Gravitas redux

I only wrote yesterday about gravitas. But here's a simple exercise you can try in your own workplace.

Ask a colleague to monitor your speech during a meeting together. Get him or her to listen out for any annoying habits such as 'ums' or 'ers' and to write down how many times you use them. I remember years ago one colleague pointing out that I used the phrase 'you know' about a dozen times in a one-hour meeting. I was mortified! But I was also glad that she told me so I could clean my act up.

Look out also for using words such as 'probably', 'hopefully', and maybe' - as these words make you seem like you lack conviction.

Another technique for stamping out irritating phrases or other bad speech habits is to get a colleague to make some subtle signal every time you use one - such as tapping their pencil on the table or touching a finger to the side of their face. It can be quite vicious, but it works! So ask a colleague tomorrow to monitor you to identify what your speech bad habit is - and get them to point it out until you have eliminated it.

Projecting gravitas

I just received the page proofs back from the publisher for the next book of mine - The Rules of Entrepreneurship. The book is coming out over the summer, so that's only a few months away.

Anyway, I was editing the editors' suggested changes and I was reading the section on how to persuade investors to give you their money. I'm making the argument that it's not just what you put into your business plan but whether people trust you to deliver on it. So I'm talking about stuff like presence and gravitas. Which I think applies to everyone - whether you are looking to get funding from an investor, a job from an interviewer, or a promotion from your boss. And I came across an interesting quote that I thought made a point quite nicely.

British actor and Hollywood star Sir Michael Caine once observed rather brilliantly in an interview:

The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly – because if they don’t speak fast nobody will listen to them.

Might be interesting for you the next time you're in a meeting to spot who speaks quickly and who speaks slowly.

More importantly, are you a fast speaker or a slow speaker? And which do you think you should be?