Ignite CSP

When other people are an agenda item.

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As I’ve noted before, everybody is busy. A side effect of that busy-ness is that our interactions with other people can start to have a quality of efficient productiveness, as if “call Mom” was item #7 on today’s list of things to do.

 

Have you been on the receiving end of that kind of conversation? What did it feel like? What can we do instead to remember that the people we interact with aren’t obstacles to clearing our to-do list?

“Don’t feel nervous!”

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The advice I dislike the most on the topic of communication all falls into a common category, which is basically, “Don’t feel nervous!”

 

The other versions of this are:

 

Be more confident!
They’re not going to bite!
You know your material; why on earth are you worried?

 

Here’s the problem. When we say “don’t feel that way,” it does not help. The fact of the matter is that they do feel that way, and to help, you have to start from there. When we say “don’t be nervous,” we’re compounding the problem. Now the nervous person knows that they’re wrong to feel that way, and that we certainly wouldn’t be nervous if we were in the same position. Now on top of being nervous, they feel bad about it, and they’re going to beat themselves up for this apparent character flaw.

 

Stop all this. We feel how we feel. We have to start from there.

 

A few years ago I was delivering the keynote at a conference, and that morning I had the worst attack of nerves I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t eat, I didn’t want to talk, I couldn’t read or prepare. I was deep in the “I am sure I will screw this up” well.

 

It so happened that I was with my parents and several colleagues I’m very close to. I had terrific support and expertise—unconditional love from my parents and close-at-hand reminders from my team about everything we know to do to mitigate anxiety. Even so, I found my inner monologue going something like this:

 

I feel terrible. I’m going to be terrible. Why am I so nervous? I’m done this a million times. I know better than to be so nervous. This is so stupid. I want to get this over with.

 

In other words, I was falling into the trap of making myself feel bad about feeling bad, and slipping right into a default intention (“I want to get this over with”) into the bargain.

 

This story has a happy ending. I pulled out my whole toolkit—breathing, visualization, grounding into my positive intention, listening to “Africa” by Toto at top volume in the car on the way to the venue—and by the time we got there I was feeling a little better, almost normal. Once I was miked up and standing in the wings, I was starting to get really excited. And when I walked out and took the stage, it all came together.

 

I had everything I needed to overcome this crisis of confidence. Most people who feel the way I felt don’t. They try to muscle through it. Some well-meaning soul nearby tries to pep them up, “You’ll be great! You don’t need to be nervous.” This slips off of them; they can’t even hear it. All they can hear at this point is their own voice, speaking words of regret for every single life choice that led them to this moment in time.

 

If you’re the well-meaning person nearby, what can you do? You can tell the person that it’s normal to be nervous. To sit with that feeling and hold it loosely. To notice where they feel it in their body. To breathe, and clear their mind of the voice inside that is talking to them. To come up with a deliberate, positive intention to replace the default one that has taken hold.

I want to show them I’m right.

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This is a really common default intention (I can tell you from years of personal experience.) And it really never helps you.

 
If your intention is to make sure the person you’re talking to knows that you’re right, how does that make them feel? What’s the upside?

 

What do you win?

So…

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This little word is making a bid to become the most-overused two-letter word in spoken English. We love to use it as a launch pad into our actual thought—“So, I was thinking we could go to Chipotle,” “So, now I’m going to talk you through the budget, “So, how are you?”

 

You can see from these examples that we don’t need these “so”s. In most conversation, an extra “so” here and there isn’t a problem. But it does lead to adopting that as a habit that’s hard to quit, and using “so” as a transition into our thoughts in a speech or presentation prevents us from being as polished as we can.

 

Start noticing your “so”s. Where do they creep in?

Do just one thing differently.

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When we’re trying to learn a new skill, there’s a lot to think about. If you’re learning to play tennis, you can’t think about your feet and your swing and your serve all at the same time.

 

The same is true when you’re working to improve your communication skills—you can’t do it all at once. Choose one area you can concentrate on—for the length of a meeting or a presentation or a conversation—and work on that. It might be improved eye contact or trying to eliminate “so” or using more intentional gesturing.

 

But pick just one.

Conference calls are the worst.

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Since the advent of the cell phone, people don’t have to be in their offices to talk to you. In many ways, this is terrific. I have a nifty hands-free set-up in my car, and I get a lot done on road trips to and from the airport. But that freedom has a downside, and it’s the waning ability of people to stay engaged on a phone call of any duration.

 

And the biggest time suck is, say it with me, conference calls. I complain about them, you complain about them, but somehow they keep showing up on our schedules. I don’t know what the mathematical formula is, but I bet you there’s some kind of ratio that can demonstrate, with each person added to a call, the decreasing engagement of the group.

 

What happens on an average conference call? The first mistake is that we treat conference calls like they are in-person meetings. Essentially, even though the physical circumstances of everyone in the room are different, we behave as if we were meeting in the same room. We don’t establish any virtual gathering place, and we haven’t done a good job of acknowledging that we need to have different rules for virtual meetings than for in-person ones. Instead we just wait until everyone is breathing into the same weird void and launch our agendas.

 

Assuming that no one reading this has the unilateral power to stop this massive time wastage (although hey, if that’s you, could you make that happen?), let’s talk about some ways to pump up your own engagement in the conference calls of your life.

 

First, think about your intention. What do you need to make happen on this call? What’s at stake for you? What change do you need to effect? If the answer is “Seriously, nothing, I don’t know why I have to be on this call,” hit that mute button and get started reading your favorite blogs, cleaning out your inbox, paying bills, or whatever you need to do to reclaim your time.

 

Otherwise, identify the portion or portions of the meeting when you need to turn up your intention, to be really engaged. Identify that intention: “I want to get the committee on board with my plan for the annual retreat.” “I want to advocate for my project budget.” “I want to ensure the report is clear to others on the call.”

 

Setting this intention will help you have energy and focus. You’ll listen more closely to others because they may say something relevant to your topic.

Make an assertion.

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In October, I was a student in Seth Godin’s altMBA program. It’s an intense month of individual and group work that takes the form of thirteen projects, three lengthy meetings per week, and giving and receiving lots of feedback.

 

One of the guiding principles of the altMBA is that you make assertions. You state what you believe, with the readiness to listen and revise.

 

I didn’t really get why that was part of it, at first. Asserting your opinion seemed like a good way to get your idea out there, but I wasn’t sure why this concept made it into the syllabus.

 

In the weeks since I finished the course, I’ve found myself thinking about it more often. When you assert yourself, you’re making yourself vulnerable. You aren’t hedging your bets, you’re not sitting on the fence. You’re taking a chance that someone will disagree with you, that they will assert something to the contrary, that you may turn out to be wrong.

 

When you assert, you create. You give yourself a platform, and it may just be you up there at first. But the power of assertion, and of standing up on the platform, is that you make yourself visible to the people who agree with you, who are moved or inspired or excited by your platform.

 

Soon you may find that platform is bigger than you ever thought.

“Presenter view.”

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When you’re working with a PowerPoint deck, you can select something called “presenter view” when you’re ready to, you know, present. This gives you a large view of the current slide you’re using as well as a (smaller) preview of the one coming up.

 

Ideally, this is your state of mind, as well. Most of your attention is on being in the present, connecting, engaging. Only a small part of your mind is keeping tabs on what’s coming up, to make sure you transition to the new information cleanly.

 

If you’re thinking more about where you’re going than where you are now, you’ll talk faster, drop your transitions, and miss opportunities. Stay in presenter view.

How do I start?

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Start with something interesting.

 

Sometimes when people are creating a speech, they treat their content like it’s an Agatha Christie mystery—they save the most important, engaging stuff for two-thirds of the way through.

 

I’m going to challenge you to put it right up front—tell us why we’re here. Tell us what the most important thing is. Hook us with the good stuff, and we’re yours for the duration.

What came before.

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In theatre, sometimes we talk about “the moment before.” We’re referring to what happened to a character right before they entered the scene we’re watching. There are clues in the script that tell us what state of mind they’re in, how they’re feeling, who they just saw, etc.

 

This is important because the character didn’t just start to exist the second they walked onstage; they have a back story and relationships and feelings and thoughts. Young actors often forget this, and they need a nudge to remind them what the circumstances are for the character.

 

The funny thing about this is that as people, just living our lives, we do this All. The. Time. We’re constantly bringing the last thing we did into the next thing. Traffic is bad on the way to work, so we bust into the first meeting of the day out of sorts. We answer the phone while still talking to the person in our office, “—so yeah, I’ll come in there when I’m finished here—hello?” Sometimes we schedule the last thing over the next thing; I have been on a dozen conference calls during which someone working from home is answering the door to let painters/pest control/carpet cleaners inside.

 

This is human nature. We’re affected by our experiences, and we bring them with us. There is a case to be made, though, for  making a fresh start. What if we take three seconds to re-center, get grounded, and find a fresh intention before we do the next thing? As always, asking “what is this for? how do I want to make the people I’m with feel?” can help us focus and see what’s next with fresh eyes.