Tim Newman [00:00:10]:
Welcome back to Speaking with Confidence, the podcast that helps you build the soft skills that lead to real results. Communication, storytelling, public speaking, and showing up with confidence in every conversation that counts. I'm Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach and I'm thrilled to guide you on your journey to becoming a powerful communicator. Today's guest is Michael de Lisser. Michael is a leadership consultant with more than 25 years of experience designing and delivering customized executive and leadership development programs across multiple industries including healthcare, technology, manufacturing, energy, government, higher ed, logistics and hospitality. Here he has created over 100 custom leadership training programs and coached more than 500 senior leaders and executives on emotional intelligence, leadership communication and career acceleration. He also spent over a decade teaching leadership communication in the MBA and executive education programs at the University of Utah. Michael is the co founder and managing director of Delisler Leadership Consulting LLC and the author of Leadership Accelerators.

Tim Newman [00:01:17]:
High impact communication skills that strengthen relationships and drive results. Michael, welcome to the show. I'm really looking forward to talking talking with you today.

Michael de Lisser  [00:01:26]:
Thanks Tim. I'm excited to be here and I'm looking forward to it as well.

Tim Newman [00:01:30]:
You know, one of the things that is really intriguing about your story and you mentioned this when we had our pre interview talk that your father was also an executive coach and you started watching him coach leaders when you were 15. That really puts you in a really good spot to. For you to do this as an adult.

Michael de Lisser  [00:01:50]:
Yeah, it was a pretty incredible experience. I mean, you know, anytime my father could, he would just invite me to come in, especially when he was sitting down doing one on one coaching with executives. And the interesting pattern that was there is. And he was in executive val placement so he only worked with executives that had been fired and he was helping them find their next career. And so most of these people have been fired, have been fired because of lack of communication skills. So they messed up somewhere in their communication. And so in any case, for me as a 15 year old to be able to sit there and watch him coaching these senior executives on all aspects of their communication or whatever aspect that led them to get fired was just an incredible experience for me. It started to build a passion in me and then both of my degrees were in communication skills and.

Michael de Lisser  [00:02:37]:
And my whole career has been about helping leaders at all levels become better at communicating.

Tim Newman [00:02:42]:
Yeah. It's funny how something at such an early age that we see that we grasp onto that really kind of molds who we are and drives us as we get older.

Michael de Lisser  [00:02:54]:
Yeah. And I think for me the message Back then was people are getting fired because they don't develop their communication skills as they get promoted. And with each level of promotion, they need better and better communication skills. That problem is even twice as compounded because with AI and with technology advances, your ability to communicate is going to be what makes you stand out. Because a lot of what you do technically may be eventually replaced by technology and or AI. So I've seen the actual issue that caused these executives to be fired get much worse in recent years. And so that's why I wrote the book and that's why I'm excited to be able to do what I do. Because I'm helping people prepare for the future as AI may start to take over.

Michael de Lisser  [00:03:37]:
Some of the things that make them more dependent on their communication skills.

Tim Newman [00:03:41]:
Yeah. Were there some lessons that from the early years that still influenced the way that you actually teach communication today? Because even though we've changed how we communicate, but is there something about how you teach it that has really kind of stuck with you?

Michael de Lisser  [00:03:56]:
Yeah. And I have a very formula that just works. Right. The first thing is you have to help the person raise self awareness, right?

Tim Newman [00:04:03]:
Yes.

Michael de Lisser  [00:04:03]:
A lot of times people have these communication habits, whether they're presenting or whether they're just in one on ones, they have them because they just don't know that they're doing them. Their habits they picked up at a very young age. Sometimes it's from family communication, things like that. And if I make them aware, that's the big thing is raising awareness. Once they're aware of it, then they have to be good at catching themselves doing it. And then they have to find an alternative behavior to replace it. So I take them through those steps of raising awareness, helping them get good at catching themselves and then replacing it with another behavior. And with presenting in particular.

Michael de Lisser  [00:04:37]:
I almost always use videotaping because I can say to them what I'm seeing. But until they see it themselves, it's not, it doesn't really register in the same degree. But once they see themselves doing it, that's when real, you know, the aha moments happen.

Tim Newman [00:04:53]:
You're so spot on with that. You know when, when you watch yourself and then it's pointed out and, and that's when it, when the cringe happens. Oh, there it goes. I did it again. I did it again. And as you practice and I' you know, everybody is out there actually practicing their presentations and the things that they're supposed to be doing, right? Yes. We're practicing and you catch yourself as you're practicing doing it as well. So seeing that video has really been a game changer.

Tim Newman [00:05:20]:
And now that we have access to video in our hands and in our pockets, 24, 7, that should be something that people are doing all the time, right?

Michael de Lisser  [00:05:30]:
Yeah. And for me, I tell people, I don't care where you're presenting if you can use your own cell phone to record it. And you know, and I do that with myself at least a coup times a year because I want to see if I'm developing any bad patterns and, or is there anything I can do to make my, my delivery even stronger. But there's no question that the people that record themselves or see themselves recorded, that's the thing. A lot of people say, oh, I don't want to see myself on tape. But when you do see yourself on tape, it creates a higher level of motivation. It also helps you hone in on the few things that are going to make the biggest impact.

Tim Newman [00:06:01]:
Do you have a, a bad habit that is difficult for you to get over? Because I've got a couple.

Michael de Lisser  [00:06:09]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My worst one was filler speech. And early in my career, and this was actually something that happened to me in college. My first presentation skills class, I was presenting and I thought it was going well, is in front of about 30 students. And the professor stops me mid sentence and says, hey, I need to interrupt you because you're using so much filler speech, you're saying so many ums and ahs that I literally can't hear your messaging because it's so distracting. So what I'm going to do for the rest of your presentation is I'm going to raise my hand every time you say. And then I got really nervous and the ums got worse. And at one point he literally started using two hands because I was saying it so bad.

Michael de Lisser  [00:06:45]:
And then he stops me again and he says, okay, now I'm going to stop doing this. I just wanted you to be aware. But that was something very early on. I had no clue I was saying arm and ah a lot. And a lot of people do that when they present. You know, they say things like, like and, you know, and things like that. And, and it's not until you really get brought into your awareness how much that can distract from people hearing your message. That was the habit that I really had to work on.

Michael de Lisser  [00:07:11]:
I've been working on that for years and to this day I still hear myself saying umm or ah every once in a while. But you know, with any of these bad habits, you don't ever want to try to get rid of it 100. You want to make it, make it not noticeable because that's, you know, if it happens once in a while, nobody notices it. But if you continue to do it on and on, that's when it really starts to detract from your effectiveness as a speaker.

Tim Newman [00:07:33]:
Yes. And let me just follow up with that, because if we try and be perfect, that's not, that's not normal, it's not natural. Right. And no.

Michael de Lisser  [00:07:40]:
And it's not authentic.

Tim Newman [00:07:42]:
Right. And just in every everyday conversation, you know you're going to have an um or not. And that's, that's what a presentation should really, you know, sound like. Like it's just a regular conversation with people. For me, I start talking really fast. If I see something that's either distracting or maybe the audience isn't engaged, I start talking really fast. My ADHD is really bad. So I keep something either in my pocket or something to keep me grounded.

Tim Newman [00:08:15]:
But again, if I see that the audience isn't engaged, then I start playing with it and that becomes distracting as opposed to just holding it or whatever it is. So there's, there's, we all have those things and as long as we know what they are and can work on it, that's how we start getting better.

Michael de Lisser  [00:08:30]:
Yeah. And a lot of those habits can be tied to, to personality preferences as well. You know, a lot of times I'll work with people and help them understand what their most dominant preference is. And for me, another habit I have is over explaining. Well, one of the, you know, my personality type tends to be one of the understanding driven ones. I want to make sure I'm being really clear and understood. So I tend to over explain. But if you are more of a results driven person, you may not give enough detail or if you're an overly structured person, you may not necessarily be able to naturally be good at creating messages that people can empathize with.

Michael de Lisser  [00:09:03]:
Right. And if you're a people person, you may not be structured, so there's all sorts of things. But once I help people understand how their personality impacts their delivery, it can help them a lot, particularly if you know what your weakest one is like. For me, right. My weakest area is structure. And early on I was all over the place in my presentations and so I became much better at, and I would go to people that were structured and say, take a look at this. And they'd say, no, no, no, you need to add more logic, you need to add more evidence, you know, and, and So I worked on my structure heavily because that's what was hurting my presentations the most. Right, right.

Tim Newman [00:09:38]:
Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about the younger generations. You know, and again, you and I talked about how the younger generations are really smart and really entrepreneurial, but, but they really struggle with communication and is probably, you know, at least in my perspective, you know, as bad as it's ever been.

Michael de Lisser  [00:09:56]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:09:57]:
What do you think is really driving that decline and how can we reverse it?

Michael de Lisser  [00:10:04]:
So I think the biggest challenge is there's less interpersonal and, or presenting going on that people, well, put it this way, they have less opportunities to do it early on. And what happens is they get so comfortable texting, they're not working on their communication skills because they're just texting. Right. And so, so what happens is, if you, if you grew up in an environment where you're texting and emailing all the time, when you get in front of people, you have not had as many opportunities to get feedback on how you're coming across or how much filler speech you use or even staying focused. Because, you know, one of the biggest challenges this generation has is their, their phones are constantly pinging at them. They're, you know, they're constantly having distractions happen and as a result talk to people about this, but they end up multitasking that are helping, they're helping their brain become less able to stay focused. And that hurts them as well when they present because they're, they're not staying focused and as they're working on things. So those are the things that I think stand out the most to me.

Michael de Lisser  [00:11:03]:
And the worst part about it is as AI starts to replace more and more of their technical work, they're going to become more dependent on those communication skills that they have not spent time developing. And that's where it's going to really hurt.

Tim Newman [00:11:14]:
Yeah, let's dig deep, deep into that a little bit. Because AI is a good tool. Right. I mean, we can't deny that that's not a good tool. But it seems that especially from the younger generation and the older generations like us who don't truly understand it and they rely on it as opposed to using it for maybe like idea generation or things of that nature. You can't just put a prompt into AI or ChatGPT or Clive or whatever program you're using and then pull that and use it as yours because it's not really yours. It doesn't sound like you. And people can tell when you do those types of things.

Michael de Lisser  [00:12:02]:
Yeah, well, I mean, the way I see it, a lot of times, and this comes from also teaching classes at the university level, but a lot of times people will, they'll, they'll use it to write their papers or write, you know, emails and things like that. They'll even use it to create the structure of their presentations. But in reality, you know, getting the content right depends on your ability to really understand the audience and personalize it. And, you know, AI can help a little bit with that, but they can't help completely. Whether it can't help completely. The other piece of it is AI is not going to necessarily help you with your delivery of it. And so if you're making the actual delivery of a presentation, you can have the most powerfully created AI generated whatever that you're going to present. But if you are not delivering it with confidence and personalizing it and using all of what your body can offer in terms of getting people engaged, you're just not going to have the impact that you would want to have.

Tim Newman [00:12:58]:
Yeah, that relevance to the audience is critical. We talk about all the time about how, you know, adding value to the audience. That, that should be your number one, number one goal. And to be able to do that, you have to know who your audience is and what they want. And so to, and, and to, to do that and to be able to connect with them and engage with them. Not only do you have to have the content that's geared towards them, but you also have to use that, their terminology, their wording, their, their, their, their style to be able to reach. To be able to reach them. Yeah.

Michael de Lisser  [00:13:32]:
And I think, you know, one of the most common mistakes I see people make is they create generic presentations that they're going to give to many different audiences and they don't take the time to customize it to the particular needs of each audience. Great example. I work with sales teams and they're putting together their pitches on their products or whatever it is. And as I'm listening to it and I tell, I always say, who is your target audience? I'm listening to see if they did anything specific to speak to that target audience. And more often than not, they did not. They gave the generic presentation presentation. And for me, it's like if you're giving a generic presentation, your audience is going to know. You're going to know you're just doing your thing instead of talking specifically about the concerns I raised or can or the challenges my industry has or whatever it might be.

Michael de Lisser  [00:14:17]:
So that's the biggest. Aha. I Think for people, when I'm working with them, when I give them feedback on the presentation, I'd say something like, very well presented. However, to me, it felt like you could give that same presentation to any one of 20 audiences and it would have been okay, but it wasn't great for any single audience because you didn't take the time to make it personalized to them. And that's what really makes it really powerful.

Tim Newman [00:14:39]:
Yeah. And I think that's a tough thing to understand for people who don't present on a regular basis. Right.

Michael de Lisser  [00:14:52]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:14:53]:
Whatever it is, if you're standing up in front of a team meeting and you're talking to the same people all the time, that's one thing. Yes, you're presenting to them. But if you have to take that and then let's just say you. You're. You. You've got to present that same information to the board of directors, you better change it.

Michael de Lisser  [00:15:11]:
You.

Tim Newman [00:15:12]:
You better figure out exactly what they want to know, what they want to hear, and give it to them that way, because otherwise you could put a lot of things in jeopardy. You could put your job in jeopardy, you can put the. The. The project in jeopardy, whatever that is, if you don't actually give them what they. What they want.

Michael de Lisser  [00:15:29]:
Yeah. And I'll give you some great examples of the exact type of mistakes you want to avoid in those situations. Right. So. So if you go into any board meeting or. The higher the stakes, the more time you have to spend making sure you really know your audience needs. And, oh, by the way, each member of that audience may have different needs. Right.

Michael de Lisser  [00:15:45]:
So you, as. As you're speaking to a board, you know, is the person who's over technology versus the person who's over HR versus something else, they may all have different needs or, or interests, and you have to know what those hot buttons are, and you have to speak to them. And then the other. The other challenge in those situations, too, is when you're. When you're presenting to them, are you taking the time to know your audience well enough that you even can do that? You know, and that's. That's the other part of it. But it's. It's all.

Michael de Lisser  [00:16:15]:
It's all about knowing your audience well enough to. To make it resonate with them. Otherwise they'll just kind of glaze over because you're just doing something that feels kind of standard and really not relevant.

Tim Newman [00:16:25]:
Yeah. And as I think back, you know, a number of years ago, when we. When we first really started talking about analytics and business analytics or, you know, from the sport world, performance analytics. You would never have the statistician go and talk to the client. Right. Because they wouldn't understand it. You always had somebody in communications or marketing or someone from that space to be the interface between the client and the statistician, the person who's either building the program or analyzing it. And so, because otherwise, you know, they're just not gonna understand it.

Tim Newman [00:17:12]:
And it's so important. And I know things. Remember, that's how we were, how we would build some teams, let's just say 10 or 15 years ago. And I know, you know, from the, from the STEM perspective, that's, that's changing. You know, people in STEM still do have that probably the, the biggest hurdle in terms of presenting because it's not really who they are. You know, they're, they're very technical, but they're starting to get better and they're starting to spend more time in this space getting help in, in presenting. It's, it's just kind of a funny evolution for me.

Michael de Lisser  [00:17:45]:
Yeah. You know, the other, the other thing I usually tell people too is why don't you run your content past a couple members of your audience first? Right. Because you can ask. Well, first of all, when you ask for their opinion, they appreciate the fact that you value their opinion. But secondly, they can identify what their reactions are going to be to it. And you can even ask questions about what? About the rest of the board, for example. How do you think they're going to react to this? Is there anything I'm not covering or I should be covering that'll be more important? And you could get a lot of, of intel that's going to help you be much more effective. And if you don't take the time to get to know your audience and sit down and give them a chance to give you feedback before the actual presentation, you're reducing your chances of being successful in the presentation itself.

Tim Newman [00:18:26]:
Absolutely. Very, very good points. And it really comes back to the value. Right. You know, what value? What value do they want? What value are you giving them? And you know, to be able to do those types of things as well, you have to have, you have to build relationships.

Michael de Lisser  [00:18:44]:
Yeah. And the other thing, too, and you know this, but a lot of mistake, the most common mistake I see is people presenting from a standpoint of what they want.

Tim Newman [00:18:51]:
Yes.

Michael de Lisser  [00:18:52]:
As opposed to changing the messaging into messaging that matches what the audience wants.

Tim Newman [00:18:58]:
Right.

Michael de Lisser  [00:18:58]:
And so like, you want to change and you start talking about how to change is going to help your department well, how's that change going to help each member of the board? How's that change going to do? But you, you, that's the biggest mistake I see is there's a lot of me instead of you and they're in their messaging. Yeah. And you could tell the content is around what I want as opposed to what the audience needs.

Tim Newman [00:19:16]:
Yeah, yeah. What was your aha moment on that? Because again, I think that's a, that's a, a hard one to, to get until you've been put in that position and say, ah, I really messed that up.

Michael de Lisser  [00:19:29]:
Well, again, I, I've, I very early in my career learned that I need to go talk to people that are in that target audience. And more than one occasion I've had people say to me, I would not present this at all. And I'd be like, why not? It's like, well, I don't hear you speaking to their needs, you know, and so a lot of those early life experiences where I had very. And the best part is when you go to someone who's very results driven and you ask for their feedback because they're not going to cookie code it and they're going to lay it on the line for you. And so I've been fortunate to have mentors and, or trusted resources and, or access to my audience in a way that allowed me to get people to poke holes in my reasoning and my logic and even my approach before I ever presented it. And that's when you really start to get the aha moments, is when you're like, I didn't even think about that. Then you start to realize, well, wait, this is, here's another one that nobody thinks about. If you're getting in front of an executive audience and you have a 30 minute presentation, do you have your 15 minute presentation ready? Because more often than not, if they're at the end of a long day of meetings, you're going to walk in there and they're going to say, hey, we thought you had 30 minutes, you know, but you really only have 15.

Michael de Lisser  [00:20:36]:
Do you already know in your mind what you're going to cut out? Because you have to be prepared for that, you know, and so these are just simple things that can allow you to set yourself up for success and manage and adapt in situations where something happens that you didn't expect.

Tim Newman [00:20:51]:
Exactly. And this kind of makes me think about, you know, some of the other things that you've done. Like, like when you were creating the, the MBA course. And if I remember, just correct me if I'M wrong, but I think you told me that the employers were saying that your students were brilliant but horrible communicators.

Michael de Lisser  [00:21:12]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:21:16]:
Go ahead.

Michael de Lisser  [00:21:17]:
I hear that a lot. In fact, I've had just in the last several months, I've had a couple different universities reach out to me to want to help them in the same regard. But it goes back to what you're saying that earlier when you're talking about the younger generation maybe struggles with some of these skills more because they haven't either haven't had the opportunities to practice them. But ultimately, the common message I'm getting, and I'm also hearing this in corporate environments where senior leaders are saying, look, we just promoted this person to be in the leader and they can't present, you know, worth a damn. You know, and I actually, I work with executive teams a lot and they are constantly trying to fine tune their presentation skills. So when it's all said and done, there is a common problem out there with people not spending enough time on working on these skills. And ultimately it's, it's critical that they, that they get in the time and put in the effort to developing this. Because presenting is one of the most powerful tools you can have to create widespread impact.

Tim Newman [00:22:20]:
Yes.

Michael de Lisser  [00:22:20]:
And if you cannot be, you only get one shot at it when you're in front of that audience and you either are ready for it or you're not.

Tim Newman [00:22:27]:
Exactly. And you know, that makes me think of something else. You know, we've got this buzzword going around now. It's been going around for a few years. Executive presence. What's executive presence? Everybody's using executive presence. And when you ask somebody what it means, you get a whole bunch of different answers. What's executive presence to you, Michael? I mean, because we got to teach it and you got to have it, but it's, it's so fluid, Right?

Michael de Lisser  [00:22:54]:
Yeah. Well, I can tell you what it's not. It's not being a motivational speaker. Right. Because people think they need to get up there and be, you know, this real. I have seen people that have executive presence that are introverts who are very controlled in their, their delivery, but they, I think executive presence is about making it feel like a conversation, you know, making it so that you're speaking to the audience's needs and delivering it with confidence. Right. And those three things together are critical combination.

Michael de Lisser  [00:23:24]:
And to your point, I may give a very different definition of others, but I give that because when I work with executives, it's usually about finding ways to make their content more personalized and hit home with their audience and looking at how they deliver in a way that. That emphasizes the most important pieces of it and being authentically yourself, not trying to be someone else because you saw some great leader and you want to present like them, that's not going to work. You have to be the person you are, be comfortable with who you are and deliver that way, but find ways to make your content at home.

Tim Newman [00:23:56]:
Yeah. And again, I think. I think you nailed it. If you try and be somebody else, and I hope the audience really catches on to this point, if you try and be somebody else, you're going to be seen through very, very quickly, and any credibility that you had is going to be lost almost instantly.

Michael de Lisser  [00:24:13]:
Right. It's about leveraging your strengths, really. I mean, if you think about it, if you're introverted and very structured, you can create a bulletproof, logical argument that speaks to all the key needs and deliver it calmly and without all the energy, and it'll be very impactful. And you could be someone who, you know, maybe is a great people person, but you lack the ability to really be structured and make it targeted, and that's somewhere you need to work on. But if you know what your strengths are, leverage those strengths in your presentation, and if you know what areas that you're weak, find ways to work around them, you know, and find people that can help you do that. Those are the two things, because what people notice is your strengths and weaknesses. They don't notice much else, you know, so you work on those two things, and that's where you're going to get your biggest executive presence boost.

Tim Newman [00:25:03]:
Well, yeah, and. And, you know, by. By being authentic and by. And by doing those things that increases your confidence, because your audience is going to see that. They're going to. They're going to lean in more. And even if you mess up. Right.

Tim Newman [00:25:25]:
They're not going to notice. Even if you mess up, they're still on your side. Right. And I'm for those that can't see I'm using the air fingers. Air fingers, quote, to mess up. Right. 99% of the time. If you've done the work ahead of time.

Tim Newman [00:25:40]:
Michael, tell me if I'm wrong here. If you've done the work ahead of time, you've done the preparation, and you're presenting what you're supposed to be presenting, and you feel like you've messed up, the audience doesn't even know.

Michael de Lisser  [00:25:51]:
Yeah. And that gets into what's the conversation going on in your own head. Your own headset. Right. Because for me, one of the first things I do when I teach any kind of presentation skills class, I get people to look at mindset. Right. And. And so there's kind of four different levels.

Michael de Lisser  [00:26:04]:
You could be an avoider of presenting, you know, you could be an acceptor, you know, where you do it as part of your job, but you don't love it. Or you can be a seeker. Right. And really love to do it. Now, if you're on the avoiding end of the scale, if you don't want to be there, your audience knows you don't want to be there. Yeah. So how do you change the conversation in your head to make it so that you're at least, you know, more of an acceptor? Right. Because in each conversation or each topic may cause you to shift on that scale somewhere.

Michael de Lisser  [00:26:32]:
You might be, you know, a seeker on a topic you really love to talk about, but you might be an avoider on something where you don't want to talk about it. And so the first thing to know is, where is my mind currently? Is the conversation? My mind like, oh, no, I don't want to do this. This is not going to go well. Then you're setting yourself up to not have it go well. But if you can catch yourself having that conversation and change it into, I am going to do well with this. And another mistake is people like, I need to make it perfect. Right. And there's perfectionists out there.

Michael de Lisser  [00:27:00]:
I promise you in your career, you will never deliver the perfect presentation. I mean, in your lifetime, I've given thousands of them. Something goes off in every single one of them.

Tim Newman [00:27:11]:
Every time.

Michael de Lisser  [00:27:11]:
One. One time I was. I was presenting to an executive board in a hospitals. In a hospital. And the middle of my presentation, everything was going great. All of a sudden, all their beepers went off and they all got up and left the room. And I'm just standing there in an empty room like, what just happened? Like, I had no idea. And it turned out some kind of code happened and they all responded to it and they all came back about five minutes later.

Michael de Lisser  [00:27:33]:
And. But I mean, how do you respond to that? And then you have to get your mind back in it because you just had everyone rush out of your room. And now you got to get your head back in the game.

Tim Newman [00:27:40]:
Yeah.

Michael de Lisser  [00:27:40]:
So that ability to control the conversation in your head is critical. And the first way to avoid that is to acknowledge, I will never give the perfect presentation. And that's not even my goal. My goal is to be authentic in how I present and Be articulate in how I present it and let it flow the way that it needs to flow. Because if you try to memorize it, that's when your brain starts to say, oh, no, I didn't say it exactly the way I wanted to. And the audience wouldn't even have noticed it if you didn't have that in your head. Right, right.

Tim Newman [00:28:08]:
And that kind of goes into your. Into your rule, which. Which I really, really like. There's no stopping and starting over. It's no. Just keep going. Right?

Michael de Lisser  [00:28:19]:
Yeah. And it's important to practice that way. The biggest. Another big mistake I see people make is when they're practicing, they'll get to the part where they start to mess up, and then they'll start rehearsing from the beginning again. And I tell them, do not ever do that, because what you need to do is convince your brain that if you get stuck in the real presentation, you can fight through it. So when you're rehearsing it, if you get stuck, take a moment, compose yourself just as you would in the real presentation, and then keep pushing through. Because when you do that, you can. You build confidence in your ability to get through anything.

Michael de Lisser  [00:28:50]:
And when you're practicing it, that's when you're going to make the most mistakes anyway, because you don't know your content well. But you've got to get in the habit of practicing it from beginning to end, then going back and fixing it afterwards instead of stopping and starting over. Because you can't do that in the real presentation.

Tim Newman [00:29:04]:
Right. And, you know, when you go back just a second, talk about the whole idea of mindset. I was talking to somebody yesterday, and we were talking about that exact thing, and they put it to me in a way that I'd never really thought about. And from a physiological perspective, the body does the exact same thing. So if you're thinking about it from stressful and anxiety, and then you switch your thinking to, I'm excited to do this. The physiological perspective that's happening in your body is the exact same thing.

Michael de Lisser  [00:29:36]:
Right.

Tim Newman [00:29:36]:
But the mindset changes, and everything else changes. Your facial expression, your facial expressions change, Your body language changes, your tone, everything else changes just by that. That. That little. That little shift.

Michael de Lisser  [00:29:53]:
Yeah. You know, and. And another thing that people all need to realize is nobody is born having anxiety about presenting. That's a learned behavior.

Tim Newman [00:30:02]:
Yeah.

Michael de Lisser  [00:30:03]:
Right. And so it may be as a result of a bad presentation in the past. It may be. It's just new to you. But. But we build up in our brain as it Being this big, scary thing. And that is part of where the avoider mindset comes from. Right.

Michael de Lisser  [00:30:17]:
Because the more you think of it that way, a lot of times this happens when someone's presenting to an executive audience. They're intimidated by the executives. Right. And it's like they're people just like anyone else. And whatever you're presenting on, you probably know that topic better than they do if you do your, you know, if you prepare. Right. So. So it's.

Michael de Lisser  [00:30:33]:
It's critical that people recognize that. That they need to make sure that they are doing everything they can to. To get their head in the right space before they start presenting and know that. That it's never going to go perfect and you need to prepare the best you can and be okay with it however it comes out.

Tim Newman [00:30:52]:
Yeah. And Michael, I love these conversations because. Because it reminds me of. Of. Of other things that. And I just had this, a conversation with my best friend this morning about this, because I'm. I'm working on some things, and he was kind of giving me his perspective on it, and he said, well, you can come out to my farm and you can present to my bees. I said, well, how many bees do you have? He says, I've got 10,000 bees.

Tim Newman [00:31:15]:
So I said, I can go out there and I can present to 20,000 years. You know, but it's the whole idea of how many people are in the room. And oh, the more people in the room, you better. Oh, you. Now it's really getting stressful. Right. Because it seems like it's more important, but if we, if we approach it differently.

Michael de Lisser  [00:31:33]:
Yeah, it's. And it's so critical to listen to that voice in your head.

Tim Newman [00:31:38]:
Yeah, right.

Michael de Lisser  [00:31:38]:
What is the voice telling you? Because that voice is. Probably has nothing to do with the situation in front of you and has more to do with your past. Whenever we have. Whenever we have low self. Low, I'll say self esteem or self confidence. Presenting something in our history has led us to develop that belief about ourselves. And when we go into a situation and we're thinking, I am going to be really nervous in front of all these executives. Why? What led you to feel that way? Is it you had a bad experience in the past? Is it that authority figures in the past have.

Michael de Lisser  [00:32:10]:
Have, you know, you had a bad experience with them, there's all sorts of things that can be contributing to it. But if you can change the conversation in your head, your body will follow. And if you can really start to convince yourself that I could do well here, and this is Going to be fun instead of scary. You can, it'll take time. It may not happen in one presentation, but over time you could start to develop that.

Tim Newman [00:32:30]:
And that's where you get into the whole idea that again, I love how you approach this, the difference between learning and unlearning. Right. So what are some habits or patterns that, that we need to unlearn first if we want to get better?

Michael de Lisser  [00:32:48]:
Yeah. Mentally criticizing yourself is one right out of the gate that comes to mind to me because when you have that negative conversation in your head, you're setting yourself up for having it happen when you're present. That's number one. There are things like mentally criticizing yourself. I have a list in front of me. These are the most common presentation habits that I work with people on reading from the slides, you know, because they're uncomfortable looking at their audience, not, not providing enough value, added context on what's on the slide. You know, all sorts of hands trembling or shaking because they've got this anxiety built up using filler speech. I mentioned earlier, some personalities give too much detail, some people don't give enough.

Michael de Lisser  [00:33:30]:
Right. And it's about knowing how your personality impacts how you deliver. And so what I do is I typically at the beginning of any coaching session with, with an executive or anybody, I will right out of the gate say, do a five minute presentation. For me, it can be anything you've presented in the past. I'm just going to watch. Right. And inevitably those habits will come out and I'll capture them and I'll record it so I can show them to them later. Right.

Michael de Lisser  [00:33:52]:
And when you do that, it, you allow them and it's really about focusing on the one or two things that'll have the biggest impact. You can't sit there and look at your, your video and say, oh, there was 10 things I did wrong. Nobody cares about the 10. Pick the one or two that if you improved on, will have the biggest positive impact on your next speech. And then when you're done working on those, you can pick one of the other 10. But it's about, you know, applying that 80, 20 rule and only focusing on the few things that have the biggest impact. That's how you get the fastest improvement in your, in your ability to present.

Tim Newman [00:34:22]:
Yeah. And, and then I, I would just add on top of that, celebrate the win. Once you've gotten better at it, celebrate that. And I'm Michael, I'm the worst. Trust me, I'm the worst at this. I criticize myself over and over again. And I think that's something that is common amongst high achievers, right? Because we always got to get better. Didn't do that well, got to get better at this, got to get better at that.

Tim Newman [00:34:45]:
But I'm the master at beating myself up and I'm the master at not celebrating the small wins. And when you give those things up, you progress and get better so much faster than you could ever imagine. But it's understanding that you have to give them up to be able to get there.

Michael de Lisser  [00:35:04]:
And the other thing too is, look, we're going to have bad experiences over time, right? And so when one happens, you can choose to either be victimized by that bad presentation or you can use it to improve. And I would tell people that the bigger mistake you made, the more you can learn from it. My experience with that professor back in college, I was horrified to get back in front of that group again and have to present again because I knew they'd all be listening to my ums, right? But I went in there with a mindset of, I'm going to deal with this, right. And the next time I was a little bit better and the time after I was a little better. And you have to know that whatever your habit is, it will not go away overnight. But you have to give your credit. Like you said, the little wins. If you caught yourself three times, then five times and ten times using filler speech, that just catching yourself as a win.

Michael de Lisser  [00:35:51]:
And then knowing which, by the way, if you use filler speech in your presentations, you can work on improving it in your day to day conversations. Because if you listen to yourself in a one on one with your spouse, with your friends, with your kids, whatever it is, you will be using the same filler speech probably. And so if you can practice not using that filler speech with a one on one conversation, it will ultimately translate to using it lesson presentations.

Tim Newman [00:36:15]:
Yeah, yeah. And that's again, it's such a simple piece of advice, right? But we have to be aware of.

Michael de Lisser  [00:36:24]:
That.

Tim Newman [00:36:27]:
And think about.

Michael de Lisser  [00:36:30]:
We have to.

Tim Newman [00:36:30]:
Think about how we're actually communicating throughout any given day, throughout any given situation. And you know, If it goes back to some of the first things we started the episode with. Right, yeah. Being aware, being made aware and then doing something about it. And I think one of the INU and I talked a little bit about this as well. One of the biggest problems that we have from a professional communication perspective is a lot of times we are communicating under stress and that's when things really break down. That's when we really started having Miscommunication problems or issues. So what can we do to.

Tim Newman [00:37:25]:
Because it's hard to videotape that unless we're gonna have a film crew follow us. And I don't want that. I don't want a film crew following me around all day. I got other issues I don't want to people know about. But, you know, how do we hone in on that? How do we understand who we are as a communicator when we're under stress and fix those things before it really hurts us from a credibility perspective.

Michael de Lisser  [00:37:50]:
Yeah. And let me just start by saying it's easier to say it shouldn't be stressful presenting to an executive audience when you're not presenting to an executive audience. Right, Right. But here's the thing is one is you have to be aware of what is the conversation going on in your head. Head. Right. And what, what are the thoughts you're having about getting in front of that. Right.

Michael de Lisser  [00:38:08]:
But then it's also about in your mind being okay with the idea that it will not be perfect. And you don't have to be perfect. So if you're working on reducing your filler speech and you say once or twice in your presentation, they probably won't even notice. Right. It's only if you're doing it a hundred times. Right. And so if you go in with a mindset of it's not going to be perfect and I'm going to focus on having positive thoughts in my head and get good at catching yourself with those negative thoughts and then what? The other thing I teach people on is having a pre presentation ritual. I never veer from this one ritual.

Michael de Lisser  [00:38:41]:
I do this every time. I even did it before today's press. You know, with you, I have, for me, I use music. I have a playlist of. Most of them are heavy metal songs. One of them is cool. But. But it's.

Michael de Lisser  [00:38:52]:
It's a list of about, you know, five or 10 songs that I will play in a certain order right before I present. The words to all the songs are all about getting pumped up, being excited, getting ready to present, you know, you know, those kind of things. And for me, that works for other people that are really nervous, they may want to have really calming music or they may want to use breathing techniques. But the thing is having a ritual that you do before every single presentation that gets you in the right mindset.

Tim Newman [00:39:17]:
Yes.

Michael de Lisser  [00:39:18]:
And if you get in the habit of doing that, that actually brings you more comfort and confidence when you get in front of the group. Because each time you use that ritual, it allows you to be a little more effective each time. And so for me, I get, I get myself pumped up and excited for these things by listening to music that pumps me up. And everyone's got to pick something that works for them. It could be completely different. You've heard about people talking about power stances and things like that, but the key is finding what works for you and religiously following it before every time you present. So it becomes a routine that sets you up for success.

Tim Newman [00:39:53]:
You know, I love that you brought that up. I really do. Because the whole idea of the walk up song for me is something for me that gets me going too. My kids are older now, but I would talk to them when they would say, dad, I got an interview tomorrow, I got this due. And I would say, well, what's your walk up song? Because when it comes that time, I want to make sure that I'm playing it so that you're feeling the good vibes and you're feeling it. And they would say, you're crazy, you're nuts. But there's a, there's a reason why baseball players, why it's called a walk up song. There's a reason for that.

Tim Newman [00:40:27]:
Right. And I'm the same way as you. I've got three or four songs that, that I play in my head and it depends on just how I'm feeling that day. But they all have that, that, that high beat count, motivational, good vibes type types of songs. Yeah, some. Some heavy metals, some, some hard country rock types of things as well. And, and it's just that thing that gets you, not only get you in the mood, but when you, when you're walking out there again, whether it's a team meeting on stage, whatever, you have that energy, you have that look, that look of executive presence.

Michael de Lisser  [00:41:05]:
Yeah, I am.

Tim Newman [00:41:07]:
Right.

Michael de Lisser  [00:41:08]:
Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. My actual walk up song is by a band called Warrant, and it's called the Show Must Go On. Right. And the reason it's my walk up song is because the chorus is, whatever happens, let it go. Because the show must go on. And it's a reminder to me that I don't need to be perfect out there. I just have to go with the flow and deliver.

Michael de Lisser  [00:41:28]:
And for me, that resonates and that's why that's my walk up song. Everyone else might have something different, but the key is that's what I want to remind myself. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to go out there and be yourself.

Tim Newman [00:41:39]:
Well, since you said one, I'm going to say one. The one I used. I'll give you two. The one I use a lot is I Love this Life by Low Cash. Okay. And Nice. The other one's by Gunner and the Grizzly Boys. And it's standard American.

Tim Newman [00:42:01]:
And it's a. It's. It's a. It's a heavy beat, heavy bass.

Michael de Lisser  [00:42:05]:
Nice.

Tim Newman [00:42:06]:
It's a band out of Michigan. I love them, but it just kind of depends on the mood I'm in. It'll be one of those. And we go out and we. And we get it done and have a good time. And that's the other thing for me, if you're having fun, your audience is going to know it. If you're not having fun. Right.

Tim Newman [00:42:24]:
And that's part of that engagement piece that is so, so critical.

Michael de Lisser  [00:42:29]:
Yeah. And that's anything that'll help you get yourself in the right mindset, whether it's music or whatever. I mean, it's just. It's critical to know what works for you, experiment with different things. But once you find something that works, stick with it and be religious about doing it right before you present. Even if I have to hum it in my head because I didn't have a chance, I got to get that. That groove going in my head. The other song I use is Pitbull called Get Ready.

Michael de Lisser  [00:42:51]:
It's a remake of a rock song, but it's all about getting ready and getting in the right mindset, you know, so.

Tim Newman [00:42:56]:
That's awesome. That's awesome, Mike. Thanks so much.

Michael de Lisser  [00:43:00]:
I could talk about this. I could talk about this for hours.

Tim Newman [00:43:04]:
Me too. I think we better, better move on. I'm to going just.

Michael de Lisser  [00:43:07]:
Yeah, let's keep going. People that aren't into music right now are like, come on, guys, get it moving, would you?

Tim Newman [00:43:12]:
Well, you know, I don't. I don't hate on any music, but if you. If you had said a Taylor Swift song. I said, mike, come on over. Let's. Let's go through the collection. We'll find some other songs anyway, but Michael, thank you so much. Where can people connect with you if they want to work with you?

Michael de Lisser  [00:43:31]:
So my website. The shorter version of the website is delisir.com. it's my last name. So D E L I double S asinsamer.com. if you go out there, there is, you know, more information about me. There's a link to my book that I just published called Leadership Accelerators. It's all about key communication, skills to help you improve. I also have a YouTube channel that is nothing but short snippets about key messaging around how to communicate.

Michael de Lisser  [00:44:04]:
And they're all from different podcasts I've been on and you could just look up delicir consulting on YouTube and you'll find that as well. And then on LinkedIn, I'm regularly posting, you know, articles around communication, some around presenting. A lot is just about general leadership communication. And so I try to put a lot of free resources out there to help other people wherever I can.

Tim Newman [00:44:27]:
I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to talk about your book, but I do want to say something about the YouTube channel. Guys, go check it out. There's a lot of really good information there.

Michael de Lisser  [00:44:36]:
Yeah, I love it.

Tim Newman [00:44:38]:
It's great.

Michael de Lisser  [00:44:40]:
I have like another 20 or 30, you know, clips that I want to put up there in the next month or so, but it's going to continue to grow and I'll eventually organize them by topic. So if you're managing a change, here are the things you want to do. If you're presenting, here are the things and I'll pop around and do a number of different things. But I just want it to be a quick reference tool. And the book is set up that way as well, by the way. It gives self assessments and areas of communication, then it gives activities to practice it and then it gives you things you can go out and do to apply it. And that's as I mentioned when you asked me in the beginning, my strategy is always raise your self awareness. Become really aware of when you're doing a habit or what you want to work on and then coming up with an alternative behavior and applying it and practicing it it.

Michael de Lisser  [00:45:18]:
And you know this as well as I. If you really want to improve in any area of communication, you must work on it daily because you're trying to overcome habits you've developed over your whole life and you need to be patient with yourself because it may take some time.

Tim Newman [00:45:31]:
Exactly. You got to do the thing, you have to do it. And, and that goes for any type of change. If you want to be good at anything, you got to do it. Yeah, you don't get better by thinking about it. You don't get better by reading about it. You get better by, by, by doing it and, and being evaluated on it and fixing those things and doing it. And it's a, it's a repetitive process.

Tim Newman [00:45:52]:
You got to actually go out there and do it.

Michael de Lisser  [00:45:54]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Tim Newman [00:45:56]:
Well, Michael, again, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I really do appreciate it. There's a lot, lot of good, actionable advice in here, and I'm sure the audience is going to take a lot of value from it. So, so thank you so much.

Michael de Lisser  [00:46:09]:
Thanks for having me on. I mean, I think what you're doing is so important because there's a lot of people out there that really want to work on these things and they're looking for, you know, those few tips that may make them go from good to great. And I think your program delivers a lot of that. And hopefully the feedback, you know, what we did today will help give them a few more things to work with.

Tim Newman [00:46:25]:
So I'm sure it will. Thanks so much. Take care and we'll talk to you soon.

Michael de Lisser  [00:46:29]:
Okay, thanks.

Tim Newman [00:46:31]:
Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com to get your free eBook, Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers and How to Overcome Them. You can also register for the Foreman for Public Speaking speaking course. Always remember, your voice has the power to change your world. We'll talk to you next time. Take care.