When an eager young person, perhaps a recent college graduate, applies for a job, will they mention their MySpace page? Or their Facebook entry? Probably not, but those sites can be checked, regardless of whether or not they’ve added them to their resume, application or(for some reason) are discussing them during their job interview.

Employers engaged in the hiring process today often consider their candidate’s online pictures and pages, which are quickly and easily accessible on the internet. More than ever, a reputation gained (or lost) by these sites may be an important aspect of whether or not that eager young person is one who wins the job.

NY Times columnist, Thom Friedman, reminds us that, "When everyone has a blog, a MySpace page or Facebook entry, everyone is a publisher. When everyone has a cell phone with a camera in it, everyone is a paparazzo. When everyone can upload video on YouTube, everyone is a filmmaker. When everyone is a publisher, paparazzo or filmmaker, everyone else is a public figure. We’re all public figures now. The blogosphere has made the global discussion so much richer – and each of us so much more transparent."

Since the word transparency is defined as seeing through an object, in discussing individual reputations, it also defines seeing the faults and missteps caught and recorded — now instantly available to the world.

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This blog post from MindTools.com on active listening is extremely pertinent, thoughtful and well written. So much so that I don't have anything to add. I recommend that you read it for yourself:

http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm

This last Saturday, June 21, I finished reading "What is the What" by Dave Eggars. It is billed as a novel but is essentially a biography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan who fled a civil war in Sudan.

Thousands of boys died during their 1,000- mile walk to Ethiopia, most from starvation and dehydration, some from man-eating lions, and others from attack by the murahaleen; Sudanese government-armed Arab militias. The boys live for a time in relative peace in a refugee camp - Pinyudo.

Then, Valentino and all refugees at Pinyudo are forced to leave Ethiopia when that country's dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, is overthrown. They were run out of the country at gunpoint and forced to swim the Gilo River where two thousand lives were claimed by shooting, drowning or crocodiles.

They ended up in a huge refugee camp - Kakuma in Kenya. Eventually, Valentino made it to the United States where he met Dave Eggars, a Bay Area writer who agreed to write his story. Valentino has created a foundation and uses his web site to tell the story of his efforts to rebuild his village (Marial Bai) in Sudan.

The setting: In the vast camp of Kakuma which houses 72,000 refugees from all over Africa, Valentino has achieved a position of leadership. He's been a model student in the camp's schools gaining an education he never would have had in his village in Sudan. He's participated in the camp's drama program and even performed plays in the other-worldly, bustling metropolis of Nairobi. He's gained the lofty status of coordinator for the Youth and Culture Program, a paying job with an office, unheard of for a Sudanese boy without any family.

More on Public Speaking enhances leadership of famous African refugee, Valentino Achak Deng

“Stump the Chump” refers to an audience member who may be disruptive or hostile; often expressed through repeated questioning meant to challenge a speaker’s authority and possibly steal the spotlight.  Here are some tips on dealing with this demanding dynamic:

1) Keep a very warm, friendly "interface". This allows you to maintain control over your state of being and will keep the rest of the audience on your side.

2) Play the role of "helpful facilitator." 
"I am just trying to be as helpful as I can be."

3) Let the person trying to stump you be "the expert". 
"Wow, you really know a lot about this!"

4) Engage them with humor and have fun with them.  
"Maybe you should be up here delivering this presentation."
"Let's check with Bob.  He IS the expert, after all."

5) When the expert starts to take you down into the weeds, get the group to help you out.
"Gee, I'd love to talk more about this.  At the same time, I want to make sure that others in the group get what they need from our time together.  (To the group)  Do we want to dive deeper into this topic right now?"  Then the group can be the bad guy, saying no, while you remain the "helpful facilitator."
"Bob, I want to make sure that you get what you need.  How about you and I can take this offline?"

6) Operate from the assumption that there is no conflict.  My experience has been that conflict will not survive if not given oxygen.  By assuming there is conflict, we tend to get into a debate-based mode of communication and thought.  That tends to exacerbate the situation. 

7) Seek out areas of agreement.  Work with the group to outline key ways in which you all agree.  “What can we all agree on?”  Write down those areas of agreement.  At minimum, you will gain a clearer understanding of where your perspectives diverge.

8 ) Let go of the need to be right.  After all, do you want to be “right” or do you want to get what you want?

More on How to deal with the "Stump the Chump" dynamic in Public Speaking

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. Albert Einstein

A nurse in an intensive care unit for neonatal babies notices something wrong with one of the babies. She can’t pinpoint it exactly, but she immediately urges the doctors to prescribe a course of antibiotics.

The next day, tests show that her recommendation was correct when they revealed a potentially fatal condition.

She doesn’t know exactly how she knew, but her intuition – or her emotional decision — saved the baby.

"The theorists say decision-making is a logical process," writes Jeremy Hardie, former chairman of WH Smith Group, "but new research shows emotion is just as important."

Decision-making is a cognitive process, one which gives us a subconscious choice between logic and emotion. It might not seem that way in the middle of a heated argument or when faced with sudden danger, but the feelings that arise when we make an emotional decision from our "adaptive unconscious" are a subtle and sophisticated form of pattern recognition. These gut reactions, in other words, are a form of thought, and not just a knee-jerk reaction.

What does this emotional decision-making have to do with sales? How important is it for a sales person to pay attention to the first response from a customer? It is crucial for sales people to understand emotional decision-making simply because it explains how the brain works and how decisions (particularly buying decisions) are made. When a young woman walks into a car dealership and sees the shiny red convertible (even though she’d planned on a mid-size sedan), which decision-making process will operate in her mind first?

More on Emotion In Decision-making: Sales

"We live in a culture that barely acknowledges and rarely celebrates the arts or artists."  Dana Gioia, Chair for the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts

How many writers, artists, scientists can the average American name?

In a speech delivered to the graduating class of Stanford University, Dana Gioia decried the lack of interest in cultural figures (other than pop culture) in America today.

He claims that the cultural entities of today are all for the sake of entertainment. And so ultimately it follows that everything today comes with a price tag. When celebrities appear on radio or TV talk shows, their main, and often only, purpose is to push their book, movie, new TV show, or a new vote.

What has happened to American culture?

More on Communication: Is Our Culture Failing Us?

"Everything in life cannot be grasped by the logic-centered left brain." D.T.Suzuki

Sometimes you need more than your own dynamic self to get your message across. Just standing there and talking is not very creative and not much of a strategy. You might be a great speaker or think you’re a great speaker, but don’t take any chances that you might miss reaching your audience. Especially if you’re giving out complex and/or technical information.

To be as effective as possible in your presentation, you will need unique tools to motivate your audience and to implant the desire in them to take the action you desire for them. A highly effective tool in any presentation is the use of SYMBOLS.

A symbol, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is: "Something that represents something else by association, resemblance or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.  You see a red stop sign. What do you do? You know.

The reason humans created symbols in the first place, according to Carl Jung, was to try to understand human nature beyond language. In his investigation of various, unrelated cultures, Jung found a similarity in the images – or symbols – they displayed.  Though fewer and less complex than the plethora of symbols we see in today’s culture, they nonetheless evoked in those ancient people a universal meaning that resonated in each person.

The symbols – or familiar images – of today evoke such a familiar message to most of us, that we all "get" the message as soon as we see them. McDonald’s golden arches, for example. And what about the apple on the phones or laptops you’re using today? Granted, these are both very commercial symbols, but nonetheless are images most of us can instantly relate to.

So what about symbols in your presentation?

More on Using Symbols In Your Presentation

We’ve all heard that less is more, but not when applied to the frenetic, fact-filled culture of today. Today we are constantly bombarded with information, junk, information, junk information. There’s little "free space" left – with advertising embedded on the shopping cart, popping up on the computer screen, scrolling across the TV, you name it.

Feeling like there’s barely any space left in our minds, overburdened with unwanted information, we might feel like screaming, but it’s easier and less noticeable to flip the "off" switch. Not take in any more. So working with today’s overburdened minds, how do you get an audience to turn on the "on" switch and get your own "very important" message across?

"In an ancient Chinese legend, the emperor offers a reward to the man who has just invented the game of chess. The inventor modestly asks for one grain of rice on the chessboard’s first square, two grains on the next square, four grains on the third, and so on, doubling every square.

The emperor, thinking this is a swell bargain, grants his request – only to realize later that the sixty-fourth square would have enough grains of rice to cover the entire earth.  He angrily orders the inventor beheaded." (Business 2.0, July 2001)

 Like the Chinese rice, the amount of data which assaults a person’s mind, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, is more than one mind even begins to need. According to research from the University of California at Berkeley, the amount of digital information produced in the world today is doubling as often as every two years. Since information is so quickly multiplying, when you give a presentation, it’s more important than ever to deliver a lot more than facts and data to your audience.

In Samurai Selling: the Ancient Art of Service in Sales, the authors tell of research which indicates that people tend to ignore all data (yes, ALL) when given more than they can process. Recently, neuroscientists tested people for the effects of information overload and found these symptoms.

1. Irritation
2. Boredom
3. Inability to take decisive action
4. Pervading sense of "So what?"
5. Failure to respond

 Don’t you desperately want to avoid any one of those five symptoms occurring in your audience?

More on Succinct Skills: Communication and Presentation

One way for presidents and world leaders to assure the public is through their body language. The words are important, but how they stand and gesture can add or detract from their message. Click here to see an example >>

Remember the recent debates between presidential candidates? When they addressed each other – did they face each other, then turn to the audience to give the rest of their message? Did they stand up straight? Gesture appropriately? Where did their eyes go?

You may not be running for President, but whatever you do – at work or at play — your body language – the way you stand, sit and "pose" sometimes has more effect on the message you’re trying to get across than what you’re actually saying, especially with the short attention span most people have today. How do you come across?

It may sound crazy, but stand in front of the mirror and observe your body language. Stand up. Sit down. Pretend you’re talking to a client. To a date. Watch your face, your arms. Are you standing up straight? Arms crossed on your chest? Are you smiling? Start with a good attitude, a pleasant expression and a self-confident posture. Don’t cross your arms or legs. Take up space. Face the person you’re talking to; don’t just give them a shoulder or half a back. Work on maintaining eye contact. Can you really trust or believe someone who won’t look you in the eye?

Next time you see someone you respect, or even someone you don’t, but someone who has an air of authenticity and self-confidence, pay attention to their body language. Then go back to the mirror.

Below, see Patti Wood's body language expertise in action on CBS's Inside Edition show, aired on January 22, 2008. In this segment entitled "Democratic Debate Body Language", the topic of discussion is the nasty and heated fireworks debate between democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama the prior evening covered by CNN. Patti's body language analysis reveals the non-verbal bitter battle of symbolic weapons and gestures used by the two presidential hopefuls.

More on Presidential Posture: Presentation

The psychedelic 60’s phrase coined by Timothy Leary, “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out” is being replaced with Silicon Valley's new mantra “Turn Off, Tune in and Unplug.” 

The latest meeting model encourages us to leave our laptops at our desks and keep our smart phones out of sight. If you can endure the initial anxiety and craving, this progressive trend in business paths the way to connecting with our coworkers, rather than what has become the ubiquitous distraction of our personal devices.  Meeting productivity, focus and teamwork are the goals of disconnecting from our technology for a short time.

Todd Wilkens, who works at a San Francisco design firm Adaptive Path, waged a "personal war against CrackBerry."  

His colleague, Dan Saffer, coined the term "topless" as in laptop-less. Mobile and smart phones must be stowed on a counter or in a box during meetings. "In this age of wireless Internet and mobile e-mail devices, having an effective meeting or working session is becoming more and more difficult," he wrote on his company blog in November. "Laptops, Blackberries, Sidekicks, iPhones and the like keep people from being fully present. Aside from just being rude, partial attention generally leads to partial results."  LA Times Article

"It's increasingly difficult to get people's undivided attention," said Stanford University Professor Pamela Hinds, who studies the effects of technology on groups. "People would argue they are attending to the most important information without any loss of participation, but in fact they aren't fully there." The culprit: Etiquette has not kept up with technology, said Sue Fox, author of "Business Etiquette for Dummies." 

Below, a pharmaceutical cure for Blackberry addiction (comedy):

More on The Topless Meeting