Can you always be certain about what is going on

Here in Melbourne, Australia, some 16,000 kilometres from Washington, everyone seems to be talking about the media interview of Donald Trump's latest press secretary, Katie Zacharia. 

None of it is complimentary. 

I've heard suggestions that she was hired because nobody else wanted the job, that her greatest qualification was long blonde hair, that she lacked the intellectual capacity for the role and that she read like a primary school student. Some have even questioned her command of the English language and now, after 5 days, she is out of a job.

Cruel? Certainly.

True? Who knows?

But while the world debates her intelligence, qualifications and hairstyle, it is missing something far more relevant that explains much of what happened in her disastrous media interview.

This was a spectacular public demonstration of performance anxiety.

And when your job is to represent the President of the United States, that is not a minor occupational inconvenience. It is a catastrophe and all assumptions about her true self rush dramatically out the window.

So, what went wrong?

When the body wants to run

For those fortunate enough never to have experienced severe performance anxiety, it can be difficult to comprehend. This is not simply being nervous.

It is the body entering an emergency state while the conscious mind attempts to carry on as though nothing is happening.

And Zacharia's physical behaviour offered a remarkable illustration.

Watch her shifting repeatedly from leg to leg, dropping heavily into one hip and then the other. There is no physical grounding. No stillness. No command of the space.

The body appears to be searching constantly for relief.

Watch the energy rise. Her upper chest lifts in short bursts. Her neck stiffens. Her breathing appears restricted, with air drawn high into the chest rather than supported by the freedom of the diaphragm.

And there goes the voice. Without an effective breath cycle, she struggles to sustain her sentences. Words arrive in fragments. Phrases break in inappropriate places. Air is snatched between thoughts as if she has a severe breathing disability.

Far from controlling the message, she is fighting to get it out.

This is one of the great cruelties of performance anxiety. The harder you try to force the performance, the more you can interfere with the very physical mechanisms required to deliver it.

The eyes have it. Or do they?

Then there are the eyes.

Notice how frequently Zacharia looks down at her prepared remarks, particularly when making statements that should demand direct engagement.

She appears glued to the page.

What happens is that under significant stress, visual attention can narrow.

Reading may become more difficult, concentration can fracture and the human beings in front of us can cease to register as individuals. Everything is a blur.

When the eyes look up, the audience becomes a threatening mass. 

Whether Zacharia experienced that precise visual disruption is impossible to know. But the observable result is clear: precious little human connection.

Her vocal pitch climbs, while her speaking rhythm becomes increasingly unnatural and as a consequence the listener loses trust.

And then comes the desperate reliance on the script. Word by word. Line by line. Rather than using the written material to support her authority, she seems to cling to it for survival.

Her hands do nothing to reinforce any message. They repeatedly open and close in what I call the accordion gesture, losing meaning and causing distraction.

The page has become a life raft and unfortunately, life rafts are not particularly impressive behind the White House lectern.

When the performance becomes a pantomime

And then something even more fascinating happens.

When people are under threat, they frequently retreat to behaviours that have previously helped them gain acceptance, approval or control.

This can be aggression, contempt, a baby voice or, in Zacharia’s case, an attempt at charm or flirtation.

Look at the mouth. There is repeated tongue movement, lip licking and chewing, consistent with attempts to manage a dry mouth under stress, but also verging on flirtation. Occasionally, the lips form an exaggerated pout that would not look entirely out of place on Ben Stiller in Zoolander.

Then there is the hair. At times, she grabs at it, despite one of the enduring principles of professional media performance: keep unnecessary self-touching to a minimum.

As comedian Will Ferrell's hilarious character Ron Burgundy reminds us in Anchorman, ‘Never touch your hair or face!’

Apart from being gorgeous, her hairstyle itself does her few favours. One side falls perilously over to her face, creating an opportunity to retreat behind it as her head tilts it almost like she is attempting to hide behind the shield. It’s all about escape.

And then there are the smiles. They arrive quickly, sometimes accompanied by a forward thrust of the chest and an exaggerated display of teeth, before disappearing just as abruptly.

There is something deeply incongruent about the effect.

A smile should communicate a genuine emotional response. Here, the rapid onset and equally rapid disappearance make the expressions appear disconcerting.

The charm factor is lost and we are left with a series of competing signals.

The audience is left trying to interpret the performer rather than listening to the performance.

The first few minutes are everything

Eventually, the physical agitation appears to ease.

There is more air available. The voice gains force. The delivery becomes sharper, harder and more emphatic.

But now another problem emerges.

Instead of conveying authority through control, she appears to manufacture it through vocal attack, punching out words in an effort to sound convincing.

Force is not authority.

Volume is not conviction.

And aggression is certainly not gravitas.

I often hear executives tell me, "I'm fine once I get through the first few minutes."

Wonderful.

Except you don't have the first few minutes.

Not in a boardroom. Not in a media interview. And certainly not when standing behind the most recognisable lectern in world politics.

What does it all mean

What fascinates me most about this episode is not Zacharia herself, but the miscommunication and observations people make.

Performance anxiety is real. It masks everything that is genuine about the person suffering and yet we make judgements on what we see, not the problem that is presenting.

Rather than learn to overcome it, we spend extraordinary amounts of time on appearance, working on the hair, the clothes, the makeup and the backdrop. 

All of these are really important, but not everything.

And then, having perfected the packaging, we send the person out to perform without ensuring they possess the physical and vocal skills to survive the experience.

It is like polishing a grand piano and forgetting to check whether anyone can play it.

The ancients understood this better than we do.

For Cicero and Quintilian, the delivery of speech was not an optional finishing touch. Voice, movement, gesture and physical command were essential elements of persuasion.

And the higher the responsibility, the greater the importance of the performance.

This is not about being an extrovert. Nor is it about being naturally confident or possessing some mysterious gift of charisma.

It is about skill.

Breath can be trained. Vocal control can be developed. Physical responses to pressure can be understood and managed. Gestures can be made purposeful. The capacity to engage an audience under intense scrutiny can be practised.

That is the work of gravitas.

And that is where the Zacharia episode offers a brutal lesson for every senior leader.

You cannot rely on a carefully manufactured image to rescue an unprepared self-awareness and development of skills.

Nor can you expect your audience to overlook physical chaos simply because your title is impressive.

The title might get you the lectern.

It will not keep you there.

Katie Zacharia should have worked with me!

Love,
Dr Louise Mahler