Category — Life Skills

The great news is that Effective Virtual Meetings:  Seven Ways to Boost Your Virtual Meeting IQ is that it was interactive and there were a ton of questions.  The bad news is that when there’s 500 people in the audience, you can’t get to them all.

Following is one that came in that I didn’t get to during the presentation:

Margaret M asks a VFAQ (VERY frequently asked question): “Any tips to get your “set in their way presenters” to change their methods of just reading the slides?”

Oh Margaret, Margaret, Margaret.  I feel your pain.  I really do.

My quasi-rhetorical question is “Can you change anybody in any way if they don’t want to change?”

Here’re are a few thoughts:

One, give yourself some peace.  I think, “work with the willing.”  YOU know that’s awful, their AUDIENCES know that’s awful, but for many – if they aren’t coachable – you might have to let natural selection breed them out of the gene pool.

Two, give them some research.  This paper is from a study I just completed where respondents overwhelmingly said “DON’T READ YOUR DAMN SLIDES.”  You might consider making copies and passing them out to the whole team so you don’t seem like you’re singling them out.

Three, (this is a looong shot) have them listen to a recording of themselves.  It’s doubtful anyone who won’t change is seeking to improve their presentation skills, but someone listening to themselves present will learn a LOT.  Most of us hate listening to the sound of our own voices, but listening to a recording of yourself will often cure you of speaking too quickly, using too many “uhms,” etc.  Like I said in the seminar,unless you’re a professional newscaster or voice talent, reading doesn’t sound natural.

You’re a presenter, trainer, marketer, sales person.  You know stuff.  And it’s likely that you from time to time you need to remind yourself how much you know that is of value to others.

I’m inspired today by a nice note I got from a training manager at Nationwide (we should all take a reminder in the power of reaching out and making someone’s day).  Today Ms. M made my day:

“Great information and delivery! I have been designing and facilitating online training for the last 5 years and I’m always looking for information to help build my skills in this area. Although much of what you addressed in this webinar are things I practice now I did pick up a few ideas I hadn’t thought of. Not only do I train soft skills using this environment but I also provide train the trainer for those in my organization new to training in this environment. I loved the idea of using the registration information to better know your audience before they attend your sessions.”

This means a lot coming from another pro, and I have no doubt that if I sat in one of Ms. M’s classes, the tables would turn.

Many ‘little’ things you know are new to someone else…and no matter how experienced you are, there’s more to learn from that same someone else.

This post is at once a history lesson, a cultural observation, and a practical.  (Of course, if you hate stories as part of learning, you’ll hate me as a teacher and can save some time by changing the channel now   Let me help with something random.)

First, the history lesson.

Many web conferencing tools have a “meet now” function that will take you directly into a meeting, bypassing the need to schedule and log in.  The very first function of that type was invented at PlaceWare (later acquired by Microsoft and becoming LiveMeeting), and the product manager who invented it was an industry old timer named Scott Driscoll.  Oh, and he happens to be my partner at 1080 Group.  Nice.

Second, the cultural observation.

Early adopters of web conferencing were marketing, sales, and training departments for reasons I’ll spare you here.  Therefore conferencing marketers placed ads in marketing pubs, rented lists from training sites, tried to influence-the-influencer in various thought leaders of those fields, all that.  Years ago when PlaceWare put ads on the radio and CNN, the sales team complained the leads were unqualified (and I imagine Webex’s crew did too).  But the broad, SMB market isn’t affordably reached when you’re selling a solution for hundreds of dollars instead of thousands or tens of thousands…

So the application story is a continuation of the previous thought…

My dad calls me.  Computer problem.  Never mind that I’m not a hardcore geek, but I “work in the computer industry.”  While on the phone, I fire up GoToMeeting (instantly) and ‘look over his shoulder’ while he shows me the problem (and we fix it).

He quips, “Hey, I’ve heard of them on the radio!”

Now his nutrition business doesn’t need conferencing, but thousands of others do, and they’re not on a list from Web Digest for Marketers or Chief Learning Officer.  Those radio ads are reaching a whole new group of businesses.

More importantly, the use-case envisioned by Scott comes full circle.  Adoption will occur when we reduce clicks to make using this stuff happen at the speed of thought.  An inbound sales call becomes a presentation.  An outbound call goes from telephone chat to full collaboration.  Ad hoc conversations, part of our every day life in the terrestrial world, now can have that visual component just as easily, even when we’re virtual.

Explode your productivity.  Get hip to “meet now.”

Yesterday eve my beloved and I took the three kids to The Children’s Course, a short par-3 golf course that is little people friendly.  Midway through the round my middle little one, who’s seven, got frustrated and gave up.

After walking a hole without playing, on the following hole she walked up to the tee, teed up a ball, and announced, “I’m going to hit it, but I’m not playing.” 

She then proceeded to get one of her best shots of the day.

Excited by that, she then proceeded to tee up the shot she had in the fairway.  Clearly the tactic of putting the ball up on the tee made it easier to hit, and so she did for the next shot, then the next, and the next, until she finally put the ball on the green.

Imagine our amusement when, after everyone had put their ball on the green, that we turned around to notice she’d teed up the putt she was about to hit, too!

How long do each of us keep doing the same thing, the thing that worked like a charm last time, before we notice that it’s not the right tactic anymore?

 If life stood still, we’d figure it out, get our recipe dialed in, and not have to worry about it any more.  We spend our youth fighting to change things to the way we want them, to our vision of how things should be.  If we manage to get somewhere near accomplishing that, then we fight to keep things the same, to keep them from changing away from us.  And if the first is a difficult, if not futile activity, the second is most certainly an impossibility.

We grow, we get profitable, we create value when we managed to build faster than entropy acts against us.  Sitting still is an illusion.  It is the first step toward death.

I found this tasty tidbit in a press release.

When DO you hand someone a business card?

Do not give your card within the first few seconds of meeting someone.

Do wait until they ask you for it. Your job is to pour out so much value during the conversation that they will beg you for a way to keep in touch you.

When given a card, do not write on the front or back– that would be akin to taking a permanent marker and writing across their forehead!

Do study the card with utmost respect– we have something to learn from Asian cultures in this matter.

Don’t stuff the card in a back pocket or cram it into an already-full wallet

Do place the card carefully into an appropriate card holder–ideally, it should have one pocket for your own cards and another for cards you receive.

A card is someone’s entire corporate ego wrapper into a little piece of paper. Beware…

I don’t know the author, but here’s her web site…

Peace

I met Athena Williams-Atwood when she was in the audience of a presentation I made in fall 2006 (about web seminars). I remember her and her passion because it is, in part, ‘green’… a subject which my event-planning-wizard friend Lisa Lynn Anderson has continually reminded me is served well, in part, by web seminars.

Subscribe to her newsletter, and you’ll catch tasty treats like these five reasons for stress and overwhelm:

1. Being Unclear What You Truly Want from Your Work and/or Business
2. Not Having a Life and/or Business Plan or Having an Underutilized One
3. Limited Planning Time
4. Lack of Self-Care and Personal Time
5. Losing the Passion for Work and Life

Touche’

Pain of discipline or pain of regret?

Your choice…

Do you want one secret for growing your career?

Learn The Delegation Rule

It’s tough enough for some of us to think of ourselves as ‘delegators.’ For some of us it’s perfectionism, and we have a hard time thinking someone else can do something as well as we can; for some it’s relationship skills…we don’t know how to discuss things that are uncomfortable, such as suggesting how to improve performance.

Harder still, though, is remembering that as we are working for someone else, we become valuable to them when we help them delegate to us. They might equally have difficulty in being a good delegator. In fact, the more difficulty they have, the more they will appreciate you making it easier for them to do so.

A phrase I like to help remember this is “Push up, pull up.” Want a promotion? Help your boss get a promotion. Want to get a promotion while avoiding just doubling up your workload? Help one of your employees or peers prepare to step into your role.

Want the best part of “Push up, pull up?” In so doing, you are pro-acting. You are being a leader. And leaders win.

I don’t begrudge people who work over the telephone doing their jobs one little bit. In a past life as a sales person, I personally sold several million dollars worth of services over the phone in a professional capacity.

That doesn’t mean, however, that a telemarketing call is always a welcome interruption.

Before the tips o’ doom and humor for dealing with telemarketers, a little background for why you listen sometimes.

One, consider the difference between sales people and marketers. Telemarketers are a volume-driven, numbers game. It’s like phone spam. Dial a bazillion times, if 1/2 of 1% respond to buying, minus my costs, and do I have a business? Sales people, good ones, have an attitude of ‘It’s a waste of my time to waste yours, but I’ve got something that might be of value to you. Professional to professional, would you like to learn more?’

Sales people have names. Telemarketers don’t. Telemarketers read scripts that they have trouble deviating from unless it’s on the ’script tree.’ Sales people know how they’re going to open and close a call, but have a person-to-person dialogue skill set in the middle.

So when do you listen? When they’re pros and might have something you need. That doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes say, “I can’t have this conversation right now, but if you’ll give me your number I’ll call you back (or call me back tomorrow, or send me an email, or let me send you an email…).” Try THAT with a telemarketer.

So an idea or two for telemarketers (who, by the way, are probably really nice people stuck working for companies asking them to do inhuman things):

My wife hands the phone to my son. He’s four. He chats until they hang up.

I’ve known people who subscribe to things with their dog’s name so they know it’s a telemarketer. Or use your name backwards, so Rob Johns becomes John Robs.

You could say ‘Just a sec…’ …putting the phone down and letting it sit until they hang up.

I’ve never tried it, but I understand that if one of those auto-dialers gets you and you hit the pound key a pile of times that it’ll confuse the machine.

Finally, if you run a business: recruit them. Every once in a while you get a really tactful, literate person on the phone. In an industry with 35% annual turnover, someone like that isn’t going to be there long. Offer them a job at your biz.

In a recent article in Marketing News, a publication of the American Marketing Association (yes, I’m a member), Marilyn Kennedy Moats makes a keen suggestion in her column about careers.

Always solicit negatives.

I think that there is wisdom in this idea and that it renders three personal benefits:

1. You really do have a chance to improve. (If you’re not a lifelong learner, you probably won’t get much out of this blog!)

2. You have a chance to get more of what you want. An article in Wall Street Journal last fall noted that the people who get ahead aren’t those that produce more, but those that produce more of what their bosses want. If this doesn’t make sense, read “Point B” above.

3. You have a chance to reduce tension. Unspoken differences are often the most debilitating, and since most managers are not very good at providing feedback, this will help a lot of them over the hump. They will feel better when they’ve actually stated their issues. You will get more of 1 and 2.

Peace.