Allgemein Archive - Page 50 of 159 - The Art of Communicating

Meet Rambo

We don’t meet Rambo when he was born. We don’t meet him in school. Not even in Vietnam.

We meet him after all of that has already happened. We see him walking down a path, arriving in Hope, Washington.

We meet him at the latest possible time in the story.

Most business stories are different. They start at the earliest possible time. Usually when the business was founded. And then they continue by telling us about the company milestones – all kinds of events that matter a great deal to the founder but not at all to the audience.

When they get to the interesting parts, they have long lost our attention. Rather than to make us curious about the story, the founders expect us to be already curious. Which we’re not.

It’s much better to do it like the great novels and movies. Start at the latest possible point. Speak about things that grab our interest. Give us a reason to care

When you do, it’s almost inevitable that we want to know the details.

Rewarding meetings

Meetings are madness. We all know better. But still, most of us don’t do better. Because we’ve accustomed ourselves to the way that meetings are run. We’ve let inefficient meetings turn into a habit basically from the very first meeting we joined (we were the juniors, after all).

It’s just the way it is. They’ve always been like that. Get over it.

Or not.

Let’s revisit this statement: We have allowed inefficient meetings to become a habit.

The thing with habits is that they are automatic behavior. Once you experience the trigger for the habit, the habit takes over. The trigger in meetings is the meeting room. The habit is to drift away in your mind doing things like planning your next vacation, thinking about new career opportunities, or just catching up with mail.

The bad news is that habits, even if you’ve uncovered them, never go away, as Charles Duhigg argues in his fabulous book “The Power of Habit”. Bad habits can only be replaced by new habits.

One possibility to replace a habit is via what Duhigg calls the “reward”. For example, for some of you a reward of the inefficient meetings habit might be that you feel like you’ve managed to catch up with mail (finally!). Much better than to waste your time listening to a boring PowerPoint presentation.

So, the question becomes: How can you make the reward of paying attention more desirable than the reward of catching up with mail?

Let’s look at what causes meetings to feel so inefficient. Some of the more important ones are:

Too many participants who don’t have anything meaningful to contribute.
Too many topics that don’t impact us.
Nobody’s prepared.
Statements (especially when they’re conveyed via PowerPoint) are vague, abstract and inconcise.
Nothing comes out of it. People make great promises that they never keep.

Making meetings worthwhile means eliminating these causes. If you’ve got something to contribute, if you can articulate your thoughts with clarity because you’ve prepared well (and don’t rely on your teammates to figure out what you mean), if what gets agreed upon gets actually done because people take responsibility, people will pay attention because they will feel like they can affect change.

I believe that that’s the actual meeting problem: People feel that their contribution doesn’t matter (that much). So, if you manage to make every meeting member’s contribution matter a lot, your meeting problem will vanish. If their contributions matter and have an actual impact, then that’s potentially a much bigger reward for people than catching up with mail.

Here are a couple of steps you can take towards this:

Enforce a being prepared policy!
Insist on clarity (Say what you mean)!
Have people take on responsibility (Mean what you say)!
Include only the people who can contribute in a significant way or are directly impacted!
Exclude people who don’t contribute or aren’t paying attention!

In other words: switch to a doing!

Lack of time

It never ceases to amaze me how the default mode in some sales forces (especially the larger ones) is to make loads of mediocre pitches rather than a few exceptional ones.

The reason for this that I’m hearing most often is – ironically – “lack of time”. After all, there’s a lot of pitches to make, and a lot of daily business to cut through: proposals, emails, meetings, more emails, Slack, another meeting, another proposal … you get the idea. So, there’s just no time left to push a pitch from ok to great.

Yet, the actual problem is that “lack of time” easily becomes “waste of time” when you settle with mediocrity.

In the short run, it may not make much difference whether you put in a little effort often and then spread your efforts wide because you know that you’ll win only a couple of those. Or whether you put in so much effort on a few select occasions that you win almost every one of them.

But in the long run, it makes a huge difference. Because the former businesses will still hustle their way through occasion after occasion while the latter’s job gets easier with every deal they make.

Electric clocks

In the 50s, Rolls Royce claimed that their cars are super quiet.

But how quiet were they? Here’s how Rolls Royce explained it:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

Can you explain to me your promises in plain English in a way that I can make sense of them from my everyday experience?

The best use of your time

Clarity takes time. Time to think things through. Time to change perspectives. Time to ask for feedback.

Time that we often lack in our daily business.

Given all the other things that are on our table, clamoring for our attention, it often feels that we just don’t have time to refine our story or to look for simpler ways of explaining our product.

I don’t think that’s true. In fact, I feel that the opposite is true: Investing in simpler language is one of the best uses of our time while settling with hard to understand or plain confusing messages is about the worst use of anyone’s time.

When you aim to speak with clarity, then yes, it will consume some of your time. But on the other hand, it will spare your audience an enormous amount of time – time that they would otherwise need to spend in order to figure out what you mean.

Arguably that’s going to be worth way more than your time invest.

The effort required for a TED talk

So you want to give a TED caliber presentation. Are you willing to put in the effort?

Here’s how TED Curator Chris Anderson describes what it takes to be prepared to go onto the TED stage:

We start helping speakers prepare their talks six months (or more) in advance so that they’ll have plenty of time to practice. We want people’s talks to be in final form at least a month before the event. The more practice they can do in the final weeks, the better off they’ll be. Ideally, they’ll practice the talk on their own and in front of an audience.

Let’s summarize that. TED speakers:

begin to prepare 6 months in advance,
have the talk final one month in advance,
practice a lot in the remaining weeks.

When do you begin to prepare? How often do you practice the talk in its final version?

Really, what looks effortless is often the result of an enormous effort.

The utility of a blank stare

One of the things that we lack as speakers on a large stage is the blank stare of our audience. Even more so when the large stage is virtual so that you’re looking into a camera.

The blank stare in a 1:1 conversation (or in a meeting) informs us about our blind spots. What are the things that are clear to us but make no sense for our audience?

You can’t reliably find that out alone. You need other people’s help. Alone, in your office, you lack these blank stares, the kind of stares that make you look for simpler ways of explaining your idea.

Practicing in front of a small live audience helps. As do private conversations. Use these as a testing environment for the clarity of your communication. Too many speakers avoid these situation because a blank stare embarasses them.

I think it’s the best thing that can happen to you. It allows you to fix your blind spots.

Look for and embrace the blank stares!

What does the door sign say?

When you make someone an irresistible offer, it’s as if you’ve opened a door in their mind that is so tempting that they absolutely must go through it. It’s an unbearable thought for them to shut that door and not walk through.

Would you like to have such a door?

Here are three useful questions to ask:

What does the sign on the door say?
What kind of person is it that would feel that tempted to walk through?
What do these people hope to find behind the door?

It would be better to make a film

Film director extraordinaire Werner Herzog famously said: “I felt it would be better to make a film than go to film school.”

Herzog knows that the best learning is by doing the work. Because it’s all theory and “could” and “would” until you actually do the work.

I feel like today is a great day to stop overthinking and start learning – by simply doing the work.

Look how beautiful the moon is

“Daddy, look how beautiful the moon is today.” My daughter expected me to chime in with her cheering.

Only that I couldn’t … because from where I was standing, I couldn’t even see the moon. It was obscured by a building. Luckily, I took a couple of steps to the side. It really was an astonishing view of the moon, an object that we see so often, yet not quite the way my daughter and I saw it on that evening.

Sometimes, to appreciate the beauty of something we need to look from the right perspective. We need to move to a different place.

If you’re wondering why your audience isn’t chiming in with your cheering, could it be that they just can’t see it when looking from their perspective? If so, then no amount of cheering from your side will make them see it. It’s obscured.

You need to show them a way to get to your place.

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