Page 25 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

16 THE SPEAKING GAME

If you can forget about how you are doing and think only of
what you are saying, you need never feel like you have to act out some
imagined role in front of any audience. Have faith in your message.
Have faith in your knowledge. Have faith in yourself.
Everybody today—and I mean everybody—craves authenticity.

In the smarmy wake of financial-services scam king Bernie Madoff,
and after years of hedge fund scandals, absence of ethics, chronic
impropriety, and general misbehavior on Wall Street and in corpo-
rate life everywhere, candor, openness, and honesty are at a premium
like never before. Steve Jobs understands this, too. He understood
this long before Madoff did and all the way back when he first
emerged with a computer and a vision from his parents’ garage in
California.
If there are occasions when you cannot, or will not, be honest

with your audience, Instinct Man will probably find you out. In the
course of your professional life, you may well discover yourself in
this kind of compromising situation. But don’t worry. All is not
lost—as we will see in later chapters.
It is important to never forget that you are not making a presenta-
tion. Presentations do not bring us together. They only drive us far-
ther apart. (You will hear me refer to presentations countless times
in this book because I must use that word for clarity. But when you
read “presentation,” you can think “conversation.”) Nobody wants to
hear a presentation, but we all welcome a good conversation—even
though you may be the one doing most of the talking.
Steve Jobs does not make presentations, even when he is present-
ing. He is always having a conversation, and he’s always got some-
thing to say. He talks without guile. He comes across as a natural.
That’s why people listen and remember. With important audiences
like investors, customers, employees, and the trade press, this is an
enormous business asset.
Presentations and conversations are very different animals—as
different as the ugly duckling and the pretty swan in the fairy tale.
The trick is to create a swan from an ugly duck. So you want to