YOU Are the Message!

The Power of Authentic Speaking

Robert Rabbin

Are You for Real?
I can think of nothing more essential, more urgent, more compelling for business executives and students of business and management than this: Learn to speak in public with authenticity.

Why? What’s at stake? Your soul. The vitality and future of your organization. The fate of the world. If you can speak authentically, you will bring untold blessings to yourself, your organization and its network of stakeholders, your family and friends, your community—the Earth herself will be glad!

Jimmy Cagney, the actor famed for his tough guy roles, pointed toward authentic public speaking when he offered a novice actor this essential teaching: “It's simple. You walk in the room, plant your feet, look me in the eye, and tell the truth.”1

Can you do that? It is more difficult than you might think.

I define public speaking as “speaking with anyone other than yourself, regardless of numbers, venue, or purpose.” Do not confuse public speaking with lecturing or giving keynotes. Those are different types of public speaking. Everyone is a public speaker; YOU are a public speaker! Speaking itself is more than the words that come out of our mouths and more than the nonverbal signals of meaning and intent we transmit. Speaking is how we move in and through life. Our speaking tells the story of who we are and how we live. If we are to live a true life, a vibrant and vivid life, then our speaking will reveal, rather than conceal, our heart—the truth of who we are, what we are doing, and what we stand for.

At the end of one of her poems, Mary Oliver asks what it is we intend to do with our “wild and precious life.”2 If we take this question deep inside to the very depths, then our answer lies in our speaking. Our speaking represents the truth of how we live—or how we do not live—moment to moment in the here and now, without any spin or hype. Deep speaking reveals the self, unwrapped from rationalizations, justifications, and all the reasons why. Not the mundane self, not the blah blah blah self, but the primordial self, the pristine essence with a spine so strong that it stands as the axis of the world.

The question is, do you speak this way? Does anyone? Do you know what this sounds like?

As public speakers, our first task is to tell our audience, the person or people with whom we are speaking, that we are for real. They want to know this one thing above all else, and they want to know it up front, immediately, before they are even willing to listen to what we have to say. They want to know if we are for real.

They want to know if you are a real human being who is going to speak the truth, who is going to speak with transparency and integrity, with authenticity and vulnerability, Are you for real?

They may not agree with your message or point of view. They may not be persuaded to do what you want them to do, but they will not even get to these considerations if they do not think you are for real. We, as speakers, have got to be real, authentic, transparent. For their sake. For our sake. We must tell the truth. The deep truth.

Hide and Seek
Being an authentic speaker is not a matter of content or technique or rote behaviors or scripted actions. As far as I know, there is no precise prescription, no “how to” manual, no one-size-fits-all recipe for authenticity. In an interview with Larry King, master chef Julia Child suggested that real chefs don't need recipes, they just need to know the principles of cooking. If you need recipes, you’ll never be a chef. In the same way, you cannot become a credible, inspiring, compelling public speaker, which is to say a truth-teller, by following a recipe or imitating someone else, or by raising your hand just so when you say just this.

Do not look for a model or precedent. It does not matter who else has done it, is doing it, or will do it. Maybe no one ever has. The principles of authenticity, however, are universal: intimacy, vulnerability, and connection, as well as courage, truth, spirit, passion. Authenticity means to meet people without a hiding mask, without a disguising role.

Authenticity is predicated on vulnerability, honesty, empathy, transparency, and love. A telling distinction must be made between those who speak about authenticity, compared to those who speak from authenticity. It may not be easy to speak from this place, but the willingness to do so is what will get you there. It means to speak from your depth, from the place where words are almost superfluous, where the truest speaking is the silent presentation of you.

Many of the business leaders I have coached find it difficult to embody my defining dictum of authenticity: YOU are the message. I ask them to speak, to lead, with themselves out front, but they would rather speak and lead with their title, their knowledge, their accomplishments, their plans, their forecasts and charts, their net worth, their positional power. In essence, they want to hide. Yet when the X-ray machine is scanning for their true heart, or their soul, what do we see?

I was once invited by the president of a company to listen to his keynote address to an international conference. The room was big and full, eight to 10 people per round table, maybe 50 tables. He stood to one side on the elevated stage that ran the width of the room. Of course, two imposing screens, one on each end of the stage, were unfurled like white flags waiting to be emblazoned. And then they were—with slide after illegible slide. Even if I had been a speed-reader, I would not have gotten through the slides. There were charts and diagrams and bullet points and excerpts and quotes and flowing things and arrows going this way and back, and that way and hey, now look here this is important and you really need to get this, and while you’re at it remember this because see these famous guys said it was so, and now we’ll go on to the next slide and I do hope you’re really getting all this and remembering it and integrating it into your consciousness and connecting it to your experience and frame of reference and, oops, I think I need to go back one or two, and now let’s jump ahead to something you’ll really like and be able to use—if you’re still breathing and conscious.

When his talk was mercifully over, he invited me to have a drink with him in the lounge. We sat down at a small round table, and he asked, “So, what did you think?”

I was silent, weighing several options.

He said, “It’s okay, I want you to tell me the truth. I want to know what you think.”

I was waiting for that invitation. I said, “I really enjoyed that bit when you spoke about your values and why you do what you do, about the love you have for your family. I thought that was very revealing and refreshing. It lasted for about 30 seconds, and it came at the 42-minute mark. By my reckoning, you had 30 seconds of authenticity in a 70-minute talk.” I spoke a bit about the mind-numbing complexity of his slide-show jumble and how no human being could possibly assimilate any of the information in a useful way.

Then I was silent.

So was he.

Finally, he said, “I don’t like you. And I don’t like what you just said. But I know that I need to hear you. I know that you are right.”

I told him I thought he was hiding behind his slides and information. I asked him why he did not show up as a human being and say, “Here I am. Please see me. Please hear me. This is who I am and this is what I stand for.”

In business, much of our speaking is really a hiding. We speak like newsreaders at their evening desks in TV world. No one is home! We hide our selves behind neutral masks, speaking neutered words. This is not speaking. This is not communicating. This is not connecting. Giving out information, reading a script, pointing to slides—these are not speaking, not communicating, any more than random pressure on the inner ear is music. It is just hiding and pretense. It is a sham.

I do appreciate the value of information, especially information carefully gathered and clearly presented. It is important; in some cases, vital. But slides do not have eyes, and information does not have flesh, or feeling, or empathy. Information does not have love or a soul. People have these things.

Where are the people?

Why do we hide?

Why don’t we speak authentically?

Not Good Enough
When we stand in front of others, we are exposing ourselves completely. This total vulnerability triggers every one of our insecurities and fears, especially the fear of not being good enough. I am not talking about being good enough to speak well; I mean good enough as a human being. We fear being the one that some celestial quality- control angel will point to and say, “Not good enough!”

We hide because we are afraid that if we are seen, we will not be good enough.

Almost everyone who comes to my RealTime Speaking workshops is afraid to stand in public and speak their truth. To speak our truth means to show ourselves, not our “knowing.” It means showing the fingerprint of our soul, not all the red tape we have accumulated in the form of experiences, ideas, and beliefs. It means being willing to be seen by people without defense or pretense, without fear of their criticism and judgment, without hiding.

I ask people at my workshops to show themselves to others without masks and roles, without prepared texts or PowerPoint presentations. Until we can do this, our fear of being seen and judged as not good enough will rule us and run us from dawn to dusk and all night long. Until we can do this, we cannot really live authentic lives.

One of the most challenging exercises for participants in my workshops is the one in which I ask them to stand before the group without saying anything. I ask them only to see and be seen; to connect with each person in the audience, in turn, with their eyes, with their hearts. I ask them to notice any tendency to hide, to retreat, to cover themselves. I ask them to notice any feeling of contraction or tension. I ask them to breathe, to open, to say nothing. To just be present with themselves and others. To see the audience and let the audience see them. To let people in.

Most want to run away. People want to laugh, to joke, to hold their hands tightly, to look away, to clench their jaws. One teacher kept turning around, wanting to write something on an imaginary blackboard. Another kept shifting from one foot to the other. Some say they want to sit down. It is difficult. People have a hard time connecting.

Most of the ills of our world are from a lack of real connection. We meet each other, yes, but we meet behind layers of protection. In other words, we hide, for safety’s sake. Not only do we hide from each other, but also we hide from ourselves. Our communication, our public speaking, is a lie. It presents who we think we should be rather than who we really are.

I am not suggesting that we disclose the minutiae of our life indiscriminately. I am talking about revealing that thing in us that other people can trust.

Years ago, I did enough rock climbing to know that when it came time to pick a belay partner, the person to whom you were entrusting your life, I chose based on that thing in them that I could trust, their inner character that I knew would not betray the trust I was placing in them. I needed to see and feel something from their core that would match, “I’ve got you. Climb away.” If I did not see it, if I did not feel it, well, no thanks.

It is no different with public speaking, which should first and before all else reveal our inner character, motives, intentions, commitments. Our authentic speaking tells the truth of who we are with everything on the line.

Another word for this is “credibility.” If our audience does not immediately find us credible, they will not allow us to influence them. The widespread notion that credibility comes from the content of our presentation is incorrect. Credibility in public speaking comes directly from the quality of our authentic connection, from the degree to which our speaking reveals, rather than conceals, our true self and character, motive and purpose, heart and soul. People want to know, and trust, us. That is why we get up to speak with people, to show who we are. If we are only going to be tour guides for a PowerPoint presentation, we should stay home. When people come to see us, to hear us, then we should show them us.

Authentic Connection
Many business people confuse information with communication. Sydney J. Harris, an American journalist and author, sets us straight: “The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.”4 Getting through requires authentic connection.

Authentic connection means touching your audience by speaking from your heart to theirs, in a simple, direct manner. You look in their eyes and you tell the truth. Authentic connection has a precise formula:

Authentic Connection = Intimacy with Self + Vulnerability with Others

Intimacy with self implies a willingness and capacity to know ourselves from the inside out, deeply; to excavate through layers of repression, other people’s ideas and beliefs, fears and inhibitions to a dynamic place of genuine enthusiasm for life. There is a depth within each of us that connects us, as individuals, to the whole; not just to others, but to all of nature, to the earth, to the cosmos. When we can open ourselves to this depth, then we can receive what is already there, within us, waiting to be expressed. This is how we become most fully our unique self while being most fully connected to others and to life.

Vulnerability with others implies a willingness and capacity to see and be seen; to stand in front of others, fully seeing them and allowing them to see us, without putting up masks or barriers behind which to hide or distort our genuine presence. Vulnerability is risky business, at best. We scarcely open ourselves all the way with our spouse or partner, so how in the world can we do this in front of people we do not know, maybe hundreds of them? I know we can because I have seen it happen, many times.

It is this quality of establishing a connection with ourselves and our audience that creates the channels through which communication—distinct from information—is transmitted. It is a matter of embodying our message rather than presenting information.

A day does not pass that some scandal of corruption, fraud, or deception does not make the front page of a newspaper—government officials, corporate executives, spiritual leaders, celebrities, sports figures. Even the Catholic Church is not immune, paying out more than $1 billion in penalties for not speaking authentically. I want to set things straight: We are not victims in this. The light is always on. What people do is always visible. Maybe someone is not telling the truth, but, then again, maybe we are not listening for the truth. Their lies reflect and mirror ours.

Yet if we really want to, we can see with our light into the darkness that others may use to cloak and camouflage their speaking. As we begin to speak authentically and transparently, we begin to listen in the same way. This is how we begin to see who else speaks authentically, and who does not. But we have got to go first. We need to learn how to show who we are, from way down deep. We need to tell the truth. Then we will be able to know who else is doing it. Once we get used to telling the truth, to living and speaking authentically, then we get used to discerning the truth.

Speaking from the Heart
In my workshops I assign all kinds of talk topics. Somewhere around the halfway mark, I almost always say, “Give a three-minute talk beginning with the line, ‘What I love most in the world is…’ ” If people start too fast, or if I think they are too much in their heads, I stop them. “Saturate each word with the feeling of love. Don’t describe, demonstrate. Feel it. Show it. If tears come, let them come. If your feelings overwhelm you, if you can’t speak because of the emotion, then stand there without speaking, and just show us the emotion.”

Sometimes I will tell a story or two of times when I have sat on a stage in front of hundreds of people and cried. I am not telling them to do this, or even saying that they should, but I am saying that our true emotions are a part of our speaking. We do not have to bury these feelings, or be afraid of them, or manage them. We do not have to fear them. We can let them be a part of our speaking.

It never fails. When people begin to go deeper, their talks become dramatically different from their first attempts. Something happens to them when they share their connection to someone or something they love. Their faces are brighter, their rates of speech slow down, the quality of their connection is vastly stronger. They stop hiding. They become, in a word, real. They become present. They become beautiful and inspiring speakers.

I emphasize the importance of speaking from the heart. I want people to see for themselves that when they settle into themselves and talk about things that matter to them, when they open their hearts to the audience, when they are unafraid of deeply feeling and showing the emotion of “what I love,” it is transformative. I want them to see what happens when they speak from their hearts.

There is an intoxicating freedom and power in this realization that we do not have to fear our hearts. We can only speak from the heart if we know our heart. If we know our heart and speak our heart, we elevate and beautify our speaking beyond any technique or skill.

In this elevation of our speaking, something magical, almost unbelievable, happens in us and in our audience. Please find out what that is. It is awesome. You will be amazed.

(This essay is included in a collection of best practice essays for business executives and university students entitled The Workplace and Spirituality: New Perspectives on Research and Practice, edited by Dr. Joan Marques, Dr. Satinder Dhiman, and Dr. Richard King, published by Skylight Paths.)