Crafting Your Business Narrative--a Lifelong Process

As a Business Narrative consultant, my job is helping people craft and tell the business stories that will help them win audiences. For both themselves and their organizations, they need stories that show:


• Who they are--what makes them unique and trustworthy?

• How they got to where they are today--how did their journey shape their destiny?

• Where they’re headed--what's their vision of the future, and their role in it?

Some of my clients are surprised to learn that, while I can easily help them with their stories, it’s been a long journey for me to develop my own business story.

I’ve been a Business Narrative consultant for over ten years. In that time, I’ve told people the story of what I do—helping people and organizations tell their best stories—at least 500 times. Each time, I lean in close, I study their faces as I tell my story, I look for the flash of understanding and the gleam of shared passion—I watch their faces to judge how my story is working. Then I go back to my dream space (aka, the corner chair in my office) to refine, rework, and retell the story. How best can I convey what I do? How can I vividly illustrate the benefits of working with me to create a powerful story?

This process takes time. And the best way to do the work is to tell your story, over and over, to a thoughtful, receptive listener who can help you take your story to the next level. What details should you include? How long should the story be? How technical? What images and metaphors are buried within the work itself that you can highlight and weave through the entire story?

I take each of my clients through this process. We begin with informal exercises that take us far afield from our final goal of a 10-second introductory story. We expand, explore, explain, digging for the buried treasure of their work stories. Only after we’ve collected a rich assortment of images and anecdotes do we begin to prune and shape the material into the actual story that they might tell to a prospect, colleague, or acquaintance at a social event.

As I tell them, a story is far more memorable than the “dead fish” of a job title or a business card. Stories build bridges between people, helping establish the relationships that all successful businesses thrive on.

By going through the story-crafting process consciously, my clients are able to expand and adapt their stories to fit different audiences and occasions. And when the core nature of their work changes, they come back to me again to help them modify or craft a new story.

If you’re ready to embark on the story crafting process, please contact me at info@rhalpernassociates.com.

Spreading the Word: How to Collect Your Organization's Stories

Want to motivate donors to give to your cause? Studies have shown that telling a story is the single most effective way to motivate donations—more than statistics, and even more than statistics and stories combined.

So: if you want to expand awareness of your organization, start collecting stories from everyone who comes in contact with you. Not only the beneficiaries of your work, but the employees, volunteers, and donors who make your work possible. This applies to both private and public sector organizations—because all of us need to motivate our target audiences to commit themselves to working with us.

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking about the power of narrative to 150 people from non-profit food banks and soup kitchens. They were attending the annual Harvest of Knowledge Agency Conference hosted by the Second Harvest Food Bank. Their challenge, as assigned by Second Harvest's CEO, Kathy Jackson, is to collect stories from their clientele and share them with the Second Harvest Food Bank, so that the Food Bank will be better able to gather more donations.

I encouraged the group to broaden their definition of those whose stories they should collect to include food recipients, volunteers, individual and organizational donors, and themselves. All of these people are characters in the story of how Second Harvest nourishes people, in body, mind, and heart.

In order to fulfill their assignment of gathering stories, every one of the agency workers I spoke to must expand their focus--because food banks and soup kitchens are nourishing more than just the bodies of their hungry clientele. They’re not just moving food from storehouse to kitchen table. When they listen to their clients’ stories, they also nurture their sense of self-worth, and their ability to create meaning from their experiences.

All the members of the Second Harvest community can tell stories that answer:

• Who am I?

• What has led me to this place in my life?

• How do I envision the journey unfolding from here?

• What tools do I bring with me?

• What outside help is available to me?

• How is my journey enriched by my traveling companions, the obstacles I've overcome, the character strengths I've employed?

The challenge is to create the time and the place where these stories can be exchanged. In the day-to-day hustle of business, checking items off of to-do lists and making sure that perishable groceries are delivered on time and to the right place, how do you create an opportunity to hear people's stories? It can't be done through a written questionnaire or an online survey. Stories thrive on face-to-face interaction, on intimacy, on the listening ear and the delighted glance.

What does that mean for organizations in general? It means that story collecting needs to be a full-time, all-hands-on-deck, organization-wide activity. Everyone needs to make time for sharing stories, because your stories are the seeds that help your organization grow.

I encourage my clients to make a physical space for storytelling: Create a comfortable area for sharing stories, a table with two chairs facing each other, a pot of something delicious to share, an inconspicuous recording system, and most importantly, an eager ear waiting to be delighted by a story.

Then, create new ways to share the stories you collect. A website is classic, a newsletter works well, even a “tale of the week” email that celebrates both a story and the person who collected it. Your stories preserve and pass on your organization’s culture and values—don’t let them slip away.

If you would like to learn more about using stories to increase awareness of your organization, please contact me at rh@rhalpernassociates.com.

The Power of Storytelling: Service Above Self

Last Thursday, I was invited to the Oakland Rotary Club to give a speech on “Galvanizing Your Colleagues with the Power of Storytelling.” To my delight, in a completely unplanned moment of synergy, the meeting opened with an electrifying illustration of my message: that a memorable story can transmit and reinforce the culture and values of an entire organization.

The motto of the Rotary Club is Service Above Self. Brief, concise, accurate. But how amazing when that abstract motto is embodied in a story like the one told by Past District Governor Brad Howard. In simple, direct language, he described the plight of a German family whose son fell into some kind of depression while on a Rotary Youth Exchange in Mexico City. His father flew from Germany to pick the boy up. Their return flight included a plane change in San Francisco. As they were changing planes, the boy collapsed, unable to walk.

The boy was sent to Oakland Kaiser, while Brad Howard contacted the Oakland club’s Executive Director, Lori Sinclair. She got on the phone with all the Rotarians in the region, and managed to find one who was fluent in German. This man went directly to the hospital, where he translated the terrible medical news for father and son: the boy had a brain tumor. It was growing so quickly that the boy was already starting to lose facial recognition and language. Surgery was required.

While the man was helping the father and son at the hospital, his wife was at Target, buying sweat pants, pajamas, toothbrushes and shaving gear—all the daily equipment that had been sent on to Germany when the father and son had to leave their flight. The Rotarian and his wife, two working parents, invited the German father to live with them and their children while his son was in the hospital. By sharing their home with him, they provided him with the daily routines and comforts of family that he would never have found in a hotel, alone and in crisis in a foreign country.

Soon the boy’s mother flew over from Germany to be with her son and husband. She, too, was invited into the Rotarian’s home, and received their care during the three weeks her son was in treatment.

The surgery was successful, but the cancer was so fast-growing that the boy needed chemotherapy as well. The question was whether he should remain at Oakland Kaiser, or return home to Germany. His parents, awash in the crisis of the moment, didn’t know what to do. So the Rotarian contacted the German health care system directly, explained the problem, and made all the arrangements to have the family flown home to Germany for treatment.

The boy is now responding well to treatment at home in Germany. And the Rotarian, Rich Hallock, has received a Paul Harris Fellowship in honor of his generous service.

I had the privilege of hearing this story from the stage. This meant I could watch the story's effect on the audience: I saw people’s shoulders relax, their faces open, their bodies lean forward, caught up in the emotional current of the story. At the end, that room of over 100 people gave Rich a standing ovation, and not a single eye was dry.

I was so moved I wasn't sure I'd be able to stand up and tell my own story, about the importance of using narrative to create a memorable, moving message. Everyone in the room was already on board, though--because the best example of the power of narrative had already been delivered.

Through workshops, keynote presentations, and one-on-one coaching, I can teach you how to galvanize your colleagues with the power of storytelling. If you would like to turn the experiences and anecdotes from a typical workday into a story that embodies your organization’s values and goals, please give me a call at 510-338-0241 or write to info@rhalpernassociates.com.

Learn more about the Oakland Rotary Club.

Cooking Up a Delicious Message

They say that if you can read, you can cook: Just follow the recipe, and you’re guaranteed success.

But just look at the sad form of this flattened-out chicken (the first time I’ve ever roasted a whole chicken). The recipe said “place in the pan,” so I did—wrong-side up, my chef-husband later told me, and all splayed out, he explained, because I didn’t truss it.

“But I followed the directions,” I complained. The recipe didn’t say “This side up,” nor did it say to truss the bird, nor how, nor where, nor why. I just did as I was told, and ended up with this funny-looking result.

How often the words on the page, or the sentences we speak, are based on assumptions and premises about the audience that are absolutely incorrect. Not everyone went to cooking school in Paris. Not everyone knows what you know about policies, histories, the Way Things Should Be Done.

How do we figure out what our audience doesn’t know, and make sure to address those gaps when we communicate?

• Question yourself—how did I learn how to do this?

• Put yourself in your audience’s place—what will make the process easy, clear, and rewarding for them?

• Test your communication on a sample audience with the same background/knowledge level you anticipate in your real audience.

Before you communicate, make sure you’ve included all the ingredients needed to cook up a satisfying exchange.

And by the way, as funny-looking as this chicken was, it tasted delicious.

Get inside the life of an outsider

One of my goals in delivering diversity training is to help participants develop understanding for the world-views of people from different backgrounds than their own. This is hard work: you have to want to do it, because it takes energy, empathy, openness, and patience.

This year, one way to expand your awareness of diversity is to go to the movies. Rarely have movie-goers had a chance to feel life outside the mainstream as strongly and viscerally as they do in the movie "Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire." Precious Jones is a quintuple outsider: African-American, female, a teenage mother, an incest survivor, and obese. She is also a deeply feeling, strong character, who we quickly come to identify with, root for, and love. For her, an "ordinary day" is fraught with threats and dangers--harassment, humiliation, physical and sexual assault--that many of us have never had to contend with, yet we follow her because she pushes forward with persistence, sass, and a powerful imagination. This is why storytellers say that "you can never hate a person once you know her story."

This movie is a gift: an opportunity to inhabit a world that, while it may seem foreign in some respects, is as passion-filled and worthy of respect as any that has been portrayed in more "mainstream" movies.

I emerged from it shaken, and enlightened.

What more could a diversity trainer ask for?

When the facts defy our beliefs

This week, NPR aired the story of Brian Korbon, a 9 year old boy who, it appears, knew he was going to die shortly before he did. The story was recorded at a Storycorps booth, which is part of a national project to record people's stories about friends and family, nationwide.

In addition to being a powerful, loving tale of a vibrant boy and his parents' loss, I find myself pondering this statement: The father, Gregg Korbon, says, "It wasn't in my belief system that something like that could happen."

There he was, an anesthesiologist, watching his son gather his possessions, write goodbye notes to his friends, and announce that he "wasn't going to see double-digits" (meaning wasn't going to live till he was 10), but the father couldn't HEAR this.

The father's belief system did not allow for the possibility of losing his beloved child, never mind that the son might know that this was going to happen.

This story gives me shivers for so many reasons: The boy's foreknowledge, the mother and father being forced to accept the son's wisdom about his imminent departure, and most of all, the reminder that this story gives all of us: There are realities that all of us are unable to see because they don't fit into our belief systems.

How does this play out on an organizational level? What realities are invisible because they don't fit into our organizational vision of what is possible? Attainable? Real?

How vital it is that we listen, pay attention to the facts, try to see past the filter of our beliefs to what is possible--and real.

Public Speaking--Read Your Audience, Not Your Notes

Last night I had the honor of speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California, a historic institution dedicated to sharing knowledge and information on many subjects. It was a great honor to be there, and I had worked hard to prepare.

My session was on "Galvanize Your Colleagues with the Power of Storytelling," and it was very well-attended. Business people know that they need excellent communication skills in order to succeed, and knowing how to craft and deliver an effective story is a key tool. The crowd was engaged and curious, which was a delight.

My favorite part of any presentation is the Q&A, when I get to learn more about the questions that my ideas have inspired in other people. There were many interesting comments, but one in particular really stood out for me:

One woman asked whether there's a particular personality type (think Myers-Briggs or another personality profiling tool) that is especially adept at telling stories, or one for which it's harder to become a good storyteller?

What a great question! So many of us are fearful of public speaking, and more so if we think, "Oh, I'm not a good enough storyteller to stand up there and talk. It doesn't come naturally to me. I'm too dull/nervous/verbose/fill-in-the-blank."

As a business narrative coach and teacher, I believe that everyone of all personality types has a story to tell, and everyone can learn to tell it effectively. So much of the challenge in crafting a story is knowing what to include and what to leave out. What level of detail is appropriate? When is it OK to digress? How do you keep people engaged enough in the overall suspense of the story that they're willing to follow you into more technical material?

The best way to determine how much to say on each of your story points is audience awareness and responsiveness:

• Learn as much as possible about your audience BEFORE you speak to them.

• While you're talking, DO NOT read your PowerPoint, your script, your detailed notes.

• Do not rotely repeat a memorized program.

• Instead, read the audience. Are they looking at you? Are their faces confused/blank/disinterested? Are heads nodding because people are in enthusiastic agreement, or because they're on the verge of dozing off?

• Be prepared to adapt your story. If you see that you're losing people, move forward towards your conclusion--the happy ending, the call to action, the REASON you're speaking in the first place.

• Don't be afraid to ask questions. Draw your audience in by asking for a show of hands on a relevant topic. Don't answer for them. Allow silence in the room, time for people to think, digest, and respond.

No matter your personality type, when you can read and respond to your audience, and you know your material intimately, you can deliver a powerful, memorable business story. And sometimes, the best way to master your story and deliver it well is to work with an experienced story coach. Call me next time you have an important presentation to give, and you'll see what a difference it can make.

Want to Improve Workplace Performance? Play a Little!

I had the privilege recently of leading an ice-breaker session for a board retreat of high-level legal managers. We spent half an hour playing together as a warm-up for their annual retreat. When I say "playing," I mean it in the best sense of the word: Experimenting, taking risks, making mistakes, and laughing our heads off.

We make such a grave mistake, suffer such an immeasurable loss, when we ignore the value of play in the business world.

My techniques for leading people into this world are drawn from improvisational theater, storytelling, and group process. And I know what people think when I suggest that we play catch with an invisible ball--they think it's ridiculous, unprofessional, a complete waste of time.

How can I tell?

Well, of course I can read it on their faces and in their body language. But I also hear the condemnation in my own head, a sinister whisper telling me that having this much fun can't possibly be considered "legitimate" work.

Here's the great news, though. Play is the very most vital, legitimate approach to coming up with new ideas, building healthy, resilient teams, and staying engaged and creative when the going gets tough. Many kinds of research have shown it--one of my favorite books on the subject is The Levity Effect by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher. Short summary: Studies have shown that laughter pays off. That the most profitable, efficient, and effective business teams are those that laugh together, play together, experiment and explore together.

So why haven't more businesses rushed to embrace this great news? I think there are a few factors:

• First, in order to laugh, we have to have a certain amount of emotional abundance--the freedom, the time, the expansiveness to let loose and laugh. When times are rough, and people are focused on scarcity and loss, laughter feels like an extravagance that no one can afford. But in fact, we can't afford NOT to laugh. Laughter lightens the mood and replenishes us so we can get back down to business with renewed energy and enthusiasm.
  
• Second, I think there's an element of The Emperor's New Clothes in the business world--no one wants to admit that they can't quite see the seriousness and portent in every business procedure and detail, for fear that they'll appear frivolous, incompetent, or addle-pated. So we all put on our stiff suits and our stiff upper lips and act as though everything we do is deadly serious.
  
• Third, I think that more traditional businesses, with more traditional, top-down management styles, are reluctant to try anything that doesn't have concrete, measurable results. If it's not rational, linear, and quantifiable, it can't be real.
  

But we cling to these beliefs to our great detriment.

Playfulness Gets Results

After half an hour of circle games, imagining ourselves in strange worlds, free-associating, and sharing stories about our most passionate non-work interests, the group was energized, galvanized, and ready to begin some of the most creative work of all: developing a vision of the future, and agreeing on a strategic plan to make that vision a reality.

Could they have prepared themselves just as well using a 40-slide PowerPoint and a few flip charts? I doubt it. After all, the meeting took place after lunch. Everyone knows what happens to a human being with a full stomach when the lights dim for a presentation.

If you'd like to learn more about bringing playfulness into your workplace, contact Halpern & Associates at 510-338-0241 or by writing info@rhalpernassociates.com.

Strengthen Your Tolerance Muscles and Support Diversity in Your Workplace

After years of studying the skills of professionalism and self-mastery, I firmly believe that the hardest skill for us humans to develop is tolerance. What better, or more bitter, example, than the recent assassination of physician George Tiller, a brave and compassionate man who was killed for practicing his beliefs? Two people differed on a profound moral issue; for one, this difference was so intolerable that he convinced himself that murder was preferable to mutual acceptance.

We can all imagine what would become of civil society if every time people disagreed, they shot each other. Intolerance inside your organization can also be deeply destructive. When people don’t know how to differ or disagree constructively, their intolerance can destroy creativity, stymie innovation, shatter teams—destroy all the key elements of an enterprise’s success.

But the habit of intolerance is deeply implanted, perhaps even biological. We perceive those who are different from us as threatening, repulsive, wrong-headed—even dangerous. Don’t believe me? Just listen to the little voice in your head next time you find yourself in a crowd. Who are the people who you shy away from, mistrust, condemn? For me, the interior litany of intolerance is instantaneous—and embarrassing. I like to imagine that I’m nonjudgmental, and I’d never deliberately hurt anyone over a disagreement, yet I hear my inner voice criticizing bad driving, bad communication style, bad parenting, and bad fashion crimes. Over and over, it’s those who seem most different from me who I disapprove of most fiercely.

Cultivating tolerance is hard work—in fact, it may go against our natures. Studies show that people are most comfortable living, working, and studying with people most like themselves. That’s how liberal communities like Berkeley spring up—like-minded people like to live together. But “liberal,” it turns out, does not always mean “tolerant.” In fact, Berkeley liberals are just as eager as everyone else to encourage (or coerce) others to be more like them. This is, after all, the town where strangers will criticize what’s in your grocery cart, berate you for the car you drive, and even try to mandate where your coffee comes from.

How can we exercise our tolerance muscles effectively? In my workshops on “Mastering Difficult Conversations” and “Fostering Diversity,” I lead exercises designed to increase your comfort with difference. Find a partner and stage a discussion where someone deliberately opposes one of your most strongly held beliefs—on capital punishment, the right to vote, or the appropriateness of spanking as a child rearing aid. Listen to your inner voice as your partner deliberately supports the opposite position on whatever topic you’ve selected.

Workshop participants report unspoken reactions such as,

“What an idiot!”

“Who in his right mind believes that?”

“Oh, I can’t listen to this!”

“I could never respect someone who believes X.”

Not only do we practice not saying these conversation-stoppers out loud; in these workshops, we listen to those inner voices, and we wait them out. In place of intolerance, we learn to substitute curiosity. Asking questions is a great way to get past the reflex rejection of difference, to actually learn about another person’s point of view.

And I don’t mean fake questions like, “What in the world are you talking about?”

I mean real, open-ended questions, like, “How did you come to that belief?” and “What experiences have led you to that conclusion?”

Try it out sometime. Next time you’re in a conversation with someone you strongly disagree with, instead of explaining to him how wrong he is, or changing the subject because he's “hopeless,” try asking a question. Treat it as an exercise—but see how many things shift for you when you set aside intolerance to learn more about another human being.


Why should we spend time building our tolerance and curiosity?

It could save your life. And it will definitely strengthen all of your relationships, with family, with colleagues, even with those you disagree with most fiercely. Inside our organizations, when we learn to tolerate difference, ask questions out of genuine curiosity, and recognize our common humanity, we add another thread to the web of relationships that supports our success.

Want to strengthen your tolerance muscles and support diversity in your workplace? To schedule a custom-tailored workshop on “Mastering Difficult Conversations” or “Fostering Diversity,” please call 510-338-0241 or contact info@rhalpernassociates.com.

Delegating Makes You a Mentor

Wondering how to get started as a mentor? Delegate a project to someone today!

I was training a group of attorneys recently who said that they simply don’t have time to mentor young associates—it takes more time to delegate a task than to do it themselves. This is a tough complaint to argue with, because in the short term it’s true: it often seems easier to do a task than to break it down, teach someone else how it should be done, and coach them through the process.

The long term view, however, is that we can’t afford NOT to do it. If we don’t pass on our expertise and know-how, our organizations will be unable to survive us—we’ll have no skilled, well-trained successors. To put it another way, it’s our duty to our employer to mentor and train younger members of the organization. When we postpone or avoid this task, and try to do everything ourselves, we’re dooming the organization.

So, given the importance of mentoring our successors, how do we get past the “I don’t have time” barrier?

Last week, when I was presenting a program at the Northern California Human Resource Association’s HR West Conference, I attended a wonderful training session that provided a good answer to this question. Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching, Inc., presented a program on “Becoming a Person of Influence.” Jo presents the components of influence very clearly, and one thing resonated with me more than anything else: you can increase your “resources influence” by delegating projects to other people.

Naturally, you don’t delegate in an, “I can’t be bothered with this” way.

Instead, you might pull someone out of the crowd, saying “You’re the right person for this job. You may never have done anything like this before, but I’ve been watching you, and I’ve seen that you have capabilities that go beyond your job description.”

What Jo explained is that you can expand your influence by assigning tasks to people within your organization who might be stretched—and increase their competence, confidence, and reputation—by taking on a task you don’t want to do. You gain in several ways simultaneously:

• You gain influence, by demonstrating that you’re a person who can build a team and get things done.
  
• You gain time, by delegating a project to someone else.
  
• You gain a loyal ally, someone who believes in you because you believe in them.
• You establish yourself as a mentor while learning how to delegate skillfully.

When it’s spelled out like this, why wait? Delegate!


Learn more about Ruth Halpern's training and coaching services at www.rhalpernassociates.com, or call 510-338-0241 for a consultation today.

Enjoying the mud puddles

Last Sunday, after what felt like 40 days of rain, I took my 3.5 year old daughter out for a rain walk. We put on our raincoats, our rain boots, and our rain hats, and set out on the Seaview Trail in Redwood Park.

The bay tree and redwood forest was so dense and green it almost hurt your eyes. The ferns and moss were damp and dripping, though no rain was actually falling. And I thought, "Great, we'll walk a mile or so to a beautiful look-out point, see the clouds pouring over the Golden Gate Bridge, have a snack, and walk back." A goal, a destination, a reward, and home--what a fine plan.

Three minutes down the trail, we came upon a mud puddle. A substantial mud puddle, deep and squishy, with enough mulch to leave footprints and make a sucking sound when you tried to pull your boot up. And my daughter declared that this was "home." She didn't want to walk any further. She didn't want to see the view. She wanted to stomp and smush around in the puddle and play that we lived there--mud pillows, mud blankets, mud pies for breakfast. So that's what we did.

No view, no completion, no achievement--just playing with what we found on the path.

As avidly as I set my adult goals and destinations, in times like these, especially, it helps to be reminded that stopping and stomping in the mud puddles is the real purpose of the journey we're on. What seems like an annoying detour, inconvenient and messy and sticky, can, with the right pretending, be the place where we make ourselves at home.

A Strategy for Hard Times: Improve the Assets You Already Have

What should we do when the news turns scary and all economic signs seem to point downward?

I was talking recently with Dick Frankel, my friend, attorney, and entrepreneurial mentor, who commented that, in his experience, when the economic news is bad, companies cut the two things they can least afford to lose: training and marketing.

When times are hard, what we should be doing is maintenance: polishing and improving what we've already got, so that its value really shines. If you own a house, take care of that termite work you've been putting off. If it's a car, check the tires and make sure it's running as fuel-efficiently as possible.

Your organization's most valuable asset is its people. Enrich them by training them to use their technology as effectively as possible, polishing their customer service skills, and helping them manage the inevitable stresses of their jobs.

For technology, rather than installing a whole new suite of software, focus on the features of the existing programs that could help expand your client base. Client Relationship Management software, or CRM, is a great example of this. If your firm has been using its CRM as a glorified rolodex, this could be the time to expand and improve the quality of the data you store in it. By enriching the data with areas of expertise, languages spoken, and a history of past work for a given client, you make it possible to identify new business opportunities that might otherwise be missed. Of course, once the data is there, you also need to train people to turn to the CRM for answers, and ensure that they know how to produce the information they need.

Providing on-going training for your personnel saves costs by increasing retention and job satisfaction. You also keep your customers happy, which is ultimately the most important way to improve your bottom line.

When times are hard, it's true that customers watch their spending more carefully, but they still need products and services. Use tailored marketing to tell your story to existing and potential clients: Make sure that everyone knows that what you're offering is the best of its kind. Halpern & Associates works with professionals, staff, and management, to help everyone in the firm tell their best stories.

When times are hard, we're all tempted to tighten our belts and lock our wallets. But the truth is, we can't afford to skimp on maintenance in times like these. Now more than ever, it's vital to invest in the assets you already have.

Choosing the Right Medium for the Message

As an early-adopter techno-geek, I was thrilled to receive an Amazon Kindle for my birthday. For those of you who haven't yet fondled a Kindle, it's a portable book-reading device, about the size of a trade paperback, that lets you download and store about 20 books at a time. You can also annotate and search all of your books and comments, which provides access to the text in ways that printed books can't offer.

I was thrilled to be able to bring lots of books along with me on my travels, and luxuriated in reading by the light of the airplane. However, I soon discovered that I had trouble staying engaged with longer novels in this limited, bland format. I missed the look of different fonts for different stories; resting my eyes between the text and the margins, and beyond; the sound of the pages as I turned them; the shift in weight as I passed the halfway point of the story. In other words, the Kindle "book" existed in its own strange sort of techno-vaccuum, devoid of all the sensory elements that I enjoyed so much, and that gave me a sense of being in dialog with a writer, without ever fully realizing it.

The same thing has happened to us as we've moved from in-person, to telephone, to electronic communication: We've lost many of the body language, vocal intonation, and nonverbal cues that added richness, meaning, and nuance to our communications. The message is there, but the medium of email has stripped away some of the most important parts.

Recently, I read an article asserting that, in moving from telephone to email communication, we've moved to a measurably inferior technology for one of the first times in history. (Though Socrates himself feared that carving symbols onto stone would prove measurably inferior to passing knowledge along orally--that the invention of written language would make people lazy and weaken their intellects and their memories.) In any case, I had to put down my magazine to ponder this criticism of one of our newest methods of communication. (Don't get me started on texting and twittering--I'll save those for another installment.)

For years now I've accepted--even embraced--the supposed benefits of email: precision; a chance to edit and review before sending (spell check!); a written record of an exchange; and the independence of the two correspondents. Email, I believed, is the perfect medium: I can write to you at midnight, and you can reply at 10 AM--the conversation unfolds at our mutual convenience.

But of course, all that supposed convenience comes at a cost: Misunderstandings about tone and intent, inadvertently hurt feelings, the inefficiency of exchanging 10 emails when a single phone call would get the job done. When I'm absolutely honest, I have to say that email has not improved business communication--but it certainly has increased the quantity.

After test-driving a few different kinds of books on my Kindle, I've discovered that it works best for short, humorous essays, and light reading with lots of breaks between sections. For longer stories, ones I want to savor written by authors I want to know well, I'm sticking with the old printing press.

This discovery reminds me that we also need to choose the medium for our own messages very deliberately: Email is great for short, factual exchanges, and informal notes. Telephone calls or in-person meetings work better for occasions where the information is more complicated, there's significant emotional content, or where the real goal is to establish and deepen a relationship, not just share a quick laugh.

Thanks to the Kindle, for all that it is and all that it is not, and for reminding us that we still have to choose the right medium for each of our messages--and for our audience.

We Are What We Wear

When I first developed my "Dress to Impress--What [Not] to Wear" workshop, I was secretly a little embarrassed. Wasn't this subject kind of trivial? How much does appearance really matter in the business world? Shouldn't professionals be more concerned with what they say and how they act than how they look?

But the sad fact is, as Malcolm Gladwell demonstrated so persuasively in Blink, we all have only about 5 seconds to make a first impression, so we need to make sure it's the right one. As the fashion pendulum swings back to the conservative end of the spectrum, it becomes especially important--and tricky--to make sure that our clothing sends the right message: You want to convey that you're thoughtful, aware of tradition, and yet capable of independent and innovative thinking. In addition, you want to show that you understand what "business casual" is--and isn't--that you're sensitive to the culture of your organization, and that you clearly belong there.

This was brought home to me by a partner at a recent "Dress to Impress for Attorneys" workshop that I taught. She described meeting with a client in her office, and wanting to introduce the client to a young associate whose abilities she thought were relevant. However, when she peeked around the associate's office door and saw what the associate was wearing, she changed her mind. She couldn't possibly introduce her client to someone who was dressed so inappropriately.

So, how much does it matter what you wear? It could be the difference between making a deal and never even entering the negotiations.