The show’s guest in this episode is Marsha Redmon. She is the secret weapon elite law firms and leaders have gone to for 20-plus years to have a more powerful presence when they speak. She became the go-to expert during the pandemic teaching professionals worldwide how to fix their virtual presence so they could speak with confidence and engage powerfully – to win clients, to have more impact and to own their niches.

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Being Boring and Making Mistakes During Presentations. What To Do and Not Do As A Leader with Marsha Redmon

Hi, everybody. I’m Melanie Parish, and I’m super excited to be with you here live on the experimental leader podcast, I want to take a minute and just like you know, I always forget to say this, but you are welcome to ask questions in the chat on the Live platform that you’re on. You can interact with us while we’re online. And you might note excuse me, I have my winter cold. You, you might notice that I have Christmas decorations behind me. It’s legit, it’s okay. I’m in Canada. So we did. Wow, it’s gonna be a long podcast. We did Thanksgiving, in October. So we get to decorate early, which I always love. And I always love hanging stockings. They’re pretty exciting. And there’s like promise in them when you hang them, because you never know what they’re gonna get filled with. And it kind of makes me think about what I’ve been thinking about lately in my business, which is I’ve been kind of thinking about value stream mapping, and tracing, you know, client journeys through how they interact with us as a company, how they interact with me as their coach, how they interact with our products. And I’ve just been thinking about it a lot, because it’s really important to me that we offer both really good value in the way that our products are intended, but also sort of surprising value, that we do a little extra sometimes and that we go above and beyond for our clients.

So, I’ve just been thinking about that just sort of how, how we’re nice to our clients, and how we also are really careful to provide what they buy from us. And then also how we just try to say yes, mostly if people ask me over the years, if they asked me if we can do something, I usually just try to say yes, sometimes we can’t. But mostly I try to say yes, when they ask if we can do something because I really want to help people in their work. And I want to help them be happy in their work and I want to help them scale up in their work.

And I am super excited about our guests today. Our guest is Marsha Redmon, and she has a company called Marsha Redmon Communications. And she’s this secret weapon that elite law firms and leaders have gone to for 20 plus years to have more powerful presence when they speak. And she became the go to expert during the pandemic teaching professionals worldwide, how to fix their virtual presence. So, they could speak with confidence and engage powerfully to win clients have more impact and own their own niches.

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Marsha, I’m super excited to have you on my show today. Welcome.

Thanks so much, Melanie, I’m excited to be here.

Well, and now I’m like, oh, gosh, do I have something like cheeks? Do I? You know, like, oh, and I just heard my dogs barking because I just realized I forgot to put them lock them up before the show. You know, there’s just all these things, especially being remote and working from home and you know, all of those things. So, I can’t wait to dive into all of that. It’s very fun to think of how we present ourselves. We’re presenting ourselves all the time.

Absolutely. And of course, for me, because I’m a Communications workshop leader and a coach. Everything for me is a communication problem for you. Everything’s probably a leadership issue. For me. It’s all about communications.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Well, I want to start because we are doing book club this year. So, I want to start with the experimental leader and just read a little passage. And then we can talk about it a little bit because you might have some ideas too. We are on chapter one, the climate of innovation. And I’m just going to read a little bit.

“When I was a brand-new coach, I received some advice from a woman who had been a coach for many years. She said, Melanie, people who go fast like to go fast. It isn’t your job to slow them down and make their lives peaceful. As a coach. It’s your job to go along for the ride. I’m ever grateful for this advice because I do indeed coach people who go fast. I enjoy the ride. The people I coach never slow down. The same is true of the companies I work for. They drive for that dream of innovation. They push to win these, and they succeed and fail every day. We aren’t going back to 100-year-old businesses, like McKone fine food. This is the world we live in. It’s not our job to slow down innovation. But we need to put in place ways of creating stability. That’s what experimental leaders do. They create stability and an unstable world. And they open the doors for change. So, innovation can emerge.”

Okay, it’s all good.

What do you notice about chapter two?

Well, chapter two. I love the title investigate like a scientist. Because I am a former investigative reporter on television. So, investigation asking questions, you talk about neutrality, which I find to be very helpful for folks when they are nervous about presenting nervous about communicating. So, both of those issues really resonated for me.

Well, and how does that neutrality help from a presenting point of view?

Yeah, so the way I’m looking at neutrality in this context, is the notion that as we communicate, we need to have a neutral mindset so that we’re not assessing ourselves while we’re talking. We’re not worrying about how we’re coming across, we’re simply communicating in the moment with the audience in front of us, whether they’re in person or virtual or hybrid, so that we cannot put ourselves in the middle of the communication. And I find for most people who are nervous, and I work largely with folks who work who are in professional services. And so that is definitely a marker for them is they’re so busy judging themselves and worrying about how they’re doing that they make themselves more nervous. And also, it’s, it’s kind of a big barrier between them and the audience. And so, I tried to teach them to put all of their focus and attention on the audience itself, and not be busy. Having that judgmental mind, about how they’re doing how the audience seems to be receiving it, and instead, really trying to be in the moment.

Speak to the audience that's in front of you, even if they're virtual. To have a real sense of who they are and what they're interested in. Share on X

I think that’s super powerful. And I was having a conversation with another coach this morning. And we were talking about how, you know, as coaches, we can kind of say almost anything to anyone, like in the in the world of feedback, or, but it’s because of that she’s a very longtime coach, I’ve been coaching 23 years. And it it’s a skill that we develop, and it’s that neutrality that allows you to say like, hey, I don’t think this is working, what do you want to do with that like, and because it’s almost it becomes a superpower. Because of that neutrality, you’re not hurting someone by giving feedback. And because you’re not vested, it’s that same as getting self out of the way of self is out of the way and coaching, then you can have a conversation about what it is you’re talking about, as opposed to an investment in the outcome.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I resonate with that so strongly, because in my work, I give lots of feedback as well. So, I videotape everyone, or I guess record them since as my husband pointed out this morning, there is no tape anymore. I’ve had my business for any few years as well. So, for me, I try to get everyone you know, recorded so they can watch themselves, which they all hate. And then give them feedback in a way you would call neutral. I call it matter of fact, matter of fact. And that’s and I love that I see I see this, this commonality here, I hadn’t thought of it as neutrality, but I love that approach. I think it’s, it might resonate even better with the folks I work with, as opposed to being matter of fact. And that’s and that’s the key to of course to delivering bad news, hearing bad news, all of those scenarios where there’s energy or motion, that notion of going to neutrality, whether you’re speaking or hearing, and sticking with the facts.

Well, and I can see if you’re delivering bad news, I really liked the phrase matter of fact, like, you know, we could talk about like, oh, I went to the store and bought oranges we can also talk about hey, a tragedy just occurred. You know, this is that’s sort of the matter I see where the matter-of-fact language is also super useful in the kind of work that you do it’s quite interesting how they’re aligned and yet you know, I’m I probably am not. I rarely am helping clients who are on Do the gun, like, like to time pressure in a way that you might, on occasion be helping them figure out what to do under time pressure? So, I noticed that too. It’s very interesting.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because I’m mostly working with lawyers and other people that who are similar. A lot of the skill they need is not only being accurate and having confidence, you know, projecting competence and authority, but it’s in the moment, how can you, in the moment have answers are in the moment, not have answers, but still come across with confidence and authority? And so it is, for many of them, it is an in the moment kind of thing, which is scary.

Yeah, so, um, if you want to, like, you know, I am, you know, people are always giving presentations, they’re always trying to, you know, we’ve all become, I cannot even tell you how ironic it is at 54, I’ve become the face of my brand. I do a weekly live podcast I’m presenting all the time. You know, I just think it’s so funny that I’ve become this sort of, you know, on camera person, at this stage in my life, you know, I’m not young, I’m not shiny, I’m not skinny, I’m not any of those things. But this is true for so many of us in this world that we live in, where, you know, everything is about video and social media and all these things. How can people up their game in the way that they present themselves? Like, do you have some fast tips for people?

Absolutely. And I’m, we’re in alignment, 100%, we are all on camera. Now, we all have to be able to perform on video. And so, the phrase I like to use is we are all broadcasting, whether we want to or not, we are broadcasters. And so, you know, for me with a background in TV news, and also having been a litigator, you know, as a lawyer, it’s an easy, it’s an easy place for me to be, but it’s been a fun ride, helping a lot of other professionals figure out how to do it, because it really is about connecting over the camera. And so, the first tip I give to anyone, whether we’re talking about virtual communication, or hybrid communication, which is really even harder, is you’ve got to learn how to make eye contact. And so many folks still haven’t gotten this one down, they’re looking down here, they’re looking over there. But if you’re not looking at the camera, it doesn’t feel like a one-on-one conversation, which is, which is the huge benefit to virtual communication is that even when you’re communicating one to many, it feels like one on one to each person, if you look at the camera, and what we get from that is the power of the talking head. So, looking at you and looking at me right now, we’re talking heads. So, we get the perceived authority, confidence, whatever, because we’re all used to when we see people on video looking like we both do right now, we think they have authority, because we’ve been trained visually, over decades that this is what authorities look like. And so, there’s real benefit there. So, the first tip is, is eye contact. And the second one is to really speak to the audience that’s in front of you, even if they’re virtual, to have a real sense of who they are and what they’re interested in. And to imagine that you’re speaking to one person at a time, because then you’ll be a lot more engaging, and a lot more conversational.

And how do you figure out like, if you know, you’re talking to lots of people, how do you figure out who the one person is that you might be talking to?

So hopefully, we know who our audience is, we have some sense of who’s showing up, and, and the different core characters. So, we may have. So, for me, again, I work often with professional services, folks. So, if they go to an industry conference, they may have lawyers, accountants, scientists, and marketing people. And so, they have a sense of who’s there, they need to find a way to come at the topic in a way that’s useful to all of those people. And in particular, in that case, because professional services folks tend to talk about things that are very complex, I often recommend they start with an example. I’m talking about x issue today. Here’s how it comes up in the business world. And here’s why it matters to you whether you’re an accountant or this or that or the other. And so, what that does is it frames the issue in a way that’s approachable to everyone. And it signals right off the top that you’re a professional that gets who your audiences and that you’re going to make an effort to give value to everyone and not be the usual professional talks over everyone’s head and never even bothers to tell them why this issue matters to them?

What are you up to in your leadership? What are you experimenting with in your life and work right now?

Yes. So, I the core of my business is workshops. And so, I teach various communication skills mostly at larger law firms and other professional services companies. And I’ve done that for like you for 23 years. And I continue to do that. It’s the way it’s been morphing, of course, during the pandemic, I went from in person presentation skills and in person messaging and pitching to teaching virtual communication skills, so that that’s still happening, what’s really becoming more important now, and it’s important for all of us is hybrid, teaching people how to communicate effectively in a hybrid scenario. So of course, that’s where we’re virtual. But some of us are in person together. And I’ll tell you, it’s a lot harder than simply virtual, we thought virtual was tough, hybrid is much worse. And I believe that hybrid is our, it’s our present, and it’s our future, we will never go back to being all in person. Hybrid is tricky, because it means we need to connect as you and I are one on one directly. But also, we need to connect with folks, where we have some in person in a room and some virtual. And so, the main thing, the real takeaway there is that we need to make sure those who are joining virtual, are not being left out, because some of you are in person. And it’s harder than it sounds, you may have experienced it already, we ended up with, essentially, second class citizens, I remember telling a group of professional women, you know, we’ve worked so hard to get a seat at the table as women. And now all of a sudden, we’ve lost our seat at the table, if we happen to be virtual, because the folks in the room, ignore the folks who are virtual in many cases, and our voice isn’t heard. And so, it’s challenging. And I’d say the most important thing for you to do if you’re in the room together. And there are other people that are virtual, is make every possible effort to get their voice into the room, get their video into the room so that the folks in the room don’t forget about the virtual people, and even ask for their engagement. First, always ask for the virtual folks to ask questions to make comments. If it’s possible, have a person who’s in the room, be the voice of the folks who are virtual. So, monitor the chat. Say their questions out loud in the room as though they were present. These are the things so far that I’ve found are most effective and basically leveling that playing field again, now that we have this Hybrid communication.

I’ve been working with this idea of the hybrid for a long time, because in team coaching engagements, it’s been a problem for a long time, if one person doesn’t make it to the team event, what do you do with them, and it’s really challenging. To bring them in, I think technology with Zoom has gotten a lot better. But not good enough for you know, it’s almost like if there’s a table you need a spot with, you know, a device at each place for each person so that their head is big enough to take up space at the table. I must find that, you know, Zoom makes it much easier to give everybody space. If not, everyone can attend in person.

Yes, yes. And that’s the challenge. So again, I mostly do workshops at large law firms, and people are showing up in person. And so, they’ll have a hybrid workshop, you know, you can come in person, or you can join by zoom, just let us know. And they all say they’re coming in person, and then most of them don’t show or something is planned to be completely in person. And then suddenly a day before everybody asks, where’s the Zoom link? So, they assume that that virtual is an option. So, it’s really challenging. It’s a challenging planning issue. It’s challenging as a communication issue. It’s we’re definitely back on yet another cutting edge or bleeding edge of great change.

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I have heard about a leader who started bringing in really enticing snacks. Because you can’t say to someone, no you can only attend in person, but by bringing in really good snacks you sort of it sort of So that’s the idea that, oh, maybe you want to attend in person because the snacks are so good. When we think about leadership, and I know we’ve been talking about this, but what do we need to think about as leaders when we’re setting up these meetings? When we’re running these meetings? How do we think about it from how do we twist it? And think about it from the leadership perspective?

Well, for me, leadership, a big piece of that is, is connecting with your people. So, connecting, connecting with your audience, of course, to me, everybody’s an audience. And I always recommend that we try to do that before, during and after. So, if we think about maybe doing a presentation, to the entire firm, or doing a presentation to a certain group, to try to reach out to folks beforehand and say, what are your concerns? What are your interests? Where are you right now? Do you have experience along these issues or topics that we’re going to discuss that I can that I can speak to give me examples. And so, to reach out beforehand, maybe even to tee up folks who will ask questions or make comments, because as we know, in the virtual and hybrid world, it’s very hard to get engagement. And so, I think of all of us, you know, as leaders at every level, that allows us to have a better experience for the audience during our communication. And also, it allows us to take some control over the value that that’s presented in the communication and how connected people are. Because here’s the thing, if you take my number one tip for engagement, which is plant questions, you’re taking control so that people have a better experience. And it also helps you. And it allows the audience to be less uncomfortable in that presentation or meeting. It makes a huge difference. And then during Of course, looking at the chat, having someone else maybe glance at the chat, and ask questions by voice, it’s always great to have multiple voices. And that breaks up you as the leader doing a lot of talking or maybe going through a slide deck. And then afterward also engaging with people, encouraging people to engage with each other, if that’s appropriate in the in the company’s culture, for them to engage with each other during chat or in Slack or something like that. So that they’re connecting on the issues and getting to know each other.

I noticed our title is being boring and making mistakes. Can you speak to that?

So, the being boring piece of this is I mean, I remember doing a video about how lawyers cannot be boring, must have been 15 years ago, at least, the answer is still the same. It’s content and delivery. So, on the content side, you’ve got to know your audience, you need to always start with, here’s why this issue matters to you. Here’s the impact of this issue on you. We are people first we care about what affects us, rather than saying there’s a giant change in the tax code there at seven sections, section one looks like this, right? No one will listen, it no one because we don’t know why we care, right. So, make sure people understand why they care and what the effect is on them. That’s the first thing. The second thing is use examples. Don’t use big words, don’t talk over their head, talk like a regular businessperson. Unless your audience is such that, you know, they’re deep in the weeds, as we say in legal. And these terms are obvious and easy for them. But to really be accessible and make it practical make it useful. So that’s the content side, the delivery side of not being boring, which is usually what most of us think about is, again, if it’s virtually got to have the eye contact, and secondly, energy, right? Whether it’s virtual or in person, you have to have energy. So many of us because we’re nervous, or because we’re not dialed in to what we’re doing. We are very flat. And so, energy, especially virtually and in a hybrid way, energy is mostly about your voice. And so, if you’re good on the phone, you’re set. And what that means is conversational tone, a variation and pitch no Monotones allowed. And energy, right just like you and I are doing today, emphasize important words, really connect with people. And so, I know it’s a challenge if your topic is very complex, or if you find it personally boring, but you need to find a way as a communicator to connect with why the topic matters. And it could be just I know this is useful to my company. This is useful to the people on this call or listening to my speech. And so, you connect in an energy that equate with that. Or this makes a difference in our industry. And so, I care, but you’ve got to find a way to connect with the people you’re communicating with.

Well, I love that. And then what about the mistakes?

Yeah, well, most, a lot of the mistakes are this, these days, not making eye contact, being very flat, having things in the background that are moving around, not having lighting on your face. So, I talked about taking advantage of being a proper talking head. what that requires is decent lighting, people are watching us, they want to read our expression on camera, just as they would if we were in person. So, if they can’t see us clearly, or we’re way back here, we’ve lost, we’ve lost the ability to connect, we’ve lost the ability to have credibility.

I think it’s interesting that you say that lightnings the mistakes I think people in their heads think it’s going to be that they say the wrong thing, or they do the wrong thing, or, but I think you’re right, like I’m sneezing through this because I have a cold and it’s a live show, and I don’t cancel live shows. But that’s not the mistake. Like it’s, it’s but my lighting is good. You know, it’s yeah, it’s um, and so it’s, it’s funny, you know, it’s a funny thing. And if you don’t have a ring light, people get a ring light, they’re like $18, and they plug into your computer, like it doesn’t it’s this is not an expensive toy. To have. I mean, I turn it on, when I’m coaching. If my light goes bad in the room, because it’s a rainy day, I’ll turn on my ring light, like it’s just a good tool to add to your zoom.

And melody in all fairness, I mean, content is another piece. So, if we’re thinking about, you know, if we make mistakes in the moment, if we miss speak, preparation is crucial. You know, again, I deal with a lot of people that need to be quickly prepare, be on the spot be absolutely accurate. So, going into everything having sketched out, you know, your top three or four bullets, having anticipated, what might they asked me that I cannot answer because I’m not allowed to? Or it’s dangerous? And how will I bridge or pivot away from the question I can’t answer. What do I say when I don’t know, you know, those are all messaging, messaging issues, which we could do a whole other podcast on those and how to how to prepare quickly how to be concise. Because if bad lighting is a is a is a delivery problem, not being concise is the largest content problem people have.

And we’ve also got a comment about poor quality sound. And I think that’s also, if you don’t have good quality, sound fixture equipment, if you’re going to be doing something virtual, then you want to make sure you have good equipment, I used to have tech problems, I bought a brand new, you know, high end computer and all of my check problems went away overnight. So, if you know if you’re spending a lot of time with that, you can solve your problem, so that you don’t have those challenges.

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Yes. And the other thing too background noise one of the best ways to best ways to deal with that, like the dog, if you’re up for it to go ahead and I can’t reach it from here. But to wear a headset, I have a headset that covers both of my ears. It’s very low profile, though I don’t look like I’m about to launch the space shuttle. And it has a noise cancelling microphone that’s that comes out right here. And so, when I’m doing workshops, and it’s a Wednesday, I always use that because the yard guys come and they’re really loud. And so, I’m not distracted, and the audience isn’t distracted.

Well, where can people find you, Marsha?

Yes, it’s really easy. So, my name is Marsha, and they are SHA right. Not the Marcia Brady way the other way. And my website is www.marsha.com. You can email me marsha@marsha.com

That’s Marsha… Marsha… Marsha… Marsha.

Yeah. So, the first I heard there was this thing called the internet and that if you’ve got on it, you could buy your name. So that’s what I did the first time I got Oh, if only I bought lawyer.com or something…

I’ve been thinking about marsha.com is really fun. I love that. Yeah, it’s pretty well, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for being with us here today. It’s been such a pleasure.

Thank you, Melanie and it’s been it’s been a ride. I’ve enjoyed it very much.

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It has been so fun being here today with you. And I love thinking about, you know, how we experiment with virtual teams and how we get people, how we treat the people who are in our meetings virtually and how we give them voice. By pairing them with others. I think that’s a really great thing to experiment with, in order to create some equity, to create, to get their ideas into the room. I think it’s so easy to marginalize, just through technology because they’re in technology, they don’t get their ideas spoken so to have their ideas spoken by others. It’s a really cool thing to try. I’d love to challenge you to try amplifying the voices of virtual team members in meetings. Go experiment!

Important Links: 

Marsha Redmon

Marsha Redmon is the secret weapon elite law firms and lawyers have gone to for 20+ years to
have a more powerful presence when they speak. During COVID, she has become the go-to expert teaching professionals worldwide how to fix their virtual presence so they can speak with
confidence and engage powerfully – to win clients, have impact and own their niche.

Marsha is a former practicing attorney and award-winning TV journalist. The through-line in
her varied career is “there must be a better, faster way to do this.” With practical, hands-on
processes, she is the checklist and template queen. Her workshops teach lawyers and
executives the speaking skills and a fast-messaging process they need for effective Thought Leadership in every scenario: speeches, panels, pitches, media interviews, client summits.

Marsha practiced law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and was an award-winning consumer and
investigative reporter on television in major markets. She also taught Business
Communications to MBA students at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland.

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