Laura Stack - Apply 3-V Impact: Strengthen Your Visual, Verbal, and Vocal Image

Table of Contents

Apply 3-V Impact:

Strengthen Your Visual, Verbal, and Vocal Image

By Laura Stack, MBA, CSP

In this eBook,well discuss the communications skills needed to share your vision and ignitepassionate followers. I call this 3V Impact: the messages your Visual, Verbal,and Vocal images convey when you communicate.

As the sayinggoes, your brain starts working the minute youre born, and it never stopsworking until you stand up to speak. Similarly, you might have heard thefollowing statistic: According to The Book of Lists, speaking is thenumber one fear, beating out heights, insects, financial problems, deep water,illness, and even death. Does this mean that most people would rather die thangive a presentation? I suspect not, but by its very nature, death is a once ina lifetime ordeal, which makes it easy to push down the list. However, everyleader must eventually grapple with public speaking and the nervousness thatcomes with communicating ideas to other people.

Some of youhavent given a lot of presentations, and others could be writing this eBook. Im a professional speaker, which means I get paid to give speeches and trainingseminars. Ive presented an average of eighty to one hundred presentations peryear for nearly twenty years, and I believe I have some ideas to share withyou. Im not here, however, to help you become a professional speaker. Imhere to help you communicate with people in a way that helps others see yourvision, capitalize on your strengths, and become the very best you can be inyour particular role.

As a leader, whendo you make presentations? I would suggest to you that the answer is always. What well discuss here will help you not only in your formal presentations,but also the informal ones.

As a leader,you are constantly on and selling yourself. When youre discussing an ideawith a colleague, youre making a presentation. When youre talking with acustomer, youre making a presentation. Sitting across the desk with the CFOor a frontline supervisor, seated around a table with four people on the Boardof your HOA, or standing in front of fifty people at a Rotary meetingyourepresenting. Whatever youre doing and whenever the situation, you need to becomfortable in any situation where you might find yourself communicating,whether its in a formal or informal situation, in front of groups large andsmall.

A recent surveysuggests theres truth to the old saying, What can go wrong will go wrong. The Creative Group, a staffing service for marketing, advertising, and webprofessionals, asked 250 executives to describe their most uncomfortablepresentation experiences. Those surveyed were asked, Whats the most unusualor embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you during a presentation? One said, The client laughed because he thought our ideas were so bad. Another said, I recently lost a lot of weight, and when I got up to shakehands, my pants fell down. Still another said, I pulled out the wrongpresentation and showed them a competitors instead. One of my colleaguesonce accidentally stepped off the edge of the stage and fell onto the floorbelow. He sprang up and immediately quipped, I will now take comments fromthe floor.

I can only hopethat something like these examples will not happen to you when youre in acommunication situation. Careful preparation can help prevent some problemsbut certainly not all of them. You can rarely plan for most things outside ofyour control, but you can control yourself and project a powerful, confident,professional image.

Lets start bydiscussing the term image. I define it as the picture you project to otherpeople when you are talking. Webster defines image as a mental conceptionheld in common by members of a group and symbolic of a persons basic attitudeand orientation.

For example,recall the last time you felt like a million bucks. Then think about the dealsyou made that day and the way you walked into a room. People treat youdifferently when you feel that way, and everything seems to fall into place. Why? Because you were projecting a strong, positive, confidentimage to the world that said, I look great, I feel great, and Im loaded!

Everyone youmet seemed to pick up those messages and respond to them in an equally upbeatway. Was that a phony image that you were projecting? Not at all. In fact,that was an extremely accurate one. You were feeling positive and confident,and everything about you was broadcasting those feelings. The same thinghappens when youre having a bad daywhen your spirits are lowand you look andfeel like five cents.

Bottom line:whether you talk or not, you are practically shouting information to anyone whocomes within twenty feet of you. Perception is reality. When you communicate,the receiver takes in information in three primary ways, or by three differentsenses. They take in information with their eyes, with their brain, and withtheir ears. These are the three ways that people pick up perceptions aboutyou, the picture you presentyour image.

These are thethree Vs of powerful presentations when you communicate; they are what make youpowerful:

1. Thefirst V is your VISUAL image, or what people SEE. Its how you look. Itswhat the audience sees and what they take in with their eyes. It involves yourability to look authoritative.

2. Thesecond V of powerful presentations is your VERBAL image, or what you SAY toothers. Its how the audience processes your information and the content youpresent with their brains. It involves the meaning of your words.

3. Thethird is your VOCAL image, or how you SOUND to others when you speak. Its whatyour listeners take in with their ears when you communicate. It involveswhether you sound powerful and confident.

Lets talkfirst about your visual image. Again, this is how you appear and what theaudience sees.

When you talk,people observe individual body language signals that say to them, Hmm, thisperson seems to be closed to my ideas. For example, if you observe the otherpersons arms crossed in front of his or her body, you might read that asdefensiveness or disagreement. This is sometimes called a blocking signal. Does it necessarily mean that you disagree? No, not really, but thats how itcan be perceived.

Look at others body language and how it signals you onwhether theyre open or closed. Body language is perceived in certainways, whether you mean to or not. So if you run the risk of being perceived acertain way, sometimes its simply better not to do it. Here are some keyareas people observe that you should consider when youre presenting or communicatingin any way:

1. Face. How do you perceive people when they wrinkle their lips, narrow their eyes, orhave nervous twitches or protruding veins? Perhaps they frown or furrow theirbrow. Perhaps they lower their eyes when they speak. All of these things couldindicate your predisposition toward that person or information and actuallyimpact the way you perceive them. When you do these things, do you mean toconvey certain meaning? Perhaps not, but since others might perceive how youfeel based on how you look, try instead to maintain neutrality in the head andneck area. Its been said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, so beespecially cognizant of your face, head, and neck area.

2. Hands. Besides the head and neck area, the most significant aspects of body languageare the hands and other limbs. As a general rule, the farther the arms moveaway from the body, the more open a persons mind is. As they move toward, oreven touch, the trunk of the body, the more closed the persons mind is likelyto be to us. If the hands are loose and flexible in their movements, the moreopen the person is likely to be to us. Thats also true if the palms are heldvertically to the floor or if theyre up. When theyre down, however, theperson may be closed to us. Worse yet is when the fists are clenched, and theperson may actually be aggressive in their verbal approach to us.