Booher BanterYour Resource for the best ideas to improve communications skills.

After a day with a client, coaching executives on using the teleprompter, I came home on Monday evening to discover our top executive had his own prompter problems. When President Obama lost his place while reading from the prompter, came to a dead stop in his speech, and had to tell the operator to move up the script, his recovery wasn’t nearly on par with Bill Clinton’s ad lib during the 1994 state-of-the-union speech when he had prompter problems. 

Glancing at the prompters as he began, Clinton shook his head, grinned, and turned back to the crowd: “I don’t know what speech they’ve loaded into the prompter, but I came to tell you about the state of the union…” And he did just that. He had rehearsed his speech enough to internalize what he intended to say, and he launched in, unfazed for 20 minutes without the prompters.

If you have similar tech glitches when your big day comes (or if an audience member faints—as happened in President Obama’s audience on Tuesday) the crowd often remembers your recovery more than your relapse. For those cases, you need specific techniques.  Keep the following tips in mind to tackle your prompter problems.

• Have a back-up plan. Either know your material well enough that you could deliver the essence of it without a script. Or, have a written script, talking points, or notes for reference in case there’s a problem with the technology.
• Use the technology features to their fullest: Formatting text in colors, bold, or italics aids in reading. For example, you might add names in blue or key statistics in green. Directions such as “pause” should always be in italics. Use bullets to set off items in a series—even a short list of phrases in sentences.
• Pay attention to the punctuation. When speakers cannot see a complete sentence, punctuation tells them how to inflect their voice—even when they don’t know what’s ahead. Some people are careless when entering changes into the prompter, for example, and use a hyphen and a dash interchangeably. The two marks have totally different meanings and cause a reader to inflect the voice in opposite ways. Another problem: Dashes and parentheses call for different inflection. A speaker raises the voice on the words between dashes. A speaker lowers the voice on words inside parentheses. If you’re stumbling over a script on the teleprompter, check the punctuation. That’s often the problem.
• Turn from one teleprompter to the other (side to side) at the end of a sentence and where you see a blank space on the screen—not in mid-sentence. Otherwise, it’s far too easy to lose your place in the script.
• Remember that you set the speaking rate.  It’s the operator’s job to stay with you—not the other way around. When you speed up, the teleprompter rolls faster. When you slow down, the teleprompter slows down. Your call.

Finally, connect brain to words coming out of mouth—just in case the teleprompter falls asleep!

Posted at 9:55am in Communication—Oral | Permalink | Add Comment » |

With the increasing competition for available jobs, we can all take a cue from Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson.

In Sunday’s New York Times Corner Office, columnist Adam Bryant asked Mr. Anderson if there was any change in the qualities he looked for in candidates compared to 5 or 10 years ago.   His reply focused on the intangibles:

“Typically, when you’re hiring a vice president of a company, they already have the résumé, and they already have the experience base. And so what you’re trying to find out about are the intangibles of leadership, communication style, and the ability to, today, really adapt to change.”

Ask any engineer, accountant, or sales professional and they’ll tell you that their week consists of communicating—emails to their colleagues, reports to their managers, proposals and presentations to their clients.  But frequency doesn’t equate to effectiveness.

CEO Anderson continued to drive home his point about the increasing importance of communication today: 

“People really have to be able to handle the written and spoken word.  And when I say written word, I don’t mean PowerPoints.  I don’t think PowerPoints help people think as clearly as they should because you don’t have to put a complete thought in place. You can just put a phrase with a bullet in front of it. And it doesn’t have a subject, a verb, and an object, so you aren’t expressing complete thoughts…”

If you read the same corporate reports, hear the same management briefings, watch the same slideshows as I do in and out of corporations daily, then you understand his point.  Common-sense communication isn’t all that common—nor that clear.

Communicating clearly, concisely, and compellingly has become a core capability for the job candidate.

Read the full article.

Posted at 9:32am in General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Suppose you are CEO and your VP of sales says to you, “The client rejected our proposal, and you may also be surprised to discover that our name has been removed from the bidders list.” You’d probably be wondering who removed your name from the client’s bidders list.

The sentence doesn’t provide that information. And therein lies the problem with passive voice. (Definition below) Does your VP have “an attitude” and just not want to be forthcoming with the information? Is the VP protecting someone? Or is she just a careless communicator?

Passive voice can become a way of life—or at least a bad habit of downplaying mistakes and shirking responsibility.

Politicians use it: 
“Mistakes were made in that situation.”

Managers use it: 
“The decision has been made to stop reimbursing employees for those expenses.”

Spouses use it:
“Your note got misplaced somehow. I didn’t see it.”

Here’s a brief refresher on passive voice: If the subject of the sentence acts, the verb is active. If the subject of the sentence receives action, the verb is passive.

• Active:  Judd hires a new salesperson each month.
  (The subject Judd acts.)
• Passive:  A new salesperson is hired each month.
  (The subject salesperson receives action—gets hired.)

Active-voice verbs generally make writing crisp, clear, and concise. Passive-voice verbs also have a place and purpose: They add variety, slow the pace, and focus on the results of the sentence if the doer is unimportant.

Passive-voice verbs often remove the doers or actors altogether from the sentence. The result is much like a theatre, with a voice-over and no characters visible on the set. Generally, who does what is important in business. That’s why passive voice often leads to clarity problems.

• Passive:  The negotiated deal has been rejected.
  (by which side?)
• Active:  The prospect rejected our proposal, and the evaluation team removed our name from the client’s bidders list. (clear)

Unless you have an “attitude,” don’t create mysteries when you write. If passive voice doesn’t serve a specific purpose, put people in your prose.

Posted at 10:51am in Communication—Interpersonal, Communication—Oral, Communication—Sales, Communication—Written, General Communication, Grammar | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Recently, while leading a writing workshop at Microsoft, I noticed a cluster of people gathering around a particular attendee at the back of the room. The group huddled over his open laptop and listened intently for what seemed like several minutes, then started chuckling, then broke out in roaring laughter. 

After they dispersed, another group gathered, listened intently for a minute or so, then slow snickers, then uproarious laughter, then they left. 

They passed the word to a third group.

My curiosity finally got the better of me, and I wandered back to join the new group forming for their turn around the laptop.  By the time I joined them, the video clip was already running. 

An immaculately dressed, articulate, energetic speaker was explaining a new product on the market.  It sounded somewhat technical, but then I was at Microsoft so what did I expect?  After all, they don’t sell crayons or Kool-Aid. 

I listened more intently.  The guy was smooth:  polished gestures, great posture, winning smile.  The others around me started to ask questions as they watched:  “Who is this guy?”  “Have you seen one of those things he’s talking about?”  “Is this for real?”  To all these questions from the onlookers the guy at his laptop simply shook his head and grinned at his YouTube bait.

Take two minutes to watch the perfectly polished Rockwell Retro Encabulator presentation—one that you should never emulate.

(I would tell you the point of this blog, but that would be like a movie or book reviewer giving away the plot and ending.)

Posted at 11:08am in Communication—Oral, General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |

For tips on communicating with employees during this challenging economy—and in fact, during any tough time—check out Gloria Lau’s column in Investor’s Business Daily.  My main point in her interview with me was that just because employees don’t ask questions about what’s happening in the economy as it relates to their company and their jobs doesn’t mean they don’t HAVE questions.  So the challenge to managers and supervisors is, How do you keep the lines of communication open?

Here are some tips from both my interview and that of Chicago-based communication consultant Stacey Hanke:

• List five pieces of information you’ve heard from your staff this week.  If you can’t, you haven’t been listening.
• Confirm or deny rumors rather than letting them run their course. Set the record straight.
• Give state-of-the-union messages periodically.
• Encourage questions.
• Deliver difficult messages in a calm, confident tone.

For more tips, read the complete article.

Posted at 11:15am in Communication—Interpersonal, General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |

For those of you who may be looking for a job, L. M. Sixel, of the Houston Chronicle, interviewed me this week for a round-up article with a new twist on job hunting:  how to “freshen” your résumé if it has been circulating for a while—or if you think that your career history is rather ho-hum.  

She had heard from others that writing articles and books gave them a career edge, and that path led to my door for a few tips on writing quickly.

If you have a few hours to spend on writing some industry articles on your area of expertise or a few weeks to try your hand at writing a book (you can sell it first with a great proposal), then you may want to check out what I and the others had to say.

Read the full article here.

Posted at 10:19am in Books | Permalink | Add Comment » |

We’re bombarded daily with numbers as to whether the economy is improving or still declining—new home sales, jobs lost per month, first-time claims by those applying for unemployment benefits, manufactured goods produced/sold. 

As the different politicians and reporters try to tell us what the numbers mean, I can’t help but recall this classic story that we tell in our presentation training workshop:  During the Cold War, there was a two-person race between an American and a Russian. The American came in first and the Russian second. The American newspapers reported that a major race had taken place and the Americans won—with the Russians coming in dead last. The Russians reported that there was a major race and the Russians came in second—with the Americans coming in next-to-last.

The point is clear:  Both the Russian and the American reporters wanted their constituents to feel good about how their teams performed. 

Presenters do the same. They select their statistics and their facts to spin their stories and achieve their goals.  Spin happens with facts or statistics or relationships or rituals.  Politicians,  pollsters, pediatricians, and programmers spin and hear spin. 

So what?  Listen discriminately so you’re not “spun” out of control and off target.

Posted at 12:16pm in Communication—Oral, General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |