Listen down

Happy New Year! Readers of this blog will, I hope, forgive the fact that I did not post much over the Christmas/winter holiday season. I was taking time off from virtual communication to engage in real time communicating with friends and family. And doing lots of cookie-baking.

I was also working with clients, and managing to keep up with The News. Last week, while trying to solve some communications problems specific to clients in leadership roles, I looked to Adam Bryant's Corner Office  interviews in the New York Times. If you're not familiar with this column, look it up. Bryant shares insights from a variety of savvy leaders in business and management. One column in particular jumped out at me, Penny Pritzker's interview, titled "On Hearing the Whole Story." It dealt with the power, and importance, of listening. Pritzker, a highly successful business leader in the real estate, hospitality, and financial services industries, is currently serving as Secretary of Commerce. She answered Bryant's question about improving her leadership over the years this way: 

"Probably the biggest mistakes I’ve made were when I wasn’t listening carefully enough. Sometimes you need help with that. I have often said to my closest advisers that your job isn’t just to tell me what you think, but you also have to get in my face and make sure I heard you. It’s hard to deliver bad news, and part of leadership is giving people permission to give you bad news, and making sure you really hear it."

The thing that struck me was how much humility is packed in that statement. And the acknowledgement that true leadership means a willingness to deal with uncertain, or even negative, feedback. A reminder that when you are a leader it is not about you, but about the shared goal of the stakeholders in your venture. If your staff or team is reluctant to give you bad news, then how can you really find our what is going on? Their job in not to please you, but to give you the information you need. 

As Shanti Atkins, President and CSO of Navex Global, said in Bryant's January 2nd column: "Even now I like to have people around me who will disagree with me and who will tell me when they think I’m wrong or something is a terrible idea. If I get the feeling I have people around me who are managing up, I get very nervous. I just instantly start wondering, 'What’s actually happening and why can’t you give me more of a balanced picture?' ” 

We all need to be ready to really hear what employees, co-workers, even family members, have to say--especially when it is something we may not want to hear!  Let's resolve to be better--and more open--listeners this year. Mindfully practicing our listening skills will improve every facet of our lives, not just the bottom line.

Magical memory

photo by Lee Jordan

I read a wonderful piece in yesterday's New York Times that explains how "magical thinking" and belief in such fictitious characters as Santa Claus is part of normal brain development. When we are very young we start out with billions of brain cells whose connections are "relatively sparse," according to the author, neuroscientist Kelly Lambert. So our childish grasp of what is real and what is not develops over time. Dr. Lambert begins her opinion piece by recounting a time when she had to undo the damage of some early Christmas snooping. Her daughters, who still believed in the magic of Santa, wanted to know why presents from him were in their attic well before Christmas Eve. Dr. Lambert asserts that she acted instinctively, as a mother. Yet, as a scientist, she was relieved to realize later that protecting these beliefs was really OK. Because the richer and deeper our memories are, the more likely we will be able to conjure them up as visceral experiences later in life. We will be more likely to relive positive past memories if they are multilayered.  Lambert says this is because they are a special type of memory, what Washington University Professor Pascal Boyer calls mental time travel memories, or M.T.T.  "Professor Boyer describes how neuroimaging evidence indicates that, when certain events are recalled--presumably after being triggered by familiar sights or sounds--emotional brain areas are activated as well as visceral responses. You relive the feelings you experienced in the past. These recollections can be thought of as full body and brain memories."

Actors know the importance of using sense memory to trigger emotional memory, though they have probably never heard of M.T.T.  We have been utilizing this type of memory in our profession since the cusp of the 20th century. It is the only way to create an honest emotional life for a character who is not us. We do not know exactly how this character would react to the given circumstances of the world of the play. Since we only have what the playwright gives us, the big-picture outline, we have to fill in the blanks and populate every second we are onstage with a living, breathing reality grounded in past experiences. BUT we cannot substitute our own past. I have seen my acting students get really tripped up; they say, "Well, I wouldn't have acted this way" when examining a character's divergent reality. But you can't get inside the character if you are judging. So I tell them they must use their imaginations, put themselves in the character's shoes. And use their own sense memories and emotional memories to build a new reality. When my beginning acting students ask how this is done, I sometimes answer, "all theatre is magic." Now maybe I should give the scientific explanation. As Prof. Boyer would say, we use our brains' M.T.T. capacity to catapult ourselves, however briefly, into a completely different world. 

Dr. Lambert concludes her article by observing that even when they become adults, "the sight of Santa will allow my daughters, once again, to see the world as a child would, if only for a few fleeting moments." Actors get to use their storehouse of memories from childhood to the recent past over and over and over. Is it any wonder we take joy in our work? 

When he spoke the world listened

Nelson Mandela. We all mourn his passing. He was a great man, and, like President Obama, I "pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived, a man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice."

What has struck me about the broadcast coverage of his life and legacy is how many audio clips I am hearing of the man himself speaking. There is a very good reason for this: he spoke about his vision more eloquently and dynamically than anyone else could. Most of the news stories I have heard or seen in the past day have included tape of him speaking, because the power he communicated is easier to experience than describe. NPR put together an amazing special: Nelson Mandela: an Audio History, which excerpts many recordings of Mandela. It is amazing to listen to. The print media has also devoted many column inches to the fact that Mandela's considerable speaking skill was often his strongest weapon.

All leaders strive to express their vision with such authentic voices. Most of them fail. To be a leader requires a bold vision, and an ability to be clear-eyed about how you embody that vision and how you will implement it. And a strategy for communicating that vision to your followers. It all takes time--and a lot of thoughtful effort. Sometimes people on the "leadership track" are looking for quick results. So they like shortcuts, like modelling themselves on leaders they admire. I can foresee that soon I will have new clients asking me to teach them to "speak like Mandela." Yes, that really happens... Ask any speaking coach, we have all had that experience. The desire to "sound like Obama" has waned a bit, but we still get it. I am sure--now that she has finally developed her own reliably powerful voice--I will soon hear "I want to speak like Hillary."

But to be an authentic leader you need to find your own voice. Then you should ask a professional to help you refine it. And you need to really do your preparation. There is no shortcut for that. Even leaders with speechwriters collaborate on the writing process and then practice the heck out of the text to internalize it. Again, Mandela offers an instructive example: his four-hour speech at the 1964 Rivonia Trial set him on the world stage. He spent a great deal of time crafting that speech, then asked for expert help. As the Washington Post reports: "For weeks he worked on his public statement, which was polished and edited by novelist Nadine Gordimer and British journalist Anthony Sampson at Mandela’s direction." That article also asserts that "He read from a script, slowly and deliberately in a flat voice — the drama was all in the content and the circumstances."  I have heard recorded excerpts, and I would not say his voice was flat at all. He words were a stinging indictment of the government, but his delivery was simplicity at its best. He trusted that his dramatic text would be best served by such openness and honesty. 

We should be thankful that this most authentic leadership voice, though silenced, lives on in recordings for all to hear and cherish.

Don't let your brilliance bore them

 The Thinker felled by the Igs

One of my post-Thanksgiving traditions involves listening to the annual broadcast of the Ig Nobel Prize Awards on NPR's Science Friday. These awards are given every year by the Annals of Improbable Research, a magazine whose stated goal is to publish "research that makes people LAUGH then THINK." I enjoy laughter-provoking thought, so I always tune in.

The Magazine: Annals of Improbable Research

DOWNLOAD this issue as an e-book FREE! To read e-books on your computer, mobile phone, iPad, or other device, you'll need an e-book reader app. There are many — all similar, but each with its own gleefully maddening quirks. Here are some FREE apps: Calibre, Kobo, Adobe Digital Editions, Kindle App. * [To read e-books on your Kindle device, or Kobo e-reader, or Nook, or other dedicated e-book-reading device— of course, just use that device!]

Annals of Improbable Research (also known as AIR) is the magazine about research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
- See more at: http://www.improbable.com/magazine/#sthash.KMqRJddw.dpuf

The Magazine: Annals of Improbable Research

DOWNLOAD this issue as an e-book FREE! To read e-books on your computer, mobile phone, iPad, or other device, you'll need an e-book reader app. There are many — all similar, but each with its own gleefully maddening quirks. Here are some FREE apps: Calibre, Kobo, Adobe Digital Editions, Kindle App. * [To read e-books on your Kindle device, or Kobo e-reader, or Nook, or other dedicated e-book-reading device— of course, just use that device!]

Annals of Improbable Research (also known as AIR) is the magazine about research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
- See more at: http://www.improbable.com/magazine/#sthash.KMqRJddw.dpuf

The Friday broadcast is a compilation of highlights from the actual Awards ceremony that takes place each September at Harvard. Scientists come from all over the world to accept their prizes in categories as diverse as Safety Engineering, Medicine, and Probability. They are tasked with describing their research in creative and succinct speeches. And, judging from the number who accepted their speeches in song or verse this year, or in costume, there is an expectation they will entertain and enlighten. The room is full of scientists, but they may not all speak exactly the same language. So jargon is discouraged, as are complicated explanations.

Yet even with this model of humor and brevity, the Ig Nobel Awards organizers have felt the need to include a "referee" who is known as Miss Sweetie Poo. She is a wonderful addition to this awards ceremony, where erudite experts expound upon their research. A sweet-looking, party-dressed eight-year-old, Miss SP walks right up to speakers who have exceeded their time (or her attention) limits and cuts them off by intoning "Please stop. I'm bored" over and over again--until they stop. It is a maddeningly effective tactic. Here is very funny collection of video clips with various Miss Sweetie Poos silencing distinguished scientists mid-explanation.

I have been to several events that would have greatly benefitted from Miss Sweetie Poo's guidance.  Longtime readers of this blog will know I rarely make absolute pronouncements, but here is one: Every speaker, in every situation, needs to remember that audiences have finite attention spans. They may also have limited capacity for understanding the details and minutia of specialized hypotheses, research, or conclusions. So, do what an acquaintance of mine does; he is an expert in a somewhat arcane field, but also a consistently terrific speaker. When he is speaking to any but a group of his closest peers, he looks over his speech and asks himself if a smart fifth grader would understand. If not, he simplifies and shortens. He is always thinking of a possible Miss Sweetie Poo in his audience. We should all be so smart!

Giving thanks for Sarah Silverman

Like many of you, I am busy this week with all sorts of preparations on the domestic front for the great Thanksgiving feast. And I am trying to tie up some lose ends in my office before the long weekend of food, friends and family. As my readers outside the U.S. may know, there is a particularly American story attached to our celebration on the fourth Thursday in November. In practice, however, Thanksgiving has much in common with other cultures' harvest festivals of thanks.

So I'm not going to unpack my latest sure-fire speaking techniques or reveal any *new* tips-you-can-use this week. I just want to recommend that you take a minute while you are peeling the potatoes or ironing the tablecloth to check out Sarah Silverman's interview with Scott Simon on Weekend Edition this past Saturday. One, becasue she is funny, with an engaging interview style that will at least bring a smile to your face. But also because she addresses two issues I spend a lot of time discusing with my clients. And, though we have never discussed this, she feels the same way about them I do. She talks specifically about the difficulty of actually getting a joke to work (it takes a lot of tweaking, even for a professional. And still sometime the joke falls flat), and the utter impossibility of "reading" the audience ("Everyone can be laughing and if there's one person with their arms folded, it tends to be the person comics focus on....And it has nothing to do with you, it could have everything to do with their day, or how they're hearing your comedy, you know, in the context of their lives. You know? And you can't control it, but it can really get inside a comedian's head, like an illness.") Good stand-up comedians are the experts; they are extremely skilled at people-watching and listening. And even one as great as Silverman knows there is danger in amateur public joke-telling, as well as assuming you know what a listener is thinking. Imagine the trouble these fixations could cause a speaker who is is not a professional entertainer!

Listen and learn from this funny lady. 
And enjoy your holiday! 

It's about time

My last blog post concluded with the statement that the two things you need to be a great speaker are trust and preparation. And preparation takes two forms: delivery prep, which I teach my clients and students; and content prep, which many of these same people tell me they have under control. But do they?

Not really. Most don't allow enough time to fully prepare a speech, let alone talking points for a panel discussion or office meeting. It's not that they don't want to, or don't know that they need to. It's just that, well, time slips away. . .Time is one of our most valuable resources. And yet, it is the most elusive.

Two very interesting articles about time came to my attention this week. Drake Baers' blog in Fast Company focuses on traps we fall into at the workplace due to poor time usage. But what really jumped out at me was the reference to research by neuroscientists that asserts: ". . .there are no sensory receptors specifically dedicated for perceiving time. It is an almost uniquely intangible sensation: we cannot see time in the way that we see color, shape, or even location." We are time blind.

When I read this I thought, of course! I can see (and possibly hear) the clock, but my internal sense of time is not consistent (hence the need to watch the clock). In situations where I am actively leading others (rehearsals, trainings, workshops) I have a good grasp of time. And when I am being purely creative, deeply engaged in writing a scene for a play, for example, I experience time stretching, compressing and bending. But when I have a linear task to complete, like answering e-mail, writing a proposal, or putting together a presentation, I lose track of time.

Sunday's New York Times contained another article, not about the subject of time per se, but with some fascinating implications about our use and misuse of time. "You're So Self-Controlling" by Marina Konnikova examines why we fail at self-control. According to studies done by University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists Joseph W. Kable and Joseph T. McGuire, it's not because we lack willpower or moral fiber, but because we are uncertain. We often don't know how long it will take to reach our goal. Kable and McGuire's studies reference examples of delayed gratification when getting edible treats, playing games for money, even waiting for a subway. “The basic idea,” McGuire said, “is that while a decision maker is waiting, he is constantly re-evaluating the thing he’s waiting for. You’re waiting for the same reward, but your assessment of it changes as a function of the passage of time.”

Uncertainly about when a reward will come, or even if it will come, can make us give up before we achieve what we set out to do. The studies cited don't deal with workplace tasks, but I have seen the same thing happen to clients."I started to prepare that speech but ran out of time; this will be good enough." Or "I meant to jot down some ideas before that meeting. . . but I'm sure it will be alright." The clock is ticking and the writing isn't getting any better, or those 17 main points just cannot be condensed into the requisite three. And so we run out of time to do our tasks as well as we wish we could. Time just slithers away. We may quit just before we strike rhetorical gold. It could be a matter of seconds before inspiration hits and clarity is achieved. But we never find out.

As Ms. Konnikova summed up her article, "Investing upfront in realistic time frames — and learning to adjust those time frames as new information becomes available — may help us resist the pull of rewards that come too soon. Controlling our sense of the future, in other words, may help us control our behavior in the present."

Judge not

One of the hardest things for us to do is to trust ourselves. In many situations, social as well as professional, we second-guess our every utterance and stifle our instincts. Why? We know there are people out there who will judge us, and too many mistakes will land us in the loser column. I could probably dig up several studies that say such a fear of judgment is deeply rooted in our brains as a self-protection mechanism. And I can think of situations where it is useful not to dive headlong into action but take time to pause and reflect. But reflection is not the same as the "instant editing" process jump-started by fear's best friend, your inner critic. That lack of trust in your words and actions is extremely detrimental to effective interpersonal communication.

I work with acting students and speaking clients. Both come to me for very different reasons. But they get into trouble the same way when they do not trust themselves. I can see the brain freeze, the dazed, I-wish-I-were-anywhere-else look that comes over them. They stand outside of the interaction, watching, judging. Asking themselves how they could improve their performance, say it better. And in the meantime, they disengage from the activity at hand: communicating.

Every communication is a conversation. Even a speech. Just because the audience does not speak while you are at the podium, don't assume they are not mentally having a dialogue with you. Indeed, you should hope that they are! But all too often that level of engagement never happens because the speaker stays "in his head," or she is preoccupied with how she looks, how she sounds, and is not "in the moment." You can't stand by and observe, criticize, or score the level of your speaking while simultaneously being engaged with the audience. You need to be there, telling them the story, living it with them.

When we see an actor who is so self-conscious he or she is not fully inhabiting the character we write her/him off as having no talent. But that is not always the case. I have been teaching acting to adults for a while now. And I have found that my students who take a leap of faith and bravely step outside of their comfort zones learn to become good actors. If they trust themselves enough to stop judging, they can transcend their own reality and actually live in the moment--as the character. They thoroughly prepare, of course, so they know where the scene will lead, and so they can fully immerse themselves in the journey.

When speakers prepare as thoroughly, they, too, can experience their speech. They can enjoy it as they are sharing it with their audience, their conversation partners. They will be freed from the need to judge themselves, as well as the fear that they will be judged. It's simple. Just trust and prepare.