Someone told me awhile back that a corporate speechwriter is like the corporate pilot: their relationships with senior leaders are almost brotherly, but neither gets invited to holiday parties at executives’ homes.

If someone is putting into words what your mind is thinking, relationships matter a lot. If you’re a chief executive or other senior manager who thinks you need a speechwriter, decide the role you want the professional to play and then think about the relationship you want.

From my experience, relationships with speechwriters fall into one of these 3 categories.

1  Fingers
Many – well, honestly, maybe some — talented writers can handle executive speeches along with other writing assignments. The writer typically has a knack for clear and speedy wordsmithing in multiple formats: feature articles, web pieces, speeches. His writing style is deliberate, his grammar perfect, and his productivity high.

Hiring such a utility player will give you considerable flexibility in covering all that writing stuff that you know you don’t do well. He or she will deliver good, though perhaps not great, speeches. For many companies, good is good; great may not be necessary.

Your contact with this hire will be on an as-needed basis.

2   Brain
Maybe you need someone to do nothing but write speeches full-time. This professional loves the sound of words, is keen on research, has mastered the techniques of speechwriting, and faithfully reads each issue of Vital Speeches of the Day.

She lives from assignment to assignment, with not much to do between them because she prefers not to take on other writing projects. Often her time is dominated by the CEO, to whom she typically reports, and she rarely writes for anyone below the EVP level.

Your relationship with this person will be one of periodic collaboration and respect for her impressive word-crafting.

3   Voice
Wouldn’t it be valuable to have a resource who keenly understands the workings of corporate life and can deftly and persuasively communicate all of that in writing? This is not the CEO’s filter for those bidding for attention and favor. Rather, he is a proactive seeker of opportunities to position the company through senior leadership.

Such a gifted individual grasps and translates the corporate vision into digestible terms. Hiring such a professional reflects the CEO’s desire to aggressively raise the company’s visibility among key audiences — investors, customers, prospective partners, acquisition candidates, etc. — by getting himself and his team out on the speaking circuit.

Regarding the relationship, you as the CEO might not want to admit that he’s your alter-ego, but he would be just that – someone who could be your voice to get more than just attention by authority but also change by persuasion.

If you hire a Voice, consider these 5 requirements:

1. A track record of diverse speechwriting experiences. He or she has produced both heady speeches for major platforms and empathetic eulogies, as well as presentations to testy shareholders and to inquisitive, challenging student groups.
2. A fluid writing style that focuses on memorability. He knows how to craft words and phrases that hang on the audience’s ears and to structure ideas that stick in their minds. He avoids cuteness and limp attempts at cleverness.
3. A likable, confident, and yet independent presence. He should be approachable but not malleable. He’s a door-opener not a gatekeeper. People assume that he doesn’t speak for the chief executive but they don’t want to test that assumption.
4. A facility to write like he talks and talk like he writes. He’s street-wise and poetic in how he communicates.
5. An expert in individual and organizational behavior, and how the peculiarities of business shape both.

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

I once had a boss at a consulting firm who was fond of after-work drinking bouts with the staff. He was also notorious after four hits of hard liquor for conducting impromptu performance reviews at the bar.

The evaluations were always black or white, never balanced. You came away from the monologue either determined to update your resume or plan a promotion party.

However, when the alcohol wasn’t talking, you could grasp his criterion for judgment: future return on investment.

The Few, the Proud … and all the Others
High-flyers (his good reviews) created opportunities that made themselves and low-flying drones (his not-so-good reviews) billable. High-flyers’ efforts secured the group’s future; low-flyers’ busy-work paid the bills. The former were few and indispensable; the latter were many and replaceable.

Except for the bar and spontaneity, what are the differences between those reviews and your organization’s annual evaluations? Ask yourself:

• Does you organization’s review/reward system assume — or require — only a few “exceeds expectations” go-getters backed up by a large, compliant gang of “meets expectations” worker-bees?
• Does your system reward employees for completing last year’s agenda or incentivize them to create a future agenda?
• Is improving group effectiveness built into each individual’s performance evaluation?

Here’s a hair-brain idea: What if nearly everyone could be rated “meets very high expectations,” for which the criteria would be producing results and opportunities this year that set up greater achievements next year?

3 ways managers can increase future ROI

1   Spend 365 days preparing for the next 365 days
Anytime you witness some significant achievement or setback, jot down on a 3X5 card the date, a few words about the event, and, most important, a brief comment on how an individual’s actions contributed to advancing the department’s effectiveness. For example: “built bridge for future cooperation with previously hostile manager.” Toss your notes into files, one for each staff member. Make sure every three months that no file is empty. If so, pay closer attention to those individuals with no notes. Synthesize the cards prior to the next performance review to spot patterns.

2   Get selfish
Think about your own upcoming evaluation. What will you tell your boss about how well (or poorly) you enabled your staff last year to achieve more during this upcoming year?

3   Organize a crowd review
Gather the staff for your first annual staff performance recap. Sit in a circle. Conduct a review as if the group were an individual:

• provide context
• give perspective
• ask for their appraisal of goals set, met, and unmet – and reasons why.

Explore:

• the group’s strengths and performance holes going forward
• what is possible for the upcoming year
• what staff members can do together to fill in the holes

Create a one-page plan and make sure it has legs and personality.

5 tips for individuals to build future ROI

1   Talk about slip-ups in your next performance review
Huh? Think about this. Selling you achievements shouldn’t be difficult. You may overstate your case somewhat but your boss expects that. Your challenge is to own up to what you were not able to do. Sure, there were extenuating circumstances and difficult people. Yet, what would you have done differently in hindsight that gives you foresight on how you can tell your boss you will take on similarly difficult projects? Be brave.

2   Anticipate a substantial raise/promotion … but next time
If you’ve done a sterling job this past year, great. Expect your due! However, perhaps you muddled your way through a year of start-stop projects and tepid motivation. Perhaps you now are emboldened to change course not by wishful thinking but by detailing and executing on what would be expected of someone in the position you want or at the salary level you desire. Go earn it.

3   Write your resume one year out
A prospective employer about to makes a substantial investment in a candidate looks for results and promise on a resume. Assume that’s what your current employer also is thinking about you. So, write a resume that looks back a year from now and features achievements that show promise. Now, convert that year-out resume into your year-forward performance plan.

4   Get smarter, faster for tomorrow
Too often, attending a seminar is considered a quick-fix for some performance deficit. Seminars help … maybe. But what you already know is that, to increase your future value, you have to get smarter and more skilled faster and continuously. You have to read more, listen more, get mentored more, risk more, and evaluate more. All of that will require more time, and that means dropping busy-work that you think is important but really isn’t.

5   Focus on the future but keep checking your rear-view mirror
You know what I’m saying. Don’t assume that the people who have been and will be most important to you are in the back seat. Don’t self-justify your ambition by saying it’s all for them. It’s not. If you transfer all that I’ve recommended from your job to your non-work life, you may be amazed by what will be accomplished in both worlds.

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

I was flattered years back when the vice chairman of the company from which I had just resigned called me to his office to coax a reversal of my decision. The company was very large; he was very important; I was young and ambitious.

He said that, unbeknown to me, management had tagged me as a fast-riser, and should I change my mind about leaving, the first career development step in my ascent to becoming possibly the company’s youngest vice president at age 50 was about to happen: a move from public relations in Pennsylvania to raw materials sales in Texas. I saw my future flash before me. I left the company.

Why?

You can answer that. Put yourself in my place. Actually many of you reading this are in that same place now or could be – or were there once. Choosing a career direction often has to do with longitude versus latitude, with moving upward versus sideways, with a ladder versus scaffolding. Climbing the corporate ladder is exhilarating but taxing; scaffolding is relatively safe but not as titillating.

If you’re up for climbing the ladder, I recommend three items you will want to strap on: an oxygen bottle, a recorder, and a breathalyzer.

Oxygen Bottle
During an Arizona vacation, my athletic high school age son guilted me into a bonding venture of climbing what looked like a steep but, I thought, relatively short hill. Half-way up, after climbing aggressively, I was gasping the thin air and envisioning my body being air-lifted down.

The corporate ladder does not look that high at first, and, besides, you’re in upbeat mental shape. You expect to climb quickly, and you might even have a strategy for by-passing a few rungs.

However, each step – each stressful assignment you undertake – steals a portion of your energy. And all those conference dinners and customer nightcaps add body ballast. Your climbing legs get weary, your vision foggier, your hands sweatier. So, you hold the ladder more tightly, your work more rigidly, and your relationships more cagily because you don’t want to give up the progress you’ve made.

As you near the top, you sense your close friends getting fewer. Good thing you have family (You remember them, don’t you?)

Recommendations

• Stay toned-up physically and mentally;
• climb deliberately but sensibly;
• stop occasionally to breathe; and
• at every vantage point, be sure you can see and talk with your significant others.

Recorder
The climb is difficult enough, but then there’s the crowd near the bottom. Maybe, you think, you could haul yourself up and over their backs to the next level. These folks are not that significant, you tell yourself.

The climbers further up are fewer but much more competitive, more skilled at climbing, and less predictable about their next moves. But some can’t or won’t move up any further, which blocks your ascent. What are you going to do, throw them off the ladder? C’mon, you wouldn’t do that, would you? You simply have to wait. But you’re a patient person, right?

Recommendations

• Along the upward journey, pull out your recorder to remind yourself of who you were at the bottom and note who you’re becoming at every rung.
• Remember to take note of those you have passed by because, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, you might meet them again on the way down.

Breathalyzer
Should you reach the top or even get close to it, you will be drunk with the joy of success – and, after the hangover, swooning with power. At first you will be obsequious, eager to convince others that you are a team – though the team members are on different rungs, still climbing, and privately petitioning you to toss down a rope.

There’s no more climbing for you, however. Anything you want, someone else takes care of. Before long, you might just begin thinking you are entitled, irreplaceable, invincible, and even beloved.

And that means it’s time for a sobriety check.

Recommendations

• Don’t even think about administering a breathalyzer reality test on yourself. You won’t believe you need it, and you won’t trust the results.
• Get someone without a vested interest in your business to do it — someone who listens, can pick out your old self from the newly fabricated self, and can talk tough-love.

Now, about the scaffolding approach to career choices, I’m going to give you five indicators that you should ignore ladder-climbing and try scaffolding.

1. You’ve clearly defined how you’re wired, and you want to deepen your knowledge and perfect your skills within a certain perimeter, like communication or engineering.
2. You enjoy working with a few people for long periods of time on programs that achieve sustainable results.
3. You realize that scaffolding can be elevated pretty much when you want – and that it takes two to pull the ropes and keep everything in balance.
4. You occasionally want to lower the scaffolding, review what you did, learn lessons, and move back up.
5. You don’t want to blame your spouse for your kids’ problems because you were never there.

Richard Skaare 06.17.09
Photo credit: sickmouthy

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

(Rethinking a previous blog post)

When I stepped into the classroom of a university course titled “Computer-mediated Communication” as a guest lecturer, I faced approximately 40 students sitting at rows of tables, peering politely at me from behind computer screens, and tapping on keys.  I was well prepared to use human-mediated communication (that’s me!) to talk about computer-mediated communication.  I was not prepared, however, to compete against another medium.

That situation was not unlike making your way through a choreographed PowerPoint presentation only to realize that many attendees are looking down, not taking notes but checking emails and social networks on their phones.   Media competes against media.

I suppose I could have told the students to turn off their machines and listen to me.  You could do the same prior to your presentation.  But even if they were to store away physical distractions, that does not mean paying attention.  Our talking does not equate to the audience listening.  People choose to focus on what interests them most at the time: you the presenter, their iPhones, daydreaming, or, in my case, computers.

Rather than becoming a frustrated lecturer, I became inquisitive.   I wanted to know:

• Can humans rapidly switch between two sources of communication and still absorb information?
• Was the choice either-or:  could these students simultaneously link to my messages and to their networks?
• In short, how could I – how can you — get important message and information into heads with short attention spans?

Here is what I learned – or relearned:

1. Non-verbals don’t always reflect listening. Sure, there are obvious signs of distraction:  a smiling student typing while looking at her computer screen meant an Instant Message had supplanted me; or your audience may suppress yawns.  However, most of the time, the audience will appear to be attentive by sitting upright and staring at you.  But are they listening?  Who knows?
2. My periodically distracted audience could be exhibiting “continuous partial attention,” a phrase coined by social analyst Linda Stone and particularly applicable to tech-centric young folks.  Continuous partial attention involves prioritizing, keeping one source of information such as my remarks as primary but staying accessible and jumping impulsively and often emotionally between any opportunity at the moment – for instance, a rumor on Facebook — that lets people feel connected and alive.
3. And that’s the third and most important lesson: connecting emotionally unlocks attention.  People learn best by connecting with people who connect them with information.  If we cannot connect with the speaker at the front of the room talking at us, then we will connect with the people next to us through whispers or with our colleagues and friends through our phone screens — or, in my case, computer screens.

How then do you do you connect emotionally as the presenter when you are one and they are many, when you are standing above them on a stage, when you control the information, and when they know you only as “our esteemed speaker?”

Here are 4 suggestions.

Connect before you present
I made a point of chatting with several students as everyone settled into the classroom.  A much better approach is what I was told another guest lecturer does.  He greets students as they enter and then uses their names in his remarks and in the Q&A.  Smart.  Swap names and you start a connection.  Try it.

Walk around the room as you present.
Scary, huh?  Scary for you as you leave the security of the lectern and your PowerPoints and scary for the audience who doesn’t know what to expect from this unexpected move.  Yet surprise spawns attention.  The audience pays more attention to you and you pay more attention to their reactions (up close) and can adjust your message and animations accordingly.

Use connected media to connect.
Ask a question and tell those with smartphone browsers to find the answer while you get the audience speculating.  Or ask those with Twitter on their phones or laptops to poll their groups for opinions on a particular question, and then read the results to the audience.  Link what people know with what you know.

Turn what you know into questions you had to ask yourself in order to know it.
In other words, rather than presenting your findings on a particular topic, insert questions such as, “How could I reconcile this piece of data with that piece?  How would you?”  Ask two or three people in the audience whom you met earlier how they would answer the question.  That will get a discussion rolling, after which flip to the visual that shows your conclusions.

Competing for attention is trying.  Yet, trying to control an audience by over-talking, over-informing, and over-PowerPointing results in under-connecting.  Remember, you are there not to be a memorable speaker but to make a memorable impression that changes the audience.

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

I was feeling the rush of pending triumph in a debate over the annual report with a notoriously stubborn co-worker. I had to win — I would win — even if that meant humiliating him! Suddenly, he checkmated me: “Rich, you can beat me in this and other arguments. Let’s go with your approach.” Surprisingly, I found myself mumbling a few words of stunned apology for … well … for being a jerk.

I hadn’t anticipated his surrender, and certainly not sincerity, and never his humanizing me by using my name. In two sentences, he had inadvertently broken me (at least temporarily) of what I realized was less about an issue – a soon-to-be-forgotten issue — than about my ego, ambition, and retribution.

What’s more, the incident was not a one-time tantrum; it was part of an evolving pattern of hardness that had been riding with me for years, unnoticed. It was in my blind spot.

A blind spot is that area of our lives where we put stuff we don’t want to deal with, where we can’t see it – stuff like low self-esteem, anger, greed, selfishness … common maladies. We refuse to believe we are anything but good folks. At work, we present ourselves as who we want to be or want to be perceived as: that is, even-tempered, loyal, open-minded, team players.

That’s certainly the persona during the first few months on a new job. Then, the boss’ unreasonableness, colleagues’ pettiness, and the realization that appearance matters more than results throw you into survival-and-attack mode. You start getting tight-jawed around your boss, cagey around your colleagues, and defensive about your work. And you believe that nothing about you has changed. Before long, some of what was black-and-white morphs into grayness. You begin forgetting who you were, who you want to be.

The bad boys of business (almost all have been men) – some now in prison, others at home with their riches – didn’t set out to be ogres, I suspect. In fact, they probably once were very likeable, even admirable.

We, too, didn’t plan to become street-fighters in our jobs; we used to be about empowering and collaboration. How did we get from niceness to nastiness without noticing? More important, how do we return to our former state?

3 PATHS TO NASTINESS

1 We ignore compounding
Compounding is that profoundly simple phenomenon that says that even something small can increase exponentially over time. That works well for financial transactions (excluding 2009), but sometimes not so well in human transactions.

A small offense by an equal from another department at work is brushed aside, forgiven by you. But others won’t let you forget it; they urge retaliation. They’re right, you begin to think: the offender deserves notice. Emotion turns into attitude, attitude turns to action. You become competitive, withhold information, fail to stop rumors. Your department converts to a silo, the organization suffers, and your professional life is on course for an eventual crash. In short, the unsettling person in your blind zone has appeared.

2 We succumb to group-think
Group-think is a form of compounding. One person believes or wills to believe a desired outcome and through power or persuasion recruits a batch of yay-sayers. One believer in a false cause creates a cult of followers.

Here’s an illustration. It’s generally known that the success rate of mergers and acquisitions is in the neighborhood of only 25 percent. Essentially, don’t acquire unless overwhelming evidence forces you to do so.

Yet, during almost every merger and acquisition process I have been involved in or watched over many years, the bulls run wild. I cannot remember a company walking away from a prospective acquisition that the CEO wanted to make.

In such a situation, to avoid being viewed as disloyal, we are apt to soften contrarian facts and, consequently, compromise ourselves. Objectivity, honest thinking, patience, and the will to say “no” to a bad idea too often get put aside. Ambition, sometimes disguised as entrepreneurism or pluck, slips out of the corporate blind spot. Two years later … you know what happens.

3 We get seduced by impatience
Admittedly, much of any job is repetitious, boring routine. For some, predictability is security; for others, it’s hell. For the latter, after awhile, impatience breeds dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction breeds a sense of superiority: we’re better than those around us. We begin taking credit where credit is not due. The “we” in our conversations, reports, and presentations turns to “I.” I am responsible for success, you are accountable for problems.

Letters to shareholders in annual reports illustrate the problem. Weak performance is due to economic and market conditions, not flawed judgment or, frankly, mistakes. However, record earnings are the result of management’s foresight and decisiveness, not to massive layoffs and plant closings – or to happenstance.

How do we prevent the incipient evil spirits from spreading and turning us into what we don’t want to be?

5 STARTERS

• Admit that you are capable of becoming the person you dislike.
• Unload your issues and justifiable complaints from work every couple of months on someone older and wiser, and let her or him repeat back what you said. Then go home bruised and better.
• Reconnect on FaceBook with your childhood friends and high school classmates. Swapping stories will remind you of who you used to be.
• Look in a mirror at the beginning and end of the day and say hello to yourself by name. Silly? Yes. But you may be amazed at the simple curative power of hearing your name from someone who knows you.
• Edit out as many “I’s” as you can from your writing and speech.

Richard Skaare 11.05.09
Photo credit: fellowapeman

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

I was feeling considerable pressure preparing for a three-day seminar I was to teach on “Communicating Effectively Under Pressure.” How could I be struggling with something that I had obviously mastered enough to teach others? Besides, I am a seasoned presenter.

Yet somewhere between cooking the content and serving it up, I lost confidence and control. What I thought I knew, I suddenly didn’t. What made sense in my head didn’t quite look right on my computer screen.

The pressure caused me to over-prepare, and by the time I arrived in London for the event, I was mentally and physically exhausted.

What went wrong? First, tell me that this has happened to you, right? Of course it has, or will. For me – for us — I came up with three reasons why I (we) over-prepare and five ways to prevent us from going batty in the process.

3 reasons we over-prepare

1. We see dead people.
   How many presenters, professors, and preachers have you heard rolling on endlessly without passengers – without the audience? They were so absorbed in their content, or two-stepping with technique, or shielding themselves behind PowerPoints that they forgot why they were there. Retaining listeners and causing listeners to retain what they heard seemed unimportant.

   For me, however, as I prepared my presentation and visualized the audience, all I could see on day one were faces begging to be engaged not lectured and, on day two, saying, “Huh?” and all of them looking like corpses transported from other seminars with life-changing titles.

   The presentation I had crafted from recycled, dense lecture notes would not revive them, I realized. I had started with the wrong material. The audience was my material. The more I focused on them, the smarter and clearer I got. But that meant a lot more work because I was preparing for unpredictable people not just adeptly stitching together stuff I knew.

2. We gotta believe
   Have you, like me, come across too many professional bluffers who knew their stuff but didn’t practice it—inspiring marriage counselors in broken relationships, empowerment evangelists who never would accept contrarian ideas?

   Thinking ahead to my seminar, I knew I could have danced, sounded clever, waxed passionately and convincingly. Nah, I couldn’t — or wouldn’t. I heard myself prodding, “C’mon, do you really believe that? Could you do what you’re asking your audience to do? Give me personal examples … stories. Turn information into conviction that generates passion.”

   I had to convince myself before I could convert others. And that required more time and soul-searching. It required over-preparation.

3. We want to make it damn good
   Sadly, good is acceptable these days; good gets you paid. That’s not good enough for me because too often good is just polished mediocrity. Too many seminars are good because they are pre-fabs modeled after reportedly successful seminars that can be quickly assembled, seem to satisfy buyers, and generate a profit.

   Perfectionism has its problems, too, of course. Striving for excellence has a certain cache’. However, perfectionism can create a great product – an impressive presentation – that lacks stickiness.

   Between mediocrity and perfection, I have found my standard; it’s called “damn good.” Damn good is that sense that you outdid yourself. You started with a good idea and a modicum of self-confidence and ended up with something amazing because you could never get the topic out of your mind and yet would never let it own you; you stayed in control. You stuck with the idea until you understood it enough to explain it to your mother.

   Damn good takes time, takes over-preparing.

5 ways to over-prepare without losing your mind now or later

1. Become the application. Half-way through preparing your presentation, draft a one-page plan of how you will – will, not could – apply your emerging recommendations to your own job. If the plan sounds realistic and do-able, continue preparing your presentation. If not … well, you get the point.
2. Be willing to trash. When you’re flat-lining in the wee hours from piling every piece of information you could find on the topic, stop, go to bed, and when you wake up, extract from your pile only that which will turn audience yawns into, “Hmm, I never thought of that. I bet I could do that.”
3. Assemble your work with Velcro, not screws. Prepare one solid, well-crafted presentation but then organize your notes for what-ifs: have case studies ready for the possibility of only five people rather than 12 showing up; have lots of stories should eyes glaze over during your talk; and have profiles of attendees’ organizations should you find the content out of sync with the audience’s real needs after the first day.
4. Prepare for the presentation after this one. Think of what you might learn from this presentation – you talked too much, the case studies were too generic, etc. – that would improve your next presentation. You’re now ready to do a bang-up job on this presentation.
5. You’re an expert, you’re okay. You were asked to present most likely because you are known as an expert on the topic. That said, you don’t have prove it in your presentation. Ease back, trust you smarts, and think about going into your session to mingle and chat with the audience. That’s the style that will convey much more credibility than a tedious argument with pinpoint logic.

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

Love or hate his politics, you have to admire the President’s knack for talking like he writes and getting his wordsmiths to write like he talks. He sounds the same in his books, at the lectern with a prepared speech, and in a Town Hall without notes.

That’s because President Obama understands instinctively that the mouth and typing fingers are merely different conduits from the same thought process, whose aim is to engage others in dialogue of some sort.

Writing like you talk, which I talked about in my last piece of writing, is challenging but doable. Injecting the dynamics of exchange from conversations into your copy can be intimidating for some. The changeover requires shifting your focus from the form and pride of writing to its purpose, which is, simply, to talk with folks. But you can pull that off.

Talking like you write … well, that seems considerably more awkward and somewhat unnecessary — but not less desirable, right? Wouldn’t upgrading your conversational style from dribble and drabness to approximate crisp writing raise your self-esteem and perceived value? I think yes. I also think there are other reasons.

I’ll point out 3 .

1. Perception is often reality, like it or not.

The impression we make on others such as higher-ups at work comes mostly from the innumerable impromptu dialogues we have with them, not from prepared presentations at meeting. Yet we invest enormous amounts of time and money developing presentation skills yet not talking skills.

As a result, notice what happens if you interrupt some polished presenter with a difficult question. Suddenly, he starts stuttering and dancing. When he returns to his presentation, he is less credible and less fluid. Better if he had prepared himself to talk not lecture and to speak from his soul not his PowerPoints.

2. PCD — Post-Conversation Distress — is painful, even ruinous.

PCD strikes when, for instance, you say impulsively and flippantly to impress your boss that the architect you met last night was a horrific bore, only to find out that he’s your boss’ brother-in-law. (That happened to me.)

When our mouths are tethered to our emotions rather than hotwired to our brains, we generate regrets – regrets about what we should have said, what we should not have said, and what we are determined to say next time – assuming there is a next time.

3. For those with leadership leanings, talking smart is a smart trait.

Up-and-comers are regularly thrown into situations where what you say in conversations will represent and reflect the organization and/or executives.

For example, you are sitting across from a major client when the boss calls your cell phone to say he will be seriously late to the meeting and wants you to cover for him, though you don’t have his agenda or presentation.

Small talk won’t work here. You can’t look like you’re sweating, trying to kill time, or merely acting as a stand-in. What you say has to be business-like, productive, and, oh yeah, engaging.

How, then, can you become not only a good conversationalist but an integrated communicator – that is, someone who communicates consistently and naturally whether chatting with a colleague, presenting to the Board, or writing a report on budget cuts?

Here are 5 suggestions from writing that should help you master the art of conversation.

1. Strong leads
   If you want to yank in your reader and link with your dialogue partner, start with something bold, interesting, and other-directed. Not this: “Hey, Ed. Awful weather we’re having, huh? They say more rain is possible tonight.” Yawn.

   Such a trite opener suggests you don’t have anything worthwhile to say and are hoping the other party takes over the conversation. It would be akin in writing to plagiarizing, “It was the best of time, it was the worst of times.”

   Instead, begin with something that draws in the other party’s interest. For example, “Hi, Ed. Whew! The last time I saw rain like this was during that dreadful trade show we attended in Wichita, remember?”

2. Short paragraphs

Attention spans have always been short for listeners, and now readers, too, have become easily distracted scanners. If you want to convey something important, you must train yourself to talk in pithy phrases and write with short paragraphs. Your objective is to generate the right phrasings and a bit of drama to win and keep the listener and reader’s attention and trust.

3. Lots of bullets

English majors and too many academic writers balk at using bulletins because bullets, they think, clip and cheapen important points that require deep and long explanations. That may be true, but, again, most readers and listens are not into deep and long, sad though that may be.

Therefore, organize your conversations and your writings to be visual and aural. Inject three points or two ideas, and use your voice and fingers to emphasize that these bullets points are important stuff that won’t take much of her time.

4. Season with stories

Good writing is built on good stories. So are good conversations. The more you can relate information to experience, the more effective will be your message. Think about and talk stories, analogies, metaphors, and similes – oh yeah, and jokes.

5. Think others

Your role as writer and conversationalist is to insert yourself enough into the dialogue to coax a response from the reader/listener but not so much that you’re forcing or over-extending your presence. No one enjoys listening to someone talk incessantly about himself any more than wading through the confessions of a self-absorbed writer.

Take long breaths between comments (and paragraphs) to make sure you being listened to and are listening. You must always stay on the same channel as the other party or reader.

Richard Skaare 07.16.09

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

The thought of writing like you talk and talking like you write is scary. Imagine the gibberish that would appear on your computer screen if you typed in word-for-word what you said at yesterday’s staff meeting? And can you see the bored look on the faces of your colleagues if you talked the way you wrote in your last email to them?

And why would you even want to talk and write the same, or at least close to it? They’re two different forms of communication, right?

I don’t think so.

Honing your writing to match your talk and upgrading the quality of your conversations might well result in a more integrated, authentic, comfortable, engaging, and downright impressive you. Your writing would seem spontaneous not contrived, and your conversation would sound more purposeful, not trite. Imagine what that would do for your self-esteem and career.

How can you write like you talk?

3 recommendations.
1. Maintain eye contact.
Conversations and writing are both dialogues that start with the interests of the other party, drift into what you want to say, and then recheck periodically to make sure the other person’s eyes are still on you.

Eye contact is simple – rather, should be simple – in conversations because the other person is right there in front of you. However, writing requires strenuous focus to visualize the reader listening across the desk from you.

If you can talk with that person as you write, however, what you create could turn out quite intriguing. Here are several ways to maintain eye contact with the reader.

• Write your document as a letter.

Even some accomplished writers use this technique. At the top of your document, write “Dear” and the name of one recipient whom you know well. If you have a photo of him or her in your organization’s digital library, bring it up on your screen. (You may want to close your door to avoid strange looks from colleagues.)

Now, write your report, or email, stopping regularly to look at the photo or thinking about the person to whom you are writing. Do this exercise for your next five documents, and you may be able to begin writing without props.

• Think attention span.

When eyes glaze over or look away in a conversation while you’re talking, you probably have lost his or her attention. Likewise, keeping eye atttention on text against a plain background is even more tedious and straining.

To keep the reader’s attention, think format and humility. Formatting means short paragraphs, bulleted lists, drop caps, italics, and whatever else it takes to keep the reader’s eyes moving through the page. Humility comes in by forgetting about what you think a writer should do: that is, write big words in big paragraphs.

2. Change your inflection.
Talk in a monotone during a conversation and your listener will certainly drop out. Attention requires changes in tone, volume, emphasis, and pace — in other words, inflection. The same is true for holding a reader’s attention, whether the document be an email, report, blog post, or journal entry. To create inflection in your writing, you might:

• drop a short, staccato-like sentence in the middle of a long paragraph.
• use not only lots of action verbs but choose edgy ones that come with sound effects, like vex, pimp, and eradicate.
• insert a surprise sentence that might be somewhat confessional or reflective, such as: “Maybe what I just said was overstated, but, hold on, maybe not.”

3. Move your hands.
In dialogue, our hands say what our words cannot and also add drama to our comments. Likewise, in writing, we can create hand-equivalent visuals.
Assume that you are asked to write an assessment report of a meeting with prospective buyers of your company. You could be analytical and dull or conversational and interesting by creating mental images, such as:

• Inserting a simple graphic. A hand-drawn diagram of nuclear energy might better reflect your view that the acquisition could create synergies and energies but had the potential to be explosive.
• Trying out similes and metaphors. For example, “Our company is like a family, dysfunctional at time, but still willing to stick together through troubles. What happens if we adopt new family members?”
• Telling a highly visual — and short — story. For instance, you might say, “Being in that meeting with all those lawyers and listening to the smooth-talking CEO reminded me of sitting cross-legged at sunset on the porch of my Uncle Jim’s dilapidated farmhouse listening to his biting jokes as the mosquitoes feasted on us.”

One final recommendation: Read Stephen King’s book, “On Writing,” and then listen to him read it on CD. He writes like he talks and talks like he writes.

Next post: How to Talk Like You Write.

Richard Skaare 07.01.09
Photo credit: psmclaug

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

I finally met the THEY’s the other day. The THEY’s were lurking and smirking down in the Control Room on the lower level.

THEY were gabbing, criticizing, speculating, boasting, back-stabbing, and vying for attention. Each one thought he knew everything. Each one made claims about being right, about having all the answers. THEY talked in generalities, nothing specific.

I was glad to meet them. People refer to them frequently, as in, “THEY say …” to prove a point, impress others, whatever. I had lots of questions for them.

I asked the one who claimed to be the Chief THEY – chief at least for the moment — why THEY were so popular.

He said, “Simple. Some people need attention and THEY – that is, we – help them stand out by looking authoritative. Then there are some who think that information, even undocumented information, makes them look smart, prestigious, and powerful; we give them that information … well, sort of.

“There are also those who don’t trust what they know. And still others who just don’t know what else to say.

“In short, put pressure on someone and voices start popping up in her head saying, “you don’t know what you’re talking about because, truthfully, you’re not really that bright or interesting or informed. So, people turn to us – to THEY — for a bail-out.”

“What do you mean, ‘bail-out?’” I asked.

“We … THEY … give them generalities that are usually untraceable and sound so authoritative that few people can refute what is said,” he replied.

“For example?”

“Three months ago, this department head guy was promoting some unworkable idea about a software platform. Actually, he didn’t know what he was talking about, yet he had the power of position and persuasion to get his way … almost.

He assumed everyone in a meeting on the issue endorsed his view until the irritable and always irritating manager from another department challenged him.

“The department head seemed trapped. So, THEY – that is, most of us – jumped in and told him what to say. He was too threatened and unfocused to resist, and couldn’t remember facts or anything substantial to rebut the criticism. He did what we told him and responded, ‘THEY say that several Fortune 500 companies are about to use the same software.’

“Then one of his loyal staffers chimed in with …”

“Let me tell it,” said someone named Experts. “I instructed the staffer to say, ‘I read somewhere that a lot of experts think this software will be a game-changer.’ Cool, huh? But I also made sure he didn’t identify the source because, to be honest, the actual article didn’t quite say what he suggested that it said. “

“Success,” said the Chief THEY. “No more objections from anyone, and the crummy idea rushed forward to become a very expensive and, ultimately, a failed program.”

Another member of the group with the unusual name of Customers jumped into the conversation. “The easiest way to win support for your program in business is to mention customers in the abstract. That’s my expertise,” she said, scanning the group, “or so THEY say.”

“I don’t understand,” I confessed.

“Here’s how it works,” said Customers. “Say, the company’s director of advertising proposes to launch a new ad campaign that features products for the automotive industry. Prominent in the ad is a yellow American car. The CEO loves everything about the ad.

“To the executive in charge of European sales, however, the campaign looks too American for his region. Yet he senses that he has no say in the matter: it’s a corporate campaign. So, he shows the prototype ad to a high-level buddy-customer and the customer’s assistant, both of whom say it’s not their favorite ad.

“The sales executive then goes over the head of the advertising director, to the CEO, and informs him, as we advised, ‘Our European customers say the ad won’t work.’ The CEO panics and the ad campaign is put on hold for Europe.”

The Chief THEY took charge of the conversation again. “We have lots of other ‘THEY say’ stories. For instance, how many times have you heard, ‘THEY say that we’re definitely going to get 12 to 18 inches of snow.’

“But our pride and joy comes when we stop all efforts to change an organization by recruiting folks to say, ‘THEY will never approve that’ or ‘THEY won’t let us do that.’ Most everyone falls for this one, even though no one knows who ‘THEY’ are. There are still some, ‘yes we can’ dreamers out there, but we’ll wear them down before long.”

“There’s no stopping you guys, is there?” I asked.

“Not really,” the Chief THEY responded. As long as people don’t want to take the time to substantiate what they’re talking about,

… or don’t want to deal with specifics,
… or don’t have the courage to be silent and, instead, resort to generalities,
… or no one holds them accountable for verifying what they’re saying,
we will be in business and there will be no change.”

I started to walk away, but turned and said defiantly: “You’re wrong about change. They say that ‘time changes things.’”

“Yeah, that’s one of our favorites,” said the Chief THEY.

Richard Skaare 06.24.09
Photo credit: Annie Ominous

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.

Four minutes is not much time to do much of anything. However …

But I’m a reality coach. What hinders productivity and increases stress, I think, is failure to clean up loitering vexations – those slight annoyances, anxieties, and distresses that we leave unresolved. Consequently, we suffer more pain avoiding than attending to them.

So, take four minutes to read this list of vexations and then spend four minutes on each one that fits, getting them off your mind and out of your life. You’ll be a happier, healthier, greener person – guaranteed, says pitchman Billy May.

1. Vexation: You’re bothered by knowing who you are but not being able to yank the words out of your soul.
   Un-vex: Your mind has taken charge. Stop intellectualizing and try simplifying. Come up with four words in four minutes that describe who you are and what you do — not boilerplate words, gritty words like “edgy thinker, detail addict.”
2. Vexation: You keep promising yourself to get healthier.
   Un-vex: Eat a banana. During the four minutes it takes to eat the banana, you might realize, what would happen if I stopped dieting and every day – every day! – ate five servings of fruits and vegetables.” C’mon, this is easy.
3. Vexation: You made an off-handed comment to a less-liked colleague this morning and are still feeling somewhat righteous yet regretful that you said it.
   Un-vex: Take two minutes alone in your office to collect your thoughts, 30 seconds to walk down the hall, one minute to surprise and apologize to the colleague you offended, and the remaining 30 seconds walking back to your office feeling relieved, humbled, and committed to getting better at biting your lip rather than people.
4. Vexation: You cared about a former staff member and his future when he worked for you, but you wonder how he is doing six months after you were forced to let him go because of budget cuts.
   Un-vex: Call a staff member who is still friends with her former colleague and get an update. Contacting the individual directly can be sticky for legal, HR, and personal reasons. But going through an intermediary will get you honest information. During the call, don’t justify your decision or otherwise explain yourself; just ask questions.
5. Vexation: You have been so enamored and owned by technology — your laptop, your smartphone, your social networking app, your home theater – that you worry about losing perspective.
   Un-vex: You need to be reminded how amazing creation is. Spend four minutes looking out a window when you hear an airplane coming. Think about the technology that, as one comedian says, lets people sit in a chair in the sky. Then look at a bird and also your reflection in the glass. You get the point.
6. Vexation: You’ve been arguing all day to yourself and others why your position was the right one during yesterday’s troublesome, stalemated meeting – and you know you have been wasting valuable time.
   Un-vex: Read your meeting notes, think again about what you said, but this time more open-mindedly than analytically, and jot down a possible solution that could break the gridlock. Give up the wrong belief that you have to be either right or compromised in exchange for compromising to do what might be right for the organization.
7. Vexation: You’ve been personally offended by people not spending much time on your website, the content of which you wrote.
   Un-vex: The next time you’re stopped at a four-minute traffic light, ask yourself, how can only three colors influence the behavior of so many people when all the information on your website cannot. Then go back to the office, re-edit, reduce, and re-energize the content … and insert images that are worth a thousand words.
8. Vexation: The pile of must-read and want-to read materials on your desk is slowly convincing you that they may become never-read.
   Un-vex: Toss all the materials into the bottom drawer. Then make a note on your calendar for the last day of the month to pull out the drawer, and empty its contents into your waste basket without thinking. There, now you will have to rely on your own wits to be smart.
9. Vexation: You hate meetings because too many participants are consuming too much time on trivia, but you don’t want to say something that would irritate everyone.
   Un-vex: During a meeting, when someone makes a brief but insightful comment, ask her to spend four minutes expanding on the idea. This will serve as an example of the kind of high-quality, potentially high-impact thinking that should dominate every meeting.
10. Vexation: You have been worrying too much about being lame and underappreciated.
    Un-vex: Spend four minutes thinking of some simple accomplishment that recently gave you an ego boost: an amazing golf shot, the loss of four pounds in one week, the unexpected congratulatory note from the CEO you’ve never met. Maybe, just maybe, there is a chance you can lower your handicap, lose another three pounds, and get to finally know the top-gun.

Richard Skaare 06.17.09
Photo credit: phxpma

©2012 SkaareWorks. All Rights Reserved.