I have not posted here in a long time, and honestly I still don’t have the time today, but I know I will miss the opportunity unless I talk about this now.
We are in the middle of the capstone speech round for my classes, the speech to actuate. Several students have impressed me, but a couple stood out today. I offer these stories because of their implications for communication on several levels. Continue reading
No, this is not about manipulation. A real-life friend was expressing frustration at some of the stuff she has to see from friends on Facebook that make it not as fun as it used to be. She doesn’t want to leave, and doesn’t want to unfriend people over a few posts, but it gets old, doesn’t it?
This isn’t an exhaustive treatment of such things, but here is one way of sort of controlling the flow.
If you hover over a friend’s name in your FB stream, you will get a little window with a couple of buttons associated with your friend. One of them is a drop-down menu labeled “Friends.” Click that.
Then click on the settings link.
You can choose what kind of updates to include. I’m not sure I’m not sure how FB determines “only important,” but it sure cuts down on the posts you see from that person. You can also choose “all updates,” which may change your mix at least to slant toward people who post less irritating material. You can also unclick certain things–I tend to turn off “Games” on everyone, for instance.
You can also use the Social Fixer addon to sort certain friends’ posts into their own tabs. That makes it easier to control–you can read that friend’s posts in a batch when you feel up to it, or just mark all of them “read” without having to actually read them. It has a little higher “geek” factor, though, so I will save that for another post.
I’m sitting in the Intensive Care Unit of Children’s Hospital in Knoxville with my daughter as she sleeps, finally resting after three or four days of what must have felt like drowning for her. It turns out she has double pneumonia. Under the tender ministrations of the medical staff, she is getting better, and although Hannah has taught us that we never know the future, even two minutes from now, the prognosis is good, and we expect to take her home early next week.
As I look at the ceiling, though, I see graphic reminders that many parents who have waited agonizing hours in this room have not been so fortunate.
Instead of empty industrial ceiling tiles, patients see a colorful collage of artwork done mostly by children who have stayed here, whiling away the time and contributing to later patients by relieving visual monotony. It is a nice touch.
But a few of them come from parents leaving behind a memorial. You can easily spot these tiles; they’re the ones with two dates.
They strike me the same way 19th century cemeteries do. Have you ever strolled through an old graveyard and noticed how many tombstones commemorate a child? Some have only single dates for a child who died the same day he or she was born. Many have tiny statues of lambs on top. In some older cemeteries fully half the graves hold the remains of a child, with dates only a few years or a few months apart.
This is a room of hope, not a cemetery, but it is a room that has witnessed countless dramas and struggles, the stuff of movies and stories. Maybe these stories aren’t spectacular enough for the big screen, but for the real individuals involved they held all the impact that a Gone with the Wind or a Titanic did for those characters.
At this moment, two nurses are working on Hannah, and alarms are going off. I am writing because I can’t really do anything else. I can do little for my daughter right now beyond simply being present, and so I turn to writing, a tool that has always helped me make sense of the world.
I don’t know how much time I will have with Hannah. It may be a day; it may be that she will far outlive me. I hold out hope that gene editing may allow her to escape the chains that bind her in this life. (I’m not delusional. I realize it’s a long shot, but a slim chance is better than none.) But I do know that I don’t want to risk one day looking at a tile with two dates and regret that the space in between was so filled with trying to make a living that there was no room to just hold her hand.
I’ve tried to post at least twice a week, and I’ve kept that up regularly for 19 months, except for two periods when I took a week or two off. But I need to turn my attention to other things. I’m not leaving, but I’m setting the conscious intention of cutting back to posting only two to four times per month for at least awhile. Effective communication is my passion, but only because it connects us to each other, and I have some connecting of my own I need to do.
I’m completely burned out, folks. I’m taking a week off from the blog to regroup, catch up on some maintenance, take care of some stuff around the house, etc. Join the mailing list to make sure you don’t miss posts when they come out, and thanks for sticking with us! I hope you find useful information here to help you be the most effective communicator you can be.
Technology is great! I love it! But it can overshadow things that are more important.
The very word implies that technologies are tools. They help you accomplish things, but they don’t tell you what to accomplish or help you evaluate what’s most important to accomplish. Continue reading
I enjoy teaching, and have been fortunate to have good classes throughout the last year. It was fascinating watching the process of them starting with something that is often very general and then slicing it down to fit the time limit, while developing enough depth to interest an audience.
In the process of doing that, many of them got excited as they made the topic truly their own. Continue reading
America is the embodiment of an idea communicated.
Tomorrow is July 4, a day that Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence. We call it Independence Day, but the reality is there were five years of war yet to come before a treaty was signed granting independence. Stop and think about that: it means we celebrate not the achievement of independence, but its declaration. Continue reading
Let’s make something explicit: just exactly what is that “learning curve” you keep hearing about?
I can’t remember where I first heard this idea, but it has been around for awhile: whenever you learn something new, you go through four stages. Continue reading
Speakers serve audiences. It’s easy to forget that, but speakers who last figure that out quickly. If you are a speaker, you can help that process along by coaching the person who will introduce you with these tips. If you are the person introducing the speaker, here’s what a speaker should tell you.
You are really helping set up the speech. Introducers usually either follow the directions they receive from the speaker, or else have to come up with an introduction on their own. In either case, introducers often make the same mistake: spending too much time on the speaker’s background. Audiences all listen to the same radio station, as Zig Ziglar used to say: WII-FM, which stands for “What’s in it for me?” It’s worthwhile including biographical information in the program notes, agenda, or handout, but “out loud” the introducer should focus on connecting the speaker, topic, and audience.
So don’t waste time on, “He’s done this, and he’s done that, and he’s received these awards, and he played college basketball and receive the adulation of fans, etc.”
Keep it short. The longer you talk in an introduction, the more time you’re taking away from giving the speaker the chance to grab the audience’s attention. My rule of thumb: seldom should an introduction run over 30 seconds.
Work out the introduction with the speaker ahead of time. The speaker has enough challenges without having to deal with something unexpected from the person doing the introduction. Remember this is not the time to showcase your own cleverness. Out of service to the audience, focus on connecting the speaker.
Avoid the cliche introduction. Think about the usual pieces from the standpoint of the audience member. “Our speaker today needs no introduction.” So why are you giving one? “It is my privilege to introduce today’s speaker.” How is this helpful in figuring out what’s in it for me, the audience member? “You’re really in for a treat.” I’ll be the judge of that.
Allude to the problem the speaker will solve or the need the speaker will address. This immediately gets to the WII-FM question. When audience members know from the beginning that the speaker will address some pressing need, they have a reason to tune in and stay tuned in.
Work out logistics ahead of time. It is minor, but on the other hand, a bit of awkwardness in relinquishing the lectern or passing a microphone can interfere with the speaking getting off on the right foot. Since audience remember most readily the first thing and the last thing they hear, it’s worth the extra effort to make sure it goes smoothly. Clarify briefly such things as which way you will step to get out of the way as the speaker comes to the lectern, whether or not you will shake hands, what your cue to the speaker will be, etc.
Generally, never come between the speaker and the audience. I recommend this pattern: if you occupy the same space that the speaker will, and will exit the podium via the same route the speaker will enter, shake hands, pass the microphone (if it’s a hand-held), then take a step toward the back of the podium so the speaker can step to the front. If you didn’t work this out with the speaker ahead of time, you can help this along by gently tugging the speaker toward the lectern or the front of the stage, and by a definite turn of your head indicate you’re going to the back, leaving no doubt which way you’re going. That will avoid the little dance that sometimes results as you jockey around each other.
There’s an art to introducing a speaker, and many more tips we might share. But these will put you ahead of 90% of introducers, leading to a grateful speaker and a better-served audience.
What tips would you share for folks needing to introduce a speaker?
Photo Credit: Joshin Yamada cc
Numbers present a special challenge for speakers. Especially after surviving the American education system, speakers may approach a speech as a paper out loud. That has a lot of problems, and one of the biggest can be the temptation to throw a bunch of statistics at people out loud that they would have trouble processing even if they could read them. Continue reading
