Full Transcript for Stop Performing Confidence with Ann Keil Dux

The temptation is to overcorrect, to overpolish, to try to look a version of yourself you think the camera wants. What I've come to believe is that leaders who translate well to camera are not the ones with the most technique. They are the ones who can hold on to themselves when the light comes on. And that comes from the same inner work as any other high-stakes moment. My guest today is Ann Keel Ducks. Anna is an Emmy Award winning journalist, turned executive presence coach, and founder of Dux Communications. She works with executives, founders, and senior leaders. On how they show up in moments that count most, from high-stakes presentations to on-camera performance, and to the everyday communication that shapes how a leader is perceived. Her approach draws on her background in investigative journalism, her training as a certified executive coach, and her work as an EQI and EQ 360 practitioner. She holds a global executive MBA from the University of Miami. along with degrees in journalism and public affairs from Boston University and American University. Please welcome Anne to Still Evolving. Let's get to it. And welcome to Still Evolving. Grateful for you and the opportunity to have you on the show. speaker-0: Lovely to feed here, thank you. speaker-1: I am very excited to learn from you and to ask you more around really when we talk about communication and people finding their voice, you'll hear that that language used a lot, right? And I I help people show up in their moments that matter. So oftentimes that is with communication and using their voice. so talk to me a little bit about your work, perhaps your journey, and how the inner work really has. has to come first and knowing your voice and being able to communicate so effectively. speaker-0: Absolutely. We all want to be more confident people, more confident communicators. But what we often don't realize, and this is something I also didn't realize, is that confidence is the output. The hard work, the repetition, the learning is the input. So when I have professionals come to me and say, I really want to be at the level that I am in terms of public speaking, I want to meet Where my specialty is. And I said, well, I'm happy to help you. But you don't start with the top 10 tips and tricks to become a better public speaker. My perspective is that we really want to improve instead access to yourself. I think most people, I really think all people, but most people are good speakers, solid speakers, but we get in our own way. So the work that needs to be done is teaching people how to better access themselves when they're in high pressure situations. For me, it's high pressure communication moments. That could mean a huge speech in front of thousands of people. It could also be an intimate conversation with your boss when you're asking for a raise. Whatever brings that stress up, those are the moments where we lose track of ourselves, we lose track of our passion. we lose track of our expertise. And so really connecting those dots is the work that I do and is the work that we can all do. So make sure that we're better communicators, not at that next pitch or not at the next meeting, but consistently long term. speaker-1: I love it. There's so much intersection there. As I help people show up in their moments that matter. As a performance psychologist, I really highlight the tools of composure, clarity, the ability to connect as well as take that courageous action. When you talk about helping communicators, helping those who are perhaps giving that pitch or that keynote or even having that intimate conversation, communicate authentically. Authentically and effectively. What have you found that has helped those people make the shifts needed so that they can be their best self? So they can come across and perhaps communicate or perform authentically? Like what helps them move in the behavior change process to be able to adapt? adopt those new skills and and certainly ideally we'll then rehearse them more frequently as you t said, become more consistent. speaker-0: I think the road to becoming a great speaker is not as long as we think. It's not as big a hurdle as we think it is. So I think number one is recognizing that we already have some of the guts. We already are enough. Our experiences, our expertise, the blood, sweat, and tears we put into becoming the professionals that we are, the leaders that we are, they're inside of us. We just need figure out how to better communicate or to communicate those to others. And also how you're then communicating it differently to the different audiences that you communicate with, and also being able to communicate it in today's world on multiple platforms on and off camera, virtual presentation, content creation. And can you do that in 30 seconds? Can you do that in three minutes? So that's where you start to build that structure around being able to effectively communicate who you are in those moments. And I think tapping into the raw moments in your life, some of the difficult ones and some of the big wins, whatever that is for you, those moments where you just had to take a moment to say, What am I doing here? Or why is this important? Those are gems that I want people to share on a regular basis. Weave that into the numbers and the graphics and the data and the deadlines. speaker-1: That's the you, right? The emotional experience. You speaker-0: Absolutely. Absolutely. speaker-1: mentioned the challenge now, and and if I'm being fully transparent, you mentioned with a different medium of communication, intimate conversation on a stage with an auditorium, or nowadays in front of the camera. I'm a Gen Xer, I didn't grow up with this thing floating around. much less turning it towards myself and and and talking in it or or taking a picture or a video. Talk to me about helping people communicate more effectively in this virtual medium. So perhaps maybe you're on a Zoom, or maybe you are

maybe not looking to be the next huge influencer, but do have a need to put video content out. because that's That's all that's out there now. That's how we're talking now. Right. How do you help someone like me, that Gen Xer who loves to be conversational? I can kick it with you, but you know, now are the days where it's like sixty seconds or less. speaker-0: Yes, I know those deadlines. Well, I laugh because I spent much of my career as a journalist live on television, breaking news, investigative reporting. And I was on television at a time where you won not many people were on camera. And so nowadays everyone else is in my same boat. Seconds matter. It's not about minutes or weeks or that month deadline. We're all in a world of seconds. We're all on camera. We're all looking at ourselves more often. And that's a lot of pressure. It's not necessarily something that should feel normal, especially for us older folks. And but we don't want it to keep us behind or limit us. We all communicate differently, naturally, with different audiences and different situations. You are not the exact same communicator from one moment to the next. some of us are tend to be more shy, some of us tend to be more outspoken, some of us are very different in personal versus professional settings. Knowing that about yourself, really digging deeper into the emotional intelligence arena, and I offer an EQI assessment that really helps people better understand what are they, where are they on that spectrum as it relates to self-expression as well as self-awareness? What happens when the pressure really starts to increase? And so what's important to know is who we are at the ground level. I think all of us are. This big bat of soup. And I think about my mom is a great cook. And I think about sometimes she'd go into the refrigerator when we were young and she'd just pick out different ingredients and put something together and it was beautiful and it was amazing. how did you figure out there was no measuring cup, there's nothing there? We're all that beautiful pot of soup. We all have bits and pieces and different amounts of this or that that make us special. We need to lean into In marketing language, our UVP, our unique value proposition. The same way that we decide we're gonna buy this iPhone because we don't want that other phone instead. We need to highlight our inner iPhone. We need to figure out what is different about ourselves and be able to communicate that effectively. You can win in any situation if you pull out the most human version of yourself. Many of us older people were taught separate your personal and your professional. Don't bring too much emotions to the table. What I'm suggesting is not pure raw emotion, but what I'm suggesting is human, that most human parts of yourself, the things that make you special, your special sauce, your UVP, whatever you want to call it, I want them to bring more of that to the table. And if you do that, you connect with other humans because no one wants to be marketed to. speaker-1: So you mentioned the role of video. I I had an experience where I get called f couple years back from a professional sport organization and they wanted to talk to me about a sports psychology psychologist position in their organization. And I I mean I'll talk to anyone, you know, I ness I wasn't necessarily looking for a job then, but I was intrigued and I'm certainly welcome. Building a relationship and and and learning from them. So what I thought was going to be, and how this has typically happened in the past, I've been called from other organizations. It's just very collegial, right? Maybe a phone call, maybe like a FaceTime or Zoom, brief, you know, usually 15, 20 minutes of a conversation where it was just that initial introduction. Talking about their need, what ideas I had, would I be interested? If not, would there be other people in my network that I would recommend, et cetera? What ended up happening is I I received an email saying, We're we're so glad you're interested in talking more with about this position. here's the portal to to share back. And what it was was a one way video interview. Is essentially what it was. There was no conversation, right? And I was like, huh. Admittedly, I at this point, even before recording, I knew this was not going to be my vibe. It's not going to be my fit. but I went through it because I'd never seen something like this before. And maybe I'm showing my age. Maybe maybe these these video HR selection tools are are very prominently used. I had never done it. So I went through it. I was horrible. Absolutely horrible. So, how it went, the platform gave me my one question. I had I was on the clock to prepare my answer. Then the video started recording. I had only a couple minutes to share back my response, my thoughts on this question, and then it recycled. And I don't remember how many questions there were. Three, five. I don't know. I sucked. I mean, I even if I was interested in this, there's no way in hell I would have moved on. No way. Now, the questions they were asking me, if we were in conversation, even if we were on Zoom. I would have responded so differently. I have no doubt that I would have made a connection. I would have shared back not just kind of my recommendations and how I would, quote, solve a problem, but more significantly my experiential journey and how I had had built programs or executed X, Y, and Z previously. And that human component that you mentioned being so impactful, I would have had no problem. executing in person or even on Zoom. The one-way, the one-sided aspect of this platform, not to mention the the hitting recording, immediately changed the game for me. And I I'm telling you, I pray to God that that is not safe in some database. Like that just needs to go poof because it was really bad. so I'm curious in your work Or or in your experience, what is the meaning or what is the impact of hitting record?

Right? I'm recording now. I think this is like a longer, this is a 30-minute conversation, 20-minute conversation. certainly it's something I've been doing for a while now. So I have some reps, right? What w how do you make sense of it? Yes. The record button. speaker-0: That little red light is shocking and all of a sudden we go. And I and I laugh at your moment with kindness because the first time I went live on television, I blacked out. I was on top of a mountain. There was a helicopter crash. I was in East Tennessee that I had just moved to. week or so before, I realized in the middle of my live shot that I couldn't remember where I was and who the anchors were that I was tossing back to. And it was raining and the weather was horrendous. And I had been writing beautifully after talking to the police chief all an important information. And guess what? All of that blue ink just blurred away. And I ended my live shot saying, thank you. And I just paused. And again I hope it doesn't exist somewhere the world. It might. It might. Thousands of people did see it that night many, many moons ago. but we all have those moments. And so I share this because I don't do what I do because I started off great at it. I was incredibly shy, but I love journalism and I love people and I love community and I love knowing what's going on behind the scenes. And I landed there and I said, what am I going to do with this? Sometimes being uncomfortable teaches us how to be the better version of s of ourselves sooner. And what a beautiful thing is that. The camera is shocking. And anything else, they say with riding a bicycle, more experience doing it allows you to become more comfortable. Of course, there are tips, tricks, and techniques that are incredibly helpful. Technical in in mind, of course, when it comes to virtual or even being on camera for content creation or an interview like that. There are technical things when it comes to body language that needs to look a bit different than it does when you're in person. Also, your spacing, your headroom. Lighting, things like that are distractions in those in those spaces. And so we need to move those out of the way so we can be the best version of ourselves. We've talked about being human as well. But to your point, I think that many people are uncomfortable being on camera, even if we're on it more often today. Sometimes it's worse when we're looking into that lens and we're supposed to pretend there's a person there. other times we're getting grilled by the media on something, so we don't have to make eye contact with the camera, but we're looking over here instead. it is difficult, but it is possible to figure out how to manage. And number one in those moments is to take a deep breath. I'm a big believer in box breathing, and I know you're in this arena as well. there are different breathing techniques that we can use for a few seconds or a few minutes before anything that causes us to feel that high pressure, where our face gets red, where we're start Chest breathe, shallow breathing. And if we can just bring our parasympathetic nervous system down, we're down here now. So no matter how much excitement or anxiety we feel, we're only gonna go up to here, not over our head and feel like we're drowning. And so if it's on camera that makes you uncomfortable and you're great in person, work on some of that breathing ahead of time. This is something you can train on your own or with experts. But it really does make a difference. And this is again one of those things that I say it's already in your toolbox. There's so many things about ourselves that we already have. We don't need more from the outside. It's already inside ourselves. We just need to give ourselves some time to invest in that inner working that makes a real impact on the outside. speaker-1: So I appreciate the certainly the the the tools that you can use to maintain composure, right? And certainly you mentioned the arousal level spiking, clouds your words, certainly your thoughts. You mentioned your your mind going blank and even saying something like thank you at the end of the broadcast. I wanna shift also not just to the medium, but nowadays People are having to perform on camera. And and you were talking about showing up as yourself, as, but where do you see people? What's the trap to perform for the algorithm? Because people, you know, it used to be SEO was the language, right? And everybody was talking about like how what you're writing, what the content is on your site or or in a post. But what do you see? Can you spot it like a mile away when you see people just showing up as a chameleon versus just being them and conveying certainly their knowledge or even sharing on their skills and abilities very authentically. speaker-0: Yes. We tend to perform confidence. Fake it till you make it, right? These ideas. So we think I'm in this situation, I authentically want to be the best version of myself in that moment. But what happens in that moment, if I'm not prepared in the right way, is I'm performing confidence. And as the listener on the other side, as the viewer on the other side, They're going to feel that. There's going to be some sort of, I mean, maybe it's a thin veil or maybe it's a wall. There's going to be something that doesn't feel natural. There's going to be something that prevents that connective feel. Again, going back to that human level of you just can feel this person across the room from you. You can still feel someone through a camera as well. You don't have to be the person to have that kind of experience. And so when we perform confidence, which is well, we don't have tools, we just make it work. And I've done it a million times. I did that early in my career for years until I realized, interestingly enough, when I was in the breaking news situation, something changed. I didn't have a script. Something went terribly wrong. And I was the Ross version of myself where I

had pull myself out of myself in a way and out of my head and all those questions and a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. I connected with more people. I got more reaction, showing off some of my raw edges, showing off some of my imperfections. I think the best speakers, we talk about the best speakers, are actually speakers that do funny things, do interesting things when they're communicating. I don't think following perfection or aiming for no filler words and no run-ons and no any of this. That no list constrains us. And it prevents us from being ourselves. So I think number one, getting rid of that theory that we need to be someone that we may or may not be in that moment is the first check. and what we need to look towards, and we've talked about emotions. And and my end goal with my clients is what I call felt authority, is being commanding in a room, not not not loud, being commanding in a room where you're earning it so people feel you. before you even say a word. They can emotionally connect with you as well as intellectually connect with you. And that is really the winning recipe. You can achieve that not just through body language, but through tone and what you're saying, that strategic communication about yourself and about what you're selling or sharing in those moments. speaker-1: I love you highlighting that it's not always the need to talk, right? Like the power that can sometimes come with even silence and and your presence and and that is so significant. Yeah, I think now my production crew can I had a question and I told you flaked on it. speaker-0: Good, you're good. speaker-1: my gosh. What was you said something so this is where my menopausal cocktail supplements did it come through. Damn it, I lost it. Sorry. speaker-0: No, you're okay. speaker-1: I'll come back. I I appreciate your message of showing up. You can be professional, you can be respectful, but also avoiding that that perfectionistic list, like the like you said, don't use this, don't do this. it's almost as if that list in all of what we should be doing becomes just noise and it pulls us from the presence. present a moment where we can communicate perhaps a story about ourselves or laugh and share perhaps hardship that may bring a tear, right? Like it seems as if to be authentic also has a very present moment about it, which those lists of to-dos, the tactics or or strategies or even the tips kind of really have a risk of pulling us away from in that moment. speaker-0: Yes, exactly. And if you think about it, we don't have to necessarily bring raw emotion to a professional setting. And we all ex are in different professional settings that allow certain types of communication or certain amounts of communication. But what I'm suggesting is this, and here's an example of something that I I share with clients early on. It's a really easy tactic to just implement and see what happens. I tell them, what do you want your audience to feel? So say you're pitching. What do you want them to feel? Do you want them to be excited? Do you want them to be enamored? Do you want them to be frustrated with you too about the problem? So you can really tell them, Hey, I have the great solution here. Right. So whatever that word is, grab it, write it down. And then when you are presenting, make sure it lives in the way that you're speaking, the words that you're speaking, and your body language. Because Think of that moment when someone came up to you and maybe they had too much coffee, but they were really excited. And next thing you started sounding like you were excited too, but you didn't really have that great of a date, and you don't know why you're all of a sudden moving your hands and talking like this. That's natural and human. That's a skill. So reuse that skill in those situations. So if you want your audience, and we have to think about who our audience is because we're communicating for our audiences, not for ourselves, what do you want them to feel? Breathe that into what you're about to share. speaker-1: Super helpful. And I I'm sitting here thinking about, hmm, I've gotta make more videos. You know, my my social media team's like, ca here's your shot list, and I'm like Something I can I could work on. Super helpful. Yes. and you've had quite the journey. You mentioned you started off in investigative journalism. certainly you saw that red light on many a times, and and and now serving as a coach and consultant. Can you share back in that journey what has perhaps sustained you, perhaps helped you respond to life's punches? I'm always curious from our from our guests to learn from them. maybe that takeaway that others can use in their weekly or daily routine or maybe just give a shot to kind of help them as they continue to evolve. speaker-0: Absolutely. We talk about those bruises in our lives and those moments that make us ask why or why me or what's next or how could that be? And I think there's incredible power in those moments. One of my favorite quotes is: what matters most is how well you walk through the fire. And what I take from that is those moments change us. But what defines us is who we are in the seconds, the minutes, and the hours afterwards. What happens afterwards? What do we do with the moments that whether it was our fault or someone else's or life or block or whatever it might be? Who are we? We are that person in the seconds and the minutes and the hours afterwards. And in that respect, I was diagnosed with cancer while as a television news reporter years back. I am healthy now, but it was five weeks before my wedding. I was working non-stop as a television news reporter. And it didn't feel like good timing, although The C word is never good timing and it touches so many of us. And I had already learned the lessons of live TV and broadness and being stripped away and being around people, great people in their worst moments. So I knew the power of human connection and knowing how to be myself without that performance. But cancer for me was really a teaching moment where I understood that what is most impressive about ourselves to others is who we are not only afterward for ourselves, but for others. And there's so much trust to be built with others and with ourselves in those high pressure moments that will come because it happens in our lives. And so for me, I think trust is something that we can all dig deeper into. And and that's within and that's also externally. How do we build more trust in our lives so that when those moments come, we are better prepared. Not to say that we reacted one way or another. There's no right or wrong way, but we have a little bit of solid ground for those moments so that afterwards. We can soon become the best versions of ourselves again, and just stick that little band-aid on and we keep moving. speaker-1: I love it. Helpful reminder. Trust is a performance skill. Absolutely. Yes. We can all learn it. Yes. And thank you so much for the opportunity to have this conversation. I learned a ton. I'm I'm sitting here thinking about the future times where I'll be hitting record. so thank you. grateful to please share with everyone where we can find more. speaker-0: Absolutely. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. I love to have these types of conversations. I love to hear from all of you. So please join me on LinkedIn and we can continue these beautiful conversations about how to more effectively communicate. speaker-1: Wonderful. Thank you.