly important to analyze data, see patterns, choose an appropriate course of action, and know how to ethically and appropriately present data to change behaviors. This is also vital to consider on a personal branding level through Michael Fertik’s The Reputation Economy.
- Creativity. This is another 21st century skill. And it’s one that’s closely linked with innovation. With data, technology and information, a creative ability enables connections and something new and fresh from considering and combining seemingly disparate ideas and concepts.
With so much to learn, where’s a good place to start?
Often, it’s by doing one new thing and taking just one step.
As a new school year kicks off, I’m recommitting to learning a new language with my Spanish studies. My husband is brushing up on his Italian, and our children are heading back for the first day of school.
What are you learning this fall?
by Caroline Leach | Jun 13, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media
Speaking at the Intranet Global Forum this week at USC made me reflect on new ways to work.
At Toby Ward‘s invitation, I joined a variety of speakers including digital luminaries Shel Holtz, Dion Hinchcliffe and Aadam Zaidi.
The focus? The future of corporate intranets, spotlighting the design, governance and management of enterprise and social intranets.
My talk was a DIRECTV case study, looking at how we’re changing the way work gets done in our connected enterprise.
Today it’s more collaborative, productive and innovative. And tomorrow it should become even more so, as technologies and cultures evolve.
It started four years ago when my Communications team began working with the I.T. team to explore technologies for social collaboration.
We began with a vision – to make it easy for employees to connect, collaborate, access and share information with each other and partners, leading to greater engagement and productivity, along with better decision-making and increased innovation.
Our work was informed in part by the McKinsey & Company study, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.
Across four sectors studied, it reported that social technologies improving productivity could potentially contribute up to $1.3 trillion in value. And two-thirds of this amount lay in improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises.
Those are hefty numbers. And big potential to achieve.
We embarked on our journey with a group headed by Michael Ambrozewicz on my team, and later joined by Thyda Nhek and Mani Escobar.
We have a great technical partnership with I.T. strategy leader Frank Palase and his team, along with insight from various consulting partners.
Together we could put a social collaboration platform in place, but how could we encourage people to use it? How could we achieve its full value?
We had to make it part of how people did their daily work. Not a separate site that people would visit and engage with when they had time.
It had to be a way to get important work done every day. It had to foster new ways of working, with employees creating content to share in places where teams collaborate in real time.
Senior leader involvement is a key way of doing that. If leaders are active in a social intranet, then employees will join the dialogue and the action.
In our beta phase, I launched a communications leadership blog. My purpose was to encourage the beta participants to experiment and learn. And I’d learn enough about blogging from first-hand experience so I could advise our C-suite leaders on launching and growing their own blogs.
In the next year’s annual leadership meeting, we wove social collaboration into the program.
- Our CEO talked about its importance in the context of our overall business strategy.
- Michael and Thyda manned kiosks and helped leaders set up their profile pages and get started with initial actions, like following colleagues and bookmarking key content.
- Each day I blogged for all employees about what was happening at the meeting. Our CIO jumped in with blog posts and perspectives of his own.
Blogging for me created a “flow state” experience, where time drifts away and I’m completely engaged in the art and craft of thinking and writing. It’s one of the things I wrote about in my very first post.
And it’s one of the reasons I launched this second blog, Leading Communications, earlier this year. I wanted to continue learning, sharing knowledge and engaging in dialogue.
What are we doing with our social intranet today?
First, we’re providing company news and information in real time, that employees can like, share, comment on and add their own perspectives.
Second, key teams are regularly collaborating on projects and keeping their colleagues up to date on emerging industry trends, new technologies and consumer insights.
Third, major work locations and teams use spaces to engage colleagues with relevant information and project-based resources.
And where are we going tomorrow?
First, our social intranet will sustain and build on organizational knowledge. Information is increasingly less likely to be buried in individuals’ email accounts, and more likely to be available for colleagues to access and build upon.
Second, our word-based content is becoming more visual, with photos and videos increasing in importance compared with text. People can process visual information much faster, not to mention that it’s more engaging.
And in our rapidly changing world, that provides tremendous upside. Step by step, we can all make that trillion-dollar value creation a reality.
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