Thanksgiving Reflections

I always love Thanksgiving week; not only is the week short, but since so many of our colleagues and clients are on vacation, it’s a great time to catch up and take stock of things at work.  As a result, the first two days of the week are quite busy here at CRNW.  In honor of this season of thanks, I’d like to publicly give thanks for the amazing team that works here to serve our clients.  And, I encourage each of you to do the same for your own incredible staffs who work alongside you to serve clients, both internal and external.

This economy has been stressful for everyone, for firms that have lots of work and firms that are searching for more.  And, given shrinking staffs, our remaining teams are stretched thin, working longer hours to accomplish more work.  In fact, given the procurement “season”, I know many marketing and technical staffs will be spending time over the Thanksgiving holiday writing/editing proposals for late November due dates (and that will be a subject for a later blog – but in the interim, WHAT were those selectors thinking setting proposals due on the 29^th/30^th of November!!!??!!).

A lifetime ago in graduate school, my area of focus was on organizational stress and strain –and I’ve continued to be interested in this area of research.  Stress is a normal part of organizational life that varies with workload, team dynamics, market conditions, and any kind of change – good or bad.  And, most employees cope with stress quite well, with many performing their best work in stressful or chaotic situations.  However, when employees stop being able to cope with and adapt to organizational stress, it becomes strain, which is always a bad thing for the employees and the organization.

Symptoms of strain include a litany of somatic complaints – when physical meets psychological – such as sleeplessness, stomachaches, headaches, etc.  Organizations may see an increase in absenteeism and a decrease in productivity.  Previously high functioning employees become unfocused or even incredibly dissatisfied. Some leave; others simply implode.

The most important thing our own research has revealed is the importance of the relationship the employee has with his/her first-line supervisor relative to the employee’s ability to cope with or adapt to higher levels of stress.  In fact, key to avoiding strain or moving an employee from strain to coping, depends on the strength of the supervisor/subordinate relationship.

In this economy, the relationships we have with our staffs are increasingly important.  Supervisors need to remember the centrality of their role in the organization – not just to manage work, but to be a social support for employees.  This means stepping outside our own stressful work lives to actively engage with employees, learning what they need and how you can help.  It does not mean being sucked into the personal drama of a challenged employee, but it does mean developing a relationship with the employee in which s/he can ask for and find critical assistance.  And, it means obviously, regularly, repetitively thanking employees for their hard work.

Employees who feel their work matters do better work because they feel more connected to and more engaged in a relationship with the organization.   Most supervisors are very good at corrective action, finding problems and resolving them. But, most employees respond much more readily to recognition as a method for improvement.   So, in this week of thanks, set aside some time to not only give thanks for your team members’ work, but to tell them specifically what you appreciate.

As we leave our offices on Wednesday for some much needed time with family, friends, and the turkey, make sure you leave your organizational family feeling good about their jobs, their organization, and their worth to you and your projects.  Then, all of us can come back rejuvenated and ready to buckle down in the hectic weeks before the New Year.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. 

Mark Twain

When coaching presentations, I’m often asked about what team members should wear to the interview.  It sounds like a minor decision compared to the numerous other decisions we make in our professional lives. But, it is a critical one and we do need to spend time thinking about and strategizing our presentation wardrobe.

First impressions make a real difference.  If we make a bad first impression, we can spend the next 20-30 minutes of the interview working hard to change a negative impression of our intelligence, our professionalism, or our diligence.  And, like it or not, much of that first impression is made based on what we look like – our dress, our overall presentation of self, and how we carry ourselves.

As many of you know, I come from the Pacific Northwest – the place that brought us grunge.  My husband has only worn a tie twice in the past ten years, both times under duress.  And, I’ll confess to wearing sandals with socks – to work.  But, even for us devoted Northwesterners, our militantly casual style needs to stop at the interview.  At any interview, in fact, any professional presentation – we need to take care with our appearance and overall self presentation.

I work with a woman who is a contractor for one of our clients.  She’s very intelligent and has years of experience.  But, she comes to work wearing incredibly inappropriate clothing – lingerie type tops and garage cleaning jeans. And, I believe this hurts her when she makes a presentation about her work.  It took me over a week of working with her to believe she was indeed the professional I’d been assured she was. The way she presents herself contrasts sharply with the talent she brings to the work.  Unfortunately, I know I’m not the only one who thinks this.  What we wear and how we present ourselves do make a profound and immediate impact on how others perceive us, and, in fact, how able others are to hear our message.

The Three ‘C’s of Dress will serve you well for the interview and at work in general:  conservative, clean, and comfortable.  Presenting yourself at work is not the time to assert your outrageous sense of style.  In my humble opinion, others should notice our work, not our dress.  In dressing for presentations, we should take active steps to avoid calling attention to what we wear so listeners can focus on what we say and mean.

Conservative dress means muted colors, classic lines, and quality fabrics. Conservative need not mean staid or old-fashioned.  Think classic, not dowdy. Men and women should own one pair of well-fitted, tailored black pants (or for women, a skirt if they so desire) and a jacket.  Find a good tailor – or personal shopper – and get one outfit that fits well.  Choose good fabrics that last, natural fibers that breathe, and colors and fabrics that cross seasons.

Clothing should always be clean, well-pressed, and in good shape.  While grunge works in some circles, it doesn’t work in an interview.  At the risk of sounding like Emily Post, a clothing brush is an essential tool for any professional.  If you have a hairy pet (I do – thanks, Rosie!), use it right before you leave the house.  Or, choose clothing the same color as the dog.

Finally, in any interview, comfort is critical.  Natural fibers breath and minimize the tell tale signs of stress.  An undershirt can be essential to comfort and appearance.  And, make sure the clothing fits in a non-constraining way.  I need to be able to move in my clothing; when I’m presenting, I don’t want to think about what I’m wearing and whether what I’m wearing will continue to be decent in spite of how I might move around the space.

A good rule of thumb for any speaking team is to dress one step above how you think the selection committee will be dressed.  This communicates professionalism and that you’ve taken the event seriously.  I also believe – though I don’t have any hard proof – that when we dress the part, we have an easier time speaking and projecting an image. 

I’m not sure I’d go so far as Twain in saying that clothing makes the person, but I do know that it makes a very real difference in how audiences feel about us.  I’m also not sure that naked people don’t make an impact on society; but, in the context of a short-list interview, our choice of clothing is important and can make a significant difference to our success.  It’s one more way in which we communicate the type of people we are and how committed we are to the client relationship.

An Extra Hour

With the exception of my friends in Arizona and Hawaii, most of us in the US received the annual fall gift of an extra hour today.  While this hour was given while we were sleeping, it always feels to me as if the day is longer, affording me endless possibilities of things to do.  I feel energized by the opportunity to finish long-avoided tasks, catch up on work projects, or spend time with family and dog.  This hour – 60 minutes – seems so much longer than what it is in actuality.  As I get older, I look forward to “falling” back more than almost any other day on the calendar.  And, to be fair, I resent giving that hour back in the spring.

As with many things, this makes me think of the difference an hour can make to my teams and to my clients.  What if we had an extra hour to get ready for a critical short-list presentation?  What would we do with it?  As you might imagine, I have several suggestions of both what to do, and what not to do with your extra hour.

First, though, in the absence of any cosmic gift of fabricated time, how do we gain an extra hour of preparation and/or rehearsal time?  By planning the presentation development like we would a project, we can capture time by minimizing waste.  In other words, by developing clear milestones for preparation and by holding team members accountable to preparation deliverables, any team can significantly decrease the amount of time it takes to create a good presentation.  And, by establishing realistic milestones right up to the time the team leaves for the interview, we can capture that extra hour between the final rehearsal and the time we leave.

Before writing about what we can do with that time – there are so many possibilities – I should establish what teams and individual speakers should not do.  Teams that practice right up to the time they leave for the interview create nervous speakers and risk being “flat” in the actual performance.  Team members who fiddle with their visuals and PPT slides up until “go live,” create anxiety for themselves and others and buy themselves enormous risk of failure of both content and technology in the actual interview.  And, please, don’t spend your hour rewriting your notes.  Not only will you waste time, but you’ll actually decrease the value of any notes because your eye will no longer recognize the shapes and patterns of words on the page.  Finally, don’t go to your office and return emails or solve problems of your day. The hour before the team leaves for the interview is a time to prepare, to relax, and to get ready.

The hour before the team leaves for the interview can be a gift and can be the most important period of time of all.  Successful teams finish their team rehearsal at least an hour before the team leaves.  These teams keep speakers together to have a snack, rehearse Q and A, and work logistics. This enables each team member to leave for the interview rested, relaxed, and confident. 

In some cases, I put teams through a “blocking” rehearsal.  Blocking, a term borrowed from the theater, means to put speakers through the movement of the interview without practicing the actual content.  This helps speakers know who is on their left and who is on their right, where they move in the space, and where to find visuals.  Blocking creates confidence in movement and interaction.  And, most importantly, it reduces uncertainty and burns off energy to help team members relax into the process of speaking.

In the final hour before departure, I sometimes recommend to particularly nervous speakers that they take a walk around the building, speaking their content out loud to themselves or another team member.  In this way, the speaker reinforces the “body memory” necessary to link content to delivery and s/he continues to manage nervous energy.  Some of my most memorable presentations involved long walks with principal speakers who went on to give the best presentation in the interview room before the real selection committee.

For particularly nervous speakers, helping them breathe can be a huge help. It sounds strange –and sometimes it is – but reminding a speaker to take deep breaths can be enormously helpful.  Getting away from the bustle of energy to sit in a quiet room and calmly breathe in and out can be the best strategy for managing frayed nerves. Let the marketing professionals pack the team up for the interview.

On this day of extra time, I wish each team an extra hour to get ready for each interview.  While the rest of the year only affords us 24 hours in each day, by proper planning and time management, teams can capture an hour to get speakers really ready to present their best and most relaxed selves before selectors.

Election Day Thoughts on Social Media/Marketing

It’s been a long and particularly difficult election season; I’m so tired of negative ads about candidates, issues, and propositions.   Despite my election exhaustion, however, I am hopeful that the majority of my clients, friends, and family have stood up for democracy and voted today.  It really doesn’t matter to me how you vote – just that you do so in a timely and thoughtful manner. 

This election day, I’m amazed at how many politically insensitive statements I’m reading from friends and colleagues about the issues in today’s election on both Facebook and Linked In. This makes me think about how professionals should use social media as compared with our high school and college aged counterparts. 

I’m a fan of Facebook (I love reading what many of you are up to – and it’s nice to know my children are alive and well when I’m not in daily contact). I have a Linked In account, which I use sporadically. As you can read, I maintain a regular blog.   And, at Communication Resources, we send out tweets about articles and events – though I have to admit someone does this for me as I’m not as technically savvy as you might think. 

As technical professionals, we should be different kinds of Facebook users.  We need to hold ourselves to a different standard of care relative to what and how we write.  Most of us in marketing and business development use a variety of social media modalities to report on issues and ideas (as in a blog), highlight events or accomplishments (as in Twitter), and connect with colleagues and clients (as in Linked In, etc.).  However, I’m finding less and less care is being taken in what and how we communicate in these venues.

I’d like to propose a new standard of communication be adopted by all of us who make use of a range of social media/marketing venues. 

My father, a long-time attorney and my business mentor, taught me three things about writing:

1) Never write anything you wouldn’t want read back to you in court.  This sounds strange for social media, which was intended to be more immediate and “edgy.” But remember, the way we use social media is to create an image of our businesses and ourselves.  Posting political statements undermines relationships and exhibits a lack of sensitivity to others’ viewpoints.  All of us need to remember that what we write exists forever as a statement of who we are, what we believe in, and the professionalism of ourselves and our businesses.  So, be thoughtful and careful about what you write and to whom you write it.  If you have a business Facebook (or other venue) account, keep it professional and leave the chatter to the kids. 

2) If you are going to write it down, make it complete, objective, and verifiable.  Blogs were never meant to be conversational.  In my opinion, it’s a mistake to write opinions as facts or to post thoughts that haven’t been vetted.  Blogs written for business purposes shouldn’t be merely stream of consciousness – they are another important vehicle for readers to understand you and your business perspectives.  Assume your words may be printed, copied, and distributed. Take the same care with this writing as you would a letter, a report, or an article.  Don’t write negative things that may hurt you (or others) later.  Check your facts.  Reread before you hit “post”. 

3)Whatever you write should pass the Mom-Test by being exceptionally well-written.  My mother is a linguist, champion Scrabble player, and the best editor in the business.  Passing the Mom-Test meant that any document had to be well-written.  I still hold myself to the standard that anything I write should be well punctuated, grammatically correct, and spellchecked.   Fortunately, my mother (at 83 years of age) is still ever-vigilant, watching my writing and others’ for hanging prepositions, verb-tense agreement, or the lack of a referent.  

For those of you not acquainted with my mother, The Elements of Style is still a great resource and I encourage regular bloggers (and in fact, anyone who writes regularly) to make active use of it.  Read it – it’s quite good and still – for me – the definitive work on what good writing looks like.  In addition, find and use a good editor.  Read through and check the quality of what you write.  Remember, what you write is a reflection of you and your firm.

Social Media venues like Blogger, Facebook, and Linked In provide excellent vehicles for our firms to get the word out about products, services, areas of expertise, and new ideas.  But, as with any written form of communication, these venues come with the responsibility to take great care with what we write and to uphold traditional conventions of good writing.   Communicating through a social media venue doesn’t absolve us from the responsibility to adhere to the standards of good writing.  If we want to reverse the downward trajectory of quality writing in this country, it starts with us.

Winning the Q and A Interview

Tired of hearing the same interview over and over by different teams, many owners are turning to interviews comprised of targeted questions and answers (Q and A) in the hopes of really getting to know team members’ thoughts about the project and whether a team is a good fit for the client organization.  These interviews can be extremely effective vehicles for teams to showcase their expertise and personality. But they require specific planning and rehearsal, the same as for a traditional interview.  Teams who come unprepared and unrehearsed do so at their peril and will not give their best possible performance.

Teams should prepare for Q and A interviews by getting immersed in the project, learning as much as they can about the client, the site, the project, and the stakeholders. As with all interviews, we win projects in the details. It is paramount that team members be able to tie rich details into their discussion of approach and philosophy as it relates to the project under consideration. This first stage of interview development is the same for a traditional interview as it is for a Q and A interview; aligning team members to the project and the client is the most important first step in any effective interview planning process.

In addition, I also recommend to teams that they develop a “What we need to prove in order to win this job” list. Commit this list to memory. Use it in your Q and A rehearsal. Keep it with you at the interview if needed; it is the DNA of your pitch. This becomes a check-list to make sure you communicate the information needed in order to win the job.

To increase your chances of success in the Q and A interview, the best strategy is to design a set of mini-presentations that respond to the key messages list above – each with a strong claim, detailed content, and examples to back up your points. These mini-presentations need not be over-rehearsed, but they should be planned and structured around strong, clear claim statements. By creating a set of mini-presentations, teams can make sure they cover the points they need to in a clear and organized manner. 

Team choreography sets the mood for the interaction between client and team. In a Q and A interview, move in closer to the selection committee, even sit around a table, interspersed with the selectors if possible.  Otherwise, move the team close in to facilitate eye contact and true engagement.  Team members should sit up straight (not rigid) and focus their attention on the selection committee, making strong, real eye contact with the person asking the question and smiling in order to come across as engaging and collaborative.

Rehearsal for a Q and A interview is incredibly important – probably even more so than for a traditional interview.  Because of the inherent “impromptu” nature of the context, Q and A interviews can encourage poor presentation behavior by some speakers. Speakers who are more confident and comfortable can inadvertently take over the interview by talking too much - overshadowing the less verbal experts on the team and wasting precious minutes. Rehearsing appropriate presentation behaviors can dramatically increase a team’s chance of success.

Teams should brainstorm a list of possible questions (and their follow-on questions) and should practice answering both the easy ones and the hard ones.  If possible, convene a group of informed professionals within your own firm to practice Q and A with the team in a more realistic rehearsal.  Determine who “owns” what content.  Make sure no answer is more than about two minutes in duration. And, never, ever have more than three speakers speaking on the same question (e.g., the “endless hitchhike”).  Finally, nominate one person in the room to make sure the team has covered everything on your key messages list.

In sum, a Q and A interview does not mean your team cannot plan, strategize, or rehearse. In fact, you probably need even more time together to align team members to the project and get them comfortable with the content and the “rules” governing your team’s approach to Q and A. Only by planning and rehearsing can we have absolute confidence that the team will perform well in the actual interview.   Because so few teams are good at this type of interviewing, there’s ample room for savvy teams to shine in this venue – coming across as prepared, relaxed, conversational, and ready to get to work.

Partnering with Housing Hope: Your Purchase can Make a Difference!

As we move closer to winter and our northwest winds start to blow, we at Communication Resources are very sensitive to those among us who are without shelter this season.  As a result, we are donating $100 for each of our training DVDs purchased in the month of October to Housing Hope of Snohomish County. 

The DVD training, entitled "Winning the Short List," provides a quality training experience to A/E/C professionals on short-list interviewing.  The training is accompanied by a detailed participant’s handbook and a trainer’s guide.  In this training, you can learn Meg’s tested techniques for developing, presenting, and winning short-list interview presentations.  The complete system, including both DVD and Guides, is $395.  With purchase, you may also call Meg and her team directly with any of your training and/or coaching questions.

You can read more about the DVD, preview a segment, and see the guides at www.communication-resources.com.

We’re happy to partner with Housing Hope to help provide shelter and valuable resources for our community’s most vulnerable families.  If you would like to contribute to them directly, please do so at www.housinghope.org.

Walking, Talking, Smiling, and Pointing: Delivery Skills for Technical Professionals

Technically trained professionals – primarily engineers, contractors, and architectural project managers – have typically been perceived as poor speakers.  Companies spend thousands of dollars on standardized delivery coaching in an attempt to make these professionals more compelling and dynamic.  After more than 20 years of coaching such technical professionals, I have found, however, that this standardized coaching method is ineffective. In order to improve the delivery skills of any technical professional, coaches like me need to adapt our approach to coaching to the unique ways in which our technical clients think and communicate.

Training an engineer in theatric “tricks” like common gestures, movement in the room, and the ubiquitous smile, typically makes said engineer look over-coached and wooden (think Al Gore in the 2000 presidential elections).  Rather, we should be coaching technical professionals in ways that connect compelling content to their own natural delivery.  I’ve seen literally hundreds of technical presenters in a range of important presentations and frankly, I’ve only met a handful of them who were truly horrible in their delivery.  Most speakers are actually quite competent – if we work with them in a way that is supportive vs. prescriptive.

I tell speakers that there isn’t any right way to present and there’s no simple list of delivery improvements that will work for every speaker.  Most speakers, in fact, are quite competent in the four elements of delivery that really count:  walking, talking, smiling, and pointing.  We just need to help speakers take their natural competence in these four elements and translate them into the context of a compelling presentation.

Technical professionals need to have a strong working outline that they have written, that has strong logic, and that they’ve both had vetted by colleagues and had an opportunity to practice.  In my experience, most technical professionals can’t begin to focus on delivery until they have connected with content.  Coaching delivery before the speaker has a firm grasp of the content results in frustration and stress for both speaker and coach.

Once content is ready, however, we need to coach technical speakers carefully – choosing our “battles” and making minor improvements that are consistent with a speaker’s natural style.  If a speaker naturally uses small gestures and speaks softly, asking him to adopt broad gestures and an effervescent vocal style simply won’t work.  Technical speakers are generally not trained actors and we need to support them in minor changes that will appear natural in a presentation instead of asking them to make major changes that are more consistent with the coach’s prescriptive vision of a good speaker.

Minor changes might include adding a smile, moving closer to the selection panel, slightly increasing volume, or interacting with a visual to show a process or example.  Technical speakers respond well to minor changes that have a major impact.  Any delivery “tweaks” that we recommend as coaches need to be closely tied to the content. In this way, the technical speaker can “see” the logic of the recommendation.  For example, “Suzi, when you identify the major technical challenge, pause beforehand, then speak louder and look the selectors in the eye. This will give that statement much more impact.”  This is more effective than saying, “Suzi, you need to speak louder and integrate more pauses into your delivery.  This will make you a more persuasive and dynamic speaker.”