EP62: Presenting to Senior Leaders: How to Cut Someone Off Without Being Rude
episode
Speaker Dynamics | Leadership, Communication & Public Speaking
10 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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How did Karin Reed’s live‑TV experience inspire the “paraphrase and pivot” technique?
When I worked in TV News early on, I did a morning show, which was incredibly painful from a circadian rhythm standpoint because I had to be in by 3 a.m., had to get up at 1:30 in the morning, and the morning show was like middle of the night show for me, or at least it felt that way. But during those newscasts and any newscast afterwards, I would wear something called an IFB, which is this little earpiece that allowed people in master control to talk to me as I was anchoring. So it might be the director, it might be the producer who would be giving directions, you know, drop page five, go live to City Hall, whatever it is. So we had a producer on this morning show who would get a little bit impatient and would sometimes give directions through that earpiece that were a little bit over the top.
And it was my job to appear calm, cool, and collected as I was receiving these instructions. So it'd be something like this. I'd be interviewing, you know, some public figure and the producer would say, Shut him up. And so at that point I would say, Well, thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. That's all the time we have today. Moving on. And then I go on to the next story. And what I realized is that really created the basis for a skill that I teach to my clients now, which I'm going to share with you in today's speaker tip spotlight. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Karen Reed. I'm a four-time author, Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist, and communication expert on helping people to own the room, whether it be a physical one or a virtual one.
Welcome to Speaker Dynamics.
So that story I just shared with you is actually the basis for one of the things that I think is a critical skill that you can apply in many different scenarios. It's called paraphrase and pivot.
What exactly is the “paraphrase and pivot” method and when should you use it?
So the two different ways that I would apply it today would be if you are, for example, moderating a panel discussion. Or if you are presenting up. It also could be applied if you are just running a meeting. So I'll I'll leave it to you to figure out ways that you can apply this skill. But let me explain what it is. And maybe it's best to do it it within like a real life scenario. So paraphrase and pivot allows you to basically cut off the monologuer. And then move forward with what you wanted to do in that meeting, in that presentation, whatever it is. Let's let's do it from the standpoint of you're in a meeting and let's say you're presenting up. And you have an executive who decides to go in a completely different direction by asking you a question and then giving their take on something that you had not planned to talk about.
And they start really, really getting into it and going deeper and deeper and deeper. And if you've ever been in a situation where you're presenting in front of senior leaders, you know time is short. And they are eating up all that precious time on something that they care about, but probably nobody else in the room cares about. So what do you do? Do you just like sit there hoping that they'll shut up at some point? Well, you could, but then you get to the end of your time and you haven't accomplished your goal because presumably you're there to deliver a message of value that they can then make a business decision on. So what I would suggest to you is using paraphrase and pivot, which means, okay, so say that this senior leader is talking, talking, talking, talking as soon as there is just a smidge of air, like they have to at some point take
Taking a breath. I would be cutting in and saying, you know, that is a really excellent point. What I'm hearing you say is that XYZ.
How can you apply paraphrase and pivot when an executive hijacks your presentation?
And we're actually going to be talking about that in a couple of slides later. So let me continue on. And then at that point, you just continue with the story that you want to tell. Because here's the thing: you know, you can't let them take control of that conversation because you have a job to do, and you have to make sure that you You get through your message in its entirety. Now it may not be exactly the way you had planned, but whenever somebody you know makes a comment, asks a question that you had not planned on having come into the dialogue whatsoever, you might think, okay, this is the time when I need to just completely stop what I was doing and take a left turn.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
How did Karin Reed’s live‑TV experience inspire the “paraphrase and pivot” technique?
0:00–1:58
2
What exactly is the “paraphrase and pivot” method and when should you use it?
1:58–3:46
3
How can you apply paraphrase and pivot when an executive hijacks your presentation?
3:46–5:45
4
What phrasing lets you acknowledge a senior leader’s point without losing control of the agenda?
5:45–7:34
5
How do you use paraphrase and pivot to keep a panel discussion on track?
7:34–9:02
6
What steps help you prepare a panel so the “talk‑the‑talk” person doesn’t dominate?
9:02–10:00
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Speaker Dynamics | Leadership, Communication & Public Speaking
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