How to Build Executive Presence and Communicate With Confidence

John Jantsch (00:01.23)

So we all know that AI can draft your pitch, polish your deck, and script your answers, but then you still have to walk into a room, hold eye contact, and earn trust from a person who’s deciding whether to hire you or not. The more tools handle behind the scenes, the more moment. The more that that moment decides who wins the business. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Gina London.

Gina London (00:20.531)

That’s good.

John Jantsch (00:27.594)

An Emmy-winning former CNN correspondent and CEO of Language of Leadership. She advises executives and boards on executive presence and influence with clients that include Salesforce, SAP, Merck, and PWC. She writes a weekly leadership column from her home base in Dublin, where she’s calling in from today. And we’re going to talk about her new book, Amplify You: How to Connect More Powerfully in an AI World. So, Gina, welcome to the show.

Gina London (00:55.526)

thanks a lot, John. I appreciate it.

John Jantsch (00:57.814)

So I was expecting more accent between you and me. So so did

Gina London (01:02.483)

I’ve lived in Ireland for ten years, but I’m born and bred in the good old USA Bay.

John Jantsch (01:08.302)

Okay. Okay. I thought maybe like the your CNN training sort of knocked that out of you or something because because they didn’t want accents.

Gina London (01:16.567)

No, no, and well, that’s not true. No, to be fair though, I grew up in a really small town in Indiana, and part of the story of the book that I wrote is not calling for no accents, but it is calling for people to understand that they can take control of their voice. So the town that I grew up in, for example, we didn’t wash our clothes. We washed our clothes. Nothing wrong with that, except for if you’re going to be presenting in front of the White House, it probably is going to hit a little bit.

John Jantsch (01:27.0)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (01:36.61)

Yeah.

Gina London (01:44.349)

with more credibility if you say reporting live from Washington, not Washington. So some neutralization I would call for, yes.

John Jantsch (01:48.312)

that’s

Yeah, so I I actually grew up in the Midwest as well, so I can app appreciate that. so I do know I do know that particular term very well. Yes. So you went, as I mentioned, from CNN to coaching leaders. w in your kind of early days of coaching, you know, as opposed to what you’re doing before, was there anything about it that said, gosh, this is the work that I need to be doing?

Gina London (01:57.148)

Okay, you know what I’m talking about.

Gina London (02:17.715)

I th great question. I think that initially when I was asked I was asked to have executives tell a better presentation on their st on the stage. Sometimes it was storytelling, so the construction piece, a lot of the delivery piece. And because I’d gone through the rigors of twenty four hour news and evolved, I think, in a way, I’d forgotten to look behind me for where I’d started. And I was a little bit overwhelmed thinking, these guys are gonna know everything. They’re execs the top execs in their field.

John Jantsch (02:38.775)

Yeah.

Gina London (02:45.789)

But some of this communication stuff, the body language, the vocal presence, even some of the enunciation techniques, not to mention the content construction, is not trained alongside subject matter areas of expertise. So the penny drop, I guess, for me was when these big execs with all sorts of people underneath them said that this was really something that they learned and that they could apply and then it was really relevant and was made an impact in what they did.

John Jantsch (02:51.085)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (03:16.813)

So I’m I’m I’m curious. talk to me a little bit about how this I know there’s a lot of conversation now, particularly in AI, AI appears in your subtitle. a lot of conversations around the human versus machine sort of idea. So so how does that play? I mean how how does AI impact, you know, connecting or or you know, for good or for bad, connecting in in a human way?

Gina London (03:27.283)

Mm.

Gina London (03:43.536)

Yeah, as as you can see my dog wandering around the background, it connects because we are in an inflection point around how much are we going to let AI support us and are we aware of the us that we need to bring? If we are letting AI, for example, write our emails or write a report or even create a presentation, including the beautification of the slides, do we then have enough confidence in how we’ve equipped ourselves?

To make that connection congruent and not have it be this abrupt, I thought you sounded this way when I read about your your slides look this way, but you’re coming across in a way that is most likely not as elevated or as heartfelt or impactful as all this written stuff is. So I’m saying to people, we can do a human renaissance here and remind ourselves to equip ourselves not to be fake, but to be intentional about how we

Take more control of our content, think about our audience, power up our humanness so that we aren’t substitute become irrelevant and be made sub that AI has actually substituted fully for us.

John Jantsch (04:55.063)

Yeah. You know the the benefits of it in terms of speed and efficiency and things like that are are really appealing. But, you know, as somebody who’s kind of spent my entire career writing, you know, I learn so much when I actually do the writing. You know, I as as a speaker, I learn so much about what I’m gonna present or say by doing the slides as much as I hate doing them. but you know, I think it it is there a danger that AI is

Gonna actually rob us of that?

Gina London (05:25.987)

Yes, especially I would use it like an exercise of your physical muscles. If you’ve if you’re someone like yourself where you’ve exercised that writing muscle for a while and you use AI maybe for the casual email or maybe a proposal, but not actually the writing of some sort of a piece of content yourself, then you’re still exercising that muscle. And even if you do let it dip a little bit, John, you’re gonna be able to muscle it up more quickly because of that muscle memory of that particular skill set.

John Jantsch (05:30.806)

Right, right.

Gina London (05:53.458)

for the Gen Zs, Gen Alphas, maybe even millennials and ourselves, if we become so dependent upon it that we’ve never exercised that muscle at all, then I’m really concerned that it is going to be a real hard effort for you to make up for what you’ve become dependent upon through using AI for everything.

John Jantsch (06:15.213)

I was talking to an attorney the other day and he said, you know, in one hand, on one hand, this AI is so great because I mean we don’t need all these junior people anymore there. and and he said, and then I realized who’s actually going to become the partners? Right? Because it’s like there’s none of this training of the, you know, like you said, the muscle, you know, that has to go on. And I I do think it’ll be interesting in 10 years, you know, to to see the impact of that in in many, many industries.

Gina London (06:29.704)

Yeah.

Gina London (06:43.537)

I agree. I mean, what’s our succession planning? How are we equipping our young people to, if they haven’t yet exercise it because they’re so isolated down in their devices anyway? How are we starting to help them awaken to the concept that this stuff matters, how you collaborate, how you lead, how you motivate, how you inspire, how you have a difficult feedback conversation, unless you’re doing everything by writing or that you’ve got some AI avatar that can substitute for you.

John Jantsch (06:45.855)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:53.612)

Okay.

John Jantsch (07:05.015)

Mm-hmm.

Gina London (07:10.277)

You still need to be that person making that connection.

John Jantsch (07:14.573)

So your book introduces a framework that I I think you and maybe you don’t call it a framework, but you use the term say it, look it, be it. so tell us kind of unbox that for us.

Gina London (07:25.885)

Sure, the whole approach of what I do, because I’m not an academic per se, although some of the experiential stuff that I try to codify in the book has been ratified by academics. I try to make things as simple as possible back to the execs I was training that said, hey, this is really practical and easy to apply, or at least we understand the framework simply. So three ideas. Say it, look it, be it. Say it is split in two because the first person you need to be s able to speak more intentionally to is yourself.

John Jantsch (07:55.447)

That’s a good point.

Gina London (07:55.572)

’cause that’s the one that you’re talking to the most inside your head. And then say it then from a out to an audience point of view. Are you aware of this amazing instrument in you called your voice, not just from an accent point of view, but from taking control on pacing, on emphasizing, on making sure that you’re keeping your connection in your voice, if it’s authoritative or if it’s warm, not to be Shakespearean actors, but to know that a lot of us do this stuff

naturally when we’re off the clock and to be able to do it more intentionally, knowing how to connect with that audience makes that communication experience more impactful and I hope for the better, for the positive.

John Jantsch (08:40.381)

So how much what what role, especially in in face to face, but even in, you know, Zoom calls, w what role does body language play in in either helping or detracting from the message?

Gina London (08:54.183)

Great question. And that’s of course the next chapter is all in that look it piece. And I was just in Switzerland before I came back home to Dublin yesterday. And one of the ideas in the series of one-on-one coaching I was doing was this woman had to be presenting to the board and she had her content, but her face looked absolutely not resting, you know what face, just no expression at all. So neutral that it was almost as flat. And I put her on camera, which we always do, so she can see herself back as others would.

John Jantsch (08:57.665)

Yeah, yeah.

Gina London (09:24.337)

And she says, I know what I’m doing. I’m so focused on thinking about what it is I’m going to say that I’m forgot to tell my face to connect with if I say, We’re gonna get FDA approval on this project in the next three months, I need to look, and I would say back to say it sound, it. So really just helping people raise their awareness on this holistic experience that they’re bringing when they’re communicating that the other person is taking signals right or wrong.

Of what they really believe. If you’re speaking in one tone and your face is looking another, we tend to believe the one that doesn’t match up because we think that that’s some kind of leaking. And often it can be. So helping people not to be slick or manipulative, but to take more awareness and ownership that this body language piece can signal, I really believe it, I’m uncertain, I’m maybe.

John Jantsch (10:06.529)

Yeah. Yeah.

Gina London (10:20.817)

self-conscious, but all of this kind of stuff can be developed. So you can use more your brain capacity to read the room and think about your content. But when you’ve got all this like conflicting focus, then the absolute result is not as impactful as I know you’d like it to be.

John Jantsch (10:37.941)

Yeah. I think people probably underestimate how much we subconsciously are reading all the signals. you know, we may not even say, yeah. I mean, we may not even consciously say, I don’t like the way that person is standing, but it’s like adding up to something, you know, that that sends a negative, doesn’t it? Yeah. Right. Yeah. So you mentioned audience a couple of times, and I think a lot of times when people think about speaking, they think about speaking to a large group, but

Gina London (10:43.569)

Yeah, we’re great at reading. We’re not so good at delivering.

Gina London (10:55.107)

Absolutely. We we wanna augment our message. We don’t want to distract or detract from it.

John Jantsch (11:07.617)

The the fact of the matter is a lot of people speak to one person audience, you know, I’ve I’ve got a discovery call with the prospect coming up. Can you apply some of what you do, do you think, to that setting as well?

Gina London (11:18.789)

Absolutely. There’s a fundamental framework strategy piece. So the overarching book is in those three areas and the be it then is putting it all together. And we’ve got some great application lab work around the different applications around difficult conversations or presentations or interviews and that sort of thing. But in the one on ones that you’re talking about, it gets to that strategic framework framework, which is before you’re thinking about what you want to say, think about to whom you are speaking. And if it’s one person, that audience piece doesn’t mean

Lots of people can mean just one. What is that person motivated by? What is the best to your understanding, their hopes, their dreams, their fears about what it is you’re going to be having a communication event and everything’s a communication event around? And taking a moment to even just a couple of minutes to think about where can I come to their level? How can I reassure around a fear or help?

Plant and share that dream that we can have a mutually beneficial outcome on whatever the the event is. That changes things. I had a client one time as we were working through this audience intent message, three-part little strategy framework. And we were talking about who is that person, what is our real goal, not 25 different goals, but one narrowly focused goal. And then then I craft the message. And he said, well, now I have a whole different approach. And I said, Yes, that’s exactly right.

John Jantsch (12:47.361)

So my wife and I went out to dinner the other day and the server came up to explain what was going on and for some reason decided I was the decision maker. And so his entire conversation was with me. so much so that that my wife even noticed it, you know, after after he went away. And I I wonder, you know, is is that the type of mistake or what common sort of mistakes do you see where people you know, really kind of kill a room, you know, by by something like that.

Gina London (12:50.248)

Yeah.

Gina London (13:15.121)

Yeah, there’s a lot of different directions to go in that way. And I work on both sides of that equation. So I help if there were, for example, a male and a female presenter coming out, I actually could think of one offhand where it was people that were trying to sell a software package for peer recognition to a group of police officers. And so just by the demographics there were, it was skewed more male in this particular decision making group. So I told my team, make sure that.

John Jantsch (13:38.957)

Mm-hmm.

Gina London (13:44.648)

The man in the situation has the woman introduces the man as opposed to the man introducing the woman or leading as the first person to communicate, because already you’re sending a signal to your audience. Now, on the audience side, if you’re going to be thinking about how you’re listening to others speak, you want to make sure that they’ve had their strategy in a way that they’re not just

Playing to one person or one decision maker. If you have multiple decision makers and you’re just one person presenting, I would say try to do a little segmented outreach. Say, I know John, you’re really interested in this. And I know, hey, Mary, you’re interested in this because you’re the director of this division. So in my presentation, I’m going to try to cover both. So name checking and putting the obstacle or the objection out in front so everyone knows that we can refer to it and talk to it.

That’s a great strategy technique, and I do cover that more in depth in the book.

John Jantsch (14:40.599)

So, you know, it’s pretty cliche to say that, you know, for people to talk about like public speaking is one of their worst fears. how do you how do you help people, especially people that haven’t done much of it? how do you help them sort of take over, you know, the calm their nerves, I guess, so that they they don’t blow the presentation just because they’re you know, they’re freaked out.

Gina London (15:03.655)

Right. And a lot of the first of all, the ner nerves in the book we talk about nerves from a lot of different variet from a lot of different angles. Nerves in of themselves could mean that it’s the first time you’ve done something and that you’re just really inexperienced. Or it could also mean, which I say for me, I’m speaking a lot of times in a month, but I still feel a bit of nerves and anxiety because that means I care and I want it to connect. So I use those nerves as an energy and a enthusiasm mechanism for me.

But another real trigger for nerves, John, is because people ha don’t know what to do. They’re thinking about their content, but now as I mentioned about that person unaware of their face, they haven’t even practiced what an engaged face looks like. They don’t know what to do with their hands when they come out and stand. Do I put here? Do I put here? Do I put here? And that sort of starts to take away some of that brain focus and makes you feel uncertain.

John Jantsch (15:50.455)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:54.589)

Yeah.

Gina London (16:00.446)

So we really do get a little bit granular in this book, not to have people overthink stuff, but to kind of uncover it, examine it, repack it in the purposeful pocket, and then move on to the next thing so that your confidence gets elevated as an outcome because through the book and through the identification of all those pieces of communication, you feel more comfortable that you can actually do it. So you don’t have to spend so much brain focus during that experience.

And I think that’s a real important thing to remember for anybody listening, that it’s a developable skill like anything else.

John Jantsch (16:39.191)

How much of your work, especially one-on-one work, is is kind of breaking bad habits? You know, there are a lot of people that really struggle with eye contact, for example, or just posture, have posture, you know, bad habits. I mean, how much of it do you have to like overcome years of sort of ingrained habits?

Gina London (16:49.139)

Mm-hmm.

Gina London (16:59.239)

Yeah, you hit it on the head. It is usually exactly that. You’ve got somebody who’s senior vice president, even at the C-suite of an organization, they have spent years being an expert in the field, presenting a particular way, communication habits, even their word usage. And so we do go back to building that awareness of the components, asking them, of course.

John Jantsch (17:08.277)

Yeah.

Gina London (17:24.721)

where they’d like to be or some of their awareness pieces about how they feel that they’ve been experienced by others. And then we can get really micro because it isn’t nothing to help someone project their voice or enunciate. Or I had one CEO who could say the exact same beautiful amount of like the language he had, if I read it, I would think he was really so heartfelt. And to hear him speak it,

I’d be afraid for my life because he was so serious, so tall, so blustery. And he pushed back and said, Well, I don’t do this happy clappy stuff. It and I pr it’s okay because it can feel performative, but I put him on camera and then we played both of those clips back. Him presenting as he normally would, him presenting with what he felt was a happy clappy clown smile with the sound off.

John Jantsch (18:00.778)

Yeah.

Gina London (18:17.787)

And he looked at the one where he was starting to smile and said, You know what? I could do even more. So it’s raising that awareness, hopefully igniting that desire that it’s worth the effort, that it makes a difference because we’re trying to positively impact others. And that it is daily rehabit training. It truly is. It’s like going into an again with a gym exercise metaphor. You go into a gym, and if your coach doesn’t come and say, Hey,

John Jantsch (18:22.177)

Yeah. Yeah.

Gina London (18:45.681)

you need to change that hinge or you need to change how far you’re going down on that bicep curl because if you don’t get the full extension, you’re not gonna get the full impact. And that little adjustment can make a big difference. Same thing.

John Jantsch (18:58.155)

Yeah, I I imagine you employ video quite often because I think a lot of people have no idea they’re doing what they do until they see it. So I’m I’m sure

Gina London (19:05.307)

Yes. And I even try in the book to put some QR codes so you can see some videos of me demonstrating the things I’m demonstrating. But sorry I don’t have two way video yet in a book that I can actually record. But I do encourage the readers to go ahead and put yourself on your phone even for thirty seconds. That little daily thirty second work can make a big difference too if you’re consistent.

John Jantsch (19:09.175)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:27.167)

I suspect you have encountered some people that have used AI to fully write a script. have you also seen that backfire?

Gina London (19:32.731)

For sure.

Well yeah. I mean that the well, we all I think it was in the news a couple of weeks ago or maybe even a couple of months ago now that Canadian elected official who was reading on the floor and as he was reading out loud clearly for probably the first time, he also read the AI agent’s instructions that was saying, Hey, read it this way. Hey, should I try it? Should I do another version that’s got a little more sincere sound or a little more and he read those out loud. So I think one of the things to

John Jantsch (19:52.639)

Right.

Gina London (20:04.711)

course is to interrogate the voice of a script, does it sound like you or those words you’re comfortable pronouncing? If not, get a sin in them. Find, read it out loud. Don’t read it to yourself quietly because it’s not the same thing. And if it doesn’t sound like you and you’ve got an audience that knows you especially, there’s gonna be a real disconnect and likely a distrust.

John Jantsch (20:07.852)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:19.563)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:29.217)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing. I I do a lot of ads for for various sponsors and it’s you know, they’ll send me you know, a written script and then you read it out loud and you’re like, Well, that sounded stupid. you know, out loud. It really is a huge difference. Exactly. Yeah. Well, Gina, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you’d invite people to connect with you and and find out more about Amplify you?

Gina London (20:43.152)

Yeah, it doesn’t it doesn’t sound conversational at all.

Gina London (20:56.315)

Yes, thank you so much. I’d love for you guys to go to wherever you get your social media, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube. I try to be as active as I can over there and I do respond to any DM if it’s heartfelt, of course. And then you’re welcome to go up through my website, Gina London dot com to get your copy of Amplify You or you can add to Barnes and Noble’s or Jeff Bezos’ retirement fund over on Amazon and get a copy there as well.

John Jantsch (21:19.309)

Awesome. Well again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’re running into you one of these days out there on the road.

Gina London (21:26.652)

that’d be great. Thanks, John.