Communication Skills

You have the best of intentions. You give speech after speech using strong visuals, compelling examples and riveting stories to make your points come alive. But then, slowly, your speaking skills start to dissolve. The next thing you know, you’ve become a boring hack, just like everyone else.

How did it happen?

Here is the usual suspect. You are supposed to speak at a conference in 3 weeks. The conference coordinator calls your office urgently and says “Can you email your presentation today? We promised all of the attendees that we would send them in advance!”

But you are on the road, or busy. So you ask a staffer to put together a rough draft PowerPoint slide. Since the assistant isn’t a mind reader, all he/she can do is list bullet points of concepts that you have discussed before on this subject, or take out facts and numbers from your website and previous presentations. So far, no harm, because this is just a draft.

But now the speech is tomorrow and you haven’t had time to think about it. And all you have is the “draft” prepared by your assistant. There’s still time to prepare a great speech on the plane. But things come up, as they always do, and you are preoccupied.

Now you have to give the speech in five minutes. And you are left with one option: you will kinda, sorta read the bullet points on the PowerPoint slide to your audience. You know it was awful, compared to your normal way of speaking. But nobody came up to complain afterwards. In fact, several people still complemented you, though they were vendors looking to do business with you.

The next thing you know, you’ve gone six months and a dozen speeches using this technique of reading bullet points off of a screen. You have a new habit.

Stop! You are destroying your reputation! And no one has the guts to tell you!

Throw away your slides and start from scratch. For your next speech, you need to come up with five major points, and then an example and a story for each point. Then, come up with a visual slide for each point that contains no words. Finally, prepare a one-page outline that reminds you of your key points, examples, stories and slides. Finally, rehearse.

Now you are ready to re-enter the society of interesting speakers and presenters. Welcome back.

TJ Walker, Media Training Worldwide

Dick Weiss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch does some neat stuff on writing  in his Weiss on Writing at STLtoday.com.  His address is weisswrite@marketvolt.com.  Recently he did a nice paragraph about punctuation and then took off about the exclamation point.  His title was “Ban the exclamation point — period.”  It’s a bit overstated, but that’s OK.  I feel even stronger about banning MOST dashes.  I say beware the dasher who when it doubt dashes.  If you see a dash in the first paragraph, start counting them.  Dashers are even worse when they have another point to make in a sentence and can think of no way to add it except after a dash.  Another sentence usually works just fine.  I had a teaching assistant once who said her high-school teacher told her class that they were allowed one dash per essay.  I like that.  Save the dash for dramatic contrast or emphasis.

Some members of our magazine faculty here at the Missouri School of Journalism got stirred up over something the person who is teaching Magazine Editing this semester wrote.   He questioned the use of the semicolon, especially in direct quotations.  He doesn’t mind the semicolon to break up lists that have commas inside them, but he wonders why and how we can determine whether two complete sentences or independent clauses are closely related enough to skip the coordinating conjunction and use  the semicolon instead.  I think that careful writers often do want to show a close relationship between two complete thoughts.  For example, “He enjoyed writing; he wrote every chance he had.”  Certainly we don’t want to join two complete sentences with simply a comma.  A comma alone joining two independent clauses is a comma fault or a comma splice.  I don’t allow them — ever.  I do allow three or more short sentences to be joined with commas.

The professor questioned how we ever know a speaker means to have two thoughts closely related.  Isn’t that interpreting what the speaker is trying to say?  My answer is, first of all, that if the speaker does not use a conjunction, we shouldn’t insert one.  Second, we always interpret what a speaker is saying or trying to say.  People don’t speak using punctuation marks, except perhaps for Victor Borge.  We insert punctuation marks such as commas, question marks, and even sometimes, exclamation points.

He emailed me that he thought semicolons in direct quotations looked funny.  I emailed him back that he had a strange sense of humor.  Of course, I don’t think we should overdo the semicolon between sentences, especially in direct quotations.

See how journalism professors spend their time?

Don Ranly

I’ve been doing a lot of intranet/portal governance work lately. It reminds me how important process analysis skills are for the communication professional. How many times have you been asked to “fix” a situation with communication, only to realize it is actually a broken business process that is the culprit?

When you set out to analyze a process, there are two steps to take first:

1. Identify the start of the process
2. Identify the end of the process, either where all activity stops or where another process takes over

Sounds simple, but the second one is sometimes challenging to determine. Once you’ve identified these, you can map the functions involved, what they are supposed to do and at what stage. Then, there are several key questions to ask yourself:

• How many different things can be in the process flow at one time (e.g., how many different pieces of content can be in the approval process at one time)? To find the answer, it is usually best to ask this question for each individual step in the process. Different steps may have different capacities.
• Where are the bottlenecks? Look for places where the process slows down or becomes less efficient.
• What is the cause of the bottleneck? Look for underlying causes such as inadequate information, availability of people, or people assigned to the wrong role.
• What can be done to eliminate the bottlenecks?
• What other people, processes, or groups depend upon this process?

These questions help you identify solutions and figure out how important the process is based on who relies on the process. If your organization has people dedicated to process improvement, try to spend some time learning from them. Process skills will be very useful in your communication career.

Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado

The second most frequently asked question I receive is “Where can I find good humorous material?” (The most frequent question I’m asked is “May I please see your driver’s license, sir?”)

Anyway, my answer used to be a list of books, magazines and newspapers. It was a long list that required a trip to the library unless you wanted to spend a fortune on subscriptions to a lot of publications. Then the Internet came along and almost changed the situation. Instead of recommending a long list of periodicals, I started recommending a longer list of web sites.

The problem was that if you liked a site, then you’d bookmark it. And that was the kiss of death. Because how often have you gone back to view the sites in your bookmarks? Be honest now. Not too often, right? In fact, if you’re like most web surfers, you’ve got a bookmark full of sites that you’ve never looked at since book-marking them. Let’s face it. Book-marking a website has become the high-tech version of taping something on your VCR. (But I really am going to watch that tape of the C-SPAN special on the history of politics some day. Uh-huh.)

Here’s the good news. As an old motivational guru once said, “When faced with a problem, make it into problemonade.” So here’s what I’ve done. As a special service to anyone interested in using humor in oral or written communication, I’ve created a super site. (Not the polluted kind!) It’s a web site packed with thousands of links to incredibly great sources of funny material. Here’s a guided tour.

Start by surfing to http://www.museumofhumor.com. That’s the homepage. Along the bottom of the page you’ll see a button labeled “For Clergy.” This section of the museum contains over 700 links to sermons about laughter, joy, humor and happiness, as well as links to humorous material appropriate for use in sermons. If you’re worried about finding material that’s in good taste, it doesn’t get more appropriate than this. Click on some of the sermons to see how clergy have used quips and jokes to make various points. You may be able to adapt them for your own purposes.

Now go back to the homepage. Along the left side of the page, you’ll find a button labeled “Resources.” Click on that and you’ll come to a page divided into three sections: News, Tools and Material. Under “News” you’ll find links to offbeat news stories. These can provide fabulous topical material, especially if you look at them on the day that you’re scheduled to give a speech. They’re great for developing a humorous opening to your presentation.

The “Tools” section provides links to variety of web sites that can provide material for your presentation or help you write it. For example, “Today In History” and “Those Were The Days” give you lists of events, birthdays and other things that occurred on the day that you’re speaking. The “Lexical Freenet” is a great word association tool for brainstorming ideas and phrases to use in your presentation.

The “Material” section is what you want to see especially if you can’t tell a joke. Instead of dividing material by subject-matter (the traditional way), it groups material by type of humor. Categories include “Anecdotes & Jokes,” “Carnac,” “Definitions,” “Goofups,” “Insults & Comebacks,” “Laws & Lists,” “One Liners,” “Quotes,” and “Topical Humor.” Click on the type of humor that you feel comfortable using. You’ll be transported to a page with lots of links to your desired humor type.

Below the “Material” section is a section labeled “Cartoons.” Cartoons are a fantastic and yet overlooked form of oral humor. Why? Because even if you can’t tell a joke, you can probably describe a cartoon. (I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t.) That means you can make a point by describing a cartoon, just as you would make a point by telling a joke. The links provided will allow you to peruse thousands of cartoons until you find one that makes your point. (Tip: look for one that’s easy for your audience to visualize as you say it.)

OK, let’s go back to the homepage. On the left you’ll see a button labeled “Library.” Clicking it takes you to – here’s a big surprise – the library. You will be most interested in the middle section labeled “How To.” It includes links to a wide variety of how to articles ranging from “How to Make Meetings Fun” to “How to Write a Humorous Speech.”

Let’s return to the homepage one more time. On the left you’ll see a button for “Exhibits.” Click on it. Then click on “Talk Culture” and then click on “Talk Wine (New Style).” What you’ll find is a funny analogy generator. Although I’ve set it up to generate analogies for wine, you can use the analogies to describe anything. For example, I just clicked the button and got: This wine is like “watching Gilligan’s Island for the first time, not quite humbling but close.” Well, that’s a good analogy for lots of other things you might be writing or speaking about. Just keep hitting the button on the analogy generator until you get something you can use. They’re not prewritten. The computer combines phrases to keep generating new ones.

Want to help support the museum? Visit the gift shop and buy someone a present. Or become a museum member.

And that’s no joke!

###
Malcolm Kushner, “America’s Favorite Humor Consultant,” is an internationally acclaimed expert on humor and communication. A co-creator of the humor exhibit at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Kushner is the author of several books including Public Speaking For Dummies which has sold over 100,000 copies. He has been profiled in Time Magazine, USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post and numerous other publications. His television and radio appearances include CNN, National Public Radio, CNBC, “Voice of America” and “The Larry King Show.” Prior to becoming a humor consultant, he practiced law with a major San Francisco law firm. A popular speaker at corporate and association meetings, Kushner is based in Santa Cruz, California. For more information, and lots of humor you can use in your next presentation, check out http://www.museumofhumor.com. 

Thousands of years ago, Aristotle wrote that believability is one of the three most important facts in being a good speaker—this has not changed. A speaker must be believable to have an impact on an audience.

This is why it is so important to eliminate obvious issues that can easily destroy a speaker’s believability. Reading from a script destroys believability because your audience doesn’t know if these are your ideas or even if you understand the ideas you are reading. Excessive looking at notes inflicts the same damage. Obvious displays of nervousness also eat away at the perception of believability.

“If he is really so confident of his ideas, why is he shaking like a leaf?” your audience muses.

The single easiest way to come across as more believable to an audience is through your eyes. Give long, luxuriant, and steady eye contact to as many people as possible, one at a time. Do this throughout your presentation and you will be believed.

TJ Walker, Media Training Worldwide

Film and now electronic images have been influencing world events for almost a century now. The prison photographs coming out of Iraq this spring are images that not only are reshaping world opinion, but are also unique in both form and function. All of these pictures were made, as far as I know, by amateur photographers — people actually involved in the events themselves. Some say that as many as 1,000 such photos were made — all of them with digital cameras. In the past, most opinion changing images were made by professional photojournalists and videographers functioning as news reporters. These amateur photographers used digital cameras and computers — which allowed them to make, store, copy, and even transmit and ultimately publish their images via the Internet with instant ease, and at no cost. And so digital technology itself — this time in the hands of rank amateurs — has come to play a central role in shaping world opinion.

(Digital technology apparently also played a major role in still another picture-scandal coming out of Iraq this spring. Pictures published in the UK involving the British military were apparently electronic fabrications, undermining the validity of news reporting still again in this era of journalistic fraud.)

Another unique aspect of these crudely made digital snapshots made by American soldiers in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib Prison is that those who made them were actually recording their own criminality in progress. Some images not only document their actions, but even go on to show us how these soldiers felt about what they were doing, as they went about doing it.

Still another important fact has emerged — many of these photos apparently were made as part of the actual punishment and pressure these soldiers are applying to their prisoners. They were making these pictures not just to record the event as documentation or personal souvenirs, but to further humiliate the Iraqi prisoners in their care, in order to “break” them.

Ultimately, these electronic images were not only published in newspapers and magazines everywhere, but also shown by television networks all over the world, and with varying contexts. In the most recent, and horrific, twist, the kidnapped American, Nicholas Berg, was murdered on videotape. According to his executioners, the killing was in reprisal for the American photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib prison.

Nobody can say where all of this will take us. The images themselves are only evidence — the substance rests in the brutality itself and its political effect on history. But when that history is written, electronic imaging will loom large as the visual story teller.

Phil Douglis, The Douglis Visual Workshops

Editor’s note:  For another reading of these photos, see the May 23, 2004 New York Times article Regarding the Torture of Others(must be registered) by Susan Sontag — whose essays and books on the role of photography in society have given us much food for thought over the last 30 years.

Child with Offerings, Vientiane, Laos, 2005; from Pbase Gallery Twenty Two: Black and white travel photography – making less into more. By Phil Douglis, Visual Literacy Community LeaderI am often asked when black and white can work effectively in expressive travel photography. My answer: rarely. That’s because color itself is so much a part of travel itself that it usually helps us to define the nature of a culture, a place, or an event. To remove the color from an expressive travel image will often remove an entire dimension of its meaning. Seeing the colors is part of travel experience. We remove those colors from our travel images at our own peril.Yet, as all my Pbase galleries abundantly demonstrate, abstraction is also a pivotal tool in expressive travel photography. And black and white is, in itself, a powerful medium of abstraction. In any black and white image, the black and white medium itself must always be part of the message. A black and white travel image functions best as expression when its monochromatic effect enhances the idea you are trying to convey. Another reason why I use black and white so sparingly in my own travel photography is that a color image often appears to be more “real” than a black and white image. That’s because a color picture generally is faithful to what we can see with our own eyes. Black and white is not. Black and white is nothing at all like reality. It reduces everything to shades of light and dark. Travel photography is usually based on reality – it’s the nature of the medium. If interpreting reality is to play any role in my expressive message, it might well be worth keeping the color in my picture, if just for that purpose alone. So when should we seriously consider producing travel images in black and white? Now that most of us exist in a digital world, we can have the option of shooting everything in color and then have the luxury of converting some of them later to black and white to see how they function. You will find that when you want to drain a travel image of everything but its essence, making it seem to be timeless, or remove distracting colors that call attention to themselves at the expense of meaning, black and white will work more effectively than color. (Shortly after posting this gallery, I came upon a stunningly effective black and white image posted by one of my cyberbook students Dandan Liu. You can see it at: http://www.pbase.com/celestine/image/39230266. It as close to a masterwork of travel photography as there is on pbase. I praised Dandan for using it in black and white. When I clicked on her very next image at http://www.pbase.com/celestine/image/39796498 I was stunned to see the same picture arrayed in color that utterly destroyed its beauty and message. If ever there was an example where black and white would be preferable to color, this would be it.)Travel photographers face still another potential issue when using color imagery. Viewers expect to see it reproduced in the “correct” tones, etc. With black and white there is no “right” way to worry about. Because of its ability to abstract a scene, simplifying it and making less into more, black and white can be more effective at stimulating the imaginations of your viewer. Black and White is best used with art-oriented, journalistic, or documentary intentions. In fact, I often find myself responding to my subjects more as a travel photojournalist, than as just a travel photographer. When I am shooting with the mentality of a reporter, working as a visual storyteller making spontaneous images rooted in the reactions and interactions of people, rather than carefully and deliberately previsualizing images to express the reality of the places in which they work and live, I find that black and white can often work more effectively than color. The images on display in this gallery, many of which are really a form of travel photojournalism, bear this out. If you go through my overall cyberbook, you will note that I’ve posted very few images in black and white in my other galleries. And that is because I am generally teaching expressive travel photography here, not art photography, photojournalism, or documentary photography. Color imagery reflects reality, and reality is at the very core of travel photography. That is why most travel brochures and magazine articles are reproduced in color. Rare is the travel image that will work more effectively in black and white, unless it is intended to be primarily artistic, journalistic, or documentary in nature. In my Black-and-White Pbase gallery, you will see examples of how black and white can work as expression in some forms of travel photography, particularly as travel photojournalism. Some of these images may also work well in color, but for different reasons. I will note such cases in some of my captions. Wherever possible, I will also provide a link to the same picture, showing you how it also looks in color as part of my travel articles posted on worldisround.com, so you can compare them side by side. I hope that when you have finished studying these images and my comments, you will gain a better feel for the kind of travel photos that might work effectively as black and white imagery. One other point deserves mentioning: when we shoot digitally in color and convert later to black and white, we lose the advantage of actually “seeing” our subject in black and white as we shoot. Most digital cameras allow you to shoot in black and white. It might be worth doing so, just to train your eye to “see” in tones of black and white, instead of in color. However keep in mind that shooting in a black and mode discards color information, so you can’t change your mind later and have that picture in color as well. The answer: if possible, shoot in black and white and then re-shoot in color. You may not be able to capture exactly the same behavior, etc. the second time around, but at least you will have covered all of your bases, and learn more about the differences between the two mediums. All of the initial examples posted in this gallery were made in Laos and Burma in early 2005. In the future, I will be adding examples of black and white photography to this gallery made elsewhere as well. I’ve selected these images from my portfolios of digital travel narratives I’ve posted at: http://www.worldisround.com/home/pnd1/index.html.  I welcome your comments, questions, and ideas with open arms, and will respond as soon as possible. About the photos above: A young child sells floral offerings outside of a Vientiane temple.  Both versions of this image are essentially portraits. Both have the same neutral background, the whitewashed wall of the temple. The color portrait is more real. The black and white abstraction is less real but it takes you more deeply into the subject. The color version buffers her plight with the warmth of her complexion, and the multi colored dried plants she is holding. The abstracted black and white version, on the other hand, makes a more direct impact on our imagination. She seems more vulnerable once her color “cover” has been removed. By removing the symbolic warmth of the color in the flowers, they become essentially dead sticks in black and white. By removing the reality of the child’s skin and clothing colors, and presenting my viewer with a monochromatic image, I’ve once again raised questions involving a social issue – child labor – rather than just making an attractive portrait of a young child holding an attractive floral offering. Both images function effectively. It comes down to a choice based on the purpose of the picture. Travel photo or documentary image? Take your choice.

Phil Douglis, The Douglis Visual Workshops

Now that “doing more with less” is the universal business mantra, managers are scrambling to develop the innovative capacity of their teams. If you are looking to increase your team’s creative output here’s a review of a classic technique and an introduction to some strategies you may not have tried before.

Linus Pauling once said: “If you want great ideas, you need to have lots of ideas.” Brainstorming is the most popular technique for producing lots of ideas. But, although it is widely practiced, it is seldom utilized to its full potential. If your group uses brainstorming, check to be sure these fundamentals are in place:

• Start with a warm-up exercise – especially if the group doesn’t brainstorm frequently or when the group seems distracted by outside issues. Use word games or puzzles or humor to set an atmosphere that is relaxed, fun and freewheeling.
• Encourage everyone to participate, either with original ideas or “piggybacking” (adding on to) other people’s input.
• Focus initially on quantity, not quality of ideas. Write all ideas on a white board or large sheets of paper and number them to help motivate participants and to jump back and forth between ideas without losing track of where you are.
• Urge participants to say anything that occurs to them, no matter how wild or “far out” those ideas may seem.
• Realize that brainstorming sessions tend to follow a series of steep energy curves. When the momentum starts to plateau, the facilitator needs to build on what’s been stated (“That’s a great idea; now what are some other ways to _____________?”) or to jump to another point (“Let’s switch gears and consider _____________.”)

Ideally, the brainstorming session should be broken into two parts: the first for idea generation and the second for evaluation. During the idea generation phase, no one should be allowed to judge, criticize, or squelch any of the ideas presented.

• Stay alert for nonproductive comments such as, “We tried that last year,” “I don’t think that will work,” etc.
• Counter premature judgment with, “This isn’t the time for evaluation yet.”

And, as effective as brainstorming can be, remember there are many other collaborative techniques that stimulate creativity. Here are just a few:

Metaphorical thinking is a great tool for breaking out of current patterns of perception. By comparing your situation to another more well-understood system or process you may spot similarities and come up with an unexpected idea. The exercise asks: What can I learn from this comparison?

A classic example of this technique from my book Creativity in Business is of a defense contractor that developed a missile that had to fit so closely within its silo it couldn’t be pushed in. Comparing the situation to a horse that refuses to be pushed into a stall, the solution was to lead the horse in. The solution for the defense company: pull the missile in with a cable.

Forced connections is a technique for finding commonalities between two or more seemingly unrelated concepts or items. One practical exercise is to examine an industry that is very different from yours and look for things you can successfully imitate. Another is to bring “show and tell” items that help you visualize the wide variety of options and materials that could be applied to the session’s topic.

Back to the future starts with an image of the completed goal. Team members compare their answers to a series of questions: What does the ideal end result look like? How is the ideal different from what we have now? What changes are necessary for us to achieve the ideal? How can we make those changes?

Get visual. The most productive creative-thinking sessions are extremely visual. They include mind mapping, sketching, diagrams, cartoons and stick figures. Images stimulate emotion. Emotion opens creative channels that pure logic can’t budge.

Get physical. Get up and move around. Have your team stand rather than sit when grouping around white boards or easels. Act out the problem you are working on. A popular technique used by design firms is “bodystorming” where people act out current behavior and usage patterns to see how they might be altered.

Get fired. My favorite way to end a creativity session is to ask participants to take the last few minutes and contribute ideas that would probably work, but are so outrageous they could get the group fired. (Obviously, the task then becomes to tone-down the potential solutions so that the problem can be solved without risking any jobs.)

And, of course, you want to make sure that you are trying to solve the right problem. The European operation of a business started losing money after many years of outstanding profitability. Worried, the management team initially discussed ways to reduce costs in Europe in order to improve profitability. When the cost-cutting did little to stop the downward slide, the team finally faced the real issue: the geographical distribution of customers had changed drastically. The problem was then redefined as “How do we serve our customers more profitably on a global basis?” Hundreds of ideas were generated around this challenge that resulted in a customer focused business restructuring that not only cut costs in Europe but also added resources in other parts of the world.

By Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. delivers keynote speeches and seminars on collaborative creativity to association, government, and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website:http://www.CKG.com.

Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and  “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.

Your workplace is filled with liars! How do I know? 

I’ve got this straight from one of the foremost authorities on body language in business, Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. Carol conducted an extensive survey to research her new book, The Truth About Lies in the Workplace (Berrett-Koehler).

Here are a few of the startling facts she uncovered:

• ·         67% of workers don’t trust senior leadership
• ·         53% said their immediate supervisor regularly lied to them
• ·         51% believe their co-workers regularly lied
• ·         53% admitted lying themselves

Lies and deception are running rampant in the workplace. Fortunately, Carol’s terrific new book explains in easy to understand language:

• ·         How to spot a liar and what to do about it
• ·         How men and women lie differently
• ·         How to deal with liars whether the liar is above, below, or on the same level as you
• ·         The one lie you better not tell  your manager
• ·         How to NOT look like a liar when you’re telling the truth
• ·         Ways to foster candor and decrease deception in your organization

Carol’s advice applies whether the liar is a co-worker, boss, customer, prospect or board member. Her tips will help you defend yourself and your company from backstabbers, credit taking colleagues, lying bosses, gossips, and cheating job applicants.

I recommend that you read The Truth About Lies in the Workplace. When you order your copy now, you will also receive over $500 worth of career-building bonus gifts from Carol’s friends (including Communitelligence). And that’s no lie.

P.S. If you think you are too sharp to be taken in by a con man like Bernie Madoff, you had better read Chapter 3: Why We Believe Liars and How We Play Into Their Hands twice. Get your copy now.

Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and  “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.

Your workplace is filled with liars! How do I know?

I’ve got this straight from one of the foremost authorities on body language in business, Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. Carol conducted an extensive survey to research her new book, The Truth About Lies in the Workplace (Berrett-Koehler).

Here are a few of the startling facts she uncovered:

• ·         67% of workers don’t trust senior leadership
• ·         53% said their immediate supervisor regularly lied to them
• ·         51% believe their co-workers regularly lied
• ·         53% admitted lying themselves

Lies and deception are running rampant in the workplace. Fortunately, Carol’s terrific new book explains in easy to understand language:

• ·         How to spot a liar and what to do about it
• ·         How men and women lie differently
• ·         How to deal with liars whether the liar is above, below, or on the same level as you
• ·         The one lie you better not tell  your manager
• ·         How to NOT look like a liar when you’re telling the truth
• ·         Ways to foster candor and decrease deception in your organization

Carol’s advice applies whether the liar is a co-worker, boss, customer, prospect or board member. Her tips will help you defend yourself and your company from backstabbers, credit taking colleagues, lying bosses, gossips, and cheating job applicants.

I recommend that you read The Truth About Lies in the Workplace. When you order your copy now, you will also receive over $500 worth of career-building bonus gifts from Carol’s friends (including Communitelligence). And that’s no lie.

P.S. If you think you are too sharp to be taken in by a con man like Bernie Madoff, you had better read Chapter 3: Why We Believe Liars and How We Play Into Their Hands twice. Get your copy now.

So many presentations are boring because their pace is exactly the same throughout. Whether the speaker reads a script, follows a PowerPoint or just works from an outline, the word flow is coming out at roughly the same speed and same volume. The result?

Boredom. The audience falls asleep.

Practically anything you can do to alter or change the pace of your speech is a good thing because it will make you stand out from all of the other speakers who never change their pace. This is why when a speaker makes a seemingly spontaneous remark, the audience responds favorably. When uttering a spontaneous remark, whether louder than usual or under the breath as an aside, the speed and volume change. This variety makes the speaker more interesting.

Since most speakers are nervous, they don’t pause long enough when tossing out rhetorical questions to the audience to allow the audience to think of an answer. Great speakers pause longer and that results in a favorable change of pace.

Telling funny stories, even telling jokes can change the pace (but I’m not recommending that you try to be a joke teller). When you get your audience to laugh, you are, in effect, changing the pace of the presentation. Because now you are pausing and you are giving your audience a chance to communicate back to you in the form of laughter.

Occasionally getting excited and speaking quickly is OK, as long as you balance that with longer pauses and moments where you speak slower than normal. Walking around in front of your audience and moving at a different pace can also create more variety in your presentation.

When it comes to a presenter’s speaking pace, consistency isn’t just the hobgoblin of little minds, it is the bane of bored audiences everywhere.

TJ Walker, Media Training Worldwide

We re all taught to avoid clichés by our high school English teachers. And this is good advice, when it comes to writing reporters, articles, or even giving speeches. Reporters have also been taught by their instructors to never, ever write or utter clichés in news reports.

However, there is one big exception to this rule for both newsmakers and news

reporters: Reporters LOVE quoting experts, executives and newsmakers using clichés.

Why?

Because clichés are often more colorful ways of making points. Clichés become clichés in the first point because they are a more memorable way of making a message stick in someone’s head.

A journalist’s job is to make new information more understandable and more memorable to readers, viewers or listeners. When a reporter combines new information along side a cliché that repackages old information, the result is often a better understanding and context of the new story.

If you want to be a masterful media communicator, sometimes you have to swallow your pride. You have to realize that you are not the journalist or writer—your job is to get your message out. Your high school English teacher might not be impressed if she sees you quoted while using a cliché, but that should not be your concern. Your job is to get quotes that reflect your message.

“At the end of the day…”

“The bottom line is…”

“We hit a home run when we…”

None of these clichés are brilliant, but they may help you insert your main points into a story.

One of my clients was a financial regulator for the state of Florida. His office often had to shut down fraudulent boiler room operations. His message, after each shut down, was that consumers should be cautious if someone calls them at dinner time and offers to turn $5000 into $10,000 in three weeks in an oil well investment.

That was the message, but how did he get this idea into newspapers, TV and radio?

He said, “Remember citizens, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Same message as above, but because it is a cliché, the news media quoted him. And they quoted him using this cliché EVERY 3 MONTHS FOR 20 YEARS.

Not only do clichés work, but they will keep working for you over and over again.

Remember “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

TJ Walker, Media Training Worldwide

My friend and colleague, Richard Barrett, wrote a book several years ago called “Liberating the Corporate Soul.”  It’s exceptional on many levels, as I wrote in a review that is posted on Amazon.com.  One remarkable quality about Richard’s book is how it is both wonderfully inspiring and technically rigorous.  Marcello Palazzi, Co-Founder and Chair of the Progessio Foundation said that “Liberating the Corporate Soul achieves the impossible: it integrates the intangibles of ethics, vision, and consciousness into a tangible measurement system.”Much of Richard’s work is rooted in his experiences from when he worked at the World Bank.  During his years there, he developed a strong conviction that the institution needed to focus more of its attention on the issue of human rights in its monetary policies and decision-making.  Since he was a mid-level manager with limited influence, he decided that he would need to take a less conventional approach if he wanted to reach the ears – and hearts – of senior management.  

One great way to get your message quoted by reporters is to state your ideas in the form of a rhetorical question. Why do reporters like rhetorical questions?

Because journalists like to break up the structure of their stories. If every sentence begins with a subject, is followed by a verb and ends with an object, the story can look boring very quickly. An occasional rhetorical question surrounded by quotation marks helps mix up the flow of a story.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

“Are we going to face a possible bankruptcy next year?”

“When is management going to listen to its own workers?”

“When will the airline unions realize that if they get all of their demands, there will be no airline left in business?”

“Why has the governor betrayed the faith of the voters?”

“Will Microsoft Office revolutionize the way workers get their jobs done?”

The one thing all of these questions have in common is that they aren’t real questions. They aren’t the expressions of one person seeking new information.

They are rhetorical questions, meaning they are simply a way of making a point in the form of asking a question. But they question doesn’t have to be answered in order for the point to still be understood.

Do I think it’s good to communicate your message points in the middle of an interview by using rhetorical questions? Yes I do.

TJ Walker, Media Training Worldwide

Regardless of your particular discipline, I believe that there’s much about communications – applicable to today – that we can learn from Mr. Lincoln:

1. Getting to the point – The Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches ever delivered.  It consisted of 10 sentences and took a little more than two minutes to deliver (by way of comparison, President Obama’s recent State of the Union address lasted well over an hour including the applause breaks).  In the time he spoke, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality as set forth by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as “a new birth of freedom” that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also create a unified nation. 

All of President Lincoln’s hopes to end the Civil War and the entire future of his presidency and, for that matter, the entire nation, rested on his shoulders at that moment. Yet he did not allow the importance of the moment to complicate his message, and that speaks volumes about Lincoln’s gift as a communicator.

By now, it is widely known that Mr. Lincoln labored mightily with this speech as opposed to the commonly-held belief that it was hurriedly written on the back of envelop in ten minutes. In choosing his words carefully, Mr. Lincoln delivered his messages cogently and succinctly (and, of course, without the aid of PowerPoint).

2. Listening – How often do we forget that listening is an important part of the communications process? Clearly Mr. Lincoln was a listener and this trait informed his opinions and shaped his understanding of the people he was elected to govern. He spent hours sitting and talking with people, asking questions and getting to know others. He talked with soldiers, widows of fallen soldiers, common people and more. Although known as a great storyteller, he was also known to take the time to hear complaints from people and listen to their stories. It’s hard for leaders of significant importance to take the time to slow down and listen, but it’s critically important.

3. Crisis communications – Given that Mr. Lincoln presided over a war torn country, he came to be an expert at crisis communications. More than telling the American public why the war was worth fighting, he gave them a sense of hope during a time when hundreds of thousands were dying in the Civil War. And he gave Americans a sense of purpose, that it was their duty to honor the dead by ensuring government “of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Read full article by Gene Marback at ThereforeIAM

Writing good is a big deal these days. A bigger deal then math, according to my friends and I, but I’m not hear to represent there views. But, I thank it’s important to know the English language and all it’s rules.

Did you catch all the errors in that first paragraph? The spell-check on my laptop didn’t.

The College Board – those friendly scholars who bring us the SATs and other fun tests – recently released the results of a survey by its National Commission on Writing. The news is not good. A majority of U.S. employers say about one-third of workers do not meet the writing requirements of their positions. “Businesses are really crying out,” College Board President Gaston Caperton told the Associated Press. “They need to have people who write better.”

The employers who say people need to write better are in some surprising industries: mining; construction; manufacturing; transportation and utilities; services; and finance, insurance and real estate. It seems companies want everyone to be able to communicate effectively, not just the executives, lawyers and public relations people.

This might come as a surprise not only to people in the working world, but also to people who are preparing to enter it. Students who believe the informal shorthand of e-mail and instant messages is acceptable in corporate America might be in for a shock when they lose the jobs of their dreams because of misspelled words on their resumés. I recently read a self-promotion posted by a recent graduate on a job-seekers discussion board for the public relations industry. The misspelled words, poor sentence construction and grammatical errors were enough to make E.B. White turn over in his grave. It’s bad enough that the job seeker embarrassed herself in front of thousands of professional peers (she even proudly announced the college from which she graduated). I only hope no one committed the greater sin of actually hiring her.

I have a friend who recently left the practice of business communication so he could teach it to the next generation of professionals. In just a few weeks in the classroom he has experienced something akin to culture shock. “It is disturbing how little these students know about the English language and its proper usage,” he lamented recently.

A lot of people ask why it’s important to use correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in their jobs. I have two answers:

1. Standards are necessary for society to function. Imagine if a construction company decided it was no longer important to follow standards of measurement. One foot might be 13 inches or 12 inches. Who cares? Just as chaos would reign in that scenario, the same would be true if we didn’t follow standards of language. Clear communication would be impossible.

2. Credibility is at stake. I would not trust a computer programmer who doesn’t know code, a chef who doesn’t know how to measure ingredients, or a doctor who doesn’t know the human anatomy. Just as these people must know how to use the tools of their trade, so anyone who uses English to communicate must know how to use it correctly.

Fixing the problem that the College Board survey exposes is not easy. Teachers will have to stop misspelling words on the communications they send home to parents. (Yes, I’m the parent who keeps sending those notes back with proofreading marks all over them.) Students will have to take Language Arts more seriously, like it’s a ticket to a decent job. Most difficult of all, employers will have to insist that the people who work for them – no matter what their jobs or salaries – begin using correct grammar, learn how to write well and spell words correctly. Annual bonuses should depend upon it.

By the way, my laptop’s spell check caught only one out of at least seven mistakes in the first paragraph. “It’s” should be “its.” (I believe the second sentence is a fragment, which would be an eighth error, although the laptop doesn’t think so.) 

Robert Holland

Stop and LISTEN. To be a successful communications professional means you are an exceptional listener. The more you listen, the more you learn.  The less you listen, the less you learn.

When you consider the role of a communications professional, we better be doing a lot of real listening. We need to be aware of and understand the needs and goals of our internal clients and each employee audience subgroup — different generations, different functions, management vs. non-management, c-level and more.

From one-on-one meetings to interviews, focus groups to department meetings or townhall to board meetings, listening is key. So how much listening are you doing?  Media guru Roger Ailes, author of You Are The Message, says people should strive to listen 60 to 70 percent of the time and talk 30 to 40 percent.

Here’s Roger Ailes’ tips for becoming a better listener:

• Relax and clear your mind so that you’re receptive to what’s being said.
• Never assume that you’ve heard correctly just because the first few words have taken you in a certain direction.
• Don’t overreact emotionally to speakers’ words or ideas, especially those that are contrary to your views.
• Before forming a conclusion, let the speaker complete his or her thoughts.
• Listen for intent as well as content.
• Try to listen without overanalyzing.
• Remember that human communication goes through three phases: reception (listening), processing (analyzing), and transmission (speaking).
• Being a good communicator is a natural skill for only a few people. Most of us have to work at being good communicators and learn to observe not only how we speak and listen, but also what kinds of unspoken messages we send to our colleagues.

My tip. The next time you meet with someone, make a mental note of how many times you’re silent.  Remember, silence is golden.

Julie Baron, COMMUNICATION WORKS