Many effective leaders and communicators project an intimacy with their audience that at least imitates their more private backstage selves. As a result, we the audience take away the impression that we really know the speaker even if the speaker doesn’t have a clue who we are. The effective speaker bridges the gap with the listener while maintaining a safe distance, thanks to the platform.
That platform protection is lost once the speaker descends. To maintain a necessary defense barrier, the public person learns to project a careful balance of warmth and arm’s-length positioning when working the crowd. People want to know that this person is touchable, that he or she is truly flesh and blood.
Some great platform communicators can exude the same platform warmth up close. Others struggle with it. I remember when I met Bob Hope in person when I was a college student. The dean had handpicked a few of us for a small group shot where Hope would field questions for a campus program he was filming to be aired on national TV.
On camera, he was vintage Bob Hope. We felt warm and connected. Afterward we got to shake his hand, get his autograph, and chat for a minute. As I did, I felt a strange and foreign presence – a plastic Bob Hope I’d not sensed a few minutes earlier or when I’d seen him on TV. Hope and I were trading commodities – or maybe we were the commodities to each other.
There is no way you can give yourself away to thousands and expect to have anything left, unless the self you are giving away is sourced elsewhere. Those who learn to pull off this sharing of self with the masses know how to refuel. They aren’t giving themselves away as much as they are allowing themselves to be a channel through which energy from elsewhere flows through them.
But no one can truly do this channeling unless they have a backstage life where they can fully be themselves and get their own needs met. Not just expressing what they choose to share in public, but where they share with the guard down.
A funny thing about muscles and muscle groups. If you use them 24/7, if you never relax them, they eventually lose their ability to function. A muscle is not a bone, which is set. A muscle is designed to tighten (contract) and loosen. And every person needs to exercise these public/private muscles or they will freeze in place.
The reason for the need for the public guard or defense, the reason Bob Hope couldn’t risk being intimate with my friends and me, is because the more intimate we are, the more vulnerable we become. We risk losing ourselves to the other person(s) entirely.
Contrary to the mindset of this modern hookup society, you can only do so – become intimate – in a very safe, secure setting. Anyone who has sex with a stranger is not being emotionally intimate, for you can only give what is intimate to you in a context where that intimacy is mutually shared and protected. Otherwise there is no intimate self to share.
When a public person no longer has those safe havens, those backstage hideaways, he or she is in mortal danger. The risk is high for failure of some sort no matter how strong a person is. Strength is not the issue. Human beings are designed for being open, and as I’ve said, openness requires protection, something you don’t get with strangers.
Showing posts with label Platform Self. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Platform Self. Show all posts
2009-01-13
2009-01-06
Authenticity on a Pedestal – Part I
One of my favorite images from our life in Xi’an is of this guy who was operating a jackhammer on top of a pillar at the neighbor’s house across our little street. I detested the endless sound that went on for days and days. And, oh, the dust! But the visual of that man up there remains a fascinating and treasured memory. [You can see an actual photo by visiting hnkconnect.com/about-hnk.]
A lone man perched on a narrow column of concrete and rebar, with barely space for his own two feet plus the heavy jackhammer he was operating – all a story or two high above the ground with nothing but his own balance between him and tragedy. And up there so long. Hours on end. Day after day, one column after another. Slowly working his way down, vibrating and pounding his own perch until nothing remained but a crumpled heap on the ground below.
His was life on a pedestal, like a great orator with a machine for a voice or like a leader soaring high above his people showing them the way of life. Pedestal living is what we require of those who guide us. Get up there where we can see you and can see how you do what you say. The American President exposed to all the world, the pastor or parish priest on display, the boss high above the office paeans.
Pedestals, aside from that one the guy in Xi’an was working to demolish, are generally considered glamorous. Life’s a stage and everyone dreams to be on it. A position from which you can be admired and applauded.
Or attacked. I never liked eating at a Western-style head table, especially one where you sat at on stage facing the world for all the world to see. You feel exposed, your every bite thoughtfully or thoughtlessly chewed over by everyone watching. Pedestals and platforms are dangerous places, really, justifying most perks that might accompany them. Somehow the perks and the praise are supposed to make up for the loneliness and danger that inevitably come with such lofty positioning. I’m not so sure, any more than I am sure they are entirely necessary.
Public figures have three selves: the Platform, the Door, and the Backstage selves. They are all expressions of the person’s true self.
The Platform Self is what people see of the figure up in front on stage and what they glean of that leader’s or speaker’s life through what is shared in the monolog or speech or is demonstrated publicly. The self that is shared up front is part of that person, the public self or perhaps better said, the preferred public self. The self we wish people to see in us.
When that person on the platform descends to shake hands, greet and chat one on one with his or her audience, then the Door Self appears. I call it the Door Self for a doorway is often where we meet the Platform speaker face to face. Whatever feeling of intimacy can possibly be shared by a speaker with an audience of one hundred or ten thousand, the one-on-one encounter magnifies that opportunity. And yet, without either of us trying, the engagement is acted out. Not so inauthentic as it is projected, the preferred self presented once more in deliberate, careful choreography.
It is only backstage that the true self appears. Here is where we let our hair down, where we take off the guard. Maybe the Backstage Self is not any more or less authentic than the other selves, but there is something to this unguarded, unprojected self that is genuine and truly intimate.
We’ll continue this theme next week …
A lone man perched on a narrow column of concrete and rebar, with barely space for his own two feet plus the heavy jackhammer he was operating – all a story or two high above the ground with nothing but his own balance between him and tragedy. And up there so long. Hours on end. Day after day, one column after another. Slowly working his way down, vibrating and pounding his own perch until nothing remained but a crumpled heap on the ground below.
His was life on a pedestal, like a great orator with a machine for a voice or like a leader soaring high above his people showing them the way of life. Pedestal living is what we require of those who guide us. Get up there where we can see you and can see how you do what you say. The American President exposed to all the world, the pastor or parish priest on display, the boss high above the office paeans.
Pedestals, aside from that one the guy in Xi’an was working to demolish, are generally considered glamorous. Life’s a stage and everyone dreams to be on it. A position from which you can be admired and applauded.
Or attacked. I never liked eating at a Western-style head table, especially one where you sat at on stage facing the world for all the world to see. You feel exposed, your every bite thoughtfully or thoughtlessly chewed over by everyone watching. Pedestals and platforms are dangerous places, really, justifying most perks that might accompany them. Somehow the perks and the praise are supposed to make up for the loneliness and danger that inevitably come with such lofty positioning. I’m not so sure, any more than I am sure they are entirely necessary.
Public figures have three selves: the Platform, the Door, and the Backstage selves. They are all expressions of the person’s true self.
The Platform Self is what people see of the figure up in front on stage and what they glean of that leader’s or speaker’s life through what is shared in the monolog or speech or is demonstrated publicly. The self that is shared up front is part of that person, the public self or perhaps better said, the preferred public self. The self we wish people to see in us.
When that person on the platform descends to shake hands, greet and chat one on one with his or her audience, then the Door Self appears. I call it the Door Self for a doorway is often where we meet the Platform speaker face to face. Whatever feeling of intimacy can possibly be shared by a speaker with an audience of one hundred or ten thousand, the one-on-one encounter magnifies that opportunity. And yet, without either of us trying, the engagement is acted out. Not so inauthentic as it is projected, the preferred self presented once more in deliberate, careful choreography.
It is only backstage that the true self appears. Here is where we let our hair down, where we take off the guard. Maybe the Backstage Self is not any more or less authentic than the other selves, but there is something to this unguarded, unprojected self that is genuine and truly intimate.
We’ll continue this theme next week …
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