I wrote a book.

The book is called Before You Say Anything: How to Have Better Conversations, Love Public Speaking, and Finally Know What to Do with Your Hands. I’m incredibly excited about it, and I wanted the people who read this blog to know about it first.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you won’t be surprised to learn that the book is all about intention, alignment, and practice, and how we can change the way we communicate in order to reach our goals.

Before You Say Anything will come out in October. In the meantime, you’re invited to check out the brand-new web page for the book, sign up for specific book-related updates and freebies, and, of course, to share the news far and wide!

Thanks for being readers, thinkers, and curious people who made me want to write more for you. You’re the best.

Read more about the book here!

Can you tell a story?

Can you tell one about yourself? About what’s important to you? About your values or your challenges?

Storytelling is an important business skill (and if you don’t believe me, check out a few of the 44 million Google results from “storytelling business communication.”)

What do I mean by “storytelling”? The word itself can be offputting to some people. It can conjure images of long, drawn-out tales or something that is fanciful and not rooted in facts or data. But what I mean when I talk about storytelling is the ability to share a concrete example that brings a concept to life.

This skill is critical to helping other people understand, viscerally, the ideas, theories, data, principles, and values that we are talking about. Great leaders know how to draw listeners in using metaphors, examples, stories, and analogies to make their ideas real.

I was coaching a client in the healthcare space recently. We were working on a presentation she was going to give about a new initiative she really cares about, one that could transform how many people in her community get timely medical care. Her presentation was heavy on theory and data, and it simply wasn’t very engaging.

I asked if she could tell me about someone she knew who was going to benefit from the new program, and her eyes lit up. She told me about a woman with a family history of breast cancer who would be able to access mammograms and biopsies, if needed. The woman’s story was detailed, and moving. This new initiative could make a life or death difference for her, and for many others like her.

“Tell her story,” I suggested. “Drop us into the reality of what it’s like to need care that we don’t know how to get, and probably can’t afford. Help us feel the relief of learning that there’s a program just for me, that someone thought about how to help.”

Folding in this story made it clear why the program mattered. It helped the audience understand the urgency and gave context to the data. Her story wasn’t long or complex, but it served a clear purpose. The ability to share the personal impact of a program, a chart, or a data set can be the difference between landing your message with impact and missing the mark.

Want to learn more? Check out our Fundamentals of Storytelling workshop!

Before you create a slide deck and record a webinar, please ask yourself this question:

Does this need to be a webinar? Is a webinar the best way for me to get this information to its intended audience?

If the answer is yes, this needs to be a webinar, here’s the next question:

How will people who don’t learn well from a recording get this information? What can you do to supplement their learning? 

Confession time: this is about me (surprise surprise.) I have a hard time watching long educational videos. In general, I learn much more efficiently when I can read the information rather than watch it. In addition to learning preference, this can be an accessibility issue. Can you pair your video with captions or a transcript in order to reach more people?

The passive nature of a webinar means you have to work hard to be engaging. Giving your audience several ways to interact with your material is a win-win.

What’s your webinar pet peeve? Or if you just love to watch a webinar, tell me why!

Y’all.

I have been in webinar hell. Without naming any names, I’ll share that I’ve been grinding through a bunch of webinar content in order to get a specific professional certification re-upped. 

The people who recorded the webinars seem to be knowledgeable, nice folks. But they are missing the mark in a couple of ways that could really make a difference to me (at least) as a viewer.

• Be very clear about what the session is for, and what the viewer can expect to walk away with. A slide listing your agenda bullet points isn’t enough: connect the dots explicitly throughout your talk.
• If you’re going to be visible, please do the basics of elevating your camera to eye-level and making sure you’re well-lit. (One gentleman’s camera was set so low that it felt like I was looking up at him from below his coffee table.)
• If you’re not going to be visible, make your voice clear and engaging without being too casual.
• If possible, have your video hosted on a platform that allows the viewer to control the viewing speed. Being able to speed up or slow down the video is a major benefit for the audience.
• Get to the point. Don’t spend a lot of time chatting, making the point repetitively, or sharing redundant slides. Concise is nice.

I finally finished watching everything I had to in order to get recertified, but I can’t tell you that I really learned that much. The user interface was such an obstacle that it left me feeling like I wanted to rush through it to get it over with.

I know you don’t want the people watching your webinars to feel this way! Take a few extra steps to make your work clear, concise, and engaging.

As always, I am grateful to all of you who are readers of this blog! If you know someone who would find it valuable, please forward this to them!

I am fascinated by people who are great at what they do. I love learning the process behind different people’s craft, from athletes to musicians to writers.

My latest deep dive into the nerdy world of process is Mike Birbiglia’s podcast, “Working It Out.” Birbiglia is a comedian, and on the podcast he interviews other comedians and storytellers, getting into the nitty gritty of how they develop material. He talks to Hannah Gadsby, Ira Glass, Hasan Minhaj, and John  Mulaney, among many others, and with each conversation he draws out telling insights into how each of these people do what they do so well.

It’s also really funny. Highly recommend! Check it out here.

When you’re starting a presentation, challenge yourself to engage the audience from your very first words. The first minute or so when we’re speaking is the honeymoon period, when they are really ready to listen and be wowed, so you don’t want to waste it on boring introductions and thank-yous.

Ask a question, say something surprising, or tell a short story that captures the point of your message. I think of this approach as the “rocketship.” You’re not trundling along a runway, slowly building up speed to get off the ground. You’re launching right into the stratosphere and taking the audience along with you.

Now that you’ve got their attention, you can work in some of those introductory details if they’re necessary. For example, I often begin a presentation by describing a time when I really blew a talk I had to give. And the end of the story, I go on to say, “And now I run my own company that teaches people how to communicate! I’m Angie Flynn-McIver, founder of Ignite CSP.”

The introductiory details are meaningful when we take the time to make them have meaning to the audience.

I write a lot in this space about how to use deliberate, productive intention as a tool to create effective communication and decrease misunderstanding. What I haven’t spent much time on is the fact that intention does not equate to impact.

It’s not possible to completely know what effect our words will have on a person hearing them. Even the most thoughtful speaker has assumptions, biases, and blind spots that show up in their words and behavior. Others can be hurt or offended by what we say, even when we didn’t mean for that to happen. And the fact that we didn’t intend offense or hurt does not absolve us from responsibility for the outcome of our words.

So what should we do? Thinking carefully about how we want to be understood does help. And if we’re venturing into territory we’re unsure of, perhaps we can find a trusted friend or colleague to ask for insight. Curiosity and a genuine openness to feedback help us know how we can communicate more effectively in the future.

The fear of saying the wrong thing sometimes keeps us from speaking at all. If you are in a situation where you’re unsure of how your words will be received, thoughtfulness, transparency, and willingness to learn can help lead the way to a fruitful conversation.  

 “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, is credited with this quote. While neither he nor I can promise that this is, in fact, the single biggest problem in communication, it is a big one.

I see evidence of this all the time, at work and in my personal life. All it takes is for one person to think the other is totally following what they’re saying, and you’re set up for misunderstanding. We assume that, since we said/emailed/thought something, the communication is complete. As Shaw implies, that’s the illusion at work.

We can overcome this “single biggest problem” by working a little harder, repeating ourselves, saying things in different ways, choosing good times to communicate, and asking whether the people we’re talking to have questions about what we said.

We can make sure we’re not assuming that the communication is complete when all we’ve done is “transmit”— we’re not done until we have also received communication from the other party. Figure out what’s needed in order to be sure that the communication wasn’t an illusion.

One of the most common pieces of advice on public speaking is to “know your audience.” Experts advise the aspiring speaker to think about the audience they’ll be addressing, do some research, and tailor their speech to the group.

In a broad sense, there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s important to know if you’re talking to four-star generals or pacifists, second-graders or lion tamers. Knowing the most pressing interests or concerns of the decision-makers, board of directors, or other stakeholders in the room is useful, and that knowledge should inform your speech or presentation.

But the real challenge of addressing a group of people is that all of them are arriving at your talk with a mixed bag of experiences, opinions, and biases that you can’t possibly predict or adjust for. They aren’t a monolith. One pitfall of “knowing your audience” is that the more research you do, or guesses you make, the more you may be tempted to warp your talk to avoid this thing or highlight that thing, until this cohesion and coherence of your message is lost.

You are there to serve the audience. That’s the point of the presentation. But the job of the speaker is to connect the audience with ideas and information that they may or may not know that they need. The craft of speaking is to find the balance between incorporating your knowledge of the audience and staying the course of your unique message.

One tricky element of being on a team that works remotely is that all the incidental ways people can interact are stripped away. There are no chats by the coffeemaker or spontaneous lunches. You don’t catch up while you’re on the elevator or grab a couple of extra minutes to talk after a meeting while you walk back to your desk.

These opportunities can fill in the gaps of our relationships with each other. As leaders, these informal moments give us a chance to commend, appreciate, and applaud the people around us on a regular basis. Meeting remotely, at scheduled times, strips away some of the spontaneity of our connections and can make our interactions feel more transactional. At the same time, our workdays are expanding to fill every available moment, and we rush from one meeting to another. 

If you’re leading people on a remote team, make sure to communicate that you see their contributions and hard work, and that you value them. There are a lot of ways to do this: I was talking to a leader this week who builds “shout-outs” to her team members into her weekly agenda. A quick IM or text to say, “Great idea” or “I loved how you spoke up for this initiative” lets people know that you’re noticing. Crediting the people on your team out loud, in front of others, also says, “Your work here matters.”

All of us want to know that we’re not just working away, unnoticed. Taking the time to appreciate the people on your team goes a long way towards nurturing connection and providing a sense of meaning in our work.