Dr. Maroño suggests that the CEO demonstrate


their receptiveness to the audience by showing ac- tive listening cues such as nodding along, repeating back what an audience member says, and using their language. Dr. Maroño also noted that lower body move-


ments are crucial for perceptions of trustworthiness because they are linked to empathy. “You want to make sure your CEO is paying attention to what their lower body is doing,” she said. “If they’re participating in an in-person meeting or in a group, they should face the person speaking to show they’re engaged.”


Executive Buy-In To gain executive buy-in on the importance of their nonverbal communication skills, Dr. Maroño advised stepping back to consider what the CEO wants. “Instead of asking, ‘How do I get the CEO to do


what I want?,’ try to understand why they do what they do and what they want to achieve. Ten, reverse engineer it,” Dr. Maroño suggested. “Figure out what their communication style is, what matters to them, and then craft your message in a way that matches their style, instead of using your style and trying to get them to see your point of view. You want to re- ally step into their shoes and speak their language.” Pope added, “When I was in graduate school,


I had a professor who, every time he wanted to get our attention, would say, ‘Now I’m going to show you how to make money,’” recalls Pope. “So, if I were talking to the CEO, I would use the term ‘stock price.’ Companies whose management is confident when they speak outperform those that are nervous.” Next, Pope said he would point out to the CEO


that AI-generated measurables of how someone performs while speaking is an impersonal score of their performance. Tat empowers the next step, which Pope said


is to benchmark the CEO to see how they compare to their peers. He added, “What management team isn’t competitive? Tey want to know their ranking!” Once you’ve measured the executive’s perfor-


mance, you can recommend corrective actions so it’s no longer a slight on their performance,” Pope said. “You’re basically encouraging them to improve, and who doesn’t want to improve, especially competitive


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executives? It’s all part of the effort to put their best foot forward for the company’s success.”


Room for Improvement Pope explained that his company creates a baseline for every speaker, but never compares two speakers – a speaker is only compared to themselves. “We look for what is anomalous to what the speaker is saying com- pared to their own baseline,” he said. “Tat’s important.” A simple trick Pope shares with executives is


to use shorter sentences. “You’re trying to reduce their cognitive load by removing anything that cre- ates stress, makes them uncertain, and is going to lead to mistakes,” explains Pope. “Cognitive load is also reduced through preparation, use of numbers, shortened sentences, being very concise, and not trying to give long, elaborate answers.” “If you want your CEO to improve as a com-


municator, the best thing to do is first identify what they’re lacking and what is undermining their per- ceived confidence and trustworthiness,” Dr. Maroño said. “Identify those essential elements, learn about them, and try to change just those. Ten identify the behaviors that create the perception your CEO wants to project and practice, practice, practice.” Dr. Maroño said the goal is for the CEO’s nonver-


bal communication to become part of their natural behavior, so they do it automatically. “One measure we use is called the Gunning


Fog Index, which calculates the number of years of education one needs to understand what somebody’s saying,” Pope explained. “For earnings calls and busi- ness, we look for grade 11. What does reducing the complexity of language mean specifically? Reducing sentence length and the number of polysyllabic words” Pope emphasized that investors value clarity and


transparency, and they will reward it. “You can run your executive’s remarks through a Gunning Fog Index or similar calculation to see how educated somebody has to be to understand what they’re say- ing,” he said. “If you see something like a score of 17, forget it. Nobody knows what your CEO is saying.” IR


Alexandra Walsh is Senior Publishing Consultant for Association Vision, the company that produces IR Update for NIRI; awalsh@associationvision.com.


ni ri .org/ irupdate


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