The Pin Drop Principle

Captivate, Influence, and Communicate Better Using the Time-Tested Methods of Professional Performers

David Lewis, G. Riley Mills

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118310175
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

Tap into the powerful techniques of professional actors and great communicators

The Pin Drop Principle is a step-by-step master class for anyone wishing to become a more confident and credible communicator. Lewis and Mills believe all business professionals ought to deliver their message in such an engaging way that one could literally hear a pin drop when they speak. The secret to doing so comes from an unusual world: professional acting. By activating "objective" and "intention"—the main tools of actors (and great communicators)—business people can give their messages meaning and relevance, so the recipients walk away knowing why the message is important and what is in it for them.

• Empowers business professionals with performance-based delivery techniques—from storytelling to vocal dynamics—essential to becoming a great communicator
• Written for anyone wishing to engage listeners, establish instant credibility, influence key decision makers, and create a positive lasting impression
• Based on the Pinnacle Method, one of the most popular and groundbreaking communication skills training methods

The Pin Drop Principle is an accessible resource for anyone who routinely needs to present ideas to large or small groups, convey feedback effectively, conduct difficult conversations, and persuade others.

Chapter 1

Understand the Secrets of Persuasion

Communicating with Intention and Objective

The starting point of all achievement is desire.

—Napoleon Hill

We've all seen or heard persuasive speakers—people who engage us with their communication effectively, whatever its subject may be. And because they are able to capture our attention (and perhaps our imagination), the chances are good that they will also be able to move us emotionally or change the way we think about a topic or issue. But how exactly do they do it? What makes someone persuasive as a communicator?

The story of one of history's most famously persuasive speakers gives us some insight.

Often regarded as the greatest of Greek orators, Demosthenes, the Athenian statesman and rhetorician, rallied the citizens of Athens against the military power of Philip of Macedon and Philip's son, Alexander the Great, for almost thirty years. So powerful was Demosthenes in his ability to rouse the passions of his audiences that Cicero (perhaps the greatest Roman orator) called him “the perfect orator.”

But Demosthenes, who was the son of a wealthy sword maker and was orphaned at age seven, was not always celebrated for his abilities—in fact, his early attempts at speaking were met with ridicule.

In ancient Greece, public speaking was a vital aspect of everyday life, and skilled orators or rhetoricians were valued very highly. When he was still a boy, Demosthenes saw some of the great rhetoricians of the day speaking in court or in the assembly—a regular meeting of the citizenry, where they would deliberate and vote on all aspects of Athenian life. He was captivated by their power and popularity, and set about to study their methods and become a great orator himself.

He had some early success in court, bringing suit against his guardians for mishandling his estate. But his first efforts in the assembly were met with jeers and derision—his style was stilted, his sentences tortuously long, his voice weak and breathy. People hated listening to him. Crushed by this public humiliation, Demosthenes fled the assembly in shame.

On another day, when Demosthenes had not been allowed to speak before the assembly at all, he came upon an acquaintance—an actor named Satyrus. It's not fair, Demosthenes said. I work hard on my speeches; I'm far better prepared than any of those idiots they let speak, and they won't even listen to a word. Satyrus, as a professional actor, perfectly understood the cause of Demosthenes' failure in the assembly: the problem was not his message—it was the poor delivery of his message. Demosthenes' speeches failed to connect with his audience because they lacked something vital—they lacked intention. The young orator took no care in how he came across to his audience—he didn't even seem to know he should—and as a result he thoroughly alienated the people he meant to persuade.

To demonstrate the problem, Satyrus had Demosthenes read a passage from the classics, and then he read it himself, using his voice and body with all his skill. Demosthenes was thunderstruck—the passage seemed like an entirely different text when the actor read it—and from that day he began to believe that if a speaker neglected his presentation, he might as well not speak at all. He saw that a speaker's intention—the choice to act and speak persuasively—was imperative and essential to his objective—to persuade.

Demosthenes took to the actor's teaching with a vengeance. He built an underground chamber—a sort of cave—and he practiced his gestures and intonation there every single day. He picked apart speeches—his own and others'—rephrasing what was said more gracefully and practicing it aloud in his chamber. He trained his breathing by reciting a speech while running or climbing. He put pebbles in his mouth to improve his enunciation. He rehearsed in front of a mirror to check how his posture, gestures, and other body language would come across to his audience.

When it was time for Demosthenes to speak in front of the assembly again, all of Athens took notice. His fiery speeches about the political, social, and economic issues of the day riveted, persuaded, and roused the Greek citizenry. Neither his subject matter nor his audience had changed, nor had his objective—to compel his listeners to action. But once he began delivering his speeches with intention—and with an actor's techniques—the results could not have been more different.

Intention and Objective

The Pinnacle Method, adapting the actor's approach to a wide range of communications, is based on the simple premise that whether you are making a customer service call, delivering a large presentation, running a team meeting, or having dinner with your family, the success of your communication depends upon two things. First, you must identify an objective—something you want or need from your audience. And second, you must choose an intention that will assist you in the pursuit of that objective. Think of the objective and intention in your communication like this:

• Objective = What You Want
• Intention = How You Are Going to Get It

Actors, by training, know the secrets of objective and intention and how to make them work together for effective communication.

It's a common misconception that actors pretend to be other people. In reality that's not what we do at all. Rather, we are trained to put ourselves—our true selves—into imaginary circumstances and deliver our message (in this case, our lines) with a specific intention to generate a desired reaction from our audience (whether that audience is our scene partner or the audience who paid to come and see us). We need our audience to believe what we are saying as the character in that moment. If they don't believe what we say, the credibility of our character comes into question, and the success of our performance is compromised.

The same can be said for any person's communication. If we don't believe what someone is saying—whether that person is a salesman, a mayoral candidate, or our teenage daughter—they end up communicating to us something different from what they intended—for example, we come to believe that this product is actually not a good fit for our needs; that these policies don't sound very effective; or that perhaps we should check to see if her homework is really done.

All of these people in the examples above want something that depends on us, their audience—a sale, a win, a trip to the mall—and they want to compel us to do something—buy the product, vote for them, give them permission to go. If their objective and intention are not well aligned, we'll remain unconvinced, their communication will have failed, and they won't get what they wanted.

Thus an objective, if properly aligned with intention, should result in a successful communication—one that changes your audience's knowledge, attitude, or action with regard to the topic being discussed or presented. As a communicator, you must have a specific objective in mind—something you need to accomplish—if you hope to impact and move your audience. In the end, without an activated intention behind your delivery—and one that is specifically in line with your objective—the best your message will be is ambiguous. A strong intention behind your words will literally fuel the emotion of your delivery.

In the rest of this chapter, we show you how to clearly identify a specific objective for your communication—to understand exactly what you want to have happen as a result of your message. We also guide you in the process of pinpointing and choosing the most effective intention to accomplish it.

For your communication to achieve its objective, all aspects of your delivery must be supported and driven by the chosen intention. It is the ability to combine these two elements working in tandem that separates engaging communicators from those who fail to engage an audience in any meaningful way.

Defining Your Objective

As Demosthenes discovered, effective communication never consists of words alone. There must be a purpose behind those words that calls an audience to action. The result of this action is, ideally, identical to what we call a communicator's objective. Simply put, your objective is the goal or purpose you hope to achieve with your audience as a result of the delivery of your message. A computer sales rep wants to sell a computer, a teacher wants the students to learn their state capitals, and a safety manager wants the workers to avoid injury.

Constantin Stanislavski, the founder of the Moscow Art Theatre in the late nineteenth century and the father of modern acting, wrote extensively on the concept of objective in his groundbreaking book An Actor Prepares.¹ In his books and methods, Stanislavski developed an approach to realistic acting that is still used to this day. One of the major precepts of the Stanislavski system was the importance of a particular kind of preparation. An actor was to begin by studying the script and identifying goals and objectives for every scene, seeking answers to the following questions:

1. What do I want?

2. What is in the way of what I want?

3. How am I going to get what I want?

By carefully and thoroughly answering these three questions, actors gain a much clearer idea of what they want to accomplish in a particular scene. The questions are so effective that they have come to represent a sort of “holy trinity” for actors.

But they can just as easily be applied to communication in any setting—whether you're managing a team, hoping to influence a stakeholder, or asking someone out on a date. As Stanislavski explains, “Life, people, circumstances … constantly put up barriers … Each of these barriers presents us with the objective of getting through it….² Every one of the objectives you have chosen … calls for some degree of action.”³

But not all objectives are created equal, and most communication doesn't consist of just one objective; instead, it comprises numerous objectives—smaller goals that need to be achieved in order to accomplish the main one. Your most important objective, the one that best describes your overall goal, Stanislavski called a super-objective. For example, a teacher's super-objective might be to teach the students geometry, but first they must be induced to take their seats and be quiet.

Before delivering any message, you need to understand what you want at the end of your communication. What is your super-objective? Is it buy-in from the other party, or commitment for more funding, or additional personnel? Is it a signature on a contract or the adoption of a new policy? Whatever the goal is for your communication, you need to clearly understand it for yourself. Otherwise you risk being like a marathoner who runs and runs but has no idea where the finish line is. Write it down, using concrete language. If you have more than one objective, express each clearly and concretely.

Once you know your objective you have half of what you need to communicate effectively. The other half is the communicator's secret weapon and most invaluable tool—intention.

Choosing an Intention

Often when we develop a message, we focus primarily on the words and content we are delivering. We usually also have an objective in mind, of course, even if we have not defined it carefully and precisely. What we often fail to ask ourselves is why that overall message should be important to our audience. Why should they care? What would make them care? We neglect to pair intention with objective. This very common mistake is usually fatal to effective communication.

Before delivering their messages, communicators must understand with great clarity how they want their audience to react to each message. How do they want their audience to feel as a result of their communication? The answer to this question is the speaker's intention; according to the dictionary, intention is “an aim that guides action.”

Understanding the importance of intention and deploying it effectively is the cornerstone of brilliant acting, often separating a memorable performance from a forgettable one. Actors use intention in every aspect of their performance, breaking down each moment of a scene to understand their objective and help them identify the specific intentions they will use to deliver their lines. Actors always have an objective in a scene, something they want (to get the money, to sleep with the girl, to convince the bully to stop picking on them) and they always pair that objective with a complementary intention. They use their intentions to threaten, seduce, or intimidate to accomplish the objective. While actors focus their intention and objective on their partner in a scene, there is alwa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for The Pin Drop Principle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Understand the Secrets of Persuasion: Communicating with Intention and Objective
• Chapter 2: Tell a Good Story: Using Personal Experiences to Inspire and Persuade
• Chapter 3: Craft a Compelling Narrative: Building the Framework to Support Your Message
• Chapter 4: Be Prepared: Managing Nerves and Controlling Anxiety
• Chapter 5: Project Confidence: Expressing Your Intention Nonverbally
• Chapter 6: Say It Like You Mean It: Using Your Voice to Influence
• Chapter 7: Listen to Understand: Maximizing Comprehension and Retention
• Chapter 8: Think on Your Feet: Mastering Impromptu Speaking in Any Situation
• Chapter 9: Stay Focused and On Track: Handling Questions and Controlling Your Audience
• Chapter 10: Assert Yourself: Gaining Commitment, Providing Feedback, and Delivering Difficult News
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Glossary of Terms
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Index
• End User License Agreement