Time for Hillary to call it quits?

I enjoyed this column by Eugene Robinson who wonders if Barack Obama had lost 10 primaries in a row, would he be under greater scrutiny than Hillary Clinton? I think so.




In this blog post titled, "The First Major Call For Hillary to Drop Out" at the National Review Online, Jim Geraghty had the following to say:

John Nichols of the Nation made an interesting remark during our radio appearance this morning - he was in Wisconsin, and he noted that in 2006 and 2007, as Hillary was running as the inevitable candidate, a lot of Democrats at many levels signed on because... well, she was inevitable. And they came with their own agendas. Some wanted jobs in her administration, some wanted to ensure they had an in with the new president, etc.

Obama's supporters and staffers signed on because they believed. The chances of a benefit or cushy appointment from President Obama seemed pretty long odds, so they were motivated by something different - actual agreement on the issues or stirred by his rhetoric or whatever.

You have to wonder how many Hillary backers, staffers, and endorsers are quietly thinking to themselves, "dang, I backed the wrong horse, how do I get out of this?"

Associated Press reporter Tom Raum thinks Clinton is "on the ropes" in this column.

She's still fighting, but it's awfully hard to find encouraging news for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic homestretch.

She's behind in money, delegates and momentum. She's selling experience when everyone seems to want change. And all the cheering for the man who could be the first black president is drowning out any excitement for the first female.

Once deemed the nearly inevitable Democratic nominee, Clinton has now lost 10 presidential contests in a row as the battle heads for a March 4 showdown in Texas and Ohio — states she must win. By most measure.

He goes on to make the point that Clinton faces 3 major challenges:

1. "Obama has outpaced Clinton in fundraising and spending."
2. "She's behind in delegates, and the gap has been growing."
3. "Momentum? That clearly goes to Obama ..."
   

Micheal Grunwald of Time wrote a piece titled, "Clinton's Spin Machine: Spun Dry" and comments on the Clinton campaigns tendency to discount Obama's primary wins saying that they don't matter.

So maybe all these Obama victories mean something after all. Maybe they mean that voters are sick of the perpetual Clinton spin machine. At the very least, they've made it clear that the machine is broken, if not dead.

Hillary, please do the right thing. Step aside for the candidate who can and will win - Barack Obama.

Bush Legacy: 935 Lies About Iraq

The Bush administration lied to the American people 935 times in the build-up to the Iraq war, according to a report released by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, non-advocacy, independent journalism organization based in Washington, D.C.

"President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses ...

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14)."

Ultimately, this will prove to be a big part of the Bush legacy along with a faltering economy, the home mortgage collapse, the disgraceful response to Katrina, a massive $250 billion deficit largely driven by astronomical costs of the Iraq war, election fraud, the scandal surrounding the firing of federal judges and the resignation of another lier Alberto Gonzales (# 1 on Bert Decker's list of Worst Communicators of 2007), and the Valerie Plame / Scooter Libby scandal.

These have all led to some of the lowest approval numbers in US history. Bush and Co. have a lot to learn about authenticity and credibility.

Man, I cannot wait until late January, 2009 when this administration is GONE! Good riddance, Dubya!

How NOT To Use Powerpoint

I just came across this very funny video on YouTube:
"How NOT To Use Powerpoint By Comedian Don McMillan"
Good advice for anyone who uses PowerPoint.

Even a child can do it

I found this video through Garr Reynolds' superb blog, Presentation Zen.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki was only 12 years old in 1992 when she raised money with members of ECO, the Environmental Childrens Organization (a group she founded) to attend the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro. Severn presented environmental issues from a youth perspective at the Summit, where she received a standing ovation for a speech to the delegates. This video presents that speech.

What struck me the first time I watched this deeply moving video were the reactions on the faces of the adult delegates. I imagine them as typically distracted and jaded, creatures of politics. When they listen to Severn, their faces are rapt and attentive. Their feelings and thoughts are as evident as neon signs - their protective masks are stripped away by the directness and passion of this terrific young speaker - this "child" who communicates with the wisdom and craft of a veteran speaker.

This video reminded me of one of the deeper truths that I have observed in my work as a presentation skills coach and trainer. Authenticity and passion are the most compelling qualities a presenter can have.

So, what is authenticity? Websters defines it as "true to one's own personality, spirit, or character." I like this quote from Mahatma Gandhi who said, "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." that is a great description of authenticity, in my estimation. Authenticity is evident when someone is speaking from the heart. David Henderson, my mentor in this work, used to say, "Speak your first truth first."

Passion ("a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept") is evident when you give full expression to your deepest desires and feelings.

Severn has both authenticity and passion in spades. She provides a superb and humbling example for all of us.

Story Corps - A Worthy Project

I can't recall the first time that I heard about Story Corps but I know that the moment I heard about them, I was inspired. Storytelling is a HUGE component of communication. I preach it regularly to all my clients and in all the workshops that I lead. In addition, it's how we share the collective wisdom of our families and communities.

"Our mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.

Since 2003, almost 30,000 everyday people have shared life stories with family and friends in our StoryBooths. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to share, and is preserved at the Library of Congress. Millions listen to our broadcasts on public radio and the web. StoryCorps is the largest oral history project of its kind.

Everybody’s story matters. Every life counts. Help us reach out to record our history, hopes, and common humanity—and illuminate the true character of this nation."

The Story Corps has a website as well as some fun blogs for their mobile trailers, both west and east. There is also StoryCorps Griot - a one-year initiative designed to collect the stories of African Americans. You can find their blog here.

NPR.org has posted recordings on their website that you can download as a podcast or hear online from the Story Corps project.

You can order either a CD with recordings or a book titled, "Listening Is an Act of Love" at Amazon. I ordered the CD and am looking forward to listening to it on my next flight. (The spoken word on a MP3 player/iPod is a great way to pass time on planes.)

Brain exercise - talking

Today's local paper contained an article positing a thesis that warmed my heart - talking improves memory and boosts intellectual performance as much as doing crossword puzzles.

"A team led by University of Michigan psychologist Oscar Ybarra asked more than 3,500 people ages 24 to 96 about their social interactions and tested their working memories. Regardless of age, the more social contact, the higher the level of mental function. The researchers also split 76 college students into three groups. One group had a 10-minute discussion, one spent 10 solitary minutes doing intellectual exercises (such as reading comprehension) and the third, in isolation, watched 10 minutes of "Seinfeld." On follow-up cognitive tests, the social interaction and intellectual exercise groups did better than "Seinfeld" viewers. The chit-chatters did just as well as the intellectual group."

Check it out:
"Idle chatter? Hardly"
By Susan Brink, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2007

The next time someone gives you grief for talking too much, reply with, "Hey, I'm giving my brain a workout, baby. Chill!"

Authenticity in the Face of Crisis

Jon Harmon, a PR Consultant with Force For Good Communcations, wrote a piece in the LA Times about the recent Utah mine tragedy and how CEO Robert Murray managed his role as the face of Murray Energy Corp.
Harmon makes an important point about effective communication in a time of crisis - that the good of genuine authenticity can often help counter the bad influence of mistakes. He writes:

The 67-year-old Murray was in Montana when he got word of the collapse at the mine owned by Murray Energy Corp. He hopped on a private jet and was at the scene within hours, taking command of the rescue operation, providing the media updates. All this was textbook PR in the best sense. The presence of the concerned chief executive on the scene of a disaster has been understood to be essential to successful crisis management since Exxon's CEO infamously took far too long to travel to Valdez, Alaska, in 1989, to take stock of the oil spill that caused one of history's worst environmental disasters.

But after that, Murray broke so many rules of crisis communications he had news anchors, on-air, asking what they'd just witnessed. From his first briefings, Murray angrily denounced the media (seldom a winning strategy) and blamed union organizers for suggesting that the dangerous practice of "retreat mining" had led to the collapse. He blasted environmentalists for their crusade against global warming, calling it an affront to the coal industry and to the American economy.

Crisis communications experts universally panned Murray's rantings as "callous," "damaging" and "not helpful" to the families of the trapped miners.

Murray also insisted that an earthquake had caused the mine collapse, then doggedly held to that theory despite seismologists' conclusions that the tremors were caused by the collapse.

These would appear to be disastrous mistakes, guaranteeing Murray a shot at The-Worst-PR-Gaffe-of-the-Year-Award. Indeed, the following paints a picture of miner's families who have lost faith in Murray:

After three rescuers were killed in a cave-in, Murray dropped out of sight, leaving a subordinate to conduct briefings. A representative for the miners' families said, "We feel Bob Murray has abandoned us." Without any explanation for his disappearance, one could only assume that he was made to understand that his abrasive style did not fit the increasingly grim mood.

In spite of all this, Murray is noted in at least one blog for his candor and refreshing authenticity.

"Despite [Murray's] occasional moments of near-insanity, I suspect he's better liked by the general public than he would be if he'd gone by the crisis communication book," David Murray (no relation) wrote on his public relations blog, Shades of Gray.

In times of crisis, spokespeople should trust in the redeeming power of being authentic. We empathize with the leader who bravely steps up in a time of peril. We readily forgive an unpolished and even shaky presentation -- as long as we feel in our hearts that the spokesperson is being truthful to us, a feeling Bob Murray has not always inspired.

We can recover from mistakes, especially honest ones. But once our credibility comes into question, once our authenticity is compromised, it is a steep uphill-climb to regain the trust of those who experience such a lapse.

PS: I did a web search to find the Murray Energy corporate website. My search string on Google was "Murray Energy Corporation." On the 10th page of search results, I gave up. The first 10 pages were almost ALL links to news stories or blog posts about the Crandall Canyon mine collapse. This reminded me of the story about Dell in my post about Radical Transparency and Authenticity.

Big Brothers Big Sisters - A Great Experience

Since the fall of 2002, I have been volunteering as a Big Brother with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Sonoma County. This has been an extremely rich and rewarding experience.

During that time, I have been matched with 2 boys. First ...

Luke

Then ...

Aaron.

This has been a very rewarding experience for me and very much echoes the experience described in this terrific story about Alex and Isaac.

BBBS is always looking for adults to act as mentors and friends to kids who really blossom with these kinds of friendships. I hope you will consider volunteering yourself.

You'll find the national website here where you can find out about your local chapters and how you can get involved.
http://www.bbbs.org/site/c.diJKKYPLJvH/b.1539751/k.BDB6/Home.htm

Is our culture failing us?

“Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and Dr. Alfred Kinsey.”

So said Dana Gioia, chair of the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, when he delivered the commencement address this month at Stanford University. Click here for an excerpt of the speech.

“I don't think Americans were smarter then, but American culture was. Even the mass media placed a greater emphasis on presenting a broad range of human achievement.”

He goes on to say:

"Everything now is entertainment. And the purpose of this omnipresent commercial entertainment is to sell us something. American culture has mostly become one vast infomercial. When was the last time you have seen a featured guest on David Letterman or Jay Leno who isn't trying to sell you something? A new movie, a new TV show, a new book, or a new vote?

Don't get me wrong. I love entertainment, and I love the free market. But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing – it puts a price on everything.

The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace.

A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us."

This reminded me of an article in Wired Magazine titled "Putin? Never Heard of Her."

"More than a decade after the Internet went mainstream, the world's richest information source hasn't necessarily made its users any more informed. A new study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Americans, on average, are less able to correctly answer questions about current events than they were in 1989. Citizens who call the Internet their primary news source know slightly less than fans of TV and radio news. Hmmm... maybe a little less Perez (sic) Hilton and a little more Jim Lehrer."

Reading this graphic, I was gratified to see that watchers of The Daily Show fared well in identifying figures in the news. It was also gratifying to see that Fox News either:

1. Delivers the lowest quality news coverage.
2. Is watched by idiots.
   

For my parent's sake, I'll assume it's the former.

In recent conversations with friends and clients, I have been saying, "Knowledge is no longer a determinant of success. Now, it's ideas."

I say this because Google, Wikipedia and other internet phenomena make your need to know information less critical than your ability to know where to find good, reliable information and come up with creative ideas - creative solutions to problems.

In reflecting on my work with presentation and communication skills with The Henderson Group, I believe that general and broader knowledge of culture is important.

Recently, I was leading a workshop with a group of sales people in the Pacific Northwest. I kept referring to my bibliography, the books that I and my colleague Chuck Kuglen, used in our research, preparing for the workshop. I would ask them, "Have you read The Tao of Sales by E. Thomas Behr ... or ... Selling With Integrity by Sharon Drew Morgen ... or ... Blink by Malcolm Gladwell?

"No."

It became a running joke.

"Would you please stop asking us if we've read any books because we don't read, apparently."

I remember thinking, "These people are sales professionals. Their livelihood depends on being able to do this skill well. I am a trainer. Yes, I do wear a sales hat but 60 - 70% of my livelihood depends on my being an effective trainer. And I've read more books about selling than they have. What's wrong with this picture?"

Perhaps this perspective grew out of my work as an actor and director. When working on a play, I was trained to read biographies of the writer and their other work, not just the play I was working on. In addition, if it was a period piece (Shakespeare, Dickens, Chekhov), I was taught to study the history and the culture of the period. This studious quality seems less prevalent to me now than when I was young.

Is our education system failing us, too? My wife's family is filled with educators that would argue that any alleged failure is certainly not due to the teachers.

Is this a sign that I am fully middle-aged - bitching about how lazy the younger generation seems? It's probably some of the latter.

I consider the stories from Blink of the art experts immediately recognizing a fake Greek sculpture. Their snap judgments prove right because they've spent decades training themselves. This level of bone-deep knowledge doesn't come from a cursory read of a Wikipedia page on Greek sculpture.

In the end, broader understanding of a culture, deep knowledge of culture has some value and perhaps ideas alone aren't enough. Or perhaps the most useful and valuable ideas only flow from minds with a broad understanding of a the culture - be it knowledge of Greek sculpture, theater, or the problems facing businesses.

In closing I think of the words of 2 visionaries:

"Television is democracy at its ugliest." Paddy Chayefsky
"The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogren and stupidity." Harlan Ellison

Images and PowerPoint update

bigstockphoto.com

Check it out.

They license stock photos for $1 - 2 per image. The quality of images seems high and the selection appears to be good.

I'd like to hear about your experience using them.

The Urban Dictionary

OK, so, maybe you are a middle-aged white guy ... like me. You wish you could be all hip and urban and down with the latest street lingo. But, instead, you are a middle-aged white guy ... like me.

Here's the solution: The Urban Dictionary.

Finally, it's a level playing field. You can find out what "word" and "ese" actually mean without having to reveal what a unhip, dorky white guy you actually are. You can toss around hip, edgy slang like "That's how I roll" and "bling" with the best of them. You can watch "Boys n the Hood" and "Colors" without subtitles.

The Urban Word of the Day is hilarious.

So, now you have a resource. This internet things is pretty stinkin' cool especially for mawgs like me. Double true.

The Power of Stillness and Silence

I am becoming a big fan of Garr Reynold's blog, Presentation Zen. His most recent post is titled, "When there is no quiet, there can be no loud." He uses an interesting YouTube video called the "Loudness War" to demonstrate that "dynamic range" not only applies to the impact of good musical audio engineering but presentation style as well.

The Wikipedia entry on dynamic range states:

"... a good quality audio reproduction system should be able to reproduce accurately both the quiet sounds and the loud; and a good quality visual display system should be able to show both shadow details in nighttime scenes and the full brightness of sunny scenes."

The presentation analog is the dynamism of a presenters communication style. If the presenters range of dynamism is narrow, their presentations have a flat quality and our attention will drift. When the presenter has a more compelling quality. As Reynolds says:

"Great presentations too make us 'turn up the volume' ... There is immense power in the quiet bits and the silent spaces in music and in speech, just as the empty spaces (negative space/white space) in visual forms of expression can make or break the effectiveness of the design."

One of the first points I make in my workshops on presentation is that great communicators have developed a comfort with stillness and silence. Rookie presenters often speak constantly afraid that silence will betray their self-perceived lack of credibility. In addition, their constantly fidgeting, swaying or pacing (My wife Robin calls this the "Caged Lion") betray their lack of comfort and confidence. It's as though they feel compelled to speak and to move in order to mask their discomfort. In fact, it has the exact opposite effect.

Observe the presenters that you admire the most. You will see and hear them being still and silent.

They will take long pauses to give their words impact.

They will hold a gestured position while they speak to create a sense of movement even in stillness.

Notice statuary. My observation is that the subject is either in motion or in an interesting pose. Be willing to assume a dynamic pose and hold that in stillness.

Take pauses after key points to give those points impact, to think about what comes next or how to make your next point most effectively. Take in the audience's reaction in those silences as a form of non-verbal feedback and guidance.

As Thomas Carlyle, Scottish author, essayist, & historian, said:

"Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time."

As Indira Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India said,

"You must be still in the midst of activity, and be vibrantly alive in repose."

Images and PowerPoint

Finding images for PowerPoint slide shows is a time consuming process.

That said, it can be time well spent ... if you are using PowerPoint correctly, making images and graphics the focus rather than text.

PowerPoint is misused by the VAST majority of corporate users. Edward Tufte (described by The New York Times as "the Leonardo da Vinci of Data") believes that PowerPoint is responsible for degrading the effectiveness of corporate presentations. In his words:
"Rigid slide-by-slide heirarchies, indifferent to context, slice and dice the evidence into arbitrary compartments; producing and anti-narrative with choppy continuity."

In a sense, we are using a linear, hierarchical, left-brained format to communicate a layered right-brained narrative.

It's clear to me now that learning to utilize the right-brained big picture tools of story and metaphor is a requisite to excellent communication.

Finding the right image to capture a visual metaphor or to tell a story can be a tricky business. That's why I was very interested in an article in the April issue of Business 2.0, titled, "You Ought To Be In Pictures." The article focuses on the business of licensing images and lists several image sources.

There are "The Goliaths":

• Corbis
• Getty

And "The Davids":

• Fotolia
• Dreamstime
• Shutterstock

I would add to that list:

• Concept Images
  

Of course, Google's image search is a great resource for images but one has to be careful about violating copyright laws, especially for corporate presentations. Also, Google can be far more time consuming as the images are usually not labeled or tagged with the searcher in mind.

In other words, if you are looking for the image of a female archer, you are likely to use "female archer" or "woman archer" as your search string. However, Jill, an avid archer might post dozens of high-quality images of herself practicing archery on her personal web site and never use those words to label her photo files.

The sites that license the use of their images are incented to tag them so that they can be found easily. Hence, searches using the paid sites can often be less time-consuming.

When I work with intact teams, I coach clients to create a pool of images that each team-member can draw from. This can help to cut down the amount of time spent on searching for images. In addition, it encourages conversations about how various images, stories and metaphors are being employed. "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." said Pablo Picasso. You SHOULD be stealing ideas from colleagues, if you want to truly master the art of communication.

I've made much personal effort to make sure I had access to all the images that we at The Henderson Group have compiled over the years. Having a good recall of these images has often saved me from time-consuming image searches.

This is an important personal practice that can benefit your team-members as well. Some final tips:

1. Thinks in terms of story and metaphor
2. Use images to tell your story or illustrate your metaphor
3. Use image resources and services to help you find the right image
4. Make the image the focus on the slide, taking up more real estate
5. Minimize the use of language
6. Keep bullets to a minimum
7. Think of your bullets as very succinct "hooks" (more on this is a future post)
   

Spin vs. Authenticity and Credibility

Will future generations look back and see this as The Age of Spin?

If they do, I hope they look back from an age when being authentic and credible is the norm, rather than the exception.

On Fri, May. 25, 2007, Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald, posted a column titled, "Dishonesty is sanitized in a world of spin." The column opens with these paragraphs:

"One hopes there's a little something extra in the pay envelopes this week for whatever flacks represent Jimmy Carter and Clinton Portis. Surely, the spin doctors have earned it.

Take Portis, a Washington Redskins running back, for example. In an interview Saturday, he defended Michael Vick, the Atlanta Falcons quarterback under investigation for dog fights at a home he owns. Portis, 26, said he didn't see what the fuss was. 'I don't know if he was fighting dogs or not. But it's his property; it's his dogs. If that's what he wants to do, do it.'

Just hours later, Portis issued a statement saying in part he wished to make it clear he does not 'condone dog fighting in any manner.'

Former President Carter, meantime, was asked in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to rate the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush. He said, 'I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.'

Carter would hardly be the only person to hold that view, but apparently he had second thoughts about violating the unwritten rule that says one president never speaks ill of another. Days later, he claimed on the Today show that his remarks were 'maybe careless or misinterpreted.' "

It seems that daily, I am reading retracted comments like this in the newspaper. I wonder if these folks (Porter and Carter) really thinks that anyone believes their retractions.

Though I certainly have not lived under the kind of scrutiny these guys have, I wonder how I might deal with such a situation. I like to think that I would stick by my statements, if they truly matched my beliefs or opinions.

These questions come up for me:

• What is driving this dynamic?
• Is it the press, shoving microphones into people's faces - shouting, "President Carter, do you stand by your statement that the Bush administration "has been the worst in history"?
• Can't they see that their credibility takes a hit every time they retract their opinion?
• How far will Political Correctness go?

Perhaps the deepest question of all are:

• How does one remain true to one's self and opinions while remaining open to other viewpoints?
• How does one be willing to admit honest mistakes while remaining credible in the public eye?

All tough questions to wrestle with. More thoughts to follow ...

Radical Transparency and Authenticity

The cover story "The See-Through CEO" for the April 2007 issue of Wired Magazine addresses a new philosophy in business driven largely by blogs and the internet. They call it "Radical Transparency."

The article argues that it is impossible to control the image of your business anymore.

" 'You can't hide anything anymore,' Don Tapscott says. Coauthor of The Naked Corporation, a book about corporate transparency, and Wikinomics, Tapscott is explaining a core truth of the see-through age: If you engage in corporate flimflam, people will find out. He ticks off example after example of corporations that have recently been humiliated after being caught trying to conceal stupid blunders. There's Sony, which put a rootkit - a piece of spyware - on music CDs as a secret copy-protection technique, only to wind up in court when bloggers revealed that the code left their computers vulnerable to hacker intrusions. There's Microsoft, this time on the wrong side of the transparent shower curtain, offering to pay people to buff up the company's Wikipedia entry. And Diebold, which insisted its voting machines were unhackable - until a professor posted a video of himself rigging a mock election on them. The video went viral and racked up some 300,000 YouTube views."

The example they provide that drove this point home very powerfully was this:
"When Shel Israel and blogger Jeff Jarvis wrote about wretched treatment by Dell's customer service, their posts were so gleefully linked to that for a while they appeared as the number one and two search results for 'Dell.' "

I found this article extremely intriguing. This made me think of transparency not only from a corporate standpoint (a company being transparent to build trust with customers, employees and investors) but also on a personal level.

Authenticity is an important element in the work that I do with The Henderson Group - leading workshops and coaching clients on their communication and presentation skills. This idea of transparency is strongly connected in my view. If you have developed superb communication technique but are not being fully authentic, your co-workers and audiences will sense that there is something amiss.

Transparency on a personal level translates to being vulnerable and up-front. It means revealing personal details and quirks. Trying to hide them suggests that you are concerned that people will discover your true self. That invariably comes across as lacking in confidence.

In our workshops we address the dynamic of "explaining" when receiving feedback. When we try to show that our intentions are perfect and there were understandable reasons for the reason that our performance was not perfect, we come across as defensive and lacking confidence.

Truly confident people (who know themselves and are willing to be seen as vulnerable and imperfect) project a rock-solid belief in themselves: "Yes, I made a mistake in this case but I still believe in myself."

It also means being proactive in pointing out our mistakes. I remember vividly early in my management career the lesson I learned about fessing up when I'd made a mistake.

If I did not report that mistake to my boss, ESPECIALLY if I tried to cover it up, he would be on me like white on rice. (Does the phrase "reamed" have special meaning for any of you, too?) If I went to him and said, "I've screwed up" and explained the problem, invariably he was very understanding and compassionate.

David Henderson, my dearly-departed former mentor and co-founder of THG, used to tell me, "Tell your first truth first." By that David meant that in moments of fear and confusion to turn inward and examine deeply what is most truthful for one's self.

A client recently asked me about giving feedback to her teenage children. She confided that they were often resistant to feedback. (Really?!?! Teenagers resistant to feedback from parents?!?! Alert the media!) I spoke about the idea of authenticity and framing her feedback as a positive statement. I asked her, "What is your core message? What is most important to you?" She thought for a moment and her voice dropped into a deeper register with her eyes welling up. She replied, "I want them to understand that I am setting limits because I care about them." I suggested that she make certain she said that when she speaks to her kids. "If they see that deep sincerity, they will get it. They may still resist but they'll understand and be more likely to comply."

Finally, the willingness to laugh at one's own foibles is a liberating way to demonstrate transparency. When I was younger (and much stupider) I used to spend inordinate amounts of energy focused on being "right." It was more important to me to be respected than liked, I have since learned (largely due to this work) is that vulnerability, transparency, warmth, good-humor and empathy are FAR more important.

One of my favorite writers, Frank Herbert (author of Dune, the world's best-selling science fiction novel) said something like, "A person who has the ability to laugh at one's self has taken a step toward the highest level of civilization."

The willingness to be up-front, vulnerable, show one's warts can go a long way in being authentic and building trust.

Low tech presentation

On Saturday, April 28 our local paper, The Press Democrat (A NY Times paper), published a front-page article titled, "Pen and paper trump tech: In a world of impersonal gadgets, techies are turning to tactile pleasures" by Meg McConahey.

For example:
"Moleskine notebooks, classic bound journals into which Matisse poured his sketches and Hemingway his prose, have become almost "a fetish" among techies, said Rich Gibson, Internet mapper and database programmer from Sebastopol."

This parallels the experience that I often have when a participant in a presentation skills workshop or coaching session turns to the flip chart or white board.

The use of the hand-written media often draws more attention than PowerPoint. In addition, the human touch of a crudely drawn figure or flow chart has more charm than a carefully crafted, slick presentation slide.

The additional advantage is that such a graphic can be quickly drawn on the fly with minimal preparation whereas an intricate flow model can take hours to construct in PPT.

This reminds me of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski's arguments for a low-tech theater in "Towards a Poor Theater." Grotowski argued that theater should be stripped down to it's essence: "a theatre in which the fundamental concern was the work of the actor with the audience, not the sets, costumes, lighting or special effects ... 'Poor' meant the stripping away of all that was unnecessary" according to the WikiPedia entry on Grotowski.

Often, presenters become so enamored by (or addicted to) their technology that they lose the human connection with their audience.

As my mentor David Henderson used to say, "They won't form a relationship with your slides."

The Value of Freaking Out

On Friday, April 27, USA today ran an article about leaders who jump from planes, surf, ski, climb mountains in order to reach "the freakout point."

The idea is to learn to cross the fear threshold and form a more useful relationship with fear:
"crossing it provides lessons useful in business and life. There's the significance of knowing that what frightens can be survived, as well as the importance of concentrating when concentration is all but impossible."

"Perhaps the most common freakout point comes with public speaking, and Iron Mountain CEO Richard Reese remembers being drafted early in his career to do a last-minute presentation on a technical subject he knew zero about."

This resonated deeply for me. Having now lead workshops for 10 years on interpersonal communication and presentation, I've often wrestled with fear. This is especially true when I've encountered what I envisioned as worst-nightmare scenarios. For example:


1) The Psychotic Supporter whose sweet demeanor is replaced by the face of Gollum when you offer candid feedback that her style might be perceived as condescending.

2) The Socially-Myopic Sales Rep who misses all the non-verbal cues that indicate that his colleagues think he is a moron.

3) The Wax-Eared Trainer Candidate who required a metaphorical two-by-four upside her head to get her to stop defending herself when given the feedback that "you are coming across as defensive."

4) Realizing it's 30 minutes before the start-time of a gig and you are in the wrong city.

5) Flight delays result in having to lead an 8-hour workshop on 2 hours sleep.

Each time one of these scenarios has happened, it's like being visited by an old, familiar enemy ... "Oh, fear. It's YOU again." Each day the scream of fear becomes fainter and fainter.

As Eugen Herrigel says in "Zen in the Art of Archery": “Like the beginner the swordmaster is fearless, but, unlike him, he grows daily less and less accessible to fear.