Speaking and Communicating Podcast

00:00

Speaker 1
It's gonna absolutely transform your career. And for a business, if you've got a team of leaders and a team of salespeople that are able to do those things, it's gonna mean more revenue in terms of sales. It's gonna mean higher retention. Leaders that communicate well don't lose their team members. People don't leave the team of someone that they think is a, a fantastic communicator and a fantastic leader.
00:25

Speaker 2
Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast. I'm your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now, let's get communicating with our guest today. Joining us from the UK, Dominic Colenso is a best-selling author. He is a former actor turned communications skills expert, a keynote speaker, and coach who's here to help us create messages that have impact, be more proficient and confident, and deliver outstanding results. And before I go any further, please welcome him to the show. Hi, Dominic.
01:23

Speaker 1
Hey. Lovely to be here. Thanks for having me.
01:26

Speaker 2
My pleasure. Welcome. So, I'm wondering, isn't acting a lot more fun than speaking?
01:34

Speaker 1
(laughs)
01:35

Speaker 2
(laughs)
01:35

Speaker 1
Well, I, I think they're probably quite similar in, in that respect, in that you find yourself in front of an audience, and you have to take that audience on a journey. Ideally, if you're communicating really well, you're gonna leave the people that you're talking to feeling different at the end of that communication compared to how they did at the beginning. Uh, and it's exactly the same for an audience, whether that audience is sitting down watching a TV program or walking into the theater. Hopefully, you're gonna take them on that emotional journey. So, there's, there's lots of similarities between what I used to do when I started my career, uh, and what I do now.
02:11

Speaker 2
So, what is it then that made you decide, "You know what? I'm going to transition to speaking, helping leaders, helping people deliver their messages"?
02:21

Speaker 1
So, Roberta, it wasn't an overnight thing. I think probably if you speak to many people in, in their career journey, it, it's not always something that you kind of wake up one morning and say, "I'm going to decide to do this." Just things present themselves. And if you're curious and you start to follow those threads, then interesting things happen. So, I was working as, uh, an actor, as a, as a teacher of acting at the RADA and a couple of the other big drama schools in the UK, and also directing theater shows. And at that time, someone that I knew asked me whether I could help a business, uh, with some storytelling. And I'm the sort of person that says yes to anything once, so I went in to meet a group of, of young leaders, uh, and to talk to them about the things that I knew as, as a theater creator that might be applicable in their lives and their jobs.
03:11

Speaker 1
And what I was fascinated to discover almost immediately were, was that the, the toolkit that I had as an actor and as a director was immediately applicable to people in the business world.
03:23

Speaker 2
So, your best-selling book, Impact, first of all, let's start with acting. What impact do you hope to have on your audience that you have now translated to the speaking career?
03:38

Speaker 1
So, I think, for any speaker, you have to be absolutely crystal clear on the impact that you're trying to create. So, my first book was very much designed as a kind of guide to help you think about how to show up more confidently, how to increase your influence in any situation, because I believe that there are really key fundamental principles to great communication. And those were the things that I drew from that acting career and tried to share in that first book. So, for me, there are six ingredients. It's about intention, mindset, presence, knowing your audience, uh, knowing your content, and then developing your technique. And if you can craft your performance and your message around those six ingredients, then you're much more likely to be successful.
04:28

Speaker 2
The last one you mentioned is technique, and we've had different debates and different perspectives, especially when people wanna learn how to speak, okay? So, we say-
04:38

Speaker 1
Yeah.
04:38

Speaker 2
... "Okay, stand like this. Do this with your hands. Don't have too many slides." Entire to-do list of do's (laughs) -
04:47

Speaker 1
Yeah.
04:47

Speaker 2
... and don'ts (laughs) of what to do. And so, I've always wondered, does the technique then make the real person not show up 'cause they're trying to implement those things while speaking?
05:00

Speaker 1
So, for me, technique is actually the opposite of that. Technique is saying, "I've got a, a toolkit, and there are so many tools available to me, uh, as a communicator." And you can read my books or you can read someone else's books. It kinda doesn't really matter. You can start to gather all of these things that may work for you. And then your job, as far as the technique is concerned, from my perspective, is to start trying these things out and work out which things work for you and which things don't. And also, develop your own awareness of who you are, so that you are able to turn certain pieces of yourself up and certain pieces of yourself down, depending on the situation you find yourself in. So, so let me dig into that a little bit more. Most of us, if you imagine the, the keys on a piano, I think that's quite a, a, an easy kind of metaphor to work with. Most of us, when we communicate, play maybe two or three notes. Yeah? But there's this whole keyboard that's available to us.
05:58

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
05:58

Speaker 1
And in life-We play many more notes on that keyboard. So, I know that I am different when I am speaking to you on a podcast compared to how I was when I was sat round my dinner table with my daughter two hours ago, compared to how I'm with my friends when I'm watching a sports game, or how I am when I'm, you know, deep in concentration working on a, on a project in the office. I bring different versions of myself to that situation.
06:28

Speaker 1
So, the Dominic that exists when his team scores a goal is being-
06:33

Speaker 2
(laughs)
06:33

Speaker 1
... really loud and jumping up and down. Uh, and most people don't bring that version of themselves to the workplace, but it exists. And I'm not saying that you need to bring that version, but what if you just brought a little bit of that version that allowed you to communicate with a bit more passion, that allowed you to show your connection to the topic? I, I work a lot with people that tell me, "Oh, you know, I'm, uh, I'm not a very loud person, I'm not a very expressive person." And then you say, "Well, you know, who's your favorite football team?" And they go, "Oh, my goodness-"
07:05

Speaker 2
Liverpool.
07:05

Speaker 1
"... let me tell you."
07:06

Speaker 2
(laughs)
07:06

Speaker 1
And they suddenly, and they suddenly come to life, right?
07:09

Speaker 2
Yes.
07:09

Speaker 1
So, we have this range, and the more we can learn to play those different notes on the piano, the more effective we're gonna be as communicators because we have more choice.
07:20

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm. Which brings, then, the confidence piece, because I think what you just described is somebody saying, when they say, "Oh, I'm not that loud," maybe there's an, a confidence element missing there.
07:34

Speaker 1
Yeah.
07:34

Speaker 2
But if they then bring that bit of the louder part to themselves, does that mean maybe their confidence level has gone up a notch?
07:44

Speaker 1
I think it's an interesting word, confidence, because I think we are all innately confident. No one can make us confident. No one can stop us being confident. It's just a state of being. And I think rather than aiming for confidence, it's much more useful to aim for presence. So, actors are often, people reflect that an actor has presence, yeah? That that actor has great stage presence, and, and we really respect that. And what that really means is that that person is there in the moment. They're not thinking about the future, and whether the words are gonna come out of their mouth in the right way, and they're not thinking about the past, the mistake that they made or the slide that they missed. They're just absolutely connected with the person that they're speaking to. So, right now, I am completely present with you.
08:40

Speaker 2
Right.
08:40

Speaker 1
And it doesn't matter what's coming next, and it doesn't matter the fact that already I've stumbled over my words and I've said a few things wrong. Like, no one's gonna remember that, unless-
08:49

Speaker 2
Right.
08:49

Speaker 1
... now they're gonna go back and rewind and find out what happened, right?
08:53

Speaker 2
(laughs) I hope not.
08:53

Speaker 1
But if we stay present with each other in the moment, then we're going on that journey together. And I think rather than aiming for, "I must be more confident," I would say to people, "Try and be more present. Take the spotlight off you and try and put the spotlight onto your audience."
09:09

Speaker 2
Yes, we always remind them that it's not about you, it's about them.
09:14

Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.
09:14

Speaker 2
'Cause I find that a lot of speakers who are so self-conscious, and, "How do I look?" and, "What do they think of me?" And yeah, you're not thinking of people-
09:23

Speaker 1
Can I tell you a secret?
09:24

Speaker 2
Please do.
09:26

Speaker 1
Yeah, they don't care.
09:27

Speaker 2
(laughs)
09:27

Speaker 1
Your audience doesn't care about you at all. You think you're really important. You're not.
09:32

Speaker 2
(laughs)
09:32

Speaker 1
They're only thinking about themselves.
09:34

Speaker 2
Right. (laughs)
09:35

Speaker 1
Like, when people are, when people are listening to you, they're sitting there thinking, "What's in it for me? What am I gonna learn from this?" Now, it's really important to say that your audience want you to succeed.
09:48

Speaker 2
Yeah.
09:48

Speaker 1
There's very few people that are sitting in your audience, whether that is in a team meeting, in, in the office, or whether you're speaking at a conference, your audience are sitting there thinking, "Please, be interesting. Please, have something good to say. Please, make what you're talking about relevant to me and my world and my job." So, no one's sitting there thinking, "I hope you fail." Uh, I mean, I, I've never sat in a meeting and thought, "I've h- I really hope the next 20 minutes is a complete waste of my life."
10:17

Speaker 2
Nobody wants that kind of (laughs)
10:18

Speaker 1
No one, no one would do that. Everyone's coming to the party really hopeful that you're gonna be brilliant and that they're gonna take something away from, from what you say. So, I think we can, you know, give ourselves a little bit of a break as, as presenters and speakers in, in those moments, and then focus on trying to get into that moment and be present with the audience, putting the spotlight on them.
10:41

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Now, when it comes to acting, you memorize your lines, right?
10:48

Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
10:48

Speaker 2
And then you deliver them, but they are literally what the writer of the movie or the play-
10:55

Speaker 1
Yeah.
10:55

Speaker 2
... said, said, "Dominic," exactly, "These are your lines," and... But here's the thing, and I would like your insights on this. When it comes to public speaking, how much of it should be memory? How much of it should be, "Dominic really knows his material. He can just deliver it any way, e- anytime?" If, if they give him 45 minutes, but suddenly he's got 20 'cause they're running out of time, he still knows how to deliver it in-
11:19

Speaker 1
Yeah.
11:19

Speaker 2
... 20 minutes?
11:21

Speaker 1
I think when you're speaking professionally, that's, that's an absolute necessity. You have to be able to know your material inside out and, and back to front. And happens very often that you are about to walk on stage and someone whispers in your ear, "Can you make that five minutes longer or 10 minutes shorter?" And you just have to go, "Absolutely. You're the client. You're the boss." Uh-
11:42

Speaker 2
Yeah.
11:42

Speaker 1
... "Here we go." I think from a professional context, if, if it's not your job to be a speaker but you are speaking as part of your job, if you're delivering a, a presentation or you're speaking up in a meeting, then the advice that I would have is, absolutely, do not try and learn a script. As an actor, learning lines was really difficult. And what's even more difficult than just learning lines is speaking lines and helping the audience imagine that you are speaking them for the first time, because actually, we can smell a script a mile off. Especially during the pandemic when everyone had all of their scripts on the computer screen in front of them and was, were just reading it.
12:22

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
12:22

Speaker 1
Then immediately as an audience, we switch off. So, I would encourage people to, to really ditch the script as much as possible. The places to pay attention and really work on being super familiar with your content is what you say at the beginning and what you say at the end, so that for those first couple of minutes...... everything can be very fluid. It's like, it's almost scripted, but it, it shouldn't be word-for-word, it should just be the flavor. And then, what I'm a massive fan of is framework. In the middle section of a presentation, I use frameworks to help me organize my thinking, to, to know where I am, to organize the stories and to, to have the kind of case studies and everything pieced together. But that allows me, if I put them in those kind of building blocks, to take one out and put one in, and change the duration based on the, uh, specification that I get from the organizer.
13:17

Speaker 2
So, you've mentioned storytelling twice already. Why is it such a key part of any, what I would call, phenomenal speech, phenomenal presentation?
13:28

Speaker 1
Human beings are hardwired for story. Now, story doesn't have to be bedtime story for children, right? It's about narrative. It's about taking people on a logical journey. When you tell a story, invariably, you follow the chronology of the story. So you have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the timeline kind of works in that way, you know, five years ago, we started doing this, now we're doing this, and in the future, we're hoping to do that. And all of a sudden, because you packaged up those ideas in that way, it's much easier for your audience to follow what's going on. And, and story is so familiar to us, in the entertainment that we watch, whether that is, to be honest, a piece of kind of drama, a movie, a, a Netflix box set, or whether it's a piece of scripted reality TV. Now, I mean, everyth- everything that you watch has an editor. Every TikTok video that you watch is, is a story.
14:35

Speaker 1
And so, we're just immersed in it, and if you break those rules for your audience and deliver a message that is confusing and doesn't tie together and doesn't have a, a strong beginning, middle, and end, then it's really easy to lose people along the way.
14:51

Speaker 2
Because, like you said, they need to follow. Because concepts, I mean, everybody has heard of the concepts. Everybody knows there's empathy, there's leadership, there's communication skills. But what's gonna make the audience of this podcast remember Dominic is the story he told during his episode on the topic, whether it's impact or storytelling. So, that's the difference here.
15:16

Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.
15:17

Speaker 2
Mm.
15:17

Speaker 1
You know, when I'm delivering a, especially a kind of keynote speech, if I'm talking at a conference to a big audience, then I will use storytelling really deliberately to join the big takeaways together. So I might want someone thinking about narrative, for example, and I might tell the story of how I won my first acting job. My big break was because I told a story. So I will tell that story, and then I will allow the audience to be part of that story, and then tell them why I told them the story. And all of a sudden, they start to join those dots.
15:59

Speaker 1
It's a way to bypass people's kind of logical brains-
16:04

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
16:04

Speaker 1
... and start talking to their more kind of emotional selves.
16:08

Speaker 2
Mm. When you say that-
16:10

Speaker 1
Yeah.
16:10

Speaker 2
... you use your acting lessons to work with leaders, how exactly do you help them from what you learned in acting?
16:20

Speaker 1
If you think about the, the six ingredients of, of IMPACT in the first book, or if you think about the Cut Through me- Methodology, my most recent book, they're all based on the tools and techniques that actors use. So, it's not like I sit with leaders and say, "Right, pretend to be a tree." Or, you know, do anything kind of crazy like that. But I'm talking to them about how they can be more embodied, how they can find relaxation when they're in the spotlight, how they get comfortable with making eye contact, how they expand some of their physical presence and gesture so that they take up more space and seem to have more gravitas, um, how they bring their words to life. Uh, I'm sure we've all experienced someone talking to us in a really kind of boring monotone and everything just kind of keeps going in the same way and at the same pace, and after about two or three minutes of listening to this, everyone will have switched off and the podcast will have no listeners left.
17:20

Speaker 1
So, we've got-
17:20

Speaker 2
(laughs)
17:20

Speaker 1
... to do something to kind of bring that to life. We've got to play around. No, and it's not acting. It really isn't acting, I think that's really important to say. It's about being embodied with your communication. It's about finding your own personal connection to what you're talking about. And that's another reason why storytelling can be so powerful, because if you tell your story, or share your experience, then you're much more likely to, to bring it to life in that way.
17:50

Speaker 2
And you're much more relatable, because I think-
17:53

Speaker 1
Of course.
17:53

Speaker 2
... one of the myths is that l- you know, leaders have these, they know everything, they have the answers, which is complete myth.
18:01

Speaker 1
Yeah. (laughs)
18:01

Speaker 2
And they don't need to, actually. (laughs)
18:03

Speaker 1
No, and we wouldn't want them to, because otherwise we wouldn't be part of the story, helping them solve the problem. You know, we, we're going into the metaphorical battle together. It's Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey and, you know, we're all going along for the ride, and w- we all want to imagine ourselves as being part of the solution. I always say to, to people that I work with, you know, "How many of you have seen a James Bond film?" And most people in the room will put their hand up. And I say, "How many of you have seen two?" And 90% of people keep their hand up. And then I say, "Why? They're all exactly the same." We know what's gonna happen. When we go and watch those types of films, we know exactly what we're gonna get, but we love that structure.... and that story, and we also love to imagine that we could be part of it.
18:56

Speaker 1
And I would put money on the fact that, that, that the vast majority, certainly of men listening to this podcast, if they've watched a James Bond movie, at some point, they have imagined themselves as James Bond-
19:08

Speaker 2
(laughs)
19:08

Speaker 1
... and thought, "I could do that," right? And that's the power of story, is like we step into that character's shoes, and we get a completely different perspective.
19:19

Speaker 2
Mm. I would imagine so as well. How do you help teams deliver outstanding results using all the, the techniques that we've spoken about already?
19:30

Speaker 1
So, uh, a lot of the work that I do is actually with, uh, with sales teams and sales leaders, so we spend a lot of time looking at crafting pitches and sales conversations to really think about how you engage your audience, how you make a, a really clear and clean ask so that people know what it is that you're requesting and, and know whether or not they want to buy or buy into what it is that you're talking about. In many organizations, it's a, a real missed opportunity. We kind of imagine somehow that all human beings have fully fledged communication skills and that they're, they're properly honed and that, that everyone's really good at it, and, you know, we all speak, so we must be fine. But actually, it's a massive competitive advantage, wherever you are in your career. If you are able to articulate your message well, if you are able to engage with your audience, if you're able to be memorable so that you leave people wanting more, it's gonna absolutely transform your career.
20:39

Speaker 1
And for a business, if you've got a team of leaders and a team of salespeople that are able to do those things, it's gonna mean more revenue in terms of sales. It's gonna mean higher retention. Leaders that communicate well don't lose their team members. People don't leave the team of someone that they think is a, a fantastic communicator and a fantastic leader. And it makes the team more productive, because rather than things being hidden within the team culture and no one being able to speak up, people that are able to communicate will say, "Hey, I've seen this. I have a question about... Can we discuss?" So, all of a sudden, you're, you're shifting productivity, you're shifting profit, and you're shifting people. You're creating a, an environment where people wanna stay and do their best work.
21:28

Speaker 2
Yes, and when they stay, the company saves a lot of money 'cause they don't have to keep training new people.
21:33

Speaker 1
Well, yeah. Do you recruit men? Oh, my gosh. The time and the, the cost of filling in vacancy is huge.
21:40

Speaker 2
You said that when you train the sales teams, what we were talking about earlier regarding knowing that when you're saying, "Let me tell you a secret," people (laughs) don't care.
21:51

Speaker 1
(laughs)
21:51

Speaker 2
When you, when you wanna make it about your audience, have you had sales teams who come to you, and they say, "Dominic, we're struggling," or, "Because I've been trained, I've been coached to use this script to try and make the sale," you find that sometimes they don't take the time to actually understand the person in front of them, the potential client or customer? They just think, "You know-"
22:16

Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean-
22:16

Speaker 2
"... when I'm in front of you, I'm supposed to say this and this and this," like the call center scripts.
22:21

Speaker 1
And h- and here we go, and, "Let me show you these slides."
22:24

Speaker 2
(laughs) .
22:24

Speaker 1
And, you know, "Here's a brochure," and yeah, uh, uh, all the time. And normally, if I'm being brought into an organization, it's because someone within that leadership team recognizes that there's a problem and wants things to change, so that th- that person is normally kind of joining, just taking over the team and looks at what's going on and goes, "Th- this isn't working." But like an actor in the rehearsal room, the day that the director says, "You're not allowed your script anymore," is actually a really scary day, because it's much easier to hang onto the piece of paper and read the lines than to put the piece of paper down. So, so many people, especially in a sales context, get very attached, as you say, to the script, or to, you know, that terrible thing of reading off the slides, where the slides have 400 bullet points on it, and, and it's just a, essentially a script document for them.
23:20

Speaker 1
Sometimes, you know, for the, for the first sort of half a day, I'm not the most popular person in the room when I walk in and say, "Right, we're not doing this anymore. We- we're gonna go back to basics. Who are your audience? What do they want? What do you need them to know? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do?" And we start asking all of these questions, and slowly, people start going, "Ah, yeah." And then I say, "If you were being sold to in the way that you were trying to sell, would you be ready to buy?" "Oh, gosh, no, I hate it when people sell to me like that."
23:55

Speaker 2
(laughs) So, why are you doing it? (laughs)
23:57

Speaker 1
So, okay, well, that's a, that's a good clue then. So, maybe we should change. Yeah, maybe we should, yeah. (laughs)
24:02

Speaker 2
Hmm. And here's the other thing with sales teams as well. Okay, let's say that the potential customer's listening and is interacting with them. How do you get them to actually listen more and speak less and find out where the resistance is, where person sounds like they're not even really buying in?
24:22

Speaker 1
Right.
24:22

Speaker 2
So, what happens is, you know how... Okay, you can be not so fully in the script, but how do you coach them to actually listen, listen for resistance, listen for concerns, or even read the room and think, "Wait a minute, Dominic doesn't wanna buy. Is there a way for me to dig deeper, or do they just give up and think, 'Oh, he's not interested. Let me go to the next one'?"
24:49

Speaker 1
So, I think there, there are a few things there. O- one is deliberate practice. Again, if you look at what an actor does in the rehearsal room, they spend a lot of time going through the same scenarios, yeah? And it's the same, actually... You, you have actors who have a script, but you also have improvisational acting as well.... where there is a show, and the show has a structure, but the words are different every single night. And that's a useful, uh, jumping off point when you're thinking about rehearsal. So, what I will often do with, with a sales team is set up rehearsal scenarios, so we either bring in professional actors to work with them, or we can work with the teams themselves to have, to have these conversations. But we also work on that deep listening piece, which comes back to being comfortable with presence, being comfortable with silence, so just taking that pause, slowing things down, really listening, and listening to understand, not just to respond.
25:56

Speaker 1
Sometimes we get into that mode where we're like, I, I ask you a question, and then I know the answer that I'm gonna give to you, uh, after you've given that to me, so I'm, I'm straight in there with the next thing. But actually, we need to be better, whether we're salespeople, or whether we're leaders, or managers, or, to be honest, employees. We need to be much better at really listening and creating space for ourselves and for the other party to process. And if you do, then invariably, if you take a deep breath, you'll find the right thing to say next. And that's why knowing what you want is really important, because whether you're in a sales meeting or discussing a pay rise with your boss, what is the actual outcome that you want from this particular conversation? Not what's the overall outcome you want in the next week or month, but from this conversation, what is it that you're looking for?
26:56

Speaker 1
So, to use a, a, a metaphor, I think sometimes people are going on a first date, but they meet the person, and they say, "Hi. Will you marry me?"
27:07

Speaker 2
(laughs) .
27:07

Speaker 1
And it's like-
27:08

Speaker 2
On a first date? (laughs) .
27:08

Speaker 1
... "Whoa. Hang on. Like, I don't think we're quite-"
27:10

Speaker 2
Unless it's Married at First Sight, the TV show. (laughs) . <|agent|><|en|>
27:14

Speaker 1
(laughs) . I, I don't think we're quite yet, there yet, right? So, we need, we need to walk people gently-
27:20

Speaker 2
Hmm.
27:20

Speaker 1
... down the path with us, whether that is a conversation with our colleagues, or whether we're trying to, to sell a product or a service to someone.
27:27

Speaker 2
But isn't the tricky part though, Razul, the fact that we have different communication styles?
27:32

Speaker 1
Well, that, again, goes back to understanding your audience and listening. So, I, I actually think that there are, broadly speaking, four types of people. From a communication perspective, I think we have head people, who are very logical, one plus one equals two, I need to see the workings out. I would, I'd like time to reflect on that. Can you send me an email and a spreadsheet? I think we have heart people, which are all about connection and consensus and bringing people together and really interested in how you're feeling and what happened at the weekend and, and what this idea would mean to the rest of the organization and the team. Then you have your gut people. They're like, "Oh, that's interesting. New idea. Let's ... Oh, that's shiny. We'll have a piece of this, we'll have a piece of that." And they, they like ideas and like new energy, and they're great at starting things, and absolutely terrible at dotting all of the Is and crossing all of the Ts.
28:24

Speaker 1
And then you have your feet people, who are just on the march, walking to where they need to be, and they go, "That's the goal. That's where we're going," put their head down. Then they get there and they go, "Hang on. (clears throat) . Where is everyone else?"
28:37

Speaker 2
Hmm.
28:37

Speaker 1
Because they didn't stop to look up. But if you listen to the way that people talk, if you do a little bit of research and, and find out about what their LinkedIn profile says and, you know, how they write their emails and those sorts of things, then you can start to get a feel for what type of communication preference that other person has. And then you can start to play that back to them.
29:03

Speaker 2
Really get to know your audience. One last thing. Uh, your new book, Cut Through: The Pitch and Presentation Playbook. So, the pitch is the sale, and the presentation, you were talking about slides earlier-
29:19

Speaker 1
Yeah.
29:19

Speaker 2
... and again, there's been so many debates on what you're gonna ... Obviously, I think we all universally agree that it shouldn't be a novel, it shouldn't be 48 bullets (laughs) .
29:28

Speaker 1
No.
29:28

Speaker 2
The, the, the less, the better, with words. You can use pictures-
29:31

Speaker 1
Yeah.
29:31

Speaker 2
... and that sort of thing. But when it comes to the pitch, so what are some of the, say, two key highlights from your book that our listeners can look forward to if they buy the book?
29:44

Speaker 1
The book is split into six sections. The first section is discover, then distill, then design, then drill, then deliver, and then debrief. And I think the two sections that people miss out the most are, firstly, the discover phase. So, people jump straight into crafting the presentation. They go, "Okay, I, I've been asked by my boss to speak to them about finance," whatever it is, and they open up a PowerPoint deck, and they start dragging slides and numbers and writing a script. And actually, what we need to do is we need to take a step back.So, the first thing is to go to the big picture. Why am I being asked to do this? Am I the right person to do this? Who's gonna be in the audience? What are some of the things that I might be able to talk about? And we just start to gather all of that stuff together. We don't need to form it at this point. We're just starting to do that big-picture kind of brainstorm before we start. My desk is absolutely covered in sticky notes.
30:49

Speaker 2
Sticky notes, mm-hmm.
30:49

Speaker 1
Because when I have an idea, I write something down, and when I'm crafting a speech, I will take over a whole wall in my office and I will just put hundreds of sticky notes up and go, "Okay, what might fit together and where might this go?" And, "Oh, I don't like that anymore," and I kind of throw that away. So, that big discovery piece is, is really important. And then the final piece, which, uh, again, I think most people don't do, is the debrief. So, most people go, "Oh, I've just given a presentation.
31:19

Speaker 1
Oh, thank goodness that's over."
31:21

Speaker 2
(laughs)
31:21

Speaker 1
Right? And they, uh, and then they forget about it. They don't go, "Okay, I've just done that. What worked? What didn't work?" You know, if it was a sales pitch and I won, "What can I learn for the next time?" If it was a sales pitch and I lost, "What can I learn from the next time?" Um, if I'm presenting internally and some colleagues are gonna be in there, could I ask them and give them specific feedback roles so I can learn something from the process?
31:45

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
31:46

Speaker 1
N- normally, we just kind of get it over and done with. If we wanna grow, we have to do that post-mortem. Any, any sports team will sit down with their coach after the match, whether they won or lost, and watch the video analysis. As an actor in the theater, every single day before you started the warmup, the director or the assistant director would come in and do a note session, and they would tell you what w- needed to change from what you did the night before. That's just, you know, how you improve. But, for whatever reason, in a, in a business context, that's not something that people are doing consistently. So, I think those two things are, are, are real opportunities to help people be more effective.
32:29

Speaker 2
Discover and debrief from the book Cut Through: The Pitch and Presentation Playbook by Dominic Collenso. Dominic, this has been really insightful. You've taught us so much. Especially, we love learning from your acting career and how that translated to being a communication-
32:47

Speaker 1
(laughs)
32:47

Speaker 2
... skills expert, so thank you very much for sharing those stories that you did today.
32:52

Speaker 1
Uh, thank you so much for having me on this show.
32:54

Speaker 2
My absolute pleasure. Before you go, where can our audience find you online?
32:59

Speaker 1
Yeah. Come and find me online. Uh, I have a YouTube channel which has loads of really easy, bite-sized video tips and tricks. Um, my website is dominiccollenso.com, and you will find my books in all good bookstores.
33:15

Speaker 2
Dominiccollenso.com. By the way, his, his YouTube channel has over two million views?
33:21

Speaker 1
Two and a half million views.
33:22

Speaker 2
Wow.
33:23

Speaker 1

27,000 subscribers, so there's, uh, there's lots going on. Come and check it out.
33:27

Speaker 2
Absolutely. We'll put all that information on the show notes. Thank you so much, Dominic. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come. (gentle piano music)