Booher BanterBusiness Communication Consultant

They did it to me again. The sponsor for one of my upcoming keynotes sent out a slide master template, asking all their speakers to use it for their slides to give the conference program “consistency.”

I have no complaint about consistency—and usually such templates are flexible and harmless enough. But this one looked pathetic: It attempted to confine us to a simple slide title and bullet points. Can you imagine such in this day and age? (Yep. I called to verify. No art. No animation. No imbedded video. No audience polling. They wanted just boring bulleted text “because it was for senior executives.” Obviously, the template had been designed by someone who’d never presented to senior executives, and nothing could change his mind. Rather than consistency, “command and control” came to mind.)

The days of creating slides with clip art and bullet points are long past.

If you want to see what’s now possible––and often expected––to convey complex information for your business presentations, technical presentations, and webinars. Take a look at these eye-popping visuals: http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2010/10/40-creative-and-informative-infographics.html

Granted, you wouldn’t want to spend your day creating these kinds of slides for the routine briefing, but it’s nice to know what’s available and possible with today’s tools and a little creativity (okay, maybe a lot of creativity). So what are the guidelines for creating and using visuals that accomplish your goal?

Top Ten Tips for Developing and Using Visuals

1. Consider the purpose: Ask yourself these differentiating questions: Do I intend to display this visual as a slide during a live presentation? Or am I using this visual for other “static” purposes (handout, book, brochure, website)? In a live presentation, the audience has only seconds or a couple of minutes to see the slide. Can they grasp all that’s there? Do you as presenter want to compete with your visual for your listeners’ attention?

On the other hand, if you intend the visual as a “keeper,” by all means, let your creativity run wild about how much you can display on one slide. If it takes half an hour for the viewer to study your visual, that’s their choice.

2. Start with the concept: Think: What do I want to show—not what do I want to say. Far too many presenters begin with their visuals as their outline for speaking. They create slide titles for their main points, and then go back to fill in the bullet points around that skeleton. They aim to make the slides their notes as they speak. And once they’ve developed these time-consuming visuals, they have no heart to dismantle them—even when they realize that they’ve wandered off track.

Worse yet, sometimes presenters take shortcuts by pulling previously used slides from other slideshows. Never mind that the slide doesn’t quite make the right point. As long as it contains key data or a difficult-to-develop diagram, they grab it and go, with the intent to orally “make it fit” into the current presentation.

Result? A group of slides that resemble leftovers after Thanksgiving dinner: A few slices of turkey, no gravy, two sweet potatoes, way too much broccoli, and only one slice of pecan pie.

3. Simplify, don’t complicate: As you design the visual, think what can I omit, not what can I cram on the visual. “A picture is worth a thousand words” has become a cliché for good reason. The primary purpose of a visual is to replace words—to simplify ideas so that people can grasp the concept quickly. Look at your visual and ask: Does this art, verbiage, or video simplify or complicate the idea?

4. Make the message clear: No matter how “beautiful,” “creative,” or “comprehensive” your visual, if the viewer cannot understand the point, the visual fails. In our presentations workshops, I sit through presentation after presentation and see briefers show slide after slide—often, creative slides done by their communication departments. Yet when they finish their talk, the audience can’t state the “walk-away” point they were supposed to understand from the slide. Big problem.

5. Integrate: Learn to manipulate your slides. Display them when you need them and black them out (hit the “B” key, plus “Enter”) when you’re not. Never, never, never just turn on the slides and leave them displayed. If you do, the slideshow becomes the presentation, and you, merely a slide narrator.

6. Engage the viewer: Use visuals that encourage participation. For example, if you’ve ever visited a Thomas Kinkade art gallery, the associates will tell you to view the paintings by dimming the lights on individual paintings to see how the colors seem to change and create an entirely different scene and mood. Likewise, your visuals can engage by posing a question that calls for reflection, by revealing data with animation, or by using interactive polling and showing results.

7. Learn to use the capabilities of your software. As I told one client in our presentations workshop, “Your people are still using their PowerPoint® in much the same way as someone who buys an airplane and then drives it from city to city.”

8. Reduce the “noise”: Never use a special effect or feature that calls attention to the whiz-bang of the technology and diverts attention from your message. As a rule-of-thumb, use only one type of transition within a section of your slides. Never use more than three font changes within a slideshow. And avoid so many colors that your visuals look cartoonish.

9. Eliminate errors: Random capitalization, misspellings, and grammar errors create clarity problems—not to mention mar your image.

10. Use visual support, not sabotage: Finally, know when NOT to use a visual. Visuals should support what you say. They should serve to make your point clearer, quicker, funnier, more memorable. If they don’t, they create a barrier. Eliminate them.

Dianna Booher, an expert in effective communications, founded Booher Consultants in 1980.  Dianna has written more than forty books in the fields of business communication and productivity.  As a high-caliber keynote speaker who inspires audiences worldwide, Dianna delivers focused programs to address specific communication challenges.

Contact Booher Consultants, Inc. for additional information.

Share and Enjoy

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

Catching grammar goofs could be an entertaining game as they pop up in social media—-if the prevalence of such errors didn’t make it boring child’s play. But occasionally, something surprises me.

I grabbed my bowl of cereal and sat down to the breakfast table this morning only to read this copy in big bold print on the back of the Post Grape-Nut Flakes box:

This little flake has 3 big things going for it!

* Nutrition

* Crispy

* Taste

Each of the above 3 headings was followed by a paragraph extolling the virtues of those nutritious, crispy, tasty little flakes. Mind you, I love those little flakes. They keep me thin, they taste great, and they give me all the energy I need to keep me happily working until noon.

But I couldn’t focus on the flakes in my bowl for staring at the glaring grammar error. An international cereal company had spent a gazillion dollars to print these boxes without a proofreader to get the grammar right?

Soggy cereal set aside, this was serious business.

This error mimics the fashion faus pax of wearing a brown suit, brown socks, brown belt, one brown shoe—and a one blue shoe—to work. Sure enough, the three items listed didn’t match—two nouns; one adjective.

Mentally, I corrected the headings for them. The copywriter should have written either of these:

This little flake has 3 big things going for it!

* Healthy

* Crispy

* Tasty

OR:

This little flake has 3 big things going for it!

* Nutrition

* Crunch

* Taste

Post cereal packagers are not the only people who make such parallelism errors. (Okay, so I tossed in a grammatical term here. Parallelism simply means that parallel or equal ideas should get equal treatment or expression—all nouns, all adjectives, all phrases, all sentences, or whatever. You get the idea.)

In our business writing workshops and technical writing workshops, participants bring their own samples to class. And by far, the most common parallelism errors occur in lists. They cause readers to do a double-take in determining the meaning. For example, here’s an excerpt from my morning’s email:

For those of you attending the preconference, you’ll enjoy these additional benefits:

1. Opportunity to interact with your peers from all functional areas in the organization

2. Additional resources provided by experts leading the preconference sessions

3. You will have access to a private online library of resources available for the next 90 days.

4. Reduced cost because of the bundled price of preconference and tradeshow programs

5. Reserve your hotel accommodations on a first-come, first-served basis.

6. Survey results (unavailable to the membership as a whole) will be sent to you as a preconference participant.

7. Discussion groups and networking on both Thursday and Friday evenings

Does this parallelism error look familiar now? Items 1, 2, 4, and 7 “match.” They’re noun phrases. But items 3 and 6, as complete sentences, don’t fit the list. Neither does item 5. It’s a sentence, but unlike the other two sentences, it’s an imperative (a command)—and a puzzle. Is that a benefit like the others? Grammar errors frequently lead to clarity problems.

Should I respond to my email writer with a corrected version of the list?

For those of you attending the preconference, you’ll enjoy these additional benefits:

1. Opportunity to interact with your peers from all functional areas in the organization

2. Resources provided by experts leading the preconference sessions

3. Access to a private online library of resources available for the next 120 days

4. Cost reductions because of the bundled price of preconference and tradeshow programs

5. Hotel accommodations available to preconference attendees on a preferential basis

6. Survey results (unavailable to the membership as a whole)

7. Discussion groups and networking on both Thursday and Friday evenings

No, of course, I won’t. That would be rude. I’m going to assume my email writer had dragons to slay today.

But I expect more from Post. They make great cereal. You’d think a company like that could pay an editor to get the grammar right so they wouldn’t start my day off wrong.

Dianna Booher, an expert in effective communications, founded Booher Consultants in 1980.  Dianna has written more than forty books in the fields of business communication and productivity.  As a high-caliber keynote speaker who inspires audiences worldwide, Dianna delivers focused programs to address specific communication challenges.

Contact Booher Consultants, Inc. for additional information.

Share and Enjoy

Posted at 9:43am in Grammar | Permalink | Add Comment » |

In the months since the Great Recession, while stalled between the two viewpoints “we’re rebounding” and “we’re heading for a double-dip recession,” organizations have learned that they can get along with fewer employees. After downsizing, survivors find themselves now filling the roles of two colleagues laid off or outsourced as a part-time contractor. The result: Many middle managers and senior executives who formerly had administrative support staff have been given productivity tools and told to fend for themselves.

Unfortunately, leaders who lack core competencies look naked.

Their skill gaps have become increasingly visible without support staff to “cover” for them. That executive assistant who could organize the quarterly report, draft it with all the commas in the correct place, and knew the difference between affect and effect is gone. The leader lacking writing skills is drafting fewer reports—and those documents completed look like a first draft.

The presentation slides that once reflected creativity of expression have regressed to bare-bone bullets. Without the core interpersonal skills, these leaders fail to listen “between the lines” to understand morale problems among the staff and dissatisfied customers ready to defect to the competition.

People at the top of their game in their technical field get tapped as project leaders, supervisors, or committee chairs for any number of reasons—technical expertise, tenure, tenacity. And they fail miserably when serving as official leader because they lack core communication skills. What’s more, they fear to ask for help.

Here’s why: A recent comment from a CEO at a large hospital system:

“We’ve had a change in plans since our phone call last week,” Jerry, my client contact at the hospital system explained. “All the vice presidents were going to be in your session. But the CEO told me yesterday that anyone at the EVP level should be able to communicate. So he decided not to open the program to them. You’ll be speaking only to those at the director level on down—general professionals.”

Jerry raised his eyebrows in a manner that spoke volumes about the CEO’s pronouncement.

Scratch the surface on your leadership team, and you’ll discover vice presidents who don’t know the difference between narrating a story and telling a story for their annual stockholders meeting. You’ll discover senior managers who can’t summarize findings succinctly in formal reports and presentations. You’ll find directors who can’t facilitate a meeting among strong personalities.

Yet review the “leadership” curricula of many corporate “universities,” and you’ll find courses on creativity, innovation, strategic thinking, visioning, branding, negotiation strategies. That’s not to say leaders don’t need such skills. They do. It’s just that for some, the fundamentals are missing.

The Core Communication Skills Necessary for Leadership

• Organize ideas and information to build a persuasive case
• Speak dynamically to engage listeners
• Tell a great story to motivate, inspire, and illustrate
• Write clearly and correctly to build credibility and get action
• Summarize succinctly to focus attention on priorities
• Listen to understand
• Listen to engage and connect with others
• Ask appropriate questions to analyze and gain insight
• Ask provocative questions to guide and coach
• Answer questions appropriately to illustrate, engage, guide, encourage, mentor
• Resolve their own conflicts
• Mediate conflict between others
• Master their emotions, adapt, and express their feelings appropriately
• Lead productive meetings that engage all participants, end with sound decisions, and generate action
• Participate productively in meetings to produce solid decisions and appropriate action
• Interact with all cultures and both genders in ways that increase trust and commitment

The essence of leadership is communication. People cannot lead if they cannot communicate. Leaders inspire through their communication. They build trust through communication. They deepen relationships through communication. They engage employees and clients through communication.

Leaders of the future understand the necessity of putting first things first in developing their teams. When deciding where to spend your money and your time, build core communication competencies like you’d build your house: Don’t start importing the art collection if you don’t have the plumbing in place.

Dianna Booher, an expert in effective communications, founded Booher Consultants in 1980.  Dianna has written more than forty books in the fields of business communication and productivity.  As a high-caliber keynote speaker who inspires audiences worldwide, Dianna delivers focused programs to address specific communication challenges.

Contact Booher Consultants, Inc. for additional information.

Share and Enjoy

Posted at 9:38am in General Communication, Uncategorized | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Many users have become more intrigued with the technology than the message. Their presentations and customer communications have become all flash with little fodder or foresight.

In our presentations workshops, it’s not unusual to have attendees walk in with their prepared deck of 15-30 slides for a 5-minute presentation. They have photos, imbedded video or audio clips, even live web interaction planned, and all sorts of animation and transitions. When the whiz-bang has ended, the group can’t tell you their point.

Recently, one of our trainers returned to the office with this pronouncement about the day’s experience at a client organization: “Their CEO won’t let anyone in the company use anything on a visual but bullet points. Just an informative heading and bullet points! No photos. No color. Nothing. So everything I tried to introduce to them in our session on how to prepare and design effective visuals was a waste of time. They just said, ‘No, we can’t do that. The CEO has put his foot down—he won’t permit anything but black-and-white bullets.’”

Well, as you can imagine, I had to get to the bottom of that mandate. So I made a call to find out what was going on.

Answer: The CEO’s black-and-white-bullets-only mandate was his response to the frustration to the same problem stated earlier: Glitzy visuals that obscured the message his staff members intended to deliver. (Granted, his mandate seems as extreme as the technology overkill that he hated, but that’s another blog….)

How do you know if technology has become a nuisance in your organization?

Ten Tell-Tale Signs of Troublesome Technology in Communication

• Listeners ask “How did you do that?” questions when you finish a presentation? (Such questions are a big clue that your use of technology distracts rather than supports your message.)
• Listeners can’t summarize your main points when you finish your slideshow.
• Presenters spend more time developing their visuals than their message.
• Presenters find themselves altering what they want to say because they don’t know how to render the message on a visual with the available technology.
• Everyone’s time is wasted in a meeting because of “technical difficulties” in getting equipment to operate properly.
• Speakers complain to conference sponsors about all being required to use the same slide template “for consistency” and “to ensure that the technology works properly” when multiple speakers and sessions are involved.
• Presenters worry more about how the technology will work than how the listeners will react to their message.
• Budgets for “editing” your executives before the organization presents them online grow astronomical.
• When customers and the public meet and hear presenters “live” and in person from your organization, they don’t even recognize them because their “personae” and their presentations have been edited and altered so dramatically with technology.
• Your hallways buzz more frequently about the latest model gadget or gizmo than profits and problems.

It all comes down to this: All technology eventually loses its “newness,” and then users are back to the fundamentals of communication and human nature: Trust. Credibility. Integrity. Inclusiveness. Listening.

Leadership communication is about people and the message first and foremost. Clarity. Brevity. Messages aligned with action. Repetition.

Technology is only a means to the end. Leaders of the future must continually cut through the clutter to the core message.

Dianna Booher, an expert in effective communications, founded Booher Consultants in 1980.  Dianna has written more than forty books in the fields of business communication and productivity.  As a high-caliber keynote speaker who inspires audiences worldwide, Dianna delivers focused programs to address specific issues.

Contact Booher Consultants, Inc. for additional information.

Share and Enjoy

Posted at 10:02am in General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |