Nonverbal Communication

October 30, 2009 by Jerry

nonverbal_communication

Major newspapers, along with countless other print publications, have been focused on what is rapidly becoming their chief competition—and perhaps successor—electronic communication; and especially electronic social networking. Text messages, emails, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, while lacking the organizational breadth and professional depth of newspapers, have clearly encroached on print territory.

One of the major side effects of this cultural change is in the area of interpersonal communication and, particularly among young people. A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues,” focused on these dynamics. We’ll give you our views on the subject from two angles: today’s post from a presentation point of view and the next from the Gen-Y point of view.

The article describes “a culture where young people—outfitted with iPhone and laptop and devoting hours every evening from age 10 onward to messaging of one kind and another” have resulted in a “text-dependent world” in which “nearly all of their communication tools involve the exchange of written words alone.”

This may be all well and good among socializing Gen-Yers, but it won’t fly in business. The single most important factor in making business decisions is how people communicate face-to-face. In every business exchange, there are always two sides: the solicitor, a person in search of an objective—a sale, an investment, a partnership, or a project approval—and the solicited, a person who can approve or reject the solicitor’s objective. From the most basic business exchange—a job interview—to the most challenging—an investment—the ultimate decision is always based on how well the solicitor communicates his or her message to the solicited interpersonally.

The most telling example of this dynamic is in the investment arena, and it occurs at the interface between interpersonal and internet communications. When a company decides to sell shares to the public for the first time, they file a formal Initial Public Offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. An important adjunct to the offering is a road show, a presentation that the company’s senior management travels to deliver in more than a dozen cities, presenting 6 to 8 times a day for a total of anywhere from 70 to 90 iterations, all within two intense weeks.

Since 2005, all IPO road shows are now recorded and posted on a website called retailroadshow.com. Anyone with a browser can view any company’s archived presentation displayed in a split screen; one side shows a video of the senior managers presenting, and the other side their slide show. Despite this universal accessibility, offering companies still send their senior management out on the road for those two intense weeks to deliver those 70 to 90 iterations, just as they did before retailroadshow.com came into being.

The reason for this grueling tour is that no investor will make a decision to buy millions of dollars of stock (as are most such IPO orders) based on a canned presentation alone. Investors want to meet the senior executives in person, press the flesh, look them in the eye, and interact with them directly.

As you read in our news item a couple of weeks ago, I was privileged to coach the IPO road show of a Massachusetts technology company called A123Systems. Before the tour, the investment bankers expected to price the offering somewhere between $8 and $9.50 a share; after the road show, they priced the shares at $13.50, for a total deal value of $380 million. At the end of the first day of trading, shares were at $20.29.

Dave Vieau, the A123 Systems CEO, and Mike Rubino, the company’s CFO did their full two weeks on the road, meeting the investors in person, pressing the flesh, looking them in the eye, and interacting with them directly.

Person-to-person counts big time in the Big Time…and every time you present.

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