Page 63 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

54 CREATING THE PERFECT PRESENTATION

Earlier, I mentioned the idea of barroom talk—in which you
picture yourself in a bar with friends or in a similar situation where
performance anxiety virtually vanishes. In this zone of comfort you

are more likely to find yourself and be yourself. Barriers weaken,
fear disappears, and the real you emerges. This is the only person in
the world you can ever count on to get you closer to customers,
employees, peers, investors, senior management, and decision
makers.
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Stop thinking that every time you stand up to say something
you are making a speech—because you’re not. What you’re really
doing is having an enlarged conversation—even though there
may be a hundred people listening and even though you may
be doing all the talking.
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You always have a choice when you enter into a dialogue or com-
munication of any kind: you can clarify or you can obfuscate. Some-
times people obfuscate without realizing it. But some people, for lots
of different reasons, actually obfuscate on purpose.
The acknowledged master of incomprehensible language is the
seasoned bureaucrat—a wily creature who has been known to devote
his entire working life to dodging responsibility and remaining
almost totally faceless, forgettable, and invisible—all of which
requires a considerably developed repertoire of verbal camoufl age.
An experienced bureaucrat can raise the art of obfuscation to inge-
niously ambiguous new heights.
Take, for example, the venerable Alan Greenspan, onetime
chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Greenspan and other Fed
chairs before him have had a long tradition of cryptic allusion in
public commentary, which allows them to hint at future action with-
out feeling obliged to actually take any action. Here’s what Green-
span told Congress: