Page 19 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

10 THE SPEAKING GAME

I read somewhere that more than half of all job applicants are
turned down on the basis of verbal communication skills judged to
be less than adequate. If all these people hit a wall (and probably
never know the real reason why), it’s mind-boggling to imagine how
much wasted effort is poured into presentations that fail for the
same reason. What if more than half of all the pitches, presentations,
speeches, lectures, and assorted other communications all over the
world also failed because of poor communications?
What if the number were only half of that? We’re still talking
about lost productivity and lost opportunity on a staggering scale.
Anyone who is serious about his career or his company has got to
know how to play the game.
A friend of mine in a midsize company got an assignment to give
a new-business presentation but waited until the last minute to pre-
pare the big pitch. He cannibalized other presentations, made hasty
notes, threw together a mixed bag of handouts and visual aids, and
then rushed to the airport to catch a plane to the prospective client’s
headquarters in another city. Not surprisingly, the presentation did
not go as well as he might have hoped. The order went to a compet-
itor—a loss of more than $65 million in new business.
When I hear stories like that, it seems only fair to ask, what is
the nature of true productivity? Is it more productive to apply one-
self diligently every day at one’s desk with the aggregate long-term
rewards of that labor almost impossible to measure? Or is it more
productive to set aside more time—perhaps a day or two—to ade-
quately plan, prepare, and practice for a presentation that could be
worth more to your company in just one day than all the fruits of an
entire lifetime of functional diligence?
Why should we not expect higher quality, speed, and productiv-
ity from our communications abilities—just as we routinely expect
these things in our businesses? Most of us spend our working lives
unaware that we are in fact the message—that how others see us can
determine the degree of our success.