Engaging Audiences: The Power of Preparation and Tailoring Presentations with Marianna Swallow

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted special specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide, and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Mariana, good to see you again, my friend.

Likewise. Thanks for having me back, Kwame.

Yeah, it is my pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure, absolutely. So my name is Mariana Swallow, and I am the speakeasy coach. My specialty is helping people get really comfortable and really calm with public speaking. Everything I do is customized and it is proven. And I love helping people get comfortable with public speaking, make more confident presentations. And I support leaders who want to get better at this skill as well as their teams. So I offer workshops for groups as well, as well as hybrid workshops followed by coaching.

This is great. And I think I'm glad that you painted a picture of the type of work that you do, because I think when people hear a speaking coach, okay, cool, I'm on stage, but I guess I'm not on stage, so. Not for me. But now people can recognize. Oh, no, this is not just for public speakers, keynote speakers who are on stage all the time. We're all in these situations from time to time where we have to speak in front of people. So this is just a ubiquitous leadership Skill.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So this is great. I really want to hammer this. This home. Because I think some listeners might question the nexus between public speaking and negotiation. And if that's only for new listeners, because everybody knows now that I can connect anything to negotiation.

Yes, absolutely.

So I want you to paint this picture for people who are out there listening to get better at negotiation, and they think about negotiation through that narrow, limited perspective. What is the value of public speaking as it relates to negotiation, sales, and persuasion in general?

Absolutely. Well, it ties to all of those things. Right. Because if someone is selling you something, you want to speak to someone who's confident, who's a good listener, who is maybe relating the case or making the case for you. Because, Kwame, what you need might be different. What someone like me needs versus someone like my husband. So it's really meeting the audience where they're at. Because whether someone's trying to sell to me or negotiate with me, if I don't feel connected, if I don't feel like they're hearing me, I'm not going to listen. And not only will I not listen, I will probably be defensive. Speaking from experience, listen, you're so right.

And I think we all have several years of being humans, and we can all relate to that situation where somebody goes on a monologue and we're like, I don't know what you're talking about, but I know I don't want it. And it is antithetical to our persuasive endeavors. And one of the things that you do that you've mentioned a lot. And I don't want to just assume that everybody's on the same page. You've talked about the audience. And so when you are talking about the audience, who does that actually entail?

Anyone that you're speaking to, especially in the situation, whether you're trying to sell something or you're negotiating. When I think about negotiation, I'm laughing because where my mind automatically goes, Kwame, is not someone like you or me doing business. It goes to. I'm going to disclose here, arguments I've had with my various condominium boards. However, there's still the audience there. And just as you would prepare for a corporate presentation or for some fundraising you're doing for your not for profit. It's kind of the same thing. If you need to speak to a board to get funding, something a lot of my clients have to do, you still want to go in there. You want to prepare before you go in there, and not just go in there cold, like, here's what I want and you're going to give it to me. Sometimes we think that our reasons and our needs are enough to get us what we want. And that's not always the case, as I'm sure you well know, given your line of business. We really need to do the prep for the audience, regardless of the situation.

Yeah, spot on. And what we're recognizing here, and I'm hoping the listeners are picking up on this too, the audience. This can be anywhere from one to a million people or billions. I mean, it could be really big. Right. And so I think adopting this mentality of recognizing that anytime we are speaking or presenting an idea or a concept or those type of things, there has to be some element of presentation skills attributed to this behavior. So there is a really, really clear nexus between negotiation and public speaking and just learning how to present yourself at a high level. And if we don't master that skill, it could have a negative impact on our ability to negotiate and persuade.

Absolutely, absolutely. I call this doing the audience recon. And that's finding out as much as you can about the audience. And it's not just, well, there's 20 people there. They're recent college graduates. Anything more you can find out? What are their motivations? What do they care about? And sometimes it's as simple as just thinking about the audience in general. Let's say I do have a room full of 23 year olds who just got out of college. What do they care about? Well, and I actually am working with a group like this right now. It is, how do they get a job? What is important for them to connect with potential employers. I'm a coach for future founders, which helps underserved youth populations start businesses. So what do they, as a group of young people who maybe didn't have resources or maybe didn't get to go to college, what do they need to know about starting a business? I could show up there and spew everything I know about public speaking or spew everything I know about being an entrepreneur. But if I just do it like that, just kind of blanket it, that's not really going to land with them and that's not going to help them with their business. So before any engagement, I always ask as many questions about the audience as I can to find out who they are, where they're coming from, what's our goal today, but also what's important to them, what are their priorities?

Yes, let's go deeper on this, Mariana, because people might say, okay, got it. Know my audience, do recon. Great but the meeting I have on Thursday is with my team, so I already know them. I don't need to do recon, so I'll just throw that out there as an alley OOP for you, Mariana. And you could just slam the point home.

I will slam the point home. Yes, sure. And I love how you worded that, because I see this in so many of the corporate clients I work with when I talk about preparing for a meeting. Well, we're all on the same team. I don't need to prepare. Well, we do this every Monday. I don't need to prepare. Well, you might. And maybe it won't be preparing before the meeting because you might go, I've got, you know, Dave from sales and Dave's boss or whatever. But when the meeting starts, that is a great time to ask questions. Maybe iterate the purpose of the meeting and say, you know, we're here to accomplish X. What else is on your mind? Maybe there are other factors, something that gets overlooked a lot. For instance, when companies announce mergers or it's been announced that layoffs are coming, how's that affecting the people in the meeting? There's often outside factors, or it might even just be something as simple, Kwame, as someone has something personal going on that's maybe affecting them that day. I'm laughing because this is the example I give in some of my workshops where I'll say, the guy at the other end of the table, maybe he found out that morning his wife's leaving him. And it sounds like kind of a tongue in cheek, but, you know, these things happen where someone might have something going on that's distracting them. Or maybe even if it's not a personal thing, maybe someone on the team who's been part of this project from whatever the last six months. This next piece doesn't apply to them. And their time could be better spent doing something else. So that's why we need to have these conversations with what's on your mind? What's a priority for you today? What's important to you?

Yes, this is so important. And it reminds me of hypothesis that I've heard about when it comes to traffic safety. So the majority of car accidents happen when you're in close proximity to your home. Two main reasons. First of all, most likely you're going to be in close proximity of your home. So, yes, that's going to play a role into it. But also, oftentimes we let our guard down when we are close to home and we don't take it as seriously. And so with These everyday, frequent types of interactions, we might just say, oh, I know Mariana. We meet every Thursday, right? So no need to prep. I know my audience. But the reality is that as humans, we are living in a dynamic type of dimension here, because it's not just the same person over and over and over again. It's the same person with different issues, different concerns and things like that. So we have to treat them with the respect we would anybody else.

Yeah, and I love that, Kwame, and kind of building onto that, similar to your traffic safety analogy. And, boy, can I just tell you, when you said that, I remembered every accident I've been in, and sure enough, it was all, like, within a mile of my house, no matter where I was living. But something I read about Madonna very early in her career was that she took an agenda to every meeting and prepared for every meeting, even if it was wasn't her meeting. If the record executives wanted to talk to her, she'd write down what she wanted to talk about and that. And then also a business mentor of mine who I worked with years ago, even when it wasn't her meeting, she'd say, well, I have to hop off. I have this two o' clock coming on. I need five minutes to prepare. So that's what I do now, before every meeting, whether it's a rote, whether it's my check in with my video editor, or it's brand new and I already wrote up the agenda, I still go and prepare because by taking that time, we think about things we might not have thought of. But also, I'm better prepared to meet my audience where they're at, and I can flex in the moment when I already know what's on my agenda. So flexing your audience is useful, too.

So useful and so easy to overlook. I think that's what the big takeaway is. We have to prepare. And we will be tempted not to because we might feel as though we're prepared. But feeling prepared does not always mean that you're actually prepared. It might just mean that we are operating off of our assumptions and not recognizing our vulnerabilities.

That is the perfect way to put it. Acting off of our assumptions. And honestly, Kwame, I think that's why I have this really great job that I do. Because when people prepare presentations, what do they do? They think about the content. They type it up in PowerPoint. They don't rehearse it, they don't run through it, they don't think about the audience. And then they just get into that boardroom and Go blah blah, blah blah blah. Because preparing it and then thinking about the content are two different things.

Hello my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops to tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. I think this is a great opportunity for us to talk about the word engagement. And you earlier you were telling me about engaging people as the speaker, but also being mindful of engaging as a listener. So can you break down what you.

Mean by that by both parts? So let's start with the speaker. The speaker has to be engaging, meaning they are involving the audience. They are making this more of a conversation than a one way stream of talking. A question I get a lot is what's the difference between a presentation and facilitation? And even though I teach presentation skills or presentation workshops, what I really teach is facilitation. Presentation is one person speaking. Think about if you, Kwame or listeners had the unfortunate college experience like I did, where you go into class and I'm going to keep the nasty words out of my mouth, but the person at the front of the room would just stand there and lecture for an hour, blah blah blah blah blah. Not asking us what we thought, not asking to check for understanding, not asking if we even liked the text we were reading. That's a presentation, one person talking. It's one way communication. What I encourage my clients to do, and we'll tell everyone listening here to do, is you find a way to make this more of a conversation. For people who get really nervous presenting, that's a great way to relax yourself because you're having a back and forth. You're making eye contact which connects you to the listener and shows them that you're listening. That's another way to be an engaged listener. But anything you can do to engage them, whether it's questions up top, like I gave you the example of when you're in this regular Monday meeting. Hey, what's going on with you guys today? Where's everyone's project at? Is there anything going on outside the project I should know about with clients I have who are nervous once they get into a presentation situation, but they like connecting with people. I tell them, don't start your presentation right away, you know, with your big slide or whatever. Start with, hey, how is everyone doing today? How was the drive in? Or if you're on Zoom, how's everyone doing with Zoom? Anyone got any pets or kids or whatever is a way for you to get some of that chit chat going. And it can be small talk because sometimes that's enough to just relax people. So engaging, speaking to your audience, asking them questions. You can also open the door for them to ask questions. And then depending on your scenario, whether it's like an all day meeting or a training or a workshop, you can work in other things, such as Icebreakers, brainstorming, interactive activities. All depends on what you want to achieve and how much time you have. But all these little things that make you more engaging, they create connection. And your audience knows that you're paying attention to them, you're involving them. They're more likely to buy in and listen to you.

This is so good. And I think a lot of listeners are saying to themselves, this is so scary because when I think about those times where we might present just reading off of a PowerPoint slide, it's not just about the skills. A lot of times it's about fear. People are afraid of letting go of control because they say, what if somebody says something I don't, I wasn't expecting, what if I freeze in the moment? And so for the full who might be afraid of engaging other people, what advice do we have for them?

Oh, I love this question, Kwame. Thank you. So what's the football cliche? You're talking to a non football person. The best defense is a good offense. The best offense is a good defense. Whichever one you're supposed to do in sports, it's the same thing. And here's how you do that. Plan for things to go wrong, plan for question. Even if it never happens, then you're at least prepared. And I actually, it's interesting, Kwame. I've had this rash of like sales leads and managers lately. And that's one of the things we do is we brainstorm. What are some of the most difficult questions you can get? What is a question that will throw you and what I find. And this isn't, I'm not trying to paint it with a broad brush across all industries, but I think this happens to a lot of people where, let's say you sell Widgets. And you're an expert in widgets, but you go to present to a client and they ask you about the manufacturing. Well, you're not on the manufacturing side. You're the sales guy, right? So what if someone asks you about the manufacturing? Do you just freeze? Do you stammer? Do you go, I don't know? No, you prepare for that question. And let's say, I am that salesperson who sells widgets. I might write out an answer ahead of time, such as, you know what? That's a great question. That is on the manufacturing side. And I know everything about the tool, but not how it's manufactured. Dave is on the manufacturing. Can I get your number? And I'll ask Dave to give you a call after today so you prepare for the stuff that might happen, even if it's just having some of those. I'm not the person to answer that. Let me get back to you. It's always okay to say, let me get back to you, or I don't know. And Kwame, you're an expert. Something I've never understood about American corporate society is why do we expect everyone to know everything about whatever it is in their business and expect them to have an answer at the ready? Now, like, what is that? I love how you're laughing.

It is a really weird thing, isn't it? Because first of all, it's unrealistic. Second of all, it creates a lot of pressure and tension. And now, third of all, this is an interesting one. It creates some ethical conundrums, because a lot of times people don't plan on lying. Sometimes because of their lack of preparation, they have a fear response that results in a lie. And now they're embarrassed because they don't know how to back off. So in that example that you gave, so somebody asks a question, I don't know the answer, but I'm insecure of the. About the fact that I don't have the answer. And so what am I going to do? My amygdala is going to make something up. And now I'm saying, oh, my gosh, I just said that. But I can't just say, hey, by the way, the thing I just said was a lie because now I look stupid. And so what we can do is we can essentially enhance ethical behavior and performance by taking the time to prepare and recognizing that sometimes we might not have the specific answer. And that is completely okay. But you can be that person who knows where to find the right answer. You can put them in touch. And I think the Thing that is really so important for us to remember is that preparation will solve the majority of these problems.

Yeah, absolutely. And if I can share one thing, this is kind of my mantra. Never confuse knowledge with preparation.

Oh, that's good. Okay. Go deeper. I like this.

Yeah, it's. Again, it's back to what I said earlier, that most people, when they are asked to give a presentation, will just kind of Type up their PowerPoint slides or worse yet, be given a deck and go. Okay, I know this. The other thing I see a lot, Kwame, is people who've been at the same company a long time or in the same industry, those are the ones who don't prepare because they think, well, I know all this stuff, but you know it, but you haven't prepared it. That's why it's important to have things that I teach, like a structure, like some organization, like knowing what to do if you get. Get a question out of left field. And I'm sure all of us can think of times we went somewhere unprepared, whether it was a date. Have you ever done that, Kwame? I feel like I'm self disclosing so much here today, but, you know. Oh, how old's your sister? I don't have a sister. Oh, geez. Must be that other guy I went out with last week. Kwame, I'm embarrassed, but I know I've done that on dates. I've confused clients, driving directions, things like that. So it really is just a matter of taking, even if it's only five minutes to go. Okay, here are the three things I want to talk about. Or, okay, my boss gave me this deck. Let me review it, and let me say my three main points out loud. Just even five minutes of preparation. I think what happens is when someone is told, okay, you're speaking at next month's meeting, or you're going to this conference and speaking for us, and you have a half hour slot, or you have a 60 minute slot. Take 10 minutes for questions. I think people hear that and they think, oh, well, if I want to practice this or prepare it, it's an hour slot. I have to practice for an hour. I have to prepare for an hour. No, you don't. It's just a little bit of time. Athletes, actors, singers, we expect them to spend hours rehearsing and then come do their thing. But we don't give business people that same amount of space. So I invite business people. Not for profit people, education people. Whoever take that time, block off an hour for yourself in a conference room. Or 30 minutes, look at your presentation, say your points out loud, because saying it out loud is different than thinking it in your brain. And then maybe make some notes. You know, what do I need to change here? Or go back to your audience Recon. Okay, who's in my audience? Maybe I should emphasize this point more than this point.

Absolutely. It's so important. It's so important. And I mean, I can even think about for me and my keynotes too, because sometimes the person that I'm talking to is a different audience. Want different tweaks. We make those minor adjustments as necessary. And when I look at the slide, I clearly know what I want to say, but it's slightly different from what I usually say. And just taking the time to just talk through it just once or twice really makes a massive difference.

Yeah. And if I can build on that, you just reminded me of something when you said, you know, you look at a slide, you might do this for audience A or this for audience B. This is something I learned from stand up comedy, that it's important to have different paths for your. In comedy, you do it for your jokes, but when it comes to presenting, you switch paths for your audience. Like, I know, and I know you know because you spoke to my class. I teach at Loyola as well as run my coaching business. But the way I share presentation lessons with my college students is very different than what I share for my MBA folks versus my people who are already out and working in corporate America. Because something that resonates with my college students is not going to resonate with a 50 year old man who's been a lawyer for the last 25 years. So I think it's important too, like you said in the preparation, to look at your material and go, okay, what is going to land with this audience? And how can I tweak this piece?

Bingo. This is great. And now one of the things that I think is so interesting about your approach is that you also focus on engaging through listening. And so again, this might be a strange concept to people because we understand the value of listening in difficult conversations in general. But then as a speaker, it's similar but different. So can you break that down too?

Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of want to go backwards here on something that's really come out of a result of the pandemic. Everyone's on Zoom, Right? I am hearing more and more complaints from clients or boards that support not for profits, where they come to me and say, you know, we love supporting XYZ organization, but man, they look forward when we're on calls with them. And granted, some people, like, just have one of those faces that just is always kind of stony faced. But what I found is, and hopefully some of your listeners can see me on video. You know, the leaning forward, the making the eye contact through the camera, the nodding to show you're listening. This stuff is so important now, especially over Zoom, because what's happening is even when it's not your turn to talk, everyone else is picking up on that and going, wow, how come? Gee, why is Mariana sitting back like that? She looks like she doesn't want to be here. And back to what I said earlier, that might not be the case. It might be. I got some bad news that morning. But the thing we've really found with Zoom, or teams or Skype or Google, Meet meetings, any kind of virtual meeting, it's kind of like you got to be on even when you're not on, because it shows that you're listening. And this has really become valuable to supporters, to bosses, to colleagues. They want to see that you are there and you are listening. I think we all tell too, when someone's. They're staying on camera, but like they're answering an email. And people like me, I wear glasses. You can see the email screen come up in my glasses if I stop paying attention. You know, my friend and colleague, Randy Ford, he's also been caught in that trap too. We've talked about it. It's usually Randy who can see who went on their email, because Randy, he doesn't wear glasses, but something like that. So that's one way is if you're on a virtual meeting, and I'm not saying Kwame, I'm not saying over the top, like big eyes and leaning forward, but just show that you're listening. Just a gentle nod of the head, not looking at your email, not, you know, checking your phone over here. So that's, that's one thing that has really come about is people want to see your listening virtually. And it's very similar in person, too. Show people you're listening. Make the eye contact when you're listening, even if it's not your turn to speak. Leaning forward. Another way to show you're listening, ask questions. Because if that speaker or whoever's leading the meeting, if they didn't listen to this podcast and they don't do the time or take the time to ask you, you know, what's going on with you, how do you feel about this proposal? Whatever, feel free. And this is what I wish more meeting participants would do. Feel free to let your voice be heard and just little polite interjection, raise your hand. Kwame, excuse me. I know you're talking about XYZ for the summer meeting, but I think it's important that we put employee recognition in here. Can we talk about that? So letting your voice be heard and asking questions is another way to show that you're there, you're listening, you're participating, and you're with them.

I love this. It's so critical, Marianne. It's so critical. But again, people often overlook it because we might not have been aware of the value of this skill. But also it can be kind of scary because there might be times where somebody disengages and then you say, okay, maybe I should re engage them with a question. But what if they disengage because they hate this and they hate me. If I. I ask them, then they'll tell everybody and it can become really scary. So we have to blend that mindset and skillset too, because now we have an idea of how to reengage people. But then also we have to talk about being willing to reengage people too. And so for people who might be afraid, what advice do you have for them to kind of relinquish control and ask more questions? Oh, you're good. You're good.

Thanks. So two sides of that coin. I would say maybe re engage them with one more question, and it can just even be a simple acknowledgment, maybe not even a question, something like, kwame, I've noticed that you haven't shared any of your ideas during brainstorming. Is there something you'd like to share? The flip side of that coin is if they say no, or they clearly are really checked out, they don't want to participate. You don't know what's going on with them. Go ahead and drop it it. Because as I will again self disclose, when I was a novice trainer, many, many moons ago, and this is true for many novice teachers, novice trainers, we want people to like us and we want everyone to be on board. So we end up kind of catering to everyone in the room and the person who is ignoring us, who's shutting us down, who maybe doesn't like us or is maybe just having a crappy day, they'll tend to withdraw, and the novice trainer will constantly check in with them, constantly ask them to participate, constantly go over and at what they're doing on their desk. And the truth of the matter is, yes, maybe try and re engage people. But after maybe one attempt Maybe two. Maybe I wouldn't push it. Know when it's okay to drop the rope? Because any of this advice I'm sharing, this is how I feel about business advice. Do you have to do this 100% of the time? No. Take what works. Throw the rest of it out of the window.

Yeah, I think that's. That's brilliant advice because especially when you give the example of somebody going through something, maybe their kid is sick, like you said, maybe they're. They're going through a breakup. Unless you are a. A healer of some sort with your words, you can't solve my problem. Right. And it's not about you, too, because a lot of times as speakers, we can take everything personally. This person's disengaged. This person is sleeping. Am I that boring? Oh, my gosh. Right. But again, a lot of times it's not about us.

Yeah. And I want to hit on something you just said. You said, oh, am I that boring? Something I see. And it's not even just novices. I've seen novices and experienced, maybe not expert People do is. Is they'll see someone yawning and they'll. They'll make a comment like, am I that boring? Or like, oh, maybe you need a nap. When someone does have something going on, don't call attention to it. Don't make it about you. Like, you know, sorry, sorry, I'm boring, folks. I've seen so much of that. First of all, it's natural to yawn. Our brains need it. It gives us oxygen. But anything like that, you know, calling attention to the person, that's just. It's not professional. And, yeah, they might have something else going on. You've got other people in the room. Focus on what's giving you the good stuff and just do your best. That's all you can do as a speaker, you know.

Bingo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes you can make it very awkward for people because the person who's in front of the room, they have more authority than they might feel that they have. So, for example, you might be up in front of the room and we all. Everybody has their own insecurities. I'm afraid of being boring. I'm afraid of being whatever. Right. And so then when you try to. You call somebody out on it, it seems from your perspective, we're more on an even playing field. Or maybe I feel like I'm playing behind because I'm trying really hard and this is a scary situation. But for them looking at you, you have the bully pulpit. You're in front of everybody. You have some authority, and now you're picking on people. It could really, really go very sideways very quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.

Yeah. Oh, this is good. So much to explore. And I appreciate this because this is your second time on the podcast, and we are batting a thousand one hundred percent here. So I appreciate you coming on the show. And before you go, remind the listeners again about your program and how people can work with you.

Absolutely. So I am the speakeasy coach. I help you speak with confidence, and my keynote program. It's not keynote. I have a keynote speech. My signature speech is what happens when you don't get to snl. But my mastery program is the Speak with Confidence Mastery program. That's my most popular program. And if you want to find me, I am ariannaswallow.com I'm also on LinkedIn. Marianaswallow. Thanks, Kwame. It's been great to be here.

My pleasure. Great to have you back.

Thanks so much.

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