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In the book “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect”, John Maxwell has five chapters devoted to principles of connecting, and five chapters devoted to practices of connecting.   I have spent five weeks on the first five chapters covering those principles, and today I start on the second part of the book, with the practices. The first practice of connecting is in the sixth chapter, and it is “Connectors Connect on Common Ground”.

In the last post, I discussed the fact that finding common ground is often the basis for international diplomacy, so the principle works on the largest stage there is.   It also works on the stage you are going to be standing on to give your speech, and this post discusses the barriers often encountered in trying to find common ground with your audience.

1.  Assumption–“I Already Know What Others Feel and Want”

It’s unwise to make assumptions about people based on their background, profession, race, gender, age, nationality, politics, faith, or other factors.    People’s idiosyncrasies often contradict one’s assumptions, because these are based on generalizations.    A person is neither an average nor any other kind of statistic!

Stop the judging and start paying attention to what people say, how they think, and above all, what they do.   Then you may find common ground with someone who has a different … background, profession, race, gender, etc.

2.  Arrogance–“I Don’t Need to Know What Others Feel, or Want”

It’s one thing to assume that you know what others feel or want.   It’s even worse not to CARE what others feel or want.   This kind of person thinks of themselves as being not just different in degree, but in kind from others.   Losing empathy for others is the first step towards being a complete sociopath, for whom people are mere commodities or objects.     Slavery was a horrible institution because treating people like things takes you down that path.   The first step on that path is arrogance, so don’t take it.

3.  Indifference–“I Don’t Care to Know What Others Feel, or Want”

The people have no desire to know others are a puzzle to me.    I am filled with such xenophilia, love of that which is different from myself, that people who show no desire to learn or experience the outside world are a challenge for me to understand.    It is a form of selfishness because it says that the present horizon of my experience is all that I want to experience.   It implies that you have already grown enough and in a way are already perfect.    If you focus on yourself and your own comfort you will not be able to put yourself in the shoes of others to glean what they want and need.

The development psychologist Jean Piaget said that children typically move through various stages of development.   From two to seven years old, they are in Pre-Operations Stage where they are egocentric.    One test of this is to show a child a ball that is painted yellow on one side and blue on the other.    The tester shows both sides to the child, points the blue side towards the child, and asks “which side do you see?”, and the child answers “blue”.   Then the tester shows the yellow side towards the child, and asks “which side do I see”?   If the child has passed out of this stage, it will answer correctly, “blue.”   If it is still in the Pre-Operations Stage they will answer “yellow.”   Because they are egocentric, they are incapable of taking the perspective of another person than themselves.   The sad thing is that,  those adults who exhibit the indifference mentioned in the previous paragraph are, in a way, emotionally equivalent to those 2-7 year olds.

4.  Control–“I Don’t Want Others to Know What I Know, Feel, or Want”

In order to make a connection, you not only have to understand others, but you have to open enough for them to be able to understand you.    When I was working at Mitsubishi Motors, there used to be a saying prevalent among the American employees.    “The Japanese give information to the American employees on a  need-to-know basis:   meaning if you are an American, you don’t need to know.”    I didn’t agree with this saying, because I was fluent in Japanese and English and could understand what they were saying without any difficulty and my ability to understand Japanese meant that there was no barrier I perceived in getting information.

However, it bothered me that some people felt that:   that must mean that that perception exists, whether or not it is based on actual reality or not.    That got me started on contemplating how a global project should be run, when there are different languages spoken by the various participants, and the necessity for a global communications plan to reduce the risk of miscommunication.

If you are a leader, don’t isolate yourself, and don’t keep your employees in the dark.   Inform people, make them a part of what’s going on, and include them in the decision-making process whenever possible.

Now that you’ve learned what not to do in order to find common ground, the next post will discuss what you should do in order to cultivate a common ground mindset.

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In the book “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect”, John Maxwell has five chapters devoted to principles of connecting, and five chapters devoted to practices of connecting.   I have spent five weeks on the first five chapters covering those principles, and today I start on the second part of the book, with the practices. The first practice of connecting is in the sixth chapter, and it is “Connectors Connect on Common Ground”.

I will introduce the subject where finding common ground with one’s adversary was literally a matter of life and death.

1.   Introduction–The Cuban Missile Crisis

There were two weeks in October 1962 when the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union was in danger of becoming a very hot war indeed.    How hot?   Oh, a couple million degrees, because that’s the temperature in the center of a nuclear explosion.   You see, we almost had a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  At that time, John F. Kennedy was the president of the United States and Nikita Khrushchev was the Premier of the Soviet Union.

The United States had deployed nuclear missiles in Turkey that were capable of reaching Moscow, and so in a sort of global chess game, Khrushchev conceived of a plan to counter this by deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba that could be pointed towards the U.S.

On October 14^th, 1962, their plans were found out.   A US spy plane on a reconnaissance mission over Cuba took pictures of seemed to be a missile base construction site.

The CIA analyzed the photographs identified the objects as being medium-range ballistic missiles.   These were the rockets that would carry nuclear warheads to their targets in the U.S., but they did not see any warheads themselves.    So they assumed that the warheads had not yet been delivered, and that the Soviet Union would soon be sending ships to deliver them to Cuba.

The President was informed of the existence of the missiles in Cuba and he held a meeting with members of the National Security Council, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military.    There were three options discussed, diplomacy, a limited blockade to prevent the warheads from reaching Cuba, and a full-scale invasion.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously agreed that the only option to remove the threat was a full-scale attack and invasion.   They figured that since the nuclear warheads were not yet in Cuba, the Soviets would not be able to stop the U.S.

The National Security Council preferred the blockade option, which Kennedy accepted,  but the military was directed to prepared for the full invasion just in case.

Meanwhile, on a beach in Miami, Florida there was a little boy who was playing with his grandfather.    He and his mother had flown from Chicago to spend a vacation there.    That night they saw President Kennedy on the television who announced that Cuba had missiles aimed at the U.S. and that the U.S. would launch a blockade around Cuba.

The Soviet Union now gave its response, saying that it would view a blockade as an act of aggression and that their ships would defy the blockade.   The situation was now at a stalemate; the U.S. raised its defense level to condition red.   There is only condition beyond this, condition white, which just happens to be the color of the center of a nuclear explosion.

That night, the boy who staying with his grandfather heard the voice of his father on the telephone calling to tell him that he loved him very much.    You see, the father was a reporter who knew the seriousness of the situation, and knew that his son was in a place that would very likely be a target of a nuclear attack in the case that war broke out.   He wanted to memorize the sound of his son’s voice in case he never heard it again.

At 6:00 PM on the night of October 26^th, the State Department received by teletype a very long and emotional letter written by Khrushchev .

“Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of a rope in which you have tied the knot of war.   Let us take measures to untie that knot.  We are ready for this.”

Tommy Thompson from the State Department,  a former ambassador to the Soviet Union, was sitting at the elbow of the President reading what he referred to as the soft, diplomatic message which he said had come directly from Khrushchev.    Just then, another message that came in that was more threatening and it was the message that had written by the hardliners in the Kremlin.

The crucial question now was:   which message should the U.S. respond to, the soft message or the hard message?

Tommy Thompson had knowledge of the Russian language, but even more importantly, because of his time as ambassador to the Soviet Union, he knew the Premier personally.   He could empathize with him, and knew exactly what the Premier was thinking.   He said that the Premier was being pushed by his hardliners into a military confrontation and he wanted desperately to find a diplomatic solution that would allow him to save not only the Cuban people from invasion, but to help him save face politically.   President Kennedy finally understood exactly how the Premier felt.

President Kennedy listened to Tommy Thompson, and made a deal with the Soviet Union.   You pull out the missiles from Cuba, and we will remove ours from Turkey.    Khrushchev agreed, and the crisis was now over.

In 1992, it was discovered that the CIA had made a mistake.    Remember how they had assumed there were no warheads in Cuba?   There were over 160 nuclear warheads already in Cuba.   So the blockade accomplished nothing.    But more importantly, if Kennedy had listened to the military, who based their strategic plans on what the CIA had told them, the invasion would have failed and nuclear war would have resulted.

And I would not be standing here today.    Why?   Because that boy I mentioned in the story–was me.

In the documentary The Fog of War, the former Secretary of State Robert McNamara listed several lessons to be learned from the Cuban Missile Crisis, among them 1) be prepared to re-examine your reasoning, which you can see by the fact that the CIA made a mistake regarding the warheads, and 2) empathize with your enemy, which was the key to Tommy Thompson’s diplomatic breakthrough.

In the case of Tommy Thompson, he allowed President Kennedy to see that, although Premier Khrushchev was politically on the other side, in reality they both were in the same position vis-a-vis their military.     The military on each side was overly optimistic about the chances of success in a military confrontation.   In the case of the American military, it was born out of a false premise.   In the case of the Russian military, it was underestimating the willingness of Castro to actually engage in a nuclear war on his own soil, knowing full well the ruination it would wreak on the island of Cuba and its people.

But by seeing the two leaders as follow politicians who not only wanted to resolve the crisis but do it in a way that would be acceptable to their own people, Tommy Thompson paved the way for a solution to the crisis.

That is why, to the lessons proposed by Robert McNamara I would like to add a lesson of my own.  We can learn from Tommy Thompson and use the power of language to engage the language of power.   It is the power of language, and its ability to be an window of understanding, and through that window, to be an instrument of peace, that has motivated me throughout my life.   Why?   Because it allows you to explore the common ground you have with others with whom you speaking, or negotiating.    Peace is found on level ground.

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Yesterday I attended what must be the sixth in a series of workshops held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Park Forest on the subject of Sacred Communication.    Although the title sounds like it is talking about the way one addresses the divine, the actual subject matter is how you address yourself.

When I moved here to the Chicago area last year, it was with some trepidation because I had lived in the area for decades.    Feeling a little bit like Rip Van Winkle, I wondered if it was possible to generate an entirely new network of friends and colleagues.    I was looking for work in my new career of being a project manager, and while doing that, I was also trying to recast myself not just as an employee of a company, but as a leader, in such a way that would gain me success that had so far eluded me where I used to live in Orange County, CA.

But you know that saying, “lead, follow, or get out of the way?”   Sometimes the biggest factor that prevents us from being successful is within ourselves.    The Sacred Communication, which is like spiritual gardening, promised to help me not get in my own way, so to speak.   When I say “spiritual gardening”, I mean it is analogous to planting a garden.

First you till the soil, then you plant seeds, but you also remove weeds, prevent bugs from eating the fruits of your labors, and there is a lot of constant work that needs to be done so that the new plants get enough sunlight, water, and nourishment from the soil.    In a similar way, you have to till the soil (do introspection), plant seeds (visualize your goals and make concrete plans to achieve them), and then monitor the growth.   Weeds (thoughts whose origin is fear) can choke off the growth of the seeds, so you have to remove them, not just once, but CONSTANTLY.

In this latest workshop, the leader of the workshop, Henrietta Byrd, asked two important questions.

1.   What do you wonder about?

People responded with something that was of paramount concern to them–for example, I was wondering about what my next success was going to be after I completed the project I am currently working on.    However, after we named our individual areas of concern, she said, “now, when I said ‘wonder’, did you interpret that to mean what you ‘worry’ about or whether you ‘wonder’ in the more neutral sense of ‘speculate with your imagination’?”

Because if we were WORRYING about the outcome of a particular situation, then this is essentially taking the form of “IF something negative happens, THEN how will I deal with it?”    Now, this does not mean that you shouldn’t plan for the future so that you have a plan B to fall back on if plan A doesn’t materialize.    However, planning for a possible negative outcome is not the same as DWELLING on it.   If you dwell on the negative, your mind will create ways for that negative outcome to happen.

So if you dwell on the positive, your mind will likewise starting thinking of creative ways of how you can get from here to there.   Once you have fixed a positive goal in your mind, and you are doing all you can to achieve it, then LET GO and trust in life that the goal will materialize.

So I am concentrating on doing what I am doing and achieving the goals I have set out for myself, but with an attitude of wonder and not of worrying about what my next project will be.

2.  What have you had enough of?

What are you so sick of in your life that, if you had a chance to, you would get rid of it and have no more of it from here on out?    I don’t mind sharing that, in my case, it was “excuses”, which translate for me as the belief that the reason for my not achieving my goals is something or someone outside of myself.

Once Henrietta asked this, she then said, “okay, so you want to get rid of that.   What concrete steps are you going to take to do so?”

There are some problems which because they are difficult to solve, I find myself avoiding because of the emotional charge I attach to them (“I can’t solve it because I am not good enough/smart enough, etc.”).    Once I realized that I was using this as an excuse not to solve these problems, I realized I needed what I call an “ego-bypass operation”, meaning that I need to make it less about me as a person, and focus instead on principles that will help me deal with the problems.

So I came up with a little slogan to help me out:  “I’m eager to go to the problems that scare me, and treat them instead as puzzles that dare me.”   This slogan has two parts to it:   going to the problems that scare me, which means that I will no longer tolerate avoidance behavior.    And then when I go to the place that scares me, I will use the calming techniques that Pema Chodron recommends in her book “Go to the Places that Scare You”, because this allows you to face reality and detach yourself from fear.   And if you detach yourself from fear, one thing you can do to propel yourself in the right direction is to attach yourself to the same problem, but with a different emotion, that of curiosity and delight.    How can you delight in problems?

Well, for one thing, I LOVE puzzles:   logic puzzles and cryptic crosswords being some of my favorites.   If I approach a puzzle I can’t solve, I don’t go away in anger or in self-recrimination.   “Oh, gosh, I’m so stupid!”   No, if I were stupid, I wouldn’t even TRY to solve such complicated puzzles.    If I solve the puzzle, yes, I do feel a little bit of an ego boost.  But if I can’t solve it, I don’t just give up.   I put it aside TEMPORARILY, after I have made a decent attempt.   And then I come back to it–and it is amazing how what the solution to what was though to be an unsolvable problem now taps you on the shoulder and says, “here I am!”    That’s because your subconscious often times continues working on the problem after your conscious mind has temporarily thrown in the towel.

Well, why not deal with the various problems of my life like puzzles?   Rather than eagerly avoiding them, I would start eagerly tackling them.   Not just because I want to solve the problems, but because the process is FUN and makes my mind sharper for having done so.    So this is an example where I am trying to get out of my own way, and work towards solutions that will propel me forward.

And if I do that, I have trust in life that I will be rewarded.   This is not just blind faith, either:   I started these Sacred Communication Workshops about one year ago when I had NO accomplishments here in Chicago under my belt.   Now, in the one year since then:

• I volunteered as a project manager for the Chicagoland Chapter of the Project Management Institute’s Professional Development Day Project for 2013, which was a very successful event for the chapter.
• I got a part-time project management position in November 2013 which ended in April 2014.
• I then got a full-time project management position as a Chief Project Manager for the Professional Development Day Project for 2014 (based on my work last year).
• As a Vice President Education for my Toastmasters Club (Homewood-Flossmoor Toastmasters Club #1451), I helped our club achieve the highest level of achievement at the club level, the President’s Distinguished Club award, for having achieved all 10 goals in the Distinguished Club Program.
• As an Assistant Area Governor for Area S56, I worked together with Felton Armand, and helped our Area achieve the highest level of achievement at the Area level, the President’s Distinguished Area award, for having more than 50% of the clubs in our Area achieve the level of Distinguished Club or higher AND having sponsored the growth of a new club in our Area (Richton Park)
• I have been selected as Area Governor for my area for the upcoming Toastmasters year (July 2014-June 2015).
• I have been elected as President of my home club Homewood-Flossmoor Toastmasters Club, and have been elected as the Vice President Education for my second club, the PMI Chicagoland Toastmasters Club.

I have been asked to be in a leadership position both professionally and at my church; I am applying for those positions, but will not mention what they are specifically until I actually achieve them.   But these opportunities are coming unexpectedly, and so I am truly in a position of not worrying about success, but simply wondering, what direction is it coming to come from?

And I achieved this by, as the title suggests, getting out of my own way and not preventing my own success.    I hope you can ask yourself the questions Henrietta asked us, and take some quiet time out for reflection.   As Maya Angelou said in her last public statement on Twitter before she passed away, “listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.”

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In the fifth chapter of his book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, John Maxwell describes his fifth principle for connecting, namely, that connecting is more a learned skill than a natural talent.

In the final segment of the chapter, John Maxwell has some final reflections on this principle in the section he calls “Becoming a Connecting Communicator is a Process”.

John Maxwell opens up with an anecdote about his early days when he was studying for the ministry in college, and he was NOT a stellar speaker at the time.   In fact, far from it:   his goal for his first sermon was that he wanted to speak for more than three minutes.    He overshot the mark by more than a little bit:   he spoke for fifty-five minutes.    As he said, his audience was not captivated, they were held captive.    He concludes this anecdote by the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “All great speakers were bad speakers first.”

This is true in other art forms as well.    When Chuck Jones, the famous cartoonist, when to art school, his teacher said, “everyone has at least 10,000 bad drawings in them first.    Practice drawing every day so you can these bad drawings out of the way and go onto the good stuff!”    Chuck Jones practiced diligently, and did just that.   By the time he was hired by a cartoonist for Warner Brothers, he had done so many drawings that the bad ones had “gone out of his system.”

Even if you are not studying communications formally in school, you should become a student of communications anyway.    Don’t study just theory, but listen to a number of speakers, and see which ones you feel are effective and which are not so effective.   Start evaluating what is was that made the effective speakers effective and copy their techniques.   However, you need to make them your own so that you are borrowing only that which fits within your own communication style and your personality.    And remember the old joke about the guy who asked someone in New York how to get to Carnegie Hall.    The answer:   PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

This chapter’s principle is in effect a combination of good news and bad news.   The good news is that anyone can become better at communications.   The bad news is you have to be willing to work for it.   But if you have the right attitude, you can turn that bad news into good news.    If you are passionate about your subject and you have the burning desire to improve, then as Noel Coward once said, “work is more fun than fun”!

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In the fifth chapter of his book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, John Maxwell discusses his fifth principle of connecting, namely, that connecting is learnable skill rather than a natural talent that only the few possess.

In the previous sections of the chapter, John Maxwell’s friend Charlie Wetzel discusses five ways in which John Maxwell connects well with an audience, and four ways in which he connects well when he is networking on an individual basis.   In the final section of his comments, Charlie Wetzel discusses the principle behind how John Maxwell connects when he using the written word.

1.   The Main Point

Charlie Wetzel says that when he captures John Maxwell’s ideas in writing, he tries to “create the same response in a reader that John would get it if he were conveying it personally.    What does this imply?    You try to convey the personal touch of a face-to-face meeting without the physical content of a person being present.   How is this done, with the understanding that the person cannot respond to you in real time?

a.  Understand Others

Here you cannot reach out and ask questions and draw the person out.    If you are conveying information, however, invite the person to ask questions.    You can understand others by trying to understand what you would want to read if you were receiving the information.

If you give too many details, it can make the correspondence to lengthy.   I always fear there being confusion about what I am saying, so I tend to do this and write too much detail.    Yes, if I shorten the communication, it CAN lead to a possibility of heightened confusion, but that possibility already exists, and you will make your reader grateful if you keep you communications short and to the point.

b.  Help Others

If you giving someone a task to accomplish, let them know you are cutting them adrift with the responsibility, but no authority or worse, no resources with which to carry out the task.   Let them know what resources you are willing to lend them in terms of your time of advice.    They are not alone!

If you are imparting information, make sure you write it in such a way as to be useful to the reader, while keeping to the “short and to the point” rule mentioned above.

c.   Include Others

You can tell people that when you read this information, you thought of them because you thought it might be useful to them.   That personalizes it rather than just being a datum you are passing along.

d.  Add Value to Others

Don’t just impart information, impart confidence.   Mention past triumphs that the reader has accomplished, extol their virtues, and give them a vision to reach out for.    Their lives will be improved by your having send them the information, not just because the information is worthwhile, but because the way you sent it to them.

And going beyond the word of e-mail, make sure you take the time out to send out good old-fashioned “thank you” cards to people who have done a good job.   They may not mean much to the Millennial generation, but people in their 30s or over will appreciate it as an example of manners that they probably have not seen for a long while.

2.   Tear Down This Wall

The wall in this case is the reserve that people normally have, which is a wall they build around themselves to protect their ego.   It also prevents hurtful things from coming out, in that it prevents you from saying things which may be hurtful to others, albeit truthful.

When I write to a person, I tend to hide behind my reserve and use more formal language.    You should try to write the same words as if you are sitting in the room with the person to whom you are sending the communication.    In a letter, “Dear …” is an acceptable formula.   In an e-mail communication, would you say “Dear …” to the person you are writing to?   No, unless it is a term of endearment, which in this context, is probably not the case.   You would say, “hello” or “hi”.   In an e-mail that is acceptable, because that is an informal means of written communication.

The distinction between informal and formal is not ironclad, because many Millennial students studying for the PMP exam in the workshop we put on honestly thought that e-mail is formal communication, with informal communication being texting.    Well, relatively speaking, it is more formal, but compared to a written letter, it is still informal.

However, even in a letter you can, if you are writing to someone with whom you have an already-established relationship, write in a style that is more conversational and less “organizational speak”.    This closes the distance between you and the reader, whereas the “organizational speak” deliberately creates distance and induces an inequality into the relationship.

The fact that John Maxwell, as a famous person, goes out of his way to connect with people as just another person is a testament to the fact that he, unlike many famous speakers I have heard, is not in need of what I call an “ego-bypass operation.”    He bypasses it all the time itself, and that is why is such a beloved speaker and leader!

Tomorrow’s post wraps up the chapter with John Maxwell’s challenge to the reader–on the one hand, the fact that connecting is a learnable skill means that there is hope for everyone!    On the other hand, it means that no one is off the hook for being a bad connector–you can always do something to improve, you should always do something to improve, and if you are going to be an effective leader, you must always do something to improve!

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In this fifth chapter of his book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, John Maxwell explores his fifth principle of connecting, namely, that connecting is more a matter of an acquired skill than of natural talent.

In the last section, Charlie Wetzel, a friend of John Maxwell’s, described John’s five methods for connecting with a live audience.   In this section, he describes how John connects in the exact opposite situation from a mass audience:   how he connects well with individuals.   Here are four methods that John uses to connect on a one-to-one basis.

1.  Understand Others

One story that John Maxwell related in a different book was that of a nineteenth century American heiress who married and moved to Britain after her marriage to an English gentleman.    She had a chance to meet Prime Minister William Gladstone at a formal party one week, and then by happenstance she was invited to a formal party where the former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was in attendance.    She had a chance to compare the way the two men connected.   She said Gladstone made you feel like he was the most interesting person in the room, but Disraeli, on the other hand, made you feel like you were the most interesting person in the room.    He listened to what she had to say, asked questions and drew her out, commenting amiably on what she had to say.    Oscar Wilde was also a famous conversationalist from that period.    He was the most celebrated comic playwright of his era, and those whom he met at dinner parties were often shy of saying anything in front of this witty genius.   However, he found wit and delight in what they had to say, and that is why he was so highly regarded (before a homosexual scandal destroyed his life).

2.  Help Others

If you are at a networking event looking for connections to a person who may help you find a new position, try turning the tables and helping others whom you meet.    In the course of helping them, they will naturally ask what it is that you are looking for.   And when they come across a helpful piece of information, they will naturally want to help you, because they have fond memories of you for having helped them when they needed it.

3.  Include Others

When you see someone in the corner at a networking event who is standing by him or herself, then go over and introduce yourself.   Take away the nervousness and social awkwardness they feel by including them.    Ask what they do and what they are interested in.   If you know someone at the event that is in their same field or who could help them find something they are looking for, introduce them.   Or if you know someone who is not there at the event who can help them, get them in touch with the new person by exchanging that person’s e-mail.

4.  Add Value to Others

Try to give something to the other person before they leave:   a piece of information, a piece of advice, an encouragement, something that will make the person glad they came to the event, and glad they talked to you.

These are excellent ways of getting to connect with people in a networking system.

The next post will deal with how to connect with the written word.

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John Maxwell’s fifth chapter of his book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect is devoted to the principle that “Connecting is More Skill than Natural Talent.”    One of the surprises in the chapter is that he has friends of his describe his ability to connect to a live audience.    In this piece by Charlie Wetzel, called “The Art of Connecting,” he shares 5 ways in which John Maxwell has learned how to connect well to a live audience.

1.   Possess Great Confidence

You know the saying, “lead, follow, or get out of the way”?    One of the people you should get out of the way of is yourself, or that is, the negative voice in yourself which says “I can’t”.   If you listen to this voice and give in to it, it is not a triumph of the will, but a triumph of the won’t.   Your ego likes to have boundaries, and it likes to create categories such as “things I am capable of” and “things I am not capable of.”   You need to stop drawing those boundaries, go into the presentation with a positive attitude, and then, suddenly, when it is over, you may have found that you enlarged the boundary without even trying.

If you have personal issues related to past failures, then make sure you use them as a springboard or a launching pad, and not as a prison cell.    You do this by listing lessons learned, and, with a sense of humor, being able to laugh at your mistakes.   I now have a humorous speech I am preparing in Toastmasters where I in essence make fun of what I used to do in my first speeches.    Why?   Well, I sure am not going to make fun of somebody else who is just starting, because I don’t want to hurt their confidence.    But with a little bit of time and distance from the event, you can develop enough perspective to laugh about it.   Another way of getting confidence is to prepare well, and even have checklist of all the preparations needed to be done so that you don’t have part of your mind thinking, “did I forget to do such-and-such?”

And if something unexpected DOES happen, deal with it the best you can, because if you have the audience in the first minute of your speech, most of them will be on your side and will forgive you for a mistake you make or if something happens that you didn’t plan for.

2.  Exhibit Authenticity

Groucho Marx once said, “Hollywood is all about sincerity–if you can fake that, then you’ve got it made there.”   That may be fine for Hollywood, but in the world of presentations, you cannot fake sincerity, or at least not consistently or for very long.   Admitting weaknesses as well as strengths gives you enough perspective that, if someone says something flattering, you won’t let it go to your head.

One of the reasons why we practice evaluations in Toastmasters is that, no matter how good the person is who spoke, you need to give them something concrete that they can improve on.   Just telling them “oh, that was just WONDERFUL!” may massage their ego, but it doesn’t help them improve their message.

3.  Prepare Thoroughly

When you start writing speeches, you may write a script, but then you go from a script to an outline, where each point of the outline represents a certain communication unit:   an idea, a quote, a story, a statistic.    One way to give good output in a speech is to always have good input from various sources like books, magazines, and articles from the Internet.    One tip that John Maxwell uses is that he does his outline with a four-color pen to differentiate the body of the story from the illustrations or examples of it.

Besides working on the presentation at hand, a person should start carrying around a notebook to jot down ideas that come while the mind is wandering in what is commonly called a “daydream”.    These can be the seeds of future presentations, or they may, on the spot, give you the idea for a presentation right then and there.   Always be incubating your next speech!

4.  Utilize Humor

You need to find your style, which for me always involves leavening whatever message I have to give with a little humor, even if it is supposedly a serious topic.    Serious people, according to John Cleese of Monty Python fame, are able to look at a problem seriously but yet have enough perspective with relationship to the problem that they can always see it from a humorous light.   This often gives them additional insights with which they can solve the problem.   Solemn people, who do not have a sense of humor, on the other hand, are incapable of taking a serious subject and laughing at it.   This gives them a sense of righteous indignation towards those that do, but it doesn’t help them gain any more perspective, or indeed give them any additional insight into the problem that they purport to want to solve.

5.  Focus on Others

You are not there to say the message in order to get the audience to focus on the MESSENGER, you are there to say the message in order to get the audience to pay attention to the MESSAGE.    I have a saying that goes, “there are three stages to being a Toastmaster:   the first is when you find it difficult to get on stage, the second is when you find difficult to get off stage, and the third is when you know when it is time to get on and to get off stage.”

The first stage is when you have fear of public speaking, and this diminishes, but never truly goes away.    When people notice how well you are starting to speak, there is a tendency to let it get to your head and think it is all about you, when it isn’t.    That is the second stage when you like being up there on stage because of all the attention you are getting.   But it is still feeding the ego, and so you need to get to the point where you realize that you are unique, and you have been sent here on a mission to give your message about what you care about to the world, starting with the audience sitting right in front of you.   You get on stage to give the message, but once you have given it, you can relinquish the stage because you have done what you came to do.    You can rest assured that you did your best, and you can leave the stage–and your performance, to rest.

Now there are other ways of connecting rather than to a live audience, namely, to people on a one-on-one basis and through the written word.   The next post gives some advice on that subject from John Maxwell.

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In this fifth chapter of the book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, John Maxwell discusses the fifth principle of connecting, namely, that connecting is more a matter of skill than natural talent.

People who draw others to them are called charismatic, and people like to listen to them.    Charisma is something that many people associate with a personality trait, or personal chemistry, or something that a person is born with.   Well, John Maxwell has good news for the rest of us:   it is not an innate talent, but a way of looking, talking, and acting which influences others and causes them to listen to you.

This post covers some of the factors that make people want to listen to you.

1.   Relationships–Who You Know

One way to gain credibility with the audience is to associate your statements with a) somebody who already has credibility with the audience, or b) somebody whom the audience knows and likes.

In the first case, I am talking about using quotations from famous people, especially those people who are in the same field as your audience members.    If I am talking to some Toastmasters in District 30, I can say “Pres Vasilev once said such-and-such” and I will have everybody’s attention, because he is the Toastmaster from the Chicagoland area who won the World Champion of Public Speaking, so everybody in District 30 recognizes his name.   If I were going to some other group, I probably wouldn’t mention him because he may not be known outside those Toastmasters circles.

In the second case, I am talking about relating the subject matter to the audience’s own experience, because that will lend credibility to your statements–they can verify it against their own experience.

2.  Insight–What You Know

Benjamin Franklin was an expert in so many areas:   printing and publishing, politics, the natural sciences, and diplomacy.    And yet when he was assigned as a diplomat to go to France as America’s ambassador in order to ask for financial assistance to wage the Revolutionary War against Britain, although he was in his 70s, he learned how to speak French so that he could make an impact to his audience.    And yet rather than dressing as elegantly as the French, he affected very simple dress, so as to make himself approachable to all people.   It was a studied effect, but it worked:    he was the most accomplished American of his age, but he was also the most beloved American next to George Washington.

He always was learning new things:   on his way by boat to France on the diplomatic mission, he leisurely wondered about the reason why the climate east of the Atlantic ocean was so much milder than the climate at the same latitude west of the Atlantic ocean.    But being a scientist, this idle curiosity soon took the form of experimental measurements, as he lowered thermometers in jars to various depths of the water, and thus he discovered the deep-ocean current known as the Gulf Stream, whose northward flowing waters were warmer than the surrounding ocean.

So if you want to relate to others in various fields, be interested in what is happening in those fields.    Even if you are not an expert in a given area, it will be a compliment to the audience in that field if you show in your presentation how fascinating the subject can be.

3.  Success–What You Have Done

One of the reasons why I recommend Toastmasters to those who are looking for a new job is that it doesn’t seem at first that it is related to a new job.   But being able to excel at impromptu speeches will make your interviews go more smoothly.   And if you start having successes in your speeches, to the point that you have a Competent Communicator Award, or in your supporting roles in the meetings, to the point that you have a Competent Leadership Award, those are marks of success that you can take to ANY employer and have them be impressed.

And frankly, if they aren’t impressed, then … (he whispers) go find another employer, because if your employer doesn’t value public speaking and leaderships skills very highly, then it will not be a productive place to further YOUR career.

So elude to your successes, not in a bragging way that points to your own ego, but in a way that lends confidence to your audience.   “I’ve been there, and I have experience in this area, so it is worth your while to listen to what I have to say.”

4.  Ability–What You Can Do

If you get up in front of others and prepare well, it’s amazing how easy it will appear to the audience, although you know that it indeed took a lot of work.    And when talented people do things that SEEM to come effortless, it is interesting to watch.    This is where WHAT you say is not so important as your ability HOW to say it.    I’ve been a MC at a celebration of a wedding anniversary where I had to speak both Japanese and English, and it was something I had never done before, so I practiced the HELL out of my presentation.    When I got the applause from the audience, I had people come up and they didn’t say that I did well, they said they were very moved by what I had said (in both languages).    At one point, there was a delay and I had to “stretch” the presentation out five minutes.   But I had prepared extra material for just that occasion, and I came up with stories about how the couple met, and the woman who organized the event was so grateful to me afterwards.    She said, “when we had to stall, I was hoping that you wouldn’t run out of material, but I was so glad you remembered those stories I told you.”    I told her I had prepared them just in case everything DIDN’T go like clockwork.

The biggest compliment I got was from people who said, “how do you know the couple?”   I had to confess I didn’t, but I told the stories as IF I did.    It took preparation, and the confidence I got from my earlier Toastmasters experience, but later on this year when I apply for a Toastmasters club that trains people to be professional speakers, I can say that I had at least one professional experience so far.    And how I was picked by the woman whose parents she was giving the party for was that I was in her Toastmasters club, and she knew I was a good speaker, AND the only one she knew who was fluent in Japanese (I lived there for five years), so my abilities up to that point GOT me that opportunity.    One success will lead you to furthering your ability, which will lead to further success, and so on, and so on …

5.  Sacrifice–How You Have Lived

For a half hour a day in the morning, I practice five languages with a language app called Duolingo.   For another half hour I practice with a brain training app called Lumosity.   For an hour every day in the evening, I write an article like the one you are reading in my blog.    That makes 2 hours of every day I sacrifice to activities that increase my brain power, that help me communicate in foreign languages, and that further my professional development.

But the dividends these sacrifices give me are what keep me continuing to sacrifice my time to them.   With Lumosity, I have gone from having a brain performance index of 950 or so to something a little more than 1300, which gives me a BPI at the 98.5% percentile for someone my age.    My Duolingo app has me increasing my confidence in five foreign languages, and helps me prepare for certification testing in them.    And this blog has reached 200,000 readers in the past two years!    So they are all have tangible benefits that increase my ability to communicate with people all over the world (this blog has been read by people in over 180 countries).    For that reason, I sacrifice my time willingly.

Let people know what it is you sacrifice your time for, because that will give them an idea of what it is you are passionate about.    Either they will share that passion, or who knows, they make pick up that passion from you!

In the next section of the chapter, John Maxwell repeats a trick he did in an earlier chapter and he has someone else describe John Maxwell’s ability to communicate, which should encourage you that you can do the same thing.   Because as John Maxwell will tell you (in many stories from his books) he wasn’t this way from the very beginning.  And if he could learn how to do it, you can too!

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For all of those who have been elected as club officers at Toastmasters, congratulations!   I hope whoever approached you for this honor did so in a way that conveyed the sense that they were giving you the verbal equivalent of a Hallmark card that says “Congratulations!” rather than “My Deepest Sympathies…”

I have been a club officer a few times but this is the first time that I have been the President of a club, namely, my home club of Homewood-Flossmoor Toastmasters.   I wanted to give some advice for the new club officers who are going to be serving the next term (July 2014-June 2015) with me.    However, I thought I would put down my thoughts on this blog so this advice would be useful for ALL Toastmasters out there who are going to be club officers, ESPECIALLY for those who are doing this for the first time.    All five of these should be in June, so that July 2014 starts off smoothly…

1.   Download the Club Leadership Handbook

At the Toastmasters International website, there is a handbook you can access and download for free:

http://www.toastmasters.org /CLH

I recommend that you print it out or print out those portions that have to do with your role.   The following sections are particularly helpful:

• Anatomy of a Club (shows how the various club roles and club officers interact)
• Club Executive Committee Meetings (shows their importance and how one should be conducted)
• The Club within District Structure (shows how the club fits into the area, division, and district)
• Club Timeline (shows the timeline of when certain deadlines and milestones occur within the Toastmaster’s Year)
• Club Leadership Roles (describes the roles and responsibilities of each of the club officer positions, including a  checklist for the duties pf each position)
• Distinguished Club Program (describes this program, which should be the core of the club’s goal planning for the year)
• Toastmasters Educational Program (explains the awards within each of the two tracks, communications and leadership)
• Club Finance, Public Relations & Marketing (further information for the Club Treasurer, VP-PR and VP-Membership club officers)
• Club Events (including Club Officer Elections, which have obviously just concluded, and the Club Speech Contests, which will start VERY soon after the new year starts)

2.  Choose Which Toastmasters Leadership Institute to Attend

In June, most districts have two opportunities to attend a Toastmasters Leadership Institute or TLI, which is a requirement for club officers to attend.    You should determine which club officers intend to go to which session, so that at least four officers are trained by the end of June, and at best all seven are trained.    If the location of the training is a bit of a commute, you can make things easier by organizing a car pool.

There IS make-up training that is offered, usually in July, but I would encourage all club officers to make it to the TLI if at all possible.   It is not just club officer training that is offered there, but also training to be a judge in a speech contest, and additional educational opportunities.    For example, in the TLI being held in the first half of June in District 30, there are opportunities to go to educational workshops on speech writing, using improvisational techniques in your speeches, and the session I am hosting, which is obtaining resources for your ESL members of your club to improve their pronunciation.

3.   Plan the First Club Executive Committee Meeting

Each Club Executive Committee Meeting should ideally be held one a month, preferably either before or after one of the chapter meetings.    However, the first meeting should be two hours long, so that you can use it to plan out the Club Success Plan.    Therefore, it most likely will be held on a Saturday or Sunday.    Now since the TLI is already going on in June on Saturdays, I recommend finding a Sunday on which at least the following officers can be present:

• President
• Vice President Education
• Vice President Membership
• Treasurer

Ideally, all seven officers will be able to be present.    The reason why I specified the above officers is that the President will lead the meeting, and the other three are needed to help create the Club Success Plan, which needs the input of these officers at the very least.

4.  Have the Current Club Officers meet with the New Club Officers

You should have the current club officers meet together with the new club officers sometime in June.    This can even be done by phone call, but after each club officer reads the club leadership handbook BEFORE the club executive committee meeting and BEFORE the TLI, the new club officer may have a lot of questions which are most easily answered by the current club officer.

Rather than having a mass meeting, I suggest a one-on-one meeting which can either be face-to-face (the best option), or by conference call.     This will not only serve the function of answering the new club officer’s questions, but it will also establish the relationship between the two “generations” of club officers as being a mentor-mentee relationship.

In particular, it is necessary for the Vice President Education to get the educational records of the various club members from the previous VPE.    Only if you know how far each member has gotten in the Toastmasters Educational Program can you properly complete the Club Success Plan.   The VPE needs this information BEFORE the club executive committee meeting in June.

5.  Have a Club Officer Ceremony

This ceremony should be held in June, and the contents of the ceremony are listed in the Club Leadership Handbook.  You need to order a set of club officer pins NOW in order to have them arrive before the ceremony either in the first or second meeting of June.

This is not just a superficial formality.   It emphasizes the fact that the new club officers are not being pushed out on an ice floe, only to drift with the currents.    They are going to be actively supported by the current club officers, and the ceremony itself reflects that.    The pins are badges of respect, authority, and gratitude towards these people for having stepped up and taken a leadership role.

In short, if you engage in these five activities STARTING NOW, you will, by the end of the month, have a series of club officers who do not look like they are deer staring in the headlights of their approaching responsibilities, but rather are leaping at the chance to take on their new roles in the club!

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The fourth chapter of John Maxwell’s book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect covers the fourth prinpiple of connecting, namely, that connecting requires energy.    Each of the five sections of this chapter deals with one of the five ways in which this energy is embodied in the process of connecting.    This fifth and final section of the chapter is concerned with the fifth way, mainly that Connecting Requires Stamina … So Recharge!

1.   Combating Fear

The first emotion that you have to overcome when learning how to do public speaking is that of fear.   Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of making a mistake.   The fear never totally goes away; as the saying goes, you won’t be able to get rid of the butterflies in your stomach, but you can at least get them to fly in formation.   In other words, that fear is an emotion which has energy behind it.   You can channel that energy into constructive channels, and it can fuel your desire to prepare ahead of time in order to at least reduce the chance of your making a mistake.

2.  Introvert/Extrovert

One of the characteristics of an introvert versus an extrovert is that an introvert recharges his or her batteries in solitude, whereas the extrovert recharges his or her batteries through interaction with others.   No matter where your energy is, you will have one, either with the preparation (for extroverts) or the execution (for introverts).   In any case, you will need to recharge your batteries somehow.

3.  Recharging Batteries

How does John Maxwell suggest to do this?   Of course physical exercise is a wonderful way to expend energy in order to get it back in the form of increased metabolism, etc.    Joseph Campbell one time created a formula for what he called the creation of a “sacred space” in your life, where you can incubate creativity.   He said “follow your bliss”, meaning follow the natural direction your thoughts flow in terms of activities, interests, etc., that have you entering a “flow state”, where the passage of time becomes meaningless because you are lost in the moment.

For example, I have a passion for foreign languages.   No matter how busy my day is, I make it a point to use my language learning app called Duolingo and I study one skill in each of five languages–Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese.   This takes about one half hour in total, and doing a little bit each day keeps me progressing in my language skills at a steady pace that is better than trying to study a lot once every week.   But when I come out of the language learning, my brain is energized, not depleted.

4.  Energy = Intensity, not Volume

In the space itself, you should make sure you use energy to get your point across, but don’t confuse energy with volume.    Energy means intensity, but that can includes silences and pauses, and in fact, the powerful words of your speech will be made even MORE powerful by their being bracketed by silence.    This is a well-known trick in movies that if there is an explosion, sometimes the soundtrack has a moment of silence beforehand that makes the sound of the explosion louder by comparison and has more emotional impact for the audience.

The whole purpose of the energy is so that the audience is engaged, catches the energy, and at the end of the speech, they applaud which is a way of passing the energy back to you.    Accept their gift with gratitude!

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