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Category listings for Communication Skills

Avoid webinar viewer unconsciousness

Posted by Ben Decker   |   October 21st, 2011   |   10 Comments   |  Tweet This

Is it a coincidence that the moment a webinar starts, it’s viewers experience spontaneous narcolepsy?

Nope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Webinars tend to be passive, informational data dumps, which (surprise!) don’t get our audience members excited. They’re being used more and more frequently for virtual training and orientation programs, but if the listeners aren’t ingesting the content, what’s the point? No matter what you call them (webinar, virtual meeting) or what platform you use (GoToMeeting, Lync Online, WebEx) here are 4 best practices to keep in mind:

1. Hold interest

  • Keep the presentation slides moving. More than a few minutes on one slide causes a massive dip in attention (which you can usually track in your webinar toolbox). No one needs to see the same agenda or fiscal results for an hour, so keep it going.
  • Use engaging visual slides. Garr Reynolds is well renowned for his easy-to-implement slide tips — take a look.

2. Direct

  • Why are you having this webinar? We’ve all sat through an informational webinar with no real point or direction. Spare your audience this fate and let them know not just what info you’re dishing, but why they should care.
  • Think through who is listening and why. What do you want them to know, understand, or do? What is their call to action? What do they get from being a participant? These may seem obvious, but lay it out for your listeners — you can’t assume they see the value.

3. Interact

  • Don’t make it a one-person show. Get clients, customers, stellar sales reps, and others on your team involved in the presentation by having them present a few slides, offer an example or short story, or give a quick interview. This will limit multitasking and continue to help keep interest high.
  • Use polling, Q&A, chat rooms, and other functions available in your webinar toolbox. Often, no one wants to be the sole voice to unmute and ask a question, so give your listeners other ways to engage. If you have more than 10 people participating, consider getting a producer to help you manage the interactions and keep things running smoothly.

4. Push energy

  • Show energy through your voice. You may have created the most influential PowerPoint in history, but to keep your audience’s attention, you need to pay attention to your delivery. Project volume, smile, move around, and gesture because they’ll hear the energy. If you sound like you care about the content, they’re more likely to care. All they have of you (other than your words) is your voice, so use it to keep them focused.

Ultimately, you need to think about communication experience you are creating. Sure, people should pay attention because the webinar information you’re doling out is important, but they won’t if they’re bored. It’s your responsibility as the presenter to keep them with you.

Please share your thoughts on these tips, or your own best practices!


Categories: Communication Skills, Web/Tech
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Steve Jobs the Communicator

Posted by Bert Decker   |   October 6th, 2011   |   3 Comments   |  Tweet This

 

Above all, he communicated his brilliant concepts to millions of people, brilliantly.

So much is now being said about Steve Jobs brilliance – and deservedly so. He was one of a kind. Here is the acknowledged leader and innovator in the world of computers, media, music and business – and yet on the side he built Pixar into the best animation studio in the world and became Disney’s largest stockholder. Amazing.

But what strikes me most about Steve Jobs is that he had no peer in inspiring and motivating others. Not just his employees, not just his customers, but the world. Because of his communicating ability he became a rock star. I remember when I got up at 5AM to go to Moscone Center in San Francisco to hear him announce the iPhone, and I was too late – the line was already three blocks long. Who could have ever predicted that an executive who really is just making a product announcement would be able to command such attention. Amazing.

He was unparalleled. We had him on our Top Ten Best Communicators list several times – and actually he could have been #1 every year but that would have been boring.

He was never boring. He brought us so much. He is a worthy model to emulate. He will be so missed.


Categories: Communication Skills, Leadership and Communications, Newsworthy, Speakers
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Rebuild trust

Posted by Ben Decker   |   September 30th, 2011   |   1 Comment   |  Tweet This

 

“Do you trust most people?” This was the simple question asked in a survey done in 1960 and again in 1993. In 1960, 58% of respondents said yes. In 1993… just 37%.

With recent leaders like BP CEO Tony Hayward bumbling through press conferences with “I want MY life back,” Dr. Conrad Murray and Bernie Madoff (no explanation necessary for either!), to the housing crisis where many people found themselves in trouble for heeding their “advisor’s” advice, it’s not surprising – we’re conditioned to look over our shoulder and wonder, “What’s the motive here? Can I trust this person?”

Even opening a basic checking account is a questionable experience. Sure, the account is free now, but what kind of fees am I going to see a few months down the line? Considering all of this, we can pretty confidently assume the trust percentage has continued to decrease.

This proves a challenge when connecting with customers and clients. Not only are they more risk averse, but also they’re smart consumers with access to information and motivated to look up the real differences (if any) between you and your competitors.

You have to differentiate yourself by offering them a better experience than anyone else. Knowing that, it’s vital to focus time and resources on building and maintaining trust with your clients. But how? We’re doing a series of posts that offer tips to tackle this otherwise nebulous concept.

The First Step

Listen. It’s a critically important (and very frequently forgotten) element of communication, especially when building trust.

If you only consider your angle, your promotional marketing lingo and buzzwords, what you have to offer, you’re missing out on a major component of message creation: the audience. The first thing you must do before creating any sort of message, even before thinking of a point of view or thesis, is consider them.

  • What does my audience care about? (budget, time, hitting quota, lessening workload?)
  • Why are they taking the time to talk to me?
  • Do they have any preconceptions?
  • Are they big picture driven (usually upper management), or more about the facts and figures (typically middle-management)?
  • What could make them resistant?

This goes for talking to prospective and current clients alike. Take the time to listen to them and THEN craft a message around their concerns, objectives, and priorities. Not only will you be able to formulate your ideas around what will matter to them, but they’ll feel heard and acknowledged. You’ll come across as someone credible who understands them and cares. So simple, yet, again, so frequently forgotten.

Remember, you’re not just taking the meeting to give information, data dump on them, and promote yourself. You’re listening to their current concerns to better understand them and then influence them to take action.

Many people like Seth Godin are getting creative with trust-building initiatives, so please share anything you’ve tried, successful or not!

Stay tuned for the next steps for rebuilding trust in the coming weeks.


Categories: Communication Skills, Leadership and Communications
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These aren’t soft skills

Posted by Kelly Decker   |   May 6th, 2011   |   6 Comments   |  Tweet This

Soft skills have a bad rep – they’re a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. Things like time management, team work, problem solving, ability to take criticism, and of course, communications. Training for them is the first to get slashed from the budget, to get pushed back in the calendar, and if you ever manage to actually attend a training, you think can multitask your “real” job during the class.

Seems logical that people with a job focused on “hard skills” like mathematical analysis, statistical modeling, and engineering would have training solely focused on it. After all, these people are getting paid for their awesome technical knowledge. And, they just communicate with machines anyway, right? All they need to do is talk about protocols, bits and bytes, and things like leveraging shared capabilities that are self-healing to maximize network efficiency.

What our partners at F5, Brocade, Cisco, Informatica, and others have realized is that technical competency is a fantastic and necessary foundation, but great communications is the tipping point to closing the deal, launching a new initiative, or leading change in their organizations. They’re the ones investing in their Engineers, Programmers, Analysts (whether or not they are customer-facing) to become more effective communicators. Unfortunately, even PhDs in Physics, Computer Science, and Statistics can leave their great team/life/company/world-changing ideas on the table if they can’t engage their listeners and motivate them to do something.

So, what happens when these “hard skill” masters come to Decker? Here’s an excerpt from a blog post written as a result of our most recent work at F5 Networks. Click here to read Steve’s entire post.

Here’s a shout out to all the engineers (and our clients who are footing the bill) who take two days to raise their game. Thanks for being so engaged, for challenging yourself and each other, and for making a difference the very next day. And a big shout out to Steve for sharing his experience and showing that it’s not just about the hard stuff.

What’s your best “soft skills” experience? What kinds of programs should be moved from the “nice-to-have” category to  the “need-to-have” list?


Categories: Communication Skills, Short Bits
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Value-added, out-of-the-box… nothing!

Posted by Ben Decker   |   March 24th, 2011   |   2 Comments   |  Tweet This

Could someone have played buzzword bingo during your last pitch, team meeting, or presentation? Employees in the video below definitely could, enduring a rah-rah talk about “goal-oriented, disruptive, Web 3.0″ nothingness.

Jargon gushes out of us like water from a busted fire hydrant – when will we shut off the main line? We latch on to these phrases frequently because of the Curse of Knowledge (sounds oxymoronic at first doesn’t it?). As you become more expert in your field, it’s extremely hard to imagine not knowing what you know. This has hugely negative effects on your communication, and can curse you in to using language that seems straightforward in your head, but is vague and abstract to anyone else.

Yeah yeah, Ben. But my colleagues and I use the same jargon, so it’s not vague to us. Even if your colleagues use common buzzwords, you’re not safe from abstraction! That’s the thing about jargon — it can mean different things to different people. Avoid jargon, or at least define yourself with an example.

Let’s take this for a spin: say you’re rolling out a new emailing process that will improve your team’s efficiency. Improved efficiency seems great, people love the sound of it, so what’s the problem? Efficiency alone doesn’t provide a concrete image to your listener – they can’t “see” efficiency. Unpack that abstraction with an example.

“For instance, John, how annoying and redundant is it for you to send an email to our scheduler, then another to our office manager, and then another different email to our accounting department? This new process will allow you to turn 3 steps in to 1, freeing up your time.”

John is much more likely to support the new emailing process now that he can visualize improved efficiency and why it would matter to him.

Kick the Curse of Knowledge — get rid of the buzzwords, or define them. Here are some usual suspects, and suggestions:
  • Added value (Right, who doesn’t want it. Instead, try “Want some results? Then…”)
  • Data integrity (“Why does this matter? You could cut your spending 3x by sending me only one mailer, instead of one to Ben Decker, another to Benjamin Decker, and third to Ben C. Decker.”)
  • Total cost of ownership (“Our competitor’s offering is free like a puppy is free.”)
Why don’t you try your hand at…
  • Responsive
  • Fantastic Service
  • Seamless interaction
  • Greater reliability
  • Big savings
  • Growth opportunities

Categories: Communication Skills, Made To Stick, Messaging, Public Speaking
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Communicating Enchantment

Posted by Bert Decker   |   March 8th, 2011   |   2 Comments   |  Tweet This

Guy Kawasaki’s new book Enchantment publishes today. It’s already a best seller, and it’s very good – typical Kawasaki in its wit, irreverence and relevance. And it’s really all about communication – which is why it’s here!

Example chapters:

  • How to Achieve Likability
  • How to Achieve Trustworthiness
  • How to Prepare – and much more.

The Kirkus Review is a publishing world power that rarely gives great reviews – so these comments should motivate you to go out and get it:

“The entrepreneur’s entrepreneur is back with his ninth book, this time tackling the tricky art of influence and persuasion. Kawasaki (Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging and Outmarketing Your Competition, 2011, etc.) transforms the otherwise exhausted and overwrought tropes of how to win friends and influence people with a complete makeover here, whether he’s talking about wardrobe choice or tips for effective swearing. The author, a modern-day Dale Carnegie, offers explanations on how to wield the most influence in the digital age: Push Technologies like presentations, e-mails and Twitter are discussed as active means of enchanting others, while Pull Technologies like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn passively draw them in. The author’s suggestions for achieving likeability and trustworthiness, as well as overcoming resistance, are thoroughly explained and can easily translate from the workplace to the real world. Kawasaki makes good use of subheads and bullet points, rendering information in a searchable format. He ends each chapter with an anecdote that illuminates the effectiveness of his techniques–while it’s not original, it’s effective. The author’s trademark light and airy style is on display, but it’s his humor and empathy that makes the heavy use of BusinessSpeak and buzzwords more easily palatable.
Informative, concise guide from one of America’s most influential and, yes, enchanting entrepreneurs.”

I couldn’t have said it better. Buy it here!


Categories: Books, Communication Skills

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What the TSA would say about your next presentation

Posted by Kelly Decker   |   February 24th, 2011   |   Leave a Comment   |  Tweet This

Lately, the best thing about FedEx Office is the commercials. Thanks to our Program Leader Maria Ralph – who’s constantly on the lookout for examples of good, bad, and ugly communications – here’s one of the best from FedEx Office’s latest campaign:

You need to be airport security for your organization (bonus points for channeling the big burly guy with the dangling keys). Take an x-ray view of your presentation and inspect the message. That doesn’t mean reviewing the slides. In fact, shut down PowerPoint and ask a few key questions – all critical elements of your message:

  • Listeners: Who are you talking to? Why? What do they expect? Why would they challenge you? Summarize your listeners into 3 adjectives (skeptical, budget-conscious, time pressured, detail-oriented, etc.)
  • Point Of View (POV): What’s the one thing you want them to walk away with? How do you want them to change the way they think or act about your subject? Maybe it’s something like:
    • Simplifying systems
    • Broadening their perspective of your offering
    • Getting closer to customers with social media
    • Adopting a new protocol or standard
  • Action: Once they buy off on your POV, what’s next? Tell them what to DO! Make the action timed, physical, and measurable. It’ll become your golden nugget of accountability.
  • Benefit: What will they get if they take the action? Don’t just give them a standard corporate line of “greater ROI” or “more revenue to the bottom line” – give them something that they care about. Remember how you described the listener above and target that description: if they’re risk averse, talk about a benefit that will ease their mind.

The rest of the message should address what the listener needs to know to buy off on your POV, take the action you suggest, and realize the benefits. Things like: the current situation, examples of where you succeeded while others failed, addressing objections, the coolest thing about your proposal, and emotional reactions about your topic.

Last but not least, your slides better grab your listeners’ attention and support that message. Remember, don’t just give them sales figures. Yawn.


Categories: Communication Skills, Messaging
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