Tag Archives: communication

TNF #132: Email addiction

Welcome Professionals…

…I guess you are drowning in emails. As a top management consultant you most likely deal with a lot of stakeholders, there is a vast amount of information to be processed and extensive communication to be done. Yes, we all know, that checking emails is unproductive, but did you actually know that it is addictive?

Psychologists refer to the phenomenon as the “random awards system”. It was first discussed by American psychologist B. F. Skinner in the 1930ies when he did some experiments with rats. The rats received a reward every now and then for a certain behaviour like pressing a lever in a box. When the reward followed a fixed scheme, it was not nearly as fascinating for the rats as a random award. The random mode turned out to be addictive.

I am far from comparing top management consultants with rats. But it is obvious to see some parallels here. When we synchronize our emails, we usually receive some spam, commercials, cc-fyi, and some additional work. Only sometimes we receive something nice like an invitation to a party, a funny joke from a friend or a compliment from one of our clients. These goodies are random, they do not follow a certain scheme. Thus, checking emails is a highly addictive action, this is why the typical smart phone user checks his emails 150 time a day on average.

Now think about it. Now that you know about the addiction, would you dare to keep the email temptation right next to you while you have some work to do? If I had a tendency of drinking too much, would I keep a sixpack of beer in the fridge at the office? Certainly not!

Deep work and checking email don’t go together!

Stay clean,

Malte

TNF #105: The art of rehearsal

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Welcome Professionals…

…Winston Churchill did it, professional musicians and actors do it, TED talkers do it – so why don’t we do it? In TNF #104 we discussed the power of rehearsal. A good rehearsal – when done professionally – will boost the effectiveness of your presentation by magnitudes!

So what is key for a professional rehearsal? Here is a checklist:

Plan a decent amount of time for a rehearsal. You may need some extra time for modifications to your presentation after the first dry-run and then do it again!
Get the team together when more than one presenter is running the show. Band members may practice their part alone, but every band has to practice together before entering the stage!
Rehearse with a proper audience. Get some critical minds who will give you constructive feedback. Don’t just do it in front of the mirror, this is not the same!
Remember your words. You must always know the first and last sentence of your presentation by heart! The intro and outro have be fluent and to the point. You can improvise with words inbetween, but never allow yourself a weak start or ending.
Keep your technological support idot-proof. At least plan a backup procedure in case something goes wrong.
Practice eye-contact on your most important lines, also practice accentuation!
Practice how to work the room. When moving during the presentation, set your steps deliberately. Who will you turn to, who will you engage with?
Don’t be too hard to yourself. Every dry-run will feel a bit awkward and never close to perfect. You will rock the show when lights go on and adrenalin kicks in!

Taking the rehearsal seriously will get you to a completely different level.

Knock on wood!

Malte

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TNF #104: The power of rehearsal

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Welcome Professionals…

…As top management consultants, we deliver most of our work in presentations. From the proposal pitch throughout sharing first hypotheses and intermediate results, convincing stakeholders up to giving a presentation on final conclusions and recommendations to a steering committee. All of these are presentations whether we use a formal slide presentation or free speech, whether we talk to a group or one-on-one.

A good preparation of these presentations is key and everybody knows that. Yet, I see a lot of effort put into the content while the power of a rehearsal is untapped. Only few teams and individuals acutally take the time for a proper rehearsal.

Of course, good content is the foundation of every presentation. Deep analytics, rigorous problem solving, creative thinking, and logical conclusions are crucial to every presentation. This work has to be done professionally without any doubt.

Once the content is clear, I see presenters spending a lot of time and effort in structuring the presentation, choosing the right words and graphs, adding pictures, polishing colors and so on. This is also quite important. While the polishing often goes on to the last minute before the presentation, a proper rehearsal is skipped in most cases.

This is a great mistake. While content, structure, and appearance are certainly tablestakes to every presentation, there are some additional elements of equal importance. These include

good connection between presenter and audience
projection of self-confidency
fluency and flawless execution (esp. when more than one presenter is involved
projection of a positive attitude

The above are most important elements for building a trustful atmosphere to move and convince the audience. This is why we do a presentation in the first place, otherwise we could just pass on a written document. Achieving these features takes a lot of general training and experience. It does also require specific training for the individual presentation. This is done by a proper rehearsal.

I will cover the key features of an effective rehearsal in next week’s TNF.

Stay tuned,

Malte

TNF #103: Deadline

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Welcome Professionals…

…Recently I overheard somebody saying: “I must meet this deadline or my boss will kill me!” I was cringing when I heard so much negativity condensed in one single sentence. From a motivational standpoint this is the worst formulation of thought. Think about the elements of this sentence.

“I must”: Nobody must do anything in our rich part of the world. We all must die some day. Thats all. The rest we can choose.

“…meet this deadline…”: I actually looked up the word deadline, because I wondered where it comes from. Here’s what I found on Wiktionary: “According to the Oxford English Dictionary, early usage refers simply to lines that do not move, such as one used in angling. Slightly later American usage refers to a boundary in a prison […] beyond which prisoners were shot.” I never really liked the word deadline, but now I think it is disgusting.

“…or my boss…”: This is an externalized motivation. Our protagonist is doing it for somebody else, someone of higher authority. This induces a feeling of low self-worth.

“…will kill me!”: Clearly an exaggeration from my point of view. Other than prisoners in the original meaning of the term deadline, employees will barely get shot by their boss for crossing the deadline. Thinking about the act of killing will certainly be a severe threat that is completely inappropriate for this kind of problem.

You may call my analysis of this one sentence hairsplitting. And you may be right. My point is: Words matter! Let’s think twice before we use such a desperate sentence again. First of all for the sake of our own souls. Second for the people around us – our team mates, clients, and bosses, too.

Wishing you freedom of thought,

Malte

TNF #090: Tailor the message

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Welcome Professionals…

…Here comes a reminder on an old principle that probably every consultant already knows: The message of a presentation must be tailored to the receiving audience!

Sure, you might say. This is so simple and obvious, yet it gets forgotten so many times. All too often we tend to use the material that we already have and skip the extra tailoring effort. We like the messages that sound convincing to ourselves, not necessarily pursusasive for the individuals we address. We think within the frameworks that work for us, but may be too complicated for the attention span of our listeners.

For every presentation that we prepare, we must answer the most basic questions first:

Who is our target audience of the message/presentation?
What is their status (knowledge, opinion, goals, capacities, restrictions, etc.)
Where do we want to move the audience?

Once the key message is tailored, we should review the following three questions to make our message pursuasive:

How can we create a supportive atmosphere in the beginning (a compliment, a joke, an appreciation of the audience, a consensus, etc.)
How can we address stakeholders during our presentation and show them that we understand them and that we care?
How can we finalize with a positive call for action?

Everything else is just PowerPoint,

Malte

TNF #073: Conversation starter

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Welcome Professionals…

…When we meet someone for the first time, there are good and bad introductions. One of the worst is to start right away with the question of “what do you do?”. Meaning “what is your profession?” or “what are you doing for living?”.

This answer to this question instantly leads to categorizing the other person into useful or not useful contacts, into potential client, supplier, colleague, or outsider. We can be sure that the counterquestion of “what do you do?” will follow shortly after the answer and if we don’t watch out, the conversation will be over by that time.

We unconciously categorize people by all kinds of ways before we approach them: by age, gender, color of skin, clothing, status, behaviour, and so on. There is no need to add another categorization right in the beginning of a verbal contact. It is much better to open the conversation with a commonality than another differentiation. Something that addresses a common experience. Something that most likely can be shared with the approached person.

Potential openers could be something along these lines:

How do you know the host of this party?
The weather is supposed to be fantastic on the weekend – do you have any plans?
I think the band is doing a great job tonight, what do you think?

You get the idea. Wishing you good conversations!

Malte

TNF #071: Simply to the point

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Welcome Professionals…

…I attended a speaking event yesterday. The first part of the presentation was delivered by the CEO, who had been running a successful company for 25 years. The second part was delivered by a consultant, who had served this company over 10 years and used it is a case study to explain some general patterns of leadership.

After the presenation was done, we had a casual conversation among the audience, since this was a best practice sharing event. I talked to three independent participants, who all mentioned the same thing: “Why do consultants always have to make it so complicated?”

Whether this generalized critique is fair or not, I think we need to take this feedback seriously. Oftentimes, we consultants tend to use complicated vocabulary for messages that could be delivered in much more simple terms. Why are we doing this? Is it just to make a simple finding look more sophisticated? Or are we shying away from straight and clear messages?

The attention span of an audience is extremely short and is getting shorter with more and more overload of data and general distraction. Complicated vocabulary and fancy buzz words will turn off the receiver. If we want to get our messages across, we need to deliver them very clearly and straight to the point.

Wishing you concise conversations

Malte

TNF #048: Surprise, surprise!

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Welcome Professionals…

…do you like a good surprise? A nicely wrapped up birthday present or your favourite dinner cooked for you when you didn’t expect it? Winning the lottery when you haven’t even played?

Seriously, a good surprise can be nice. In private. Not in business. I don’t like to be surprised in a business context. I like to be prepared and I like to allocate my time consciously.

Yet, there are quite some people around me who seem to think that a surprise is a good idea. They like to confront a group of people with a brand new concept. They turn around a personal 1:1 meeting to a completely different topic. They show PowerPoint presentations with animated items flying in at each push of a button. Handing over each bullet point one-by-one like a little gift.

I don’t really feel entertained by these kind of surprises. I think this is inappropriate in a business environment. The attention span of every person in business is diminishing. We need to concentrate and focus. And we need to prepare properly.

Why not sending the agenda in advance? Why not sharing the document well ahead of the meeting? Why not sending a welcome note 24 hours before the introductury meeting with a short bio and some questions to be answered during the meeting.

Not a big deal? I think so, too.

Malte