123: David C. Mann - On Bringing the Wisdom of Theater to Our Talks

Hey everybody, and welcome to This Moved Me, a podcast about creating talks that move the world. With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking, because a good talk can move the world and it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful. That's not a small task. I love your giggle.

Wow.

Oh my gosh, so waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Hey Movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney. Thanks for joining me for another This Moved Me episode. Welcome to another episode. I've got an interview for you today. Here with me is David Mann. David Mann, a theater artist, a director. He runs a consulting group called High Stakes Presenting where he works with trial lawyers and other speakers to try and bring more clarity and confidence to their work. He's a director of the Schools on Stage program at the Guthrie. He's just done some really incredible things, and I got to see him speak live and was like, Dang, he's good. I want to have him on the show. So luckily he agreed, and we got to have a great conversation today about how we bring some of our— the insight and the craft that we learn as artists in the theater to the world of speaking. And he has done this for years and years and really helping people do some very small things that make a huge difference. And so I'm really excited to bring more of his insight to all of us here. Here he is, David Mann. My husband has gone to those many times, and he forwarded me this one and said, you should, you should come to this one considering what I do. And I was really excited to see it. And you were wonderful. I loved how you took these simple things that those of us who do this are like, kind of, you know, yes, of course you do that. And just made it really easy and crystal clear for people who just have never had any mirror, no coaching, no outside influence, because it's just something that they kind of have to do. You know, right?

Yeah, that's really what it's about, is that, I mean, coming from a background in theater as a, as an actor and as a director, I'm really, really aware and, and live with all the time the idea that you have to rehearse and get better at this kind of thing that ultimately will just look natural. And I think that's the, the mistake people make is they think, well, It's just standing up there talking. So I'll just stand up there and talk and it'll just be fine. And the truth is that you really have to work on it like any other skill. And the, you know, the weirdness is that you're working on a skill that you're trying to make look like you're not doing anything, you know?

Right. Yeah. It's one of those funny things where you want people to be authentic. You want them to be themselves, but In order to do that well, you have to practice. You have to practice being more yourself.

Yeah, it's— that's the— I get into that a little bit in this, you know, work, this idea of, quote, being yourself. And it's not— I mean, you are yourself in so many different environments. And what's appropriate for those environments changes. And so yourself changes a little bit. The way you behave changes a little bit. And when you go up in front of an audience, I mean, there's a— there's depending on the stakes of the situation, there's an increasingly rigid amount of rules about what is sort of— I mean, unspoken rules about what's sort of like accepted and not accepted or what is what people like or don't like to see in a presenter. But yet we try to just— a lot of people just try to stand up there and quote, be themselves. And it doesn't really work. A lot of times it's too random. It's all over the place, or most often it's too technical and too kind of serious and things, and we end up with dull presentations a lot because of it.

Yeah, we do. So yeah, that's— it's, it's, it, it's amazing to me because I, I feel like the, the more I've been doing this work, of course, the more I'm aware how much people— like, there are lots of people out there who invest time and energy into making their presentations better, and yet there's a whole slew of people who this is a part of their job, a part that they don't love, but that they know they have to do and they have to be better at it. But they just— it's torture for them. And that there are, there are things that they can do to make this feel more comfortable and be way more successful. Really to the point, you know?

Yeah, there's, there's easy things that people could do. And I think people, like you say, they hate doing— a lot of people hate doing it, but they only hate doing it because they're, they're not comfortable with it, right? You know, we're going to hate doing things that we feel we're going to be bad at. And, you know, it's— there's simple, simple steps people can take to just be a little more comfortable. And then I can usually bring people all the way up to, if they're really willing to work at it, to being really excellent at it if they want to.

Right.

It's really a matter of the same thing people do in performance, which is, I mean, actors really don't have to create the material, they just have to perform the material. But, but other kinds of performers have to create, like a comedian or something has to create the material and to perform the material. So it's both sides of it. And I get into that with a lot of people. A lot of times they don't feel comfortable with their quote-unquote performance because it's not really put together very well. So we get into both ends of it. Mm-hmm.

So before we dive in any deeper, David, I think it'd be nice to just set the foundation a little bit.

Yeah.

And tell us how you got into this work. You've mentioned that you are a theater person and you've been in that world for a long time and done some really incredible work there. But how did you shift into this world as a presentation coach and expert?

Well, it started because I was doing, like any actor, you do videos, instructional video, you have an agent that calls you for commercial work and instructional videos and stuff. So companies are always doing these and they hire actors to be in them. And so I've been in a million of those things. And I was doing one for Hartford Life Insurance. And I did 3 of them for Hartford Life Insurance, and I didn't know what I was talking about at all as the life insurance agent. It was just lines, and I was doing an ear prompt thing, and it was just, you know, you just act it. And, um, but they really liked that I was convincing in these videos, and they were sending them around the country to their guys to train them on what's in the presentation. But the managers would also say, you know, when you do the presentation, can you be like that guy in the video? Because he's really convincing.

So, uh, you know, you're a good actor when you're better than the people who actually do it.

Well, yeah, it's, it's in a way it's easier when you don't have to— it's not really clients and you're not really pressured. And you know that the actor doing it doesn't have any of those pressures. So you can be better.

Right.

And, um, so he got his— this VP of marketing got it in his mind that he wanted me to come to their convention in London that year. To train the life insurance sales agents on being convincing. And that was the beginning of the whole thing. I just went, well, geez, I don't know how to do that, but I'll try. And I've taught acting quite a bit, so I— and I've directed quite a bit. And so I thought, well, if I just take out the stuff that you don't need for what I perceive life insurance agents need, you know, they don't need to craft perfect comic moments or act, you know, like tragic death scenes. So, um, they, they just need to— I watched myself in the videos actually, and I said, well, what am I doing that they're liking? And I just created a curriculum, uh, really sort of at the time just a basic, you know, seminar on how to act when you're in a life insurance presentation. So they like that, and they brought me all around the country for 4 years to go to all these these individual shops around the country to work on that with them. And that was the beginning of it, of just watching people do sales presentations in a role-play mode in these workshops, and then just coaching them on making them more, you know, relaxed, more on point, just getting what they need to say across without messing around too much. And from there, I started to— after that, I started to present myself because I needed to kind of forward this part of my business, and which I didn't know I had a business yet, but I was forming one at the time. And, um, and in doing all the presentations to get, to get the word out that I could do this for your sales team or whatever, I started to learn about presenting myself, you know, on a stage with a PowerPoint, which I didn't, even though I'd been an actor for years, I had never done really done that. And it's different than— it's not acting. And it is— it certainly isn't just standing up there and talking. It's, it's this in-between thing between standing there and talking and acting. And I figured it out and then was able to teach people how to do that. And now I work with people of all kinds of different capacities. And quite a bit of what I do is with trial attorneys, because they have that kind of high-stakes situation. So that's more or less the sketch of it. That's like 12 12 years or so I've been doing this now. From that, from that very first fateful day on the Hartford shoot, video shoot, to today, it's been about 12 years.

So, trial attorneys.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh. I, and my brother is a trial attorney and we've had this conversation and he's like, oh, there's such a huge need to help.

Yes, there is.

So tell me about the kind of need that you see in that realm and how, what you're doing for them.

I do like trial advocacy seminars, and I teach a class at Loyola School of Law in Chicago, which is third-year law students, second and third-year law students. And then I also work with lawyers on cases. And usually, all of this focuses around the opening statement. It's the opening statement and to some degree, witness examination, direct and cross-examination. Things that, but I work on the opening statement quite a bit because that is something that is prepared in advance and really has to tell the story. So it's very much like a performance. But you know, there's rules to how to do an opening statement. You can't just sort of say, you can't just tell the story however you want and make stuff up. You know, it's not for entertainment. And I, so I work with them on a lot of that work is on creating the opening. Like what story are we trying to tell? Who is the, who is our client? How were they wronged? How do we arrange the facts that we know? You know, certain facts are indisputable, but how do we arrange them so that they tell a story that's going to be advantageous to our side? The opposition is going to use the same facts and they're going to tell a different story with it. So how do we do that so it's to our advantage, which is really a craft of using language a certain way, you know, and just building your protagonist against your antagonist the way you would in any kind of storytelling and doing it in simple words, simple wording, so that a jury of varying degrees of education and all that, will actually not only understand you, but really engage with you. So that's the way that I work with lawyers. And then once we've done that, we start working on standing there and walking around and using your hands and pacing and, you know, using your voice and all that so that it comes across as a polished thing. But you can't really do that part till you get the construction right. Right. So that's what I do with lawyers.

Do you enjoy that work?

Yeah, I really like that a lot. Yeah. Because it's very creative and it's very high stakes.

Right.

I'm working on two cases right now currently that are both out east that are extremely high stakes cases where, you know, I mean, so much money is on the line you can't even imagine. And, you know, I'm not involved in every single part of those trials, obviously, because I'm not a lawyer., but I'm involved in the part of it where, in a way, the rubber hits the road. I mean, if they have a great argument and a great case, but they can't really say it, especially the first time the jury hears it, if they can't say it in a way that engages them and makes them say, "Yeah, I agree with you," then it's an uphill battle the rest of the trial, and you might actually lose even though you have a good case. So, it comes down to this storytelling and presenting can make or break You can win or lose a case on this stuff. So it's great. I mean, I love it.

Did you watch, I'm sure you did, but Making a Murderer?

No, I didn't watch that. I had to watch that.

Oh my gosh. Have you heard of it? Do you know anything about it?

Yeah, I know a little bit about it. Yeah.

Yeah. I just think your take on that would be really interesting because the— there was so much, uh, a story to what they were trying to bring to these trials. And I, I think the, um, defendant's lawyers did a really nice job of trying to bring the narrative in. Um, they were not successful, but it was really fascinating from a presenter point of view of how to humanize how you humanize this person who, for most people's perception in the room, was that he's just a monster. Um, and how to change that narrative, that was their, their giant, giant challenge.

It was really fascinating.

Yeah, cool.

I will have to watch that. I gotta watch it.

Yeah, you gotta watch it. It's, I mean, it's long and it's super depressing and, uh, especially makes you question the justice system completely. Um, so yeah, yeah, it's, it's really interesting. Well, you know, you're involved in, in that world, so I think you might see stuff in there that I'm, I'm missing.

Even one thing I've really noticed in doing this work is how this— you're talking about something that's, um, documentary, so it's real people, right? I mean, it's not But still, it's on television, and what we tend to gravitate to, or what TV and movies present us with, is criminal cases all the time. They're always like somebody killed somebody, or somebody, you know, it's like a defendant that has done a crime. And what I've found in the world of the real lawyers is how seldom you ever encounter— I never— I've yet to work on a criminal case. So they're always these things where you've got a contract in dispute or something that's really not very interesting, you know? Right. And it doesn't have the blood and gore and all of that stuff that kind of makes something on TV exciting. And somehow you have to engage a jury who last night might have watched that show on TV and expect it to be like that. Right. So the challenge sometimes becomes, how do you get that to be human? Or sometimes you have two monolithic corporations against each other and nobody cares about either one of them. They don't, they seem like, well, that's just a bunch of people that have nothing in common with me. So how do I care about Major Corporation A against Major Corporation B? How do you do that? You know, and that's, that humanization is, is really a trick, but if you can get it right, you can win.

So, well, and that what you're talking about, I think, is one of those pieces that It's so important for us as speakers to remember because how many of us are talking about something that has a technical aspect to it or that is, especially in the work world, that nobody outside of your little group is necessarily going to care about it and your job is to make, to find the thing that people will care about and make that compelling and interesting and clear to peel back all the layers that we put on top of it to make us sound smart and authoritative. And really, we have to peel all that away and get to the heart of it, like what people care about.

Yeah, it's really that— that what you're saying there is, is, is a central thing that I work on with everybody, whether they're lawyers or not, you know. And it's— I can say till the cows come home things like, you know, make sure it's all about the audience and make sure they are going to care and you need to engage them. And people go right up there and talk in their technical jargon with their acronyms and big long words that people don't understand. And it's made me think about why do people do that? And I think it is because we, when we present, we tend to think— first of all, we tend to go into it going, or a lot of people go into it going, I want everybody to like me, or I want everybody to say good things about how I presented, or say good things about my material. You know, we go into it with these intentions to get something back from it all. And you can't— it has to be all about like sort of driving your message forward and just saying, I came to say this, and I'm going to say this, you know. And when you work it out, if you work it out intelligently in advance, what you came to say will have to do with your audience. It will be appealing to your audience. But a lot of presenters, I think, spend a huge amount of time worrying about what the audience thinks of them. And a lot of actors do that same thing. And it gets really, can really get in the way. And I think it's why people decide that they need to use big long words and fancy concepts and jargon, because it'll make the audience think better things about them, they think. And the opposite ends up happening. People go, I don't know what you're talking about.

You know, well, they can't. And when, when you're in that mindset of just like, what are they thinking of me? Or how am I doing? Or that, that sort of loop that can just bounce around in your head, you are not focused on the right thing and nobody else is thinking about you as much as you are. So you—

right, right. I coach people through this all the time. I just, just before we talked, I was on the phone with someone on this very topic. And I answer this question quite a bit. People are like, well, you know, what do I do when they're not reacting and they're just sitting there judging me? And what I usually say is, you don't know that they're judging you. So you don't— when an audience is looking at you with nothing on their face, it's disconcerting.

Right.

It looks— it makes you feel uncomfortable. They're not laughing. They're not doing anything. They're just looking at you. And so what we tend to do as people, I think, is we tend to project into that face negative stuff. We'll project into that blank face judgment, dislike, you know, we do that because we can operate out of fear quite a bit. But the truth is you don't actually know what anyone is thinking. You don't know it. So you are, you're doing all that projecting. You might as well, I say, you might as well just project project something nice. So since you don't know, just imagine that they're curious or that they don't— you know, they're just so wrapped up in what you're saying that they can't even make an expression on their face. They're so interested. And if you keep telling yourself that, it can help you get over that fear. But I think it can be a real downward spiral looking at an audience, and then you go, they're judging me, and then you start to try to accommodate their judgment and go like, well, I'll just say more things, then maybe they won't judge me so much, and I'll say more obscure references to, you know, information.

And pretty soon you're just, right, you're like just freaking out up there.

Yeah.

And they are going to notice.

I mean, I've been at this for years as a presenter, and that's not even counting the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of audiences I've played as an actor. And you still, it takes a long time to really get used to being looked at, but not projecting judgment onto those people, you know?

So yeah, that's true.

That's, there's some, there's some psychology this morning for you real quick.

I am, oh, I am amazed at how much psychology I end up talking about and thinking about and working through with people as a presentation coach. I mean, way more than I ever thought when I got into it. And I was like, wow, it is the biggest thing that can get in the way. You might have all these wonderful skills that you're working on, but if you cannot get in the right mindset, you're screwed. Like, it doesn't really matter of all the other work that you're doing.

And it takes, it takes a while. I mean, that I always always, you know, stress with people that, that there are skills in life that you can learn by taking a class once or twice. There are skills. You can learn how to operate Excel spreadsheets by taking a class, you know. You can learn how to— you can probably take a few downhill skiing lessons and learn enough to be able to go around, you know. But with presenting, you can't do it that way. You can't just take a class once especially if you're only going to listen to someone talk about it, right, and really take away what you need. It's, it's a performance skill that needs to be practiced over and over and over and over again, and as much as often with a coach or with somebody watching, so that you can actually move the needle forward. Otherwise, you end up kind of spinning your wheels and just resorting to bad habits. But, you know, I've definitely had people, I think, expect me to be able to sort of fix everything in an hour and make them super comfortable in a really dynamic presence in front of an audience. You know, it's like, no. And that's the other thing is I don't really go into it with— I don't know what other presentation coaches do, but I think that there can be a tendency to say, here's the right way to present, or here's the, you know, or do it like I do it, you know, or something like that. And I never, as a director of actors, I would never say, "Do it like I do it," or, "Here's the correct way to play the role of Juliet," you know. There isn't a correct way. The coach has to look at that particular presenter and go, "What are the qualities that are rising to the surface that are advantageous in this human, and where are opportunities to expand some of that or make it work a little better in a room, but that's going to be unique to every single person. It's not one size fits all for presenting. And I think some books on it and some seminars kind of treat it that way, and I think that's not right.

Right. I'm totally with you. And I think it's— I have a theater background as well, although not nearly as much experience as you, and I think that's one of the things that I've cherished the most about my work as a coach is that background, to be able to look at it as almost as if I'm directing this person and really finding the quote-unquote character in them, right? And how just to, how to bring themselves out in a way that, um, is most effective but that is true to that person. You know, and I think that's so important.

One of the biggest questions I always get is, well, can you video me? Can you video— can we put it on video so we can watch it and all that? And I've kind of in a way relaxed, and now I will occasionally video people, but I use it very sparingly because no director of an actor— I mean, it would seem to make logical sense if you're rehearsing a play to make a video of the rehearsal and then have everybody gather around and watch that video and say, well, fix this and change this. And, but I mean, no one would ever do it that way. Yeah, you would never do it that way. And there's reasons why. It's because if you did, first of all, a video and a live presentation are not the same. Even though that video was of the live presentation, watching the video is different from seeing it live. It sounds different. It's got a different sensibility to it. There's not a vibe in the air, which there is when you're in a room with someone.

Yeah.

And it is not— it is a very deceptive tool to use. It's not as accurate as it seems like it is. So I say, okay, go ahead and watch yourself and get used to, you know, see the little nervous habits that you have and see the, you know, I let people do that, but then I take the video away and say, now listen to me. Because let me be the mirror. Don't watch that video because you're going to get neurotic watching the video of yourself. And you're going to hate— you're going to be your own worst critic. So that's my thinking on that. It's really about that whole theater approach really does work best, I think.

I love it. So David, we are at the time in the show where we do a "this moved me" moment. Really quickly, something that has moved you recently, because I think as speakers and communicators and presenters, that it's so important for us to stay connected to what is moving us so we can use that in our work. So I'm curious, I can start, this moved me moment. Okay. And it can be anything, a conversation, a show you watched, a talk you saw, a song you heard, whatever it might be. So for me, my "this moved me" moment, as I was thinking about this, I'm like, what has moved me most recently? And it was last night, I was watching Game of Thrones.

Huh.

Are you a Game of Thrones watcher?

Yeah, I saw it last night too, yeah.

Okay. So this show, I have such a love-hate relationship with the show. I can't stop watching it, and yet I spend most of the show watching it like through my fingers, you know, like over my eyes. I was like, "Ah!" But I have loved watching these female characters come out of the woodwork and sort of take ownership of themselves and the stage a little bit more. I mean, oh my God, Sansa Stark. I just— that woman has been through so much. But The little girl, oh shoot, I can't remember her name right now.

Arya Stark?

Not Arya, the one, if you watched it last night, so she is the lady of the castle and she's like maybe 10.

Oh, right.

Right?

Yeah.

She had this moment in the show last night that I was like, "Whoo, she's amazing." So the Starks are there to ask her for help, and she's just coming down on them really hard. And she has this moment where the Maester leans over to give her some advice, and she just holds up her hand like, "Enough." Right.

Yeah.

"I don't need your thoughts right now." And it was so well done. And I was looking at it sort of as from an acting perspective a little bit, but also just this, the power of that 10-year-old kid and her just one gesture shut this maester down, and she just was like owning that space and owning that room in such a cool way. I was like, "Woo!" It was one of the moments I did not have to look through my fingers.

That was a good moment. I remember it too.

Yeah.

I don't know. It's a very subtle little thing, but I thought, All right. This girl's got it going.

Yeah. Power. Power.

Power. Yes. Yeah, it was a power moment for sure. Okay, David, how about you?

So you got me thinking about shows and the— definitely a moment that moved me a lot. And this was a little while ago now. It's a month or two ago, but it was— and there's been one since then, but this came to mind. The Guthrie did the production of Shakespeare's Pericles. And I, 12 or so years ago, played the role of Pericles. Actually, it was more like about 15 years ago. I played Pericles in another production. So I knew the play very well. But there's a moment at the end of the— Pericles is dispossessed of his family. He thinks his wife died. He thinks his child died. In a shipwreck, and he's all over all these different lands that he gets sort of washed ashore at, and he is a king himself, but he's just dispossessed of everything by no fault of his own. And at the end of the play, he is sitting there, and the Guthrie stage, him kind of hanging in a box, like mid-stage, with all this hair, just a huge beard and this huge long amount of hair, this man who's just feels that his life is gone. And the audience has seen that his daughter lived and his wife lived, and he didn't know that. And now his daughter is this— is like, she's like 18. And she comes— he encounters her and neither one of them knows who the other one is. And they have this conversation in which it dawns on both of them that— that who they are. She feels that she thought her father was lost and he thought his daughter was lost. And they're sitting there talking to each other and there's this incredible reckoning of recognizing of what is happening between the two of them that just, it's really, really moving. And the way that Guthrie did it was really moving. And it makes you just believe that there's lots of things in your life, whether it's people or skills or aptitudes or beliefs or anything that you believe may be gone that aren't gone. And it's just a matter of coming back around and enough time passes and then you are face to face with that thing again and it actually never died at all. And I thought that was just unbelievably moving. And the weird thing was, is I was so moved by it even though I'd played the role. So I knew the lines, I knew the scene, I knew what was going to happen. None of this was a surprise, but it goes to show you the power of art sometimes to just— it hits you at the right moment in your life. You know? So that was mine, I guess.

I love it. I wish that was on video somewhere or something that I could—

Well, being a live performance, no, it's not.

Nope.

It's here, it's gone. Yep.

You gotta either see it or you miss it.

Yep. They tear them down and they throw them in the garbage and they're all done.

Yeah, but that's part of the beauty of it, right?

Yes. I mean, it is part of the beauty. It's also part of the frustration as a theater artist. You work so hard and you're like, Oh my God, all that work and it was 2 months and now we just start another one from scratch again.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, David, this has been really, um, so great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for taking the time to do it. Delightful conversation. Listen to— I, I wrote down a bajillion things here that I can't wait to share with people, so thank you.

Well, great. And, you know, point people to my website, I guess, if they are interested in finding out more about what I do.

Yeah, tell me where they can find you.

Davidmannlive.com.

All right.

And you offer coaching? Yeah. And it's David Mann with two N's. Davidmann, M-A-N-N, live.com. And I offer— I'm a speaker. So I do event speaking on subjects like my newest one that's still in development, but it's going to be great. I know it's going to be great. Releasing the Beast of Creativity. Ooh. So everyone is a creative soul and a creative person, but oftentimes don't use much of that. So that's what that's about. And then I do presentations about engaging audiences, using your words well, representing your organization to clients, boards of directors, and things like that with impact and power. And then of course, yes, I coach people too. So yes.

Fantastic, David. You are fantastic. I'm really thrilled to be connected with you. It was a delight to see you up and do your thing. You are so talented and also have really boiled down the insights to such a really important, powerful place and edible for people. So, which I think is awesome. Well, thank you.

Thank you very much. Good job.

You're doing what you say. Alright, movers, thanks for joining me for another episode here on This Moved Me.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Mr. David Mann, and I'm here right now to ask you a question about where your talks are at right now. And if you, like most speakers, you might have a handful of talks and there's always one that's like, mm, this isn't quite where I want it to be, and you're mussing with it, or you've given up mussing and you just sort of say, it's my— not my best one, not my favorite one, um, and you want it to be better.

Or maybe this is—

there's a new talk that you want to launch out into the world, but you're holding back because you could really use some guidance or some coaching, perhaps. Uh, and maybe there's a talk where you have just not found your groove with it. We all, we all have one of those. I have one of those myself. And what I want to talk about right now is a chance for you to up this talk, to move it from one place to a better place. And I am launching a new experience called the Movers Lab Retreat. And oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this. And I would love more than anything for you to come join me there so that we can work on your talk. So the idea here is it's going to be a small intimate experience for around 5 speakers and what I want to do is build a cohort of people who are about at the same level. So it may take a while to kind of find the exact right cohort, but right now I have one scheduled for the end of November, November 30th to December 2nd, and I am looking to fill this cohort. So if you are working on a talk and wanna make it better, I want you to join me. I would love to have you there. I can't wait to share this experience with some of you. So if you're interested or thinking about it or thinking, I can't do it in November, but I would totally be into this. I wanna give it a go. Send me an email, sally@thismovedme.com. I'd love to hear from you. Let me know.

Check you out.

This moved me.

What's moving you?

Does it look like a cold? Stuffy nose weirdness?

Mwah!