photo credit:

Dialogue has been in the news of late concerning the violent clash between Tibet and China:

The Dalai Lama has recently affirmed, “It is my sincere belief that if the concerned parties were to meet and discuss their future with an open mind and a sincere desire to find a satisfactory and just solution, a breakthrough could be achieved. We must all exert ourselves to be reasonable and wise, and to meet in a spirit of frankness and understanding.”

Britain, along with other Western countries, will use this year’s Beijing Olympics to put measured diplomatic pressure on the Chinese Government. Continued violence in Tibet will add to calls for Western nations to boycott the opening ceremony at the Games, or even the whole event.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told MPs: “I made it absolutely clear that there had to be an end to violence in Tibet. I also called for restraint, and I called for an end to the violence by dialogue between the different parties.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Beijing since a deadly March 14 anti-government riot in the Tibetan capital, said he appealed to Chinese leaders to engage their critics. "I expressed our concerns about the violence and urged a peaceful resolution through dialogue." Paulson said.

With less than five months before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, China's sharp criticism of the foreign news media comes precisely when China wants to present a welcoming impression to the outside world. Chinese officials have blasted the foreign media as biased against China, castigated the Dalai Lama as a terrorist "jackal" and called for a "People's War" to fight separatism in Tibet.

"The language they are using about everything has been Cultural Revolution hyperbole," said Susan Shirk, a former assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs and author of "China: Fragile Superpower." "This does not look like the reaction of a strong, confident leadership."

What can we recognize about dialogue from these headlines? If your trust diminishes along with your patience and good will, you are likely in discussion. Discussion is about being "right", appearing "strong". Dialogue has the potential to convert detractors into supporters and conflict into consensus.

The profound efficacy of dialogue requires much of us:

• Listening more deeply and for longer periods of time.
• Inquiring of others and paraphrasing their ideas when every cell in your body wants to attack, defend or explain.
• Becoming aware of your mind drifting and repeatedly returning it to the topic at hand.
• Examining our thoughts and separating assumptions from facts.

Whenever your conversation tends toward a discussion, where positions harden and frustration flares, turn the conversation around by asking questions.

Instead of making statements about what we believe, begin asking questions about what others believe. This is in accord with a principle articulated by Saint Francis and popularized by Stephen Covey:

“Seek first to understand; and then to be understood.”

When I attack your position and repeat my own, I strengthen your attachment to your position. When I ask you about your position in a spirit of inquiry, however, and empathically paraphrase what you say, you tend to hold your viewpoint more gently. You are more open to other perspectives, increasing the shared potential for influence and understanding.

Perusing Craig Senior's excellent blog on presentation and public speaking, I found this video.

Often referred to as one of the greatest speeches of all time, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is remarkable in many respects.  King was a master of speech and the classic art of rhetoric.

Here are a few of the speech's many outstanding elements:
A) Research
It was well-researched with references to the Bible, The Gettysburg Address and the US Declaration of Independence.

B) A compelling opening
He opens with, "Five score years ago" - a direct reference to The Gettysburg Address.

B) Repetition of themes
The repetition of a series of themes:
1) "Now is the time"
2) "When will you be satisfied?"
3) Finally, "I have a dream"

C) Powerful use of poetic metaphor
1) "But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice."
2) "we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
3) "The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."
4) "the red hills of Georgia" hints at blood, pain and sacrifice.
5) "Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression"

D) Use of alliteration
Which is the repetition of consonants.
1) "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.  We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence …"
2) "…they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." (Say it aloud and enjoy the strong percussive sound of the Cs.)
3) "We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating 'for whites only.'"

E) Passionate non-verbal delivery
The energetic, passionate and rhythmic, musical quality of his delivery building to a powerful concluding crescendo.  This provides a moving and satisfying emotional drive to the speech.

F) A powerful conclusion
"When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

There is a terrific analysis of the speech here.

 

[Rhetoric] is “that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.” — George Campbell

 

Influence is shaping someone else's behavior without resorting to positional power. Real buy-in is achieved when others participate in the process of making decisions.

Some approach customers and clients by telling them about the superiority of their product, countering customers' "objections," then "closing" the transaction. Influence is more subtle.

In complex transactions, involving experienced parties on both sides, a more sophisticated approach is called for.

• Increase your ability to shape someone's behavior when you do not have direct control of them.
• Gather better data while building ongoing relationships in any business environment.
• Motivate others when involved in projects with virtual teams in remote locations.
• Exert leadership that transcends organizational boundaries.

Learn more about Influence>>  

As always, the wisdom and humor of Scott Adams' Dilbert strip uniquely captures the corporate culture.  This speaks to the importance of authenticity and credibility.  Those of you in sales organizations should get a kick out of this.

Jake McKee is the Principal at Ant's Eye View, a Dallas-based customer collaborations strategy practice.

Clearly, this post on his blog belies the comment, “I’m just a n00b at all of this public speaking stuff.” He offers up some sophisticated tips which are very useful to the average business presenter.

His brainstorming and content creation process is quite ingenious:

Typically my presentations, whether client research findings or conference keynote, start on the white board. I start free forming a running list of ideas, thoughts, points, and issues that may be relevant. This includes everything from major points to minor factoids.

Once I come across a point that I see as “significant”, I write it down on an index card and lay it on the floor. (I may also thumb through an old stack of cards from an previous session) Pretty soon there’s a bunch of cards laid out on the floor. I take a first pass at culling them down a bit, putting them in some sort of order, and identifying anything that might be missing. I’m a very visual person, so seeing this all laid out in front of me really helps.

This idea of whiteboarding, then culling the broader points to index cards is outstanding. Too often, speakers think of their presentation as text and words. This method is a more visual, right-brained, big picture method that is likely to lead to a better organized and well-thought-out structure. It's a very effective and creative way to get started.

Jake goes on to add a great suggestion about time:

No audience likes watching the presenter hurry through the last 15 slides in 2 minutes because they ran out of time. I tend to plan content for no more than 75% of the time allotted, although typically I plan for more like 50% of the time allotted.

Throughout the planning process, I’ll develop for that 50% target (i.e. 30 minutes of content for a 1 hour time slot). This helps me to ensure that I’m focusing on the truly important issues, but it also makes it easy to deal with the “oh yeah!” content that pops in during the rest of the development.

He is SO right about ideas coming up later in the process and adding that extra 25%.

I concur completely with Jake's point about clothing: “one step above the audience.” I want to be the best-dressed person in the room but only by a little bit.

He says:

I always try to ensure I’m presenting wearing my wildly comfortable Nike AirMax 360 sneakers.

If you can get away with sneakers, more power to you. I wear either Ecco, Rockport, Cole Haan Air Nike brand dress shoes because they are as comfortable as running shoes but very stylish and acceptable in ANY environment, right up to the boardroom.

He also has some great tips on visual media - images, PowerPoint / Keynote, etc.

Terrific post, Jake!

A colleague emailed me a link in reply to my blog post on Barack Obama's concession speech from New Hampshire. The link led me to Peggy Noonan's piece "Declarations" in the Wall Street Journal online. I found the following excerpt very interesting and related directly to my thinking about authenticity.

In Dillon, S.C., according to the Associated Press, on Thursday Mr. Clinton "predicted that many voters will be guided mainly by gender and race loyalties" and suggested his wife may lose Saturday's primary because black voters will side with Mr. Obama. Who is raising race as an issue? Bill Clinton knows. It's the press, and Mr. Obama. "Shame on you," Mr. Clinton said to a CNN reporter. The same day the Web site believed to be the backdoor of the Clinton war room unveiled a new name for the senator from Illinois: "Sticky Fingers Obama."

Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red-faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is something heartening in this.

There are many serious and thoughtful liberals and Democrats who support Mr. Obama and John Edwards, and who are seeing Mr. Clinton in a new way and saying so. Here is William Greider in The Nation, the venerable left-liberal magazine. The Clintons are "high minded" on the surface but "smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard at the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four years."

That, again, is from one of the premier liberal journals in the United States. It is exactly what conservatives have been saying for a decade. This may mark a certain coming together of the thoughtful on both sides. The Clintons, uniters at last.

I am reminded of a comment made by David Geffen of Dreamworks SKG (G = Geffen) who is currently supporting Barack Obama for President and raised $1.3 million for his campaign. On February 21, 2007, in an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Geffen described Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton in unflattering terms: "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling." He said that Hillary Clinton was "incredibly polarizing" and described Bill Clinton as "reckless" and cast doubt on those who say he has become a different person since leaving office.

When I heard this story, it reminded me that many people have expressed concern that Bill Clinton has a thorny relationship with the truth. OK, sometimes their language was a little stronger. Bill's credibility seems to have become an issue in Hillary's Campaign. My guess is that Bill's credibility is the last thing they want people talking about. When Bill becomes the focal point of the campaign, what message does that send? The importance of authenticity and credibility in communication is never to be underestimated.

As I was driving to San Francisco Monday evening, I was listening to "It's Your World" broadcast by the World Affairs Council of Northern California on our local PBS station, KQED in San Francisco (which I recently heard has the third most popular dot-org website behind Craig's List and Wikipedia).

The speaker was John Hofmeister, CEO & President of Shell Oil Company and the event was titled, "How the US Can Ensure Energy Supply for the Future." This appearance was part of a 50 city tour that Hofmeister and other Shell executives have been conducting to start a "dialogue" with the American people.

I was impressed by Hofmeister's candor and willingness to acknowledge the poor reputation that the oil industry is suffering in the media. They are experiencing record profits while gas prices are at their highest levels in history. The public's perception of his company and industry are so poor that he reports receiving a death threat in the mail - a drawing of his body hanging from a tree.

As the event was held in San Francisco, you can imagine that Hofmeister responded to questions about the companies record profits, offshore drilling, conservation, and alternative energies. Hofmeister candid and measured responses sounded both well-informed and balanced - acknowledging the US need for new sources of energy with the long-standing 100 + year dependence on oil and a highly-developed oil-based infrastructure.

I came away thinking that Hofmeister was a very effective communicator and leader. As he speaks about in the interview, Hofmeister earned a bachelor's and master's degrees in political science from Kansas State University. He comes across as erudite. and seems to fully grasp the "big picture" of his industry and is able to articulate it's dynamics extremely well.

His candor typified the qualities of transparency and authenticity that I've written about in many posts here.

You can listen to the recording, see the video or download an MP3 file of that speech at the WAF audio and video archive here.

 

 

Hearing Barack Obama's concession speech after the New Hampshire primary, I was deeply impressed. He is clearly echoing Martin Luther King Jr's great "I Have A Dream" speech by treating adversity as a challenge, inspiring his campaign and supporters to redouble their efforts. His repetition of a simple phrase "Yes, we can" is a use of a recurring theme that makes his presentation memorable, 'sticky' and very effective. Note the audience picking up the chant … in spite of the fact that he "lost" the primary, this audience doesn't seem deterred. They seem even more committed to their candidate. Partial transcript:

For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights: Yes, we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: Yes, we can.

It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land: Yes, we can, to justice and equality.

Yes, we can, to opportunity and prosperity. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can.

This is superb communication and leadership. He uses language that makes the audience feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves, something meaningful, something important and exciting. They are cast as heroes on par with Jefferson, Washington, Louis and Clark, Lincoln, and King. It's heady company and intoxicating to think of one's self as part of a movement. On the macro level, his themes of hope and change have given him a competitive advantage against Hillary Clinton, who many saw as the front runner in this election — as though it was hers to lose. But I don't hear any consistent message coming from her candidacy other than experience and wonkiness. When Obama speaks about hope and change, it comes across as authentic. When the Clinton campaign (and all the other campaigns) suddenly picked up on the theme of change after Iowa, it seemed like a lame and inauthentic attempt to hitch themselves to Obama's message, as though it was their own.

 

 

Consistently, I find myself deeply moved by his speeches. No one else inspires us like Barack Obama. It's important to acknowledge Garr Reynolds again for this post from his terrific blog, Presentation Zen. I recommend it highly to all my readers and clients and I encourage you to subscribe.

 

 

 Carol Dweck, a Psychology Professor at Stanford, has written a book titled, "MindSet: The New Psychology of Success." She posits that one's mindset is a greater determinant of one's ability to succeed than talent. She outlines 2 different mindsets: The Fixed Mind-Set and the Growth Mind-Set. A fixed mindset is one in which you view your talents and abilities as… well, fixed. In other words, you are who you are, your intelligence and talents are fixed, and your fate is to go through life avoiding challenge and failure. A growth mindset, on the other hand, is one in which you see yourself as fluid, a work in progress. Your fate is one of growth and opportunity.

Here's a terrific Nigel Holmes graphic that originally sparked my imagination. You can also find a recording of an interview with Moira Gunn and Carol Dweck here.

In this press release from Stanford, she recounts a story from the 6th grade:

When psychology Professor Carol Dweck was a sixth-grader at P.S. 153 in Brooklyn, N.Y., she experienced something that made her want to understand why some people view intelligence as a fixed trait while others embrace it as a quality that can be developed and expanded.

Dweck's teacher that year, Mrs. Wilson, seated her students around the room according to their IQ. The girls and boys who didn't have the highest IQ in the class were not allowed to carry the flag during assembly or even wash the blackboard, Dweck said. "She let it be known that IQ for her was the ultimate measure of your intelligence and your character," she said. "So the students who had the best seats were always scared of taking another test and not being at the top anymore."

Asked what seat number Dweck occupied during that memorable year, the professor paused, and silently raised her right index finger. "But it was an uncomfortable thing because you were only as good as your last test score," she said. "I think it had just as negative an effect on the kids at the top [as those at the bottom] who were defining themselves in those terms."

From that experience, Dweck became fascinated with intelligence, convinced that IQ tests are not the only way to measure it. "I also became very interested in coping with setbacks, probably because being in that classroom made me so concerned about not slipping, not failing," she said.

This idea resonated deeply for me. As a trainer, I am constantly interacting with people in a learning environment. I can clearly see behaviors in workshop participants that fall into one category or another.

Also, it parallels the Zen philosophy called Beginner's Mind. Beginner's mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner's mind is just present to explore and observe and see "things as-it-is."

Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, captured it very simply with, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Think of how a child approaches life and you will inherently understand beginner's mind. It's full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. "I wonder what this is? I wonder what this means?" Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking "What is this? What does it mean?"

When I give feedback to workshop participants, those in Fixed (or Expert) Mindset will react by explaining or defending themselves. They feel a strong need to counter any conception that they "made a mistake" by not doing a perfect execution of the task assigned in a given exercise.

Those in Growth (or Beginner's) Mindset react with a sense of humility and confidence. They are genuinely interested in hearing how they might improve their skills. They tend to be thankful for feedback and are quickest to laugh at their own foibles.

Which mindset do you possess? Dweck provides a checklist to assess yourself and shows how a particular mindset can affect all areas of your life, from business to sports and love. The good news, says Dweck, is that mindsets are not set: at any time, you can learn to use a growth mindset to achieve success and happiness