Key takeaways from analyzing 100,000 presentations
Students in my strategic communication class often ask how they can become more engaging, competent communicators. This question is in no way new — rhetoricians dating back to the ancient Greeks have explored this issue. However, unlike Cicero and Aristotle, we now have big data tools and machine-learning techniques to examine the core characteristics of effective communicators.
One person leveraging this technology (and one of my most popular guest lecturers) is Noah Zandan, founder and CEO of Quantified Communications, which offers one of the first analytics platforms to measure, evaluate, and improve corporate executives’ communication skills.
Zandan’s team of data scientists analyzed more than 100,000 presentations from corporate executives, politicians, and keynote speakers. They examined behaviors ranging from word choices and vocal cues to facial expressions and gesture frequency. They then used this data to rate and rank important communication variables such as persuasiveness, confidence, warmth, and clarity.
Zandan grounds his team’s work in a communication scheme created by psychologist Albert Mehrabian. They expand upon Mehrabian’s original “Three V’s” — the verbal, vocal, and visual choices that a communicator makes — by adding a fourth V: the vital elements of communication.
Here’s what his team has learned through studying the best communicators, combined with concepts I cover in class:
Verbal
The actual words you use, whether spoken or written, matter. Zandan and his team found that the language used in corporate earnings calls affects up to 2.5% of stock price movement. Based on data from the most successful communicators, here are three things to keep in mind.
Visual
Visual elements refer to what you do with your body. Zandan cites studies by educational researchers that suggest approximately 83% of human learning occurs visually.Your nonverbal behaviors such as stance, gestures, and eye contact are critical not only for conveying and reinforcing your messages, but they serve as the foundation of your audience’s assessments of your confidence. This is important because your audience equates your competence with their perceptions of your confidence.
This piece originally appeared in Stanford Business Insights from Stanford Graduate School of Business. To receive business ideas and insights from Stanford GSB click here: (To sign up: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/about/emails)