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

Evidently, they have. They’re hiding somewhere, because you can’t find them in sentences or signs anymore. It’s as if half the population has decided that they’re too time-consuming to write so they’ve dropped them—as if their omission is just another shortcut like the ubiquitous  “w/” for “with” or “b/c” for “because.”

But maybe I’m jumping to the wrong conclusion in assuming the issue is time. Could it be that some have forgotten hyphenation rules? 

Hyphenate two related adjectives when they precede a noun.

Example:   He conducted a two-hour coaching session.
Example:   This is a high-stakes bidding war.

Don’t hyphenate the adjectives when they follow a noun.

Example:   They claimed the investment was tax exempt.
Example:   Their delivery service is first rate.

Exception:  If the two adjectives are commonly used together before the noun that follows, you do not need the hyphen. The reader immediately grasps the phrase as a unit.

Example:  rental car agency
Example:  income tax forms
Example:  high school students

Should you care? Only if you intend to be clear. Case in point:  Let’s say you walk into a public building and a sign says, “No smoking area available.” Does that mean there is or there is not an area for smoking?” Two different people reading the sign might interpret it two different ways:

“No smoking area available”   
Interpretation:  No one can smoke here at all. It’s a smoke-free environment.

“No-smoking area available” 
People are permitted to smoke here. If you want to get out of the smoke, you can go to the designated “no-smoking” area that’s available (i.e., no-smoking floors in hotels).

Get those hyphens out of hiding and use them. Clarity often depends on it. And when clarity is not the case, proper use just puts you at the head of the class.

Posted at 11:15am in Grammar | Permalink | Add Comment » |

The client must have gone home with a pounding headache last Tuesday evening. At 8:30 I took the stage as the opening keynoter for his conference. The crowd warmed up immediately, laughed in all the right spots, jotted notes on the significant points, and engaged where I asked them to participate.

So far so good. Then just as I clicked on the one and only slide that they really needed to see (versus the other humorous ones), the computer froze. The remote would not move it backward or forward.  I stroll to the keyboard itself and click it. No luck. Fortunately, the A/V crew appeared from behind the stage immediately to handle the situation.

They rebooted. I continued without skipping a beat because, fortunately, my slides simply support the message; they are not the message. Sigh of relief from the client sitting at the front table.

Not a big issue—at this point.

After my keynote, the crowd splits into three 45-minute concurrent sessions. That session goes well. They have scheduled only 5 minutes between sessions for attendees to switch to another concurrent session. The problem? One of the presenters in the first concurrent incorrectly thought his session was to last two hours. Needless to say, when his audience members began to trickle out, he discovered the timing error. Result:  His “holdover” made all the other sessions start late for the second iteration of concurrents.

To accommodate that scheduling error, the sit-down lunch period then had to be cut to 15 minutes—followed by the luncheon speaker. About twenty minutes into her presentation, the fire alarm in the convention center began to sound. The building had to be evacuated for half an hour.

So did the client call it quits? Oh, no. Couldn’t. Sponsors had donated prizes to be given away after the luncheon speaker. So the group had to be reassembled, the luncheon speaker had to retake the stage and finish the last half of her keynote after attendees had stood outside for half an hour, responding to text messages and contemplating their drive home in the heavy traffic.

By the end of the day, I felt fortunate to be first up with the technology freeze—rather than the speaker presiding over the fire-alarm fiasco.

So what to do if you’re similarly unlucky during your big presentation?

Prepare for the worst what-if.

Anticipate Murphy’s Law:  “Anything that can go wrong will.”  Make sure that you can do your presentation without technology support. Technology adds wonders to a presentation. I love it. I use humorous video clips, surveys, the works. I arrive early to verify that everything works. But despite precaution, sometimes technology fails. It’s like humans in that regard.

Know how to “start” officially without starting.

That is, have “buffers” in your introduction so that you can officially start a presentation on time to reward those who arrive on time.  But these buffers actually allow you to stall before getting to your key content before key decision makers arrive—for whatever reason:  an emergency or a late preceding session or meeting.

Prepare one-liners for various equipment failures or other issues.

Here are some of my favorites.

• Loud screeching microphone (“That’s exactly how my wife/husband/teen sounds when I wake them too early.”)
• Loud noise from anywhere out of sight (“Save the pieces. Guarantee’s good until 5 o’clock.”)
• Ringing cell phone  (“Tell Barack I’ll call him back after I finish here.”)
• Ringing cell-phone  (“Tell Mom I’ll be home at 10:00.”)
• Ringing cell-phone  (“Uh-oh. Forgot to tell my probation officer where I was going.”)

Call attention to the distraction, regroup, and regain control.

Sometimes you just have to let the air clear after a major distraction. Let the laughter die down, let the noise stop, or get the problem corrected. You may want to recount a personal experience related to what just happened or simply acknowledge the interruption and then begin again. If you’ve forgotten where you were, ask the audience; they typically show sympathy and oblige you. Or simply recap your main points up to the interruption and continue.

Nobody ever thinks that bad things will happen to good presenters. But they do. So know what to do in case Murphy visits.

Posted at 2:39pm in Communication—Interpersonal | Permalink | 2 Comments |

So what’s the link between employee engagement, high performance, and training? Come find out at the ASTD 2010 International Conference & Exposition in Chicago, May 16-19, 2010!

I’ll be autographing copies of The Voice of Authority and Booher’s Rules of Business Grammar in our booth (#1514) during these hours:

Monday, May 17 from 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Tuesday, May 18, from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Wednesday, May 19 from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m.

The conference also provides a great opportunity to benefit from concurrent sessions and participate in numerous certificate programs. This year’s featured conference speakers include keynoters Daniel Pink and Charlene Li.

While at the conference or on the trade show floor, we invite you to visit our booth to say hello to our staff. If I’m not there when you happen to stop by, I’ll be milling around close by. Just have someone in the booth call or text me, so I can catch up with you and say hello in person to find out what’s going on in your world.

If you haven’t already registered, check out the ASTD 2010 International Conference & Exposition website for instructions on how to do so at the conference.

Hope to see you in the windy city!

Posted at 4:02pm in General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |

People frequently send me their pet peeves about email. And as you might imagine, I have a few complaints of my own. So rather than rant and rave another day about the productivity problem this email glut causes, I’m tossing out three tips not mentioned in previous blogs or interviews:

Put the Action in the Subject Line

When you send an email with a subject line that says “Coding Completed,” your reader has several choices: 

1. Open it and read it. 
2. File it without reading it, thinking they have the key message. 
3. Forward it to someone else to follow up with a next step, reading or not reading as time dictates.

But if you want action, it’s far safer to add that action to the subject line: “Please Review the Completed Coding” or “Please Approve Invoice for the Completed Coding” or “Replace Current Coding with This Completed Coding.”

Think verbs. They typically carry the weight of your message.

Make the Bottom-Line the Opening Line

Forget the warm-up drill, the back-story, the “he said, she said” part of the situation. Summarize the point of your message, the decision, and/or the action you want upfront. Then circle back to elaborate on any details the reader will need to understand the full situation or to take the action.

If you’re writing a mystery novel, drafting a TV sitcom, or telling a joke, then feel free to start with a setup: “There were these three salespeople, see, and the first one goes to the door and ….” The email version of that setup goes like this: “There was this meeting, see, and the manager of marketing stated that …”

Problem: It doesn’t get a laugh—or action—anymore.

Identify the Players on the Field

When you’re responding to questions, make your answers easy to find. Again, you have choices:

1. Type them in a different color below the original question.
2. Label them with your name beside them: [Dianna]
3. Use a different font size or style.

Just don’t run them into the original question, and don’t try to answer five questions all upfront in one blob of a paragraph. (The temptation to do this is great when you’re using some PDAs. The trick is “Select All” in the original email, and then paste the original questions into your reply. Then your PDA will permit you these three choices above.)

You can’t tell the players without the tags or the tricks.

Posted at 10:55am in Communication—Written, Email Hints, Personal Productivity | Permalink | Add Comment » |