2005© Photograph by Tony Arpante
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Broadway Meets Wall Street: Theatre training for better business presentations 
By Tom Krattenmaker Harvard Management Communication Letter, Vol. 2, No 12 – December 1999 Blame it on rapid-fire MTV-style television or the ever-faster barrage of advertisements, e-mails, and telephone calls, but business communicators need more than words to vie for space in their audiences’ clogged attention spans. Increasingly, presenters are embracing the idea of communication as performance, and they are turning to a logical source for guidance and inspiration – the theatre. “Most people who enter into theatre-based training will, sooner or later, decide that they are being asked to unlearn everything they ever thought about presentations. That’s pretty close to true,” says Paul Basile, director of marketing communications for the Boston Consulting Group, who first sought out theatrical training 10 years ago and often recommends it to clients. “Any business conference is, or should be, theatrical in the most positive sense. It should be entertaining, compelling, professional, memorable, and personal, and its first concern should be for the audience. Business presentations typically lack most of those attributes.” Martha Burgess, an actress and founder of the Atlanta-based consulting company Theatre Techniques for Business People, often encounters resistance when businesspeople are introduced to the concept. Won’t they appear inappropriately melodramatic if they “act” in the business setting? “No,” says Burgess. “Great actors feel real, honest emotion. We businesspeople must come from the same honest place whether we are communicating on verbal or nonverbal levels. Melodrama occurs when there is a detachment from true feelings, when people ‘put on’ what they think they should be feeling.” Paradoxically, Burgess and other consultants believe the acting model teaches business communicators to be more authentic than when they are bound by conventional notions of decorum – “acting” professional. Here are some simple ways the business communicator can begin to apply the actors’ craft to the pursuit of better presentations: Unlock your presence There is a common belief that “stage presence” is something you’re born with – that certain people possess a set of arresting physical attributes or a natural magnetism that commands attention. But this “either-you-have-it-or-you-don’t” notion doesn’t wash with Burgess and other practitioners of theatre-based business coaching. They believe that all people have presence and merely need to learn how to unleash it. Says Burgess, who is 4’10”: “I’m the last person in the world you’d expect to be lecturing high-powered businesspeople, but presence has nothing to do with your body.” That’s the good news. The challenge is this: Without presence, other tricks or techniques for better presenting make little difference. The central coaching concept of Theatre Techniques for Business People is that effective business presenting, like fine acting, flows out of “performance energy.” This is defined as a peak-performance state of the mind and body in which brain and muscles work as one, all cylinders firing, with complete absorption in the material and moment. It’s a state of being “on.” While the specific technique and language differ, the Ariel Group in Cambridge, Mass., likewise teaches its clients to concentrate on developing presence. “We describe it as using your full self,” says company cofounder Kathy Lubar. “Actors talk about this ability possessed by people with presence to make the room their own, to make it their space, and to invite the audience in.” Applying this theatre concept to the business world, Ariel’s teaching model revolves around the first four letters of “presence” – “P” for being completely present, not distracted by your tie or notes or anything external to the moment and presentation; “R” for reaching out and involving the audience through questions, stories, eye contact, etc.: “E” for being expressive – appropriately animated, with vocal variety; and “S” for self-knowledge, for having a confident certainty about who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish with your speech and, for that matter, your career. “Meanwhile, the Actors Institute in New York City emphasizes an approach to business presentations as a form of artistic expression. Its teaching holds that the key to success is establishing a personal relationship with the audience. The institute’s coaches use acting exercises to nudge executives out of thinking that they need to be formal and tightly controlled – i.e., stiff – if they are to project professionalism and dignity from the dais. Don’t hide Actors are taught on Day One not to commit the cardinal sin of turning their backs on the audience. There is sound reasoning behind this conventional wisdom: if you’re not facing the audience, it is impossible to maintain the open communication channel on which effective presenting depends. You need to see the audience; the audience needs to see you. Though perhaps less obvious, covering the midsection of the body by crossing the arms or legs is another form of hiding, Burgess notes. Uncovering might heighten the feeling of vulnerability, but it is crucial to connecting with an audience. Technology has brought ever-fancier ways of hiding. “PowerPoint is a killer,” says Gifford Booth, a director at the Actors Institute. “One client had been giving these hour-long presentations with 60 or 70 slides. They were basically just reading the text that appeared on the screen. No relationship was formed with the audience. What we’ve done with them is take away the slides. To be effective, you have to be a real person standing in front of real people. You have to talk to them.” This is not to say that there is never a time or place for audio, visual, or printed material in presentations. But as Booth stresses, be sure that such material enhances, rather than inhibits human-to-human communications.
Passion is something one expects from a performer of music or drama, but from a business presenter? Absolutely, says Booth. It doesn’t mean you need to shout and weep or leap about the podium. It means communicating the material with conviction, emotion, and a natural level of animation. None of that is possible without what Booth terms a “relationship with the material” – believing in what you’re saying. Much of his coaching involves helping executives find an approach to the subject that stokes their passion. Case in point: Booth once worked with a utilities executive who had to speak to his company’s union members about safety rules, a seemingly mind-numbing subject. But Booth helped him find an angle that aroused his passion; the executive’s father had been a union member, and because of that, he had a real affinity for the rank-and-file and a genuine concern for their wellbeing on the job. He was able to turn a boring lecture into an uplifting acknowledgement of the workers and their contribution to the company. “All of a sudden, it became his personal expression,” Booth says, “and when an audience hears someone’s personal expression, they’re going to feel their time was well-spent.” Rehearse Rare is the theatre company that goes into opening night without the director running the cast through weeks and weeks of rehearsals. The actors have mastered their lines, places, and cues well enough to focus their energy on the audience and the more nuanced shades of acting that bring the performance to life. Similarly, business speakers can benefit tremendously from theatre-style rehearsing. Booth and other coaches suggest running through the speech with a coach or colleagues serving as a constructively critical audience. Find out what works and what doesn’t, which lines connect and which fly over your audience members’ heads. Learn your “lines” well enough to allow you to keep your eyes with the audience and not locked on your notes. Overcome stage fright Well-known are the anecdotes about Laurence Olivier, the extraordinarily accomplished British actor who, even in his fifties, was known to suffer vomit-inducing bouts of nerves before a performance. The point is that theatre people have been battling and conquering stage fright over the ages, and business people can do the same, often by using some tricks of the stage. Eric Maisel, a psychologist and creativity consultant who works with actors, musicians, and business presenters, describes many theatre-based techniques for overcoming stage fright in his book Fearless Presenting: A Self-Help Workbook for Anyone Who Speaks, Sells, or Performs in Public. Among other methods, Maisel recommends an exercise in which an actor or speaker relaxes different muscle groups in sequence. You begin by relaxing the forehead, then other portions of the face, then the arms, the legs, and the rest of the body. Also helpful are meditation and guided visualizations in which a speaker pictures herself in tranquil and confidence-boosting scenes. A practical application of that approach is to picture yourself at the dais, speaking with confidence and panache, moments before you step up to begin the real thing. Once you’re underway, Maisel urges, get outside yourself and your preoccupation with how well or poorly you’re doing. Lose yourself in the material. “Concentrate on the song,” he says, “instead of the fact that you’re the one performing.” SIDEBARS: Use stories to connect with your listeners Belle Linda Halpern, co founder of the Ariel Group, was working with an oil executive who faced a serious communications challenge. His company had recently joined forces with a company from Australia, and the executive was preparing a speech in which he would attempt to persuade his reluctant work team to accept the Australian newcomers as partners. Cognizant of the value of a telling narrative in reaching and moving an audience in both the theatre and business settings, Halpern helped the executive find a story. The man remembered an occasion from his youth when he had been an outsider. His family had moved to a new community. He loved baseball, but the local boys never picked him for their side when dividing up into teams for a game. So he sat on the bench, day after day, until someone finally chose him for his team. The boys soon learned of the error of their ways: The new kid hit two home runs in that first game and gained immediate acceptance. “Those kids would never have known how good he was if they hadn’t picked him,” Halpern says. “The oil executive wanted his work team to think of the Australians as that kid on the bench, waiting for a chance to contribute. Almost everyone has had that feeling of being left on the bench. A story like that can get people emotionally involved.” 
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