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.