Your message and other things you say

I shared my Christmas dinner and most of the day with a fascinating person.  Demographics and logic would say our paths would never cross.
She is a 94-year-old black woman, widowed for the last few years, now recovering from a broken hip.  While her body is weakening, her mind is incredibly sharp; her humor intact; and her willingness and ability to share and teach strong.  She split her time between urban lakefront Chicago and rural Mississippi and Louisiana before retiring on what seemed like a whim to sunny Florida.  I never got the full picture of her education and career path, but it is clear she ascended to some of the highest heights of the cosmetic and publishing world, serving in some large and prestigious companies.  She started her career in the midst of The Depression; she ended it in the midst of integration.  She shared multiple stories where her skin color alone limited her opportunity, but she clearly overcame those shallow-thinkers around her to pursue what was important to her.  She laughed openly at her current limitations (hearing aid, walker, memory, assisted living) and never once bragged on herself.   But the message received by anyone who would listen (and hopefully my kids were listening to what she said with her life) was clearly one of confidence, class, and accomplishment.

What can we learn from those not like us?  Most of us will never know.  We congregrate and collaborate by color, creed, character, and choice, limiting our exposure to those who are different in even the slightest way. When faced with the prospect of those who are different, we tolerate rather than embrace, attempt to teach rather than learn, and protect our comfort at all costs.
I watch the effect of this in large corporations striving to teach everyone who passes their doors about “their culture and their way” rather than what they can learn from those who grace them with their presence.  Bad presentations are bad usually because they mimic the only kind of presentations they’ve ever seen (which are bad).  While break rooms are flush with pithy quotes like “The only constant is change,” few things ever change proactively for the better.
And that’s a shame.

Take note of the world around you.  Learn from others.

Probably one of the most common delivery mistakes I see in newbies and experienced presenters alike is the urge to carry something with them on the podium.  Mark this rule down — if we hold something in our hands while we talk, WE WILL play with it.  And IT WILL be distracting.  Plain and simple.

I watched seasoned presenter recently play off his notes with a “I just jotted a few things down I wanted to be sure and share with you.”  Good enough.  But he then proceeded to fold, mutilate, spindle, and destroy said notes.  They went into and out of the pants pocket, were shaken at the audience, waved around, and consulted on more occasions than needed to jog a memory.  Better left at the edge of the stage or on a desk/podium and moved to when needed.
I’ve seen trainers hold whiteboard markers like Linus’ blanket, only to end the day with a green thumb (and a red forefinger, a blue ring finger, and a black pinkie and eye).

And it’s not limited to stage personalities.  Watch your meeting head during the next meeting and unless the pen is on the table, it will be twirled, flipped, chewed on, bent, doodled with, and used as a baton.  Put the pen on the table, and nobody gets hurt.

Perhaps the only excusable handheld item is the slide or audio/visual remote.  But this, too, will get fiddled with.  Better to leave in an accessible spot or leave with a trusted assistant if we don’t wish to distract our audience.

In addition to the chance of dropping, flinging, or destroying the object, it’s a simple distraction.  The added loss is that the presenter no longer has complete freedom of his hands to make decent gestures.  Far better to get an object when needed, and present a distraction-free zone the rest of the time.

Leave your hands free to avoid distractions and use proper gestures.

“I want this to be informal.“  That statement was near the end of the stated logistics of a manager to about 200 troops in a meeting.  The forum was a large auditorium, and the manager was on an elevated stage, with a backdrop of a two-story A/V screen showing scripted PowerPoint.  The presenter was mic’d wirelessly, and never came in to the audience.  There was almost no impromptu content, and eye contact was sparse.
He may have wanted things to be informal, but everything about the situation screamed formality.  Perhaps the way it was phrased — “I want…” — made it even worse.  The audience knew at once that what the manager wanted was not reality.  Anything else he had to say was likely dismissed as not reality as well.

The inconsistent message was further driven home when the presenter made a point to say he wanted questions and dialog.  But when it was time for Q&A, he asked for questions while backing up, and answered the first question with his arms crossed.  Both non-verbal communications screamed “I don’t want to hear what you have to say” while the words tried to pry comments from the audience.  When there is a discrepancy in message, the non-verbal is usually treated with greater trust.

Make your message, your logistics, and your delivery consistent.

Watched a speaker host a meeting and then ask an invited guest to open the business end of a large forum after the holiday pleasantries were exchanged.  This second speaker, known to the entire audience as a position of authority, then got up to give a casual state-of-the-union address followed by a town-hall like Q&A.  Problem was, during the whole time Speaker B was on the stage, Speaker A’s PowerPoint was displayed in the screen, complete with Speaker A’s name and discussion title.  Anyone walking in late would have been quite confused.
This actually is a specific instance of a larger problem, quite prevalent in the technical community using PowerPoint.  The purpose of PowerPoint — and any other visual aid, prop, display mechanism, joke, or demonstration — is to help get a message across.  When the presentation becomes PowerPoint, and not the message we have to give, we are prone to have everything on the slides.  This causes problems when there is even a slight detour from what is already pre-printed in our slides.
The best solution whenever there is verbal communication that is not consistent with the slides is to blank out the visual (the ‘B’ key in PPT will do just that).  Where is it written (OK, where is it good) that there must always be a displayed visual on the screen?  If the visual is to help with the message, then there should be points when there is no need for a visual to help.  When the visual IS the message (or at least the presenter thinks so), then we are forced as an audience to always watch something.  This divides, not focuses, our attention.

Corollary: do we really need a slide that says “Questions?” in order to take questions from our audience?  And if we do want to delineate a change in the program to Q&A, should it stay up the entire time we answer them?  I vote no.  Better solution is to engage your audience and take questions whenever.  If that is not feasible or desirable, then blank everything out, get the audience’s attention, and focus on questions without the distraction of a slide deck in the background.  Bonus points if you answer the question with a pre-created PPT slide and jump to it directly (# and Enter on the keyboard) to help make the point.

Make your visuals be supporting material to help drive home a point.  Don’t make the visuals the point.

Was walking through an online product demo (as a customer) in a web conference today when the demo guy said, “Let me explain this screen — it can be a bit misleading.” I about busted out laughing. As a customer, I wondered why a company would demo a product screen they knew was misleading. Since it was a web product, changing it (the text) seems to be a very minor thing. One would wonder why they wouldn’t rush to do that. Immediately. But they continued to explain the misleading application dialog, rather than make it right.

I watch speakers do the simliar things:

• “I know you can’t read this, but…” Why are you putting something in front of me (and drawing attention to it) when you already know I can’t read it?
• “I know you already know this, but…” If you really think I already know it, then why are you telling me? You either don’t believe yourself, or you’re just that bent on hearing yourself talk.

If you find yourself drawing attention to problems in your content, fix the content (first).

My 5-year-old son watched his cousin play in a basketball game.  She was the largest and most athletic girl on the court, scored 22 of her team’s 26, and led them to an emphatic victory.  His comments revealed the impression it made on him, especially in light of his own league starting later in the week.  “Dad, am I going to be the tallest kid on my team?“  I could see where this was headed — he clearly associated “tallest” with “best”.  While I’m thrilled he wants to be the best, I want him to get another lesson than “you’re born with it.”

After contemplating, I realize that adults have the same mentality, just covered up with more social grace.  We rarely put ourselves voluntarily in situations where we don’t expect to be the best, if not at least successful.  And it hurts our ability to become better.  If my goal is to be a better (the best?) tennis player, I do myself a disservice (pun intended) to play only with players who are as good or not as good as me.  I get better by playing better folks.

I just finished a course this week where a participant gave the feedback — “I’m glad you pushed me.  You didn’t let me skate.“  Would that we had such an opportunity in all areas of our lives.  When it comes to communication skills, if we only see folks who are at our skill level or below, it’s unlikely we’ll progress (and we ALL can progress).  That’s why it’s so important to constantly ’sharpen the saw’ (as Covey puts it) and to seek out environments that challenge us.  I’ve found just studying the masters of the craft to be fascinating.  The web makes it easy.  Few people take the time to do it.

Force yourself to be pushed by those who are better than you.

David Ferrabee blogs today about how information and technology is commonly confused with communication.  He is spot on.

Communication defined involves interchange or transmission of ideas.  So often when I talk to folks about what they want to say, they start with something like “I’ll use PowerPoint” or “We’ll create a SharePoint site”.  It is very difficult to explain to folks that this is the last decision (how we’ll transmit the message) we need to make, not the first (what we want to transmit).

I worked with a guy a few months ago, who after taking my course on how to develop a ‘training’ class for a technical audience, came back with his PowerPoint deck for me to approve.  Since I had demoed about a dozen alternate ways to get a message across to a class (and PPT was NOT one of them!), I asked what else he considered and he responded that he just felt PowerPoint was the best way to get the message across.  I suppose that could have been the case, but I really believe he just had not ever considered anything else (and probably was all he’d ever seen in his technology company).  More likely, it’s just a case of not trying to be creative enough and really ascertain how the audience will learn.

Been brainstorming with a friend on how to excel at web conferencing (LiveMeeting — side note: why are all the cool Microsoft tools the most abused communication methods?), which is not something I really like or excel at, but is nonetheless a very valid (and cost-effective) method for message deployment.  He ran across a treasure trove of examples at http://main.livemeeting.com/demos/web_seminar_archive.cfm, which mainly are just marginal PowerPoint decks translated to web shows.  I actually fell asleep while we tried to watch one (yes, it’s been a busy few weeks and I’m tired, but aren’t all our audiences filled with tired folks?).

The principles of communication, especially Rule #1, are always in effect, and never more so than when technology steps in to the picture.  We must meet our audience with a clear message that meets their needs, in a way they can remember and act upon.

Don’t let technology or a method be your message.

In church this past week, we were leading up to the GATE (Great American Tryptophan Extravaganza, sometimes called Thanksgiving) and singing songs that were a) appropriate to the theme, and b) known to most of the audience.  The second option is a trick these days, as an older crowd frequently doesn’t know the songs the younger crowd is pleased by, and vice versa.  So after hearing the first phrase of a common song, I made a mental note that this should be a high-participation oratorio.

Boy was I wrong.  Seems that those in charge of music decided to use an arrangement known only to the choir — syncopation and even the melody was changed from the rendition fafmiliar to the audience.  The first time through everyone sang out with gusto, only to find out they were singing in a pause (that usually was not there).  The second time, it was a bit softer, and by the non-standard ending, virtually no one in the audience was singing.  One has to wonder the purpose of a supposedly public song that no one can sing.
As speakers we do the same thing.  We provide handouts that cannot be followed, or do not refer at all to them.  We use anecdotes and stories that only we can follow.  We ask questions with answers that cannot possibly be known to our audience, expecting answers, but when the right answer tarries, we show frustration.

Our goal should be to make it as easy as possible for our audience to be involved and take ownership of the message.  When it makes sense, of course, we can use shock and surprises to make a point.  But when we want them to be a part, let’s not make them be apart.

Include your audience and make it easy for them to listen and participate.