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Every Word I Say Is A Promise

When I cancel time with you so I can spend time doing something else I send the message that I have a hierarchy of friends, and you are definitely not at the top.

To me, being nice means caring about others. It is a high value for me.

There is no such thing as a "promise" in my life. If I say I will be somewhere or spend time with someone then it is the equivalent of a promise. My word is my promise. I will do my absolute best to keep my commitment. And if I cannot keep my word due to emergency, or if I choose to break my word due to personal preference, then my responsibility says I must be up front and immediate with those who I am letting down, and I must accept the consequences of the accountability image I set for myself.

I recently called a friend a "better offer whore" (in a lighthearted tone with all the joking-yet-seriousness I could manage). He had backed out on me for a social event for another social event. When I told him I felt he was taking a better offer than me and that was frustrating because I had spent time and energy on the original plans, he got angry and said he was "making better choices".

I agree he was making better choices - for himself. But making better choices for oneself regardless of how it affects others is not what relational responsibility is about.

Did you consider how your "better choice" would impact others before you made it? If I am not committed to a person or event from the start, okay, but I must let that qualifier be known. If the 'better offer' circumstances are truly extraordinary and I do my best to make it up to or include my friend (or family) in my new plans, then that is great as everyone wins.

Otherwise, living life by the code of "If something better than this comes up then I will back out on you," is not going to cement any trusting long-term relationships. It sends a powerfully negative message about one's values.

When I give my word to anyone about anything I have the highest expectation that I will fulfill my word, and if I don't it should not be handled with just a "Oh by the way I can't." It should be handled promptly, with grace and sensitivity.

The Immediacy Rule

The Immediacy Rule is a communication rule I use when training people who work with others for a large part of their time. The rule is:

Other people don't care about your intentions.

Living day-to-day life, the interpersonal rule of thumb is that we simply interact and then react, caring only about about communication results we get from another: what we feel or understand.

To care about other people's intentions is a luxury that is afforded only when taking the time to have a longer conversation about communication with someone else, usually stemming from a misunderstanding or argument we had with them. Too often, "You misread my intention," is something people use as a defense about why their communication created a problem.

This is not to say that intention is unimportant. I believe intention is the primary driver of the emotional response we get from others. Yet as a rule, people do not consider your intention when they are experiencing how clear or impactive you are. They are just reacting to your verbal, vocal, and visual choices.

On a note regarding the receivers of communication, there are x-factors. Sometimes we develop what are called "filters" in our mindset that cause us to more easily and/or severely misread another person's intentions. For example, as we listen to a colleague who has broken our trust in the past, our reticular activating system actively - yet unconsciously - seeks phrases that could be lies, and our confirmation bias hijacks our decision making to decide that they are lies.

Thinking and learning about communication skills assists growth in becoming more conscious in clarity of intention, and also to listen with more openness to others intentions, too.

Funny: instinct > calculation

I am nobody famous. I am not a standup or a comic actor. But, like you and any convict with Internet access I can start a blog for free and write my opinions on things, pretending I am smart and that I know what I'm talking about.

As a life-long standup lover and of comedy in general, I can be awesomely nerdy when it comes to analyzing why things are funny. Style, content, timing, all of it fascinates me. And I am not a comedy snob. I enjoy a good baby farting on Grandma just as much as I enjoy Woody Allen.

So of all the things I believe about comedy, my thesis is this:

Funny: instinct > calculation

Here are some of my beliefs about humor that have tended to hold true over time.

1. Being consistently referred to as a funny person is not something that is able to be trained. It is a way of thinking we get from our parents and friends from a very young age. 
2. One's Level Of Funniness can be sharpened with the right kind of experience.
3. Being funny with family = Level 0; being funny with friends = Level 1; being the funniest of your friends (as decided by them) is level 2; being funny with strangers casually/socially is level 3; being consistently funny in front of crowds of strangers is the ultimate level 4. 
4. Improvisation is not the same as telling pre-crafted jokes - they are different humor skill sets with only a little overlap. 
5. Being able to analyze humor is a million times easier than actually being funny. 
6. Writing funny is a different skill set than talking funny or 'doing' funny.

To earn the phrase of having a "sense of humor" you should have to actually be able to make people laugh. A lot. Otherwise you don't have a sense of humor, you just appreciate humor, like every human on the planet.

That's it.

Getting Past The Gatekeeper

Let's take a look at how we can talk with a secretary, assistant, or "gate keeper" on the phone so we can get to the person we want to reach.

A little context...

• I am not interested in lying about why I am calling.
• I assume the gate keeper does not have time to dilly dally: this is a timed event. 

That said, I am going to use rapport techniques to try and connect with the gate keeper on a human level, and I'm going to use convincing techniques to transparently and emotionally show why I should be speaking with my intended target.


Rapport

1. Be Polite. More people are impressed by those who know how to be polite than by those who self-describe themselves as "no-nonsense and direct" (and who others describe as "ass holes").
2. Use Friendly Tones. Don't be monotone, add some variety in your inflection. But please: stay natural. Nobody likes Goofy The Dip Wad except for other Goofy The Dip Wads.
3. Use A Unique Greeting. These can be achieved through tone, rhythm, and word choice. The typical machine-gun-business-call starts like: "Hi this is Steve with Arrowood Training and I'm calling for Frank Anderson?" Uh... okay, thanks, telemarketer guy! Instead, slow down, be clear and articulate, and if you say something, MEAN IT. If you say "How are you?" Listen to their response and respond back to it.

I used to be an intern at The Actors Studio in New York on West 44th Street. One day my boss Jerry gave me a binder full of phone numbers of actors and directors. There were some huge celebrities in the binder, simply listed in courier font like an old phone book. I recall seeing numbers for Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, Julia Roberts, Robin Williams, and Stephen Spielberg, some of which found their way into my pocket notebook. Jerry told me all the A-list types I couldn't call, as he would be calling them, but he still gave me some people I was nervous about.

Usually I reached voice mail or an agent, but once I got the wife (presumed) of George Roy Hill, director of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and The Sting. She said "Hello?" and I said, "Is this a real person?" She laughed and after a minute of purely fun social interaction I heard George shouting in the background, "Who is that?" and I got to talk with him.

I have always felt that building rapport in many business dynamics is more difficult than doing in social dynamics. That's because as the initiator of the rapport building, I am often not only in a timed event with the receiver, but I also run the risk of coming across as insincere in my communication. This can lead to my being seen as manipulative, worsening relationship between them and me, or them and who I represent. My goal is to come across as human versus as 'caller #46'. The only way to do this is by being sincere. If you are not sincere in wanting to interact with the person on the other end, you probably should not be trying to build rapport with strangers.


Convincing

1. Offer Transparent Explanation. Be clear and up-front with your intention.  
2. Use Emotional Conveyance. Show your natural sense of urgency, sincerity, or importance in what you want). It's natural to use both techniques simultaneously, and both require specific choices in tone, pacing, rhythms, emphasis, and word choices.

When I was in college working with a temp agency, I once was given a list of names to cold-call invite to some newly formed charity business organization to try and get them to join. The company I was temping for was not that concerned if they joined or not, they just wanted the calls made. But I made it my mission to get as many as I could.

I remember speaking with the assistant for a guy way up the ladder in Coca-Cola, and the way I got through to the guy was just by being really transparent. I ditched the robotic script the company gave me when his assistant answered. "Hello, my name is Steve Arrowood and I'm a temp worker in New Brighton, Minnesota. I'm calling to let David Iverson know about this new charity organization (whatever it was) so it can get started right. I'm not calling for money, I'm just calling for one minute of his time. From what I know about it, I think it is really worthwhile and he might be interested." She paused, "OK, who are you again?" I restated it all in different words and I got through.


Different people are convinced by different things in different scenarios. Sometimes you can get a read on the person on the other end of the phone and you can best choose your convincing technique. Sometimes they give you an opening like, "Who are you again?" and you need to recognize it and jump in to go one step farther in rapport or convincing.

Got another example or story of something that worked?

Doing Without Knowing

Say you know someone, perhaps in your profession, who you admire - whose skills you would like to be able to do or whose types of creations you wish you could create.

In the training and education industry, I see trainers use each others curriculum, stories, games, and methods ALL THE TIME. Even when the content isn't open source, it gets taken by contract staff and participants who simply go out and do it so that it soon becomes open source - rarely is educational content original or documented to the extent that it truly belongs to someone.

So there is the ownership issue, but there is also the personal issue. All legalities aside, what happens to us when we see someone or something and we try to emulate without understanding the reasoning, history, or theory behind it?

I believe that through this behavior we stop being ourselves and start being a version of ourselves we wish we were. We do it because we want to create the same results we saw them get. Yes, imitation can help us learn and get better results, but if we stop there - copying without improving and making something truly original - we only achieve a light shade of the source, and that makes us appear disingenuous.

There will always be those who are content to peddle carbon copies of things they saw and heard, but as an educator, a learner, the challenge is to steal what is legal and morally conscientious, and to do it for the purpose of building something better.

True North

Over the past year I've done some work facilitating youth learning programs for a Danish education company called True North, and in April I joined them full time as CEO (/facilitator/curriculum developer/staff trainer/everything). Small company. You know.

The work is fun and meaningful, and the people I work with care about quality and give me lots of trust and autonomy, so I am having a great time.

So now I am in the exciting position of wanting to move to Copenhagen as soon as my wife and I have our baby boy in October and are able to sell our house. (If anyone wants to buy a house in Oceanside, California, let me know.)

One of the fun challenges of working in a small business for me is recognizing which area to devote time to in the company at any given moment: marketing, sales, development, staffing, etc. I have gained a lot of good execution ideas in various company areas from reading and talking with people who have been in similar positions, but with a never-ending stream of company needs and far more to-dos than time, the priority question is constant.

Earlier in life I learned how to check-off to-dos, now I am learning how to delete them.

How To Use Tiger Woods To Manipulate Your Friends

A guy I know just asked this question on his Facebook feed:

Are you a fan of Tiger Woods: Yes/No

My first reaction was to think not about my answer, but about the question. Why was I uncomfortable with it?

Exploring the question's design, the question asks me to consider emotionally charged, polarizing topics (adultery + celebrity fandom), then cram-wrap my answer into a yes/no format by presupposing there is only one black-or-white definition of "being a fan".

While I know there is no true answer to this question because it is an opinion, it still left me considering how people - intentionally or unintentionally - ask these Loaded Questions.

Loaded Questions are questions which presuppose ideas or facts. In the 'Tiger Woods fan' example, it posits that I think of myself as either a fan or not, with no other possible alternatives. And it asks that I give a definitive "yes" or "no" first and foremost, which leaks 'emotional bleed-through' onto the remainder of any explanation I give. Loaded Questions unfairly manipulate the responder/audience by projecting a contrived reality onto others.

Why do people use loaded language?

1. It gets easy ratings/attention. The emotive response makes it tempting to use for people in the public eye (e.g. political talk show hosts, public speakers, media, bloggers).
2. It less directly promotes your own perspective. It is more of a soft-sell tactic than a hard-sell. "I'm just asking questions, your honor!"
3. It is easier to use than logic or reason.

At 1:45 of the below Crossfire clip is an example of a Loaded Question when the interviewer asks Jon Stewart about political candidate John Kerry.

Stewart's first response is to devalue the over-simplified question by using humor to 'misunderstand' it. Stewart then redefines a more honest and informed question for the interviewer, which results in the interviewer rephrasing the question at 2:15. (And if you're interested, Stewart then proceeds to deconstruct the show's loaded format entirely.)



Maybe you are sitting there thinking, "Hey, I want to learn how-to / how-not-to load a question!"

Here are a few ways to load questions and language in general:

1. Offer the person a narrow set of responses. "Yes or No?" "Who is best?" "Did you or did you not?" If you are in an adversarial position with the responder, when he responds within this frame you are able to either (a) cry foul on his answer because he is lying/denying, or (b) say "I win" because he agreed with you.
2. Use subjective phrasing. "Why would you harass me like that?" "How do you justify saying that to me when I am just trying to help you?" "Have you seen how bothered some people get by what you just said?"
3. Use words with emotional pull. "How would you feel if a young child was in the room when you said that?" "As an American, it is my responsibility to ask you..." 
4. Faux-pliment. "You're a trusting person; could you loan me your car for the weekend?" "I have always admired your integrity; can I take you to dinner so I can get to know you better?" Or, "Thank you for being respectful and paying attention by sitting up straight," said to a group when they are not.
5. Use circumstantial/anecdotal evidence. "How can you say that, when everything I know from my 36 years on the planet says otherwise?" "Your eating habits remind me of a young boy I knew who tragically lost his life when he was much too young.""99.9% of people would agree that..."
6. Speak fast. A physical technique, simply speaking fast can induce faster response time from the responder, which produces less critical thinking and lower quality responses.

Got more? I'd love to hear them or get links.

My next post will be how to deal with people who are using loaded language.

PS: Thanks to Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and all the other talented media, politicians, and humble, patriotic folk who "tell it like it is". You inspire me so much when you tell all your friends what a great blogger I am.

Words Fail Me

Easily the most common technical mistake I am still apt to make while verbally communicating is to drive at a point, re-drive at the point in different words, and then ensure the death of the point with even more driving and rewording.

'Words + Words • Time' is a great recipe if you want to inspire boredom.

This 'Death of Words by Speaking' situation occurs for various reasons. We may like hearing our own voice and think we have a big bowl of important things to say. We may believe if we constantly fill the silence we will look confident and certain. And some of us think we are supposed to talk all the time when we have a listener.

Still, words lose meaning very fast when there are a lot of them. Some listeners can hang with us longer, but we all have listening limits, and the limits of listening to talk are short. Even the greatest actors in the world are ineffective at holding attention if the narrative is uninteresting.

Speaking needs constant variety to keep audience engagement, and therefore comprehension.

Variety can be achieved in many ways, from facilitated choices like orchestrating purposeful audience movement, topic-based partner or group sharing, or the use of visuals. Variety can also be heightened with presentational choices, including how we use our verbals.

Here are a few strategies that have worked for me in most situations:

1. Prepare specific phrases for certain points. I tend to dislike scripted talks, but a few prepared phrases work well to nail a point and cue me to move on.
   
2. Use periods. Many phrases are more effective when followed by a pause, resounding more loudly without a bunch of 'noise words' after them. 
3. Allow acuity to affect delivery. It is damaging to sell people on a point when they are already sold, need a different dynamic to understand, or just need more time to consider what you are saying. Constantly see and hear your audience; are they with you or do you need to change your pattern?
   
4. Appreciate that words are musical. Musical climaxes cease to be impactive when they have a bunch more music at the same volume after a peak - climaxes just become plateaus. Monitor your rhythms, paces, and volumes, and accept that every group has limits on how long they can listen to one person talk. 

Perhaps I've said too much already.

Goal Setting Is Personal

I have a little secret that I rarely talk about, except with friends, because it is so apt to be misinterpreted:

I dislike setting goals.

There, I said it.

But sometimes I teach concrete goal setting models to youth. Is that hypocritical?

For me, I am fine teaching things that hold potential value for others, even if the thing does not work for me. Teaching from a place of "Let's explore this and see if it works for you" is a delightful place to live and gets good results, in my experience.

I want to be clear that I am not unproductive. I consider myself efficient and happy with my efforts the majority of the time. I just don't feel a connection to writing down specific accomplishments in a concrete way; it has not worked for me in any sustainable fashion. Benchmark thinking has always felt false for how I interpret the world.

I'm not saying that goal setting does not work for many people, but to throw concrete goal-setting and "writing it down" at people as an answer to leading a productive and lovely, successful life of achievement? Barf-o-rama.

For me, personal efficacy entails:

1. What is my direction? (in my work, relationships, endeavor 'x')
   
2. What values do I want to embody? 
3. What is my moral code? 

I apply these qualities to my interests and have been very happy with the results. It is a less concrete, more open-ended formula (if I can call it a formula at all) that matches my thinking styles to my approach. The most meaningful things in my life have been ongoing processes or personal growth, and I haven't thought of those experiences in terms of achievements, but rather emotions of satisfaction and meaningfulness.

All I can do is give my best effort. Where I end up is not always up to me.

It would surprise me if there were not others who shared similar ideas about goal setting, but I have only met one person who has expressed this to me. Honestly, I don't go around sharing this model too often, so I haven't opened many doors for conversation on the matter. Perhaps this is because my way of goal-thinking can feel more nebulous, or I have not found the right way to explain it effectively.

Maybe I'll set a goal to figure out how to do that.

Pocket Hands

A friend of mine pointed me to this blog post by a woman named Shamelle, "12 Words and Phrases that Automatically Kill Your Self Image". On a side note, the author offers a class called "Title Writing: Save the Drama for Your Mama so You Don't Perish in Flames and Lose Your Family to Wild Dogs". It's pretty good.

Besides laughing out loud at one poster's comment about how his son says the F--- word more since working at a Chevy dealership, the article reminds me of a time when I had just finished an hour of coaching public speaking at a Wyoming school principals conference.

After my hour, I was approached by a professional speaker who told me that he had some advice for me. He said that I made the mistake of speaking in front of a group while having either of my hands in my pockets, and that I did so twice.

It was true. I did have my hands in my pockets a couple of times. In this case, I was aware that I was doing it, and it was purposeful to the extent that although it was not planned, it was a posture that matched the message I was conveying.

It is fine for a presenter to have their (own) hands in their pockets as long as:

1. the posture matches the occurring auditory 'track' (i.e. pocket-hands is sometimes an unconscious move when I am deeply listening to someone)
   
2. the presenter is in a more conversational, less formal moment
3. the presenter is in a personally vulnerable moment
   
4. the presenter is consciously matching a hostile audience's emotional state with his/her body
5. the presenter is playing a character

To me, effective public communication is not so much about being professional as being real. There are almost always norms and procedures we need to follow in every presentational dynamic, but in my world of public speaking, "genuine" almost always achieves more than "rules".

The challenge is learning how to be genuine in the midst of craft.

And finally, be wary of people promoting sound bites or 'easy fix' communication tips like "never put your hands in your pocket" or "always speak without 'um'". Audience style, speaker style, and event dynamics are all valid considerations that should influence our behaviors.

There are very few pervasive, simplistic communication keys. While there are a great number of easily understood strategies, most of them have unexplored room for the creative communicator to grow.

How Do I Move to Hold Attention?

Clint Eastwood, speaking about how to act on camera said, "Don't just do something - stand there."

Eddie Murphy told Chris Rock to pace the stage like a stalking cat during his standup routines.

Regarding how we move our body in front of an audience, how are we supposed to know which advice to follow?

My personal take is that although purposeful walking/pacing back-and-forth can work as a gimmick or for short segments of frenetic energy, stillness holds up better with time. It's more natural and less presentational.

Climate Change: If We Can't Go To Hell, Let's Bring It Here

I wonder what percentage of us are merely espousing our beliefs on human-driven climate change, not science? My guess is that the majority of us have never done any serious research or comprehensive scientific reading.

And those of us who have done a lot of varied reading on the subject have probably gathered our information from sources that match our own present beliefs, dismissing opposing views.

Is anyone else out there scared of people who speak about topics from which they received their education solely from partial corporate-funded media, hand-me-down beliefs from relatives or the church, and adamant opines from the vocal?

Like so many significant topics, climate change is a 'change-by-pain' issue. When/if we start feeling enough collective pain in our health/bank account, then we will rally to make a behavioral change.

I know it is more comforting when I think of our planet as strong and mighty, isolated from any catastrophic harm. I know that I feel better when I think of myself as a good person who is nice to others; I would never be an accomplice to ecological murder. Look around me: I have a healthy family, I eat well, have a good education, good job... my life is good, so how could any of this looming disaster stuff be true?

"The earth is invincible to humans" is a long-held belief. But let's keep in mind that just a few hundred years ago some of us wanted to behead a man for his radical belief that the earth orbited around the sun. How dare he say that we were not at the center of the universe, in control of all of our surroundings?

And many of our ancestors would point and laugh at their neighbors who were in the "round world" bandwagon conspiracy. It's obvious that those nut jobs just wanted to cause civil unrest for personal financial gain.

It Isn't What It Isn't

Perhaps you have noticed the emergence/reemergence in recent years of the phrase "It is what it is." It could be regional to some degree, but I have also read the phrase in U.S. articles and blogs, so there is something catchy about it at a national level

People tend to say, "It is what it is" in conversation when they want to describe something as self-describable or straightforward.

To this point, as far as I know, I am the sole linguistic warrior engaged in battle against this phrase. I have chosen a bloody fight to the death, and as is typically the case with cultural catchphrases, I will meet great resistance. But similar to the joke phrase "...not!" my hope is that English speaking culture will realize what an ill catchphrase this is and drop it like that dried old turd you thought was a wood chip.

Let's get lexical.

1. We have 40,000 English adjectives at our disposal. As simple and seductive as it may be to describe something as "what it is", there is a high percentage chance that at least one actual adjective will apply to it, even within our personally limited vocabularies.
   
2. If I were to use this phrase in a debate where well-educated people were listening and critically thinking about what I was saying, I would lose major points. (Unless the audience was gaga for catch phrases and easily swayed by base rhetoric - then the choice of how I present my position becomes one of integrity.)
3. It is a 'dumb down' phrase. Be it by lack of effort, lack of lexicon, or lack of creativity, when we use phrases like this we do interest a disservice.

Join me in my fight, won't you?

An Executive's How-to Guide: Five Tips to Ride a Recession

Five Tips For Riding A Recession: An Executive's How-To Guide

1. Sell more at any cost to you. Take resources away from somewhere else in your business (ex. quality or design) and devote those resources to selling more of that lower quality product. Customers will appreciate that you are spending more time and money trying to get more time and money from them, and will forgive you for a slightly inferior product. Don't be surprised if one of your customers says, "I like you guys more than your competitor because you guys focus more on what is important to you than us. That is just smart business." Hot Tip! Revenue is more important than any other facet of your business, including profit.

2. Micromanage your employees. Tighten your grip on their daily activities by requesting frequent status reports and knowledge of everything they are doing. You will achieve greater respect and trust from them because they will think things like, "Hey, this supervisor really cares about every minute of my day," and, "I love planning to tell and telling someone about all the productivity I am planning to do as soon as this meeting/email/check-in is over."

3. Label your employees with easy sterotypes. Plan ahead for downsizing by classifying staff as either "revenue generating" or "non-revenue generating". This helps them see the black-and-white truth: that some of them are not really adding monetary value to the company; they are just there to make the company look like a company. When they understand this truth, all the non-revenue generating employees will gladly accept salary reductions or even proactively quit on their own. Hot tip! This means you don't have to do any unpleasant firing!

4. Know who butters your bread. Time Saver Alert! The degree to which you listen to people should be based on the power of their title. When an employee below you sends you an email with a suggestion to improve the business, ignore it. Or, if they manage to talk to you in person, nod your head slowly and say, "mmm" and "mmmhm" while you consider your leisure activities for the weekend). Disclaimer! If you think the employee's idea will please your boss, present it to him/her as an idea for the company that "our team" came up with - it sends a powerful message about the value of socialism in these financially troublesome times.

5. This tip is no longer working here.

Backchannels: To Twitter During Presentations?

Some presenters like using Twitter and backchannels for participants while presenting, others do not. I believe the decision to use them should rest upon the circumstances of the presentation, content, style and outcomes of the presenter, and audience makeup - NOT upon a love for technology or a "I always use them" stance.

Regarding backchannels, this point is not up for debate:

Over the last twenty years, Meyer and a host of other researchers have proved again and again that multitasking, at least as our culture has come to know and love and institutionalize it, is a myth. When you think you’re doing two things at once, you’re almost always just switching rapidly between them, leaking a little mental efficiency with every switch. Meyer says that this is because, to put it simply, the brain processes different kinds of information on a variety of separate “channels”—a language channel, a visual channel, an auditory channel, and so on—each of which can process only one stream of information at a time. If you overburden a channel, the brain becomes inefficient and mistake-prone.

http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/

I appreciate that people like being able to talk with their neighbors and experience collaborative learning moments whenever they wish, but I appreciate creating the environment necessary for maximum retention and learning more than giving the opportunity for a freedom that, when used without knowledge of cognitive processing, can do more harm than good.

If one person is talking into your left ear while you carry on a different conversation - even if it on the same topic - to someone on your right, you stumble and are a less ineffective communicator. The same is true for reading or typing and listening to someone speak at the same same time. If the human brain (not just "some people") attempts to focus on multiple language sources at the same time, it fails, and it loses nuance and meaning from both point sources that are disseminating the content. And if either of the sources are delivering complex information, forget it, it gets worse. Brains must tune into one language channel at a time, or they are forced to toggle, bleeding a bit of comprehension with every jump. Try listening to two audio recorded lectures of university professors at the same time and you will hear what I mean.

In some circumstances, backchannel discussion can gash the body of the outcome the presenter is working to create. To achieve their outcomes, presenters rely on thousands of purposeful words, gestures, postures, volumes, tones, and visuals that work in sync with each other. Personally, in a presentation where I am there to create understanding on specific content within a short time (like a keynote), it is out of my integrity to create a back channel. Not out of opinion, but rather based on how humans are able to use language.

I am not saying that backchannel conversations cannot be useful or that people cannot learn anything from them. I am saying that when they are used simultaneously while a presenter is delivering, the presenter is being listened to and understood less. (Yes, I know sometimes this can be a good thing.)

Giving opportunities for people to have conversations both short and long, verbally and typed, written and drawn, one-to-one and in small groups, is really valuable for learning. It's just solid collaborative learning theory. But when we put complex and shifting dialogue on screen while someone is presenting complex information we are ignoring the capacity of possible attention in our brain.

If participants want to create a back channel within a presentation on their own, they should feel free. If they do this, it is a signal that one or more of several things are happening:

1. The presenter is boring and the audience would rather engage with each other more
   
2. The presenter's specific content is boring and they would rather go parallel on it or talk about something else
   
3. The back channel people need to chat online to get their information load fix
   
4. The back channel people are rude

Point number three is interesting to me right now, because online chat is a cultural phenomenon that has developed only in recent times. When I present in technologically undeveloped areas or with audiences who would rather not be on a backchannel, the audiences are often engaged at a higher level with my specific content.

I know there are presenters who have opposing experiences and will disagree with this. It is just that when I am presenting and ask a question or when someone in the audience makes a comment out loud and there is no backchannel pulling attention away from the conversation I am having in live air, everybody hears it and the response rate is usually higher.

The presenter is a channel. You get more viewers on a channel when you show better content, yes, and also when the other options are fewer. There can be value in limiting options. You can't eat all the food in your refrigerator before some starts to go bad. (Hungry.)

I have seen some presenters use back channels because they love technology so much that they can't see the forest for the luminous screens. They nobly want their audiences to be engaged, so they bring a backchannel into their presentations. But the forest the presenter is missing is an understanding of the brain's capcity to receive and comprehend information. Brains ability to give full attention is a limited bandwidth, not infinite. This is backed up by plenty of recent research on multitasking and processing channels (if you care to search).

Some presenters use back channels as a crutch in the same way that other presenters use their slides as more of a focal point than themselves. In these cases, why not just email the audience the PDFs and save everyone the tedium of your delivery?

Again, before all the All Backchannel All The Time people get defensive, please understand what I am saying: I like online conversations and I like groups of people to have them for learning. But there needs to be discernment in how and when to use them. This discernment comes from understanding how brains process information and what presentation means best support the dynamic's learning outcomes.

We can cry "Times are changing!" but it does not mean that all change is good (or that it just "is"). Some changes can and should be dissected and explored more deeply before jumping on the bandwagon. 

We all carry our own belief systems around that make sense to us, and one recent push in the live speaker scenario is that the use of backchannels is modern and about being "with it" technologically. Before blindly accepting this, I encourage all presenters to learn more about how the brain receives and comprehends information and how people learn best in different dynamics. There are times when backchannels can be useful and times when they can hurt the learning process.

Edit:
In many cases I do use backchannels myself and love or hate them depnding on how and when they are used.

Why Write For The Public?

I took several months away from my blog. Part of this was due to travel for fun and some work overseas, and part was the curiosity of what blogging - public writing - was adding/subtracting to my life.

When I originally started to write my thoughts online, I had the notion that maybe it would pay off for my training business by adding credibility, or maybe actually attracting customers. I saw the value in it solely in getting some attention for my business and maybe a few people would get value from my communication thoughts.

But I think the main force behind me blogging now has shifted. The two values I now get are that

1. Blogging makes me learn how to write better. There are bigger emotional stakes when my writing is public, and this affects my sense of effort. When I write in my paper journal, I am just frantically scribbling thoughts without rereading them. (I sometimes wonder how much editing someone like Michael Palin does when he decides to publish his journal.)
2. I get to involve myself in conversations rather than monologues about topics I care about. Granted, since my posts typically read by few and commented on by less, these conversations are sometimes only with myself.
   

But my main point of learning is that when I perform or present my work publicly, I work harder to make it better.

I often aim to be self-content with my work. This is fine in and of itself, and sometimes certain work of an artistic bent should not be molded or influenced heavily by anyone other than the author. But regarding thoughts on communication, I think those are more valuable when they are made public for conversation.

What's up, Thailand?

I just got back from 10 days in Thailand. I'd never been there and was really excited when I got the opportunity to do a nature and leadership program for a week with middle school kids.

An exciting part of my work is in creating a program from start to finish - not only writing curriculum, but also being able to directly deliver it and work with the kids. Having created programs like Leadership Forum for SuperCamp in the past, I have experience in this. But what awaited me in Thailand was a very different beast. This beast had peanut sauce on it.

The first thing that hit me was the age range: 8-16. In case you have never worked with kids, that is one monster of an age range. It is difficult enough to continually engage one age range, much less a developmental range whose internal dialogue runs from "how do I get with the opposite sex" to "how do I avoid cooties". But my Thai marketing partners had to accept a wide range so that they could get the enrollments they needed for the program to get off the ground. This is normal.

Quick tip: if you're ever in a situation with a diverse age-range, use stories as engagement tools for your content. Good story-telling works for everyone, and the language does not have to be focused on demographic tendencies as much as propelling the story.

To say the program was diverse in content would be like saying Don King has a little bit of hair. We traveled across the country on a bus, doing leadership sessions in the most prestigious boarding school in Bangkok, sleeping in tents in the shadow of a war memorial where fighters thwarted communists, barbecuing octopus and fish balls, feeding monkeys from a boat, eating seafood up in a fisherman's hut on water stilts, planting mangrove tress in mud that we sunk in up to our chest, and generally just had an excellent time learning and exploring Thailand, its culture, and our leadership skills.

I would recommend a trip there to anyone who loves to travel in Asia. But... the swine flu is hot there right now. I actually got sick toward the end of the program, which sucks because no matter what kind of sickness you get, if there are cases of swine flu around all you can think is, "Do I have swine flu?"

Here's hoping nix on the swine.

Secret Teachers

I was thinking about heroes, idols, and mentors.

When I was seventeen, I spent dozens of hours learning a Steve Martin standup routine word-by-word, beat-by-beat for a high school speech class assignment. I didn’t really have my own voice yet and considered the learned mimicry a sort of “homage to a master”.

Almost twenty years later, I give a lot of credit to Mr. Martin for my sense of vocal timing and appreciation for language. And also Bill Cosby, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Ricky Gervais, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, etc. Not that I am in comparing myself to comedy greats, just that they are people who have influenced me, teachers who never knew they were.

But spending thousands of hours with funny movies and comedy TV shows isn’t enough. You can’t just watch shows, you have to observe them. It takes an inquisitive mind to learn how to improve.

Why did he say that line like that? Why did that long pause make everyone laugh? Why can that actor say a line with a straight face and it’s funny, while the other one uses lots of expression and animation and it’s funny? Why does he move like that? What do I appreciate about him, even though I see no similarity in our styles? What is he doing that I can learn and use immediately in front of people?

You don’t need a formal teacher or mentor to learn interesting communication choices - sometimes you can learn more valuable lessons from those who are not official teachers.

I wonder who the world's most prominent secret teachers are? Perhaps it depends on chosen professions and areas of interest, but I am guessing moms and dads are up there.

What You're Sitting On Might Look Great

An education company I used to work for has a game in its youth curriculum that you may have heard of. It’s the one where you start with a trivial object like a paper clip, then go around to people and try to trade up for items of bigger and better value. I have also seen this same game done by Girl Scouts and youth groups. I don't know who invented it, but my guess is that it has existed for at least twenty-five years.

So the company I was with did not invent the activity, but had been doing it with youth in their programs for at least fifteen years. Then this big story broke where a Canadian guy was playing the exact same game as a hobby and had traded for a house.

So basically, the company I was with had a deliciously news-worthy story that, if played out, could have gotten them huge media; there was just no understanding of its potential. To the company, it was just a little paper clip game, a clever little game hidden amongst hundreds of pages of games and curriculum that we were doing. Ever seen that final scene from Raiders Of The Lost Ark where the Ark of the Covenant is put into a crate and wheeled into a government warehouse full of a million identical crates?

Is the secret of life sitting in someone’s hard drive or box in the attic?

Every now and then I read a story about someone finding old recordings of Jimi Hendrix or Bob Dylan in a forgotten attic, and I wonder what else is out there - not just music, but science and technology, communication and literature.

What wondrous ideas are already born but don't have a spotlight? Some ideas lie dormant due to lack of initiative or belief. Some lie wounded due to companies rejecting them.

What are you sitting on right now that needs a lift?