Talk to the Human™

Every now and then, a good book may be a reference book you can turn to again and again. If you are a person who writes or speaks, you need to have a reference of great quotes handy all the time. Seriously.

The Harper Book of Quotations, Third Edition was published too early to include any George W. Bush gems, but contains over 6,500 quotes from both the famous and obscure.

What’s great about this book:
Sorted by topic, such as Adversity, Education, England and the U.K., Honesty, Sport, Success, Work and 194 more catgories.
Fully indexed by source, so you can find, say, all 40 of Oscar Wilde’s quotes, or just the one by former President Clinton.

Limiting Factors:
It would be nice to have a fourth edition out soon. There were a few good things said in the past few years.
You’ll have to search the web for more contemporary quotes from greats like Seth Godin, Alan Weiss, or Craig Valentine.

Great Quotes:
“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” – Thomas La Mance
“Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else.” – Will Rogers
“See everything: overlook a great deal: correct a little.” – Pope John XXIII

Recommendations:
This is a reference book that would be useful on your shelf. You should have no trouble getting it for less than the $14.95 retail price.

Rob’s Rating system (bolded, the rating is)
Buy now at full price
Buy if you get a discount
Wait for the paperback (and it’s already in paperback/discounted)
Wait for someone else to be done with the paperback
If you’ve read my review, you got the jist of it

You may find yourself held back by these common myths. Each of these applies to any type of speaking, as well as speaking in Toastmasters. Read on, and learn how to identify and conquer these speaking flaws:

Error #1: Every speech has to be different.
- In professional or business settings, you wouldn’t want to give the same speech to the same audience over and over, but when the audience changes, you can use material that was developed for another audience. All you need to do is know your audience and make the small tweaks where you need to.
- In Toastmasters, this misconception comes from an erroneous assumption that you can’t take credit for the same speech more than once. Change that thinking! Don’t “take credit” for your speech…earn credit for it. Are you wondering what the difference is? Say you are wanting to practice a speech for a big presentation you have to do at work on the Johnson Account (or whatever). You can work on the Competent Communication (CC) manual speech project on Vocal Variety, give your speech and receive some useful tips to improve. Next, take those improvements and tighten it up. Go to the project on Using Visual Aides and practice it again. Now you are better prepared for that work assignment! Note: you don’t have to stop at two times, practice again if you need to.

Error #2: All of your material must be original.
- Clearly it’s a bad idea to plagiarize the work of others. However, if you credit them and include what you’ve learned from experts in your presentation you can add to your credibility and improve the audience’s condition at the same time. Telling the audience how using that other expert’s advice made a difference for you can help them follow a similar path to success.
- In Toastmasters, there are some scripted programs designed to help members succeed with common speaking and leadership topics such as Goal Setting and Planning, Evaluate to Motivate, and Creating an Opening. I once asked a fellow member about giving a speech on Goal Setting. His reply, “I don’t need to do one of those modules right now Rob, I need to give a speech.” I replied “Joe, just give a speech on Goal Setting, you can reference your own experience as well as the module and other sources in your own speech.” This took a bit of back and forth to get through, because of the misunderstanding that he though to talk about one of those topics, you had to use the module. It’s not true, and like any source you just need to cite what you use when you speak. If, however, you want to read the script as designed, then of course that is not a manual speech, but how you present it as a module.

Error #3: Saying you have a plan means you have a plan.
- In Seth Godin’s book Small is the New Big, he talks about working for an Internet company during a period when they were very successful marketing to advertisers. He looked forward to working there because he thought their techniques must be out of this world, with the obscene revenues they were pulling in. He then recounted the first sales call he went on with them. To paraphrase, the presentation was among the worst he’d ever encountered, yet the customer wrote a really big check. The point? You may have a product or idea that is so wonderful that your lack of preparation couldn’t possibly screw it up.  Guess what? Even if you’re right, you soon won’t be.
- In Toastmasters I see some individuals who give manual speeches, but never seem to have the manuals, or turn in the awards. I’ve heard a variety of “not chasing awards” excuses. I’ve also watched their slower growth as a result.

To be honest, I could probably write a “Top Ten” or “Top Twenty for 2010″ post on many other speaking myths out there. These are just three that I’ve seen and heard most recently. The short of it is, stop looking for ”no”. It’s easy to come up with excuses to stagnate and watch crap on teevee. 

If it’s in your head that you need to become a more accomplished communicator, leader, and networker (is that a word?) then move past the excuses and do what you need to do. If you are not in Toastmasters, obviously I’m going to suggest that you join. This is the place to practice and improve, and to move beyond all of the myths to become the best speaker you can be.

I wrote a book review last week on Seth Godin’s New Book, Linchpin – Are you Indispensable? This book is out today, and is now available at Amazon or your local bookseller.

I like this book so much that I finally went to Amazon.com and created an affiliate link to help you get to it faster. Read it!

After I wrote my post on why you should be brief, I received a request for a more practical “how to” series to improve your writing and speaking by being brief.

The first step to being brief is to eliminate unnecessary words. Take the following example:

I went to the store, with my dog, to shop for some groceries.

You have three ways to work with a sentence like this:
1. Eliminate the prepositional phrase, “with my dog” – best if you don’t really need to include the dog in the story
2. Eliminate the redundancy of store and groceries – I went shopping or I went to the store for <something specific>
3. Eliminate the lack of humor – You may wonder why I took my dog grocery shopping? He never knows what flavor of kibbles he wants until he sees them.

Brevity isn’t always about shortening your first draft. It’s really about finding the best way to deliver your message without wasting words or repeating yourself (first draft said “repeating yourself unnecessarily”). Take that first draft and see where you can eliminate the needless words.

Reading this book was a result of seeing and meeting the author at the Toastmasters International convention in August. Bruce Tulgan gave a great presentation as he talked about the unique challenges in managing people from different generations.

Not Everyone Gets a Trophy - How to Manage Generation Y, is probably not a book I would have picked up myself. In fact, even though I bought it from the author at the event (and I’m glad I did), I didn’t make time to read it until recently. Having said that, Bruce makes a good point about there being so many misconceptions on how to manage and lead Generation Yers (those born between 1978 and 1990). In fact, the first chapter sets the tone by listing 14 common myths about Gen Yers and the realities behind them.

Two conflicting myths that I found interesting: “Money and traditional benefits don’t matter to them” and “Money is the only thing that matters to them.” Of course there is a middle ground to that, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

What’s great about this book:
Some clear research backs up the assertions of how Gen Yers respond in real life (vs. in the heads of their mangers). The chapter “Get them to care about customer service” gives good advice on getting any employees focus right on customer service.

Limiting Factors:
Like many books that handle such diverse topics, I wish some of the chapters had a few more examples or explanations to give some additional insight in different circumstances.

Great Quotes:
“Don’t tell me I’m going to be making strategy on the beach with beautiful men, while I sip a glass of wine, connected to the office remotely – while you give me tons of stock options…unless you are planning to make it happen. Tell me the real [situation] so I can decide if I want to be a part of your thing” - Gen Yer

Recommendations:
This book is a great myth buster about the differences in one of the least understood generations in the workforce. If you manage folks in that demographic, this is a solid choice to read. Some of the specific examples can be very useful in creating training plans and interacting with your employees, volunteers ane even friends.

Rob’s Rating system (bolded, the rating is)
Buy now at full price
Buy if you get a discount
Wait for the paperback
Wait for someone else to be done with the paperback
If you’ve read my review, you got the jist of it

If you have a choice between being brief and being wordy, which do you choose?

Maybe a better question is, do you prefer to listen to someone who is wordy, or someone who gets to the point and stays concise?

I read a post recently on this topic, and today I was providing training and sitting through some training at our Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI) in Wichita. It occured to me that as I spoke on my two topics, I could have easily made both topics into full day sessions, but that is not what my audience signed up for.

It took more effort on my part, but keeping the session in time was important for a few reasons:

1. Respect my audience
2. Highlight the important topics
3. Keep the audience’s respect

Be brief…you’re audience will appreciate it.

What happens when you make things too automatic for your customers, and an annoying error occurs? Answer: You could lose the sale.

In the last few months I’ve been reading some great blogs, and decided to try one of the products I saw. There was a product that was touted as something that would help me see success as a freelance writer. In what is an understandable sales technique, it was offered at a special rate until the end of 2009.

In mid-December, I decided to allocate the required investment (~$87) and clicked on the link to purchase.

The only option for purchasing this product was to use PayPal, a normally reliable service where I have had an active account for about eight years.

For some reason, PayPal decided to decline me this transaction. Per PayPal’s policy they “don’t care”. Actually, that’s a mis-quote. Their site says something to the effect that if they denied an individual transaction, it was in your best interest to insure people aren’t mis-using your account and they don’t have a method for overruling this on any specific transaction. It’s something they’re proud of. I sent a note anyway asking for assistance. No reply.

Okay. PayPal is PayPal. I’m stuck there, but I still wanted the product. I clicked on the “contact” button in the corner, and sent a note asking, essentially, “may I please buy your product?” I said something about requesting a different form of payment.

My logic was that PayPal might be willing to help eventually, but the seller would want to figure something out right now.

Of course, if that had happened, this would be a review of the product, not a review of not being able to buy the product, right?

I did receive a follow-up e-mail the next day, and was told “they would look into it”. That was, temporarily, comforting. However, the lack of follow through into mid-January is disheartening, to say the least. And of course, now a look on that site shows the product ”is temporarily off the market.” So if I wanted to go out of my way and create a new PayPal account with a different credit card, I’m still out of luck.

From the business point of view, what do you think goes through your customer’s mind when something like this happens? Here are some of the thoughts, temporary and permanent, that I have had in the last month:

Do I still want this product?(no one referred me, so in my mind I was taking a risk anyway)
Do they even care if I want this product?
Will they even miss the lost sale?
What if I had been successful and bought the product, would this be how they would support any future issues?
Are there comparable products out there? (and yes, I am now looking)
How do I handle my disappointment? (clearly I’m blogging it)
Is all of this even worth my time?(hmmm…only for the single blog value)

As I prepare to deploy my own products on-line, here are some lessons this experience has taught me (and yes, I’ve heard many of these before):

1. Decide on a response standard and stick with it. (i.e. one business day)
- No one wanting to send you money should be made to wait more than 72 hours to be allowed to do it.
- Same standard for any reasonable customer requests, even if it’s an “I’ll find out” answer to get time to research a better answer.
2. If you say “I’ll get back to you” to your customer, do it. Especially if you take time to post multiple blog entries in the same time period.
3. Plan for back-up payment options, in case your primary doesn’t work. If your audience is a blog/web audience, they’re probably used to on-line transactions. That doesn’t mean they should have accounts at every payment site out there. That said, PayPal is well known and (usually) reliable.
4. If you leave a product page up with a “temporarily off the market” note, maybe mention why or when it will be back.
5. If you decide to blow a customer off, you might want to make sure she/he doesn’t have a blog!!!

Final note:  This post is based on what is probably a blip in their process. With this site’s reputation, I doubt this happens to many people. My idea here was not to rip them, but to show what can happen when the blips go uncorrected. Maybe their $87 loss will be my gain down the road…

I’m not going to lie to you. When I received the opportunity to be one of the first to receive Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin – Are you Indispensable? before it was available to the public, I jumped on the chance.

Freakin’ good choice, if I do say so myself.

The premise of the book is to help us discover the answer to the question, where does success come from? Not to be left out, the question we never seem to care about, but is always there, where does average come from? is answered to help give us a frame of reference. Don’t be shocked if you recognize the answer.

Right from the start, Seth’s assertion is that the choice to be a Linchpin is our choice. It’s not that we can’t be remarkable, it’s that we choose not to be. And it’s not that we came to this choice lightly, it’s that we have had that choice drummed into us through years of school and work, because that was what works for us. Be good at your job, do what you’re told, and everything will be okey-dokey (my word). Because that is no longer true (check your 201k), we may need to reevaluate our choice.

What’s great about this book:
This isn’t your typical business or marketing book (not that any of his books are typical). In this case, it’s about focusing on your own value within the organization, and how you have the choice to shape that value. 
Their are interesting real-world examples, like a company responding to Twitter complaints and finally having a face, and the riff about needing more cowbell.

Limiting Factors:
If you’re happy (or satisfied) in your current rut, this book may anger you, or at least make you think you should do more when you don’t want to.
This could be another “have to put it down to make notes” book.
He doesn’t like one of my favorite phrases, “no fear”. I”m over it.

Great Quotes:
“‘Not My Job’ – Three words [that] can kill an entire organization”
“All I wanted to do in this book was sell you on being the artist you already are” 
“You don’t need more genius. You need less resistance.”

Recommendations:
This book is an excellent eye-opener, and if you live on a planet with a bad economy, this book is a must read. Of course, if your the one dude out there who can’t be laid off, outsourced, or reorganized, just get it for the entertainment value.

Rob’s Rating system (bolded, the rating is)
Buy now at full price(of course, you’ll have to pre-order it this week)
Buy if you get a discount
Wait for the paperback
Wait for someone else to be done with the paperback
If you’ve read my review, you got the jist of it

New affiliate link – added 24 Jan 10

Tonight’s speech was called The Power of Coaching, and was directed at Toastmaster members looking to help out their clubs, and help other clubs be more successful. This speech is based on my recent District Marketing Post.

Because of the length, I had to split the video into two files. This is the first part, and this is the second part.

I thought about posting the note, like I did last night. But if you go to the link above, you’ll see the same outline that I used. Feel free to leave comments on this site, or the YouTube site.

Tonight I gave a 9-minute speech on the subject of planned spontaneity, or the art of being ready to speak off-the-cuff. This was based on my post a couple of weeks ago on that subject. However, I modified it enough that I wanted to post the overview, since the speech included some new material.

This is the format for the notes that I used, so it may look a bit strange…hey, it’s how I work.

Opening:
Have you found yourself having to answer a question at work and you weren’t prepared? How about at home?  Public speaking can be scary all by itself, but talking to your boss unexpectedly may be even more scary.

Tonight you’ll learn some ways to improve your preparation, how to avoid some common mistakes and some keys to speaking with confidence, and you’ll be able to execute some planned spontaneity.

There are three keys to being successful at those unplanned speaking situations. First, you need to know yourself. While this includes understanding concepts like using your voice and gestures, it can be different in those hallway drive-by situations, and you’ll learn how…and why.

Second, you need to know your message. What topics are you likely to be asked in impromptu situations, and how much detail do you need to know?

Finally, much like in any scenario you need to know your audience. Having the right data on a project may be important, but if you flood your boss with irrelevant information, it could be worse than saying “I’ll get back to you”.

So, let’s get started. In any environment, you want to be aware of how you communicate with those around you. To better understand that, and be able to develop and use your skills, let’s talk about the first key, knowing yourself… 

Know Yourself
A – Some aspects the same as speaking
- Anecdote – story about using toastmaster skills on stage, compared to the hallway
                – “gesture so hard you take out a passerby”
                – don’t want to seem like a lifeless robot either
Reflect: “Can you see where some of these skills could apply to any situation?”
Sale: “Practice your skills for the big room and the small hall, just to be safe!”

B – Some more unique to one-on-one surprises
- Analogy – Hallway, seated in the cube, bosses office, conference room
Reflect: “Do you like the idea of making your style fit the environment?”
Sale: “As you work on these skills, it will help you get your message across.” 

Know Your Message
A – What do you get asked?
- Activity – “Guys, have you ever fielded a question from your wife, like ‘how does this dress look?’”
- Analogy – answering questions from the boss – avoid I hope and I’m waiting!!
– Better: “I contacted Chuck this morning and I’ll have an update to the status by tomorrow morning.”
Reflect: “Do you know what you’d say to some common questions in your work and home life?”
Sale: “Find the message you need to have ready, and you’ll feel better prepared.”

B – Prioritize your queue
- Anecdote– Answering the bedtime question on dating from my 12-year old son
Reflect: “Are there questions that need to be higher in your queue?”
Sale: “Getting caught off guard is as much about knowledge as it is priority, know what you need to know when you need to know it”

Know Your Audience
A – The message is delivered differently to different audiences
- Analogy – Comparing the dating story answer from my son to my wife
- Analogy – Comparing project status for my boss, my Program Manager, and my team
Reflect: “do you know how you’d adjust you status report for a different audience?”
Sale: “It may seem natural to tell your boss everything, but if you go with the least you can pass on, it will be appreciated.”

Conclusion:    You will find yourself having to answer those unexpected questions at work. It’s inevitable. Now you know some ways to improve your preparation, avoid common mistakes and keys to speaking with confidence.

Are you ready to know yourself, know your message and know your audience?   In any environment, you want to be aware of where you’ll have to communicate, what you’ll need to say, and how you’ll deliver the answer. As you better understand those facts, you’ll be in a better position to execute that planned spontaneity!